Novel of the love affair of a Welsh girl set against the harsh backdrop of the Crimean War Rating
Rating: 3 Stars
“I stopped at a tiny chapel in a place called Pumpsaint and saw a plaque commemorating a woman called Jane Evans,” says Band of Angeles author Jilua Gregson. “In 1853 she left this tiny place and went away with Florence Nightingale in order to nurse with her in the Crimean War. I felt a buzz: What bravery. What terror. What did her family think? I had found my story. Sometimes I wish I could tell Jane Evans how much she has changed my life.”
Band of Angels is a stark look at the lives of soldiers and the nurses who cared for them during the Crimean War. The love story between Catherine and Deio is full of strife and the horrors of war. At times the story slows down, burdened by too much detail. The graphic horrors of this powerfully written book will disturb some readers.
It’s Wales, 1844. Catherine Carreg loves to race her pony against her best friend Deio, the cattle driver’s son. However, as she’s gotten older there’s talk that Catherine’s too wild. Catherine just wants to get away. She joins Florence Nightingale as a nurse and goes
to a battlefield hospital in the Crimean War. Deio joins the army. What have they gotten themselves into? Can love overcome the horrors of war?
For centuries men herded their cattle and sheep, and even geese across England. Gregson was riding a horse across Wales, where she lives, exploring the old drovers roads. It was on her way home that she discovered the Jane Evans plaque in a chapel in Pumpsaint.
“Sometimes when you’re researching a book, there are peculiar moments of serendipity,” says Gregson. “One of mine came when I had gone to the Lleyn Peninsular, on a freezing cold November Day, to research the cattle drovers who virtually stopped existing when the trains came to Wales in 1860.”
“I went to a tiny chapel on a high windy hill and there was a man inside it praying,” says Gregson. “When he came out, I told him why I was there, and he told me, he was the great grandson of a drover,” says Gregson. “He talked to me for an hour; it was wonderful and so lucky.”
Gregson took many trips to medical museums in London. She went to the British Library and to the Florence Nightingale Museum at St Thomas’s Hospital in London. “The staff there were really helpful,” says Gregson. “They have some fascinating exhibits about Nightingale and the nurses on display. Well worth a visit.”
Julia Gregson was born in London and currently lives in the countryside in Wales. She’s currently working on a book called, Jasmine Nights, set in 1942 North Africa and Istanbul. Her website is: www.juliagregson.net
Band of Angels by Julia Gregson. Paperback: 464 pages, Publisher: Touchstone; Original edition (May 18, 2010). Language: English, ISBN: 978-1439101131 $16.00
