The Glory Cloak - by Patricia O'Brien (Paperback)

About the Book

In a gripping tale of love, loss, liberation and the endurance of women's friendships, heroine Susan Gray opens a window to the lives of women who served as nurses during the Civil War.

Book Synopsis

From childhood, Susan Gray and her cousin Louisa May Alcott have shared a safe, insular world of adventures--a world that begins to evaporate with the outbreak of the Civil War. Frustrated with sewing uniforms and wrapping bandages, the two women journey to Washington, D.C.'s Union Hospital to volunteer as nurses. Which is a horrifying experience. There they meet the Clara Barton--the legendary Angel of the Battlefield--and she becomes their idol and mentor. Soon one wounded soldier begins to captivate and puzzle them all--a man who claims to be a blacksmith, but whose appearance and sharp intelligence suggest he might not be who he says he is.

Journeying through the apex of Louisa's fame as the author of Little Women, and Lincoln's appointment of Clara, this novel is ultimately the story of friendship between the women who broke the mold society set for them.

Review Quotes

Robert Morgan bestselling author of Gap Creek From the radical, transcendentalist village life of nineteenth-century Concord, Massachusetts, to the horrors of the Civil War hospitals in Washington, D.C., Patricia O'Brien has given us a portrait of our country at its time of greatest peril and greatest hope. Part romance, part mystery, part history, The Glory Cloak is most of all a story of remarkable women, their private struggles and public deeds that helped make possible the best of our own world.

Gore Vidal Louisa May Alcott and Clara Barton are splendid protagonists in this vivid and revealing story of our Civil War.