Guest: Paty Jager, Author of Doctor in Petticoats

My guest today is Paty Jager, Award-winning Western Romance author. She’s joined us today to share insights of her latest novel, Doctor in Petticoats. At the end of the blog, Paty tells us about her contest being held during this blog tour.

Welcome, Paty. Tell us about your work.

All of my Halsey brother books have a heroine with an occupation that at the time was male dominated. Doctor in Petticoats is set in Oregon in 1889 which was fifty years after the first woman, Elizabeth Blackwell, earned a degree from a U.S. medical school, there were still lots of prejudice against women as doctors both from male doctors and patients.

My editor and my critique partner both made comments when my heroine is considering if she should forgo motherhood to be a doctor. I read several books written by some of the frontier women doctors and they felt if they had children it would 1) take up time they would need to start a practice and 2) the possibility that they could bring home a disease to their own children. Several waited until their practices were well established before they had children and then they would only do obstetrics or scale down their practice. It was also felt by the male doctors that female doctors were too weak to control any sexual urges they might have toward male patients. As we all know the male is much weaker when it comes to that than females. But it was one of the major concerns of the male instructors in colleges, that women had too frail a constitution to handle crisis situations and resist their desires. Mothers for centuries have been dealing with far more than men.

Here are a few more stats on women physicians:
♥The Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania was the first women's medical college and it opened in 1850 with 40 students.
♥By 1860 there were about 200 women medical doctors in the U.S.
♥ In 1864 Rebecca Lee Crumbler became the first African-American woman to earn an MD and Mary Walter became assistant Surgeon General in the U.S. Army.
♥ In 1889 Susan La Flesche Picotte became the first Native-American
woman to receive a medical degree in the U.S.
♥In 1897 Eliza Ann Grier, an emancipated slave, became the first
African-American woman to practice medicine in Georgia.
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Blurb for Doctor in Petticoats
After a life-altering accident and a failed relationship, Dr. Rachel Tarkiel gave up on love and settled for a life healing others as the physician at a School for the Blind. She's happy in her vocation--until handsome Clay Halsey shows up and inspires her to want more.

Blinded by a person he considered a friend, Clay curses his circumstances and his limitations. Intriguing Dr. Tarkiel shows him no pity, though. To her, he's as much a man as he ever was.

Can these two wounded souls conquer outside obstacles, as well as their own internal fears, and find love?

Excerpt
“I’m going to look in your other eye now.” She, again, placed a hand on his face and opened the eyelids, stilling her fluttering heart as she pressed close. His clean-shaven face had a couple small nicks on the edges of his angular cheeks. The spice of his shave soap lingered on his skin.

She resisted the urge to run her cheek against his. The heat of his face under her palm and his breath moving wisps of wayward hair caused her to close her eyes and pretend for a few seconds he could be her husband. A man who loved her and wouldn’t be threatened by her occupation or sickened by her hideous scar.

His breathing quickened. A hand settled on her waist, slid around to her back, and drew her forward. Her hand, holding the lens, dropped to his shoulder, and she opened her eyes. This behavior on both their parts was unconscionable, but her constricted throat wouldn’t allow her to utter the rebuke.

Clay sensed the moment the doctor slid from professional to aroused woman. The hand on his cheek caressed rather than held, her breathing quickened, and her scent invaded his senses like a warm summer rain.

Blog Tour Contest

This is my twelth blog on my fifteen blog/twelve day tour. Leave a comment and follow me to all the blogs on my tour and you could win an autographed copy of my June release, Doctor in Petticoats, a B&N gift card, and a summer tote filled with goodies. To find out all the places I'll be, go to my blog- http://www.patyjager.blogspot.com to find the list.

Paty Jager
Award- Winning Western Romance Author
Website: http://www.patyjager.net
Blog: http://www.patyjager.blogspot.com
Buy: http://www.thewildrosepress.com

Review: Ride a Shadowed Trail by Eunice Boeve

Ride a Shadowed Trail, a western by Eunice Boeve, is well written with interesting twists and turns. Boeve skillfully maintains the story’s suspense around well-developed characters.

Josh Ryder, eight years old, loves his mother and knows she loves him. But his life isn’t like other boys. Alone much of the time while his mother entertains men, he dreams of what his father must have been like. He pretends they do things together like other boys and their fathers. His mother often talks about what an honorable man his father had been and about his sudden death with a fever. When his mother is mysteriously killed, Josh’s world changes into a frightening nightmare of events he can’t control. Finally, he can take no more and runs away.

Good fortune draws him into the world of Pete Waters, an old widower who sees an opportunity to have the son he always wanted. The two make a fine pair and Josh grows up in Pete’s tender care on a small ranch.

Life is good except for the dark memory of his mother’s murder and the man who committed the terrible crime. As he grows older, he realizes what his mother’s occupation had been. Pete helps him understand that sometimes people have to travel down roads they might not like, but must to survive. Josh can forgive his mother, but he had two burning desires: find out more about his real father and find his mother’s killer.

As Josh travels, he learns many of life’s lessons–both joyous and bitter. He joins a cattle drive and falls in love with the rancher’s daughter. But nothing permanent can happen in his life until he avenges his mother’s murder. He learns that the man who killed his mother, Cole Slade, is feared by many, that he kidnaps Mexican girls, abusing and killing them for sport. Can Josh bring this lowlife to justice? At only eighteen years old, will he stack up against a seasoned killer?

Boeve speaks with expertise on the business of cattle drives in the mid-1800s and the cowboy’s life of that era. Her characters have depth, evoking the reader’s emotion. She maintains a good balance between tenderness and violence as the story weaves its way through ten years of the protagonist’s life. People who enjoy westerns will love Ride a Shadowed Trail.