Prairie Courtship (Dorothy Clark).

"Prairie Courtship" by Dorothy Clark is a novel about a doctor Emma who is eager to found herself in the frontier and begin practicing medicine, but encounters obstructions from men around her – both in Missouri and on the New Frontier, despite the chance to expand her career and gain self-belief.

When the wagon crew advances to the territory of Oregon, Emma takes up the role of medicine woman, helping people in a new land, though the difficult path full of difficulties, strikes out at her patience and ends with a conflict that turns back to their inability and challenges of love.

The interplay between the characters is well-written, and the reader feels invested in the evolution of each character as they put their fates (both personal and professional) in the hands of the heartless/perfect choice they make.

Nobody wants a doctor who's a married woman—that Emma Allen knows all too well. And she hates her proverbial lot as an old maid, but that puts second behind her envy at having so little opportunity to put her medical skills to work.

In Missouri nobody wants a married doctor, or would trust one, either, and then fate offered her her chance to join up on a wagon heading west toward the Oregon Trail, potentially opening up a door to a whole new horizon, a life filled with hope she'd give anything to live.

But she soon finds herself facing some very real obstacles on that treacherous journey, most particularly Zach Thatcher, the roughest and most arrogant man she's ever met. He's the Wagon Master, though, and she has no choice but to ride in his company, like sheep tied to a lousy fat-cat. The grudging respect—nay, hatred—she began to feel for him grows into a malevolent dislike that feeds her inner tension to boiling point until she almost welcomes the opportunity to exact her revenge.

Yet it's in the most unexpected and dangerous of situations that this relationship is put to the test, as their survival hinges on their ability to forge a tenuous alliance to overcome mutual misgivings, and resolve the raging tensions between them in time to make it back home again.