Description
🏆 2023 BIBA® LGBTQ2 Memoir Winner!
What was it like to survive an illegal abortion, come out as a lesbian, and train to become a doctor in the late 1960s and early ’70s—before Roe v. Wade, before Title IX, and in a largely homophobic nation?
In this unflinching and riveting coming-of-age memoir, Patricia Grayhall battles sexism in a male-dominated profession. She plunges into a life that is never boring—and certainly never without passion.
Tossed around in the rough seas of medical training, chronically exhausted and emotionally drained, Patricia chafes at the toxic masculinity of the culture of medicine—and yearns for the same care and support her male colleagues receive from their wives and girlfriends. Although the sexual revolution and women’s movement in 1970s Boston celebrate female eroticism, she finds few role models for moving beyond desire to sustain a healthy, long-term relationship with a woman. Can she find the love she seeks without jeopardizing her career?
Patricia Grayhall is a retired medical doctor and author of Making the Rounds; Defying Norms in Love and Medicine. She’s published articles in Queer Forty, The Gay and Lesbian Review, The Millions, Lesbian Game Changers, The Seattle Lesbian, and Seattle Magazine. NPR interviewed her about the book.
Her most recent book is a second-chance lesbian romance, Golden Years and Silver Linings, that she wrote with her partner of over 20 years.
Patricia lives with the love of her life on an island in the Pacific Northwest where she enjoys other people’s dogs, big nature, and her second career as an author.
