Customer Reviews

Wide Neighborhoods: A Story of the Frontier Nursing Service

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A woman surrounded by wealth, widely traveled, followed her "calling" to come to the poorest, most remote area of Kentucky to establish the Frontier Nursing Service in the 1920's. She, almost singlehandly, established a hospital in Hyden, Ky, started a Midwifery School (still very active) and provided, with her nurses, medical and midwifery service on horseback - later jeeps - to several counties in southeast Kentucky.

It is my intent to present this message to those who might be interested in bringing about the long needed story of this woman's life and contributions in a full length motion picture.

As a registered nurse who is interested in nursing history and
fascinating medical cases, I bought this book with the expectation that the author would not only detail how she accomplished all her noteworthy achievements, but also tell in interesting clinical detail about the cases she treated. Instead, she details at great length the names of people she knew, and where she traveled, and the "administrative" aspects of her career, while covering very little of actual patient cases. The clinical stories are far between, and you must slog through "who was her favorite accountant" for the nursing service, to get to the touching story of how she helped a boy with a congenital heart condition through a flood on a makeshift raft to float downstream to the hospital. She had a fabulously interesting life, and did a great work, and I admire her, I would only suggest that she should have focused on the actual patients in her stories, and left out every little single detail of how the paperwork was done, whom she talked to at the bank, who she had supper with on June 12, 1920, etc, etc. It could have been a much more interestingly written memoir. But still a story very worthy of being told written by a great woman.

I bought this book after reading "Mary on Horseback" to my kids and loving it. This book was such a disappointment. What a shame - because the story of how the FNS started is so interesting. The author does say that she didnt use an editor or basically get any help writing this, and it shows. I really wanted to like it. Like others have said, more stories about actual patients would've been nice.

I'm not normally a history buff, but this book is fantastic. An autobiography of Mary Breckinridge, this book also delves into the history of turn of the century US and France. A must for Frontier Nursing students!