Everyone knows the name of Elizabeth Blackwell, though few know those of any of the women who followed her, despite the fact that Dr. Clemence Lozier was far more successful. Reputed to have earned as much as 25K a year, she used this vast fortune to open the first medical school for women in NYC (years before Blackwell opened hers), and to fund the fight for women’s suffrage.  

The Doctoress brings the true story of this pioneering feminist to the pages of fiction, beginning as the Civil War is ending and the fight for women’s rights resuming. Dr. Lozier learns that her only son is marrying Charlotte, a student at the medical college. After her intial surprise, she is thrilled, certain that her dreams for a big family are finally coming true.

But Charlotte has big dreams of her own. Determined to prove, generations ahead of her time, that women can ‘do it all’, she often puts her own health at risk. After getting her biggest case, the one she is still remembered for today, she will finally go too far, risking not only her very life, but that of the child she had been carrying.

Tragedy upon tragedy prevented her from fulfilling her own dreams for a family, but has Dr. Lozier, who rarely loses a patient of her own, learned enough to save her family the second time around? Or will she remain forever cursed with an inability to save the ones she loves best?

Chronicled alongside the major events of the women’s right’s movement, The Doctoress opens as the fight for suffrage begins, concluding a few short years later when the movement splits into two opposing factions. Peopled with some of the most famous women of the era, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Clara Barton, The Doctoress brings to life a period of time when deadly epidemics were a constant threat, alternative medicine was flourishing, and women, for the very first time in American history, were actively pursuing careers, not simply work, outside of the home.