Pioneer Doctor : The Story of a Woman's Work

When Mollie Babcock stepped off the train in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1890, she knew she had to start a new life. She'd left her husband and their medical practice in Iowa, and with only a few hundred dollars in her pocket and a great deal of pride, she set out to find a new position as a physician. She was offered a job as doctor to the miners at Bannack, Montana, and thus began her epic adventures in the Rocky Mountain West. The true story of a medicine woman who found opportunity in the wide-open spaces of America's frontier west, "Pioneer Doctor: The Story of a Woman's Work, "is not just a beautifully written and thoroughly researched story of a fascinating woman's life. It is also the story of an era when daring women ventured forth and changed history for the rest of us.

In 1988 Mari Grana left a career as an urban planner in California and retreated to New Mexico to write. Her recent book of New Mexico regional history, Begoso Cabin, won the 2000 Willa Cather award from Women Writing the West. She works as a freelance editor in Santa Fe.