Book description
It is 1790. After ten years' training in the great medical schools of
Europe, Alec Gordon has returned to Scotland to take up the post of
Physician to the Aberdeen Dispensary. Alec has ambitious plans for
modernizing medical practice in the town, starting with the local
midwives, whose ignorance and old-fashioned methods appal him. But
Alec's dreams of progress are thrown into disarray when a mysterious
disease suddenly strikes the town, attacking and killing every newly
delivered mother for miles around. Alec alone recognizes it as childbed
fever, a disease more deadly than the plague, a condition that has
baffled the greatest physicians of the age, an illness with no known
cause and no known cure. Desperate to save his patients' lives, Alec
sets out on an astonishing medical quest to conquer the disease. But
while Alec struggles to find solutions that lie far in the future, his
wife Elizabeth is increasingly lost in the past, prey to terrifying
memories of her childhood in Antigua. As she knows and he will learn,
some diseases lie beyond the reach of reason. Based on a true story,
Touching Distance is a stunning historical novel that brings to life a
fascinating period in world history, exploring the tragic limitations of
knowledge and the deep-seated tension between reason and passion in the
Age of Enlightenment. 'Beautifully worked. It is a book about the
shockingly intimate, but it has an epic feel.' Hilary Mantel
'Beautifully worked. It is a book about the shockingly intimate, but it
has an epic feel' Hilary Mantel
Rebecca Abrams was born in Cambridge in 1963. Her first book, When
Parents Die, was shortlisted for the MIND award and has since become a
highly respected classic in its field. Her most recent book, Three
Shoes, One Sock and No Hairbrush, was a UK best-seller. Awarded
an Amnesty Prize for her reportage on children in war, Rebecca is a
regular contributor to the Guardian and a former columnist for
the Daily Telegraph. She lives in Oxford with her husband and two
children. Touching Distance is her first novel.
