North Country Nurse

By Robert Ackworth, ©1965

Lovely young Mary Loring, her nurse’s training behind her, came home to the north country for two reasons—one, to help the people in this vast wilderness land; the other, locked in her heart, to work with young Dr. Ken Shannon who was coming back here to start his practice. But when Ken stepped off the plane, beside him was a beautiful, titian-haired bride. Now Mary wanted only to escape—from this man she could never have, from her beloved north country that would always remind her of him. It took a startling confession from Ken, and a danger-filled mercy flight with a devil-may-care pilot named Eddie Garrett, to show Mary that she didn’t have to run away—that a girl doesn’t always know the secrets of her own heart …

GRADE: C-

BEST QUOTES:|
“It’s odd that of all the moments a person passes in a lifetime, only a few are important, isn’t it? I wish now that I had decided I wanted to be something, instead of insisting that I must belong to someone.” 

REVIEW:
Nurse Mary Loring has returned to her home, a tiny town of 900 God-fearing souls in the “north country,” unspecified except that it’s not Idaho—Montana? Wyoming? Some state that is home to dude ranches and trappers and loggers—and few medical personnel. Mary is coming back with every intention of marrying Dr. Kenneth Shannon, who also grew up in this town. She’s been crushing on him for a decade, since she was 12 years old—they grow up fast in the mountains—when he left for medical school, and she’s seen him only a couple of times since then, so right off the bat we’re stuck with this extremely awkward and implausible albatross of a major plot device. And it’s not improved when the good doctor steps off the Cessna with—gasp!—his new bride!

Mary immediately decides she will leave town, never mind her vows to help her isolated fellow citizens, which would leave them without a nurse. But only a month after Kenneth arrives, “when people would not be likely to guess the real reason for her departure.” Does it really matter? Anita Shannon turns out to be as incredibly gorgeous as she is shy, completely unable to extend herself or make friends. Mary just hopes that “the absolutely unexpected might happen” while Anita is out taking long walks in the woods, or that “the strange woman who was Kenneth Shannon’s wife might walk out on him.” Nice! Kenneth does his best to get help for Anita—unfortunately asking his best female “friend,” Mary, to befriend Anita, “who was seen less and less as the days went by.”

Again and again, given an opportunity to be generous, mature, and kind, Mary instead puts on a deep freeze, doing little, and then only when absolutely forced, thinking that “her only hope for a future with Kenneth rested with the possibility that Anita Shannon would not make adjustments.” Anita even tries to unburden herself about her difficulties to Mary, but Mary just acts indignant at the “cold peculiar” woman and completely shuts her down, snapping, “Mrs. Shannon”—and her formality of using Anita’s married name is hostile all by itself—“I just won’t comment. What you do is entirely up to you.”

Later, when through her own hard work, Anita starts to open up and make friends with other villagers, “Mary could not help staring at Kenneth Shannon’s beautiful wife. She had seemed almost warm. It was hard to believe.” Naturally, Mary’s enormous hypocrisy is completely lost on her—and possibly on the author as well, as he makes no hints about how horrible Mary has been, and Mary never experiences any regrets about her cruel behavior.

When she’s not giving poor Anita the cold shoulder, she’s running hot and cold with three men in town. She accepts dates with forest ranger Tom Fogarty, even though she thinks he’s boring and awkward, and though she knows her best friend has a crush on him—and she’s completely taken by surprise when the friend, who feels doomed to be a spinster in this tiny town of few single men, leaves town for manlier pastures. Mary also has hot and hunky Perry Wynn, who runs her aunt’s ranch very capably, hinting gently about his feelings for her, but Mary calls him strange too, and gets all cranky anticipating she’ll have to turn down another man she doesn’t want—but is “annoyed” when he doesn’t stand in the barn door to watch her leave. Last is pilot Eddie Garrett, a frightening, arrogant man whose behavior toward Mary crosses well into harassment, making me concerned he’s a potential rapist: Though she’s told him from the outset that she’s not interested in him, he will not take no for an answer, and instead leers, “I’m going to make you get to know me,” and “I’m going to find your breaking point someday—the kind of breaking point I mean.” He grabs her at a dance and refuses to let go as she tries to pull herself away, saying, “When we dance you have to let me hold you in my arms. If I tried it any other way you’d yell blood murder from a false sense of outrage.” But when he tells her he was orphaned and raised by uncaring relatives, suddenly Mary feels guilty about “how unjustly she had leaped to conclusions about him,” and apologizes to him when he kisses her. Ew.

The rest of the book has some pretty descriptions of the north country scenery, especially if you are fond of the forests of the western states, but the medicine is laughable (the doctor, who performs appendectomies, is unable to manage a punctured lung, which only requires a chest tube; Mary brings large quantities of tongue depressors to a forest fire first-aid station) and of course Mary herself is obsessive, self-centered, and vindictive, and her choice of men in the end is unfathomable—she is, in short, not a likeable character. The writing otherwise isn’t terrible, but it’s just too difficult to get around the problems of a stupid plot device combined with a stupid heroine. I love the north country, but I could not love this nurse.

Nurse of the Grand Canyon

By Virginia Smiley, ©1973

The Grand Canyon was a long way from New York City … but pretty young nurse Kathleen McMasters was ready for a big change. She became enchanted by the spectacular beauty of the West and decided that this was where she wanted to live and work. One of the first people Kathleen met in Grand Canyon Village was little Kerry Loughlin. Kathleen was charmed by the child, and Kerry thought Kathleen would make the perfect wife for her handsome widower father, Pete. Kathleen truly liked Pete. But she also found herself attracted to another man. Now she would have to choose between them …

GRADE: C

REVIEW:

When I first opened this book, it reminded me of Marjorie Lewty’s magnificent Town Nurse—Country Nurse, but perhaps that’s mostly because they are both written in the first person. Kathleen McMasters has a bit of the same character as Lewty’s Kate Moorcroft, but as the pages turn, it’s really not that much.

The story begins with Kathleen, having traveled to the Grand Canyon for a solo vacation, peering over the edge and crying for the beauty of it. She’s instantly tackled by cowboy Cal Fulton, who thinks she’s suicidal. When she hotly denies it and accuses him of attacking her, he drawls, “Not a bad idea at that,” but oddly she is not impressed. Nonetheless, before he leaves her, he “glanced at my ring-free left hand,” which is apparently some sort of permission slip, and kisses her, pinning her arms so she cannot escape. “No harm done, ma’am,” he concludes when he lets her go. This is one of those all-to-frequent devices in a VNRN that I can only pray was not as common in real life fifty years ago than it is in these books. The only thing worse than these assaults is the fact that the heroine ends up dating the creep, almost every time. And despite her initial intention to “do my best to avoid him,” Kathleen is indeed soon dating Cal.

In another tried-and-true plot device, she has a boyfriend back home that she doesn’t like, this one an architect who “dressed in tailor-made suits and $25 shirts” so as to wow wealthy clients. He is pressing Kathleen to marry him, but she thinks he just likes her as “the bit of color on his arm, a soon-to-be possession,” and is really seeking a hostess for his swank parties. Despite the many, many flaws in her young man, “I was sure I loved Tod”—but in this case she actually makes short work of him. He jets out to express his horror that she’s staying in a cabin and not the ritzy hotel, and secondarily to propose: “ ‘I want you to marry me,’ he had said, not ‘I love you Kathleen. Will you marry me?’ The lovely diamond, meant to be a symbol of love between two people, had almost been flung at me, along with an order to wear it. The entire scene resembled someone else’s nightmare.” She declines.

She soon meets Kerry Loughlin, an eight-year-old girl who is raising herself (she seems to subsist on instant coffee and donuts, a diet that passes unremarked upon by Kathleen) while her widowed father, Pete, works as a naturalist at the canyon. Kathleen is quickly absorbed into the life of this family and their close friends Cowboy Cal and Nurse Holly. She gets a job at the nearby (understaffed, natch) hospital and decides to relocate to the area permanently, and goes out with both Pete and Cal. There’s the owner of the nearby grocery store and Pete’s sister-in-law to add to the mix, and then it’s just a question of figuring out which lap everyone is going to sit in when the music stops.

It’s a fairly straightforward book without a lot of zip to it, a mundane plot, and nothing to offer for the Best Quotes section. Kathleen is a bit more feisty than some, and decides to keep working after she’s married (“You’re a liberated woman, Kathleen McMasters. If you want to work, I sure won’t try to stop you,” declares her betrothed), but not enough to make it a good book. It will pass the time without too much pain, but this Grand Canyon is not really worth the stop. 

Nurse at the Fair

By Dorothy Cole 

(pseud. Frances Y. McHugh), ©1971 

Cover illustration by Allan Kass 

Pretty, auburn-haired Merilee Maxwell was happy in her position as nurse and in her love for tall, red-haired Dr. Kendall Ryder to whom she was secretly engaged. But suddenly the serenity of her world was threatened when TV-Western star Tex Howard was admitted to the hospital after being injured in a mysterious accident. Tex was dangerously attractive, and the way he set about working his charm on Merilee was enough to turn any girl’s head. It wasn’t until she was caught in an explosive incident at the local fair that Merilee realized just how dangerous was her relationship with the handsome singing cowboy. She had followed her heart and it had led her into trouble. Had she gone too far to turn back ... ? 

GRADE: A- 

BEST QUOTES: 

“She had hurried so, she knew her perky nurse’s cap was at a rakish angle on her bright auburn curls and that her face could use some powder.” 

“They never dared to look at each other when they were on duty for fear they would show how they felt toward one another—for they were deeply in love, an ecstatic state they had been in for the past two months.” 

“Complimenting a pretty nurse helped a man to feel that he was still a man, even though he was flat on his back in a hospital.” 

“When you have a good-looking woman patient who isn’t married, I can’t sleep nights.” 

“A man feels differently about his horse from the way he does his wife.”

 

“Is this where you came last evening after you got me out of jail?” 

“The hot dog, cotton candy and popcorn booths all contributed their special smells to the atmosphere. Merilee hated to think what the pollution count must be and found herself holding her breath.” 

“Ever since the riot at the fair, Mrs. Rogers had been very cool toward her, even though everyone who had been arrested that night had been released the following day without being brought to trial.” 

REVIEW: 

I have not quite decided whether this book is flat-out brilliant or just so dumb that it appears so. It is, after all, a fine line between clever and stupid. One one hand, we have hilarious lines like, “Merilee felt her heart plummet down into the sensible shoes she’d put on to walk around the fair grounds.” On the other hand, in between jewels like these, we have plodding passages such as, “Merilee hurried along the corridor lined with rooms on either side, each with one, two, three and four patients in it. At the corner, she turned into another corridor, similar to the longer one she had just left. At the far end of that corridor, to the right, was the emergency room, close to the door where the ambulance stopped.” But even if this book is consistently moronic, does it really matter? If part of its fun is its stupidity, does the stupidity make the book less fun? 

Philosophical arguments aside, Merilee Maxwell is a nurse in a perky cap engaged to a manly would-be family doctor, Kendall Ryder, who also performs surgery on a regular basis. They have been dating for about six months, and he’d proposed on the first date because, as he told her at the time, he’d worked with her in the hospital for a few months and everyone thought well of her. He already has her picking out the furniture for their new house, which he is in the process of buying when the book opens. If people in the 1960s rushed into marriage with the alacrity of the couples in VNRNs, it’s no wonder everybody’s parents are divorced. 

But—and there’s always a big but—then Robert Blakely is wheeled into the ED. He is badly injured, and Merilee and Dr. Ken get right to work cleaning off his face and legs. Only when he is sparkling clean, apart from the broken nose and at least three bleeding gashes on his face, is he wheeled into x-ray to see if he might actually be dying of a ruptured spleen or something. First things first. Dr. Ken has recognized the man as the star of a TV western who goes by the name Tex Howard. Tex has a horse ranch nearby and claims he was injured riding a horse, but Dr. Ken doesn’t believe it. He knows that Tex has a wife “somewhere,” though Tex had told Merilee he had no family; this news made Merilee’s “heart feel unusually heavy.” There’s trouble brewing in Crystal Springs. 

She’s obsessed with Tex, and pesters Dr. Ken for details of his injuries when he comes over later that night for the usual VNRN fare of a martini, steak, baked potato, and tossed salad. She’s upset that Tex has been put in a room with Mr. Oldfield, who hollers all night, and thrilled that she will be his nurse tomorrow. But when she’s checking on him the next day, after she’s questioned poor Tex relentlessly about his wife, someone fires a gun through the window. Merilee, who is either very brave or very dim-witted, immediately runs to it to see who it is. Is the author’s overwhelming disregard for human nature intentional or ignorance? In any case, the shooter is not discovered, and the incident quickly fades in the rear-view mirror. 

After he gets out of the hospital, Tex invites Merilee to come to the eponymous fair to hear him perform, and despite Dr. Ken’s insistence that she stay away from Tex, off she goes. For his opening number, Tex sings a new composition called “Marilee, Where Are You?” and is about to play it again when “a shot rang out, and Tex crumpled to the floor of the stage.” Maybe someone just can’t bear to hear that song again. The audience takes this in stride and taps their feet as red-coated musicians, who immediately rush on stage to block the view of Tex, break into a lively tune. Then there’s an explosion, apparently set off by the hippies sitting in front of Merilee, and this is finally too much for the crowd, which immediately erupts into a riot and begins throwing punches en masse. 

Merilee, who is even slower out of the gate than the audience, watches for a while longer, until the announcer pleads with the crowd to leave quietly. This request has the opposite effect on Merilee, who freaks out and tries to push her way to the stage but is sucked into the riot, where she starts hitting people. The fuzz finally arrives and drags her off to the police station, where she is booked by friendly Seargent Rosetti, whom she had nursed through a recent bout of appendicitis. She’s freed on bail by long-suffering Dr. Ken, who is understandably chilly, though she doesn’t seem to understand and is hurt when he doesn’t want to chat about Tex on the way home or come in for a visit. Tex vanishes after the shooting, but Dr. Ken knows where he is and takes Merilee with him to change the bandages, as Tex has been shot in the “fleshy part” of the shoulder. Merilee suppresses an unprofessional gasp when she realizes that “if the bullet had gone a few inches lower, it would have penetrated his heart,” which is apparently located between his nipple and his armpit. 

At this point, a mystery breaks loose. There’s a photo of Tex’s wife in Tex’s bedroom that one of Tex’s horse trainers wants Merilee to get for him, but it’s gone missing. The book finally starts to wonder about who is trying to kill Tex, how he landed in the hospital, and what the story is with his wife. Through it all, Merilee maintains a complete inability to comprehend the effects of her actions. Ken’s long-lost sister shows up, and when Ken spends the evening with his sister instead of with Merilee, she wonders, “Was the pleasant pattern of her relationship with Ken going to be spoiled because of the sudden arrival of his sister?” Of course, it’s already been spoiled because of her intense infatuation with Tex, but apparently that hasn’t occurred to her. 

This sort of overwhelmingly blatant stupidity is rampant throughout the book. Initially I found it irritating, but it was so pervasive that I actually started to wonder whether it was intentional. Can the author really be unaware that her book’s situations so consistenly run contrary to common sense and human nature? The amusing quotes—e.g. “his lips were firm yet able to smile easily”—are as dopey as they are funny. The book is not so over the top, not so obviously campy, that I can be certain that it’s deliberate, and this did detract somewhat from my enjoyment of it. But this book is easily so dumb that it’s a good read, an absolutely worthwhile way to spend an afternoon.