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Miss Morissa: Doctor of the Gold Trail
Miss Morissa is a dramatic, moving novel of a young pioneering woman doctor on the brawling Nebraska frontier of the 1870s. Fleeing the East and a heartbreaking past, Morissa Kirk finds the North Platte River Valley rife with rumors of gold strikes. Fortune hunters, desperadoes, horse thieves, murderers make up the frontier society, while Indians roam the plains refusing to surrender their land to the gold-hungry white men. Near lawless Clarke Bridge she sets up her practice, treating white and Indian alike, receiving horses (if anything) in return for her services. Then, even as fame spreads of her skill, and acceptance slowly grows, Morissa becomes embroiled in the life-and-death struggle between the cattlemen and the homesteaders, a struggle as destructive as it was inevitable. In the telling of Morissa's story, Mari Sandoz has caught the whole turmoil of the changing frontier in the days of Custer, Calamity Jane, and Buffalo Bill Cody.
249 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1980
5 people are currently reading
131 people want to read
About the author
Mari Sandoz
55Ìýbooks45ÌýfollowersMari Susette Sandoz (May 11, 1896 â€� March 10, 1966) was a novelist, biographer, lecturer, and teacher. She was one of Nebraska's foremost writers, and wrote extensively about pioneer life and the Plains Indians.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
June 5, 2017
Loved this book of the Great Plains of the 1870's! Reminiscent of My Antonia, Oh Pioneers or These is My Words, the story of this courageous, strong pioneer female doctor was so well- written you actually felt like you were back in time in NE during the Black Hills Gold Rush, the Indian Wars and the range wars between the ranchers and the the homesteaders. It amazes me still that people survived these challenging times. The strength and fortitude of these early brave Pioneers never ceases to astound me. As a Midwesterner, I take great pride in these people, knowing that I am descended from their ilk!! Mari Sandoz was an author who knew how to tap into this passion and courage. Strongly recommend this lesser known read for a lover of Willa Cather or Nancy E. Turner!
July 25, 2019
You had to be one tough cookie to go out west in the mid 1800's... in this case a single woman recently jilted by her fiance heads West to join her step-father. She is a doctor and is quickly appreciated despite being a woman, as there are no other doctors around. Good details of how tough it was for the early settlers, ranchers, and gold seekers. She does do one really stupid thing in the book that was exasperating, but comes out of it in the end. This area was close to the area where Dave / Alice grew up.
October 25, 2020
1870s feminism in the Wild West, protagonist and narrator sympathetic to the indigenous people. Does not romanticize Calamity Jane or the other celebrities of Deadwood. A bit episodic for me, but overall a pleasure to read and I got choked up at the end. I’ve read the author’s biography of Crazy Horse and that is a masterpiece. Mari Sandoz deserves more recognition.
Reading all this frontier doctoring in the Coronatime made me thankful for all the advances in health care over the last 150 years. Miss Morissa faces Typhoid, Smallpox, and Polio in her hospital shack and has to decide on treatments... there’s no transfusions for example... I normally avoid hospital tv shows and I was a bit grossed out a few times.
I also appreciate that in the outlaws vs. lawmen episodes, the sherrifs and possies and frontier justice are all equally unsympathetic. The sheriff causing our shero just as much trouble as the robbers and gunmen. It’s also cool to have some male good guys who are there to support her and not protect her or boss her. I especially liked the characters Fish Head, an itinerant, and Charley, a Civil War veteran with nursing skills.
Everyone who isn’t white, Mexican, or part of an Indigenous nation is, presumably in the language of that time and place, called a “breed,� and it usually seems to mean they have some native ancestry, but historically 40% of the ranch hands would have been African American Freedmen, and that goes more or less unacknowledged.
Someday, the USA will get its history and its myths sorted out and the whole world will be better for it.
Reading all this frontier doctoring in the Coronatime made me thankful for all the advances in health care over the last 150 years. Miss Morissa faces Typhoid, Smallpox, and Polio in her hospital shack and has to decide on treatments... there’s no transfusions for example... I normally avoid hospital tv shows and I was a bit grossed out a few times.
I also appreciate that in the outlaws vs. lawmen episodes, the sherrifs and possies and frontier justice are all equally unsympathetic. The sheriff causing our shero just as much trouble as the robbers and gunmen. It’s also cool to have some male good guys who are there to support her and not protect her or boss her. I especially liked the characters Fish Head, an itinerant, and Charley, a Civil War veteran with nursing skills.
Everyone who isn’t white, Mexican, or part of an Indigenous nation is, presumably in the language of that time and place, called a “breed,� and it usually seems to mean they have some native ancestry, but historically 40% of the ranch hands would have been African American Freedmen, and that goes more or less unacknowledged.
Someday, the USA will get its history and its myths sorted out and the whole world will be better for it.
August 5, 2017
I loved the history-- this is an era I'm not knowledgeable on, and it piqued my interest. I'd like to know more. The wild, wild west was a whole other world back then.
I also liked the writing-- this is that beautiful prose where every word holds significant meaning. It was quite dense, though, for so short a novel. It's not a book to be read quickly-- I had to return to passages several times because I missed something. The beauty overshadowed important scenes and I was lost.
I did not, however, like the female lead. For all her intelligence, she's quite stupid. At the end of it all, this novel's a romance, which I was quite keen on. Her actions reminded me of that one Hardy novel (which I only saw the movie). I couldn't sympathize with Morissa (which I pronounced Marissa, every time).
While her storyline of being a female doctor in time where there were few, or none, was fascinating, she herself did nothing for me. I feel like her bastardness was a much bigger deal to her than to anyone else; and her indecisiveness (and then stupidity!) in love appalled me.
With that said, I'm glad I read this because it opened my eyes to a whole new genre I need to explore, as well as some non-fiction.
I also liked the writing-- this is that beautiful prose where every word holds significant meaning. It was quite dense, though, for so short a novel. It's not a book to be read quickly-- I had to return to passages several times because I missed something. The beauty overshadowed important scenes and I was lost.
I did not, however, like the female lead. For all her intelligence, she's quite stupid. At the end of it all, this novel's a romance, which I was quite keen on. Her actions reminded me of that one Hardy novel (which I only saw the movie). I couldn't sympathize with Morissa (which I pronounced Marissa, every time).
While her storyline of being a female doctor in time where there were few, or none, was fascinating, she herself did nothing for me. I feel like her bastardness was a much bigger deal to her than to anyone else; and her indecisiveness (and then stupidity!) in love appalled me.
With that said, I'm glad I read this because it opened my eyes to a whole new genre I need to explore, as well as some non-fiction.
June 11, 2023
The main character, Morissa, is a strong and smart woman on one hand when it comes to being a doctor and a pioneer, but I think she is rather naïve when it comes to relationships. She keeps using the fact that she is the bastard child of an unknown father as an excuse for depriving herself of a good husband and marrying some good-for-nothing instead. Overall, well written novel that includes tidbits about historical figures such as Crazy Horse, General Custer, Calamity Jane, Buffalo Bill Cody, Fly Speck Billy and Doc Middleton.
February 21, 2022
Miss Morissa is a doctor in western Nebraska and South Dakota in the 1870's. This book deals with the historic issues of the times, the way Native Americans are treated, conflicts between cattlemen and settlers, and the rampant disease and frequent injuries of those times. As a reader I appreciated the way these story lines were handled, I was less impressed by characterizations of the people, just didn't feel like I really got to know them.
January 18, 2024
This was a fantastic novel about a woman doctor in the Old West in Nebraska in the late 1800's. There are multiple interesting stories of injuries and illness in the time of the gold rush in western NE. She is a jilted fiancee and helps many people while trying to forget the past. This was much better than I had anticipated. I am very glad I read it.
July 1, 2019
I especially liked this book because it is set in Nebraska & the Black Hills of South Dakota. It is about a pioneer woman doctor in the 1870's . If you like western novels, I think you'd like this book
October 12, 2018
Will read more Sandoz.
December 28, 2014
I really wanted to like this book...but just could not identify with the heroine. While being a strong, capable woman---and well educated--Dr. Morissa could not seem to get a handle on her love life. She put off her love interest, Tris Polk, for the first half of the book, making excuses to put of their wedding. Then she goes and marries an outlaw, Eddie, who treats her like dirt for the rest of the book, including stealing her favorite horses and selling them, driving away some children Morissa adopted back into the arms of their deadbeat father, and finally burning her home and medical hospital to the ground. Before Eddie is dead he abandons Morissa and so Tris comes around again a-courting, and by the end of the book, he's ready to marry Morissa again and she agrees...only to dump him at the last page because her patients have given her a petition to stay and promised to rebuild her home and hospital. While I appreciated Morissa's drive to heal as a doctor, her inability to decide what she wanted (or even really voice that she was unclear about it in the work) bothered me immensely.
That said, the book was well written and plotted. The style is literary, which means if you're reading for fun, you're going to have to read very carefully and pay attention so you don't miss anything. What I liked best about the book was the historical clash between homesteaders and cattlemen, which comprises the background of this tale, and is one of the contentions between Tris and Morissa, in that he is a cattleman, and Morissa often finds herself on the side of the homesteaders. There was also a good deal about frontier medicine and daily life, which I also enjoyed somewhat.
That said, the book was well written and plotted. The style is literary, which means if you're reading for fun, you're going to have to read very carefully and pay attention so you don't miss anything. What I liked best about the book was the historical clash between homesteaders and cattlemen, which comprises the background of this tale, and is one of the contentions between Tris and Morissa, in that he is a cattleman, and Morissa often finds herself on the side of the homesteaders. There was also a good deal about frontier medicine and daily life, which I also enjoyed somewhat.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 30, 2014
A very engaging book set in western Nebraska during the Gold Rush to the Black Hills. Sandoz is always one of those Nebraska authors I mean to read, so I finally got around to it.
Dr. Morissa Kirk is a strong, brave, ambitious woman, thriving in a world of men- at least materially and professionally. Her personal and love life is a wreck and throughout the book, this drove me nuts! For such a confident woman, she really second-guessed herself all the time in love. And she never felt as tho she deserved anything good.
I quite enjoyed the read, and I read it when I was home in Nebraska for the holidays!
Dr. Morissa Kirk is a strong, brave, ambitious woman, thriving in a world of men- at least materially and professionally. Her personal and love life is a wreck and throughout the book, this drove me nuts! For such a confident woman, she really second-guessed herself all the time in love. And she never felt as tho she deserved anything good.
I quite enjoyed the read, and I read it when I was home in Nebraska for the holidays!
February 28, 2010
Set in the gold rush days; a female doctor went to a town on the new railroad to set up. This is one of my favorite historical eras and I really liked this book because this woman had a really good work ethic and didn't let much get her down.
October 7, 2010
A very well-written book of a strong woman in a tough time. Read this while travelling through the area of Nebraska that she talks about and it helped to give the book more context, as well as being able to feel the history of the area while travelling in it . Highly recommended.
August 20, 2011
Sandoz delivers an authentic wild west tale about an independent young woman who becomes a frontier physician in northwestern Nebraska. The author's attention to history of the area, the status of women and Native Americans as well as medical treatment in the 1880's makes this a good read.
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December 8, 2008YA San
November 18, 2011
Danger and adventure and prejudice faced this young woman doctor in the wild mid-west.
November 21, 2013
A young pioneering woman doctor on the Nebraska frontier in the 1870's.
June 13, 2020
If I read this again, will I like it any better?
October 4, 2024
If this was a TV show I could see my mom enjoying this
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
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