Exiles

Groner does a serviceable job of blending a rugged Himalayan setting and Tibetan Buddhist themes with a gritty adventure yarn in this debut novel. After divorcing his unfaithful meth-addict wife, Dr. Peter Scanlon, a 44-year-old cardiologist from Berkeley, accepts a physician's job at a remote Kathmandu Valley clinic, taking his troubled but bright 17-year-old daughter, Alex, with him. Peter soon falls in love with a Nepali nurse and helps free a local sex slave, buying her liberty from a local "lard-ass hustler." And Alex meets an older girl named Devi and begins to explore her sexual identity. As the ominous rumblings of Nepal's Maoists play in the background, Peter is dispatched to a satellite clinic near the Chinese border, taking Alex and Devi along, where they witness evidence of Communist atrocities. When Peter is captured by young Communist guerrillas, his survival depends on cunning and the magical aid of a Tibetan medicine woman. Despite a narrative structure that borders on puzzling, Groner's picaresque story moves at a lively clip, dropping in an unforeseen plot twist that carries the reader's interest to the end. (June)