Emily Patterson: The Heroic Life of a Milltown Nurse

Literary Nonfiction. When Emily Patterson arrives in the Pacific Northwest with her family in 1862, she finds herself worlds away from Bath, Maine, the staunchly pious township of her birth. Up the remote reaches of Vancouver Island’s Alberni Inlet, Emily learns that the nearest doctor is at least a day’s travel away, and her extraordinary nursing skills–self-taught from sheer necessity–earn her wide recognition among the pioneer loggers and the native Tseshaht community. In search of their ideal homestead, the Pattersons settle in Oregon’s fertile Willamette and Columbia River regions before moving to Burrard Inlet, where the sawmilling communities of Hastings Mill and Moodyville duel for lumber supremacy. Over the course of her nomadic life, Emily is called on day and night for her medical expertise, whether to deliver a newborn, suture an open wound, or prepare a body for burial. Through vivid prose and 70 photos, Lisa Anne Smith brings to life this fascinating era of Pacific Northwest history through the eyes of an intrepid pioneer nurse.