Fresh air, warm blankets, and nourishing food-what poppycock for Britain’s sturdy fighting men!įor her entire life, Florence would experience this push-pull for her many programs designed to change nursing and hospitals. Military leadership was aghast at how she wanted to “coddle” soldiers. He was amazed at the revolutionary way she viewed patient care and enthusiastically worked to implement Florence’s proposed reforms for military hospitals and treatments. She had her great supporters-most notably Sidney Herbert, Secretary at War.
I would almost say that her contemporaries were a bit taken aback by her. Do you think contemporaries of Florence may have judged her harshly? Your portrayal of her as a working woman, questioning what is going on around her, makes sense to a 21st-century reader, but as you make clear, in the 19th century she was something of an aberration. I know that some of Nightingale’s contemporaries found her aggressive and hard to handle, for want of a better expression. I think she would have been so happy about it. I wish mom could have known that the series started in homage to her really did hit the shelves. My mother died in 2015 after years of chronic illness. Then Crooked Lane Books said, “Let’s do it!” My agent said, “Eureka!” My mother was pleased as punch. While in the middle of my Lady of Ashes Victorian-set mystery series, my agent suggested that I develop another series to run alongside it.įlorence Nightingale immediately flashed in my mind. However, she maintained her nursing license until the day she died because she was so proud of having earned it.
My mother had spent years as an RN before a knee injury sidelined her. Looking back on it, I suppose writing about Florence was fate. How did you settle on writing about her?Ĭhristine Trent: She really was remarkable, wasn’t she? A one-woman wrecking ball to the firmly entrenched private and military medical establishments. Robin Agnew for Mystery Scene: I love both Florence Nightingale your character, and Florence Nightingale the person. The first one had a bit of a goth feel, the second plunges Florence into the heart of Victorian London, with all it’s plusses and minuses. I read Christine Trent’s first Florence Nightingale book, No Cure for the Dead, and loved her fresh take on a great historical figure as well as her mad skills at crafting a traditional detective novel. Eleven books ago, when I first started writing, I made the decision to write about women in unusual professions.
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