You never know what you are capable of until you try. As a millworker, John Green was an uneducated man. That is, until the Battle of Waterloo, when he began his medical training right on the battlefield. From Waterloo to America, Green ventured to take his medical talents to the New World. When he arrived there, he fell in love with and married a Cherokee woman, despite society's disapproval. Soon Green became the first resident physician in Mineral County, Virginia. Though he eventually studied for his medical degree, he often developed his own practices based on experience rather than education. Though he had a private practice in New Creek, Virginia-a place rife with the political turmoil of the Civil War-his real office was in the back of a wagon, his tools were no more than what he could carry in his black bag, and his patients were spread throughout the wilderness of new Virginia. Based on a true story from the handwritten journals discovered by his descendants, Sawbones fictionalizes the incredible journey of one doctor's life in a young country torn apart by war.