Karen H.

Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a country doctor in solo practice in the decade of the '70s - making house calls, delivering babies, comforting the dying, offering hope to the hopeless, meeting delightful and sometimes eccentric patients, and working 60 to 80 hours per week, often exhausted and in need of rest? If so, follow me as I work in a small town office and make hospital rounds in rural Indiana as a family physician. You're unlikely to forget the experiences or regret the sharing.

For three years Meyer rented a home in the rice-farming community of Wasteland, hometown of his wife's family, and their personal saga mirrors the tremendous change most of rural China is undergoing in the form of a privately held rice company that has built new roads, introduced organic farming, and constructed high-rise apartments into which farmers can move in exchange for their land rights.