While researching what kind of disease might wipe out an entire town, sending the gunslingers of Red Ridge in a reluctant truce with the new town doctor one didn’t really trust, I was reminded of fever and ague.
I was just a little girl when I first read about fever and ague, and it was in a Little House on the Prairie book. Perhaps you remember the story? The entire family came down with an illness. First, intense chills, and then a fever and body aches.
Pa Ingalls thought it came from night air. Others thought it was the watermelons growing nearby. No one realized that fever and ague was actually malaria, and came from mosquitoes.
Fever and ague was a common but also debilitating illness in the 1800s, particularly in the United States. In the 1830s in Oregon, two Native American tribes, the Kalapuya of the Willamette Valley and the Chinookan people along the Columbia River were nearly wiped out, losing an estimated 80-95% of their peoples. One estimate I saw said they went from 14,000 lives to just over 1,000. Can you imagine? There wouldn’t have been any family spared the devastation of loss.
While today, we understand fever and ague to be malaria, in the early 1800s that wasn’t known. There was speculation about how it started but one thing was certain. It was deadly once it struck.
The only effective treatment (other than time and luck) was quinine, which came from the bark of the South American Cinchona tree. It was scarce, expensive, and ground up, but it was also incredibly bitter. However, it saved many lives.
Science Museum Group. Quinine sulphate bottle. A664060 Science Museum Group Collection Online. Accessed 3 November 2025. https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co189273/quinine-sulphate-bottle.%5B/caption%5D
It was sobering to write parts of The Doctor. When it comes to medicines and doctors and the fears of what might happen, I sometimes have trouble because it’s rather close to home. Many of you know that I have a child with a chronic illness and a suppressed immune system, and we spend a lot of time in the children’s hospital. Just recently, because his body, even after three months of antibiotics, can’t fight off a skin infection, he had to have a surgery to remove it, in hopes that it will finally respond to the medicine, and avoid the placement of a PICC line in him. Though it’s been scary and hard and there’s been so, so much stress, I can’t help but feel grateful that today, we have tools and knowledge and medicines to help. Back in the 1800s, so many towns didn’t have doctors, and they didn’t have medicines. When something like fever and ague raced through a town, there was little more than false hope that could be given, if there wasn’t a way to treat it. That’s something that the doctor in this book has to grapple with, and I pray none of us ever do.
Thankfully, this is fiction, where HEAs exist, but tears still might pop up.
If you’d like a chance to read The Doctor, it releases later this month in ebook, paperback, and large print.
Today, one of you is going to win an ebook from this series. You can choose if you’d like book 1, book 2, book 3, or…if you’ve already read those, if you’d like me to send you book 4 when it releases. (I promise, I won’t forget!)
You can click right here, to see the books to choose from.
To have a chance at winning, just tell me: Based on this blurb, how do you think the doctor will get the medicine he needs to treat the town?
Nora Madison returns to Red Ridge seeking a decision about her future, but when her overprotective brother tries to tell her what she can and can’t do, Nora resists; especially as a spark ignites between her and the enigmatic physician. Something is drawing her closer, and she’d like to find out what it is.
Dr. Aiden Rycroft’s plan is simple: practice medicine in a town far from his troubles, ignore the town’s drama (especially the possessive gunslinger), and leave when his contract ends. Yet, the more Billy Madison tries to keep him away from his intriguing sister, Nora, the more their paths seem destined to cross.
When a mysterious illness sweeps through the town, Aiden and Billy find their paths intertwined in a reluctant truce. The stakes become deeply personal when Nora falls victim to the very illness Aiden’s been unable to get medicine for. Now, any hope for their future faces its ultimate test as Aiden fights not only to save her life but also to prove his own worth, to himself and to the woman who sees beyond his guarded exterior.
He will personally go obtain it.
That’s a good guess!
He’ll send Billy Madison.
That’s a great guess!
Thanks for your post today. Wow I can’t imagine being a doctor and not having something to make someone well. Hmm in this story I think while he works around the clock trying to save people he is gong to send Billy Madison to pick some up to help.
Oh but I would love to read this series. If I win I would love to start with book 1
Thank you and have a wonderful November.
That’s a good guess! And yes, yikes, can you imagine trying to treat a town, but with so little to help them with?
Billy Madison will go through hell or high water to get the medicine his sister needs
I love that answer!
Aiden and Billy will get it together
Ohh that’s a great guess!
Sounds intriguing. Will he figure out how to make the medicine?
Ohh now that’s a good guess!
I think he will get the medicine. Never underestimate the power of love.
You have that right! What a good guess!
I think they will work together to get the medicine to the town. I haven’t read any of the series yet.
That’s a good guess!
I think they will both work as hard as they can and stand together to get the needed medicine they need to save the town. (not entering this ebook giveaway as I am not tech savvy, but Thank you) your book sounds and looks intriguing.
Thank you! And that’s a great guess!
I’m guessing Billy goes for the medicine to save his sister.
I haven’t read any of this series yet so I better start at the beginning. I’ve heard it’s a very good place to start. (The Sound of Music of course!)
Haha! Yes! A very good place to start! Loved that movie and the soundtrack!
I think that Aiden and Billy are going to have to work together to get the needed medicine, since Billy will desperately want his sister to live, and Aiden wants to save Nora and the others, too.
Very good guess!
If he’s smart, he’ll send Billy for it.
I agree!
He’ll research and discover the cure!
Ohh that’s a great guess!
I just checked the blurbs for the books and this will be a series I will be getting as I can.
With Madison’s background and the danger to his family and sister, I think he will find some way to go to pick up what medicine he can. They could order it and have it shipped to a point where he could ride hard to pick it up and bring it back. The doctor may know where to get it, but not how to get it delivered.
We doin’t appreciate how lucky we are in this country. I was in the Peace Corps many, many years ago. At that time and in places today, 2 to 3 of every 5 children die before their 5th birthday. Unclean water and poor nutrition are primarily responsible. They have no resistance. One of my 1st grade students was bitten by a rabid dog and died 2 days later. Even treatment was poor. They would have given him maybe a shot or two and stopped there. We were given a rabies shot every year. It ave us 10 days to get to a city with good medical care to start treatment if bitten. Childbirth was a hazard. They really do work in the field, have their baby, and go back out. I was at a remote village one night, when they brought in a woman who was bleeding heavily. She had had her baby that afternoon, but went back out to the field. They carried her down the mountain by litter over steep, narrow trails to get her to the village. They were lucky there was a jeep there to take her into the town which was at least another half hour drive. The community nurse happened to be there that night, but there was not much she could do. I remember another time a dad brought his 6 year old son in. They had walked 5 miles to get to the village after the boy cut his arm with a machete. He had a gash that went almost to the bone. He sat there while the nurse cleaned it up and stitched it with no way to numb it. He didn’t ‘t make a sound and didn’t cry. You can only hope it doesn’t get infected. We really are lucky.
Oh my gosh, my heart sank reading those stories. It makes me so incredibly sad that there are so many suffering and the things we take for granted, like clean water, medicines, food. I read a story years ago, where someone on a mission trip was invited into a home to speak with the family and the mother was holding a child, crying. He asked her about it, and she told him this was the child she’d chosen to die of starvation, so that her others might be able to live a little longer. It was a horrifying story, how does a mother choose? I’ve tried to teach my children to be compassionate, and to understand that the world is so much bigger than our little area, and that even small things to help add up, if enough do them.
He will make a deal to get the medicine. He has skills that people need.
That’s a great guess!
I think Billy will put aside his animosity to the doctor and travel where the medicine is available and get it back in time to save his sister.
That’s a great guess!