A well-organized, smoothly presented blend of fact and fiction about a pioneering doctor.
A debut biographical novel examines the life of Canadian physician and surgeon Thomas Robert Ross, who practiced medicine in Alberta during the first half of the 20th century.
Webster attempts to realize the one unfulfilled ambition of Ross—to write his own history as a frontier doctor during a time marked simultaneously by rapid change in his chosen profession and the western expansion of Canada. For the basic story, the author has relied on the copious notes left behind by Ross and his wife, Jennie, including fragments of case histories, personal letters, and oral histories repeated by family, friends, and their descendants. From these, she weaves her own imaginative narrative showcasing Ross, a medical pioneer who leaves the busy cities in Quebec and Ontario behind for the southwestern plains of the new Alberta province, bringing with him his wife and two young sons. Through the invented conversations and musings of Ross and Jennie, Webster builds two complex primary characters. Ross, son of a Hudson Bay Company trader, possesses a temperament that’s suited to life on the vast empty expanses of mountains and, later, prairies. He is an exuberant, restless loner. In counterpoint is Jennie, a former school teacher, who suffers from more fragile health and bouts of depression. She finds the frequent moves of their first 20 years in Alberta, until they finally settle in the prairie town of Drumheller, challenging both physically and emotionally. But the background against which their personal saga plays turns out to be the most compelling aspect of this volume: the technological changes that move Ross from horseback to automobiles, two world wars that deliver home the wounded and the maimed, and the gradual introduction of medical breakthroughs that mark the first half of the century. These include the development of insulin for treating diabetes, the early use of vaccines, the improvements in operating-room disinfection (which Ross instituted in Coleman), and his work to improve techniques in bone surgery. Constant mining injuries (these are coal towns) also inspire Ross to revolutionize on-site treatment by creating first-aid brigades trained to stabilize miners before they make the arduous journey to the hospital.
A well-organized, smoothly presented blend of fact and fiction about a pioneering doctor.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4602-7877-2
Page Count: 402
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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