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Lily's Reviews welcomes Martha H. Fitzgerald on a stop during her blog tour for The Courtship of Two Doctors.  The contest portion of this blog tour can be found by clicking here.

By Martha H. Fitzgerald

Compiling “Courtship of Two Doctors,” a medical romance and history told in letters, wasn’t a matter of simply sifting through nearly two years of correspondence. It required, first of all, a resourceful transcriptionist to decipher the handwriting of two physicians-in-training, then months of research to verify names and dates, song and movie titles, medications and treatments. I traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana, and Rochester, Minnesota, to peruse newspapers, medical archives, and other resources in person.

Other steps included a published research article on medical training of the late 1930s and a yearlong process of editing—that is, selecting excerpts from roughly 300 letters to tell the story, then polishing them for clarity and consistency. I edited with a light hand, to preserve the character of the writers and the vernacular of the times: Gee, everyone wishing me luck and
all—it’s a grand feeling.

What drove me was not just the training of a historian and the skill of a journalist, but the heart of a daughter. The subjects, Alice Baker of New Orleans and Joe Holoubek of Omaha, were my parents, who died in 2005 and 2007. My father, before his death, entrusted to me his private papers, including their courtship letters. We started on the book together, in the last months of his life, and he wrote the first draft of the prologue, describing how they met during a summer fellowship program in pathology at Mayo Clinic.

Quite honestly, I put the project aside for a couple of years, not certain how or if I should proceed. I recognized the immense historical and social value of the letters, recreating the medical era before antibiotics and illustrating the 1930s social barriers challenging women in professions. Eventually I realized this book could pay tribute not only to my parents, but to all members of healing professions. And I could benefit causes we shared: the LSU School of Medicine in Shreveport, Louisiana, which my father co-founded, and a local marriage ministry.

In editing and researching these letters, I’ve had a rare privilege—getting to know my parents before they were parents, before they were even a couple. I like who they were as young people.

It was a great delight recognizing in the young Alice and Joe some of the character and personality traits I knew in my parents, Dr. Alice and Dr. Joe. Even as a young woman, my mother excelled in a man’s world with a surprising ease and self-confidence. She did not take offense easily at slights against women. My father was a young man less sure of himself, but
with high ideals and a gentle wit.

Why, even then, he named his cars. In 1938 he was driving a 1928 Studebaker. He called her Nancy. She was a great pal, but no longer young and beginning to suffer aches and pains. “Nancy is running, on occasion,” he wrote one night. “Very interesting case, her illness. Diagnosis—malfunction of the gears. Etiology—old age. Pathology—a few teeth broken out of
the flywheel.”

Martha Holoubek Fitzgerald, an award-winning journalist of 27 years, served the Shreveport Times as columnist and associate editorial page editor. Now an independent editor, writer and publisher, the Louisiana native earned a B.A. in history and American studies from Loyola University-New Orleans and a master’s in history from Louisiana Tech University.

She’s the youngest child of the late Drs. Alice and Joe Holoubek, who met as senior medical students from New Orleans and Omaha and corresponded for two years before their marriage.  Fitzgerald drew on this collection of nearly 800 letters to create The Courtship of Two Doctors: A 1930s Love Story of Letters, Hope & Healing (Aug. 15, 2012). Proceeds from book sales benefit Louisiana State University School of Medicine in Shreveport, which her father co-founded, a local marriage ministry, and other causes she shares with her parents.

Fitzgerald owns Martha Fitzgerald Consulting (marthafitzgerald.com) and Little Dove Press (littledovepress.com/). She edited and published her father’s 2004 novel Letters to Luke (letterstoluke.com/), which won the Writers Digest Award for inspirational literature and the Independent Publisher Award for religious fiction.

Fitzgerald also writes a blog, “Catholics & Bible Study: Sharing Our Journey Through The Wilderness.” She serves on the board of Shreveport’s LSU Health Sciences Center Foundation.

She and her husband enjoy living on a quiet country road in a bend of the Red River in Louisiana. Like her parents, she has an adventuresome spirit and relishes far-flung travel.

Ms. Fitzgerald may be found at: marthafitzgerald.com and @MarthaHFitz (twitter)

BOOK DETAILS

Synopsis

Hardcover, $29.95
ISBN: 978-0-9753766-3-8
Trade paper, $19.95
ISBN: 978-0-9753766-4-5
EBook, $9.95
ISBN: 978-0-9753766-5-2
Biography/Medical, 400 pages
Little Dove Press, Aug. 15, 2012

The Courtship of Two Doctors: A 1930s Love Story of Letters, Hope & Healing

Edited by Martha Holoubek Fitzgerald
Adapted from The Holoubek-Baker Letters, 1937-1939: An Annotated Collection

From a private collection of nearly 800 courtship letters, the daughter of two remarkable physicians has crafted a timeless valentine to long-lasting love and the healing profession.

Senior medical students from New Orleans and Omaha meet in 1937 and begin a two-year correspondence across 1,100 miles. They set their sights on a return to Mayo Clinic, the medical mecca where they found each other and danced to the haunting “Harbor Lights.” Grave illness and career setbacks shake their confidence, but the two decide to face an uncertain future together, trusting in each other and the relationship they built letter by letter.

The Courtship of Two Doctors recreates the medical era before antibiotics, when health workers were at risk of serious infection, and vividly illustrates the 1930s social barriers challenging two-career marriages.