Heroine Interview for A Memory Between Us by Sarah Sundin

» Posted on Sep 10, 2010 in Blog | Comments Off on Heroine Interview for A Memory Between Us by Sarah Sundin


This week I’m hosting Sandra Robbins with The Columns of Cottonwood, Trish Perry with The Perfect Blend and Sarah Sundin with A Memory Between Us. If you want to enter the drawings, please leave a comment on one of the post during the week with your email address. I will not enter you without an email address (my way to contact you if you win). If you don’t want to leave an email address, another way you can enter is to email me at margaretdaley@gmail.com. The drawings end Sunday (September 12th) evening.

Interview with the heroine from A Memory Between Us by Sarah Sundin:

1.Ruth Doherty, tell me the most interesting thing about you.
Interesting? I’m just a Chicago slum girl, an orphan, who worked her way out of the tenements to become an Army nurse.

2.What do you do for fun?
I don’t have time or money for fun. As a nurse in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps in England, I work twelve-hour shifts, with two days off every two weeks. On my days off, I go into the nearby town of Bury St. Edmunds, run errands, and see a movie if I have money left. I also enjoy taking walks around Redgrave Park, the manor grounds where the 12th Evacuation Hospital is located. Would you believe they have an orangery—a greenhouse just for citrus! Can you imagine?

3.What do you put off doing because you dread it?
Nothing I can think of. When you put things off, they pile up and get worse.

4.What are you afraid of most in life?
I’m the oldest of seven children, and our parents died a few years ago. My aunts and uncles took in the younger children but can’t afford to feed and clothe them. That’s my responsibility. My greatest fear is that my brothers or sisters would end up in an orphanage. That could happen if anyone found out my secret and I lost my job.

5.What do you want out of life?
I want to become a flight nurse so I can better support my brothers and sisters. I also like the independence the flight nurses have—on the evacuation flights, the nurse is in charge. No man tells her what to do.

6.What is the most important thing to you?
My family and my patients. I love my job and enjoy easing the suffering of soldiers and airmen who serve our country. All I ask is that they be good little patients and disappear after they’re discharged.

7.Do you read? If so, what is your favorite type of book to read?
I do read. Books are inexpensive, and when I’m reading a book, the other nurses don’t bug me. I love a novel that takes me away to another world where I can forget.

8.If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Perhaps it sounds ungrateful—after all, most girls dream of being beautiful—but my looks are a pain. When my patients flirt with me, I fend them off with jokes, but outside the hospital, I avoid men whenever possible. And I long for a friend to laugh with, but jealousy gets in the way. As I told a patient in the hospital, “The men love me, the women hate me, and yes, I see the correlation.” Also if I were plainer, I wouldn’t be in the mess I’m in.

9.Do you have a pet? If so, what is it and why that pet?
I’ve never had a pet. No space or money for animals in the Chicago tenements or in the nurses’ quarters.

10.If you could travel back in time, where would you go and why?
I would go back to when I was a teenager, and I would stop myself from making a horrible decision.