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neither sister could have predicted the events that would ultimately take them to Olalla.
             
    O VER THE course of the next few days, the sisters would hear more of the doctor’s heroics. While most stories were recent cases involving patients she treated in Seattle, occasionally she would recall cases from Minneapolis. Dr. Hazzard spoke fondly of a boy named Edward Anderson, whom she had treated in 1905.
    The story made Claire cry. Dora listened politely.
    Edward Anderson was only seventeen when a doctor solemnly informed his mother that there was no hope.
No hope.
The words ached in her heart.
Ed was dying.
It was to be a slow, bit-by-bit demise, a kind of easing toward death that would steadily sneak up like a foggy moon behind the distant tree line. Like most of Minneapolis, Mrs. Anderson had read of Linda Burfield’s controversial fasting practice and the personal scandals that made her the source of gossip and derision. Everyone had read about her, even laughed at her. Some felt sorry for Dr. Burfield. All had opinions. Mrs. Anderson knew all of that, yet none of it would concern her enough to stop her from taking the only step she could. When a son lies pale, helpless, and drained, preconceived judgments are hurled out like buckets of wet and smelly rubbish. Mrs. Anderson summoned the fasting specialist to her home at 2517 Riverside Avenue on the evening of December 19, 1905.
    Linda Burfield Hazzard drew Claire and Dora close, the three of them filling a divan at the apartment. It was almost as if the doctor was a schoolteacher, and they were young children gathered for story time. She lowered her voice so each word would emerge from her in a soft, dramatic fashion. Now both sisters were riveted.
    “Oh please continue, doctor. Do tell us what happened to the sweet boy!” Claire pleaded.
    Slightly annoyed at the interruption, the fasting specialist continued.
    “I found him suffering from a characteristic case of inflammatory rheumatism, and in a most precarious state. The boy’s physician had thrown up his hands, and had told the distracted mother that the disease had affected the heart and that it was only a matter of a day or two at the most. All that he could do was to ease the pain with opiates and give the young man a pleasant passage into eternity. The mother had heard of my work through one of my former patients, and, as a last resort, came to me.”
    Last resort.
Certainly a familiar term; almost always born of desperation. The fasting specialist had been visited by scores, by hundreds, as a last resort. She would later laugh at the folly of those who had been brainwashed by the purveyors of surgery and drugs. She held little sympathy for them; they had been warned that nature’s remedies were unquestionably superior to the attempts “doctors” had invented. She felt she could save many, many lives if patients sought her out for the first course of treatment.
    The Anderson boy was such a case, so typical, so potentially tragic. He had been bedridden for five weeks, a victim not only of his disease, but of the futile treatments applied. His left arm, wrist, and hand were swollen to the puffiness of a bee sting. The boy’s ankles and joints were inflamed. His face was flushed; his breath labored and short. The doctor’s thermometer rose to 105 degrees.
    No doubt it was only a matter of time.
    The fasting specialist ridiculed the conventional doctor’s course of treatment for Edward. Claire shook her head disapprovingly, mirroring Linda Burfield Hazzard’s disposition.
    “The foundation I had to work on was flimsy in all respects, for the five weeks since the beginning of the attack were worse than lost—at least to me. I found that in the two weeks just preceding, the heart action had been stimulated with doses of digitalis and strychnine; food had been forced on the rebellious stomach as many times daily as the boy could be induced to swallow it; and, when the pain had become too