Cora and the Doctor; Or, Revelations of a Physician's Wife

A tender, observant portrait of a young bride's first years of marriage, set against the texture of mid-19th century domestic life. Cora arrives in America with her husband, Dr. Frank, carrying romantic ideals about married life that quickly meet the complicated reality of fitting into a new family, a new country, and an unfamiliar role. Leslie writes with quiet psychological acuity about the small anxieties and quiet joys of establishing a home: the discomfort of unfamiliar duties, the politics of in-laws, the tender negotiations of intimacy between husband and wife. What emerges is neither a simple romance nor a cautionary tale but something more honest, a young woman's gradual reckoning with the gap between her fantasies and the real, textured work of building a life with another person. For readers who find Jane Austen as much as they find Harriet Beecher Stowe in the Victorian domestic novel, this offers a nuanced glimpse into one woman's private journey toward selfhood within the boundaries of her era.