Sawbones memorial

Doctor Hunter, known around Upward as Sawbones, has spent forty-five years caring for its people, and now he is ready to step away from practice. The year is 1948, and the hospital the town has waited years for is finally set to open. The war has ended, and residents are hopeful about what comes next, yet something in the community is shifting.

The town's history is tangled with quiet grudges, old envies, and loyalties that have never been fully settled. Hunter's retirement becomes a turning point that draws together the town's figures of influence and those pushed to its margins, forcing each to reckon with what they share. The novel is built from spoken exchanges and recollections, and it tells the story of one man through the eyes of the community that knew him.

The book is by Sinclair Ross, a Saskatchewan writer best known for his fiction about prairie life.