This marvelous, incredible holiday should not be spoiled by the wrong clothes.
# 55: Wilderness Nurse! by Marguerite Mooers Marshall:At breakfast one morning a loud explosion sounded just outside the hospital. Denise was so startled that she jumped, almost tipping over her coffee cup. The others merely smiled at the following burst of gunfire.
"It's the beginning of our social season," explained Anne Pigeon.
Synopsis: (from the front cover) A master surgeon healed both her body and her heart.
In its defense, this book was originally published in 1949. And it took me way too long to figure out why that was important. See, I ran across this book in the pulp fiction section of the local genteel black hole along with a whole raft of others: Holiday Nurse, Islands Nurse, Socialite Nurse, Air Nurse, and I found that really perplexing until I got hold of that publication date. It makes sense that, at that point in US history, nursing really was one of the only occupations open to women, and thus you get all these books both glamorizing it (hint: nursing is not actually at all glamorous) and reassuring women that they could be a nurse and still have romance and a family.
So in answer to the question in the cut, our heroine does indeed give up nursing after she's healed by a master surgeon. She gives it up to, in his words, "use your nursing heart and passion for service as a real wife and a real mother?" In other words, fuck your career, darling, what about ME?
And yeah, that's just a sign of those times. Uh, I hope.
Anyway! Denise Burke is a nurse at an NYC hospital who harbors a secret crush on the saturnine and successful Dr Curt; when she pushes him for a declaration of like affections, he blanches and she quits her job on the spot. She takes a cruise up to Quebec's North Coast with a suitor who makes Improper Advances in a porch swing and looks down on the Quebecois they meet. And that includes the handsome and single French Canadian boat captain, who Denise is puzzled by. He has no wife or family! How is he happy?? she asks, as she watches him receive "an expert massage from his saturnine but devoted personal guide." Yeah.
Sister? That tree you're barking up? Well honey, I think Phillipe's all over the trunk, if you know what I'm saying and I doubt you do.
Men in the book are either "saturnine" (strong but emotionally unavailable), "grabby" (improper suitor, take one step forward) or "boyish", as in the wilderness doctor who woos Denise unsuccessfully, and her twin brother. And her dog. Denise has a busy life.
Anyway, Denise gets up to Quebec, loves it there, refuses to get back on the boat and starts working at the local hospital. I loved this part of the book, which had obviously been written from personal experience, and indeed when I went and looked, apparently the whole book was written as a not-so-thinly veiled autobiography of the author and how she met her husband. She met him by shooting off across the frozen tundra to help a midwife, climbing wet rocks in tennis shoes (be ye not so stupid) and shattering one ankle.
The kind but inept wilderness doctor (boyish!) who is totally in love with her effs up setting her ankle to the point where he opts to chop her ankle off instead. But! Our heroine telegraphs furiously to NYC to the magic Dr Curt, who basically flies up to Quebec, whips out his saturnine cock, whacks the boyish wilderness doctor about the head and shoulders with it, and then whisks Denise back down to New York, where he tenderly sets her ankle by--
DUDE, IF YOU'RE SQUEAMISH, TURN AWAY TIL THE NEXT CAPITAL LETTERS.
putting her foot on a sandbag and "pounded it and kneaded it and thumped it for a half hour." Whoo! 1949 medicine for the loss! (She was out under general anesthetic. But still, I think, given my druthers, I'd opt for something more um, sciency than an angry man with a hammer and a bag of sand.)
Which apparently worked. All That Is Surgeon and his blatant disregard of conventional medicine rule the day!
IT IS OKAY TO LOOK NOW.
Her ankle is healed and she moves back in with her twin brother and their dog until Dr. Curt proposes and tells her she can never nurse again, unless it's a gin and tonic! Hhahaha! No really, the only nursing she can do is of him and their litter of pups at the doctor's wives club. *chucks her under the chin*
Well, it wasn't a terrible book. For a start, everyone who is not one of Denise's suitors is very likeable. There's a likeable dog, for instance. And a twin brother. And Denise, while soft as newborn bread, is not terrible to read about. Also, and this was sort of huge for me, I loved both the flow and the technical precision of the author's writing. Passages are fluid and streamlined, and sentences are well-built and stacked. It's relaxing to read this kind of writing, where you're not constantly seeing stutters or missteps. Very relaxing. Also, the cover?
It just gives and gives.
Probably not a book I'll read again, but you know, a dollar well spent. I am not, on the other hand, running out to get my hands on any of the others in the series.
"It's the beginning of our social season," explained Anne Pigeon.
Synopsis: (from the front cover) A master surgeon healed both her body and her heart.
In its defense, this book was originally published in 1949. And it took me way too long to figure out why that was important. See, I ran across this book in the pulp fiction section of the local genteel black hole along with a whole raft of others: Holiday Nurse, Islands Nurse, Socialite Nurse, Air Nurse, and I found that really perplexing until I got hold of that publication date. It makes sense that, at that point in US history, nursing really was one of the only occupations open to women, and thus you get all these books both glamorizing it (hint: nursing is not actually at all glamorous) and reassuring women that they could be a nurse and still have romance and a family.
So in answer to the question in the cut, our heroine does indeed give up nursing after she's healed by a master surgeon. She gives it up to, in his words, "use your nursing heart and passion for service as a real wife and a real mother?" In other words, fuck your career, darling, what about ME?
And yeah, that's just a sign of those times. Uh, I hope.
Anyway! Denise Burke is a nurse at an NYC hospital who harbors a secret crush on the saturnine and successful Dr Curt; when she pushes him for a declaration of like affections, he blanches and she quits her job on the spot. She takes a cruise up to Quebec's North Coast with a suitor who makes Improper Advances in a porch swing and looks down on the Quebecois they meet. And that includes the handsome and single French Canadian boat captain, who Denise is puzzled by. He has no wife or family! How is he happy?? she asks, as she watches him receive "an expert massage from his saturnine but devoted personal guide." Yeah.
Sister? That tree you're barking up? Well honey, I think Phillipe's all over the trunk, if you know what I'm saying and I doubt you do.
Men in the book are either "saturnine" (strong but emotionally unavailable), "grabby" (improper suitor, take one step forward) or "boyish", as in the wilderness doctor who woos Denise unsuccessfully, and her twin brother. And her dog. Denise has a busy life.
Anyway, Denise gets up to Quebec, loves it there, refuses to get back on the boat and starts working at the local hospital. I loved this part of the book, which had obviously been written from personal experience, and indeed when I went and looked, apparently the whole book was written as a not-so-thinly veiled autobiography of the author and how she met her husband. She met him by shooting off across the frozen tundra to help a midwife, climbing wet rocks in tennis shoes (be ye not so stupid) and shattering one ankle.
The kind but inept wilderness doctor (boyish!) who is totally in love with her effs up setting her ankle to the point where he opts to chop her ankle off instead. But! Our heroine telegraphs furiously to NYC to the magic Dr Curt, who basically flies up to Quebec, whips out his saturnine cock, whacks the boyish wilderness doctor about the head and shoulders with it, and then whisks Denise back down to New York, where he tenderly sets her ankle by--
DUDE, IF YOU'RE SQUEAMISH, TURN AWAY TIL THE NEXT CAPITAL LETTERS.
putting her foot on a sandbag and "pounded it and kneaded it and thumped it for a half hour." Whoo! 1949 medicine for the loss! (She was out under general anesthetic. But still, I think, given my druthers, I'd opt for something more um, sciency than an angry man with a hammer and a bag of sand.)
Which apparently worked. All That Is Surgeon and his blatant disregard of conventional medicine rule the day!
IT IS OKAY TO LOOK NOW.
Her ankle is healed and she moves back in with her twin brother and their dog until Dr. Curt proposes and tells her she can never nurse again, unless it's a gin and tonic! Hhahaha! No really, the only nursing she can do is of him and their litter of pups at the doctor's wives club. *chucks her under the chin*
Well, it wasn't a terrible book. For a start, everyone who is not one of Denise's suitors is very likeable. There's a likeable dog, for instance. And a twin brother. And Denise, while soft as newborn bread, is not terrible to read about. Also, and this was sort of huge for me, I loved both the flow and the technical precision of the author's writing. Passages are fluid and streamlined, and sentences are well-built and stacked. It's relaxing to read this kind of writing, where you're not constantly seeing stutters or missteps. Very relaxing. Also, the cover?
It just gives and gives.
Probably not a book I'll read again, but you know, a dollar well spent. I am not, on the other hand, running out to get my hands on any of the others in the series.