The Doctor: A Tale of the Rockies

The Rocky Mountains rise behind every page of this sturdy early 20th-century novel, where a young man's jaw "does for his face what a ridge and bluff of rock do for a landscape." Barney Boyle has seen his destination - he will be a doctor - and the only question remaining is how to reach it. Set in a rugged community where barn raisings forge neighbor bonds and a family copes with devastating injury, the novel traces Barney's struggle to reconcile his towering ambition with the claims of home. His mother's quiet strength and the texture of rural life around the Old Stone Mill provide the emotional grounding. This is frontier fiction with a doctor's education at its heart: a story about what it costs to escape a place you love, and whether the leaving is worth the leaving behind. Connor writes with muscular simplicity about character forged in difficult country.