Dr. Toni's Miracle — Ruth McCarthy Sears

When Toni Corbett was still in medical school in New York, her dream was to team up with Scott Morely, already a doctor in their hometown of Cedar Valley, not only in a professional way but also in matrimony. After all, Toni and Scott were engaged, and they both shared this goal.

So when Scott came to New York and told Toni that he had signed up for a year's tour with the Ship of Hope, to help the needy and the sick in far-off places, Toni was determined not to miss him too much and promised to write constantly. Their letter's flowed back and forth for a long time, and then, shortly before Scott's tour was nearly over, his letters ebbed and finally ceased altogether. It was Toni's Aunt Miriam who wrote and broke the news to her, Scott had returned home with a young Korean bride…

It seemed as if there could be no connection between this event and the subsequent suicide of Toni's mother, a woman who had suffered years of depressive attacks, but the townspeople thought otherwise. They were old-fashioned New Englanders who could not understand the nature of suicide, let alone the presence of a “foreigner” in their midst. They simply felt that Toni's mother could not bear the agony of Scott's having jilted her daughter for some unknown creature.

But Toni did not agree -- and she had a plan. Her whole life was to change because of it, for now she was pledging herself to the field of psychiatry -- and was determined to practice in a town that would undoubtedly be in an upheaval over it.