Adele and Cateau de Leeuw - Nurses Who Led the Way: Real Life Stories of Courageous Women in an Exciting Profession

11. Nurses Who Led the Way: Real Life Stories of Courageous Women in an Exciting Profession by Adele and Cateau de Leeuw (1961)
Length: 210 pages
Genre: Non-Fiction
Started/Finished: 28 January 2014
Where did it come from? From a Library Book Sale
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 1 June 1988
Why do I have it? This book was originally one of Mareena's, but was stowed downstairs in a room we've nicknamed 'The Glory Hole' - a room beside the stairs where we generally store everything (mostly books) that we don't have room for upstairs. I like non-fiction and Adele and Cateau de Leeuw are new authors for me.

This is a book of true stories of nine courageous women who strove to heal the sick in times of need; when they were perhaps not taken as seriously as they would be now. These stories are primarily about women who lived from the nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century. They were nurses whose lives and accomplishments were not known to me until I read this book.

From Mary Ann Bickerdyke (1817-1901) - a hospital administrator for the Union during the Civil War, she earned the nickname 'Mother' Bickerdyke and worked tirelessly to improve conditions for veterans; to Lora Wood Hughes (1873-1960) - a contract nurse during the Spanish-American War, she tended to the sick during an epidemic of typhoid and wrote her autobiography, No Time For Tears in World War II.

In my opinion, this was an excellently written children's book that I thoroughly enjoyed reading. As I've said before, I had no knowledge of these courageous women's lives before I read this book, and I appreciated that these true life stories were not as well known - at least to me - as say, Florence Nightingale or Clara Barton would be. I give this book an A+! and Mareena has reacquired it to read for herself at some point.

A+! - (96-100%)

Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight