Beyond All Price by Carolyn Poling Schriber (Katzenhaus Books)
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Product Description
Beyond All Price is a historical novel, based on the real life story of Nellie M. Chase, a Union nurse during America’s Civil War. She had eloped at the age of nineteen with a man she later discovered was a "drunk, a gambler, a liar, a forger, and a thief." She was strong enough to escape from that potentially abusive relationship and resourceful enough to find a job as wardrobe mistress for a theater. The woman with whom she shared a single room in a squalid tenement took an overdose of opium in an effort to escape a life of prostitution. Nellie joined the Union Army, because life in the midst of a war seemed safer than the one she had been living.
She found a home with the 100th Pennsylvania Regiment, a band of volunteers whose nickname was “The Roundhead Regiment” because of their strong religious beliefs. She believed so passionately in her country’s cause that she displayed a soldier’s bravery. Her skill and compassion led one of her patients to write, “Even here, amid the roar and carnage, was found a woman with the soul to dare danger; the heart to sympathize with the battle-stricken; sense, skill, and experience to make her a treasure beyond all price.”
She was equally at home managing a southern plantation full of abandoned slaves, a battlefield operating station, or a 600-bed military hospital. But after the war, her deep-seated need to dedicate her life to a worthy cause continued to drive her efforts until she faced an enemy more lethal than war.
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