Set some decades after Little Joe, this finds the one and only county doctor in jail and to go on trial for the murder of a patient that had been suffering from MS. Dr Kate has one major problem – she can’t remember going out to Lillian’s house, never mind administering the fatal dose of sleeping powders.

The rest of the review can be found here:

https://nordie.wordpress.com/2015/07/06/book-review-the-trial-of-dr-kate-by-mich...

I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway.

I enjoyed reading this book. The story was interesting and I loved some of the characters. However the ending was very abrupt and I really didn't understand the reasoning for some of what happened. It is like the author reached the number of pages requested and quit. ( )

It's the summer of 1952, and Lillian Johnson, just 32, is found dead in her home. She's been suffering from multiple sclerosis and colon cancer, but neither of those caused her death. She died of an injection of Seconol--and it's not clear that she administered it herself.

The prime suspect, indeed the only one, is her friend and physician, Dr. Kate Marlow. And Kate can't prove she didn't, can't even be sure what she did that morning, because she's been experiencing alcoholic blackouts, and doesn't remember that morning before she found herself parked on the road to Static.

Old friend Shenandoah Coleman is a reporter in Memphis now, but comes back to Round Rock to cover the trial--and to reconnect with friends and family she's avoided because of the burden of the Coleman reputation.

Shenandoah has to confront her own past and come to terms with where she came from. Kate has to come to terms with her alcoholism and its effects.

The whole town, in their different ways, are struggling with race and class and social change.

Round Rock is both changed and unchanged since Shenandoah left fourteen years ago. Dr. Kate is much like her father, Dr. Walt, the same dedication to her patients, the same resistance to banks, taxes, and bureaucracy of all kinds, and the same drinking to cope with the stress and demands of being the only doctor in town. But Kate is a woman in the very conventional 1950s, in a southern small town. She's loved, but also hated.

Shenandoah has run all her life from the bad reputation of the drunken, violent Colemans, but on this return home, she starts to see some of her relatives in a different light--and meets some previously unknown relatives, too.

Meanwhile, the trial exposes both the strengths and the strains of the Round Rock community.

This is a lovely, thoughtful, and loving look at the beginnings of a painful transitional time in American life.

Recommended.

I received a free electronic galley from the publisher via NetGalley. ( )

The Trial of Dr. Kate neatly mixes intrigue, betrayal, secrets and southern sensibilities effectively showing the tensions and alliances living in a rural eastern Tennessee Appalachian town in the early 1950s. Journalist Shenandoah Coleman has returned to her hometown to cover the trial of her old childhood friend, Dr. Kate Marlow and to write a political expose on Tennessee politicians. Shenandoah quickly finds out that many do not want her to forget she comes from the round side of the tracks and that Colemans do not amount to much. Dr. Kate is accused of murdering one of her patients, whose husband just happens to be an ex-boyfriend. The stories of these two strong-willed women are revealed as Shenandoah strives to save her friend from a guilty verdict and the mystery of who is literally trying to drive her off a cliff. Glasscock keeps it moving with enough conflicts and secrets to make the story interesting while not distracting from the main theme. This story makes for a perfect escape read along with a glass of sweet tea. ( )

The Trial of Dr. Kate by Michael E. Glassock is an October 2013 Greenleaf Book Group Press publication. I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Shenandoah returns to the small town of her upbringing because she reads about one of her only friends about to stand trial for murder. Being a reporter in Memphis, she travels home to cover the trial.

It is 1952 in Tennessee, and a woman doctor is very rare. To make things complicated, it is rumored that Dr. Kate was having an affair with her best friend's (and also her patient) husband Army. There is also the fact that Kate is a functioning alcoholic and doesn't recall her actions on the day in question.

Meanwhile, people have not taken well to Shenandoah's return home. She is the only one in her family that is sober and has made something of herself. Someone is angry enough with her to try to run her off the road, and slash her tires.
Kate meets a guy, starts to have tender feelings for him, investigates the suspicious death of Kate's patient, a woman that was terminally ill, and discovers the many secrets of small town life.

In a small southern town in 1952, the attitudes toward women, race, and class are shocking and offensive by today's standards. The illegal running of alcohol was a full fledged career. But, there was also a feeling of nostalgia. The soda fountain serving a chocolate malt, going for a hamburger was a hot date, the ability to work on your own car, and so many other things signaling a slow pace of life.
The mystery of Dr. Kate - if she committed an act of kindness by performing an assisted suicide for her best friend who was dying of MS and advanced colon cancer or did she murder her in cold blood so she could have her husband? Did Dr. Kate do anything at all to her patient? There were others that could have had a motive for wanting the victim out of the way.

I enjoyed reading about the characters in this book. Things were more pleasant in the fifties in some ways, but the narrow mindedness and racism, sexism, the archaic medical procedures, the laws, and the travel barriers made the idealist time period seems overly harsh in many ways.
The rush to judgment against a doctor because of her sex and vicious small town gossip was an example of the times.
Each character in the book has their good and bad points. Kate was a savior to many who couldn't get to a city hospital fast enough, to those who didn't have money to pay her, making house calls, and so much more, but she was also grieving the death of her father and battling an addiction on her own and trying to keep it quiet.
Shenandoah will be haunted by her return home and the trial of her friend, Kate for the rest of her life.

There were many hot issues on the table here. Women having careers was frowns upon under ordinary circumstances, but having a career as a doctor was unheard of. The suffering of a terminal patient tempting those in the medical profession to show them mercy was also a theme. This was something no one in 1952 spoke of.
Old wounds were healed and some good does come from the events that are told in the novel. But, the lessons are hard ones and it will be years before some sense of closure will take place. For Shenandoah that time will hold a bittersweet place in her heart even into her old age.

Overall this was an interesting historical fiction/mystery. I give this one a B. ( )