The Heart Specialist As a young girl living in rural Québec in the late nineteenth century, Agnes White is drawn to the “wrong” things. Growing up, she finds herself fascinated with microscopes and anatomical dissection – unladylike hobbies to which her doctor father had introduced her early in life, before scandal pushed him to abandon his family and home. Agnes is drawn to medicine like a moth to flame. Despite the criticism of almost everyone around her and the many obstacles preventing women of the time from assuming traditional male roles, she persists in wanting to become a doctor, even if it means taking on the medical establishment at McGill University. She eventually becomes curator of the McGill pathology museum and discovers there a heart specimen that not only launches her career as an internationally acclaimed expert in cardiac anomalies, but provides the first of a series of clues leading to her missing father.
Inspired by the career of Dr. Maude Abbott, The Heart Specialist is a testament to the power of perseverance and of dreams.
Read an excerpt here