Digital BW, The Print

I am still in the early stages of learning to use Photoshop to 
correct the mistakes I make with intial exposures.  I shoot a lot of 
figure studies in high mountain woods as I love the interplay of the 
intense light, shadow and form.  While I occasionally get what I 
think are great images, all too often, an image is degraded/destroyed 
by a hot spot where that portion of the image gets completely 
overexposed because of the F-stop range in the initial exposure.  I 
have tried various PS tools (burning, healing and cloning) as well as 
trying to isolate the section (via the magic wand etc.) and generally 
end up with a section that looks (at best) pretty funky.  Any 
references/resources on this kind of hard core retouching or other 
advice would be appreciated.

regards

mark sharfman