Buy One or All Office Nurse by Adelaide Humphries. New York. Bantam. 1949. First Paperback Edition. Good. Edgewear. Wear at spine. Cover by Ed Paulsen. 150 pages. Lady Doctor by Adelaide Humphries. New York. Popular Library. 1963. First Paperback Edition. Good. Edgewear. Pages yellowing. 128 pages. Nurse Laurie's Cruise by Adelaide Humphries. New York Airmont Book. 1963. First Paperback Edition. Good. Edgewear. Previous owner's name, sticker on back cover. 126 pages. Orchids for the Nurse by Adelaide Humphries New York. Airmont Book. 1962. Reprint. Paperback. Good. Edgewear. Pages yellowing. 126 pages.
By Rosie M. Banks (pseud. Alan Jackson), ©1959 Cover illustration by Bob Abbett Nurse Althea Jones, young and lovely, worshiped her boss, Dr. Mike. He was a brilliant surgeon. Handsome—and married. So Althea did not admit—even to herself—that she loved him. But the day came that shattered her life. Dr. Mike leaned down and kissed his pretty nurse. Not a friendly kiss but one filled with unleashed passion. Then he recovered his control and the moment was over—for him. But for her, that was a moment of beginning. How could she forget, ever, the pressure of his lips on hers? How could she ever marry anyone else, knowing that her heart belonged to him? She knew it was hopeless. But there had to be a way, somehow, somewhere, someday! GRADE: B- BEST QUOTES: “I promise you can do more for your hospital seated opposite me at our dinner table than assisting at three thousand operating tables.” “Althea, dear, you are too beautiful a woman to hide your face behind a surgical mask.” “You’re always talking and acting like some damned angel of mercy. Why don’t you get yourself some real mercy and turn into a woman?” “Work is the way to get over these things, work and concentration on a job. Not sitting on your bucolic fanny and staring at your bucolic umbilicus, and thinking about what’s happened and getting sorry for yourself.” “There is nothing more egocentric than a patient.” “Very often we are most blind to the persons most close to us.” REVIEW: Althea Jones is a surgical nurse, and when she takes off her mask after an operation, all the doctors stop to look, because she has “one of the most beautiful faces any of them had ever seen.” Much is made of her impossible beauty throughout the book. This is slightly unusual among VNRN heroines: Although they are almost all pretty, few are outstandingly gorgeous. I wonder if her exceptional appearance is in any way due to the fact that the author of this book is actually a man. Althea has a beau, of course, Joseph de P. Saylor III, a very talented and wealthy artist. He’s desperately mad to marry her, it seems chiefly because she is not really interested in marrying him, unlike all the other women, who throw themselves at him. She doesn’t love him, for starters, and he would insist she quit her job. So she tells him, right there on page 10, that she can’t marry him. But we are already wise to Althea: Just three pages earlier, Dr. Hal Meikeljohn—known as Dr. Mike—has snapped at Althea for not paying attention for the last minute of his surgery, and one nurse remarks to another, “They’re in love and they haven’t the faintest idea that it’s going on. Yet.” The big obstacle would be Marcia Meikeljohn, Hal’s wife. Marcia is a wealthy socialite who set out to marry Hal because he would be an asset to the hospital that her family has built. “But fundamentally she was incapable of love,” we are told, and it isn’t 18 months after Hal is snared by Marcia’s carefully timed kisses that he realizes that the marriage is a mistake, telling her, “An emergency to you is nothing more than something that makes me late for dinner. It is an irritation to you, almost an insult.” If only he’d married a nurse, who would be more understanding of a surgeon’s lifestyle … So now we have 100 pages to get through until Althea and Hal get together, and unfortunately, there’s not much to report about them. There’s a nurse whose sister, abandoned with an infant son by her traveling salesman husband, is trying to find money so they can raise the baby themselves (they’ve allowed a childless couple to have him in the interim). Althea’s other beau, Joe refuses to take no for an answer and chases Althea some more. Marcia realizes that Hal is in love with Althea and invites Althea to parties so she can play mind games. And in the end—you’ll never see this coming—Marcia is neatly disposed of. Althea and Hal are united in a single swift and unsatisfying final page, and not even a slightly campy exchange (“Oh, Doctor, this is conduct most unbecoming a nurse.” “But becoming to a woman.”) can save it. I have enjoyed two other novels by Rosie M. Banks: Settlement Nurse and Navy Nurse. And I’ve said it before, but here it is again: I particularly enjoy that the author chose for his pen name the same name as a lurid romance novelist from P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves stories. But Surgical Nurse is a disappointment. It has none of the camp of its sisters and no real enthusiasm for its storyline. Lengthy side stories about peripheral characters—Marcia’s pursuit of Hal, and a Spanish immigrant named Pasquale Jimenez whose untimely demise brings together two other peripheral characters—are more intriguing than the main story itself. The writing is smart and sophisticated, with references to Grant Wood, Nantucket, and 1953 Chateau Margeaux. But this actually makes the book that much more of a disappointment, because it’s evident on every page that the author could have written a much better book if he’d put more thought into the plot. So while I can’t completely dismiss Surgical Nurse, it’s not much of a joy, either.
Title: Student Nurse Author: Renee Shann Publisher: Dell #D260 Published: June 1961, ©1941 Illustrator: Victor Kalin Review available He is credited on the back cover. When lovely young Shirley Davidson ran away from her tyrannical father, fate (and the kindness of Matron Anna Marsden) fulfilled her lifelong dream—she became a student nurse. Then, as if she weren’t already bursting with happiness, she fell in love. But there were complications (and heartbreak) ahead. For handsome Dr. Gerald Trent, though irresistibly drawn to Shirley, was already engage to Anna Marsden. And Shirley would rather die than do anything to hurt the woman she worshiped, who had given her her first chance for a decent life.
Title: Factory Nurse Author: Hilary Neal Publisher: Harlequin (812) Published: 1973, ©1961 Illustrator: Paul Anna Soik His signature is in the lower left-hand corner. Brigid didn’t really want to give up hospital nursing to work in a factory, but her father had a particular reason for wishing her to. Robert Bairnsdale, on the other hand, hoped she would give up nursing altogether and marry him. Only Morley Scott was completely undemanding, wanting only the right to love her. If only Brigid would make up her mind how she felt about him! Perhaps, she felt, getting away from the hospital would help her to sort things out. But when she met Guy Wisden, the immensely attractive factory manager, it looked as if she had only exchanged one set of complications for another.
Title: Nurse Conner Comes Home Author: Arlene Hale Publisher: Ace Copyright: 1964 Illustrator: Lou Marchetti Review available His signature runs up the left margin of the door frame. Sue Conner never thought of competing with her sister Marsha. Marsha was the family beauty who led an exciting life, never lacking for a date. Sue was the serious and sensible type—dedicated to her demanding job as a nurse and resigned to the fact that no man would look at her twice while her sister was around. Yet everything changed when handsome David Wakefield came into their lives. For then Sue found herself in the role of her sister’s rival for a man destined to break one of their hearts.
Title: Nurse into Woman Author: Marguerite Mooers Marshall Publisher: Bantam (#464) Published: December 1948 Illustrator: Dave Attie Review available He is credited inside the book. “I’m a nurse, not a woman,” said Kristine. “I’ve resolved never to marry—never to have a child. I’m a good nurse—I’ll stay one. I’m not going to be a woman.” But to Captain Jim Dudley, whose life she had saved, and woman to be loved. Which would win—the nurse or the woman?
By Thomas Stone (pseud. Florence Stonebraker), ©1944 Doctor Anthony Collier voluntarily renounced catering to a stylish clientele, and set himself up as a general neighborhood practitioner. His aim was service rather than success. He didn’t realize that certain of his patients would demand service of a kind he hadn’t anticipated, and that idle women and neurotic men didn’t frequent only specialists’ streamlined offices. A frivolous blonde office assistant with a “fixation” on the doctor; a boy afraid of the draft; and a jealous fiancée were a few of the cases Doctor Tony was called upon to treat. And in the course of his treatments, he sometimes found himself personally as well as professionally involved in his patients’ affairs. GRADE: A BEST QUOTES: “I suppose I can stand it just once—being admired for my sterling qualities of mind and character. Just so it doesn’t get to be a habit with men.” “Men think up much snappier stories on a full stomach.” “I suspect the psychiatrists are all wet when they say sex is at the bottom of the happy marriages, or the unhappy ones. Why does it never occur to them that coffee is at the root of the problem? Imagine a man ever leaving a woman who could make coffee like this.” “When Betsy Jane dreamed of High Romance, she didn’t mess with it. She really went to town.” “Now look—what were we talking about when my fiancée blew in like a wild tornado, and called you a slut, and the two of you mopped up the floor with each other?” “Rita looked like a gal on sinful pursuits bent, and as if having made up her mind to it, she’d sin or know the reason why.” “If he cut out dames, think of the time he’d have for so many of the things he had always wanted to do, but had never seemed to get around to. Reading up in the classics, for instance, in his spare time.” REVIEW: I wish I could tell you that this is the best nurse novel I have read all year, or possibly ever. Doctor by Day is, without question, an utterly fantastic book—but unfortunately there is not a nurse or female doctor in sight; this book is about a male doctor and his various girlfriends, so it does not count as a nurse novel. But it’s just too good to let go without shouting from the rooftops that everyone reading this should instantly hop over to Abebooks and procure a copy. I’ll wait. Now that you’re back, let me explain: Dr. Anthony Collier is engaged to sultry tease Rita Shreve, a wealthy and controlling woman who wants to transform Dr. Tony from a general practitioner into a highly paid, glamorous consultant. He loves Rita and yearns for her badly, but is increasingly displeased with the pressure she is putting on him. On one epically bad evening, Tony’s secretary puts the moves on him, and he brushes her off. He then takes a call from a piano playing milquetoast with an overbearing mother and a terrible fear of his upcoming draft into World War II. Tony, fed up with the weeping youth, suggests that he lose his virginity, which will make a man out of him. Rather than follow this interesting advice, the mopey lad takes himself home and attempts to commit suicide by shooting himself in the shoulder, bringing the wrath of the boy’s mother down upon Tony. In an attempt to do right, Tony goes to the boy’s house, where he finds his cast-aside secretary feeding false information to the distraught mother and the boy suffering from a minor flesh wound. He also finds neighborhood gal Kathie Downing, who owns a tea room and is on hand to lend support. She steers Tony away from the situation before it escalates further and brings her back to her house to help buck him up. Once there, though, he realizes that she is a beautiful, vibrant, kind, intelligent woman who understands him much more than Rita, and he convinces her to allow him to spend the night with her. Yes, like that—a unique plot twist pretty much none of our VNRN heroines would indulge in. Back at the home of the suicidal boy, the secretary is finally setting off for home herself, thinking about what more she can do to destroy Tony. A clever lass, she decides to drop by Kathie’s home just to see what’s what, lingers before the kitchen window for a while, and then goes home with a satisfied grin on her face. Early the next morning, she drops a dime to the home of Rita Shreve, suggesting that her young man would be so glad to see her, if she could dash over to this little cottage right away. Well, needless to say, when Rita arrives, fireworks ensue. This does put a bit of a damper on the love blooming in Tony’s heart, and crushes Kathie, though she is a tough, realistic lass and wastes no self-pity and few tears on the situation after Tony bodily drags Rita from the house. It’s just a matter of time before everything is sorted out between these three, but in fact it really doesn’t matter how all this is accomplished. Because in Doctor by Day, author Florence Stonebraker has absolutely outdone herself. She should have won a Pulitzer Prize, or some similar major literary award, for insanely brilliant writing in the genre of hard-boiled fiction. Every page has a beautiful turn of phrase or a fabulous description: “He thought of Rita’s apartment in that exclusive and frightfully expensive building on The Strip. It had been done by an interior decorator with a French name, mincing ways, and a national reputation for achieving strikingly unique effects. And it looked it. It was so unique, and so definitely Hollywoodish, and so expensive looking, that you felt like making a low bow when you went into it, and apologizing humbly for daring to sit on the delicate, salmon-colored upholstery.” At the same time, the writing also very evocatively describes the growing love between Kathie and Tony without inspiring nausea and the dry heaves, itself an extremely remarkable feat (says the intrepid guide who has read more than 250 of these books): “She had a way of looking at you, and walking right into your life as she did it. There was a warmth about her, and a sweetness. You wanted to tell her things.” The writing evokes a slightly softer Dashiell Hammett: sharp, witty, and intelligent—and at the same time charming, beautiful, and sweet. This book is an undiscovered classic, and (alongside her other outstanding work, City Doctor) permanently solidifies Florence Stonebraker’s reputation with me as the pantheon of pulp romance novelists, nurse themed or not.
1954.
By Jeanne Judson, ©1959 The imperious ring of the telephone shattered the silence of the sleeping ward. It was a message for young, red-headed Nurse Dora Tracy. “Report to Emergency at once. Dr. Terry has asked for you.” The victims of a terrible explosion were being wheeled in when Dora took her place beside the young surgeon. Silently, with practiced skill, she responded to his brusque commands. As always, Dora thrilled as she worked beside this stern servant of medicine. He had taught her the deeper meaning of their chosen profession. But Nurse Dora sometimes wondered if their shared dedication could substitute for love, the love shared between a man and a woman. GRADE: A BEST QUOTES: “Sanitary engineers, good old plumbers, have done more for the health of the world than all the doctors since Aesculapius.” “All the interesting men died three or four hundred years ago.” “He spoke in the cheerful way that doctors always do about other people’s pain.” “Men are a necessary convenience.” “She walks as if she had joints all the way down.” “All men look like thugs when they aren’t shaved.” “Little girls were wriggling their thin hips, twirling bright-colored hoops, a passing phase that had hit the juvenile world like a pestilence, or like those epidemics of involuntary dancing that had manifested themselves in the Middle Ages.” “Don’t think that I’m a philanthropist. I’m not. But it’s the fashionable way to avoid income tax right now. First, you make a lot of money and then you start giving it away—not to the people you took it from, naturally.” “Don’t modern doctors trace every ill, physical and mental, to the pernicious influence of parents and guardians who do not understand their children half as well as welfare workers and psychiatrists?” “No man will admit that it is mere beauty in a woman that attracts him. He always tries to pretend that he is fascinated by her intellect or her character.” “ ‘She lives in the Bronx.’ She might as well let him know the worst about Mercedes at once. There were lots of men who would rather drive to Boston than to the Bronx.” REVIEW: Nurse Dora Tracy has left her home in Hartford and moved to New York to take a job at Manhattan Memorial, on the men’s surgical floor. Dora is quietly efficient, which is noticed by Dr. Terry, who himself is a machine: “The other doctors would usually make one or two casual remarks just to show that they were human beings as well as doctors, but Doctor Terry never wasted a word.” He calls Dora down to assist in the Emergency Department one night when a ship in the nearby harbor explodes and two dozen burned sailors are brought in—and one young man who is clearly not a sailor. He is well-dressed and handsome, carrying no identification and huge wads of cash, and, wouldn’t you know it, in a coma. She is assigned to “special” him, or care for only him on her eight-hour shift, and she comes to think more about him than she should about a patient, though she knows nothing about him: “When he did come out of his concussion, he would probably turn out to be a ‘dese and dose’ character.” He doesn’t; it turns out he is Chris Thorsen, the son of the owner of the shipping line, a very wealthy young man. Dr. Terry, a neurosurgeon by trade, wants to perform a new operation he’s perfecting, but Chris declines. Instead, Chris’s father offers up an old sailor, knocked on the head and never the same since, and if Dr. Terry cures him, Captain Thorsen will fund a new hospital for Dr. Terry. The operation is successful, of course, and Dr. Terry asks Dora to come work for him in the new hospital when it is up and running. Dr. Terry’s interest, however mild it may be, is noticed by Nurse Vera Maynard, who is desperately in love with the doctor, and in petty revenge she takes it upon herself to spread malicious gossip about Dora. One of the lies she propagates is to tell Chris that Dora is in love with Dr. Terry. Chris asks Dora out, but she can’t go—Dr. Terry has asked her to go with him to the Founder’s Day Dance, because, as he explained when he asked her, “One must show up there for a while, at least, and it’s better to go with someone. I can’t stay long, but if you go with me, it will be a sort of—protection.” What a romantic fool. Chris tells Dora he’s heard she’s in love with Dr. Terry, but before she can explain, the Captain plows in and starts insulting everyone by handing out crisp $100 bills, and Dora runs off. Chris is discharged, and Dora tries to get on with her life. Thankfully, Dr. Terry has ordered Dora to take advanced coursework at Columbia three nights a week, so that keeps her mind off Chris. She doesn’t have many friends, not really even her roommate. Liza is a wealthy young woman with a PhD in Greek and Latin that she doesn’t want anyone to know about who endlessly dates a stream of eligible young men, interested in none of them. “I don’t want to marry anyone,” she tells Dora. “It isn’t George that I dislike. I wish I did. It’s matrimony. The word has an ominous sound. It means the giving up of all freedom. It can’t be helped. It’s just the way things are. If you marry, you have to live in the mental, social, and financial milieu of your husband. You’re classified. So far, I’ve been able to live without belonging to any class—as free as one can be in this world.” And so the book floats gently along, through Dora’s daily struggles in the hospital and at home, until it drifts into its easily foretold conclusion. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few surprises along the way—what happens to Liza, for example, and the Founder’s Day Dance, when Dora looks so ravishing in a silver gown and “properly absurd” $23 slippers, doesn’t turn out at all like the big dances in VNRNs usually do, but much more honestly. I especially liked the treatment of Dr. Terry, who begins the book as an awesome hero on a pedestal and is gradually deflated, chapter by chapter, until we see him as the inconsiderate, selfish pedant that he actually is. I actually wonder if Ms. Judson hasn’t deliberately subverted the usual custom of awarding the VNRN heroine to the deified doctor. The writing is sophisticated, with references to Joyce Kilmer and his poem “Trees,” and the passage in which Dr. Terry offers Dora a job is “almost like a proposal out of Jane Austen,” when he begins, “This may be a little premature—you probably haven’t noticed that I’m interested in you and of course it will have to be some time in the future—” Dora is well-educated enough to spot the similarity: “For a moment she had been preparing a speech in which to tell him that she ‘esteemed’ him but could not love him.” The book is also witty and humorous, with a decent chuckle on practically every other page; my list of Best Quotes, above, is edited down to about half its original length, yet still longer than any other book I’ve reviewed. In short, City Nurse is an elegant and intelligent book, gentle in the tradition of earlier VNRNs (e.g. “K,” District Nurse, Graduate Nurse), and not to be missed. Shop this title, now reprinted by Nurse Novels Publishing!
By Claire Vincent (pseud. of Miriam Lynch), ©1963 Nurse Pat Estabrook’s destiny was changed the night two strange and mysterious men were brought into the Emergency Room of Hanson General Hospital. Handsome Detective Timothy Wall was called in to investigate the man who gave his name as “John Doe” in the hopes that he would be the important clue in solving a four-year-old robbery … Rod Wuerth, the disciplined chief resident of the Psychiatric Ward, became involved with the other man, a hit-and-run victim who seemed to be suffering from delusions … And, when the case was solved, Pat knew there was no mystery as to the man she really loved … GRADE: B REVIEW: More of a mystery story than a romance, Emergency Room Nurse has a little more pull than most nurse romance novels. Pat Estabrook is—you guessed it—an emergency room nurse, with a huge crush on the “black Irish, hard-bitten” detective, whose name is, incongruously, Timmy. (She herself is called Claire a couple of times, apparently the character’s original name in the days before Find and Replace.) When Timmy gets a call from Pat that an Italian man who refuses to give his name has been stabbed in the gut, he is immediately convinced that the man is connected to the robbery of the Baylor Armored Car garage four years ago. “John Doe” is carrying no ID, an expensive linen hanky, and a huge wad of bank notes, and he talk-a like thees: “You let-a me out of here! Don’t want no cops. I’m gettin’ outa here now!” But with Pat on duty he has no chance of that, and after she gives him 100 mg of Demerol and some scopolamine, he is wheeled off to surgery. With that crisis resolved, Pat turns her attention to another patient, who is the victim of a hit and run. This patient is slightly demented and also cagey about his identity, and “Mr. Thompson” keeps claiming that “my life is in danger, that’s how it is.” But he reminds Pat of her father, so she goes to visit him in the psych ward the next day and crosses paths with Dr. Rod Wuerth, the chief resident there. Pat doesn’t care for psychiatry, or for Dr. Wuerth. “He was never seen in Chung Lee’s or the Korner Koffee Shop … Pat dismissed him from her mind with the tag ‘odd ball.’ ” Nonetheless, begins to warm to him and accepts a date. Meanwhile, Pat’s protégée, Bonnie, is a “fuzzy-brained, reckless” student nurse who hankers for pediatric intern Frank Cheney. Frank has a lot of money but is close-mouthed and secretive, and when Pat catches him slipping in to see the Italian patient, she wonders, “Why the furtiveness, his obvious disinclination to be seen?” Dr. Cheney and Mr. Doe both have a lot of money, Pat realizes, so she assumes that the good doctor is also involved in the holdup, but she keeps her silence out of her unswerving and unfathomable devotion to the slacker Bonnie. As she leaves work, Pat is struck on the head and admitted to the hospital (remember, it’s 1963). Timmy grills her: “What is it that would make you dangerous to whoever gave you that bash on the head?” All she can think of is that she has seen Dr. Cheney visiting the Italian patient, but she still holds her tongue. Then Bonnie, who has blown off her shift, borrows Pat’s coat. After she’s gone, Pat suddenly realizes that whoever attacked her might now attack Bonnie, thinking she is Pat. So she cabs it down to the seedy waterfront to look for Bonnie and arbitrarily wanders into the Rosetta Manuccini Settlement House, a new development built to help the poor slobs. Chatting up the woman at the front desk, Pat learns that Mr. Manuccini is a big gangster called Louie the Man, and he’s supposed to live a few blocks away, but no one has ever seen him, isn’t that strange? And Rosetta’s portrait seems somehow familiar to Pat … Manuccini? Cheney? Hmmm. But this incredibly contrived revelation only wraps up half the mysteries. So on her way home, Pat is kidnapped by a “thick-necked” guy and his chum and forced to get them into the hospital to see Mr. Thompson, who actually is involved in the bank robbery. On the psych floor the trio runs into Rod, and Pat “stood there sick with terror because a gun had been pointed at him and she feared his life was in danger.” Not to worry, though, it all turns out well enough: They are rescued by the mental patients, Frank’s dad is proved innocent of all wrongdoing, Pat turns down a date with Timmy, and Frank and Bonnie tear off for a hasty wedding, which puts the kibosh on Bonnie’s career as an assassin cum nurse and thus saves many lives. Ron drives Pat home. Slow curtain, the end. It’s a lively enough book, a decent read. The writing is good, even if a few of the plot devices are more than a little forced, and the final paragraphs are satisfying. When you put this book down, you feel you have not wasted your time, not an overly common feeling with this genre. If you have a couple of hours on a breezy porch this summer, this is a worthwhile companion.
Title: Nurse Willow's Ward Author: Jan Tempest Publisher: Harlequin #963 Published: November 1965 Illustrator: JH The illustrator's initials are in the lower left-hand corner. When two devoted sisters love the same man, there is bound to be unhappiness; especially in a case like this, where young Dr. Fyncham couldn't make up his mind between Willow, the competent nurse, and Rose, the sweet, shy home girl. Probably it was just as well for all concerned that a more forceful character took a hand in the game.
Title: Nurse Craig Author: Isabel Cabot Publisher: Ace (#D-532) Published: ©1957 Illustrator: Martin Koenig His signature is in the lower right-hand corner, and the original art is attributed to him. Toni Craig, student nurse at Riveredge Hospital, wanted no part of Chad Barlow. He had the reputation of being a wolf; besides, her ideal was Dr. Matt Nicoll, a brilliant, ambitious young surgeon at the hospital. But Chad refused to be discouraged even after her engagement to Matt. And then Toni began hearing disturbing rumors about her fiancé. They were saying he would stop at nothing to get ahead. And so she faced a new heart-twisting question. Could she marry a successful doctor whose practices she couldn't respect?
Title: Nurse Craig Author: Isabel Cabot Publisher: Ace (#D-532) Published: ©1957 Illustrator: Martin Koenig His signature is in the lower right-hand corner, and the original art is attributed to him. Toni Craig, student nurse at Riveredge Hospital, wanted no part of Chad Barlow. He had the reputation of being a wolf; besides, her ideal was Dr. Matt Nicoll, a brilliant, ambitious young surgeon at the hospital. But Chad refused to be discouraged even after her engagement to Matt. And then Toni began hearing disturbing rumors about her fiancé. They were saying he would stop at nothing to get ahead. And so she faced a new heart-twisting question. Could she marry a successful doctor whose practices she couldn't respect?
By Peggy Gaddis,©1953 Also published as Moon of Enchantment Julia Blake was not only a very good nurse and an extremely attractive woman but, most important, people trusted and confided in her. And so she knew: Why Joseph Smith, her patient and a promising violinist, was brutally beaten but not quite murdered Why Alice Jerome, who was not only rich but kind, brought Joseph to America from his native Italy Why Isobel Cartwright, the young, beautiful heir to Miss Jerome’s fortune pretended to be in love with Joseph And it was certainly because of her warmth and sincerity that Kent Harper, Miss Jerome’s lawyer and advisor, was deeply in love with Julia, but sometimes not as attentive as she would have liked. Julia finds her job in Palm Beach the most exciting one she has ever had … one which combines the challenge of nursing with mystery and romance. GRADE: B+ BEST QUOTES: “Julia’s crisp white uniform was very becoming, and the perky cap that crowned her crisp, shining hair was tilted at exactly the correct angle for a smart, efficient and very pretty registered nurse.” “As much as she could see of his face, beneath the bandages about his head, she liked.” “No fancy dress designer in the world had ever been able to dream up a costume as becoming as a nurse’s uniform.” “It always amuses me that men are so sure that the sole purpose of a girl’s life is to find some hapless male to pay her bills and keep a roof over her head. No matter what her profession is, or how happy she may be in it, or how successful, she’s supposed to be only ‘marking time’ until a man she can snare comes along.” “I yearn to turn her across my knee with the business end of a slipper in my strong right hand!” “The three things that make life worth living are, first of all, someone to love; something to hope for; and last but terribly important, something to do.” “It’s the sort of life I want, too. A small white house, a garden, a tree or two, a sand-box for the kids. Me with a job, coming home late in the afternoon to find you waiting for me at the gate.” REVIEW: Julia Blake has traveled to Palm Beach in the customary VNRN fashion: One of her patients in her Atlanta hospital needed a nurse to accompany her home and stay with her, and Julia took the job. But that patient is well now, so she accepted an assignment as a special at the hospital—“very, very special indeed, if I may say so,” says the patient’s doctor when he sees her—a young man who was beaten and is now in a coma. On her first day, she walks into the patient’s room to find three people there, despite the no visitors sign posted on the door. So she throws them out—and then discovers that the older woman is Alice Jerome, one of the hospital’s major benefactors. Miss Jerome has asked to see Julia at her home, and Julia is obliged to put her head in the lion’s mouth—but when she arrives at Miss Jerome’s beachfront villa, Miss Jerome doesn’t decapitate her, she hires Julia to care for the patient when he is well enough to return to Miss Jerome’s home, and installs her in the large suite upstairs with views of the ocean. The patient—an Italian named, strangely, Joseph Smith—is a violinist whom Miss Julia brought home with her from the Continent last year, and she is intent on training him to become a world-class musician, apparently purely out of the goodness of her heart. Also out of the goodness of her heart, Miss Jerome has raised Isobel Cartwright from infancy, giving the girl everything she wants. Unfortunately, Isobel has not responded with the same gratitude that Joseph shows, and instead displays her true colors by marching into Julia’s room without knocking and telling Julia, “You are to leave my men alone.” This means not just Joseph but also Kent Harper, Miss Jerome’s 30-year-old attorney, who was in the party that Julia ejected from Joseph’s hospital room. Isobel goes on to explain to Julia that she really has a thing for Kent, but is engaged to Joseph on the off-chance that Miss Jerome decides to leave him a lot of money when she dies—which is bound to be soon, because she’s really old and besides, this is a Peggy Gaddis VNRN—so she will have claim to it, since all that money rightfully belongs to her. Kent, however, has other ideas, which occur to him almost immediately upon clapping eyes on the beautiful Julia in her breathtaking nylon uniform. He takes her out on dates and kisses her—then abruptly stops asking her out, telling her that he loves her and wants to marry her, but he can’t see her for now: “Wait until I can explain a lot of things that you are going to feel need explanations. Will you trust me, darling?” This is not the only mystery Julia grapples with, but the only one she is unsuccessful at solving. The two other main mysteries in this book, i.e. why Miss Jerome is so devoted to Joseph, and why was Joseph beaten up, are soon explained away, when the person who knows the answer decides out of the blue to unburden themselves to Julia. She should have considered a career as a police detective. But she shouldn’t feel too badly about the one answer that got away, as in fact the reader never gets any explanation for this, either. Joseph, it turns out, is the grandson of a man whom Miss Jerome fell in love with as a young girl, but since the man was merely a violin teacher, and Italian to boot, her family not only rejected the match but drove the man out of the United States. Miss Jerome had tracked down the young Joseph, the last remaining descendent of her true love, and ensconced him at her house, but her attentions to him are ironically his undoing, as they brought him to the notice of an Italian syndicate. His attackers are desperately trying to bring an Italian woman named Vera into the United States. They believe that if Joseph tells Miss Jerome he wants to marry Vera, Miss Jerome, with her money and power, will get Vera into the states without an extensive background check, which would apparently reveal Vera as a bad seed. But Joseph, who cannot betray Miss Jerome, refuses to do this. Unfortunately, he has a weak spot: He’s afraid that the gang will discover that he’s in love with this woman in Italy, Lucia, and that the gang will harm her in some way. It’s a lot of back story, but eventually we get some action: One night, Julia hears a noise from Joseph’s room, and enters to see a man bending over Joseph with a knife. She screams, the man runs off, and the entire house turns up in his bedroom. She’s a bit embarrassed that all she could manage in this moment of crisis was a shriek: “What a terrible way for a nurse to behave,” she says. When she tells everyone what she saw, Joseph looks them all in the eye and tells them that Julia was dreaming and that there was no man. Finally she gets the hint and agrees she was dreaming, though Kent isn’t buying it. He posts a guard outside Joseph’s windows—and Julia’s, lest the man she saw come back for her, too—but one night Joseph is able to give the guards the slip and escape the house. His body is found on the beach the next morning—and his suicide note is on his pillow, and a scrap of paper with Lucia’s name and address on it is under Julia’s pillow. His reason for doing himself in, apparently, is to prevent the bad guys from finding Lucia, which is what Julia tells Miss Jerome in an attempt to console her when Joseph’s death leaves her prostrate with grief. Julia wants to track down Lucia in Italy to help her—what this help might be remains unclear—but if she goes racing off to Italy, the bad guys will follow her and find Lucia, and maybe wreak some vengeance. She needs a cover, and what better excuse for her to go to Italy, Miss Jerome decides, than to go on a honeymoon? So two days later, Julia finds herself marrying Kent in Miss Jerome’s bedroom. Isobel is late for the ceremony, and shows up just as the happy bride and groom are kissing—and stomps up to Julia and slaps her to the ground. This is just too much for Miss Jerome, who promptly expires. But Miss Jerome has one last secret—and you’ll never guess what’s coming—Isobel has been written out of the will, and the estate (after generous legacies to the devoted staff) is to be divided between Kent and Julia. In the meantime, Kent and Julia spend a lot of time discussing, in public places and with numerous people, their top secret mission to find Lucia and prevent the bad guys from discovering her as well. Though we never actually find out how that goes, my guess is that Lucia is doomed. On the whole, this was a fun and enjoyable book. There is a good amount of camp, and the characters, though straight out of the usual Peggy Gaddis playbook, are entertaining, and for once the ungrateful young rich girl doesn’t see the light, so that was something new. Julia is feisty, competent, and likable, though I was disappointed by her abrupt change in attitude once she has a ring on her finger. She early on declares that she would never give up her job for a man—and after she and Kent marry, they decide she will keep working “until the babies start coming, anyway”—but all the independent spirit she possesses at the beginning of the book is tossed away with the wedding bouquet and she says, “Honestly, Kent, it’s going to be your job to make important decisions. I’d like anything that you’d like. It’s always going to be like that.” After Kent and Julia are married, the book spends about 30 pages treading water as everyone waits for the will to be read, squandering the liveliness it’s had up to this point and slowly fizzling out. It doesn’t pay to look too hard at some of the details of the book—would the mob think that the best way to get Vera into the U.S. is to have Joseph marry her? would Joseph really leave Lucia’s address behind if he’s killing himself to protect her?—but this is, after all, just a silly nurse novel, and in the end it’s still better than most.
By Jeanne J. Bowman (pseud. Peggy O’More Blocklinger), ©1966 Nurse Trudy Holmes left Dane Memorial Hospital to care for the post-operative wife of wealthy Dr. Malcolm Morse. Dr. Morse painted a glowing picture of Medicine Mountain as a quiet retreat which would be more of a “paid vacation” than a nursing assignment for Trudy. Although she hesitated leaving the hospital the two doctors she loved, Trudy accepted the assignment eagerly, for she had worked so hard for several years putting herself through nursing school and training at the hospital. But Trudy didn’t count on a pampered young debutante and an old country witch doctor complicating her life. Could Trudy come down from Medicine Mountain with her reputation and her love unscarred? Trudy didn’t know … GRADE: C- BEST QUOTES: “When she smiled Trudy knew she had never sat in a dentist’s chair.” “Neither knew she was more than a pair of hands protruding from a uniform.” “Doctors are human. That is why they need wives of intelligence.” REVIEW: Picking up another Jeanne Bowman is a sign of my depression over my long string of disappointing VNRNs: With Bowman, there is no expectation that the book will be any good, so your hopes are never dashed. The question is only how bad the book will be. Nurse Betrayed is bad, no question about that, but it’s not completely horrible. I’m just not sure this assuages my depression at all. Right out of the first paragraph, Bowman hits the ground running with a hailstorm of her patented staccato diction in a discussion between two doctors about improving nurses’ shoes with balloon soles: “ ‘Wouldn’t work. Consider the patients. Nurse steps on pin. Blowout. Patient jerks; rips stitches.’ ‘Or a slow puncture. Hiss. Patient unable to identify source, and an anxiety neurosis is triggered.’ ” Then they pass our heroine. “ ‘One of you, who is she?’ ‘Holmes, special. Gertrude, called Trudy. Not bad-looking, but neither this nor that. Hair.’ ” Had enough? Well, I certainly had, but since it is my self-appointed mission to read these things, I seized my courage with a firm hand and turned to page two. I found a bizarre but fortunately short-lived obsession with the mousy color of Trudy’s hair, which dies away after Trudy accepts a job taking care of Dr. Morse’s wife, Malda, who is recovering from surgery for a benign tumor. Upon her arrival in the mountain chalet designated for Mrs. Morse’s recovery, the back-country housekeeper, Mrs. Alpin, sets Trudy up with a steeped tea rinse the minute she takes off her hat. Mrs. Alpin lives and dies by an 1856 book called Inquire Within for Anything You Want to Know, a real-life book of wisdom that informs her that Dr. Whalen is in love with Trudy because he handed her something with his left hand, that rubbing onion juice into your head will cause hair to grow, that you can stave off hysterics by avoiding excitement and tight lacing of the corsets. All this, of course, makes Mrs. Alpin ineffably charming, as does her folksy way of speechifyin’. Taking care of Mrs. Morse isn’t all that tough, since the patient is barely allowed to move. Weeks after her surgery, it’s still taking her several minutes to climb the stairs. This is quite a comedown for Mrs. Morse; previously she had been very busy with charity work, to such an extent that her husband feels she “should have been a man with a dozen companies under her supervision.” But she isn’t a man, so she should spend more time at home. Dr. Morse tells Trudy that “what his wife really needed was major surgery on philanthropic projects, time to recover from excess activity, to build up reserve strength and possibly have ‘some sense drummed into her.’ ” Not to worry, Bowman’s heroines have a habit of curing everyone with the lightest touch (see Shoreline Nurse for a particularly egregious example), and Trudy is no exception. “Lightly then Trudy tossed her dart, with laughter. ‘I am thinking of a patient who wondered if she would ever be asked to do anything worth-while. She had been a business girl, married into the upper echelons and was unable to explain to her husband why she was never invited to head anything and served only in the lowliest groups—she with her executive experience.’ ” How this anecdote manages to rouse Mrs. Morse I’ll never understand, but just two pages later, Mrs. Morse comes to her senses: “I want to thank you for awakening me to how selfish I was about duty,” she tells Trudy. “I have taken on projects, chairmanships, committee work that I loathed, through a mistaken sense of duty. I have neglected my own life and family, and have deprived younger women of work they need.” Trudy’s endeavors here are all the more perplexing because she has previously decided that for a woman of Mrs. Morse’s active disposition, “isolation with nothing to occupy an active mind could pop her right back into Memorial Hospital with the nervous breakdown the enforced rest had delayed.” But it doesn’t really pay to get too hung up on the unexplained peculiarities in a Bowman book; there are far too many of them, and you’ll just make yourself sick. Like when Trudy goes to town for the afternoon to run some errands and then becomes convinced the sheriff is coming for her for abandoning her patient. Oh, wait, there I go again. The “romance” of the book is fulfilled by a passel of doctors who also have homes nearby, and they drop in a lot. Trudy thinks they’re cute, but displays no especial affection toward any one of them. This being a VNRN, however, when her assignment is over she accepts a ride to town with one of them—who has never heretofore given her a second glance—and he pulls the car over. A helicopter is passing overhead just then, and the pilot notices “a man and a nurse, judging from her cap and cape, though the cap did get knocked off.” It’s a little creepy for her to be pairing off with a virtual stranger, all the more so because we are witnessing the ending in this voyeuristic manner, but there it is. In Nurse Betrayed, Bowman actually has a few occasional enjoyable turns of phrase. But her usual bag of tricks is on full display, such as the careful laying out of a particular character’s psychological weaknesses: “She sought desperately for a goal, such as a man and marriage, then headed for that goal, destroying anything that impeded her journey, only to find goals could fall before an onslaught.” And why is this book called Nurse Betrayed? So while this may not be as bad as some of her novels, it’s not worth picking up.
Title: When Doctors Marry Author: Elizabeth Seifert Publisher: Dell (D428) Published: June 1961 (first printing) Illustrator: Tom Miller Review available He is credited on the back cover. When Dr. Cannon Penrod read about the appointment of Dr. Corliss Walker as resident surgeon to the Memorial Hospital staff—the first woman ever to receive such an appointment—he could not believe that a woman exposed to so much pain and suffering could have feelings of her own—womanly feelings. A freak accident was to bring the two doctors together, and Dr. Penrod would learn that Dr. Corliss Walker was truly a woman—a woman almost too pretty to be a doctor, a woman who wanted to love a man, who wanted to have her own baby, even to know her own sorrow and hurt for someone she loved and who belonged to her. Dr. Walker was a woman who wanted to love a man, but not just any man …
A Visual History
1947 - 5th Print; Medical Center by Faith Baldwin. Cover art by George Steinman (?)
Title: Nurse Craig Author: Isabel Cabot Publisher: Ace (#D-532) Published: ©1957 Illustrator: Martin Koenig His signature is in the lower right-hand corner, and the original art is attributed to him. Toni Craig, student nurse at Riveredge Hospital, wanted no part of Chad Barlow. He had the reputation of being a wolf; besides, her ideal was Dr. Matt Nicoll, a brilliant, ambitious young surgeon at the hospital. But Chad refused to be discouraged even after her engagement to Matt. And then Toni began hearing disturbing rumors about her fiancé. They were saying he would stop at nothing to get ahead. And so she faced a new heart-twisting question. Could she marry a successful doctor whose practices she couldn't respect?
By Dorothy Daniels, ©1964 Cover illustration by Lou Marchetti Carol Allison, R.N. hid a dark secret out of her past from her friends at the World’s Fair. But her more immediate problem was Tina, the delicate ballerina at the Fair who had an incurable heart condition. Carol warned her that if she danced, she risked death. Yet Tina refused to quit, and threatened to reveal Carol’s secret if she went to the authorities. Standing by Carol were the two men who loved her. Each man knew that only one would win Carol, yet they both worked to clear her name. But it was Carol alone who had to choose between saving the life of the dancer or her own nursing career. GRADE: C- BEST QUOTES: “I’m Dick Walden. You will address me as Doctor when any patients are around and I’ll give sharp orders to show what a fine medical man I am. Otherwise, I cotton well to Dick.” “She’s better looking than a spanking new electrocardiograph machine, Jane. And much more fun.” “I want you back here. Not only because you dress up the scenery so well, but because you’re so capable.” REVIEW: Nurse Carol Allison finished her RN training, but then decided to continue her studies with a baccalaureate degree in nursing as well. Always a top student, she earned the college’s first perfect store on her final exam—but what does she get for her hard work? A hearty handshake? A job offer? No—it’s a blank piece of paper where her diploma ought to have been, because a shred of a stolen answer key was found under her chair, so she’s accused of cheating, and the school board is launching an investigation, but who knows when that’s going to be finished? While she’s waiting for her lawyer fiancé Marty to finish working on that important case that keeps him too busy to answer her calls, she takes a job at—you guessed it—the World’s Fair in New York City. There she works alongside Dr. Dick Walden, who from the get-go says way too many creepy things like, “You’re very attractive, know that? I hope it’s Miss Allison,” and, “Not next year. We’ll probably be married by then.” And this is just on the first day they meet. The problem with a lot of these plots of false accusation is that the alleged crime and the ensuing drama is just completely overdone, and this book is no exception. The hysteria is heightened by the fact that the fair’s prima ballerina (and it’s always spelled like that in the book, in italics), Tina, has a congenital heart condition that no one has diagnosed through many years of arduous training except Carol, and if she tells anyone about it, Tina’s evil manager will expose the cheating allegation and Carol will never work again—Never!!—but if she doesn’t tell, Tina will drop dead on the opening night of “Woodsmen’s Legend.” Oh, what to do, what to do? Well, we’ll spend about 80 pages watching Carol worry, not to mention step seriously outside her scope of practice by administering IV papaverine and oxygen when Tina has a cardiac crisis during practice. In the meantime, Dr. Dick is putting his alarming moves on, and Carol, who might ace her final but is not smart enough to work out this situation, is also not smart enough to recognize sexual harassment and seems to be going for Dick, even though Marty appears to be a fairly stand-up guy, a novelty in VNRN fiancés. There’s really not much more to tell about the story, and the ending will surprise exactly no one. Everyone is perfunctorily disposed of, some in ways that seem startlingly out of character (Marty being one of them), but let’s not quibble—the sooner everyone is paired off and Carol’s diploma and sterling reputation safely restored, the sooner we can close this profoundly insipid and stupid book—the cover art and title easily being the best things about it.
