The Love Gift

By Frances J.S. Eden (pseud. Frances Chimenti), ©1970 

So young to be widowed, pretty Andrea Courbet sought refuge and solace as the nurse to Peter Moffatt’s motherless children. But in that strained home, the shadow of Peter’s lost wife seemed always present, so that after a while even Andrea came to question her own identity. Thus when Dr. Matt Anderson entered the scene as family pediatrician and contested her hand against Peter’s romantic pleas, he offered her a new out. But was his love gift just a trap into exactly the sort of romantic dilemma she had hoped to avoid?

GRADE: B

BEST QUOTES:
“They come home from bossin’ and think they have t’keep on bossin’!” 

“Men should be marinated like meat: to make them tender!”

“The only way I can get you to hold hands is to have you take my pulse.”

REVIEW:
Nurse Andrea Courbet is a “baby nurse,” accompanying new mothers home for a few weeks or months until they settle into the routine. But this time, the mother of the new baby has died in childbirth, and Andrea’s coming home with father Peter Moffett to care for baby Donel as well as the three older children, Lanier, Geordie, and Joyce. She and the children take to each other immediately, they soon calling her “Courbie” and she becoming a major rock in the house, giving helpful advice to Peter about how to be a better father. She is worried about staying too long, though, because she doesn’t want everyone to become too emotionally involved, making her inevitable departure unbearable. 

The Moffett family pediatrician, Dr. Matt Anderson, has always been a frequent guest at the house, and now that Andrea is there he sees no reason to stop, though she is not impressed with his overly informal ways; he patronizes her during the baby’s first appointment with him and telling her, “Didey on, Nursie,” and asking her to come sit next to him. “I’m dideying the baby, Dockie,” she quips in response, and when he admires her hair, she says, “I came to have Donny examined, not me.” But as usual, the initially irritating doctor grows on the nurse, and soon they’re dating. The rub is that two years ago her husband—she was married at age 20—was killed in a car crash and the baby she was carrying was stillborn. So she’s just not ready to love again.

Except the children, whom she does whole-heartedly—and when Peter suggests that they get married because they “are fond of each other and we certainly are equally concerned for the children. It would settle all this anxiety about your having to leave. It would be the best thing for the children if you stayed on as my wife.” The incurable romantic! Andrea, not sure she can ever love again—which is the same way Peter feels after his wife’s death—agrees, and tries to find affection in their mostly platonic relationship.

Matt, of course, is heartbroken, and takes no pains to hide it, “his tone was always light and friendly with Peter and Andrea, but his eyes were bleak with unhappiness.” Then Andrea overhears Peter confirming to his sister that his wife “can never be replaced in my heart,” and she finally realizes that though the attraction of remaining with the children is enormous, she asks herself, “was she willing to settle for less to have all these things?” She tells Peter, “I want more—I need more than you can give me,” and declines his ring. But now Matt is devoting himself to Peter’s sister …

The worst thing about this book is the title, which makes it embarrassing when a man you don’t know well asks what you are reading. Nothing impressive, that’s for damn sure! And though the plot of this book is obvious and without bumps, I have to say that the family in this book is incredibly warm and appealing. I really understood the draw for Andrea to want to remain a part of a world that included these children and their grandmother—I wouldn’t mind it myself. This is the first book I have read by author Frances Eden, but if her other books are as gentle and sweet—even if they are not stellar—honestly, you could do a lot worse.

Dr. Jane’s Mission

Book 4 of 6

By Adeline McElfresh, ©1958

Cover illustration by Bob Abbett

 

Dr. Jane Langford went to Africa eager to join the man she loved and help him in his dedicated work among the natives. The tiny medical mission seemed secure and peaceful, but as the days passed, Jane learned that the strange and evil powers of the witch doctors had been turned against the hospital and all in it—powers that Jane began to suspect might be stronger than modern medical knowledge!

 

GRADE: B+

 

BEST QUOTES:

“Sidonie turned from the window to her patient, saw that the brown-lashed eyelids were just a fraction raised. A most unromantic fraction, but then, when is coming out of anesthesia romantic? Not even the class’s glamour girl could look sexy while full of cyclopropane.”

 

REVIEW:

When last we saw Dr. Jane, she had thrown off the shackles of a corrupt, smooth doctor and fled Indiana to be with her then-fiancé, Rev. Bill Latham, who had set off on a mission into the deepest heart of Africa. Now, as the book opens, the time has flown, and she and Bill have been married for seven blissful months. Jane has, of course, thrown herself into her work with complete abandon, though she’s not entirely won over by Africa. “She simply did not understand these people,” she is thinking to herself in the first chapter, upset that an obstetrics patient’s great-grandmother has attempted to administer a witch doctor’s potion after a difficult delivery. “Their social and spiritual mores, their bewitchery— She shook her head.”

 

That said, though, author Adeline McElfresh does a more than respectable job, particularly considering the times, of imbuing her African characters with dignity and personality, to a degree that I’ve not seen before in a VNRN. The African countryside is likewise presented with a painterly lushness that makes you feel that you are there—and more importantly that Jane is there, which again differs from other African VNRNs (see Jungle Nurse, Congo Nurse, and Bush Hospital) in which the heroine might be working in Cincinnati, for all the background we see.

 

Since this is supposed to be a romance novel and our heroine is married, we can all but see the bull’s eye on poor Bill’s back. Nonetheless, I was thrilled at the spectacular way he departed the scene; it was so fantastic that although poor Jane is all but prostrate with grief, it’s hard to refrain from giggling. But even with Jane back on the market, she is just not very good at love—and this has been a major flaw with the Doctor Jane series. In fact, the next gentleman she tumbles for, Tom Radcliff, basically kisses her out of the blue one day, and then then next thing we know, she’s thinking, “She did love him—of course she did!” and planning her trousseau.

 

But she’s about as lackluster about Tom (her second boyfriend of this name, in case you’re keeping track at home; see Dr. Jane, Interne) as we are—in fact, we’ve barely met the man—which again is not surprising for the Doctor Jane series. For with Jane, she’s either swooning like a 12-year-old at a Justin Bieber concert or approaching her beloved as she would a nail trim. Fortunately, romance is not the center of this book, and the vast majority of the time we are wandering around Africa with Jane, looking on as she cares for her patients with the unusual diseases or settings as we would expect to find in rural Africa of almost 60 years ago.

 

As the pages at the back of the book grown increasingly few and the book shows little intention of going anywhere, Jane suddenly, quite literally in mid-sentence, decides she’s through with Africa and can’t marry Tom. It’s just two pages for her to break his heart and book her passage on a boat down the river, and now we are free to pick up the fourth installment, appropriately titled Dr. Jane Comes Home. One of her patients, a reporter named Mike Riley, has preceded her to Halesville, so we shall not at all be surprised to find her taking up with him in that tome. But as these books pile up, I begin to lose heart that Jane will ever find a relationship that shows any of the intelligence and maturity that she displays in every other aspect except her love life. But overall, her competence, aplomb, and adventures make this book worth reading on its own.

Dr. Jane Comes Home

Book 5 of 6

By Adeline McElfresh, ©1959

 

Woman or doctor? When beautiful, raven-haired Dr. Jane Latham returned to her hometown after her brief, tragic marriage she planned to devote the rest of her life to her profession. She was Jane Latham, doctor, she told herself. She had ceased to be Jane Latham, woman. But when Dave Riley, internationally famous newspaperman, came into her life he had other ideas. He begged Jane to renounce her vows and join him in his own cosmopolitan, easy-going life of fun and travel. Lonely, confused, filled with the ardor of youth, Jane Latham’s effort to deny her woman’s needs now met its sternest test.

 

GRADE: B

 

REVIEW:

I’m not sure what book the person who wrote the back-cover blurb (above) read, but it wasn’t the one I did. Maybe all that is forthcoming in the next (and final) book of the series, Dr. Jane’s Choice. In Dr. Jane Comes Home, it seems to be two years since her husband Bill died—done in by a crocodile in Africa—and one since she returned home to Halesville, Indiana, to resume her general practice. Journalist Dave Riley, whom she met in Africa before she left, has come with her, ostensibly to write an article about her but staying on because he loves this small town that much. Oh, and Jane too, but he’s waiting to spill the beans on that little secret, out of respect for her mourning.

 

Basically this book follows Jane as she manages patients and disasters, sheds an occasional tear over poor dead Bill, and otherwise snoops on minor Halesville characters old and new. A cast of more than 50 named people populate this story, which can be a bit confusing, but otherwise it’s a gentle, meandering story. At the end of the book Dave is in a serious car accident, which of course brings Jane’s latent love for him to the fore with her usual sappy “Oh, Dave, Dave—” which she has sighed again and again for every man who has passed through her heart, much to my increasing exasperation. We’ll see what dilemmas this new relationship brings to her in the final book.

 

It’s a pleasant story, but it doesn’t have much to offer: No offerings for the Best Quotes section; no real growth in Jane’s character; no interesting dilemmas, career or personal, for her to work out. It’s just more of Jane. Which, again, is nice enough—she’s smart, competent, independent, and strong—but unless you’re already this deep into the series and feel compelled to see it through, this book doesn’t really have much to offer.

Dr. Jane’s Choice

Book 6 of 6

By Adeline McElfresh, ©1961

Cover illustration by John W. Scott

 

To hundreds of thousands of readers, Doctor Jane Langford (later briefly married to the Reverend Bill Latham) is the most beloved heroine in all medical romance literature. Sternly incorruptible, but often hesitant as she chooses what is right and what is desirable—a gifted surgeon and general practitioner, but a woman first and foremost—Doctor Jane strikes an answering chord in every reader’s heart, for Jane is more than a dedicated professional, she is a woman needing masculine strength and love. In this present novel, Jane is faced with the most important choice of her life—how she reaches that choice makes for one of Adeline McElfresh’s most engrossing novels.

 

GRADE: B+

 

BEST QUOTES:

“Don’t you talk her right arm off, Henry. She might need it in surgery in the morning.”

 

“She wanted to share his life, divide herself between being Mrs. Dave Riley and Dr. Jane Latham.”

 

REVIEW:
When we last left Dr. Jane Langford Latham, she was mourning her husband, Bill, killed in Africa by a crocodile, and I am not kidding. She thinks she’s falling for reporter Dave Riley, whom she first met in Africa and who followed her home to Halesville, Indiana, so as to write and wait for her to come around. But Jane isn’t sure, because she really, really loved Bill. So she takes a job at the nearby City Hospital—where she did her residency, by the way (see Dr. Jane, Interne)—as director of outpatient medicine.

 

In the course of her work, she discovers that a local woman who lives in the seedy part of town performs abortions, and goes on the warpath, declaring that she will “not stop until that woman is found, arrested, jailed.” Perhaps not coincidentally, a young pregnant woman from that same neighborhood is found drowned, and now the book turns into a mystery story. Whodunnit? Well, this local reporter, Charley Lewis, takes up the case, and the book is divided between following Jane and her patients, and Charley in his attempts to track down the girl’s killer.

 

I could go into more detail about the case and Jane’s success as a doctor despite her gender, but it’s not really important, and if you didn’t figure out what Jane’s Choice is going to be at the beginning of the last book, Dr.Jane Comes Home, then I won’t spoil it for you. The central question for the reviewer and the reader is, should you read these six books? The problem is that they are neither good enough to make the answer a clear yes, nor bad enough to make it an emphatic no. I always appreciate the quiet competence of the writing, which is occasionally humorous, and here we find a little inside joke: “If you two will excuse me, I’ve got Elizabeth Wesley’s new book. About doctors,” says the wife of Dr. Warren, her former attending in Dr. Jane, Interne. (Elizabeth Wesley is, of course, a pen name of Adeline McElfresh’s!)

 

The books are interesting, but they don’t have a lot of zest or camp to give them sparkle. I enjoyed Jane, but six books about her is a bit much, considering that the format or story of every book was essentially the same: All about Jane and her daily life, and then at the end, a big decision, usually more or less out of the blue, about some man, the “romance” being almost irrelevant to the rest of the book. The mystery that pervades the plot of this book is not a first for the Dr. Jane series—see Calling Dr. Jane—but it’s a bit of a distraction from what is supposed to be the central point, i.e. Jane. So if you don’t have a better book to reach for, go ahead and make the investment in Dr. Jane, but don’t expect her to leap off the page and dazzle you. She’s much too sedate for that.

Cinderella Nurse

By Jane Converse
(pseud. of Adele Kay Maritano), ©1967
Cover illustration by Allan Kass

“Give it up,” Glen Seabrook had said. “They’re using you, Rita. They’ll never change.” But she couldn’t abandon her family. And she lost Glenn. It all seemed so long ago. Before she became wife to an alcoholic, mother to a son—and widow. At twenty-four, life held no more surprises for Rita Ambler. Then came the accident that changed everything. That thrust Rita Ambler into the arms of Dr. Lester Wyman and out of reach of his new protégé, Dr. Glen Seabrook…the only man she had ever loved.

GRADE: C+

BEST QUOTES:
“You’ve been out of it so long, you think dates are sweet gooey things that grow on palm trees.”

“She wanted to scream out her anger at the pink and white and lavender woman who sat reading about submerged continents while her grandchild displayed alarming symptoms.”

“If one’s vibrations are in tune with the infinitude, there are no insurmountable obstacles.”

REVIEW:
The problem with an author like Jane Converse, who has written many, many VNRNs – this is the tenth book of hers I have reviewed – is that you just can’t always be at the top of your game, but you’re always held to your highest mark. Jane’s highest, which would be (and faithful readers know what I’m going to say) Surf Safari Nurse, is a good mile or two above Cinderella Nurse. This book is not her worst, but I can’t help feel especially disappointed, since I know what she is capable of.

At book’s open, we have something very unusual in our heroine – a widow! With a three-year-old son, Timmy! Rita had fallen in love with Glenn Seabrook, a medical student, who takes the typical attitude of male medical students in love: “Do you think I’m going to let you support me?” he asks her. “It might be a good arrangement for some lush who’s looking for a meal ticket. Not me.” “What difference did money make when two people were genuinely in love?” she asks him, as all the other nurses ask their medical student boyfriends, but he, like all the others, will have none of it. Dumb guys.

So when he leaves her for a neurosurgery residency in New York, she accepts a marriage proposal from the first loser who comes along, a lush looking for a meal ticket named Keith Ambler. Rita nags and scolds, Keith keeps drinking, and soon he abandons the family for warmer climes. Eventually Rita gets a letter from one of Keith’s drinking buddies that Keith has died of cirrhosis in Mexico.

As a single mom, it’s not just Timmy that Rita has to worry about. There’s her good-for-nothing kid sister, Nadine, who is ostensibly studying to be a nurse but seems more interested in shopping for new dresses on Rita’s paycheck than going to class. Rita’s mother, a widow herself, has gone in heavy for the psychic scene, and spends what little is left of Rita’s money on tarot readers and Ouija boards. Neither of these two ladies has acquired any experience with holding a mop, much less a job, so it falls to Rita to clean and cook when she gets home from work. It is her role as the uncomplaining nanny for all these people that earns her the nickname Cinderella, given to her by Glenn before they split up, and which adds additional heat to Glenn’s insistence that he won’t be a sponge, too.

And now the book starts. Glenn is back in town, a surgical resident working with the esteemed brain surgeon Dr. Lester Wyman. But after seeing that Rita is no less a dishrag than she ever was, he turns to feistier nurses to keep him company. Then little Timmy, while under the care of his grandmother, sneaks out of the house and takes quite a tumble, knocking himself unconscious and fracturing his skull. Dr. Wyman operates, foots the bill, and starts seeing Rita and talking marriage. She agrees – but then she finds out that he believes it to be “axiomatic that a surgeon couldn’t keep operating without a steady supply of alcohol to sustain his nerves.” And rumors are flying around the hospital that it wasn’t Dr. Wyman who operated on Timmy at all, but sober Glenn, when Dr. Wyman, shaking with the DTs, drops a scalpel, and then stoops to pick it up … though I’m not sure that readers unfamiliar with the OR will understand the horror and italics this statement is expressed in. The sterile field of the operation is absolutely inviolate, and deliberately touching something that isn’t sterile during a surgery, or apparently intending to use a dirty scalpel, is, shall we say, frowned upon.

During all this crises, the battle axe head nurse, herself a doomed spinster desperately in love with Dr. Wyman, wreaks her vengeance on Rita. But for the first time in her life, Rita stands up for herself. She tells off the head nurse, which is overheard by Glenn, who happens to be standing outside the head nurse’s office when all this goes down. She calls home to check on Timmy and finds her sister is being uncharacteristically sweet, saying that she’s really tired from all the studying she’s been doing all day and that Rita and Timmy should go out to dinner without her and just let her sleep. Rita, the dope, throws this example of Nadine’s generosity in Glenn’s face, and poor Glenn has to tell Rita that Nadine was kicked out of nursing school months ago.

Then Rita gets another call from Nadine’s boyfriend David, a wealthy med school student, telling her to hurry home. She and Glenn rush back to Rita’s house to find that Nadine has somehow gotten her hands on a drug that will induce abortion and is nearly dead from it, while David implores them not to take Nadine to the hospital because if he is implicated in the sorry mess, he’ll be kicked out of medical school. Though it’s quite clear that there’s no way Nadine could have gotten her hands on the medicine of her own accord, after Nadine recovers from her near-death experience, she refuses to name David and says that it was all her idea.

Rita finally sees herself as “the world’s champion patsy,” who has “always latched onto weaklings and chisellers on the pretext that they need me.” Rita thinks about insisting that her mother to find a way to support herself. “It was that simple. And that impossible.” But she thinks she can tell Nadine to get her ass off the couch. Arriving home, however, she finds that she has been spared the opportunity of de-lousing herself. Nadine has extorted money from David’s family in return for her silence and split for Hollywood, and Rita’s mother, having wheedled a cut for herself, is just finishing her own packing before she leaves to become a resident disciple at the Institute for Ultimate Wisdom in California. Free at last, Rita calls Glenn, who rushes right over …

The book isn’t badly written, and Rita’s mother is certainly enjoyable as she chews the furniture with lines like, “Honey, if I hadn’t been properly tuned when your poor daddy passed over into the next world, I shudder to think what would have happened to us.” But she’s a one-note wonder, and while we don’t see much of her, we’d probably tire quickly if we did. Jane earns points for plotting, but the writing is ordinary, and there’s not as much camp as I know she is capable of. It’s more than a little disappointing that we don’t get to see Rita stand up for herself in the end. We’ve seen her take a few small steps toward independence, but nothing significant, and I can’t help but wonder what’s going to happen when Mom and Nadine come crawling home from California.

Alternative cover