A Country Doctor

By: Sarah Orne Jewett

Narrated by: Laurie Klein

A hundred and thirty years after it was first published, Sarah Orne Jewett's story of a young medical woman remains an incisive rendering of the dilemmas of gender, society, and self.

Nan Prince first becomes interested in medicine as a child, as the ward of the widowed physician Dr. Leslie. In time she becomes his protégée. But when she enters medical college, she realizes that she will have to choose between marriage and her career, between the demands of her society and her obligations to her true self.

Inspired by Jewett's own interests and by her father, A Country Doctor portrays a world very much in flux and Nan, ultimately, as a woman with a new world opening to her.

©1999 Sarah Orne Jewett (P)2009 Books In Motion

The Perfect Listen

This book cannot be improved upon: story and narrator are both perfect.
Granted, you must be a certain kind of reader to enjoy Jewett's writing. There are no plane crashes or wild and sultry sex scenes, no battle scenes, no long sessions on the edge of one's chair. This is a story about remarkably well drawn people, the main characters of which are full of integrity. It is the story of right livelihood, of being at home in one's skin, and about how to get there. And it is written with great integrity. It is "true" in John Gardner's sense of fictional truth. We live in the characters' world, historically, geographically and culturally, and our attention is drawn, again and again, to beauty and goodness. It is a work of quiddity. It is a gem.

Sarah Orne Jewett

I love this author. I especially love Country of the Pointed Firs. Gives peaceful feeling