The Color of Rock transports readers into the Arizona landscape where they join Dr. Abby Wilmore in the challenges of practising rural medicine, overcoming personal demons, and finding love. Starting a new medical career at the Grand Canyon Clinic, Abby struggles to figure out her personal life amid the complicated tasks of providing health care to a wide array of patients. Abby must adjust to the medical needs of this unique rural location, with cases involving everything from squirrel bites and sexually transmitted diseases to suicides and bubonic plague. While trying to tend to unprepared tourists, underserved locals, and her own mental health, Abby finds herself pursued by a persistent park ranger and struggling to get along with the physician in charge of the clinic. As the story progresses, Abby confronts a danger far more treacherous than the foreboding landscape.

This engaging novel shows the complex, demanding tasks of physicians in their everyday professional and personal lives and explores the meaning of a life fully lived. The adventures, medical exploits and mysteries, the quirky secondary characters, and the remarkable geology of the setting make Sandra Cavallo Miller's debut novel a must-read.