The Nurses' War

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There is more than one way to fight a war...An extraordinary story of grit, love and loss, based on the true history and real experiences of Australian nurses in World War 1.

'Heart-achingly raw yet filled with the beauty of the human spirit, this novel is a triumph that will linger in the heart and psyche.' Karen Brooks, author of The Good Wife of Bath

In 1915, as World War 1 rages in Europe and the numbers of dead and injured continue to grow, Australian nurse, Sister Cora Barker, leaves her home in Australia for England, determined to use her skills for King and country. When she arrives at Harefield House - donated to the Australian Army by its expatriate Australian owners - she helps transform it into a hospital that is also a little piece of home for recuperating Australian soldiers.

As the months pass, her mission to save diggers lives becomes more urgent as the darkest months of the war see injured soldiers from the battlefields of France and Belgium flood into Harefield in the thousands. When the hospital sends out a desperate call for help, a quiet young seamstress from the village, Jessie Chester, steps up as a volunteer. At the hospital she meets Private Bert Mott, a recovering Australian soldier, but the looming threat of his return to the Front hangs over them. Could her first love be her first heartbreak

Cora's and Jessie's futures, their hearts and their lives hang in the balance as the never-ending wave of injured and dying soldiers threatens to overwhelm the hospital and the hopes of a nation rest on a knife edge. The nurses war is a war against despair and death, fought with science and love rather than mustard gas and fear - but can they possibly win it And what will be the cost

Author Bio

Victoria Purman is an Australian top ten and USA Today bestselling fiction author. Her most recent book, The Nurses' War, was an Australian bestseller, as were her novels The Women's Pages,The Land Girls and The Last of the Bonegilla Girls. Her earlier novel The Three Miss Allens was a USA Today bestseller. She is a regular guest at writers festivals, a mentor and workshop presenter and was a judge in the fiction category for the 2018 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature and the 2022 ASA/HQ Commercial Fiction Prize for an unpublished manuscript. To find out more, visit Victoria's website, victoriapurman.com You can also follow her on Facebook or Instagram (@victoriapurmanauthor) and Twitter (@VictoriaPurman)