Tired of the pace and noise of life near London and longing for a better place to raise their young children, Mary J. MacLeod and her husband encountered their dream while vacationing on a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides. Enthralled by its windswept beauty, they soon were the proud owners of a near-derelict croft house—a farmer’s stone cottage—on “a small acre” of land. Mary assumed duties … duties as the island’s district nurse. Call the Nurse is her account of the enchanted years she and her family spent there, coming to know its folk as both patients and friends.
In anecdotes that are by turns funny, sad, moving, and tragic, she recalls them all, the crofters and their laird, the boatmen and tradesmen, young lovers and forbidding churchmen. Against the old-fashioned island culture and the grandeur of mountain and sea unfold indelible stories: a young woman carried through snow for airlift to the hospital; a rescue by boat; the marriage of a gentle giant and the island beauty; a ghostly encounter; the shocking discovery of a woman in chains; the flames of a heather fire at night; an unexploded bomb from World War II; and the joyful, tipsy celebration of a ceilidh. Gaelic fortitude meets a nurse’s compassion in these wonderful true stories from rural Scotland.
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Makes you want to escape for a few years to a wonderful wilderness like this
A very enjoyable read. Fantastic description . Her lucid writing evokes a graphic visualisation of the Scottish isles . A style of care and practice of medicine which no longer exists. A simple humane caring practice which is fast disappearing in corporate medicine today.
As a retired L&D nurse I loved the book
. Well done and factual.
Refreshingly witty and homey story of her family’s time spent living on a remote Scottish island. The author has a flair for weaving the local people’s unique personalities and odd mores into her nursing experiences. Her interactions with family and the locals are witty, fresh and create an excellent read.
This memoir made me want to move to the Hebrides. I fell in love with the people who live on these beautiful but hard islands; they meet each day with humor and goodwill, they are quick to help a friend or stranger and they have an amazing sense of community. The stories Ms. MacLeod shared of her time there were tragic and heartbreaking but also …
This book belongs in the library of anyone who enjoys James Herriot’s stories.
As a public health nurse myself, I really enjoyed the book. Her experiences were better and more dramatic than a PBS special. The real people she wrote about tug at your heart strings. I really think this would be a fabulous movie series. I do highly recommend reading the Gaelic definitions first. Especially if you are not English since there …
This is an informative collection of short stories woven together in a Scottish background. Although the island where the stories take place is fictional, the descriptions are realistic and quite believable to the reader.
This book is a series of anecdotes about life on one of the Hebrides Islands in the nineteen seventies. The author, a district nurse on the island, has a wonderful gift for telling stories, and these tales about life on the island and the characters who lived there range from sad to extremely funny. I found it thoroughly enjoyable.
This book was very interesting because it takes place in modern times, but in a very remote setting where people still live like they did hundreds of years ago. It is a collection of short stories and characters, much like James Herriot’s books, but not as well written. It ends rather abruptly.
An interesting journal of a woman who moved to a remote Scottish island and worked as a nurse. Each chapter is a new story. There are several words that refer to things, foods, celebrations, etc that were unknown to me. I was reading the ebook so didn’t know there was a glossary at the end with some of the words in question. It was interesting to …
Love books that have anything to do with the medical field and real life stories. I also like books about the British Isles. Mary is a very good writer and I learned much about the Scottish people.
Loved it. Well, if I have to confess, with the Baden name of Bruce, I love all things Scottish!
Someone said it was along the lines of all creatures great and small… it wasn’t that goid
This non-fiction book written by a nurse working on the islands of Britain’s Hebrides. She and her family live in a home with no electricity, as she works to care for the injured and infirm of her island home. We meet the people, whose lives are intertwined in some most interesting ways in a place were everyone knows everyone else. Some …
Cute book. Loved the setting and characters
Great story of 20th century family living 19th century life on an island in the Hebrides In Scotland in the 1970’s. Humorous, inspiring with a nurse as the main character. Well written.
entertaining and both sad and funny in turn. Worthwhile read….
A 5th star would be for more developed characters.
Call The Nurse is the memoir of Mary MacLeod’s life on Papavray, a remote Outer Hebrides island off the coast of Northwest Scotland. Whether you’ve visited Scotland or not, you’re sure to be charmed by the quaint locals and to be amazed at the struggles of daily life on a tiny island.
The memoir is told in a sequential timeline of Ms. McLeod’s …