A Fortunate Woman

- Blurb -

' Polly Morland and Richard Baker have more than done justice to the original John Berger book - and produced a work that stimulates the eye and mind in equal measure. ' Alain de Botton A Fortunate Woman is a compelling, thoughtful and insightful look at the life and work of a country doctor. Funny, moving and not afraid of the dark, it will speak to readers everywhere. Polly Morland was clearing her late mother' s house when she found a battered paperback fallen behind the family bookshelf. Opening it, she was astonished to see an old photograph of the remote, wooded valley in which she lives. The book was A Fortunate Man, John Berger' s classic account of a country doctor working in the same valley more than half a century earlier. This chance discovery led Morland to the remarkable doctor who serves that valley community today, a woman whose own medical vocation was inspired by reading the very same book as a teenager. A Fortunate Woman tells her compelling, true story, and how the tale of the old doctor has threaded through her own life in magical ways. Working within a community she loves, she is a rarity in contemporary medicine: a modern doctor who knows her patients inside out, the lives of this ancient, wild place entwined with her own. Revisiting Berger' s story after half a century of seismic change, both in our society and in the ways in which medicine is practised, A Fortunate Woman sheds light on what it means to be a doctor in today' s complex and challenging world. Interweaving the doctor' s story with those of her patients, reflecting on the relationship between landscape and community, and upon the wider role of medicine in society, a unique portrait of a twenty-first century family doctor emerges. Illustrated throughout with photographs by Richard Baker. ' All human life is here in this evocative portrayal of the challenges and joys of rural family doctoring in modern times. Enthralling and uplifting. ' James LeFanu, author The Rise & Fall of Modern Medicine ' I was consoled and compelled by this book' s steady gaze on healing and caring. The writing is beautiful. ' Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater and Ghost Wall ' A vibrant and authentic portrait of the rural family doctor in these difficult contemporary times. ' Trisha Greenhalgh, Professor of Primary Care at the University of Oxford