FRONTLINE ANGEL
Genevieve Jordayne, Black Rose Writing, 2016, $16.95, pb, 212pp, 9781612967691
As World War ll began Eliza O’Grady was a newly trained nurse living on a Wisconsin farm, wondering how she could ever see the rest of the world and find adventure.
Joining the US Army Nurse Corps, despite the reluctance of her family, seemed the perfect answer. After two years of training in Kansas she arrived in the Philippines and was amazed by the beauty of Manila, the modern hospital, swimming in the warm bay and dances at the Officer’s club. Finding the love of her life, Reese Moretti, made everything perfect.
But the Japanese were advancing. Routine nursing turned into battlefield nursing of gravely wounded soldiers. The nurses retreated to jungle outposts, to a huge cave, then were captured and interned in desperate and deteriorating conditions until the war ended.
This is a well-researched book about the role of nurses in the Pacific sector during WW ll. The descriptions of characters and of the danger and privations they endured – suffering severe malnutrition, and a host of tropical diseases – was dramatic and emotionally powerful.
However, the book suffered from a lack of professional editing – both substantive and copy editing – which I found very distracting
Valerie Adolph
Valerie Fletcher Adolph 