Robert J. Cole, the doctor and hero of The Physician, left an enduring legacy. From the 11th century on, the eldest son in each generation of the Cole family has borne the same first name and middle initial, and many of these men have been blessed not only with their ancestor's diagnostic skill but with a "sixth sense."Now, in Shaman, the scene shifts to the 19th century. We meet Dr. Robert Judson Cole, fleeing from his native Scotland for the New World to practice medicine in Boston and to learn the healing powers of the Sauk Indians. And we follow the career of his son, Robert Jefferson Cole - Shaman to everyone who knows him - and his family as they are drawn, along with the rest of America, into the conflict between North and South. By turns tender and gritty, Shaman is a family saga of epic proportions: a vivid depiction of two physicians and the women they love, of brutal murder, and of medicine as it emerges from the dark centuries. Winner of the James Fenmore Cooper Prize for historical fiction.