front cover of The Color of Rock
The Color of Rock
A Novel
Sandra Cavallo Miller
University of Nevada Press, 2019

A young physician, Dr. Abby Wilmore, attempts to escape her past by starting over at the Grand Canyon Clinic. Silently battling her own health issues, Abby struggles with adjusting to the demands of this unique rural location. She encounters everything from squirrel bites to suicides to an office plagued by strong personalities. While tending to unprepared tourists, underserved locals, and her own mental trials, Abby finds herself entangled in an unexpected romance and trapped amidst a danger even more treacherous than the foreboding desert landscape.

Sandra Cavallo Miller’s debut novel transports readers to the beautiful depths of Arizona and weaves an adventurous and heartwarming tale of the courage and strength it takes to overcome personal demons and to find love.

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front cover of Out of Patients
Out of Patients
A Novel
Sandra Cavallo Miller
University of Nevada Press, 2022
After practicing medicine for more than thirty years in the sweltering suburbs of Phoenix, Dr. Norah Waters is weighing her options, and early retirement is looking better and better. At age fifty-eight, she questions whether she still needs to deal with midnight calls, cranky patients, and the financial headaches that come with running a small clinic. Fighting burnout and workplace melodrama, Norah gives herself one final year to find the fulfillment and satisfaction she remembers from the early years of her once-cherished career.

As she embarks on her year’s journey, Norah grapples with a medical practice that is experiencing a concerning loss of income. She is supervising two medical students, one whose shyness hampers his development and another whose arrogance and contempt for family medicine creates major friction at the clinic. Norah’s life is further complicated by her elderly mother, a feisty 86-year-old living in Sun City, who once rejoiced at Woodstock and recently partied at Burning Man. Troubled by a shadow in their past, both women find themselves on a quest for self-worth in their shifting worlds. Norah also must cope with the end of an unhappy, long-term relationship with an aspiring, but deadbeat, novelist.

Supported by her steadfast dog, a misfit veterinarian, and a thoughtful radiologist, Norah wrestles through a surprising assortment of obstacles, sometimes amusing and sometimes dreadful, on her way to making a decision about her future.
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front cover of What the River Said
What the River Said
A Novel
sandra cavallo miller
University of Nevada Press, 2021
In her third book in the Dr. Abby Wilmore Series, Sandra Cavallo Miller weaves a new riveting tale of medical adventure and mystery, set amidst the splendor of the Grand Canyon 
 
In this riveting third book of the Dr. Abby Wilmore series, Dr. Abby returns to her medical clinic in Grand Canyon National Park. Happy to be reunited with her staff and her partner, Dr. John Pepper, Abby is back treating park visitors and personnel as well as local residents. However, a wave of heart attacks among apparently healthy hikers creates a new puzzle, and soon there are rumors of people using performance-enhancing drugs. Abby’s situation deteriorates when a new female friend suddenly disappears, and Abby berates herself for missing the woman’s depression.

As Abby struggles with the disappearance of her friend, Dr. Pepper is preoccupied by a mysterious threat from his past and becomes badly
injured in an apparent fall. While he recuperates, Abby takes over much of the clinic work while they provide a home for Pepper’s troubled teenage niece and an adopted stray dog.

Abby soon discovers that there is something more sinister behind the recent troubling events. In this exhilarating follow-up to The Color of Rock and Where Light Comes and Goes, Abby must learn to confront her past in order to stand up for the ones she loves.
 
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front cover of Where Light Comes and Goes
Where Light Comes and Goes
A Novel
Sandra Cavallo Miller
University of Nevada Press, 2020

Book 2 in the Dr. Abby Wilmore Series

Where Light Comes and Goes brings back Dr. Abby Wilmore, the young family physician who was the protagonist of Miller’s first novel, The Color of Rock. Abby has accepted the directorship of a summer clinic in Yellowstone National Park where she hopes to expand her medical skills. She arrives to find herself working above the increasingly restless Yellowstone supervolcano, treating visitors, staff, and locals, all while evading the advances of a lecherous concession manager and maintaining a long-distance relationship with her partner who stays at the Grand Canyon Clinic. As tremors in the park escalate and the lakes seethe with bubbling gases, Abby learns that some-one is mysteriously killing the bison.

What follows is an engrossing mystery unfolding in a spectacular setting with rich, quirky, and endearing characters and unexpected plot turns. While an overworked Abby makes new friends among her clinic staff and patients, tension builds as the volcano seems to be moving closer to a major eruption and the bison killings become more frequent. Soon, Abby finds herself in mortal danger as the story races to a thrilling and unexpected conclusion.

Sandra Cavallo Miller demonstrated in The Color of Rock that she is a gifted storyteller. Where Light Comes and Goes deftly combines a gripping mystery set in the accurately depicted routine of a busy medical practice amid the wonders of Yellowstone’s magnificent scenery and wildlife. This is entertaining reading at its best.

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front cover of Where No One Should Live
Where No One Should Live
A Novel
Sandra Cavallo Miller
University of Nevada Press, 2021
Dr. Maya Summer works at Arizona Public Health, overseeing and researching a myriad of public health issues. A passionate advocate for a motorcycle helmet law, she also monitors disease-bearing mosquitoes, rabid bobcats, and the opioid epidemic—along with many other concerns. To maintain her clinical skills, she spends time at the nearby family medicine residency, seeing patients and teaching new physicians. Maya also navigates a complicated personal life: a somewhat troubled romantic relationship with a cardiologist; a retired physician-friend searching for new meaning; an undocumented neighbor raising a young son; and a cherished ailing old horse. A new danger looms when she sparks the anger of local biker gangs who want to stop her helmet campaign. As the intimidating warnings reach an unsettling highpoint, a past trauma that had been fueling her work now starts to haunt her—threatening to derail her carefully choreographed life.

Dr. Alex Reddish, a faculty member at the residency, enjoys Maya’s company every week. He longs to know her better but also knows she is involved with a prominent cardiologist. A former shy chess champion, Alex has worked to remake himself into a more socially engaged person, though he cannot completely shed his reclusive past. His professional life is complicated by two resident physician advisees: a depressed and poorly performing man, and a seductive woman. And now someone seems determined to harm him. 

Maya and Alex turn accomplices when they try to unravel a spate of unusual illnesses afflicting residency staff, and discover disturbing trends. As Maya and Alex become closer, they must also tackle their personal pasts and individual demons, and find the courage to move forward. 
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