The Gibson family, of One Man's Medicine, emigrates to the Canadian West. Readers will recall that Gibson and his wife, both Scottish physicians, were established in family practice near the English port city of Hull. In time, Gibson now relates, Britain's National Health Service impinged so greatly on their practice that they packed up their teenage daughter, sold their possessions, and relocated in the tiny Alberta town of Okotoks, within sight of the Rockies 100 miles from Calgary. There follow short, homespun vignettes of Gibson's new practice.

Adapting to the harsh, life-threatening winters: a trip to care for injured workers at an oil-drilling station atop a mountain provides a crash-course in winter driving--one slip would have sent Gibson off a cliff. Learning, as the only physician for miles, to treat any and all patients--to the point of doing a dental extraction on a man self-anaesthetized with liquor and setting a bull's broken leg in the absence of a vet.