Angel Face and Amazing Grace

""Show me a man who suffers the monthly miseries, and I'll show you a man hell-bent on finding relief,"" April Truitt reflects on the opening page of Copeland's latest historical romance (after Bridal Lace and Buckskin). When April's mother dies following surgery to relieve these torments, April encourages other women to avoid doctors by using alternative medicine, namely Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound. Gray Fuller, the handsome young physician setting up practice in the small Massachusetts town, has enough problems to deal without adding April and Pinkham's elixir (which is nearly all alcohol and cures nothing) to the list: the town's single women are burying him in baked goods, and his fiancee from Boston is humiliating him with her snobbish ways and passion for the color purple. Copeland fans may be entertained, but others will find that the slapstick humor and absurd antics of the characters negate the story's believability. (Jan.)