Author Joe Starita tells the compelling and complex story of Susan La Fleshe's struggle to become America's First Indian Doctor, followed by the even bigger struggle to ban alcohol from the reservation and to eradicate tuberculosis among her people through better personal hygiene and fly/insect control. She fervently believed fresh air and sunshine were nature's medicine; she strongly advocated for education; and, she became a Christian missionary among the Omaha. She undertook many letter-writing campaigns to Indian Agents and various politicians, though frequently no one heard her pleas. She saw the dire problems and worked tirelessly, though often unsuccessfully, to solve them. However, she saved many lives and eventually succeeded in building a hospital where all, red and white, could receive care. ( )

It is with heavy heart that I must admit defeat. The writing style of this book is just so very, very far from my preference for a nonfiction book, and the focus is shifted far enough away from the subjects that most interest me, that I'm not going to press on.

I want to stress that Susan La Flesche's story--indeed, the story of her whole family--is absolutely fascinating, and I would love to see a nice, fat book with even more details about everyone, from the Omaha chief who appointed her father his heir to her sister who chose to remain on Omaha land to raise children and teach. But I would also really--and I mean really--like to see such a book have end notes in it. Starita states that he chose not to use notes because they would disrupt the flow of the story, but it made me a tad suspicious to have no frame of reference every time he described Susan La Flesche's emotions. (Except for the first chapter, which he did let us know was sourced from a highly detailed account that La Flesche gave.)

Parts of the writing were also oddly repetitive: restating the obstacles that she had overcome so far, that she was equally comfortable with poetry readers and Omaha ceremonies (though I didn't read any examples of the latter), and that La Flesche "could not know" about conflicts happening concurrently at the national level. And several times a turn of phrase--like, "the half-blood Omaha and the full-blood Sioux"--would be used at the end of one paragraph and at the beginning of the following paragraph.

I have to admit, I was hoping for a lot more information about La Flesche's education growing up. What elements of traditional Omaha beliefs did her father permit the his children to learn? What was her time at the school in New Jersey like? There's plenty of textual evidence about how she fit in to white society, but were there ever moments when she stood out and stood up for her heritage? What did she think of attitudes towards American Indians playing out on the national stage? What did she think of her black classmates at Hampton? And what did a mid-to-late nineteenth century medical education consist of? I really was hoping for more information about medicine, particularly if there were any Omaha medical practices that La Flesche did approve of, or work with. And I wanted a more socially critical examination of her interactions with white America.

Even though the book didn't meet my expectations, the facts spoke for themselves: the details of white America's cruelty to the country's first inhabitants were as appalling as expected. And even the good-intentioned support of white people stung: the language used to praise La Fleshce is condescending in the extreme (I would have liked Starita to comment on this), and this behavior did seem to start impacting the way she wrote about her own people in letters to her family. I would have liked examples of ways that she preserved her Omaha heritage (as we are told she did), not just the ways she blended into white society.

And of course, shining through everything was La Flesche's brilliant resilience. I went into this book knowing that she overcame obstacles--but that didn't make it any less impressive to read about how she worked in correspondence with women she'd never met to scrape together the money to attend medical school, or how she graduated at the top of her class.

Like I said, I'm disappointed to be giving this up--but the ratio of "narrative" to "nonfiction", and literary flourishes to facts is far too high for my taste and comfort. If you like your history to read more like a story, you will love this book. If you, like me, occasionally try to vary your embarrassingly high fiction intake with distinctly differently-written nonfiction, this book probably won't be to your taste. If you have similar stylistic taste to me but are a better person than I am and are willing to push past style to read about this amazing woman and her family, I would love to hear your Cliffs Notes version. In the meantime, I will slink over to Wikipedia with my tail between my legs.


Quotes & Notes

37) "It is either civilization or extermination."
It may have been Joseph La Flesche and Big Elk's attitude, but that doesn't make it any less sad that a long-established way of life that wasn't European-based was not considered "civilization". It's not clear whether this thinking had been internalized by the "Young Men's Party" faction of the Omaha, or whether the use of "civilization" was used somewhat ironically in his sense. (It's also not clear whether this was Starita's encapsulation of a complex situation or something that someone said at the time. An end note might have settled that question...

55) As low as white America had stooped, I was still unpleasantly surprised to learn that a federal prosecutor tried to argue in 1879--after the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments--that the logic of Dred Scott ruling that denied citizenship to black people should be applied to American Indians. Fortunately (amazingly), the judge didn't buy it.

70) "Among the Indians, frustrated Senator Dawes once remarked, 'there is no selfishness, which is at the bottom of civilization.'"
Oh boo-hoo, you narrow-minded capitalist.

79) One of the coolest things about this book is the number of interesting women La Flesche bumped elbows with. This wasn't like royal Europe, where you had a handful of Queens surrounded mostly by male politicians. Alice Fletcher turned out to have a bad streak in the end, but she still campaigned on incredibly hard on behalf of the Omaha, with Susan La Flesche's brother at her side, and helped them sort out land allotments that, according to Starita, calmed the tribe members' fears that they would be shipped off to a reservation down south. The next two quotes cover other cool women:

114) "'Far from being a period when women physicians were an anomaly, the late nineteenth century witnessed a remarkable increase in their numbers. In Boston, the peak was reached in 1900 when women physicians accounted for 18.2 percent of the city's doctors."
Just to be clear, this wasn't the all-time peak. In 2014, 40% of doctors in Boston were women.

126) "Susan and her classmates (including one from India, one from Syria, and another from Japan)..."
What! I want to read about all of them! I think I just need a more-factual-than-flowery book about women practicing medicine through the ages--that would probably hit the spot for me.


The views and opinions expressed in this review are my own and should not be construed as representing those of my company. ( )

In my opinion, this was a poorly written book about the life of an amazing woman. Susan La Flesche was the first Indian doctor. She was the first in so many ways. She was tireless in her efforts to make a better life for her people. She understood the importance of good hygiene and good eating habits. She knew there were ways to avoid getting sick and wanted to share the knowledge with everyone.

My mother-in-law and I are both reading this book for a book club. We both LOVE reading. We were both really struggling to read this book for several reasons:

- It is terribly repetitive. You read about the exact same thing over and over.
- It could be shortened a lot by not listing every example of whatever is being talked about. For instance, I think it is chapter 6, it talks about how friends take her to different cultural events - it must have listed each thing she did with each person. Just summarize that.
- The chapters overlap too much.

In the end, my MIL and I decided I would read the even chapters and she would read the odd. We both read 1 -4, then I read 6, 8 and 10 and she read 5, 7 and 9. When she sent her summary of chapter 7 I had to read it twice because I thought it was my summary of the chapter I had just read.

She was so amazing, I wish this book had been amazing for her! ( )

An interesting story you would never learn about in school unless maybe you live in or around Omaha Nebraska. It’s the telling of a Native woman that overcame tremendous odds to become a doctor. You’ll find some interesting women’s rights history in this story. ( )