Molly Hilliard’s passion is medicine, but the patriarchy in 1796 Baltimore will have nothing of it and cast her out of medical school. Determined to be more than an herbal healer or midwife, she strikes out for the Northwest Territory for the freedom to practice medicine in Marietta, but she needs a guide and a guard to get her down the Ohio River. The Greeneville Treaty of 1795 liberated Romney Applewood and his younger sister after ten years as captives of native tribes in the wilderness of the Northwest Territory. He is dedicated to taking his sister to a specialist in Boston, who he hopes can help her learn to speak again. But when the lady doctor literally falls into his arms, he admires her selfless determination to save people from disease and can’t resist the feelings she stirs within him. Then his sister is taken hostage again, and the direction of his life journey changes forever.
