Heart Specialist - Softcover

Claire Holden Rothman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1851687947 ISBN 13: 9781851687947

Publisher: ONEWorld Publications, 2011

Synopsis

Fleeing accusations of a hideous crime, Agnes White's father left her with precious little: an old pipe, half-recollections of a bristling moustach, and jars upon jars of preserved medical specimens. What began as the only way to remember her absent father soon develops into a passion to understand, and to marvel at, the workings of life. Following her vocation into the medical profession, it takes all her intelligence and determination to defy the establishment and win the right for women to hold medical degrees. Yet despite a rapid rise to stardom, she continues to find herself up against a wall of prejudice and exclusion. Set against the conflicts and upheaval that permeated the early 1900s, The Heart Specialist charts one woman's struggle for the freedom to do what she loves.

About this title

Review:

My Sister the Doctor: Claire Holden Rothman on The Heart Specialist

Agnes White, the heroine of The Heart Specialist, is based on the real-life Maude Abbott. But as I wrote the novel, I needed to draw on sources more intimate than history to bring Agnes to life. Among the most important of these sources was my own sister, Dr. Ann Rothman.

Ann is not quite two years older than I am. For much of my childhood, she was my best friend. We spent countless hours together, sleeping in the same bedroom, eating at the same table, bathing in the same sudsy water and playing, endlessly, indoors and out. More than a friend, Ann was the person I admired most. She was brainy, hardworking and utterly untroubled by girly squeamishness. Being nearsighted, if she found something that interested her--a worm, a slug, a lizard--she was liable to give it an inquisitive sniff. And more often than not, she would discuss her discovery in minute detail over dinner that evening, taking it for granted that everyone at the table shared her passion for things that wriggled and squirmed and oozed.

Readers of The Heart Specialist will see my sister's intellectual vigor in my heroine. Like Ann, young Agnes is fearless in her quest for knowledge, memorably performing a do-it-yourself dissection in a freezing barn. She's also myopic; not above smelling the things she can only see mistily with her imperfect vision. And she's industrious. She has to be, to overcome the obstacles that stand between her and her goal of becoming a physician.

It's in those cruel obstacles, of course, that Agnes parts company from my sister. During the 1980's, Ann Rothman studied medicine at McGill--the very faculty that refuses Agnes in the novel. Ann never doubted for an instant that she could be fully a doctor and fully a woman at the same time. No such certainty is offered to Agnes. On the contrary, her fragile confidence is assailed again and again by a world that refuses to honor her dreams. Agnes must make her own way. Against all odds, she succeeds, mastering the intricacies of cardiac science even as she unlocks the secrets of her own vulnerable heart.

It's surely obvious to anyone who reads these words that Agnes is dear to me. Her ultimate quiet triumph is due, in large part, to the inspiration I've drawn from someone dearer still: my sister.

About the Author:

Claire Holden Rothman has worked as a lawyer, teacher, newspaper columnist, and translator in her native Montreal. The Heart Specialist is her first novel.

About this edition

• Publisher: ONEWorld Publications
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1851687947
• ISBN 13: 9781851687947
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 236