Pioneer Doctor: The Story of a Woman's Work

When Mollie stepped off the train in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1890, she knew she had to start a new life. She'd left her husband and his medical practice behind in Iowa, and with only a few hundred dollars in her pocket and a great deal of pride, she set out to find a new position as a physician. She was offered a job as a doctor to the miners in Bannack, Montana, and thus began her epic adventures as a pioneer doctor, a suffragette, and a crusader for public health reform in the Rocky Mountain West.

Pioneer Doctor: The Story of a Woman's Work is the true story of Dr. Mary (Mollie) Babcock Atwater, a medicine woman who found freedom and opportunity in the wide-open spaces of America's frontier west. This remarkable tale has been creatively retold here by her granddaughter, award-winning author Mari Grana. Blending information from historical records as well as interviews with family and friends, the author has reconstructed Mollie's steps into a dramatic narrative that brings to life the doctor's struggles, her accomplishments, and the times in which she lived.

Beautifully written and thoroughly researched, this is not just the biography of a fascinating woman. It is also the story of an era when daring women ventured forth and changed history for the rest of us.

When Mollie stepped off the train in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1890, she knew she had to start a new life. She'd left her husband and his medical practice behind in Iowa, and with only a few hundred dollars in her pocket and a great deal of pride, she set out to find a new position as a physician. She was offered a job as a doctor to the miners in Bannack, Montana, and thus began her epic adventures as a pioneer doctor, a suffragette, and a crusader for public health reform in the Rocky Mountain West.

Pioneer Doctor: The Story of a Woman's Work is the true story of Dr. Mary (Mollie) Babcock Atwater, a medicine woman who found freedom and opportunity in the wide-open spaces of America's frontier west. This remarkable tale has been creatively retold here by her granddaughter, award-winning author Mari Grana. Blending information from historical records as well as interviews with family and friends, the author has reconstructed Mollie's steps into a dramatic narrative that brings to life the doctor's struggles, her accomplishments, and the times in which she lived.

Beautifully written and thoroughly researched, this is not just the biography of a fascinating woman. It is also the story of an era when daring women ventured forth and changed history for the rest of us.

In 1988 Mari Grana left a career as an urban planner in California and retreated to New Mexico to write. Her recent book of New Mexico regional history, Begoso Cabin, won the 2000 Willa Cather award from Women Writing the West. She works as a freelance editor in Santa Fe.

(1) Preface (2) An Impossible Marriage (3) A Job in a Mining Camp (4) The Ride to Bannack (5) The New Doc is a Woman? (6) A Boy with a Broken Leg (7) A Deadly Pregnancy (8) Anthony Comstock, Post Office Prude (9) Unwelcome Back Home (10) Dr. Mary B. Moore Has Arrived (11) The Marysville Strangler (12) A Visit to a Brothel (13) A Startling Proposal (14) Just Another Little Whore (15) The Marysville Suffrage Society (16) A Surprising Diagnosis (17) The Fight for a Suffrage Amendment (18) A Close Win (19) A Monster is Killing the People (20) The Nineteenth Amendment (21) A Last Move (22) Epilogue (23) The State of Medicine in Dr. Atwater's Times (24) Bibliography