Author(s): Mary Farrell
Format: Hardback
No. of Pages: 160
Publisher: Abrams
Language: English
Date Published: 2014-02-25
Dimensions: 218 x 258 x 20mm
Publication City/Country: New York, United States
Edition:
Illustrations:

In the early 1940s, a number of young women enlisted for peacetime duty as United States Army Nurses. However, in 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, blasting the United States into World War II. Ninety-eight American Army and Navy nurses serving in the Philippines learned to treat wounded and dying soldiers while bombs exploded all around them. Captured as prisoners of war by the Japanese, they suffered disease and near-starvation for three years. American forces re-took the Philippines late in the war and the nurses were commanded by their superior officers to keep quiet about what happened. Their country needed them to return to being "ladies," domestic, safe and fragile. Pure Grit is a story of sisterhood and suffering, of death and life, of how the women cared for each other and honoured their vocation to nurse anyone in need, all ninety-eight coming home alive.