MISS MORISSA: DOCTOR OF THE GOLD TRAIL

by Mari Sandoz ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 19, 1955

This could be classified as a super-Western in the Shane tradition -- complete with all the gun-toting, cattle rustling, fightin' and feudin 'between the homesteaders and the cattle kings of the traditional, plus the authenticity possible only when there is first hand, intimate knowledge of facts and terrain. Marl Sandoz, of Old Jules 'heritage, has it in the blood, and has told a superb story here with a young woman doctor as heroine. Thus it might have been, in the days when gold strikes in the Black Hills brought successive waves of prospectors, desperadoes, tragic dregs of the eastern settlements, and all the usual array of hangers-on to the new bridge crossing leading to the trail. There Miss Morissa hung up her shingle. There she doctored one and all, stopping neither for storm nor peril from badmen and Indians. There she made friend and foe, when she dared to set up the beginnings of a home and a hospital in the area the cattlemen called theirs. There she fought out the battle within herself, and seemed more often to lose than win. Good reading, often\because the thread of story thins in the multitudinous details of fact. Perhaps this will lift it out of the Western adventure field and give it longer life. The portrait of the woman doctor is a composite of three actual figures.

Pub Date: Oct. 19, 1955

ISBN: 0803291183

Page Count: -

Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1955

Categories: FICTION