An Angel's Work by Kate Eastham
Genre: Historical fiction, WW2, General fiction
Read: 15th October 2020
Published: 21st October 2020
★★★ 3 stars
DECSCRIPTION:
Jo forced herself to look into the cot, but at first all she could see was grey dust from the explosion. Then, a tiny hand poked out through a layer of grit. In seconds she had the child scooped up and she could feel its little body warm against her own. She felt an almost painful surge of emotion welling up from the pit of her stomach. With tears pouring down her cheeks, she stood rocking and soothing the baby, knowing there was very little chance the child’s mother had survived.
England, 1941. After three nights of relentless bombing from German aircraft, trained nurse Jo Brooks is told to report to the basement theatre of Mill Road Hospital. She goes with a heavy heart, not wanting to leave behind her best friend Moira, who is desperately soothing new mothers on the maternity ward. As Jo arrives safely underground, the ward takes a direct hit.
Pulling herself from the rubble, Jo’s first priority must be her patients… but she can’t stop herself frantically searching for Moira. When Jo eventually finds her, buried beneath a foot of bricks and stone, Moira is barely clinging to life. Jo makes a solemn vow: she will do whatever it takes to help the allies win the war, even if it means sacrificing her own safety.
The opportunity to make good on her promise comes sooner than she expects – nurses are badly needed to evacuate wounded allies across enemy lines. It will be dangerous, heartbreaking work and her life will be at risk every moment, but Jo knows that the moment has come to prove herself at last…
A powerfully emotional wartime novel about friendship and love in the most terrible of circumstances. Perfect for fans of Diney Costeloe, Jean Grainger and Soraya M. Lane.
MY REVIEW:
I am excited to be taking part in the #BooksOnTour #BlogTour for Kate Eastham's WW2 historical novel AN ANGEL'S WORK.
My first novel by Kate Eastham, AN ANGEL'S WORK follows two nurses throughout their wartime nursing careers from the May Blitz in 1941 right up to the end of the war. I enjoyed getting to know both Jo and Mac and waiting to see how their respective stories would unfold.
Liverpool, May 1941: Staff nurse Josephine Brooks and staff nurse Moira (Mac) MacDonald are best friends and roommates working at the civilian Mill Road Hospital. The two women are different in personalities as they are in looks, with Jo dark haired and reserved and Mac the outgoing redhead enjoying life while she can. While both women loved their work they also savoured their time off as well but each time the air raid siren sounded, the nurses would report to Casualty immediately to help tend to the wounded...even if they are not on duty.
On one particular night, Mac went out while Jo stayed in reading, and met a dishy aircrew trainee named Don (his surname escapes me just now) who called Mac his "Rita Hayworth" on account of her flaming red hair. The pair enjoyed a passionate encounter leaving Don declaring his love for Mac who felt it was just the adrenaline of being caught up in wartime.
On 3rd May, Liverpool had endured three consecutive nights of bombing and Jo was working in the basement theatre whilst Mac was enjoying the new mums and babies in maternity. When the hospital takes a direct hit, Jo and the surgeon are virtually trapped in the basement with their patient until she manages to scramble out a window. Her first thought is of Mac up on the top floor in maternity and she races up there, calling her friend's name. There is nothing but rubble on the maternity ward but Jo does hear the faint cry of a baby, and scrambles through the debris to find the distressed infant, just 1 day old, her mother now dead. She gives the baby to a Sister and continues her search for Mac on the floor below since there was now a gaping hole in the maternity floor. She finds one of their friends dead beside an unconscious Mac who has a head wound.
Mac is stretchered out and taken with Jo and surgeon Angus Dunbar to a nearby hospital where he sutures her head wound in the corridor. There doesn't appear to be any other damage which is good news...they just have to wait for Mac to regain consciousness. But when she does, she is dazed and confused and it isn't long before she falls into unconsciousness again. After spending a few days in hospital, the two women head to Jo's family farm to recuperate.
But when Don turns up at the farm to see Mac he is upset to discover she has no memory of the days surrounding the bombing...including him. And Mac is incredibly distressed to find a strange man running up to her and encircling her in his arms. However, when her memory does begin to return she decides that what they had was a wartime fling and sends him on his way. But Don will not be swayed, declaring he will come looking for her after the war.
The bombing of the hospital and the injuries Mac sustained as a result has lead her to rethink how she would like to help with the war effort. Jo, it seems, has been doing much the same thinking...with neither wishing to return to Liverpool. Jo suggested they join the WAAF and work at the Morecambe Military Hospital but Mac has other plans. She has decided to join the army as a nurse and work at the front. So the two women for the first time go their separate ways - Jo as a flying nightingale with the air ambulance, ferrying injured patients from Europe back to Britain and Mac as an army nurse in a field hospital. Both are extremely dangerous of coming under attack in the air as well as on the ground.
The story is told the third person narrative from the alternating perspectives of Jo and Mac, as well as the occasional from Don and even from Don's mate Zach detailing their individual experiences. And despite Mac turning Don away three years before, she still carries a torch for him which she continually tries to suppress. But the moment she hears he is missing in action presumed dead, she goes to pieces.
AN ANGEL'S WORK is an engaging read with all the adrenaline of frontline nurses working under pressure often in dangerous locations. It is also a gentle read, an easy read of life during wartime that by the story's end when they announce "The war is over!" even I felt a building of emotion and tears in my eyes. It still has the capacity to touch your heart and make you feel as if you are in the air with Jo and in the field hospital alongside Mac. The story is very real and will leave you with a sense of having lived through it as well.
An enjoyable read, I recommend AN ANGEL'S WORK to anyone who enjoys wartime fiction.
I would like to thank #KateEastham, #NetGalley and #Bookouture for an ARC of #AnAngelsWork in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
A change in circumstance meant Kate Eastham made the shift from a career in nursing to being a carer for her partner. Determined to make the most of this new role ‘working from home’ and inspired by an in-depth study of the origins of nursing, she wrote her first novel at the kitchen table. Miss Nightingale’s Nurses was published by Penguin in 2018, closely followed by three more in the series. With her passion for history, Kate aims to make visible the lives of ordinary yet extraordinary women from the past. Her current historical fiction is set during the World Wars and will be published by Bookouture.
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