<p><b>THE TOP TEN BESTSELLER</b><br><b>SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE<br>A <i>The Times </i>Book of the Year 2022<br><br>'Morland writes about nature and the changing landscape with such lyrical precision that her prose sometimes seems close to poetry' - Christina Patterson, <i>The Sunday Times</i></b><br><br><i>A Fortunate Woman</i> is a compelling, thoughtful and insightful look at the life and work of a country doctor. Funny, moving and not afraid of the dark, it will speak to readers everywhere.<br><br>Polly Morland was clearing her late mother&rsquo;s house when she found a battered paperback fallen behind the family bookshelf. Opening it, she was astonished to see an old photograph of the remote, wooded valley in which she lives. The book was <i>A Fortunate Man</i>, John Berger&rsquo;s classic account of a country doctor working in the same valley more than half a century earlier. This chance discovery led Morland to the remarkable doctor who serves that valley community today, a woman whose own medical vocation was inspired by reading the very same book as a teenager.<br><br><i>A Fortunate Woman</i> tells her compelling, true story, and how the tale of the old doctor has threaded through her own life in magical ways. Working within a community she loves, she is a rarity in contemporary medicine: a modern doctor who knows her patients inside out, the lives of this ancient, wild place entwined with her own.<br><br>Revisiting Berger&rsquo;s story after half a century of seismic change, both in our society and in the ways in which medicine is practised<i>, A Fortunate Woman</i> sheds light on what it means to be a doctor in today&rsquo;s complex and challenging world. Interweaving the doctor&rsquo;s story with those of her patients, reflecting on the relationship between landscape and community, and upon the wider role of medicine in society, a unique portrait of a twenty-first century family doctor emerges.<br><br>Illustrated throughout with photographs by Richard Baker.<br><br><b><i>'C</i>ontains a profound message for the future at a critical moment for general practice and us all' - Wendy Moore, <i>TLS</i></b><br><br><b>'I was consoled and compelled by this book&rsquo;s steady gaze on healing and caring. The writing is beautiful' - Sarah Moss, author of <i>Summerwater </i>and <i>Ghost Wall</i></b><br><br><b>'A</b><b> vibrant and authentic portrait of the rural family doctor in these difficult contemporary times' - Trisha Greenhalgh, Professor of Primary Care at the University of Oxford</b></p>