Coal Miners' Doctor [Paperback]

Rita A. Mariotti (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2003

An unsophisticated young female physician admits she is not the self-assured intern she pretends to be in 1957 and decides to delay private practice to seek more experience. She ends up in a world far different from the overly protected Italian-American background of her youth. She accepts a position with a hospital owned by the United Mine Workers of America that provides free medical care to miners and their families. Though the time is late1950s, the harsh living conditions she describes had not changed much from such Depression-era visions as James Agee and Walker Evans’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Her book is also reminiscent, albeit a generation earlier, of Rory Kennedy’s award-winning documentary film, American Hollow.

The book is a vivid portrait of an individualistic young woman, raised in a close-knit family, tasting the joy of living on her own for the first time. Now she is headed to eastern Kentucky to practice medicine, in a male dominated field, on the mountaineer coal miners who are not used to female physicians. Her experiences in the emergency room both shatter and thrill her as one after another strange case challenges her in this new world.

The beauty of the eastern Kentucky mountains is contrasted to the narrow streets of South Philadelphia when Dr. Mariotti describes the Appalachian countryside she came to know so well. She finds her patients a learning experience, which later influenced her 40-year practice in southern New Jersey, and that "caring" for patients has a double meaning in that the "care" goes both ways.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Rita Mariotti graduated from The University of Pennsylvania in 1952 as an English Literature major and went on to earn a Medical Degree from The Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1957. "Coal Miners’ Doctor," her first book since retiring from a 40-year career as a family physician in Woodbury Heights, NJ, is a memoir of the first two years of medical practice in eastern Kentucky as a coal miners’ doctor. She is presently at work on a novel, also set in Appalachia, as well as a collection of poetry and haiku. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Star Ledger, Now and Then Magazine, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Medical Economics, Cuizine Magazine, and others. She lives in Glendora, NJ, summers in Sea Isle City, NJ, and travels extensively

Product Details

• Paperback: 173 pages
• Publisher: Bookman Publishing & Marketing (August 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932301879
• ISBN-13: 978-1932301878
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,267,490 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)