Dr. Darla
When Kay Byers murders her son, Dr. Darla Davenport is called on to testify in court that her friend’s temporal lobe seizures from a car accident were responsible. Dr. Darla is a psychiatrist who uses her past experience of surviving an abusive husband to counsel her patients. Her son, a student at Duke University, is struggling with grades, and attempts suicide because he feels he cannot live up to his mother’s expectations. Struggling with her own private demons, Darla counsels and treats her patients using a clinical and Christ-centered approach. Darla is a compelling story about mental health issues, faith, and overcoming obstacles.
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Jo Ellen Layne is the author of the novel Laughter at Dawn as well as a short story, “Seasons,” and the article “American Family.” She based this novel on her thirty-seven years of experience in the mental health field as a social worker, and she has drawn on her knowledge of psychological disorders as a basis for her creative works. Her short story, “Seasons,” about a long-distance relationship, placed in an international literary competition in 1988. She also published “American Family” in Woman’s World about her personal experience of placing her mother in a nursing home.