A young woman refuses to become a pawn in her grandmother’s revenge scheme and forgoes a life of wealth and royalty to pursue a nursing career as America enters WWI and the Pandem-ic Flu of 1918 wreaks havoc in New York City.
Katherine "Kitty" Winthrop life is turned upside down when she discovers a family secret. Her mother had been banished from the family home and high society when she left the Duke of Hampshire at the altar, for Kitty's father. When a letter comes from her Grandmother, someone Kitty thought was dead, she is intrigued and wants to meet her. As dizzy as a schoolgirl she enters into the world of The Fifth Avenue Lindenmayers. I can imagine how the beautiful dresses, exquisite food and dazzling balls would be enough to turn any young woman's head, but always in the back of Kitty's mind is her dear mother's warning ‘all that glitters is not gold." It does not take too long for Kitty to realise that as glamorous as this life appears it is not what she wants. Kitty wants to do something worthwhile with her life and so she applies to join the nursing program at Bellevue Hospital. Little did she know what horrors lurked just around the corner.
Kitty is a character that really grows in this novel. At first, she acts quite spoilt and seems completely oblivious to her mother's distress and warnings about her Grandmother. She is swept away by the knowledge that her grandmother is not just wealthy but exceedingly so. Kitty's mother, Evangeline, has misgivings about seeing her mother again. But despite her misgivings she allows her daughter to be drawn into the world of wealth and fortune hunters, hoping against hope that Kitty would see through the charade and come back home willingly. I was slightly baffled as to why Evangeline even told Kitty about her mother, as she isn't the nicest of people and she is very much, at times, the antagonist in the tale, but as the story progresses I realised that having this character in the background really gave the book depth. But of course, the real antagonist in this tale is the flu epidemic. Ironically, when the epidemic hits Bellevue Hospital, Kitty finally realises who she really is and what she really wants.
This book reminded me greatly of Lyn Andrews, Angels of Mercy (the hospital scenes in particular) as there was a realism to the writing which meant the author gave a credible and realistic account of what it must have been like to be a nurse during this awful pandemic. Of course, as a reader, who has lived through Covid, one can appreciate the fear the nurses and doctors had, as well as the deliberating realisation that they did not really know how to treat the patients - they certainly did not have the medication nor the knowledge to do anything but give their patients aspirin, and morphine for the pain, while desperately trying to break the fevers. Unlike our recent brush with a pandemic, there seemed to be no effective treatments, certainly no vaccines, that could help and there was no worldwide cooperation in trying to stop the pandemic from spreading. This novel is very distressing at times, and the author has gone into detail about how awful it was, not only for the patients, many of whom died of secondary pneumonia but also the absolute exhaustion of the staff and the determination of the nurses to "devoting ourselves to the care of our patients" as it says in the Nightingale Pledge. They, along with the doctors, and everyone else in the hospital were truly heroic and the author has gone to great lengths to demonstrate this heroism.
I thought this book was wonderfully written and despite its rather grim and harrowing plot, it was a story that I enjoyed immensely. And one that I am more than happy to recommend.
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Renee Yancy
A voracious reader as a young girl, she now writes the kind of books she loves to read—stories filled with historical and archaeological detail interwoven with strong characters facing big conflicts. Her goal is to take you on a journey into the past so fascinating that you can’t put the story down.
When she isn’t writing, Renee can be found in the wilds of Kentucky with her husband and a rescue mutt named Ellie. She loves flea markets and collecting pottery and glass and most any-thing mid-century modern.
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What a fabulous review! I am so glad you enjoyed More Precious Than Gold. Thank you so much for hosting today's tour stop.
ReplyDeleteAll the best,
Mary Anne
The Coffee Pot Book Club
Thank you. I really did enjoy it.
DeleteThanks for the lovely review, Jamie.
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