Synopsis
When his political opinions force him to flee his native Scotland, Dr. Rob J. Cole heads to the American West, where he tends to the country's native American population and falls in love with a healer. 40,000 first printing. $30,000 ad/promo.
Reviews
In the New World, young Scottish physician Rob J. Cole seeks the justice and tolerance that seemed missing in the Old. But in Boston in 1839, where he assists surgeon Oliver Wendell Holmes, he finds the same mixture of altruism and evil that informs all human pursuits. Joining the Union Army in civilian service, Rob J. moves to the wilderness of Illinois. Gordon ( The Rabbi ) deftly employs Rob J.'s diary, which is read by his son Shaman, also a doctor, after his father's death, to reveal the Coles's early family years. In doctoring and sheep farming, Rob J. builds a worthy life, marrying the beautiful and haunted Sarah. While dealing sensitively with Sarah's jealousy of his Indian soulmate, the female shaman Makwa-ikwa, and with Shaman's deafness, Rob J. often escapes into the demands and rewards of his practice. The search for Makwa-ikwa's murderer raises such issues as racial injustice, religious prejudice and pacifism. In serviceable, if curiously unemotional prose, Gordon tells a quietly absorbing story that should please a wide audience. Literary Guild alternate.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Gordon (The Physician, The Jerusalem Diamond, etc.) offers two fictionalized generations of doctoring on the Illinois frontier from 1839 to 1865, covering such medical history as the advent of hygiene and anesthesia. Rob J. Cole, political agitator in Scotland facing banishment to Australia, decides to migrate to the US. A doctor, he lands in Boston and can find work only in the Irish ghetto, making hovel calls for a charity. Disillusioned with the politics of the charity and intrigued with Indians, he heads west, stopping in Illinois at Holden's Crossing. Rob finds his Indians in the Sauks, who have fled the reservation and are now starving nearby. He treats and feeds them, becoming their ``white shaman,'' and eventually Makwa- Ikwa, their healer, goes to work with him. He travels the countryside, snipping off fingers and enlisting household help to pinch off spurting arteries. He removes kidney stones from a recluse named Sarah, who has holed up because she thinks she's dying from cancer. After he removes the stones, she blooms, and they marry. Sarah gives birth to a boy, and Makwa tags him ``Little Shaman.'' At age five, Shaman develops scarlatina and loses his hearing, a disability that makes his road to a medical practice difficult. Both father and son end up doctoring during the Civil War, the carnage of which is graphically described. The story moves too fast to develop either characters or scenes deeply, but it's a good read and has a refreshing approach to the frontier as part of a larger culture, not an isolated place where people did nothing but murder each other. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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