4.5 stars

If this is historical fiction, so is Gunsmoke. I think watch in Dr.Quinn Medicine woman, Little House on the Prairie or Bonanza would be a better use of time, I'm sure you could find similar story lines. I don't look to TV for intellectual depth and often prefer shows that don't require much brain activity but I like books with depth. According to this book, American soil must be bad for the soul. Only recent immigrants should apply for sainthood. Funny, the book points out Anti- Catholicism and Anti-Semetism, but compare what other faiths do. Protestant America gave religious freedom; compare to the Catholic countries of the era and look up Pope Leo XIII thoughts on religious freedom. The present Pope refuses Galileo entrance to heaven like he has such a heavenly choice. The Vatican has tried to do what so called Anti-Catholics feared - influence American politics. And Protestant America normally sided with Jewish people and gave religious freedom. Of course, you have White Protestant hate groups but if Catholic and Jewish people don't want to get painted over with a broad brush stroke, they shouldn't be doing so to the so called WASPS and Crackers. The author did a Chris Mathews by being a racist anti-racist. I have my doubts that the soil south of the imaginary Mason-Dixon line turns people into evil racists. The founder of Georgia was an abolitionist but he didn't use the scorched earth policy on Northern colonies participating in slavery. Slavery is still practiced in Africa, Native Americans did the same, a worldwide institution. A universal wrong, not a just a Southern wrong. Look at slavery in New Jersey I have Spanish Catholic, Native American ancestors and most likely some Black ancestors; I'm sure many did wrong. Painting my White Protestant pioneers as the most unjust offends my intelligence; therefore, my low review. I believe people are born equally screwed up. I'm Agnostic but if I had to choose, after my my research on religions, I would take the little Protestant crazy over the crazy of the bigger religions. See Batholomew's Day Massacre. The author's rampant stereotyping just irritated me.

Está aí uma história muito bem contada, que te pega e te mantém entretida. A gente entra nas aventuras do Dr. Cole e depois do Xamã e vai desbravando os Estados Unidos. Luta na guerra da secessão. Sofre com os sauks. Amei e recomendo. Sugestão para presente.

El otro día terminé de leer Chamán de Noah Gordon, comentaros que es parte de la trilogía de La Familia Cole,El Médico(otro día os escribiré acerca de este libro),Chamán y La Señora Cole, cada uno ambientado en una época diferente de la historia humanidad el primero en el siglo IX,( Inglaterra y Persia). Chamán, nos contará la historia americana de comienzos del siglo XIX, La señora Cole estará ambientado en nuestro siglo.
Este libro sigue la línea de El Médico, contando la historia de Rob J y Chamán, que provienen de una familia que han hecho de la medicina su historia, y los cuales tienen un “don” especial que les permite percibir la vitalidad de la persona a la que tratan, sabiendo así cuando esta persona va a morir.
El libro está genial hasta que llegamos a la parte en que Rob J. nos contará el tiempo que estuvo alistado en el ejercito, lo que a mí me pareció que Noah Gordon se va un poco por las ramas y hace esta parte en un poco pesada de leer. Con cosas que suenan un poco fuera de contexto o de relleno como:
“Salió bajo una fuerte lluvia y en medio de una humedad saludable vació su vejiga detrás de unos matorrales de lilas que volvían a pertener a la Unión”
Gracias por la información Noah Gordon.

Cuando termina esta parte (no demasiado extensa), vuelve a los orígenes de lo que significa este libro, la lucha de uno de los integrantes de la familia Cole por ser médico relacionándolo directamente con la situación histórica de la época, muy bien redactado, ambientado de forma que te permite imaginar de una forma muy cercana como era la situación de Norte América en aquella época.
Por lo que lo acabas con tan buen sabor de boca que acto seguido empiezas La Señora Cole.

Ich musste jetzt doch 5 Sterne geben, weil das Buch eine volle, gut entwickelte Geschichte erzählt und immer etwas interessantes vor sich geht. Das Buch fühlt sich extrem groß, extrem voll an, nicht nur wegen der Seitenzahl. Ich hätte mir aus dem Titel erhofft, noch mehr über Behandlungsriten indigener Völker und deren Lebensweisen zu erfahren, allerdings lag der Fokus auf der Geschichte des Arztes und den USA. Generell ist der Roman sehr gut recherchiert und man ist wirklich tief drin, dafür dass es eine so andere Zeit ist. Der Schamane ist ein mehr als würdiger Nachfolger für den Medicus.

As other reviewers have noted, this book takes place over 800 years after The Physician. As the novel begins, Dr. Robert Judson Cole (Rob J.) flees from his native Scotland for the New Word in the mid-1800's. He begins his medical career in Boston working with Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. and the indigent, immigrant population. Soon thereafter, Rob J. leaves Boston to see the West. He settles in Holden's Crossing, Illinois and establishes his medical practice. While in Holden's Crossing, he befriends a group of Native Americans and forms a close relationship with Makwa-ika, who attends to patients with him. Makwa-ika is subsequently brutally murdered and Rob J. vows to find who committed the crime. In the meantime, Rob J. marries and has a child, Shaman, who becomes deaf as the result of a sickness, but Shaman's deafness does not prevent him from pursuing a career in medicine. After graduating medical school, Shaman begins a surgical career in Cincinnati but returns home after learning his father died. While Shaman was wrapping up his father's affairs, he learns of his step-brother's confinement in a Union prison, marries, and learns who killed Makwa-ika.

Noah Gordon clearly did a vast amount of to write such a historically accurate book that covered so many time periods and subject matters. He does a remarkable job desciribing the colonization of the United States, the Native American experience during the 1800's, and the Civil War. Gordon develops an intricate plot that nicely ties both Rob J. and Shaman together, even when they are geographically apart, and gives the characters in the book remarkable depths to their personalities. Gordon's development of the plot, however, is sometimes slow and the historical recount of the Civil War can become tedious. Despite these criticisms, I highly recommend this book.

4 stars - English Ebook

Review follows later.

Excellent second book about the medical Cole family, started first in The Physician. This time the family has moved to Illinois from Scotland and the patriarch of the family becomes a physician in a small town. His youngest son, Shaman, is made deaf by an illness but desires also to become a physician and must overcome many barriers to follow his dream. The time period is during the wars on the Indian tribes as the white government takes away their lands and pushes them onto reservations as well as the civil war and its immediate aftermath. Excellent historical fiction novel.

My comments in video: https://youtu.be/82HrRN6TtZY

When repeating the same formulas works.
The author presents us with the same formulas of success from "The physician", but he manages to refresh them by giving them a new context. He presents us with the diseases and innovations in the medical practice of the time, shows us a story of personal growth, and there he contextualizes the criticism regarding discrimination, whether due to race, beliefs or political inclinations, but here he adds disability, with the double benefit of showing personal improvement. I like the developments that the author makes because he observes the human being from different perspectives, showing medicine for what it is: a profession, although due to the relevance it has due to its proximity to death, he takes the opportunity to criticize the entire cultural system, from religion, economics, morality and politics in general. Here, he also presents us with a trip and medical practice in wars, as it is framed in the North American Civil War. All of the above ingredients make it magnificent.
I await your comments

Cuando repetir las mismas fórmulas funciona.
El autor nos presenta las mismas fórmulas de éxito de "El médico", pero logra refrescarlas al darles un nuevo contexto. Nos presenta las enfermedades e innovaciones en la práctica médica de la época, nos muestra una historia de crecimiento personal, y allí contextualiza las críticas con respecto a la discriminación, ya sea por raza, creencias o inclinaciones políticas, pero acá adiciona la discapacidad, con el doble beneficio de mostrar la superación personal. Me gustan los desarrollos que realiza el autor porque observa desde distintas perspectivas al ser humano, mostrando la medicina como lo que es: un oficio, aunque por la relevancia que tiene por su cercanía a la muerte, aprovecha para criticar todo el sistema cultural, desde la religión, economía, moral y política en general. Acá, también nos presenta un viaje y la práctica médica en las guerras, pues está enmarcada en la guerra de Secesión norteamericana. Todos los anteriores ingredientes la hacen magnífica.
Espero sus comentarios

If I DNF'd books, this one would not have survived. Warning for series spoilers.

Book 1 was amazing. This fell far short.

Book 1 introduces the Cole family, focusing on the life of one man in medieval England. That man, Rob Cole, happens to be extremely interesting. He has a supernatural gift/extra sense that tells him when a person is dying. This gift is passed on in the family. He's orphaned at a young age, loses track of all his siblings, gets apprenticed to a barber surgeon, and travels England as more of an entertainer/charlatan than actual healer. Then he meets someone who had cataract surgery. Cole tracks down the Jewish physician who performed the surgery and demands to be trained. He learns that the physician trained at an Islamic medical school—which is a problem. Christians face excommunication from their own church if they attempt to study in Islamic institutions (and Islamic institutions won't accept Christians). Cole travels overland across Europe and through the Middle East, learning new languages and eventually assuming the identity of a Jewish Englishman. The book is a masterpiece. It shows the struggles of Jewish merchant communities to survive and thrive in a hostile world. The love story is compelling. There's a group of medical students sent into a plague- ridden city, a military campaign to capture elephants... I will probably read book 1 again.

This book brings in none of the beauty of the first book. It jumps ahead several centuries to a descendant of the original Doctor Robert Cole, who is also named Dr. Robert Cole. The first half focuses on the father and the second half focuses on the son, aka "Shaman" (you guessed it, he's also named Dr. Robert Cole).

The father's story is rambling ineloquence. He travels from Scotland to New England and eventually heads West. The development of medicine where he establishes himself is interesting (disagreeing frontier doctors in one generation give way to the founding of a real hospital in the next generation). Most of the elder Dr. Cole's life is narrated in extremely dry prose. His time in New England (including his love affair with the woman who miscarried and told him before the wedding so he doesn't have to marry her) could have been cut out without any further edits. Of course Dr. Cole is ahead of his time advocating for modern medicine and basically providing amazing care while his colleagues are barbaric.

Cole's time with the indigenous people near his Illinois homestead is...uncomfortable. He falls in love with a female medicine woman who he admires. She can't consummate their relationship because doing so would mean losing her ability, so she finds him another native woman. Gordon writes about the "greasy black hair" of that woman while Cole is having sex with her. Part of my disappointment with this book is that the description talks about the Cole family "absorbing the culture" of the tribe they live near (... and having read book 1 in which the original main character extensively studied Judaism and changes his whole life...). I was waiting for that culture absorbing. It never comes. Cole basically lets his wife resent his friend and uses her to help care for his patients (and as a babysitter) and at the very end, the son goes to visit a town founded by the descendants of the tribe that was driven out. Cole's friend is cut off from her people after they leave (and later on, you learn about how when she dies, the next shaman doesn't get completely trained and the tribe loses its religion).

Cole becomes a white savior by providing the medicine woman, Makwa, a place to live on his land when her people are expelled. Cole marries a white woman with a young son. His wife is extremely jealous of Makwa and people widely believe that Makwa is Cole's mistress. Makwa horribly violated and murdered. Cole performs a post mortem examination on her, noting the damage to her body. This leads to a creepy paragraph about how Dr. Cole likes women's "hinds" and how he has anal sex with his wife without injuring her. The way he views the dead woman he loved and the living woman he is married to is gross. It felt like it was trying to be preachy (like the message was supposed to be anal sex is an enjoyable experience that isn't tied to morality) but it came off as the main character being unable to view the women in his life outside his own gratification.

Cole looks for the murderer, and he thinks he has a suspect: a traveling preacher he treated for syphilis. No one in government cares, so the investigation dies off and is passed to Cole's son in his journal after he passes. I enjoyed the part about the nun intelligence on the anti catholic secret society.

Cole's son, nicknamed Shaman, goes deaf after a childhood illness. His education (learning signs, being prevented from signing, learning to read lips, speech drills, etc) is mostly told from his father's point of view. Eventually it shifts and Shaman becomes the main character. Shaman also has the family gift and becomes a doctor (surprise).

Another reason I was disappointed is that I thought the American Civil War would be a larger part. It doesn't occur until near the end. Cole was a pacifist which comes out when he is naturalized as a citizen. Cole's step son, who has been using a different last name, is located in a p.o.w. camp. Cole has passed away, and Shaman has read his father's papers. He asks around about Makwa's murder before going to retrieve his brother. They end up killing a man in self defense after he breaks into their rented accommodations and tries to kill them.

After killing their attacker, Shaman cares for a hired man who managed the elder Dr. Cole's farm for decades. In his delirium, the man says something that leads Shaman to understand what really happened. The hired farm man was a member of the same group as the preacher/ suspect, as was the would be assassin. The farm hand claims that he came across the men right before they killed Makwa. The murder weapon is discovered when his cabin is razed. Shaman ends up with a list of local men who are also members of this secret society. He destroys the list rather than read it (or pass it on to the nuns who helped his father) because he says he's going to have to care for those men and doesn't want to judge them.

The Jewish community reappears in this book, but unfortunately it receives the same superficial treatment that Makwa's tribe got. Shaman falls in love with a Jewish girl. His father explains he never had a chance because they won't marry outside their faith. The girl ends up returning as a war widow with 2 young children. Her parents are trying to get her remarried to someone acceptable. She and Shaman carry on an affair. He convinces her to marry him... then he threatens her father with never seeing her or her children again if they follow tradition (by going into mourning and declaring someone who left the faith dead). There is no exploring/ learning/absorbing. It's all about what Shaman wants. The announcement about Quaker-ism at the end was abrupt.

Now I'm trying to decide if book 3 is worth reading.... I ordered #2 and #3 while reading #1. #2 is such a drop in quality that I don't want to waste time but #1 was so amazing that I'm worried about missing out.

Me ha gustado más que el primero.
Indios, médico, guerra de secesión, casi todos mis temas preferidos en un mismo libro.
En fin, que la lectura se me ha hecho muy amena, ha sido una novela fascinante.

Some people say that if you read book about a month that means that you don't like it very much. If you do, you must 'eat' a book in a few days, reading day and night because you cannot put it away. Well, it's not about me. Maybe I read books longer but I enjoy no less than if I read it in a day. It's no matter how long you stay reading, the pleasure is the same and maybe even bigger because you can live longer with your favourite characters.

I liked the second book of Cole family. I can never imagine that I will enjoy reading about medicine, hospitals and surgery but somehow I do! Noah Gordon really has a talent for writing. There are some stories and descriptions about native americans and American Civil war but the main story is not about that. I think it's more about medicine and family relations. Ant of course love...