The Medicine Woman of Galveston by
Amanda Skenandore
Summary:
A downtrodden female doctor takes up with a traveling
medicine show to support her disabled son, joining a German giantess, a
bowlegged musician, an indentured Creek poet, and a handsome tinker under the
thumb of a charismatic but menacing swindler on a collision course with the
deadliest natural disaster in American history – the Galveston Hurricane of
1900.
Readers of Christina Baker Kline, Sandra Dallas, and Sara Donati will be
captivated by this story of medical historical fiction by Amanda Skenandore,
registered nurse and acclaimed author of The
Nurse’s Secret and The Second
Life of Mirielle West.
Once a trailblazer in the field of medicine, Dr.
Tucia Hatherley hasn’t touched a scalpel or stethoscope since she made a fatal
mistake in the operating theater. Instead, she works in a corset factory,
striving to earn enough to support her disabled son. When even that livelihood
is threatened, Tucia is left with one option—to join a wily, charismatic
showman named Huey and become part of his traveling medicine show.
Her medical license lends the show a pretense of
credibility, but the cures and tonics Tucia is forced to peddle are little more
than purgatives and bathwater. Loathing the duplicity, even as she finds uneasy
kinship with the other misfit performers, Tucia vows to leave as soon as her
debts are paid and start a new life with her son—if Huey will ever let her go.
When the show reaches Galveston, Texas, Tucia
tries to break free from Huey, only to be pulled even deeper into his schemes.
But there is a far greater reckoning ahead, as a September storm becomes a
devastating hurricane that will decimate the Gulf Coast—and challenge Tucia to
recover her belief in medicine, in the goodness of others—and in herself.
Review 4-star
While this story is very well written it’s not a page-turner, I could
put the book down and do other stuff and not even think about the story at one
point it didn’t pick it back up for three days., and this makes it a 4-star and
not a 5-star in my eyes.
The story flow is spot-on, as is the editing. The characters are where
the story fails and makes it where it’s not a page-turner. I don’t know what anyone looks like and I
couldn’t picture the story at all in my mind.
These two things are important to me to make a great story.
Conclusion:
Would I recommend this book to others? YES
Would I read other books by this Author? Maybe
I received this book from NetGalley for my honest review.
