THE UNDAUNTED by Alan Hart, foreword by Carter Sickels
THE UNDAUNTED by Alan Hart, foreword by Carter Sickels
In 1936, Alan Hart published The Undaunted, his second bestseller. The novel, which follows young doctor Richard Cameron’s attempts to find an effective treatment for anemia, begins in the west coast city of Seaforth, a stand-in for 1920s Seattle. Within the medical-research plot, Hart also weaves the story of men—Cameron and radiologist Sandy Farquhar—whose personalities and bodies do not fit neatly within the norms of the social and medical establish-ment. Dedicated to medicine and the understanding that scientific knowledge can decrease human pain and suffering, Cameron and Farquhar must nevertheless pursue their careers at personal cost. Lauded in its time for its insights into the inner workings of the medical field, The Undaunted is also an important document of the struggle of the human heart.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Series: Northwest Collection (#2)
ISBN: 9781955593038
Publication Date: November 1, 2022
Paperback, 5 x 8 in.
AUTHOR
ALAN HART (1890-1962), assigned female at birth, was born in Hall’s Summit, Kansas, the only child of Albert and Edna Hart. After his father died when Hart was two, Hart and his mother moved to Albany, Oregon, where his mother remarried. As a child, Hart dressed and regarded himself as a boy. He attended Albany College (now Lewis & Clark), transferred to Stanford, then returned to Albany and graduated in 1912. He graduated from the University of Oregon Medical School (now Oregon Health & Science University) in 1917 with the highest honors. In medical school, Hart wore the required skirts for women but masculinized his appearance by wearing men’s coats and collars. After graduating, he persuaded a doctor to perform a full hysterectomy on him, making Hart the first trans person in the United States to receive gender-affirmative surgery. Afterward, Hart cut his hair short, wore only men’s clothing, and changed his name to Alan L. Hart. While living in Washington state during the Depression, Hart published four socially-conscious novels (Doctor Mallory, The Undaunted, In The Lives of Men, and Dr. Finlay Sees It Through), all medical dramas set in the Pacific Northwest. In 1948, he and his wife, Edna Ruddick, moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where Hart earned a master’s degree in public health from Yale. Hart dedicated the rest of his professional life to tuberculosis research and was one of the first doctors to document how tuberculosis was transmitted and how it could be slowed by detection. Hart and his wife lived together in Connecticut until Hart’s death from heart failure in 1962.
PRAISE
“Hart’s novel asks essential questions still relevant to trans experiences today in America: How does one live fully as oneself in a hostile environment? What toll does fear, secrecy, and shame take on a person’s life? What does it mean to be regarded as an outsider, to experience America from a liminal space?” —Carter Sickels, from the foreword
“For anyone interested in the development of medical science—and to which of us is that development not a matter of immense importance?—Alan Hart’s new novel will prove little less than fascinating. It takes us into the world of the research laboratory and the hospital and shows us the men and women who dwell therein—petty, some of them; magnificent, some of them; self-seeking, self-sacrificing, jealous, generous, and few truly heroic.” —Louise Maunsell Field, The New York Times, 1936
