The Nurse's Secret

 

Title: The Nurse's Secret

Author: Amanda Skenandore

Publication date: June 28, 2022 by Kensington Publishing Corporation

Genre: Historical Fiction

Rating: 5 🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷

Summary: Based on Florence Nightingale’s nursing principles, Bellevue is the first school of its kind in the country. Where once nurses were assumed to be ignorant and unskilled, Bellevue prizes discipline, intellect, and moral character, and only young women of good breeding need apply. At first, Una balks at her prim classmates and the doctors’ endless commands. Yet life on the streets has prepared her for the horrors of injury and disease found on the wards, and she slowly gains friendship and self-respect. 

 
Just as she finds her footing, Una’s suspicions about a patient’s death put her at risk of exposure, and will force her to choose between her instinct for self-preservation, and exposing her identity in order to save others.

My Thoughts: Within the pages of this book readers will find a story about the first nursing school of its kind in the United States. Skenandore applies meticulous research to describing the school's founding principles, the qualities that administrators looked for in candidates, and the accepted medical practices at the time. Nursing students were upheld to the strictest of standards both professionally and personally. Readers may be surprised though at how the older generation of doctors seemingly dismissed the overall value of disinfecting prior to and after surgery. 

Fictional character Una provides the context by which the story unveils itself. Una's life on the streets brought with it loneliness, hardship, and financial insecurity. While Una pretends to be a strong self-sufficient person, one single choice means that she is in the wrong place at the wrong time. A single newspaper advertisement provides Una with an idea that will not only safeguard her for the short-term but will ultimately change her life.

As she embraces her undercover life as a nursing student Una toys with the idea that she just might be capable of having a future. However, Una's past isn't ready to let her go and she finds herself in a quandary of how to prevent all of her hard work from crashing down around her. 

Skenandore shines in this latest novel. It is truly evident that Skenandore is passionate about the subject of nursing. Her characters jump off the page and sit right there next to you while you read. 

I received a copy of this book via NetGalley and the Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours.