Publication Date: January 14, 2014
BRY Publishing
Formats: eBook, Paperback
Pages: 382
Genre: Historical Fiction
This historical thriller begins on the eve of WWII in the Philippines. Katarina Stahl an American Red Cross nurse, is the happiest she’s ever been in her life. She’s making love and playing music with Jack Gallagher in an idyllic paradise. Their medical mission is over, the boat tickets to home are purchased, and all that remains is to fly a sick child to the hospital at Clark Air Field.
She never expected to witness bombs falling out of planes. In those terrifying first minutes, she frees a German doctor accused of spying and saves his life. She turns to nursing the injured, unaware she’s unleashed an obsession more dangerous to her and those she loves, than the war she’s trapped in.
Doctor von Wettin, the man she freed, finds Katarina pregnant and starving in a POW camp after the surrender. He begs her to nurse his bed-ridden wife. She knows other Americans will despise her, but wants her baby to live after surviving Bataan. Their uneasy alliance is destroyed when she discovers he exploited Red Cross diplomatic channels and contacts at the German embassy to wire money to her parents. His benevolent mask slips when he informs her that her brothers and parents are interned on Ellis Island.
When the Stahl family is swept up in the FBI’s dragnet, Josep Stahl believes it’s all a misunderstanding. He’s interrogated like a criminal at the city jail, a military camp, Ellis Island, and then the civilian internment camps in Texas. His anger and pride blind him. One by one in this painful family drama, his wife and sons join him behind barbed wire in. There they face ostracism, segregation, and, most frightening, repatriation.
Katarina begins an even more terrifying journey into depraved darkness as Manila descends into occupation and chaos. The doctor threatens everyone she loves: infant son, POW husband, and Filipino friends. She’ll do anything to protect them; she lies, steals, and smuggles. As the war turns against the Japanese, they withhold the doctor’s wife’s life-saving medications until he finds a hidden radio inside the civilian internment camp. If Katarina refuses to help him, her son pays the price.
Survival has corrupted Katarina; but she’s not about to become his camp rat. After years of hell, she’s earned her nickname, war nurse. Doctor von Wettin is about to find out what that means.
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About the Author
R.V. Doon is a bookie! Seriously, she’s an avid reader who also loves to write. She writes across genres, but confesses she’s partial to historical fiction and medical thrillers. She’s addicted to black coffee, milk chocolate, and raspberries. When she’s not reading or writing, she’s learning to sail. Doon reports after a career of implementing doctor’s orders, she’s having trouble being a deck hand and following the captain’s orders. Doon lives in Mobile, Alabama, a haunted and historical city, with her husband and two dogs.
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My Thoughts
The War Nurse tells the story of the Stahl Family during WWII. It takes place on two fronts, the Philippines and the US. Katerina Stahl is a nurse for the American Red Cross, while her parents, brothers and sister are in the US. Katerina and her fiance Jack Gallagher are scheduled to go home as their duties are done, but this is the eve of WWII and Pearl Harbor has been bombed and they end up staying and taking care of the injured. Meanwhile Katerina's family is taken into custody because they are German and even though the children were born in the US, the parents never became citizens. This causes a host of problems for the family.
War rages on and as time goes by Katerina and Jack are prisoners of the Japanese who treat the prisoners very badly. Food and medical supplies becomes a rarity and the prisoners are starving to death and a lot of them do die. They say that survival is of the fittest and that is definitely true in war time. In order to keep on surviving, Katerina becomes a smuggler for food and ends up doing things that are against what she believes in. The Stahl's in the US end up in an military internment camp for questioning by the FBi, Ellis Island and then to a camp in Texas. They suffer segregation, they are ostracized and ultimately face repatriation back to Germany.
War is hell and this story is just a glimpse into what the ravages of war can bring to innocent people. The author knows the ins and outs of nursing, did a remarkable amount of research in my opinion, to be able to tell this story of survival in a believable way. Very believable and likeable, and some not so likeable characters. There are a lot of WWII novels out there lately, but I believe that this one is a must to read.
I received a copy for review and was not monetarily compensated for said review.
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