He marries a remarkable settler woman he had saved from illness. In the process, he absorbs their culture and learns native remedies that enrich his classical medical education. In the wilderness he befriends the starving remnants of the Sauk tribe, who have fled their reservation. Robert Judson Cole, nineteenth-century descendent of the first Robert Cole, travels from his ravaged Scottish homeland, through the operating rooms of antebellum Boston, to the cabins of frontier Illinois. Cole’s journey and love for a woman who must struggle against her only rival-medicine-make The Physician a riveting modern classic. Christians are barred from Muslim schools, but by claiming he is a Jew, he studies under the world’s most renowned physician, Avicenna. Arab madrassas are the only authentic medical schools, and he makes his perilous way to Persia. As he matures, his strange gift-an acute sensitivity to impending death-never leaves him, and he yearns to become a healer. In The Physician, an orphan in eleventh-century London, Robert Cole, becomes a fast-talking swindler. Gordon’s final novel, The Winemaker, was published in 2012.

While it was not a critical success in the United States, its popularity grew rapidly across Europe, particularly in Germany, Spain, and Italy. Published in 1986, this book would see not only a film adaptation, but a musical as well.

This is particularly true of The Physician, the first part of the Cole Trilogy. Related: 7 American Literature Books That Go Beyond the Classics Many of Gordon's works saw far more acclaim from European audiences. Published in 1965, the story revolves around a young rabbi who falls for the daughter of a Protestant minister. This book saw critical success in the United States, though it was one of Gordon's few books that would. The novel was heavily based on his own experiences growing up in an American Jewish family. The old adage of 'write what you know' paid off for Gordon with his first novel, The Rabbi. Gordon went on to work as an editor for The Journal of Abdominal Surgery, as well as eventually becoming the science editor for The Boston Herald. This would prove to be incredibly influential to his creative writing career, as well as his time as a reporter. He gained a relationship with the head of Harvard Medical School’s pathology department. It was around this time that Gordon began to grow increasingly fascinated with the progress being made in the medical field.

The cole trilogy noah gordon