The Nurse's Secret by Amanda Skenandore ~ Book Review

It's 1880's New York city, a time when either you were part of the rich elite or part of the poorest of the poor in the slums.  Una Kelley has grown up in the slums, being mentored by a con-woman in charge of a ring of female grifters. She has survived by following a set of rules she has made for herself that she always follows.   Una has learned her "job" well over the years, but when an opportunity presents itself to make a little extra cash selling a pair of cufflinks to another "fence" (someone who purchases stolen goods to resell) she decides to take the risk.  But when her fence turns up dead at their meeting spot and her fellow thief pins her for the murder, Una is forced to be on the run.  Contemplating where to run to, Una comes across an ad for a program to train nurses at the Bellevue Hospital and decides that would be the perfect place to hide in plain sight and maybe after training it will get her into the homes of the rich where she can continue her grifting under cover.  But in order to get past the application process Una is going have to pass herself off as someone she is nowhere near being.  Unexpectedly she makes it through and is accepted as a nurse trainee in the first nurse's school of it's kind in the country modeled after Florence Nightingale's practices and school in London.  At first Una finds it hard to fit in, balking at being ordered around by the doctors and performing menial tasks.   When her talkative roommate befriends her and helps her to study, Una starts to find herself actually starting to fit in.  But then a person from her past shows up as a patient and Una is terrified of being exposed.  When the woman turns up dead Una must choose between protecting herself or trying to find and expose the killer who just might be linked to the murder she is wanted for.  Can her rules from the streets protect her here?

I really enjoyed this historical fiction/mystery.  It's a new to me author and I found her writing style to engage me right from the beginning.  The author did a great job of relaying how hard things were for those who lived in the slums and how some had to resort to means they never really wanted to just to survive.  It was interesting reading about the very first nurse's school and how different it was for potential nurses back then.  They were bound by the prejudices of the day where doctors did not want women in their field, believed them to be unable to handle the demands of the work and basically treated them as servants who were to obey without question their every order, right or wrong.  They were held to very high standards right from the application process to graduating.  They had to be well-educated, Christian and unmarried which made Una's character so interesting in how she navigated this foreign-to-her world in order to deceive everyone into thinking she was someone she was not.   I loved Una's growth as a character through the story.  Though I did find the portrayal of the some of the Christians in the story cringe worthy, I am not naive enough not to realize that back in Victorian days, and even today, those attitudes towards the poor do exist.  I found the story to be a good page turner keeping me engaged in a point in time about a subject I have not read about before.

I rated it a 9.5/10

2023 Reading Challenge Goal Met:  One book a month from my library list