Central Kansas Library System

Believing rumors that credit Miss Hearse, the new school nurse, with being a monstrous-looking, frightening personage, a young boy vows to do whatever is necessary to avoid getting sick.

Describes the life of the founder of modern nursing and humanitarian who reformed hospital care in the nineteenth century.

Tells the stories of three families who were helped by the work of Mary Breckinridge, the first nurse to go into the Appalachian Mountains and give medical care to the isolated inhabitants. Includes an afterword with facts about Breckinridge and the Frontier Nursing Service she founded.

Through ghostly visitation and a diary that seems mysteriously to write itself with twelve-year-old Abby's hands, a Civil War nurse asks for help with medical supplies across an abyss of 133 years.