Our Monday Matters reading group enjoyed this, and I did, too, with qualifications. This is a fictional re-telling of the life of Maude Abbot, one of the first female physicians in Canada and certainly its first female cardiac specialist. She overcame tremendous obstacles, scorn, sexism and hostility to carve a place for herself in the medical community of Montreal and the wider world. It's always refreshing to be reminded of what women had to go through to determine their own destinies a mere hundred years ago. Abbot's story is fascinating; my complaint with the novel is that Rothman has given us too blurry a sketch of the woman. Long sections of her life are elided, and Rothman is especially stingy with the details of her work. Still, this was a good, solid piece of historical fiction.
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