Alan Hart, a physician, radiologist, tuberculosis researcher, and best-selling novelist, was also one of the first transgender men to undergo a hysterectomy in the United States. Hart lived and worked for many years in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho before moving to Hartford, Connecticut, where he died in 1962.
In 1936, Hart published The Undaunted, his second best-seller. The novel, which follows young doctor Richard Cameron's attempts to find an effective treatment for anemia, begins in the west coast city of Seaforth, a stand-in for 1920s Seattle. Within the medical-research plot, Hart also weaves the story of men-Cameron and radiologist Sandy Farquhar-whose personalities and bodies do not fit neatly within the norms of the social or medical establishment. Dedicated to medicine and the understanding that scientific knowledge can decrease human pain and suffering, these men must nevertheless pursue their careers at personal cost. Lauded in its time for its insights into the inner workings of the medical field, The Undaunted is also an important document of the struggle of the human heart.
Alan Hart (1890-1962), assigned female at birth, was born in Hall's Summit, Kansas, the only child of Albert and Edna Hart. After his father died when Hart was two, Hart and his mother moved to Albany, Oregon, where his mother remarried. As a child, Hart dressed and regarded himself as a boy. He attended Albany College (now Lewis & Clark), transferred to Stanford, then returned to Albany and graduated in 1912. He graduated from the University of Oregon Medical School (now Oregon Health & Science University) in 1917 with the highest honors. In medical school, Hart wore the required skirts for women but masculinized his appearance by wearing men's coats and collars. After graduating, he persuaded a doctor to perform a full hysterectomy on him, making Hart the first trans person in the United States to receive gender-affirmative surgery. Afterward, Hart cut his hair short, wore only men's clothing, and changed his name to Alan L. Hart. While living in Washington state during the Depression, Hart published four socially-conscious novels (Doctor Mallory, The Undaunted, In The Lives of Men, and Dr. Finlay Sees It Through), all medical dramas set in the Pacific Northwest. In 1948, he and his wife, Edna Ruddick, moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where Hart earned a master's degree in public health from Yale. Hart dedicated the rest of his professional life to tuberculosis research and was one of the first doctors to document how tuberculosis was transmitted and how it could be slowed by detection. Hart and his wife lived together in Connecticut until Hart's death from heart failure in 1962.
Carter Sickels is the author of the novel The Prettiest Star, published by Hub City Press, and winner of the 2021 Southern Book Prize and the Weatherford Award. The Prettiest Star was also selected as a Kirkus Best Book of 2020 and a Best LGBT Book of 2020 by O Magazine. His debut novel The Evening Hour (Bloomsbury 2012), an Oregon Book Award finalist and a Lambda Literary Award finalist, was adapted into a feature film that premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.
