Here are 100 books that The Girl in His Shadow fans have personally recommended if you like
The Girl in His Shadow.
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Stuck at home during the pandemic, I started watching historical fiction and fell in love with the British miniseries, Hornblower. Suddenly I found myself writing my own stories about an imprisoned midshipman and Ella Parker, a surgeon that saves him. But there was a plot hole. Women could not be doctors in 19th-century England, leave alone ship surgeons. Thus, I sent Ella into medical school disguised as a man, and Hearts and Sails series was born. Looking for interesting cases for Ella to observe and treat, I became obsessed with the history of modern medicine. I also wanted my character to overcome great obstacles and eventually prove to others what a woman can do.
I’m often asked if Ella Parker is based on Dr. James Barry. She’s not. But I was glad to confirm that history recorded at least one woman was able to disguise herself as a man and become a distinguished doctor. The biography of Dr. Barry is intriguing, well-written, and shows how brilliant and mysterious an individual he was. The best find for me was the list of classes Barry attended at the University of Edinburgh. I sent my main character into the same classes, including the optional midwifery, and the private class with a prestigious teacher. This biography gave me many answers about this remarkable doctor, but also left me with questions.
James Barry was one of the most outstanding doctors of the nineteenth century – a brilliant surgeon, a tireless campaigner for medical reform, and a compassionate Inspector-General of the Army.
But throughout a long and distinguished career an air of secrecy, even of scandal, always clung to Barry. The shrill voice, the diminutive build, the almost ostentatious humanity – all struck a discordant note in the stiff, conventional world of the officers’ mess. Only after the doctor’s death in 1865 did the incredible truth come to light:
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
As a physician, medicine is my job. But along the way, I wondered how medicine got to where it is now–like really wondered. I wondered to the point that I was reading the original treatises written by 18th-century physicians. I started publishing research on medical history and giving presentations at medical conferences. I’d like to think this helps me be a better doctor by broadening my perspective on the healthcare industry. But at the very least, I’ve found these books enjoyable and compelling. I hope you enjoy them, too!
I re-read this book anytime I want a greater appreciation for living in the 21st century because it is teeming with downright disgusting medical stories from the 1800s–and it’s fantastic.
Our healthcare system is nowhere near perfect, but the juxtaposition between it and the gory details of pre-anesthetic and pre-antiseptic surgeries makes me so incredibly thankful.
Winner, 2018 PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing Short-listed for the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize A Top 10 Science Book of Fall 2017, Publishers Weekly A Best History Book of 2017, The Guardian
"Warning: She spares no detail!" —Erik Larson, bestselling author of Dead Wake
In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of nineteenth-century surgery and shows how it was transformed by advances made in germ theory and antiseptics between 1860 and 1875. She conjures up early operating theaters—no place for the squeamish—and surgeons, who, working before anesthesia, were lauded for their speed and…
Stuck at home during the pandemic, I started watching historical fiction and fell in love with the British miniseries, Hornblower. Suddenly I found myself writing my own stories about an imprisoned midshipman and Ella Parker, a surgeon that saves him. But there was a plot hole. Women could not be doctors in 19th-century England, leave alone ship surgeons. Thus, I sent Ella into medical school disguised as a man, and Hearts and Sails series was born. Looking for interesting cases for Ella to observe and treat, I became obsessed with the history of modern medicine. I also wanted my character to overcome great obstacles and eventually prove to others what a woman can do.
Hooked on book 1, The Girl in His Shadow, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the sequel. Here Nora is studying in medical school in Italy, one of few places that admitted women at the time. While Nora is learning Cesarian section and struggling with the attitudes of male doctors and students, Dr. Gibson works hard to save ill children in London and keep Dr. Croft’s clinic operating.
I enjoyed the second book almost as much as the first. At times the pace slowed, and some secondary characters were not developed, which is why I say “almost.” I’m glad that I published my book three months before The Surgeon’s Daughter came out. Some similarities, down to minor characters names, were almost uncanny.
When Annie Thornton, midwife and apprentice witch, falls through time to a 15th-century Yorkshire village with her telepathic cat, Rosamund, she befriends Will and Jack, two soldiers returning from the French Wars. Mistress Meg, Annie’s ancestral aunt living in the 15th century, is…
Stuck at home during the pandemic, I started watching historical fiction and fell in love with the British miniseries, Hornblower. Suddenly I found myself writing my own stories about an imprisoned midshipman and Ella Parker, a surgeon that saves him. But there was a plot hole. Women could not be doctors in 19th-century England, leave alone ship surgeons. Thus, I sent Ella into medical school disguised as a man, and Hearts and Sails series was born. Looking for interesting cases for Ella to observe and treat, I became obsessed with the history of modern medicine. I also wanted my character to overcome great obstacles and eventually prove to others what a woman can do.
I scoured this book for strange and dangerous remedies people used to administer and it didn’t disappoint. Arsenic, mercury, bloodletting, to name a few. When I read about leeches used to treat painful menstruation, I put the book down… to add that gem into my fiction, of course. Interesting stories, great illustrations, great learning, and fun.
A tour of medicine's most outlandish misfires, Quackery dives into 35 "treatments", exploring their various uses and why they thankfully fell out of favour - some more recently than you might think. Looking back in horror and a dash of dark humour, the book provides readers with an illuminating lesson in how medicine is very much an evolving process of trial and error, and how the doctor doesn't always know bests.
My mother was the only female chemist in a Fortune 500 company for a good two decades before another one was hired. I saw from a front-row seat the misogyny she endured. The result of this experience was that I wrote a novel about a female doctor in 1894. I also ended up in a technical field that was only slightly populated by women, although women dominate it today. I saw the transition because I was involved in it. I think my acceptance in that field happened because of the efforts of the other women who went before me.
OK, OK, this book is not a novel, although it’s as easy to read as a novel with all its tension. It covers, among others, the lives of Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Sophia Jex-Blake, and other female doctors from the 1800s.
The deeply researched book is biographical, but its strength is in the examination of how women doctors were thought of throughout the ages and the difference they’ve made. The book explores the ancestors of modern doctors (mid wives, ancient Greeks female doctors, etc.).
I found the writing accessible and vivid with a real elbows-on-the-table and sleeves-rolled-up approach.
Meet the pioneering women who changed the medical landscape for us all
For fans of Hidden Figures and Radium Girls comes the remarkable story of three Victorian women who broke down barriers in the medical field to become the first women doctors, revolutionising the way women receive health care.
In the early 1800s, women were dying in large numbers from treatable diseases because they avoided receiving medical care. Examinations performed by male doctors were often demeaning and even painful. In addition, women faced stigma from illness--a diagnosis could greatly limit their ability to find husbands, jobs or be received in…
My mother was the only female chemist in a Fortune 500 company for a good two decades before another one was hired. I saw from a front-row seat the misogyny she endured. The result of this experience was that I wrote a novel about a female doctor in 1894. I also ended up in a technical field that was only slightly populated by women, although women dominate it today. I saw the transition because I was involved in it. I think my acceptance in that field happened because of the efforts of the other women who went before me.
I really enjoyed this book because it plopped me right into the early 1900s when women began wandering into traditionally men’s fields like medicine. I like the delicate folding of the main character’s personal life with her Down Syndrome child and her struggles in her professional life because, face it, work is not everything in life.
This book captures the compromises a single mother has to make and compounds them by adding characters who refuse to believe she’s competent in medicine.
In a uniquely vivid story of women in medicine, found family, and conquering fear for readers of Kristin Hannah, Ellen Marie Wiseman, and Audrey Blake, an impoverished former doctor and her disabled son join a traveling medicine show and its family of strangers on a collision course with the deadliest natural disaster in American history – the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. From the acclaimed author of The Nurse's Secret and The Second Life of Mirielle West.
"Perfect on so many levels that I don't even know where to begin." —Addison Armstrong, Author of The War Librarian
Chasing Light is a lyrical meditation on grief, memory, and the fragile beauty of everyday life. At its core, it is a story of resilience, forgiveness, and the transformational power of human connection. It sheds light on the overlooked realities of homelessness and addiction, while emphasizing the importance of compassion…
My mother was the only female chemist in a Fortune 500 company for a good two decades before another one was hired. I saw from a front-row seat the misogyny she endured. The result of this experience was that I wrote a novel about a female doctor in 1894. I also ended up in a technical field that was only slightly populated by women, although women dominate it today. I saw the transition because I was involved in it. I think my acceptance in that field happened because of the efforts of the other women who went before me.
This book by Barbara Wood is an oldie but goodie. I was reading it in Spanish, but it was originally written in English. I especially enjoyed the research that went into the wild hospital descriptions during the 1800s and the main character’s struggle to succeed as a doctor when society thinks she should be at home being pious.
The supporting characters range from believably obnoxious to downright endearing. More, please.
Set in London, New York, and San Francisco from the late nineteenth century through the first decades of the twentieth, Domina is the inspiring saga of one woman's personal and professional triumph against the prejudices of her time.
Beautiful and courageous, Samantha Hargrave dares to dream that she will become one of the first female doctors — and surgeons — in America. Born in the slums of London and possessing a special gift for healing, Samantha struggles to enter the all-male medical profession. When her ambition encounters hostile rejection in England, she sails to America, where she meets an eccentric…
My mother was the only female chemist in a Fortune 500 company for a good two decades before another one was hired. I saw from a front-row seat the misogyny she endured. The result of this experience was that I wrote a novel about a female doctor in 1894. I also ended up in a technical field that was only slightly populated by women, although women dominate it today. I saw the transition because I was involved in it. I think my acceptance in that field happened because of the efforts of the other women who went before me.
I like that this book is in first person because, at times, it feels as if you are in a conversation with the main character.
The book opens with a super-strong voice and is contemporary rather than historical. After I did all the research for historical novels having to do with female doctors, I felt the need to move forward in novels to see if anything had changed as far as attitudes toward women doctors were concerned.
And indeed, yes, things are better in this book, but tension and problems still require grappling.
After practicing medicine for over thirty years, Norah Waters MD is weighing her options, and early retirement looks better and better. At age fifty-eight, who needs midnight calls, cranky patients, and business headaches? Fighting burnout and workplace melodrama, Norah gives herself one last year to find her way back to enjoying her once-cherished career. In her final effort to make a meaningful difference, Norah takes on two medical students who both make and break her resolve to persist. One seems a hopeless introvert, the other a toxic egotist; supervising them makes her downright dizzy as she labels them the "yin…
Ever since I picked up an old copy of Richard Halliburton’s Book of Wonders as a child, I’ve known that exploring other cultures and countries is something I wanted to experience for the rest of my life. From then on, I’ve traveled, taken cross-cultural studies, and managed international teams as a tech marketer–and my passion for new people and places hasn’t ceased. I love reading (and writing) about the liminal spaces in history–the times and places that aren’t easy to define and don’t make it into standard history books. This list reflects my interests, and I hope it broadens the horizons of other readers.
This book is personal to me. My ancestry is Hawaiian, and I have often stared at the old photographs of my Hawaiian great-grandparents, which were taken at the beginning of the 20th century, and wondered about their world.
This book begins also at the turn of the century, and as I read, I imagined that Rachel, the protagonist, might be walking down the street at the same time as Mary, my 6-foot-tall great-grandmother. Although I had often heard that there was a “leper colony”(we now refer to it as Hansen’s disease) on the island of Moloka’i, I knew almost nothing about it.
Through this book, reading the descriptions of the clothes and houses, the language and attitudes through history into the 1980s, I really felt like I was a passenger on a voyage through my grandparent’s world.
Young Rachel Kalama, growing up in idyllic Honolulu in the 1890s, dreams of seeing far-off lands, but at the age of seven Rachel's dreams are shattered by the discovery that she has leprosy. Forcibly removed from the family, she's sent to an isolated leprosy settlement on the island of Moloka'i. In exile Rachel finds a family of friends to replace the family she's lot - but loss remains a constant shadow as Rachel watches those she loves succumb to the ravages of leprosy. Moloka'i is a story of hope, dignity, and the strength of the human spirit.
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman
by
Alexis Krasilovsky,
Kate from Jules et Jim meets I Love Dick.
A young woman filmmaker’s journey of self-discovery, set against a backdrop of the sexual liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman, we follow Ana Fried as she faces the ultimate…
This list opens the door to the inner life of physicians: our hopes, fears, insecurities, and all of the internal and external pressures we face in our training and practice. As a doctor, I see myself in these books—not a superhero with “all of the answers,” but a human being in a profession suffering one of the largest crises of workforce burnout and moral injury. Seeing our physicians as real people will help us feel more empowered to bring our own true selves to the relationship. And really good healthcare is more likely to happen when souls connect.
Shem provides a satirical look at the often sadistic training of physicians.
This was a classic when I was coming up in my training. Trigger warning: While this book importantly highlights the hidden underbelly of medical training and culture, some of the stories are so egregious that they should be used in educational settings to discuss what NOT to do. But under every satire lies some truth and something to be learned.
By turns heartbreaking, hilarious, and utterly human, The House of God is a mesmerizing and provocative novel about what it really takes to become a doctor.
"The raunchy, troubling, and hilarious novel that turned into a cult phenomenon. Singularly compelling...brutally honest."-The New York Times
Struggling with grueling hours and sudden life-and-death responsibilities, Basch and his colleagues, under the leadership of their rule-breaking senior resident known only as the Fat Man, must learn not only how to be fine doctors but, eventually, good human beings.
A phenomenon ever since it was published, The House of God was the first unvarnished, unglorified,…
