[CedarS]

I just finished reading this novel, Maisie Dobbs , by Jacqueline Winspear, and am quite impressed with it. Maisie is a young woman who starts out as a maid in a wealthy London household when she is 13 years old, in the early 1900s. She eventually works as a nurse during World War 1, afterwards she begins her own private investigation business.

Maisie definitely experiences trauma and also helps people who are traumatized, she learns her own ways of working with PTSD. I don't want to give any more of the plot away, definitely worth reading, and there are interesting twists and turns, and a mystery involved.

The book is gentle somehow, there are no intense grueling passages describing trauma, but we readers do get the point, when various experiences of soldiers and nurses are described for instance. Something about this book is gentle and dignified, thought provoking and inspiring, just as Maisie herself is.

I came away feeling satisfied with a good read, also with new ideas about how to deal with some PTSD symptoms.

Sarah

[(JD)]

I don't do libraries any more..but will keep it in mind..... do you think the author , herself ,
is a sufferer?

[CedarS]

I haven't found out yet if the author herself is a sufferer, though she does dedicate the book to her paternal grandfather and her maternal grandmother, both listed as disabled in war service. Grandfather was in Battle of Somme in 1916, sustained serious leg wounds. Grandmother was a munitions worker during war, partially blinded in explosion that killed friends around her.

The author definitely seems to have a deep understanding, her various characters express a variety of ways of coping, and not coping.

Sarah