House calls. Flu epidemics. Terminal illnesses. Coroner duties. Fishhook
incidents. For more than three decades, Roger A. MacDonald served the
people of Minnesota's north woods as a family practitioner and
jack-of-all-trades, even responding to the occasional "barn call" for
ailing animals.
In this new collection of stories, MacDonald takes readers on another
round of house calls, office visits, and emergency summons. His remote
practice saw patients of every age and type, from a local child with a
penchant for putting things up his nose to a dedicated church pianist
with untreatable cancer, from a teenager with unexplained seizures to a
vacationing Mafioso recovering from a heart attack. MacDonald offers
tales of patients, colleagues, and neighbors, probing their very human
responses to medical dilemmas and sharing humorous and touching episodes
in equal portions.
A Country Doctor's Chronicle is a charming collection of
vignettes--some hopeful, some heartbreaking--that offer a unique look at
a bygone era of twentieth-century rural America.