Flight of the Wild Swan

January 15, 2024
A fresh imagining of an icon. Complicating the image of Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) as a saintly ministering angel, Pritchard draws on her subject's voluminous correspondence and journals to create a nuanced portrait of a woman characterized by one contemporary as "an unsexed creature of narcissism, self-regard, and icy ambition." Raised in wealth, educated by her erudite father, Nightingale refused to conform to passive, frivolous Victorian womanhood. "I may not know why I was born," she writes in her commonplace book, "but it cannot be to wage war on dust and broken crockery." She desperately wants to help her father's poor, struggling tenants. "I long to live with them," she admits. "I am drawn to sickness," she says elsewhere. When she is 17, God speaks to her, calling her to end the world's suffering, a command that fuels her life's work. She visits hospitals, orphanages and asylums. She reads government reports on hospital systems and workhouses, taking copious notes. To her mother's dismay, she refuses a marriage proposal from an ardent suitor, instead pressing her parents for permission to train as a nurse. Living at home, she feels herself becoming "a seething creature, poisoned by rage, with an oversized brain"--until finally her father relents. Pritchard recounts her training in Germany and Paris; her growing reputation; and her intense friendship with statesman Sidney Herbert, who persuades her to lead a contingent of nurses to the Crimea. Faced with filth, vermin, disease, lack of supplies, and hostility from the doctor in charge, Nightingale nevertheless prevails. "'Nightingale power, '" Pritchard writes, became "a much-used phrase around the hospital, a reference to her uncanny ability to procure whatever she wants by argument, persuasion, donations, use of her own funds, or other more mysterious, coercive, or stealthy means." God's selfless and compassionate servant, in Pritchard's portrayal, is an indomitable force. A brisk, perceptive narrative.

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Starred review from January 29, 2024
Pritchard’s splendid latest illuminates the life of Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) by portraying the idiosyncratic woman behind the Victorian icon. When Florence is a teen, her mother judges her “aloof” and “obstinate,” while her father appreciates her intellect. At 16, Florence believes she hears God charging her to end the world’s suffering. Her landed gentry parents reject her pleas to study nursing, however, as they consider the work to be squalid and menial. Florence spends a decade of forced inaction in deepening despair before she attempts suicide and her parents relent. By 30, she’s a seasoned medical administrator who calls sanitation, hygiene, and statistics her “Earthly deities.” Meanwhile, Britain is fighting Russia in the Crimea, where injured British soldiers face horrific conditions. Florence’s friend Sidney Herbert, Britain’s secretary of war, authorizes her to lead a contingent of nurses—the first women nurses for the British armed forces—to reform a military hospital near Constantinople. She arrives in 1854 to find the building rotting, the men in charge contemptuous, and hospital supplies insufficient to meet the seemingly endless stream of maimed soldiers, many dying of diseases rather than battlefield injuries. The novel’s brief scenes are both vividly intimate and wide-angled enough to capture the complexity of Florence’s life and times. Pritchard excels in this marvelous and moving work. Agent: Joy Harris, Joy Harris Literary.

March 15, 2024
Drawing on Florence Nightingale's extensive letters and journals, Pritchard strips away sentimental imagery to uncover the brilliant, ""deeply human"" woman who pioneered modern nursing. Born into privilege in nineteenth-century England, Florence was drawn to science and math from childhood and driven by ""God's voice"" to care for the sick and the poor. Uninterested in conventional female pursuits, she was a wild swan among the ducks. Eventually allowed to train as a nurse, Florence famously served wounded British soldiers during the Crimean War. Returning to England, she utilized her reputation and connections to make groundbreaking reforms in nursing education, public health, and the practice of applied statistics. Her story unfolds primarily in Florence's inner voice, revealing an intense, sharply observant, and emotionally complex character. From country houses to city slums and distant war zones, Pritchard renders the people and places of Florence's world in lush, richly detailed prose. Flight of the Wild Swan marshals the ""immense collation of intimate thoughts"" in Nightingale's papers into a compelling story and satisfyingly human portrait of an extraordinary woman.

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