Wide Neighborhoods: A Story of the Frontier Nursing Service

by Mary Breckinridge

"The autobiography of Mary Breckinridge, the remarkable founder of the Frontier Nursing Service. Riding out on horseback, the FNS nurse-midwives, the first of their profession in this country, proved that high mortality rates and malnutrition need not be the norm in rural areas. By their example and through their graduates, the FNS has exacted a lasting influence on family health care throughout the world."

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, American History, History

371 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1952

Reviews

[Janet Still FNP · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Breckinridge's account of her life's events that she felt led her to create her wonderful and important Frontier Nursing Service, which also led to the creation of the Frontier Nursing University, contains fun and sad tales of the world during her time of growing up and becoming a woman and a nurse midwife that influences a whole region's health. I found her way of speaking delightful and uncontrived and therefore approachable. The stories also took me back in time to my family's history, which meant a lot to me. reading her story is like listening to my elders reminisce. I could listen all day!

[Claire Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Required reading for anyone interested in public health and midwifery; a really interesting and beautiful story of community based health efforts in the 1920’s.

I spent a summer working as a courier for the Frontier Nursing Service, so it was great to return to Appalachia through the account of one of history’s most influential nurses as she realized her own dreams of its founding.

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I too found some of the chapters fascinating, but much of the story is about financing, supporters and committee members, which made for too many names and not enough substance.

[Brenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sadly this book was much more about administrative duties and the ins and outs of starting the Frontier Nursing Service than it was about being a horseback midwife in the Appalachian mountains. I was mostly looking for stories of their care but that was not this book.
Mary Breckinridge sounds like an incredible person but the book was just pretty dry. Also heartbreaking, the story of her own kid's deaths as well as all the kids in the Kentucky mountains that had such a hard life was just tough to read about.
Also I need more information about the medicine that was practiced at that time, why did they do versions for previa?? And so interesting that she actually saw it as a win getting her patients into the hospital for their birth while midwives now are working to keep healthy patients OUT of the hospital, or at least have a least-hospital like experience as possible. Different sides of the care spectrum for sure, and it's nice to remember that being in the middle is the ideal. Modern medicine is good, when it's needed. And it's also good to let physiological birth do it's thing when it can.

[Steph Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found this heavy and hard going. It was more a factual and historic account, a who gave what donation and who started which centre rather than stories of the actual nursing. Dry, ended up skimming a lot. Clearly an incredible woman who saved countless lives and gave her all to this service, hence an extra star.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had a few very moving passages for me. There was a lot of wading through more mundane information, too. But I really did enjoy it. I liked this passage:

"It was not until early April in 1931 that enough rain fell to bring our first tide in two years. When all up and down the rivers word was passed that the waters were rising, the excitement was like the return of troops from war. In a few hours the rivers rose ten feet, then fifteen, and the great rafts, which had lain so long at their moorings, swung out to midstream. The moorings were severed and on a mighty rush of current the rafts started down. As the first ones passed, the men on them began cheering, these quiet highlanders, and the people on shore cheered back and waved at them. Then more rafts followed, over two hundred on the Middle Fork alone, and for forty miles down the river the cheering men were answered by the people on the shores. Women dropped their hoes, men stood at their plows waving their hats. Like a triumphant army the rafts swept on. The drought was broken, the heavens had opened, the harvest was to come. We felt as George Herbert did in the early seventeenth century when he wrote:

I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O, my onely Light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom Thy tempests fell all night."

[Kaitlyn Rychlowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am starting school as a student at Frontier Nursing University, and was given this book on campus to learn more about the incredible history and legacy behind our program. I was so impressed reading this with how much Mary Breckinridge has overcome when founding the Frontier Nursing Service. I loved reading about her adventures on horseback to see families up the mountain, needing to advertise for cows to get milk, and how truly impactful nurses were at that time as the sole healthcare service in the area! It filled my heart that FNS also served for preventative care, giving shoes to the children who were barefoot at risk for worms. There were a lot of names and mention about funding, but as the book went on I became more interested! I recommend reading if you are interested in nursing or rural health care. Mary Breckinridge’s passion and story surely ignites a spark for me and my future career! I hope to honor her with my future care as a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner.

[Trish · Rating 3 out of 5]

While subtitled A Story of the Frontier Nursing Service (FNS), I found this to be more an autobiography of Mary Breckinridge. She notes that to tell the beginnings of the FNS, she needed to share the background experiences that influenced her life, beginning with the birth of her younger brother in the early nineties. And when she writes of the early nineties, she means the 1890s. Her family was living in Russia where her father, a former Arkansas Congressman, was serving as U.S. Minister to Russia, appointed by President Cleveland. Her grandfather had been Vice President, serving under President Buchanan. She clearly was from a prominent family. While she was born in Tennessee not long after the Civil War, she traveled internationally with her family. Governesses provided her early education and she later attended boarding school in Switzerland. From childhood, Mary kept journals and throughout her life was an avid correspondent. She used her own journals and letters saved by friends and family members as source material for this book. She suffered some tragedies in her young adult life which strongly influenced her decision to study nursing and subsequently, midwifery. Experiences in Europe led her to develop a public health plan for rural Kentucky.

I enjoyed the first part of this book detailing Mary’s childhood. I found the inclusion of historical events fascinating as they were written not as history but as the perceived every day happenings of one who was living it (World War 1, Prohibition, the Depression, World War 2). However, the book bogged down with the minutiae she used to describe the founding of the FNS – committee meetings, fund raising, etc. It wasn’t until more than halfway through the book that the author began to intersperse stories of the women and babies whose lives were saved through the efforts of the dedicated frontier nurses. The book was written in the 1950s so needs to be read through the lens of that time period. Be prepared to scan through some tedious details to find some gems in this book.

Author Kim Michele Richardson lists this book as one of her sources for the historical novel "Book Woman’s Daughter" (sequel to "The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek"). She includes a frontier nurse as a character in "Book Woman's Daughter."

[Angie Kennedy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm glad that I saw the KET documentary last fall and read Melanie Beals Goan's book first (Mary Breckinridge: The Frontier Nursing Service and Rural Health in Appalachia). This memoir was (as is probably true of all memoirs) incredibly self-indulgent. Mary Breckinridge was certainly a product of her time and her own descriptions of her admiration for the Confederacy, casual racism and eugenics did not sit well with me. It is true I'm looking at her through the lens of my own time and I can't deny that she did some good for the people of eastern Kentucky...but to read her account of it seemed to me that she had quite a savior complex. She wanted to benefit and save the noble Anglo-Saxon stock of Appalachia but didn't shy away from recommending sterilization for certain women and including other women in trials of oral contraception to help reduce family size to make it comparable to other parts of the US.

I'm not going to lie either. One of the things that just got to me about her writing style is the usage of courtesy titles. Men always referred to as Mr. So-and-So every time their name was mentioned, single nurses referred to as Miss FirstName LastName or by a nickname, but married women always mentioned as Mrs. Husband's Name. Considering how much these women did for the Frontier Nursing Service in fundraising and promotion, I feel they should have been afforded their own identities. That's probably another sign of me looking backward through my own lens. Maybe that's very common for the era and for people raising in the South. Still rubs me the wrong way.

Anyway, glad I read it but even more glad that I've finished it.

[Lexi · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.
I started reading this book and although I enjoyed the stories in them I had a very difficult time reading the actual writing.
The book was written in the 1950s and had many more details than necessary in order to make the story fit. I think part of the story was trying to think the people involved in her life.
I really really enjoyed listening about the cases that they encountered the hardships that they went through and how hard they had to work in order to create the frontier nursing services. Everything that Mary Breckenridge and her friends and family went through to create the service was incredibly daunting. Her personal life, losing her husband and children would have been devastating. To replace that with something so long standing is a great legacy.
The frontier nursing service can create so many new midwives and nurse practitioners, they will change the world, and it will still be owed to her.
The families in the area I’m sure will never forget the kindness that Mary and her nurses showed them.

Although it was a challenge to read, I liked the book. I wish that there were additional pictures! And an update since 1981 as everything has changed.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amazing story of the rural nursing service founded in the Kentucky mountains. Though fairly dry, there are numerous stories of fording high rivers on swimming horses, dragging building supplies with mule teams that enliven the story. Also there are many details of the challenges of public health and midwifery in the 1920's and 30's in the isolated mountains. Also a very clear vision and ability to move forward to become a world training center for delivery of medical care in rural areas.

[Heidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although this book was interesting and I learned a great deal about the effort that went into starting the FNS, my hope in reading this book was to hear stories about the midwives and the births they attended. That was less than 20% of the book. For anyone wanting to know how FNS started, this is a very thorough retelling of people and inspiration and donations and struggles and building and so forth. For someone looking for birth stories, this is not the book for you.

[KLB · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this autobiography is a fairly dry and factual work, the life of Mary Breckenridge is anything but dry. There is a PBS short film of 10 minutes that is worth digging up to watch about her. She is the creator of frontier nursing and rural health.

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://...

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best part is the first page of chapter 25, when she mentions Dr. Mildred McKee, my grandmother that I never met, and her young baby, my dad! 😊 I also found, on YouTube, the movie she mentions later in the book, The Forgotten Frontier. Very interesting to me to see this.

[Sheila Zenni]

I loved this book. I learned so much. Mary Breckenridge was a FORCE! Great respect for her and the INCREDIBLE nurses who got to their patients on horseback. I'm just blown away by all they did. Amazing story!

[Lyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a great history of the start of the Frontier Nursing service in Kentucky. Some of the details were a bit tedious.

[Cathy Koerner · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very detailed book of the Frontier Nursing Service in the mtns of Kentucky. Amazing accomplishments!!

[Dale · Rating 3 out of 5]

author is the founder of the renowned Frontier Nursing Services (FNS), based in Hyden, KY; before getting to the actual beginning of FNS, this book slogs through the authors rearing as a young child (in case you can’t tell, that was of NO interest to me); once the book got into the FNS information it was far more enjoyable; overall this author is very free with honoring in print the names of people who have no meaning to those of us who don’t travel in those circles. I am guessing the author listed all those individuals in hopes of getting more donations. A worthy reading, only because I am an RN, living in KY, who has a best friend who started nursing practice at FNS before coming to Berea College plus I am always looking for ways to celebrate KY’s positive heritage (this certainly is a MOST positive story, tho’ not well told here). As a general rule, the general public would throw this book out with the bath water; purchased hardback, Madison County Public Library, Berea, book sale; 366 pgs.

[Ann Gabhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting autobiography of Mary Breckinridge. Writing a little old fashioned, but she had an eventful life.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

More about administrative parts of her nursing and not much about actual people and patients.