About the Book When your grade six class laughs at your delight in poetry, you drop your pen in favour of the rigours of the school gym. Years later professional papers, first as an occupational therapist, later as an art therapist, encouraged my return to writing. On my retirement, poetry and short stories flowed comfortably until a trip to Italy opened a floodgate of WWII memories. On returning home, I retrieved a package of yellowing, stored letters from my young love, and began to imagine the worlds that would depict two young people in their early twenties, new graduates from university, on two warfronts being sustained by the miracle of letters. My story braids together my experiences in a WWII military hospital at Ste. Anne de Bellevue, close to the hospital shops docking in Montreal, with the foxhole missives of my young love as a medic with the American Army, first in North Africa, then later moving though Italy to Rome, up the Loire valley of France and into Germany to the Allied victory, May, 1945. Accompanying all is a brief history of the war between 1942 and 1945. I have used wartime letters, poetry written after the war, and my own experiences as an occupational therapist challenged to create treatment programs for a growing number of soldiers, mainly amputees and head injuries, who had known the horrors of war.

About the Author Beth Pierce Robinson