by Louise Riveiro - Mitchell

Created on: September 06, 2009

Set in the 1800's, Michaela Quinn the youngest of five daughters of Dr. Josef and Elizabeth Quinn sets out to make her own practice as a doctor. After the death of her father Michaela saw that no one was coming to the office she and her father had shared, seems a woman doctor was not thought of as capable. She answered and advertisement in the paper for a doctor in the Colorado Territory and left her family and home to make a life for herself.

After a long and trying trip she arrives in Colorado Springs only to be met but another obstacle. Seems the townspeople were expecting a Dr. Michael Quinn and a male. Though the Reverend Johnson had offered to pay her way back to Boston, Michaela was determined to stay stating the town needed a doctor and she was indeed a doctor. The local barber Jake Slicker was the town's so called doctor and she had her work cut out for her to prove she was just as good. Finding a friend in the widow Cooper who ran the boarding house, "Mike" soon found that Charlotte Cooper and her three children Matthew, Colleen and Brian were a great help to her in learning to deal with this new life.

At the general store run by Loren Bray and his wife Maude "Mike" first sees the mountain man Byron Sully. A loner, it is Sully who offers her his empty cabin and a friendship begins. Sully had built the cabin two years earlier when he had married the Bray's daughter Abigail who died in childbirth. After that he left the cabin and lived with the Cheyenne. It wasn't long after Charlotte Cooper was bitten by a rattle snake and died, her last breath was telling "Mike" to raise her children. Now not only single, Mike now has the responsibility of caring for the Cooper children and their life as a family. The series ran 6 years and as we watched the Cooper children grow and the feelings that Sully and Mike had for each other grow, the higlight of the fifth season was the marriage of Michaela Quinn and Byron Sully.

It's the strong characters in this series that makes each episode so memorable and a favorite vehicle for entertainment for the entire family. Strong family values that can be used in today's life gives it creditability as well as the historical facts that not only accurately show the injustices done to the Cheyenne people, but it gives the viewers an honest portrayal of the Native Americans and it honors their culture and traditions

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