From Booklist
Women's friendships are at the center of this appealing historical novel that spans the years 1850 to 1888 and links the lives of Louisa May Alcott and Clara Barton. Narrator Susan Gray, a fictitious third cousin who joins the Alcott household after being orphaned in her teens, is 10 years Louisa's junior but becomes her confidant. Together, Louisa and Susan leave home to join the Civil War effort by nursing at a Washington hospital, where they meet Barton, a beloved figure on battlefields, and injured soldier John Sulie, allegedly a blacksmith with suspiciously gentlemanly ways. As love grows between Sulie and Louisa, Susan also is attracted to him, leading to relationships complicated by war, politics, illness, and emotion and a rift in the friendship that takes years to mend. O'Brien, whose previous novels were contemporary, does a nice job with the language of the period and provides an afterword to help separate fact from fiction. With its vivid portrayals of a wartime hospital and of Andersonville, this is a briskly paced, engaging work of historical fiction. Michele Leber
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Book Description
From childhood, Susan Gray and her cousin Louisa May Alcott have shared a safe, insular world of outdoor adventures and grand amateur theater -- a world that begins to evaporate with the outbreak of the Civil War. Frustrated with sewing uniforms and wrapping bandages, the two women journey to Washington, D.C.'s Union Hospital to volunteer as nurses. Nothing has prepared them for the horrors of this grueling experience. There they meet the remarkable Clara Barton -- the legendary Angel of the Battlefield -- and she becomes their idol and mentor. Soon one wounded soldier begins to captivate and puzzle them all -- a man who claims to be a blacksmith, but whose appearance and sharp intelligence suggest he might not be who he says he is. Through the Civil War and its chaotic aftermath to the apex of Louisa's fame as the author of Little Women and Lincoln's appointment of Clara to the job of finding and naming the war's missing and dead, this novel is ultimately the story of friendship between women -- women who broke the mold society set for them, while still reckoning with betrayal, love, and forgiveness.


About the Author
Patricia O'Brien is the coauthor of I Know Just What You Mean, a New York Times bestseller. A journalist, political correspondent, and TV and radio commentator, she has published articles in Esquire, Glamour, and Harper's Bazaar. She lives with her husband in Washington, D.C.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

From childhood, Susan Gray and her cousin Louisa May Alcott have shared a safe, insular world of outdoor adventures and grand amateur theater -- a world that begins to evaporate with the outbreak of the Civil War. Frustrated with sewing uniforms and wrapping bandages, the two women journey to Washington, D.C.'s Union Hospital to volunteer as nurses. Nothing has prepared them for the horrors of this grueling experience. There they meet the remarkable Clara Barton -- the legendary Angel of the Battlefield -- and she becomes their idol and mentor. Soon one wounded soldier begins to captivate and puzzle them all -- a man who claims to be a blacksmith, but whose appearance and sharp intelligence suggest he might not be who he says he is.