REVIEW: The Medicine Woman of Galveston by Amanda Skenandore
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.
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.
CW – period terms, descriptors are used. The heroine suffers one sexual assault. The heroine suffers panic attacks/anxiety/PTSD related to her early medical career
Dear Ms. Skenandore,
This is the second book of yours I’ve read. Two years ago I enjoyed “The Nurse’s Secret.” Though our heroine Tucia is also in the medical field, she’s very different from Una the streetwise thief turned nurse.
We find Tucia working grueling hours at a corset factory under horrific conditions in order to support herself and her seven year old son Toby who has Down’s Syndrome. Soon we learn that Tucia has always longed to be a doctor, that she entered a female college for doctors and lost her father before she graduated. That’s when she had to take on a college loan. Scorned by the male doctors at the hospital where she earned a spot as a resident, she was set up for failure after being sexually assaulted by the chief attending.
Now plagued by anxiety, PTSD, and trichotillomania, she’s given up medicine but can’t stay away from a lecture being given by the very man who attacked her and ruined her career. That’s when she falls into the unscrupulous clutches of a man who runs a traveling medicine show. Huey has enough dirt on all the performers that none can take the chance of leaving. Though standoffish at first, Tucia soon realizes they’re as stuck as she is and becomes part of their lives even as she grudgingly accedes to Huey’s demands for her to take part in the shows though this means she’s helping push the sales of “snake oil” cures (yes, this was actually done) . As they travel through the lower midwest, Tucia begins to deal better with her anxiety, make friends, and feel the beginning of love for one of her fellow ragtag troupe mates. But Huey is determined that they winter over in Galveston and on September 8, 1900 that isn’t where anyone should have been.
Tucia isn’t an easy person to love. She battled her way into the medical profession, stood up to the misogyny from her fellow residents and the attendings but when she made a horrible mistake during a surgery, and she knows that despite the fact that her attending pushed her to take the lead on a case she wasn’t ready to do, she’s the one who nicked the artery. As a single mother of a disabled child, she’s had to fight to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. She doesn’t accept people into her life easily. She’s also very principled and deeply ashamed of taking part in fooling patients into buying useless patent “medicine.” Even when it might be better to keep her mouth shut, Tucia often can’t help speaking up.
The other performers all have backstories that Tucia learns along the way in solo chapters that act as a sort of info dump. They are well written info dumps that enlarge on what the other people have told Tucia or that she’s seen but they are info-dumpy. But as it would have probably taken a long time and been awkward to have worked all of the details into show and not tell, I’ll go along with it. Huey is one of those awful people who can easily gain trust as well as suss out secrets and he’s not afraid to hold these over everyone in the troupe. As he also smokes opium, his moods can and do swing wildly leaving everyone slightly on edge all the time.
Though the title and blurb might lead readers to think that Tucia and Co are in Galveston for longer than they are, they actually don’t get there until less than 20% of the story is left. Then WHAMO everyone is fighting for their lives. If it hadn’t been mentioned that details were drawn from survivor material, I wouldn’t have believed some of it. The storm was bad enough but the afterwards as people struggled to deal with what had happened was almost worse.
Tucia fights to stay true to her medical morals and finds love – though the book is far more historical fiction than romance. Her son Toby is not just a plot moppet and part of Tucia’s journey is in letting Toby loose a little to be a joyous little boy. The other troupe members are written with dignity though maybe Tucia’s acceptance of them as they are is a bit too neatly wrapped. The beginning is immersive and although the middle section drags a bit, the ending is gripping. B-
~Jayne
AmazonBNKoboBook DepositoryGoogle
