When Beth desires to attend medical school, a monetary malady develops, and it’s up to Kerry to find a remedy.
Kerry O’Shea has the luck of the Irish. At the end of the Gay Nineties, she met nurse Beth Hammond, and the turn of the century took a turn for the better when their friendship turned to courtship.
Now the sweethearts are in love in perpetuity in all their glory—until Beth discloses her desire to become a doctor.
Kerry falls ill at ease, showing signs of both alarm and alacrity. As a member of the kitchen staff at a grand hotel, Kerry is overworked and underpaid. And if Beth gets accepted to medical school, Kerry will become their sole provider while her lover attends university full-time. Yet Kerry cares too much about Beth to dissuade her from following her ambition, and instead vows to aid Beth in any way she can.
However, just because she can doesn’t mean she should. Kerry’s remedy for their monetary malady would require her past, which was never in the best of health, to come out of remission. If Kerry carries out her plan, the future doctor is in for a surprise. Will the sweethearts remain inseparable, or will Kerry do damage that’s irreparable?
With their Boston marriage based in San Francisco, it’s no wonder the lovers are facing an uphill battle. Reading this book, on the other hand, is downhill all the gay. Er, way. Author Kathleen Knowles has penned the literary equivalent of a medical marvel. The story is taut as a tourniquet, the prose written with the precision of a doctor making an incision. The dignified dialogue feels true to the time period, and its formality is offset by a thorough examination of the characters’ thoughts and actions.
Elizabeth Blackwell may have been the first female in the United States to earn a degree in medicine, but Beth Hammond knows how to operate on a patriarchal profession herself. And that’s all Blackwell and good. So too is A Spark of Heavenly Fire, which merits a clean bill of health.