COME WITH ME by PAM BAYFIELD
A VOYAGE WITH PAM BAYFIELD AND JOAN FISHER
This journey of a brave young nurse to her life of service to others is told with sympathy, understanding and then crafted into a beautifully written story by Pam Bayfield. Joan Fisher shares her memories with Pam in such a way that the reader is drawn into the anticipation, excitement, fear and reality of war service under challenging conditions.
The love stories of the girls are told through their letters and the intimacy of the moments thus explored makes inspiring reading.
Going to foreign ports Joan and her friends Ida and Winsome could never have dreamt of, we share the taste of places as strange to them as they would have been to us and through her own skill as a story teller, Pam shows us the emotional roller coaster of girls in their early twenties, much less prepared for life than young women of our time.
A sense of period is contained yet described in such fine detail it is almost as if we are also in Aden, Borneo as well as on the hospital ship.
Like many dedicated to the service of others, Joan Fisher describes caring for others as ‘a privilege’.
This book is essential reading for any young women contemplating entering the Defence Force nursing or indeed hospital nursing for it will give them an insight into the lives of those who have gone before, the empathy and also sadness with the patients needed to make a good nurse. More importantly, to the general reader, and those retired from nursing professionally, it will be a reminder of the sacrifices of the few for the many.
Congratulations to Pam Bayfield for making Joan Fisher’s story so readable.
Renée Goossens
8 February 2010
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