Books: Loving Care

Next to a boy and his dog or a girl and her horse, no fictional setup is quite as durable--and automatically touching if done well--as the story of a sick man and his nurse. Now, to A Farewell to Arms and The English Patient, add another memorable star-crossed Red Cross romance: Thomas Moran's second novel, The World I Made for Her (Riverhead; 273 pages; $23.95), which delves into the bond between James Blatchley, a semicomatose New York City cop, and Nuala Riordan, his Irish-immigrant caregiver. Struck down (as the author himself was once) by a horrifically stubborn strain of chicken pox,...