Sparrow’s Song by Marilee Aufdenkamp
The Coffee Pot Book Club Blog Tour
Sparrow’s Song by Marilee Aufdenkamp
I’m elated to be highlighting Sparrow’s Song by Marilee Aufdenkamp on the blog today, a sweeping novel following a nurse through two decades and both World Wars. You can find the book description and an excerpt below.
Book Description
Shortly after Kathryn Scheibel leaves her cigar making job in 1917, she enters the Army School of Nursing, a pioneering WWI nurse training program that offers the education she’s longed for but couldn’t afford. More than two decades later, her career carries her, as an instructor, into the Cadet Nurse Corps, the federal WWII nursing education initiative created to support the war effort. There she sees the same pressures she once felt now directed at students with even fewer protections. When two Black students are treated unfairly, Kathryn must decide how to respond.
Sparrow’s Song is a sweeping, intimate novel about resilience and belonging, rooted in the real history of wartime federal nursing education and the evolving landscape of modern American nursing. At its heart is a young immigrant woman pushing herself toward the advantages she’s convinced education will unlock, even as that drive pulls her away from the people and heritage she loves.
Buy Link:
Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/3GyLvO
Excerpt
This is excerpt number 3 on the blog tour. To read the other excerpts click the image below.
It was nearly four o’clock Thursday morning when Kathryn boarded train number 29, the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Broadway Limited, traveling westbound along the New York to Chicago corridor. Under normal circumstances, she would have taken advantage of the cool sheets and soft mattress in her roomette on the all Pullman train, but these were far from normal circumstances. Having no desire to remain boxed in her room, she found her way to the observation car and settled into a generous blue club chair. The soft lighting and the copper and rose-colored walls did little to relax her. She sat quietly and willed herself to focus on the rhythm of the wheels singing along the tracks. At the other end of the car, a young man sat slumped in his chair, his chin resting on his chest, unbothered by the rhythmic bobbing of his head. She had no desire to sleep, and she had every desire to sleep. She put her bag on the empty chair beside her and draped her sweater across her lap. It was much more likely she would need a fan than a sweater in July. Even so, one could never tell how cold it would be in unfamiliar territory. Though her ticket said Gorham, Nebraska, it had been eleven years since her father’s passing and her last trip home and she felt like she was heading into an uncertain domain.
The train rolled on and she looked out into the shapeless night. How grateful she was for Helen’s easy, undemanding friendship. “You go,” Helen told her. “I’ll figure something out for your students while you’re away.”
Her train was due into Chicago’s Union Station at eight o’clock. At five-thirty that evening, she would board the Denver Zephyr for the final ten hours of her journey home. “I’ll send a telegram to President Carthage as soon as I arrive in Chicago to let him know what happened and to assure him I’ll be back in time for my interview,” she’d told Helen. She reached into her purse for a handkerchief, feeling more numb than teary. And angry, she thought. I am so angry I don’t know what to do with myself. She folded her handkerchief into a small, neat square, placed it in the palm of her left hand, and squeezed her hand into a fist.
Kathryn fought to keep her mind off Wilbur. She thought about the recent tea at the Carthage home. Everyone was so excited about the Victory Gardens. My family has put up more beans and tomatoes than these women with their Victory Gardens will put up in a lifetime. She bristled at the nonsense she’d had to listen to while Gloria and Mrs. Carthage went on about the brave way the women of Ohio were enduring the hardships of rationing. My family has faced hardships these women will never understand, but we don’t call attention to ourselves. We do what we have to do whenever it is necessary. The whole community works together, and we face whatever it is we have to face.
Kathryn visualized the scene Millie described in a recent letter. Millie, Mutter, and Anna, sitting in the church basement on a Saturday afternoon, laughing and talking with the other women from the congregation, swapping recipes and rationing stamps, and just as they always had, figuring out how to make the best of it. Making the best of it was one of the things about her family and her community she’d least admired as a girl. What she once thought of as a weakness, she now recognized as the embodiment of strength. Another hour and it would be time to change trains in Chicago. Suddenly, she had an intense longing for home.
Author Bio
Marilee Aufdenkamp
Marilee Aufdenkamp is a retired nurse educator who taught undergraduate nursing for twenty six years before turning her full time focus to historical fiction. She writes early to mid twentieth century stories grounded in immigrant experience and working class life.
Her debut novel, Sparrow’s Song, was inspired by her early nursing career in Nebraska, where she came to admire the Germans from Russia she cared for at the end of their lives.
Originally from Southern California, she has spent her adult life in Nebraska.
Author Links:
Website: https://marileeaufdenkamp.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarileeAufdenkampWriting/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marileeaufdenkampwriting/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/55952096.Marilee_Aufdenkamp