Arctic Nurse

By Elizabeth Gilzean, ©1963

Staff Nurse Sharon Lindsay’s crusading zeal lands her in trouble at St. Mary’s Hospital—and her sudden departure for a nursing post in the Arctic seems too much of a coincidence. Though she longs to prove her worth, Sharon is bewildered by conditions in a land of ice and snow, where the greatest heat is generated by her clashes with Doctor Ross Clarke—that unbearably rude man who insists on believing the worst of her!

GRADE: B-

BEST QUOTES:
“I think I’ll find myself a nice long illness so you can nurse me. How about it?” 

“A pretty face is something of a treat.”

REVIEW:
Nurse Sharon Lindsay, who has always fought against unfairness since she was a small child, has gotten herself into hot water by attending a rally in Trafalgar Square organized by the unions, who are pushing for better pay for nurses. “It wasn’t that she had taken up nursing for the money attached to it,  but when it came to getting less in her pay packet than the ward maid did—well, it hurt one’s pride.” She should also be fighting against a system that dictates what she is allowed to do in her allegedly free time, but that’s a cause for another day, because after a scolding from the Matron, Sharon is sentenced to a month of night duty. 

That same evening, she attends a lecture about life in the far north, and when she comes home, she has signed up for a year’s tour of duty in the Arctic—so much for standing up for unfairness. Soon she’s on the plane, landing on Baffin Island in the Canadian territory Nunavut. There she meets the grumpiest jerk in the entire Arctic Circle, Dr. Ross Clarke, who starts out being a complete dick and never relents until the final chapters. “You’re not only a nuisance but a menace! I suppose you’re hoping to overwhelm us northern types with your glamour. You’re wasting your time, I can tell you,” he says at their first meeting, and pretty much everything else he says to Sharon is more of the same.

When Sharon arrives at Cape Mercy, where she is to be working, it turns out that there is only a first aid station, where patients are few and far between, and those that they get usually only stop over briefly on their way to get real medical care further south. Ella Emerson, wife of the local missionary and mother to six living children—one died of polio—divulges that they wanted a nurse to deliver babies (Sharon has had no experience with that) and because “if you must really know, I got desperate for another woman to talk to.” So in her time in the Arctic Sharon does very little nursing, as the two Inuit (called Eskimo in the book) patients seem to largely care for themselves in the week or two they are in residence, with few visits from doctor or nurse.

Of course, social entanglements abound. The young daughter of the French-Canadian mine boss, Ariel, is furiously jealous of Sharon the minute she arrives, as she is apparently worried that the scathing Ross might be lured away by Sharon’s bumbling ignorance. But it’s Ariel’s widower father, Marcel, who puts the moves on, and the book takes the curious attitude that women should know how to fend off gropers. “Hasn’t anyone taught you how to keep a man like that at a distance?” Ella asks after rescuing Sharon from being “pawed.” Then Sharon’s ex-boyfriend, Dr. Alistair Gaskell, who was never actually told that he’s an ex, shows up, complicating Sharon’s life further.

One of the problems with this book is that Sharon falls in love with one of the most horrid characters I’ve met in a VNRN, a man who is incessantly rude up to the page where he kisses and proposes at the same time. When Sharon tells him, “We don’t really know one another yet,” he answers, “Not know one another yet? When I’ve had you in my thoughts ever since you arrived!” as if that is in any way relevant—and then he spends the next few weeks deliberately keeping away from her, which is apparently supposed to spur her affections or deepen their relationship in some way.

The other problem, one that should not be difficult to anticipate, is the racism toward the Inuit characters. One young man, Itsawik, is the product of “a charming Eskimo custom,” in which “if an Eskimo thinks very highly of a friend, whether he’s another Eskimo or a white man for that matter, he will lend him his wife,” and now Itsawik, being half white and half Inuit, “had failed to find a place in either of his worlds”—though it is confessed that the white population won’t accept him as an equal. I will, therefore, be making a donation to Tungasuvvingat Inuit, a nonprofit service provider for Inuit people in Ontario, in a small attempt to atone for the sins of this book, or at least mine in publicizing it.

The upside to this book is that as far as armchair travel goes, it is outstanding. Elizabeth Gilzean was born in Quebec and grew up in British Columbia, qualifying as a nurse at age 21 and working in Canada before moving to England and also working there as a nurse, while beginning to write romance novels in 1958 at age 45. I have to wonder if she herself didn’t spend some time working as a nurse in the Arctic Circle, the depictions of life and the world there are so detailed. It must be confessed that the six books of hers that I have read have earned her a C+ average, though she is capable of some excellent writing, as in Doctor Sara Comes Home and Next Patient, Doctor Anne. If this book is problematic in some ways, it also is not a complete loss, even if the cover absolutely is.

Hospital Corridors

By Mary Burchell
(pseud. Ida Cook), ©1955
Cover illustration by Paul Anna Soik 

Madeline felt that she was on the brink of a completely new life when she left England to do a year’s nursing in a great Montreal hospital. But she found that, after all, she would not be totally among strangers, for she had already met on board ship—though he was said to be so unapproachable—Dr. Lanyon, a distinguished member of the staff; and one of the patients would be the beautiful (but very difficult) Mrs. Sanders whom she had nursed before, with her good-looking and attentive son among the visitors. Still, everything else—except her familiar, well-loved work—would be excitingly new, and she might even have occasion to work for Dr. Lanyon …

GRADE: A+ 

BEST QUOTES:
“The not-really-ill patient is usually the one who gives all the trouble.” 

“I never supposed he thought of anything but cutting people up in the neatest and most miraculous way possible.”

“There is no logical answer to a jealous woman. If you do have trouble, don’t try to argue. Silence is safer—and simply maddening for the other person.”

“‘Did someone die?’ enquired Madame Loncini cheerfully, for, like many aggressively healthy people, she always liked to have an opportunity of pitying those who were less fortunate.”

“Happiness is a state of mind, and almost entirely independent of outside things. But, if it is to have any permanency and—and inner radiance, it must be founded on belief. In oneself, in others and in the ultimate rightness of things.”

“A man of such romantic temperament that he can make love among the white enamel fittings of a hospital kitchen is not to be lightly dismissed."

“Few people want advice, and almost none take it.”

“If one always thought about jealous mammas, think how much fun one would miss!”

“Nothing is worse for the patients’ morale than a red-eyed nurse.”

“I wouldn’t thank anyone who reduced me to terms of solid worthiness and nothing else.”

“All men are show-offs.”

REVIEW:
I feel a little lucky that I found this book, given that its title includes neither Nurse nor Doctor, which are nearly ubiquitous in VNRNs—because to have missed it would have been a great loss, as it is the best book I’ve read all year, and only the third to rate an A+ rating. But two other books written by Ida Cook (both under the pen name Mary Burchell) that I have reviewed (Surgeon of Distinction and The Strange Quest of Nurse Anne) have both earned A- grades, so clearly one would do well to hunt down everything she’s written just to be sure they don’t miss any gems.

The plot starts off with the tried-and-true trope of meeting the hero and being swept off her feet without knowing who he is. In this case, our heroine Madeline Gill is enlisted by her half-sister Clarissa to join a trip to Montreal from their home in England, where Clarissa will be travelling with her new husband to live, once they get married, as he is a surgeon there. Madeline dutifully finds a one-year stint for her final year of nursing school in a hospital there and has everything arranged to head over on the boat when Clarissa suddenly marries someone else. It’s too late to change her plans now, so Madeline goes through with it—and Clarissa lines up a nursing gig for Madeline, caring for the mother of her suave employer, successful novelist Morton Sanders.

Morton’s mum is not the easiest of dowagers, made worse by her paranoiac jealousy of any woman Morton looks at—and he looks at quite a few, including Madeline. But she keeps her head down until she is safely in Canada, only to learn that Mrs. Sanders is going to be a patient at her new hospital, and Morton declares he intends to see a lot more of Madeline. Her life is complicated by the fact that on the voyage over, she had run into Dr. Nat Lanyon and danced with him one evening—without, of course, learning his name. Imagine her surprise when she finds that he is the demanding but brilliant hospital surgeon—and even worse, the subject of a passionate crush by Florence Ardingley, the homely and imperious head of the ward she is to work on, the same ward where Mrs. Sanders is also ensconced, of course!

Morton keeps his promise to date Madeline, and she does find herself swooning a bit for the cad. He proves his worth by landing her in hot water on several occasions—but always Dr. Lanyon is available to scoop Madeline back to safety. It’s not hard to see why Morton is not the man for her, but it is author Ida Cook’s talent that she is able to make it clear why Madeline is attracted to him, and why he is attracted to her. Unfortunately their mutual interest does not escape Mrs. Sanders’ notice, and she sets up a trap to blacken Madeline’s reputation that to be honest I saw coming a mile away. Again, Dr. Lanyon to the rescue! But finally the dark secret that she is Clarissa’s sister comes to light—and the light in Dr. Lanyon’s eyes when he looks at Madeline is snuffed out. “Dr Lanyon, who in some curious way had been her friend and protector in no small way during her first weeks at the Dominion, had suddenly become a remote, almost ill-wishing stranger.”

But another calamity strikes requiring Nat’s intervention: When Morton bows out as her date to the hospital ball at the very last minute, he rescues Madeline again by offering to take her himself, when he has never attended the ball in the history of the world. More anxiety ensues when Clarissa is having troubles with her new husband and decides she wants Dr. Lanyon back, arriving in Montreal with the express purpose of reclaiming his love, and Madeline is required to act as chaperone as he shows Clarissa all over the hospital, the city, and half the province of Quebec—and the sting of being relegated to the level of “a not very useful car gadget” causes her to fling him out of her life forever and rush off to an important meeting with Morton, who “has something particular he wants to say to me before he goes” back to London.

The outcome is pretty clear from the outset, but the story in its unfolding is sweet and slow and believable. Madeline is strong, passionate about her work and good at it, and willing to stand up for herself and fight when necessary. Nat Lanyon has an actual personality, humorous and honest and feeling—not one of the straw heroes we are told to love but can see not one single reason to. The book has a number of charming supporting characters in Madeline’s fellow nursing students, not to mention Morton, and humor sparkles on almost every page. In short, this is a sweet, simple, but strong book—an Ida Cook staple, it seems—without serious flaws to detract. If this book does not head the list at the VNRN Awards in January 2024, I will be very impressed indeed with the writer who can surpass this treasure.

Nurse of the North Woods

By Ellen Randolph
(pseud. William Daniel Ross), ©1967

 

“I never knew how much you meant to me,” said Dr. Ralph Parton quietly. Nurse Nancy felt a glow of pleasure at his words, yet she tried not to let it show. She knew it wouldn’t take much to make Ralph openly declare his love for her. Then what would she do? Tell him the truth? She wasn’t sure she had the courage.

 

GRADE: B-

 

BEST QUOTES:

“You’re a pretty girl. Much too pretty for a nursing supervisor. I thought they were always old maids with thick glasses.”

 

REVIEW:

Nurse Nancy Rusk has been working in a small clinic about 40 miles from Fredericton, New Brunswick, for about a year. She had been working in Montreal, but “she had hurriedly decided to leave,” because “she had a secret that must be kept hidden and any relaxation on her part could mean she would have to flee from this new-found security and seek safety elsewhere.” She also plans to keep her secret from us, the readers, yet reminds us every five to ten pages of its existence, so by the end of the book you’re just so damned sick of her stupid secret that you can’t wait for her to spill the beans to her boyfriend and have it all tidily resolved in two paragraphs.

 

The man she has her eye on, Dr. Ralph Parton, likes her too, but she’s afraid to get involved with him because of her secret, of course, but also because of his sister Isobel. A stereotypical old maid at 42—right down to the gray tweed suit of mannish cut, flat-heeled brown walking shoes, and dour expression on the wrinkled and liver-spotted face—42 lying practically at death’s door—Isobel guards Ralph jealously, and Nancy is afraid that the ugly but intelligent woman will uncover and expose her infamous secret. Yet she doesn’t seem to resist all that much when Ralph offers to take her to dinner or on a drive alone, and certainly not when he kisses her in chapter three.

 

On the side, though, Nancy has to fend off the advances of the lumber mogul’s dissipated son John, who becomes increasingly predatory when she tells him she’s not interested in him. “I think we could have a lot of fun together if you’d only be reasonable,” he says when she turns him down for a date, and follows this up with a casual mention of the fact that he’d met her in Montreal. She continues to insist she is not interested, and he persists: “I’d think you would be,” he says, adding that he will see her later in the week, basically refusing to accept her refusal. After John drops by the house where she boards and tells her landlady that he’s written to Nancy’s “friend” in Montreal, Nancy finally decides to come clean to Ralph, because “it was possible she might need his protection.”

 

After she and Ralph power through a couple of serious medical emergencies, they’re relaxing in his office in the middle of the night when she finally tells all: There had been a scandal involving a car accident in which she was falsely convicted, but the real problem is that her then-boyfriend, the actual culprit who had gotten off by blaming her, has been pursuing her relentlessly ever since; he’d ended by making a scene at the Montreal hospital where she was working and shouting that he would kill her if she didn’t come back to him, forcing her to quit and go on the run. Now that she’s finally confessed, though, all her problems are resolved in one fell smooch. Given the public awareness of the issue of abuse in the current day, it’s hard for the reader to dispose of Nancy’s stalker so easily, and the relentless pounding we’ve taken about her secret becomes all the more irritating for its quick dismissal now that she has a new man in her life. If her problem were this easy to solve, why didn’t she just take care of it in the first chapter? I would rather have seen her just whip out a tiny silver derringer and put a bullet between the bastard’s eyes in a Florence Stonebraker-esque flourish, but it’s the very rare VNRN heroine who is guilty of even justifiable less-than-saintly behavior. Too bad, because it would make for much better reading, and this book is no exception.

Resort Nurse

By Rose Dana

(pseud. William E. Daniel Ross), ©1969

 

Nurse Carol Holly accepted her summer assignment to the Mic-Mac lodge with joy. It seemed full of promise. Her patient was wealthy Arthur Kulas, a stroke victim, a diabetic, but a fascinating art collector and lecturer still active in his career. And the Canadian resort offered the finest in entertainment and sports. Only Walter Pitt, the carefree young man who had pursued her from Boston, and Dr. Bill Shaw, the Mic-Mac’s resident physician, presented a problem; she liked both more than she cared to admit. Then Carol’s lightheartedness came to an abrupt end. Her patient was beaten, his room burglarized. By whom? By one or more of the too-fashionable guests at the lodge? But why? Harried by the mystery, Carol still dedicated herself to her nurse’s duties—until the criminals struck violently again, this time at her!

 

GRADE: C-

 

BEST QUOTES:

“Let’s admit, in spite of all the colleges, Boston is not the fun spot of the world for a single girl.”

 

“My last nurse had an unfortunate addiction to ginger ale. It was one of her more distressing aspects.”

 

“I hope you’re not given to making touching philosophic speeches like that. I couldn’t bear it.”

 

“Bart adores bullying me, and I find it so flattering.”

 

“Everybody acts idiotic at one time or another, but the people I have to deal with seem to make a career of it.”

 

“If Gabriel was blowing his horn and walls were tumbling all around us, you’d be running after me with a medicine bottle.”

 

“You are at your best in tennis clothes.”

 

“Don’t worry your pretty bullet-singed head.”

 

REVIEW:

This being a book by Dan Ross, you know it won’t be long before we meet a woman who will be referred to as “the dark girl” again and again. Enter Mimi Gamal, a Lebanese woman staying at the hotel in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, where stroke victim Arthur Kulas has gone to recuperate. “The name Gamal suggests she could be Turkish,” Arthur explains to Nurse Carol Holly, who he’s dragged along to tend to him on his trip. “But she’s too beautiful for a Turkish woman. More apt to be of mixed blood. They are always the loveliest women.”

 

In addition to being a racist, Arthur is a gloriously cranky Back Bay Bostonian (Beacon Street, to be precise), a former State Department envoy to Egypt, who puts on lectures about the Middle East illustrated with valuable exhibits from his personal art collection. He’s going to Canada to recover from the stroke that he’s showing no signs of; it’s his diabetes that gives him trouble, so Carol is there to administer insulin shots twice a day and urge him to eat on schedule. But that’s about the job entails, so this leaves her plenty of time to play tennis with various men at the resort.

 

One of her would-be boyfriends is Walter Pitt, a man she has encountered on the street outside Kulas’ house before they departed for Canada. He stops her with the story that he’s found a lost purse, but when she tells him it’s not hers, he chases her down the street for several blocks, insisting that he’s not “some sort of crazy person”—his persistence clearly proving otherwise—adding that her reluctance to engage in conversation with a stranger marks her as “unreasonable and Victorian,” saying, “Here we live in a swinging age, and you’re acting this way!” Naturally, when she meets him in Canada, she tells him, “I’m glad to see you again,” and takes him up on a game of tennis after he easily convinces her that his being there is a complete coincidence. Later she snubs him after he dances with Mimi Gamal, and her raging jealousy of Mimi keeps her sparring with him for the rest of the book, she all the long fervently insisting that she is not at all jealous! I hope for her sake that no one ever tries to sell this poor dope a bridge.

 

Her other beau is the local doctor, Bill Shaw. “You seem to attract young men,” Arthur notes drily. “I trust you’re not going to allow a biological urge to get you into trouble.” Given her gullibility, I don’t have much confidence in Carol’s ability to say no. Indeed, Bill soon convinces her to spend her afternoons at the understaffed hospital, since they need her help so much more than Arthur does. Curiously, though, for an overworked medico Bill has plenty of time for tennis with Carol. Bill doesn’t impress much as a doctor when he’s actually working, either; he treats a man for a mild heart attack, and decides, “But we won’t tell him that. No need to scare him.” Later, tending to an accident victim whose leg is clearly broken in several places and bleeding heavily, he chooses to first repair the facial lacerations before determining if the major arteries in the leg have been severed. If the kid bleeds out, at least he’ll look good in his coffin.

 

A number of people in the hotel profess a deep interest in Arthur’s artifacts, including Mimi, the hotel’s orchestra’s bass player and his wife, tourists Captain Bart and his wife Ellen Hooper, and sea Captain Tim Mullaney—who offers Holly a ride on the street which she accepts because she didn’t want “to give the impression she considered herself above riding in a truck.” It doesn’t take a genius to feel suspicious of their salivating enthusiasm for the valuables, but Carol is not the brightest bulb on the tree, so she drops what should be confidential information—particularly after an attempted burglary—at the slightest hint, including the fact that Arthur has brought a lot of his valuables with him on the trip. Even when she starts to have “the scary feeling that behind all this casual talk there was a pattern, an evil pattern,” she still tells them that the artifacts are kept in locked bags in the hotel suite but that Arthur will probably be taking them out to sort through them at some point. She’ll be lucky not to be charged as an accessory to the burglary that anyone but Carol can see coming a mile away.

 

Indeed, at the halfway point in the book, Arthur wakes up to find he has been robbed again, but only items of little value are taken. Carol wastes no time in publicizing this fact, along with the information that the cases just have light locks on them. It’s not surprising, then, that Arthur and Carol are soon held captive by four of the obvious suspects, who are after a treasure map they have assumed that Arthur not only owns—which he has already plausibly denied in private to Carol—but brought with him to Canada. The pair is rescued by Walter and Captain Tim, and the would-be crooks escape. Then two more invite Carol and Arthur on a cruise piloted by Captain Tim, with Walter crashing the party at the last minute. Miles out at sea, one of the party pulls a gun and insists that Arthur “hand over” the treasure map—now the assumption is not only that he brought the map on vacation but that he carries it with him everywhere he goes.

 

Suddenly the plot takes on the velocity of a tornado: In four paragraphs the criminals have been apprehended and investigated, and Arthur and Carol have checked out of the hotel. Now all that remains is for the treasure map to be found and Carol to decide who to marry. Four pages later that has been accomplished, too, and with the nauseating final sentence, we can be shut of this stupid book.

 

If there is one thing I cannot stand, it’s a stupid heroine. The only enjoyable feature of this book is the witticisms that Arthur tosses off with marvelous frequency, but unless you have the ability to enjoy a dumb book, it may not be enough to compensate for an insultingly flawed story line and a moronic main character.

Nurse with Wings

By Marguerite Mooers Marshall, ©1952

Anne was engaged to mary Dr. “Staff” Stafford, ambitious young New York society doctor who demanded that she give up the career she loved. Then, one storm-tossed night, her plane crashed in the Canadian wilderness, and the whole pattern of her life was swept out of her control. For as she sought to save her passengers from the burning wreckage, she found a stranger working skillfully by her side. He was Dr. Paul Roy, a young Canadian doctor. Back in New York in Staff’s possessive arms Anne Austin tried to forget the quiet, masterly young Canadian.

GRADE: B+

BEST QUOTES:
“Some women steal spoons. Others, if they get the chance, steal the fillings out of your teeth or the man who is your man.”

“I’ve known her for a long time, which may be the reason I should never consider her anything except a former associate and acquaintance, certainly not a friend.”

“Hadn’t someone said a woman’s husband is simply the oldest of her children?”

“Every rule has exceptions between friends.”

“Pity is a beautiful virtue but no basis for lifelong happinss in marriage. A woman wants to look up to her husband, not look after him.”

“A girl gets used to realizing the nicest men she meets are almost always married.”

REVIEW:
Nurse with Wings opens with a bit of a literal bang: Anne Austin, stewardess and registered nurse, is assisting her passengers off her plane—which has just crashed in a field in Quebec. She’s trying to get a baby boy untangled from a smashed seat and his dead mother, but “she was no Amazon,” and it’s only the assistance of passenger Dr. Paul Roy that frees the boy. Once out, she and Dr. Roy agree to drive the baby to his father’s house, several hours away. On the drive they impress each other with their patriotism, their love of flying, their interest in “mercy flights” bringing remote, ill people to hospitals. They soon discover they are both bilingual, French and English, and binational, with one American and one Canadian parent. And she trained at the Quebec City hospital where he now works as an eye, nose and throat surgeon. When they part on page 23, “Anne, with the queer feeling of losing not a new but an old friend, gently freed herself from the strong, sensitive surgeon’s fingers still holding hers.”

Back at home, she has a fiance, Dr. William Lee Stafford, waiting for her, and he manages to irk in the very sentence in which we first meet him when he kisses Anne “proprietorially,” and then it’s all downhill from there. He’s pissy about the years he was drafted into the army during World War II, which he feels were a waste—nevermind about the waste of Anne’s brother Doug, who was killed in the same war. He’s described as brusque, suspicious, petulant, bitter and sullen, and this is all on the first page we spend in his company. Then we learn that “Staff” is constantly nagging Anne to quit her job, though she loves it, is well-paid, and has to work half the hours she would in a hospital, which gives her time to care for her ailing mother. He is such a complete ass that it’s extremely hard to figure out why Anne puts up with him. She is clearly an intelligent woman—she went to Vassar, after all—so her stupidity on this score is quite baffling. Fortunately, Staff is one of those guys who won’t marry until he can support his wife, regardless of the fact that she makes a decent salary and is self-supporting, so she’s unable to ruin her life by chaining herself to this loser just yet.

Mrs. Austin, Anne’s mother, has terrible migraines induced by the summer heat in their New York city apartment, so Anne takes her on vacation to their New Hampshire home on Great Pond in Belltown—Mrs. Marshall was born and raised in Kingston, N.H., which hosts a pond of the same name—and she invites Staff to join them. Soon after his arrival, she takes him to Great Boar’s Head, a rocky promontory in the real-life Hampton (named “Campton” in this book), where the wind is so ferocious that it almost sweeps Anne off the rock into the water. At that moment, rather than grab for her, Staff pushes her off him so as to avoid being pulled in as well. She recovers her balance in time, but she can never quite look at him the same way after that. But soon he decamps, lured away by the promise by a comely young nurse of a job in a sanitorium outside of New York City catering to the ubiquitous wealthy neurotic women. She’s not happy about it, but decides it’s not her place to criticize his choice of career—perhaps forgetting that he has no qualms about doing the same to her.

In the meantime, cataracts are eroding Mrs. Austin’s eyesight. Anne calls Staff, and he gives her the names of two eye doctors in New York. But he makes no effort to help her by calling these doctors, who might be inclined to offer a discounted fee to family of another doctor. The consultations are a complete bust: One doctor refuses to see her out of hand, and the other demands more than $1,000 for his services. So her thoughts turn to the eye surgeon Dr. Roy. What a difference a Canadian makes. While her American fiance offers next to nothing when asked for help, a letter from Dr. Roy magically arrives the day after she thinks of writing to him, offering his services if she should ever be in need of them. After she writes back of her mother’s situation, he sends a telegram offering his surgical services, and soon she and Mrs. Austin are en route to Quebec City. And this is not an isolated incident; time and again, Dr. Roy offers up something Anne and her mother need even before they can ask for it.

Anne is under the impression that Dr. Roy is married—he speaks of two children at home that he has brought up—and at the same time, he tells her that he expects to be paid for the surgery he performed on Mrs. Austin, though he won’t name an amount. Well, we savvy VNRN aficionados completely understand what is going on here, even if the couple in question does not. Then there’s her engagement to Staff in the way as well—

This book has quite a few of the same ingredients we savored in the other book we’ve met by Ms. Marshall, Wilderness Nurse: New Hampshire, New York City, Quebec, bilingual main characters. I enjoyed them all the first time around (and not just because I’m from the same area of New Hampshire), and they’re almost as well done in this book. The picture she paints of a summer cottage in rural New Hampshire is bucolic and beautiful, something you feel you are experiencing with Anne and her mother. The heroine is spunky, independent and likeable, if slow to realize that her fiance is a total dolt. It’s a gentle, easy-flowing book, well-written and intelligent. Its only real flaw is that the plot never really offers up much excitement; this story is more of a pleasant walk along a pretty garden path than any wild ride. So while I did enjoy it, it’s not quite as stellar as Wilderness Nurse.

Arctic Nurse

By Rose Dana (pseud. William E. Daniel Ross), ©1966

Following in her missionary father’s footsteps, Nurse Grace gave up her comfortable city job to work in the small Arctic hospital. But she hadn’t counted on the young surgeon—and her hopeless love for him. Or on the violence that suddenly erupted in the tiny community. Or on the plane crash that brought a vital young stranger into her life. The Arctic winter was torn by violence—and she was shaken by a whirlwind in her heart.

GRADE: B+

BEST QUOTES:
“The past was as real to him as the scar on his cheek.”

“He had a strong, distinguished-looking face, even with half of it lacerated and bloodstained.”

“When I first landed here you all annoyed me. Since then I’ve changed. I’ve grown to hate you.”

“You’re a pleasant change from these little brown-skinned gals.”

REVIEW:
Not many vintage nurse romance novels have as much going on as Arctic Nurse. This book actually makes use of its setting, allowing us to experience (in an admittedly limited way) what the Arctic is like. We get a fair amount of racism toward the native Eskimos, but it’s not your standard, straightforward prejudice; the white population is there primarily to assist the natives, and the interface between cultures of different technological levels is a complicated question with no real answer. So this book actually gives you something to think about, a rarity in the VNRN. (The only other VNRN that attempts a discussion on colonialism I’ve seen is Congo Nurse.)

Grace Barrow is on her third year in the Arctic at the hospital on Kovik Island, somewhere in way northern Canada. She’s doing this because she feels like she is helping her father, who was killed when she was five years old doing similar work. Dr. Mark Windsor came to the Arctic after he lost his fiancée in a car accident: He’d been driving them home from a party at which he had been drinking, and now he never touches the stuff, “refusing to join them even in a festive glass of wine at Christmas and New Year’s, because he blamed his drinking for the accident.” This is the first time I’ve ever seen the risks of drunk driving mentioned in any VNRN, though the characters certainly do it on a regular basis. Of course, Mark, who “could have had a brilliant future in any great hospital had come to bury his talent in this sixty-bed Arctic outpost hospital.” This is a more popular theme, that the genius doctor would better serve humanity in a city hospital. Because, as everyone knows, rural and non-white populations only rate sub-par physicians. Though the idea that general practice doctors can’t possibly be brilliant, that the best minds must specialize, lives on today. But I shouldn’t get started on that little diatribe.

There is “quite a sizable native village” on the island, and at one point 50 natives gather to hear news of a comrade who is sick in the hospital. They are balanced, or maybe outweighed, by six white characters: two doctors, two shopkeepers, a Mountie, and Grace. We are repeatedly given the white characters’ fondness for their brown neighbors: “Grace had come to understand and love the amiable, broad-faced people in their colorful woolen and fur jackets.” The two races even intermingle on occasion, though with mostly limited success, such as in the case of the two male Eskimo hospital attendants: “Even though they were well trained and had been educated at the mission schools this place still spoke of magic to them.”

Then there’s Konala, an Eskimo woman who has trained as a nurse in Toronto, where she was jilted by a white doctor. She is a perfect means to introduce paternalistic attitudes about Eskimos, such as, “Konala was living proof that the natives could adapt themselves to the twentieth century.” When Konala says her half-brother seems “filled with a wicked spirit,” Dr. Mark chides, “We don’t believe in wicked spirits do we, Konala? I mean, after all we’re much too well educated for that.” Grace warns the Mountie, Bert, about his growing closeness to Konala, saying he should be careful not to break her heart. “The natives don’t always understand the subtleness of our relationships,” she tells him. Konala is different from the other natives, “but only to the degree she’s absorbed our culture. She’s really typical of her own race in every other way. And I find the Eskimos a wonderful people.”

This love of the Eskimos is more than a little syrupy, not only to the reader but also to Grace’s single white patient, a crusty reporter who crashes his plane near the hospital. He tells off the whole gang, shouting that he’s sick of hearing them “saying how wonderful it is that you’ve come up here and dedicated your lives to the poor Eskimos! … As I see it you’re all failures. Covering your failure by running away from civilization and pretending to be heroes.” To Grace, he adds, “You’re in the Arctic because you think it would please dear old Dad who was a missionary. Your neurosis is you’re trying to live your father’s life rather than discover one of your own. … What really makes me rage is your mealy-mouthed way of pretending it’s because you love the Eskimos.” It’s an excellent point.

The question of whether the white people are a help to the Eskimos is raised repeatedly through the book. Grace “felt that civilization had come as a mixed blessing to them and it was up to those who cared to try and balance the scale in the Eskimo’s favor. To date it didn’t look too hopeful.” For starters, they brought the scourge of alcohol. The trading post owner “carefully guarded against large amounts of liquor getting into native hands,” because of course the poor devils just have no self-control; if great white doctor Mark could forswear the stuff, how hard can it be?

Dr. Mark believes that “another bad thing we white, and so-called civilized people, have brought to your country” is greed, “the white man’s curse.” He and Grace have a conversation in which they decide that “it brings people closer together when they have to struggle against nature. That’s why these Eskimos are so unselfish. … We had the same generosity in America during the frontier days. It still exists to a degree in small towns and villages. But we’ve lost it completely in our cities … So even civilization has its failings.” I’m frankly puzzled by their idea that frontier America was all sweetness and light; from what I have read, it was pretty rough and ragged—was the gold rush really known for its unselfish behavior?

So it’s not surprising that Dr. Mark sometimes gets discouraged: “I wonder if we’re getting anywhere after all. Maybe we should abandon these people to their own devices.” But Grace reminds him, “Civilization always brings drawbacks with its benefits.” That’s about as heavy as the discussion gets, but at least it raises the point that technology, modern education, and fancy hospitals aren’t the answer to every problem.

They’re certainly not the answer to disease. Tuberculosis is a particular scourge in the Arctic, and the barbaric treatments the natives get include thoracoplasty, which means “all of the upper ribs were removed over the region of the afflicted lung. This caused a partial collapse of the underlying lung and so permitted prolonged rest.” (In Ski Resort Nurse, they just poked the patient in the lung with a scalpel under local anesthesia, collapsing the lung in a far less invasive procedure.) Then there’s the phrenic nerve crush, in which a small incision is made in the neck above the collar bone, and the phrenic nerve supplying the diaphragm is grasped and crushed, paralyzing the diaphragm on one side. “And as a result the paralyzed diaphragm would rise up in the chest and cause a limitation of the lung’s expansion. Such a limitation took the place of a thoracoplasty in giving the lung a prolonged rest and it had the advantage of not being so drastic for the patient.” I’m going to have to do some research to see what the evidence-based medicine has to say as to which is the superior of these treatments. The sad thing is that some TB patients at the Kovik Island Hospital were receiving streptomycin, which actually worked.

As far as the story goes, the descriptions of life in the Arctic are interesting: The houses are built on piles of rock, because if the foundation rested on the frozen ground, the earth would melt and sink, throwing the house into crazy contortions. The supply ship comes to the settlement in the spring, after the harbor has cleared of ice, and the “balmy” summers bring temperatures as high as 50º, while the winter storms drop to -50º. Sometimes the references are a bit gratuitous, such as the time Grace recalls, “The afternoon I took my first dogsled trip and we passed that immense polar bear on the ice I knew I wasn’t in Boston!”

The writing carries you easily along; it’s more the numerous controversial issues that bring you up short now and then. While it’s easy to see the racism, you can’t avoid the fact that the white folks mean well, and sometimes they even recognize their narrow point of view, such as when we are told that though Konala’s romance with the white doctor fell apart, “it was hardly fair to blame this failure in love on her racial background; it could have happened to any young nurse.” (They still think of her race first, but at least they try to knock it to the background.) And when Konala worries about whether she should wed Bert even though they are different races, Grace gives her some very sound advice: “If you marry Bert do it with the feeling that you’re bringing as much to him as he is to you.” Now if only they weren’t so parsimonious with commas!