Julia Gregson - The water Horse

reviewed by Barbara Simpson 26th Feb 09.
It is based on the life of a remarkable young woman in the 1800's. Catherine Carrag is a girl brought up on a farm in an isolated community in Wales. Her childhood friend is Deio, a drovers son, whose love for and skill with horses is recognised by all.
A tragedy in her family inspires Catherine to become involved in medicine and, with Deios help, she runs away to London where she is taken on as a maid in Miss Florence Nightingale's home for sick governesses. Whilst there she picks up nursing skills and when Miss Nightingale is asked to take 40 nurses to the Crimea to help in the hospital at Scutari, Catherine volunteers to join the group.
After a terrible journey in the depths of winter, the party arrives in Turkey and for the first month the nurses are confined to filthy rooms, well away from the wounded soliers. Women have never been involved in war before and their presence is resented and feared. But eventually, their help is needed and they go onto the wards to find conditions that are truly dreadful. Disease is rife, there is a total lack of hygiene, wounded men are left for days, their wounds untouched, to die from fever and disease, huge rats tun wild and the stench of rotting flesh and death fills the air. The few doctors are on the verge of insanity from the sheer scale of the problems they face.
While Catherine is travelling to the battle fields, her friend Deio, has become involved in providing horses for the cavalry and he too, goes to Turkey.. Of course they are eventually reunited and after an eye-opening and horrific account of the Crimean War, the book tails off into an ending that is, in the view of this reader, completely at odds with the rest of the story and totally anti-climatic.
Worth reading until the very end!