Mary Bennett Ritter was a farmer's daughter who in the 1880s defied all conventions to pursue her passion: to receive medical training and become a physician. Ritter's memoir is a riveting account of her accomplishments and a revealing peek into an earlier era through her keen sense of observation, humor, savvy, and her courage to challenge gender norms. It is filled with adventures- house calls via horse and buggy rides through the dark streets of Berkeley; a spurned lover's suicide; a near drowning at Pacific Grove Beach; one of the first automobile rides across rugged California dirt roads; intercontinental rail travel; and voyages to the Far East. As the story unfolds, readers encounter the movers and shakers of their times-University of California presidents and families of wealth and influence, including the Scrippses, and the Hearsts, and the Rockefellers.
