REVIEW: A Naval Surgeon to Fight For by Carla Kelly
Return to her respectable life…
Or take a scandalous path to marriage?
As her snobbish aunt’s companion, penniless vicar’s daughter Jerusha Langley is sent to take a donation to the local naval hospital. There she meets dashing surgeon Jamie Wilson and embarks on a secret mission—sneaking out to help him care for injured sailors!
With his life in peril fighting Napoleon, Jamie has never considered taking a wife, yet he’s impressed by Jerusha’s nursing ability—and beauty inside and out. Jamie knows she’s risking a scandal by helping him. Can he risk his heart and save her reputation with a marriage offer?
CW – Battlefield medicine is described, euthanasia is performed.
Dear Ms. Kelly,
I had a lot of fun with the light touches of humor amidst some darkness in this book and as it’s listed as part of the Channel Fleet series, I hope that some of the characters will be returned to. Fair warning to readers, the action takes place during 1805 when the Royal Navy was taking casualties during the blockade of the French fleet and ends just after the Battle of Trafalgar with descriptions of taking care of the wounded. Secondary characters are injured and some die.
Jerusha Langley gets saved by Scotsman James Wilson twice in this book. Once when she was nine and he pulls her from a pond and once when her aunt turns her out over Jerusha’s time spent helping with the “lower orders” in the naval hospital in Plymouth. Aunt Hortensia is such a snob and Jerusha has just ruined her efforts to claw her way into Plymouth Society.
Anyway, Jershua regrets lying to her aunt but not her decision to help take care of the wounded men of the Royal Navy (regardless of its deserved rakehell reputation). When a good deed leads to a conspiracy to reunite Jerusha with her surgeon husband now serving on a 74 gun warship and suddenly the French and Spanish ships break out of Cadiz, Jersuha finds herself in the middle of a war at sea seeing such horrific sights as she never thought she’d experience.
This is, may I say, fairly typical of a Kelly book with right thinking heros and heroines who do honorable things. One thing that I enjoyed here is that a few of the characters are a bit more nuanced showing both good and bad rather than the usual one or the other. Jerusha’s actions affected more than just herself and her aunt so the reaction of the servants who stood to lose their employment make sense to me. They might like her as a person but as they have so little themselves and their security depends on their betters, what she did is not easily forgiven.
James is a sweetheart as well as a dedicated surgeon. He’s a bit astounded that Jerusha has carried an emotional load of debt for the actions of their youth but soon puts her to work being a face washer, letter writer, and hand holder for the injured men in the blockhouse where he labors trying to do what he can with the medical knowledge he has. As it’s hard to do the most meticulous job of amputations on board a heaving warship in the channel, Jamie and his fellow surgeon (who is delightful) need to re-do some of these as well as take care of patients with burns, broken bones, and injuries from which they will not survive. Things can get intense during some of these scenes.
I like that Jerusha is faced with choices, choices which she realizes at the time will change her life and that she’s not afraid to take them. At twenty five, she has faced that bane of Regency unmarried women – being a spinster at home or becoming a fetcher, carrier, and arranger of shawls to a rich woman. Jerusha puts her foot down and makes her own decisions at that point rather than continue to allow others to do this for her.
There are some things which I am not sure about in the book such as where Jamie and Jerusha marry, a Navy captain flipping off another ship (that almost hit his) or that so many men would be nonchalant about or even encouraging of Jerusha learning suturing and debriding of wounds. Of course she jumps in where needed and helps out but maybe all these things would have been more accepted by military men knowing that, in a crunch, “all hands on deck” could be needed. However even as I paused while reading and mentally said “really?” I found I didn’t care. The whole here is so lovely and I spent a wonderful time among these (mostly) caring characters. B+
~Jayne
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Anything by Carla Kelly is an automatic buy for me. I love that her heroes and heroines tend to be ordinary people rather than the aristocracy. Her characters are well-developed and realistic, and she clearly has done her research on the time period. I enjoyed this book, and it prompted me to go back and reread some of her earlier romances. While a little lighter on subject matter, they have stood the test of time.
@Daran: Yes for ordinary people characters. Is this book part of an already established series? I see it listed as “The Channel Fleet” but didn’t see any other books with that designation.
I also enjoyed this!
Jayne, Marrying the Captain / The Surgeon’s Lady / Marrying the Royal Marine are all older Carla Kelly titles that are part of the Channel Fleet.
@Kareni: Thanks. I thought of those three books but since they’re so much older, I wondered if this was the start of a new series.
I have this on my TBR! I’m in a Susanna Kearsley rabbithole at present but when I surface from it I must read this one.
Now this morning I see on Amazon that this book is listed as part of the Lord Ratliffe’s Daughters series. But the original three books in that series aren’t. And Jerusha is definitely not one of Ratliffe’s daughters. I’m curious as to who handles what is listed about a book online? The publisher?
@Jayne:
I doubt it was the publisher. The physical book lists this book as belonging to The Channel Fleet; and lists the earlier three books as Lord Radcliffe’s Daughters (which is exactly correct) but not as Channel Fleet.
So someone messed up somewhere…probably Amazon.
The site Fantastic Fiction was around before most authors had websites and before Amazon grouped series. Fantastic Fiction is still my preferred site to figure out series, series order, and author pseudonyms.