In Gooding, Texas there is no physican and no vet. The good people of Gooding hire one of each sight unseen. What they don't know is that Taylor, the physician, is the female of the twins and is quite ready to take on the monumental task of winning the males of the species over to the modern idea of a female doctor.
While she and her vet brother tackle the town, he woos and wins a wife. The cantankerous blacksmith finds out she's quite up to his verbal duals and she wins his heart. I have to say, that I got really tired of her way of thinking she had to do everything all by herself along about 1/4 to 1/2 of the way through this tome. I was quite surprised at this because Cathy is an old hand at writing, being an author of 25 novels.
One most excellent thing about this novel is exploring the trials and tribulations of a female physican. Back in the very lat 1880's and 1890's, the number of female to male going to medical school was about 1 to 3, about 25% of all medical students were female. Then the males realized this wasn't a very good thing for them. If they let this trend go on, soon the females would out number the males and this very manly profession would become female dominated. That just couldn't be. So then the medical schools' professors and deans and presidents (all male) decided to be more stringent against females in school, effectively steming the tide of female students. Some propaganda filtered out which caused a lot of hullabaloo concerning female physcians, thus further steming the tide. By 1925, female students numbered 5%. What a waste!
I have not read any of Hake's other novels, but frankly I was not very impressed with this one. If you like soap operas, then you'll like this novel. It has some Small Town flavor, but it could have had so much more.
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