The Femme Actuelle novel of the summer, a powerful story about friendship, love and the legacies of the Great War.
In July 1915, the hospital ship Mahona took 70 New Zealand nurses to the battlefield. Among them were Meg and Addie, who had nothing in common: Meg, whose father was an alcoholic and whose mother was depressed, had been taken in by her uncle and aunt. She was flirtatious and fun-loving. Addie, who came from a close-knit and loving family, was very reserved and loved nothing more than literature. However, a strong friendship developed between these two young women, which would withstand all trials. Stationed first in Egypt, they met, among others, Wallace, a surgeon, and Edward, an anesthesiologist. Meg and Wallace fell in love immediately. But Wallace was married and consumed by an anxiety he didn't share with anyone.
In Egypt and then in France, the two nurses and their colleagues will discover the horrors endured by the combatants, limbs to be amputated, disfigured faces, and the diseases that accompany times of war, dysentery and especially the Spanish flu, which will not spare even the members of the nursing staff, nor their families even though they are so far away.
At the end of the First World War, Addie and Edward are ready to return home together. Meg, whose uncle and aunt have died of the flu, alone since Wallace's death, decides to stay in France to continue helping the people.
A delicate and touching novel with its dramatic intensity, a tribute to all those women who fought to save human lives.
