Call the Nurse

By Mary J. MacLeod & Claire Macdonald

Call the Nurse - Mary J. MacLeod & Claire Macdonald
  • Release Date: 2013-04-04
  • Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Score: 4
4
From 138 Ratings

Description

Tired of the pace and noise of life near London and longing for a better place to raise their young children, Mary J. MacLeod and her husband encountered their dream while vacationing on a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides. Enthralled by its windswept beauty, they soon were the proud owners of a near-derelict croft house—a farmer’s stone cottage—on “a small acre” of land. Mary assumed duties as the island’s district nurse. Call the Nurse is her account of the enchanted years she and her family spent there, coming to know its folk as both patients and friends.

In anecdotes that are by turns funny, sad, moving, and tragic, she recalls them all, the crofters and their laird, the boatmen and tradesmen, young lovers and forbidding churchmen. Against the old-fashioned island culture and the grandeur of mountain and sea unfold indelible stories: a young woman carried through snow for airlift to the hospital; a rescue by boat; the marriage of a gentle giant and the island beauty; a ghostly encounter; the shocking discovery of a woman in chains; the flames of a heather fire at night; an unexploded bomb from World War II; and the joyful, tipsy celebration of a ceilidh. Gaelic fortitude meets a nurse’s compassion in these wonderful true stories from rural Scotland.

Reviews

  • Call the Nurse

    5
    By Katleen16
    This is such a beautiful story, set on a primitive, remote island north of Scotland. The people and their lives are vividly described by the District Nurse, Mary J. MacLeod. Descriptions of the island itself are truly amazing. The lives of the people are difficult and hard to imagine. They come together to help each other in sad, often tragic circumstances. But there are many life-affirming events draw them even closer together. It is a harsh and draining way of life, but they prefer living as their ancestors did. And Nurse MacLeod and her family truly love this way of living and working.
  • Call the Nurse

    5
    By Moma Margaret
    A lovely read. Painterly descriptions of the dramatic seaside landscape and its matching weather. Touching stories of the beauty and tragedy of the isolated island life. The simplicity of these island stories revealed a vein of the deeper pain and joy of every life.
  • Call The Nurse

    5
    By PushpushStable
    I feel the call of the Hebrides. I almost believe I could find my way to the crofts. Simply a beautiful read.