Stuck at home during the pandemic, I started watching historical fiction and fell in love with the British miniseries, Hornblower. Suddenly I found myself writing my own stories about an imprisoned midshipman and Ella Parker, a surgeon that saves him. But there was a plot hole. Women could not be doctors in 19th-century England, leave alone ship surgeons. Thus, I sent Ella into medical school disguised as a man, and Hearts and Sails series was born. Looking for interesting cases for Ella to observe and treat, I became obsessed with the history of modern medicine. I also wanted my character to overcome great obstacles and eventually prove to others what a woman can do.
After the heartbreaking loss of her mother and a cruel attack by her drunken father, Ella Parker decides that dishonesty is fine when it serves her needs. At a time when wealthy young ladies do little more than embroidery, Ella escapes her luxurious but lonely life, disguises herself as male medical student, and finds her footing in the university. When she brilliantly saves a patient and gains the approval of a famed professor, she must choose between truth and lies, and distinguish between real and false friends, before her pretense is discovered.
Enjoy a riveting adventure set in a 19th-century medical school, decades before anesthesia, germ theory, or antibiotics. Follow Ella as she cares for patients, conducts experiments, and learns the value of friendship.
The Girl in His Shadow is my favorite comparative fiction. Similar to my story, Nora Beady lives in England, at the time when woman couldn’t practice medicine. But Nora’s path is very different from Ella Parker’s. Nora is a secret assistant to famous Dr. Croft, but her position is threatened when Dr. Daniel Gibson joins the practice. Soon Dr. Gibson sees Nora’s value, and the two become friends and more. The novel is very well-researched, beautifully written, and kept me hooked to the end. This book is great for fans of woman’s fiction with a medical theme. Be ready for detailed surgeries, experiments with ether, patients lost to difficult births and infections, and slow but sure steps of medical progress and perseverance.
Readers who enjoy the medical details of my book will be treated to a galore of similar themes in The Girl in His Shadow. In the 1840s, doctors used stethoscopes and experimented with ether but were still far from the effectiveness and safety of modern medicine. The characters are believable and intriguing. The characters of Dr. Gibson, Dr. Croft, and Nora are likable and developed. The book left me wanting more, and I was excited when the sequel came out.
THE USA TODAY BESTSELLER! "An exquisitely detailed journey through the harrowing field of medicine in mid-19th century London."-Tracey Enerson Wood, USA Today bestselling author of The Engineer's Wife and The War Nurse An unforgettable historical fiction novel about one woman who believed in scientific medicine before the world believed in her. London, 1845: Raised by the eccentric surgeon Dr. Horace Croft after losing her parents to a deadly pandemic, the orphan Nora Beady knows little about conventional life. While other young ladies were raised to busy themselves with needlework and watercolors, Nora was trained to perfect her suturing and anatomical…
Hooked on book 1, The Girl in His Shadow, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the sequel. Here Nora is studying in medical school in Italy, one of few places that admitted women at the time. While Nora is learning Cesarian section and struggling with the attitudes of male doctors and students, Dr. Gibson works hard to save ill children in London and keep Dr. Croft’s clinic operating.
I enjoyed the second book almost as much as the first. At times the pace slowed, and some secondary characters were not developed, which is why I say “almost.” I’m glad that I published my book three months before The Surgeon’s Daughter came out. Some similarities, down to minor characters names, were almost uncanny.
Of all the books I’ve used in research for my book, this one was my favorite. While this non-fiction work details the life of Dr. Lister, who lived later in the 19th century, it gives a view of what a hospital was like before germs were discovered. Unwashed hands, soiled sheets, bloodied aprons, and surgical instruments—Dr. Fitzharris spares no details in her riveting book. A hospital was a stepstone to the grave. Medical students and doctors caught infections and died. Butchering Art made the world of 19th-century medicine so vivid to my imagination that I was able to write my fiction with sharp details that shocked and impressed the readers.
Winner, 2018 PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing Short-listed for the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize A Top 10 Science Book of Fall 2017, Publishers Weekly A Best History Book of 2017, The Guardian
"Warning: She spares no detail!" —Erik Larson, bestselling author of Dead Wake
In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of nineteenth-century surgery and shows how it was transformed by advances made in germ theory and antiseptics between 1860 and 1875. She conjures up early operating theaters—no place for the squeamish—and surgeons, who, working before anesthesia, were lauded for their speed and…
I’m often asked if Ella Parker is based on Dr. James Barry. She’s not. But I was glad to confirm that history recorded at least one woman was able to disguise herself as a man and become a distinguished doctor. The biography of Dr. Barry is intriguing, well-written, and shows how brilliant and mysterious an individual he was. The best find for me was the list of classes Barry attended at the University of Edinburgh. I sent my main character into the same classes, including the optional midwifery, and the private class with a prestigious teacher. This biography gave me many answers about this remarkable doctor, but also left me with questions.
James Barry was one of the most outstanding doctors of the nineteenth century – a brilliant surgeon, a tireless campaigner for medical reform, and a compassionate Inspector-General of the Army.
But throughout a long and distinguished career an air of secrecy, even of scandal, always clung to Barry. The shrill voice, the diminutive build, the almost ostentatious humanity – all struck a discordant note in the stiff, conventional world of the officers’ mess. Only after the doctor’s death in 1865 did the incredible truth come to light:
I scoured this book for strange and dangerous remedies people used to administer and it didn’t disappoint. Arsenic, mercury, bloodletting, to name a few. When I read about leeches used to treat painful menstruation, I put the book down… to add that gem into my fiction, of course. Interesting stories, great illustrations, great learning, and fun.
A tour of medicine's most outlandish misfires, Quackery dives into 35 "treatments", exploring their various uses and why they thankfully fell out of favour - some more recently than you might think. Looking back in horror and a dash of dark humour, the book provides readers with an illuminating lesson in how medicine is very much an evolving process of trial and error, and how the doctor doesn't always know bests.
I was first a clinical social worker and then a social work professor with research focus on older adults. Over the past few years, as I have been writing my own memoir about caring for my parents, I’ve been drawn to memoirs and first-person stories of aging, illness, and death. The best memoirs on these topics describe the emotional transformation in the writer as they process their loss of control, loss of their own or a loved one’s health, and their fear, pain, and suffering. In sharing these stories, we help others empathize with what we’ve gone through and help others be better prepared for similar events in their own lives.
ThePianist's Only Daughter is a frank, humorous, and heartbreaking exploration of aging in an aging expert's own family.
Social worker and gerontologist Kathryn Betts Adams spent decades negotiating evolving family dynamics with her colorful and talented parents: her mother, an English scholar and poet, and her father, a pianist and music professor. Their vivid emotional lives, marital instability, and eventual divorce provided the backdrop for her 1960s and ‘70s Midwestern youth.
Nearly thirty years after they divorce, Adams' newly single father flies in to woo his ex-wife, now retired and diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Their daughter watches in disbelief…
Grounded in insights about mental health, health and aging, The Pianist’s Only Daughter: A Memoir presents a frank and loving exploration of aging in an aging expert's own family.
Social worker and gerontologist Kathryn Betts Adams spent decades negotiating evolving family dynamics with her colorful and talented parents: her English scholar and poet mother and her pianist father. Their vivid emotional lives, marital instability, and eventual divorce provided the backdrop for her 1960s and ‘70s Midwestern youth.
Nearly thirty years after they divorce, Adams' father finds himself single and flies in to woo his ex-wife, now retired and diagnosed with…
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