Catherine Bourne

Florence Nightingale Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

Sold to AST/Russia, Blanvalet/Random/Germany,Damm/Norway. Commercial women’s novel.

There’s nothing old fashioned about the three young nurses in this book. They are more like characters out of Valley of the Dolls or The Best of Everything. Grace, Cherry and Joanne share a house and commute to Manhattan from a small remote fishing village in the north Bronx of Manhattan called City Island. It is home to an old seafarer’s bar called ‘Nightingales’ , where they often gather after their shifts to unwind. It’s the story of Grace, and her relationship with a movie star patient, small town Cherry who is looking for Park Avenue doctor-husband and biker chic Joanne, who looks like Cher when she was 30, and is addicted to her drug addict ex-husband. These modern nurses – women on the forefront of medicine have to fight for respect amidst the hierarchy of the metropolitan hospital where women are still the lowest on the totem pole as far as the male surgeons, administrators and doctors are concerned. Grace, Cherry and Joanne juggle with 24 hour shifts, moment to moment emergencies and dramatic life and death events, as they try to figure out what they really want in life. Ultimately, they realize that the friendship they share is what gets them through thick n thin and that the vow they made, just like the famous Florence made, is one they cherish and will stick to forever.