Mary Breckenridge began the Frontier Nursing Service to provide medical care - and hope - for the people living in the rural Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky during the 1920s. She began with just a few nurses and her own passion and determination. Over the years, the Service grew as more nurses joined Mary and her dream of a hospital/clinic was realized. A few years later there were six such clinics, and many stories of lives that were touched and changed. Rosemary Wells tells three such stories in a work of short fiction for young readers that is deftly drawn from real people and events. Three compelling voices - a young boy whose father is injured in a logging accident, a 19-year-old nurse who comes from Scotland to join Mary's service, and a small girl who is grieving the death of her mother - chronicle events in the early history of the Frontier Nursing Service. Real-life events woven into the author's three first-person narratives with a storyteller's grace, so that each story is rooted in history but belongs as well to the imagination, where conversations and relationships among historical figures are fully realized. Black-and-white drawings by Peter McCarty open each story and are based on photographs taken for the Frontier Nursing Service by Mary Breckenridge's niece. An actual photograph of Mary Breckenridge and a brief biographical essay on her life follows the stories, and the author's acknowledgments provide the sources for the characters and events in this welcome book for young readers. (Ages 8-11)

Master storyteller Rosemary Wells tells the incredible true story of a World War I nurse who brought medical care to the Appalachians

Mary Breckinridge, trained as a nurse during World War I, rode on horseback into the isolated mountains of Appalachia and never looked back. Instead, she spent her life fording icy streams and climbing untracked mountains to bring medical help to those in need. More nurses on horseback joined Mary . . . and the Frontier Nursing Service was born. Mary’s story is amazing. And it is true.


“Wells’s realistic yet poetic prose perfectly captures the dichotomy of the majestic beauty of Appalachia and the harsh realities of mountain life. . . . This one’s a gem.”—School Library Journal