
Shaman
Noah Gordon(Author)
Open Road Media (Publisher)
Published on 3. February 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
582 pages
979-8-3372-0263-1 (ISBN)
Description
This New York Times Notable Book is a "sweeping historical drama" of a physician and his family on the Illinois frontier in the nineteenth century (The New York Times Book Review).
Dr. Robert Judson Cole travels from his ravaged Scotland homeland, through the operating rooms of Boston, to the cabins of frontier Illinois. In the wilderness he befriends the starving remnants of the Sauk tribe, who have fled their reservation. In the process, he absorbs their culture and learns native remedies that enrich the classical medical education he received at Edinburgh University. He marries a remarkable settler woman he had saved from illness. The details of how their deaf son manages to become a physician also, despite his handicap, and the story of how the Cole family is sucked into the bloody vortex of the Civil War and survives, makes an exceptional reading experience.
More details
Series
Language
English
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 34 mm
Weight
811 gr
ISBN-13
979-8-3372-0263-1 (9798337202631)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Person
Noah Gordon has had outstanding international success. The Physician, soon to be a motion picture, has been called a modern classic, and booksellers at the Madrid Book Fair voted it "one of the 10 best-loved books of all time." Shaman was awarded the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for historical fiction. Both of these books, and five of the author's other novels--The Rabbi, The Death Committee, The Jerusalem Diamond, Matters of Choice, and The Winemaker--are published in digital formats by Open Road Integrated Media. Gordon's novel, The Last Jew, will also be published digitally in the near future. He lives outside of Boston with his wife, Lorraine Gordon.