Tuesday, October 25th @ Rebecca's

 

 Tuesday, September 27th @ Kris's

 

Tuesday, August 30th @ Annie's

 Tuesday, May 24th @ Rebecca's

 

We'll meet on March 29th at 7:30 to discuss Becky's pick, Sisters in Arms by Kaia Alderson. 

This month's pick is Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. We don't know much about Shakespeare's personal life, but this work of historical fiction nicely knits together some clues we do have to weave a story of a son lost too soon, and how his father would come to name one of his greatest characters for him. 

Meet in Stacey's backyard on March 1st at 7:30 pm. We'll have a fire going to help keep warm.

Louisa May Alcott

I saw this on the Facebook page "A Mighty Girl" today.

"Many people are familiar with Louisa May Alcott’s work as an author, but did you know that she was also served as a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War? In fact, she eventually adapted her letters home into a published book, “Hospital Sketches” -- a work that became famous long before she put pen to paper to start her classic book “Little Women.”

Alcott and her family were outspoken abolitionists who denounced slavery as the "wickedness of our country & the cowardice of the human race.” When war broke out, Alcott wished she could be on the front lines: “I long to be a man, but as I can’t fight, I will content myself with working for those who can,” she wrote in her journal. In 1862, she finally had her chance: she was assigned to work as a nurse in the Union Hotel U.S.A. General Hospital in Washington, D.C. under the famous social reformer Dorothea Dix.

While she initially cared for soldiers suffering from disease, she had a first-hand look at the true horrors of war when carts began bringing thousands of wounded men from the Battle of Fredericksburg. Alcott was shocked at first when a nurse asked her to start bathing the men, an unthinkable task for an unmarried woman, but soon discovered there were grimmer trials ahead. She assisted with anesthetic-free amputations, sat at deathbeds, and notified both patients and families about impending deaths. After six weeks, she left the hospital as a patient herself -- she had contracted typhoid fever and spent weeks in recovery.

While she was recovering, she gave her family permission to publish her letters home. Her series in the Boston Commonwealth magazine became a favorite of readers who were eager to hear about life on the war front. Later, she revised the letters into “Hospital Sketches” and added a fictional narrator, a woman named Tribulation Periwinkle. It's believed that Trib’s wry tone, heavy on satire, may have provided a way for Alcott to process her experiences treating the injured soldiers. And, while it's little known today, “Hospital Sketches” became Louisa May Alcott’s first widely popular work."