Faithful Heart

OTHER BOOKS BY AL LACY

For Linda Sears,

one of my most ardent fans.
Her husband tells me she has “Lacy withdrawal”
between publication of my novels.

The Lord bless you, Linda!
P
HILIPPIANS
1:3

As Hippocrates (460-370 BC) is known as the father of organized medicine, Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) is known as the mother of organized nursing. Miss Nightingale’s rise to fame was a result of her nursing care for soldiers of the British Army during the Crimean War in Turkey, 1853-1856. In her thirties at that time, she blazed a trail that led to nursing being recognized as a profession rather than a menial service. She often spoke of nursing as an art as well as a science. She once wrote:

For centuries the world had no organized training program for nurses. Nurses learned while working with physicians in clinics and in hospitals with experienced nurses, but not until Miss Nightingale founded the Nightingale Training School for Nurses in England in 1860 was there an institution established for the express purpose of training nurses.

The aims of her school were to train hospital nurses, clinic nurses, and visiting nurses who worked in private homes with the sick and the aged. The length of the program was one year, after which the nurses were placed on the staff of a hospital for two years’ further experience.

In the early nineteenth century, the status of nursing in the United States was identical to that in England prior to the
influence of Florence Nightingale. Nurses were trained in large city hospitals, but the training was far from sufficient to equip the young women for the task they faced.

Many nurses were trained working at the sides of physicians. The American Medical Association (formed in 1847) recognized these physician-trained nurses, and by recommendation of the instructor-physicians, awarded them special certificates.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, neither the Union nor the Confederacy had an army nurse corps, but after the first battles the need for nurses became imperative. Those recognized physician-trained nurses were few and far between, but they were pushed into service as quickly as possible. Many hospital-trained nurses were sent into service for the military, and a multitude of other women served as untrained volunteers.

What few Civil War records exist estimate that some ten thousand nurses—trained and untrained—were engaged in nursing and field hospital administration during the Civil War.

The most famous of these were Clara Barton, Dorothea Lynde Dix, Mary Ann Bickerdyke, and Louisa May Alcott. Sometime during the bloody four years of the Civil War (620,000 men died), the soldiers dubbed these gallant women “angels of mercy.” Nurses were labeled as such throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century and for the first few years of the twentieth century.

Following the Civil War, interest in training “angels of mercy” was high, and culminated in the almost simultaneous founding of three schools in 1873, which were approved by the American Medical Association. They were: Bellevue Training School in New York City, Connecticut Training School in New Haven, and Boston Training School.

Nursing has been called the oldest of the arts and the youngest of the professions. Although many believe that nursing began with Florence Nightingale, in actuality nursing is as old as medicine itself. Miss Nightingale established the first institution for the express purpose of training nurses, but throughout human history an interdependence of medicine and nursing has produced a unique and exceptional relationship.

The history of nursing clearly demonstrates the most valuable aspect of nursing: care and caring. Caring is the essence of nursing—caring for, caring with, and caring about. But caring alone was not sufficient to nurture health, properly relieve the sick, injured, and wounded, or overcome disease. The development of nursing depended on two additional ingredients: knowledge and skill. Thus the heart, the head, and the hands were united to provide the necessary foundation for nursing to become both an art and a science.

In my creation of Breanna Baylor, I have sought to give my readers a tender, loving, compassionate young Christian woman with the heart, head, and hands of the model nurse who fulfills a need in her century, and would fill it in this century if she lived today.

It is my earnest desire that Breanna—our angel of mercy—will inspire all of her readers with the courage and compassion she portrays.

Since the Angel of Mercy series is a spinoff of Questar Publishers’s Journeys of the Stranger series, and since
Faithful Heart
is the second book of the Angel series, let me lay a brief foundation for our new readers.

In
Legacy
, the first book of the Stranger series, the mysterious John Stranger met and fell in love with nurse Breanna Baylor. Breanna found herself falling in love with John also, but because she had been jilted in the past by a man named Frank Miller only days before their wedding day, she feared being hurt again and sent John out of her life.

Loving Breanna as he did, John gave in to her wishes. But he told her that though she would not see him, he would be near at times to watch over her, and that she would never be out of his heart. When he rode away from her that day in Wichita, Kansas, Breanna knew before he passed from her sight that she had made an awful mistake. She was desperately in love with him … but it was too late. He was out of earshot. She could not call him back.

In the weeks and months that followed (through the rest of
Legacy, Silent Abduction
, and
Blizzard)
, John Stranger was near when Breanna faced danger and death. He delivered her from danger each time, and more than once saved her life, all without
the two of them exchanging words.

Breanna was eager to tell John that she had made a horrible mistake by sending him out of her life and that she loved him with all her heart. She prayed earnestly that the Lord would bring John back so she could talk to him, but circumstances prevailed, keeping it from happening.

Then in
A Promise for Breanna
, the first book in the Angel of Mercy series, God in His own time and His own way brought them together. Breanna had experienced a recurring dream in which John had come riding across the rugged land at sunset to meet her at a cabin in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies. The dream had always ended just as she was pouring out her heart to John and asking his forgiveness for sending him out of her life.

Breanna was aboard a wagon train in Wyoming, headed for California. Frank Miller was following the train, intending to kill her. Several days previously, Lorraine Miller had been shot accidentally by Frank in South Pass City. Breanna was there filling in as town physician and had performed surgery on Lorraine.

In spite of Breanna’s efforts, Lorraine died on the operating table. Frank believed Breanna could have saved her, but let Lorraine die to get back at him for jilting her. He was now bent on revenge. At the same time, John Stranger was riding toward the wagon train to look in on Breanna, though as usual, he would remain out of her sight.

A serious problem had developed for Breanna. Red Claw, a Snake Indian chief, had set his wanton eyes on her. Red Claw and his warriors had continually attacked the wagon train, and were still a threat. More than anything, Red Claw wanted to capture Breanna, and made plans to do so. Breanna’s deliverance from Red Claw and her reunion with John Stranger forms the exciting conclusion to Book One of this new series.

John Stranger and Breanna were finally back together. And this time, it was no dream.