The story
Witnessing the suffering and death of her dear mother, Rebecca Hostettler is determined to become a doctor…not easy for a woman in the late 1890s.
Peter Chaloupek, taken in and raised by the Hostettler family since age ten, wants nothing more than to continue farming with Becca’s father and to marry the woman he loves…the future Dr. Rebecca Hostettler. But when Becca writes home, singing the praises of a wealthy, handsome young man she met her first day at medical school, Peter fears that Becca will never see him as anything but a brother. Complicating matters is the sheriff’s pretty little daughter, sharp shooting Jane McKee who has set her sights on him.
Will Peter finally choose sweet Jane? Will Becca become the wife of a future lawyer and politician? Or will she decide to continue her medical studies and take the long road home.
The background
Into the twentieth century in medical schools throughout the United States female students were scorned, discriminated against and humiliated.
The first medical school was established in 1767, but it wasn’t until 1847 that Elizabeth Blackwell was told she might attend medical school…if disguised as a man. Between 1848 and 1895 seventeen women’s medical schools were founded, all staffed by men, since no women doctors were available. Male physicians feared the “feminization” of medicine would lead to a second-class profession.
As late as 1906, Dr. Claudia Potter of Texas was hired at the Temple Sanitarium not only to work as an anesthesiologist, but as a pathologist, house doctor, stretcher boy, and “general flunky” for the paltry sum of $25 a month plus room and board. Hers was not an isolated experience.