Solutions

About the Book

Doc, a rural Maine Physician and his office nurse, Matilda, operate a busy general practice in a rural Maine Town. Together, they deal with teenage pregnancy, incest, post-partum depression, and other medical and psychological problems. Matilda wants to become a detective and starts investigations leading to discovering and solving murders. Doc becomes a medical examiner. A death attributed to natural causes proves to be a deliberate murder for profit. Another death investigated by Matilda leads her to Bar Harbor and the Jackson Laboratory. The novel describes the transition of Zelda, an abused child, into a productive office manager, while Matilda approaches her goal of becoming a detective. Although all the characters and situations are fictional, they are similar to those seen by Family Physicians in rural general practice.

About the Author

Dewey Richards M.D., born March 4, 1927, ran a large dairy farm in Farmington, Maine, served in the 82nd Airborne Division, then graduated from the University of Maine and Tufts University School of Medicine, interned at Maine Medical Center, and set up a general practice in Bridgton, Maine. After fourteen years as a family physician, he became a full time teacher, spending five years establishing and directing the Family Practice Residency at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, Maine. The next five years he was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Family Practice at the Medical College of Hampton Roads in Norfolk, VA. The next ten years he established and ran several MedNow urgent-care centers in Maine and Massachusetts. Dr. Richards and his wife had five children, then adopted an infant, then became guardian of a family of five orphans, at one time having seven teenagers at their big home in Orono, Maine. Ten years ago, after the death of his first wife, he remarried, and now lives in Maine and Florida, enjoying grandchildren, bridge, golf and writing. SOLUTIONS is fictional, but the situations and circumstances are similar to those seen by a general practitioner in a small rural practice.