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Don't know much about the first group of courageous women who traveled thousands of miles to serve their country?
They were the 10,000 women of the Army Nurse Corps who volunteered in 1917 to travel to a country they did not know, whose language they did not know with people they did not necessarily know to nurse horribly wounded Doughboys in France.
This Veterans Day, applaud the women who lived in tents, slept in hammocks, ate "slum" and washed their hair in their helmets!
Read Jo-Ann Power's HEROIC MEASURES, out now in digital and print world wide.
For
nurse Gwen Spencer, fighting battles is nothing new. An orphan sent to live
with a vengeful aunt, Gwen picked coal and scrubbed floors to earn a living.
But when she decides to become a nurse, she steps outside the boundaries of her
aunt’s demands…and into a world of her own making.
Leaving
her hometown for France, she helps doctors mend thousands of brutally injured
Doughboys under primitive conditions. Amid the chaos, she volunteers to go ever
forward to the front lines. Braving bombings and the madness of men crazed by
the hell of war, she is stunned to discover one man she can love. A man she can
share her life with.
But
in the insanity and bloodshed she learns the measures of her own desires. Dare
she attempt to become a woman of accomplishment? Or has looking into the face
of war and death given her the courage to live her life to the fullest?
Excerpt: Copyright,
Jo-Ann Power, 2013. All rights reserved.
After a blissful minute
of silence, Gwen faced Pearl. “So you really are thinking of volunteering?”
Pearl stared over the
rims of her glasses. “I am. Want to come? It’s a set of uniforms, an overcoat,
two pairs of boots, a trip to France and all the work you can get until the war
ends and all the men in the entire world are dead. Oh, and especially for you,
Spencer, a raincoat. The one you never afforded for yourself because you gave
half your pay to that ungrateful aunt of yours.”
“A raincoat. Golly,”
Gwen mused half-seriously. “A worthy reason to join. Plus, if I go with you, I
could listen to you complain all the time.”
Markham threw a pillow
at her.
“I might look into
this, just to learn what it’s got to offer,” Gwen teased her, but inside a seed
of interest grew roots.
“Ask Dalton. She knows
more.”
“Why?”
“She’s going. O’Bryan
persuaded her.”
“Doc is going to
France?” Gwen couldn’t believe it. O’Bryan didn’t seem like the adventurous
type, nor the noble type, either. She misjudged him. Why would he volunteer?
“For a million
soldiers,” Anna chimed in. “You need thousands of doctors and nurses. Dentists,
too.”
“Of
course,” Gwen murmured. How many people
do you need to care for millions of men? How many scalpels and needles? How
much ether and debridement solution? How many sterilizers and…just how do you
get all that where it’s needed to save lives of men in pain and bleeding?
“I want to learn more.”
Buy links:
More about
Jo-Ann: http://www.jo-annpower.com

Harrowing time period and a beautiful cover too. Heroic Measures sounds like a great read.
ReplyDeleteThis sound like a very moving story.
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