With the objectivity and insight of a scholar, the compassion and curiosity of an educator, and the love and admiration of a daughter, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot recounts the extraordinary life of her mother, Dr. Margaret Morgan Lawrence, one of the first African-American women to graduate from Cornell University and Columbia University School of Medicine to become a physician. Balm in Gilead captures both the life of an inspiring woman and the social, cultural, historical, and psychological forces that shaped the destinies of four generations of African-American women and their families.