Highlighting the facts behind historical fiction with Cerise Deland who also writes as Jo Ann Powers.
Decades ago I became fascinated by the American women who volunteered to go abroad to nurse American soldiers in France during World War One. At the time, we lived in Washington D.C. and I was very familiar with the holdings and staff of the Library of Congress, the National Archives and many of the universities and their archives. I began to take the Metro to go downtown and sit in my favorite serene places to research these women.
The whole story of how the world braved and survived the tragedies of such a major catastrophe as this world war came home to me as no classroom, teacher or book had ever taught me. What I was given were cardboard boxes full of papers or photographs. What was not thrown into those boxes was up on microfiche. And many of those where documents that had been redacted with big black lines crossed through the text. The same for photographs, usually of wounded men whose amputated limbs or scarred faces also had large ink spotches placed over their wounds. Censors did a remarkably good job of eliminating the horrors of war even to those loved ones to whom soldiers wrote home.
My husband and I toured France many times in the coming years. Going to the big museums, like Les Invalides in Paris where the story of the French effort along with British and American is told in artifacts and text.
You see here a picture of a Frenchman whose face has been wounded and who was known to the French as their ‘ghouls.’ So many men survived shrapnel and gunshot wounds to their faces that surgeons began to perfect the practice of skin grafting. So too many men were wounded in other areas of their bodies that prostheses became a new medical tool and physical rehabilitation became a new practice for physicians’ assistants.
About the Book
In my newest historical romance, IF YOU WERE THE ONLY GIRL IN THE WORLD, my American doctor Katrina Schubert goes to France to serve in the only way she can. As a civilian doctor in a French-American hospital, she braves the prejudice of male doctors against females in the profession, but she also braves the French who despise anyone with a German-sounding name.
One starlit night, he saved her from tragedy and she saved him from disaster.
Years later, on a moonless night, he rescues her again—and they discover a love affair they cannot resist.
Now during the nightmare of war, each must decide if they’ll abandon all they worked for to claim the only person in the world they could love.
Katrina Schubert rejected what her father’s millions could buy—a title, a castle, a man who’d marry her for her money. Instead, she wanted to use her intellect and become a doctor.
Nathaniel, the Earl of Carbury, didn’t want what his family insisted he needed—a good woman who proved to him how beneficial a loving partner could be.
But one starless night in war-torn London, Nate saves Katrina from tragedy, the same way years before, she’d saved him from disaster. What began as friendship turns to a love affair they can’t resist.
Dare they risk their hearts to take all the riches enchantment can bring them?
Or will they reject the possibility that each remains alone, remembering the only other person they could adore?
If you love swoon-worthy historical romance, starring endearing heroes, sassy heroines and a family of irresistible charmers, this book is for you! IF YOU WERE THE ONLY GIRL IN THE WORLD to begin your journey!
IF YOU WERE THE ONLY GIRL IN THE WORLD is the sixth book in THOSE NOTORIOUS AMERICANS series but can also be read as a standalone novel. https://www.amazon.com/You-Were-Only-Girl-World-ebook/dp/B09GL2PM3P/
More from Cerise Deland
I hope you will also read my other novel, HEROIC MEASURES, under my real name Jo-Ann Power. That book tells the story of American nurses who served in France along the front lines.
https://books2read.com/u/bzgaKn