Readers first meet Henry Savard as a young boy, at his home in New Orleans where his father, Dr. Paul Savard, founded a free clinic. His mother is Julia Valentine Livingston Savard, originally of a Quaker family in Manhattan. Her first marriage ended when her husband died in a shipwreck; her second marriage to Paul Savard came about when they met at her father’s Kine-Pox Clinic where he was an attending physician.