Call the Nurse

April 29, 2013
Exotic travelogue meets medical adventure in this nostalgic autobiography of an English nurse who left London to embrace the remote Scottish Hebridean island of Papavray. In 1969, the now-octogenarian MacLeod became the isles' medical lifeline, falling in love with its quirky populous and vanishing way of life. Her debut recounts an abundance of local charm and lore, including the sloppy celebration of Hogmanay, to sweetly daft Celtic logic, to brushes with local ghosts. But the stories of gut-wrenching medical and human need are the most evocative. In one case, a 13-year-old girl becomes pregnant through incest and then inexplicably risks her baby's life to reunite with the dad; in another, a 36-year-old woman is found chained and filthy in her family home, abused for over a decade for having an out-of-wedlock baby. Elsewhere, a man beaten by a drunken dad and who lost a beloved wife and son in a shooting ends his days sick with cancer, alone, bitter and "resolved never to love anyone or trust another soul as long as he lived." MacLeod is generously non-judgmental, believing that the wild, rugged islands "are full of odd, reclusive families. Usually it's all right. Just different."