The Healer's War

Name: The Healer's War
Author: Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
ISBN: 9780575125711

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

award won

score

The Healer's War

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

award won

score

See the full ranking

The Healer's War won the 1989 Nebula Award for Best Novel of 1988. Elizabeth Ann Scarborough draws on her own personal experiences as a nurse in Vietnam during the war to create the central character, Lt. Kitty McCulley. McCulley, a young and inexperienced nurse tossed into a stressful and chaotic situation, is having a difficult time reconciling her duty to help and heal with the indifference and overt racism of some of her colleagues and with the horrendously damaged soldiers and Vietnamese civilians whom she encounters during her service at the China Beach medical facilities. She is unexpectedly helped by the mysterious and inexplicable properties of an amulet, given to her by one of her patients, an elderly, dying Vietnamese holy man, which allows her to see other people's 'auras' and to understand more about them as a result. This eventually leads to a strange, almost surrealistic journey through the jungle, accompanied by a one-legged boy and a battle-seasoned but crazed soldier and, by the end of the journey, McCulley has found herself and a way to live and survive through the madness and destruction.

Buy this book at Amazon