A Country Doctor
About this audiobook
Though not as well known as the writers she influenced, Sarah Orne Jewett remains one of the most important American novelists of the late nineteenth century. A Country Doctor, Jewett’s first novel, is a luminous portrayal of rural Maine and a look at the author’s own world. In it, Nan’s struggle to choose between marriage and a career as a doctor, between the confining life of a small town and a self-directed one as a professional, mirrors Jewett’s own conflicts as well as eloquently giving voice to the leading women’s issues of her time.
Jewett’s perfect details about wildflowers and seaside wharfs, farm women knitting by the fireside and sailors going upriver to meet the moonlight convey a realism that has seldom been surpassed.
About the author
Sarah Orne Jewett (1849–1909), novelist and short-story writer, was born and raised in South Berwick, Maine. The daughter of a country doctor, she received a lady’s education but maintained that her real learning came from her father, who fostered her writing talents and let her accompany him on his rounds. At age nineteen, she had her first short story published in the Atlantic Monthly. Her vignettes of the gently perishing glory of the Maine countryside and ports won her a place among the most successful of the local-color writers.
Kate Reading is an Audie Award–winning narrator and has received numerous Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine. She is also a theater actor in the Washington, DC, area.
