The Healing Tree

Book excerpt: How far would you go to save your dying sister? In this action-packed medical thriller, Justin Reeve, a scientist working for a small research lab in Western North Carolina, finds out. His sister is dying of cancer in a hospital, her chemotherapy unsuccessful. While hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, he stumbles across a unique tree. His Cherokee Indian friends identify it as a sacred healing tree, the source of a powerful ancient remedy and thought to be extinct. Desperate to save his sister, he secretly creates a medicine from the tree and gives it to her without anyone's knowledge. When her improvement leaves doctors confounded, evidence suggests to Justin that the healing tree is the reason. A global pharmaceutical firm, eager to obtain a replacement for their failed drug, offers to buy the lab to acquire a drug the lab had developed. They consider the healing tree a potential threat and conspire with the lab's owner to destroy it. Suspense mounts as Justin, surrounded by lies and deception, must battle powerful foes willing to do anything to protect their interests. Betrayal and death lurk in the shadows as he has to decide who he can trust to save the tree-and with it, his sister.