Home Ground

Set in Wales in 1934, this gentle and leisurely romance, Miller's third novel to feature Megan Roberts ( Snow in the Wind ), follows the district nurse back to her hometown of Drynfor. Now 42, Megan puts aside memories of her tragic past (a fiance killed in the Great War, the death of their infant daughter) as she applies her considerable skills to tending the sick. As a friend and confidante, Megan advises the Reverend Pritchard's wife to leave her domineering and violent husband; with shrewd medical intuition, she helps track a murderer; her perceptive sensitivity helps a young woman overcome childhood abuse. Megan is less able to come to grips with her own romantic entanglements: an ambivalent relationship with the town's revered but abrasive doctor, and a safe but unexciting liaison with a local shopkeeper. Fortunately, Megan's fierce assertiveness and wry, self-deprecating humor keep the book from settling into sentimentality. (Jan.)