Gernes is, as she notes in the book's preface, a teller of tales. And the tales in Fremantle Doctor add the richness of poetic expression to the flow of a narrative line.
The first story, "The Indian School," travels with a young school teacher in Minnesota during the Depression as she discovers the cultural truths of her Native American students. The second, "The Mutes of Sleepy Eye," explores the poetry of silence, as residents of a small Minnesota town offer proof that deafness can be either physical or spiritual. Here a central character, the deaf 17-year-old named Elise who is pregnant but refuses to name the father, muses over her transforming body:
The final story leaves Minnesota for Western Australia, where an ocean breeze called "the doctor" cools off summer-sweltering Fremantle in the evenings. Gernes introduces us to three women whose lives are touched by the local lunatic asylum.
As a personal touch, she includes a preface telling the story behind each story, answering that question so often asked of writers, "How do you get your ideas?"
— Carol Schaal '91M.A.