The Woman at the Front

In the early 1900s, female doctors were still a rarity and were often looked down on not only by their male counterparts but also by the people in their community. Such is the case for Eleanor Atherton, who passed medical school with flying colors only to always be seen as secondary to her father.

She is given a chance to redeem herself when the local dowager countess sends her to France to bring her injured son back home to recover. Eleanor leaps at the opportunity, only to find that neither the war nor the injured man, her brother’s childhood friend, are what she expected. The man is shallow and pleasure-seeking, hardly the hero she built him up to be. The war sucks her in, bringing her from helping out with one man to volunteering to serve on the front line.

That in itself would be a compelling story. The romance added on will be either the cherry on top or a distraction from a more interesting narrative, depending on your personal taste. I went back and forth on it chapter by chapter. On the whole, however, I found myself utterly engrossed.