The Law of Similars

by Chris Bohjalian

  The hotel reservation was under Carissa's name.

  Whitney says she doesn't believe her aunt will ever return home, but I disagree. The fact that she writes encourages me.

  And even if she never comes back to Bartlett, I believe she will come back to me. Or she will let me come to her. But she will emerge. I am confident she will emerge, and as she once--no, twice--healed me, she will let me heal her. And this time my head will be as sound as my heart, my judgment unclouded by loss.

  And I will succeed.

  In the meantime, I raise my daughter. I go to work. And though some days it is very hard, I try not to live for the future. And I try not to dream of the past.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I could not have written The Law of Similars were it not for the generosity of several extraordinary people: Lauren Bowerman, State's Attorney for Chittenden County, Vermont; Edward Kent, M.D., allergy and asthma specialist; Elizabeth Macfarlane, C.C.H.; and Shaye Areheart and Dina Siciliano at Harmony Books. They gave me the great gifts of their wisdom and their time.

  I used a number of books while writing this novel, some of which I found indispensable. Stephen Cummings and Dana Ullman's Everybody's Guide to Homeopathic Medicines and Richard Gros-singer's Homeopathy: An Introduction for Skeptics and Beginners were consistently reliable resources. Rima Handley's thoughtful and moving history of the Hahnemanns, A Homeopathic Love Story: The Story of Samuel and Melanie Hahnemann, provided valuable biographic information.

  The quotations from Samuel Hahnemann's Organon of Medicine come from the translation by Dr. Jost Kunzli, Alain Naude, and Peter Pendleton; the excerpts from The Chronic Diseases come from L. H. Tafel's translation.

  I imposed upon a great many friends and experts to read all or part of the novel in manuscript form, including: Alicia Daniel, a naturalist and botanist with the University of Vermont; attorney Susan Gilfillan; Stephen Kiernan; Ellen Levine; Dan Manz, director of Vermont's Emergency Medical Services Division; Wayne Misselbeck, M.D.; Ken Neisser; Mike Noble, a public relations specialist with Fletcher Allen Health Care; Bill Pendlebury, M.D.; Reverend Randy Rice; and Bill Warnock, N.D.

  Finally, my deepest thanks go, once again, to my wife, Victoria, a reader whose patience is endless and whose love is immense.

  Publisher's Note:

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, MARCH 2000

  Copyright (c) 1999 by Chris Bohjalian

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Harmony Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1999

  Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Contemporaries and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Acknowledgment is gratefully made to Cooper Publishing for use of the Samuel Hahnemann quotes from the sixth edition of his Organon of Medicine.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the Harmony edition as follows:

  Bohjalian, Christopher A.

  The law of similars / by Chris Bohjalian. -- 1st ed

  I. Title.

  PS3552.0495L39 1999

  813'.54--dc21 98-15807

  eISBN: 978-1-4000-3296-9

  Author photograph (c) Victoria Blewer

  www.vintagebooks.com

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