Read it for David Blight's civil war course at Yale or Itunes. ( )

Tribulation Periwinkle has gone from her home in the North to Washington D.C. to be a nurse for the wounded soldiers of the Army of the Potomac. She describes, in what reads like a diary of recollections, her trip from home to D.C., her arrival at the understaffed hospital, where she is thrown into the care of dying men, and her own subsequent illness that takes her back to her home again.

Several of the vignettes are quite poignant, recounting the suffering and dying around her. She also tackles the attitudes and treatment of the black servants that work in and around the hospital, and who receive as harsh a rejection from these Northerners as they might have expected from the South, which gives Alcott a forum to advocate for more than Abolition, but also for fair treatment of these newly freed men.

This is a quick read and an important one. Louisa May Alcott writes fiction, but it is informed by personal experience, and her own nursing of soldiers during the Civil War makes this a very realistic depiction. An early advocate for rights for both women and blacks, Alcott is a voice of the future and a glimpse into the past.
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I read most of Louisa May Alcott's novels as a young girl, as well as A Long Fatal Love Chase and some of her short stories, but hadn't read this fictionalized account of her time as a Civil War nurse until recently.  Alcott had gone to Washington, D.C. to serve, and wrote letters home to her family in Massachusetts about her experiences.  She was encouraged to turn those letters into short stories that were first published in a magazine, and later compiled into a book first published in 1863.

The book is, unsurprisingly, so much in the style of the Little Women series, with humor sprinkled in among the seriousness of the subject.  Nurse-to-be Tribulation Periwinkle (because in that era, Alcott would not have used her own name) makes the decision to go and makes rather frustrating preparations, has a rather amusing trip to Washington, and then describes a day and a night in the hospital wards, often describing her interactions with patients. My favorite story was the sad one of John (real-life John Suhre).  She also writes about her sojourns around Washington, briefly about the illness (typhoid) that sent her home, and in a postscript, apparently answers questions from readers of the magazine articles about her experiences.

The Kindle version that I read, available through my library, was the 1863 edition with a biographical introduction by Amy Holwerda written in 2011. ( )

The famous author of the novel "Little Women" volunteered as a nurse during the Civil War. She served only a few months before illness overcame her and she was forced to return home. Taken from letters home Alcott wrote during her time as a nurse, these "sketches" are as sentimental and old-fashioned in tone as her famous 19th century novels.

This little book is the result of the month that Louisa May Alcott spent as a volunteer nurse in a Civil War hospital in Washington, D.C. In addition to describing her duties, her patients, and the hospital staff, Alcott also provides an account of her journey to Washington and of the sights she saw during her day off. Alcott was in Washington at the right time to see the Statue of Freedom while it was on display before being placed on the dome of the Capitol. Alcott’s lively writing style may appeal to reluctant teen readers, making it a good choice for supplemental reading for U.S. history units on the Civil War. ( )