The first installment in a spellbinding trilogy centered around Canada’s involvement in World War I follows a privileged young newlywed to the fraught medical encampments of the Western Front.
Being an idle housewife never suited Hettie Bartlette. So, when her husband, Geoffrey, decided to enlist only a couple of months after their wedding, the choice to join him was easy.
At the time, it seemed as if the tide would turn against the Germans at any moment. But once the ambitious young couple arrives in Europe, it’s plain to see that the turmoil on French soil shows no indication of abating.
It isn’t all bad: Hettie finds purpose tending to the wounded in the Casualty Clearing Station. Unlike people back home in Ontario, hardly anyone within the Allied forces believes her work as an army nurse to be unseemly for a married woman of Hettie’s wealth and breeding.
But nothing, not even coming face-to-face with the horrific aftermath of gas and gunfire on a daily basis, can prepare Hettie for the tragedies and tribulations 1915 has in store. With letters from her family pouring in, begging her to come home, Hettie must soon decide on which side of the Atlantic she belongs.
Melina Druga’s Angel Of Mercy begins right before the First World War and we are introduced to our main character, Hettie. Hettie is a nurse who recently left the Royal Victoria Hospital to marry her childhood sweetheart, Geoffrey. The couple marries and Hettie retires from her job, but she feels like something is missing. She grows restless in the role of the housewife and longs to return to the hospital where she worked. Then Britain declares war on Germany and everything changes. Being true to England, Canada also enters this war and, after much thought, Geoffrey decides the right thing to do is enlist. Hattie didn’t expect this, but when he suggested that she should enlist to help as a nurse, she couldn’t refuse. She just couldn’t stand the housewife's life and missed helping people. The couple leaves for overseas with the idea that this will be a short war, but they are sadly mistaken. Hettie faces challenges and tragedies as she had never before. What the two thought would be a quick war that would be followed by their eventual honeymoon in Paris turns into years, changing the course of history and both of their lives.
I thought Melina Druga did an awesome job with this story. I’m always coming across so many World War Two novels about soldiers or ladies waiting at home for their loves to return that it was nice to see one about the First World War. We always hear about the British, Germans, Russians and the Americans when it comes to this war. Canada always seemed to be put on the back-burner even though many men and women volunteered to fight and help Britain. We see a first-hand account of these men and women who put their lives on the line. Mostly we see it from Hettie’s point of view but that’s what makes it unique. When we read many war stories, we deal with the soldiers. In Angel Of Mercy, we step off the battlefield to the place that those injured men go to either be healed or to die. We see the horrors of war through the eyes of the young nurses who also thought that their stay would be short with a chance for adventure or to meet the loves of their lives. It’s a side of war that we often fail to see or look into. I think it’s definitely a book that history and romance fiction lovers will enjoy.
