Author Talk: Mary Cronk Farrell

Mary Cronk Farrell will talk about her new book, Pure Grit: How American World War II Nurses Survived Battle and Prison Camp in the Pacific. While the book is aimed at young adults, readers of all ages have gravitated to this story of resilience and survival. In the early 1940s, young women enlisted for peacetime duty as U.S. Army nurses. But when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 brought the United States into the Second World War, 101 American Army and Navy nurses serving in the Philippines suddenly found themselves treating wounded and dying soldiers while bombs exploded all around them. The women served in jury-rigged jungle hospitals on the Bataan Peninsula and in underground tunnels on Corregidor Island. Later, when most of them were captured by the Japanese as prisoners of war, they suffered disease and near-starvation for three years. Pure Grit is a story of sisterhood and suffering, of tragedy and betrayal, of death and life. The women cared for one another, maintained discipline, and honored their vocation to nurse anyone in need— and all 101 returned home alive.