She Who is Like a Mare: Poems of Mary Breckinridge and the Frontier Nursing Service

The skillfully rendered dramatic monologues of Karen Kotrba's SHE WHO IS LIKE A MARE document the Remarkable history of the Frontier Nursing Service in eastern Kentucky in the early twentieth century. Through the imagined voices of the founder, Mary Breckinridge, and the nurse-midwives she trained to travel the back roads of Kentucky on horseback, Kotrba brings a whole community to life. With a sure command of the multiple tones and mixed dictions of the region, she gives voice to a wide range of characters: the local citizens who are protective of their mountain women who have always "birthed the babies"; the physicians who want to replace any kind of midwifery with the new medical field of obstetrics; the fathers who ride out in fierce storms to bring help to their wives in labor; and the mothers, the children, and even one amazing poem in the voice of a horse.