Malcolm Forrester, a physician from Edinburgh, and Elspeth MacLeod, a healer from the Isle of Skye, were both educated in European universities but only men are permitted to practice medicine in the Scotland of 1705. The two collide in Torrport, a small town near Edinburgh, Elspeth stubbornly seeking recognition as a physician, and Malcolm searching for a cure for smallpox amid the swirling vortex of war, politics, religion and disease. Poverty and...