A Wartime Nurse

Front Cover
Ebury, 2011 - Fiction - 416 pages
Theda Wearmouth is named after her mother's favourite silent movie star but that is the last vestige of glamour to touch her life. The thirties are lean years for a miner's family dependent on the Durham coalmines. Theda is determined to become a nurse as a means of escape; and, against the odds, manages to gain a nursing place at Newcastle Hospital. By the time war breaks out, she is newly qualified and working in a children's ward, a job she adores. So also finds herself being courted by a young soldier. Only Theda's dreams of becoming Mrs Alan Price are shattered when he is killed in action before he can make good on his promise to marry her. Broken-hearted, Theda finds herself re-assigned to a special unit of the hospital dealing with German prisoners of war. Her duty is clear. But will she be able to cope with nursing the very men her fiance died fighting?

Other editions - View all

About the author (2011)

Maggie Hope was born in County Durham, during the Depression of the 1930s. She is the daughter of a coal miner and knows first-hand the hardships suffered by miners and their families during that time. Along with her three sisters, she was raised in a 'two-up-two-down' miner's cottage with no inside toilet. Growing up, Maggie never dreamed she could earn a living from her writing. Instead she left school at sixteen and became a nurse, collecting stories from colleagues who had served during the war. Maggie gave up nursing when she married her husband and started a family. It wasn't until she was in her 50s though that she finally began her writing career. She is now the Sunday Times bestselling author of fifteen novels.