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For those of you who are new to the world of Substack, my apologies for not making it clearer: “The Bricklayer’s Daughter” is just the name of this newsletter, not the name of my second novel, which is still in the works. Part of the reason I started this newsletter was to stay in touch with folks between books, and since I’ve gotten a lot of questions about it, here’s a sneak preview of the yet-to-be-titled Novel #2. The logline (one-sentence summary) is:
When the ghosts of war won’t stay buried, an army nurse must find a way to heal—or risk losing everything.
Readers of The Italian Prisoner may remember the main character Rose was receiving letters from her big sister Laura, a World War II Army nurse serving in North Africa, Italy, and Germany. In researching that first book, I waded through many journals, letters, oral histories, and non-fiction books about nurses in the service. The second novel is Laura’s book, and a chance to give those brave women their due. In 1951, Laura is working as a nurse at Charity Hospital in New Orleans and gets some news that sends her into a tailspin, reliving her trauma from the war.
Over 70,000 American nurses served in World War II, and 222 of them died in service. Sixty-seven nurses were captured by the Japanese in the Philippines and spent nearly three years as prisoners of war. Keep in mind: there were no helicopters in World War II, so hospital units had to be stationed very close to the front lines. Nurses, doctors, orderlies, medics, and other personnel were often in harm’s way and witnessed unspeakable carnage.
Unfortunately, when American women returned home, they were often not recognized as full-fledged veterans and faced significant challenges accessing the GI Bill benefits they earned. When they sought help to deal with the effects of the trauma they suffered, the women were often told to just get over it and move on.
In addition to the primary source research, I thought it was important to hear first-hand testimony from contemporary nurses. My sister Marianne an RN and served on a different front-line, as a public health official during the COVID-19 pandemic. I gained valuable insights from her and others I interviewed, including my friend Nanci who worked in a hospital emergency department at the height of the crisis. The words they used and the stories they shared were reminiscent of nurses’ wartime recollections I’d read from World War II through Korea and Vietnam, to more recent conflicts. I was also lucky enough to interview some badass women veterans about their experiences on deployments to the Middle East.
Once this book is out in the world, I hope it will provide a small measure of recognition to these veteran nurses and, by association, acknowledge the hard-working, selfless professional nurses who serve our communities every day.
This is important research and awareness you are bringing. My non-fiction book about music during the Holocaust has a chapter about the women who were captured in the South Pacific and taken to an internment camp on the island of Sumatra. Among those women was a large contingent of nurses. They continued to render what help they could to the other other women even as they themselves were at the brink of death from starvation and tropical diseases.
Such a worthy subject for a novel. Looking forward to it.