#Excerpt In the Shadow of War by Adrienne Chinn

March 23, 2024 Fee Rachel's Random Resources

In the Shadow of War
by Adrienne Chinn

One war may be over, but their fight for survival continues…

For sisters Etta, Jessie and Celie Fry, the Great War and the hardships of the years that followed have taken a heavy toll.

Determined to leave her painful past behind her, Etta heads to the bright lights of Hollywood whilst Jessie, determined to train as a doctor and use her skills to help others, is hampered by the men who dominate her profession. On the vast, empty plains of the Canadian prairies, Celie and her small family stand on the brink of losing everything.

As whispers of a new war make their way to each sister, each must face the possibility of the unthinkable happening again…

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In the Shadow of War by Adrienne Chinn

Excerpt

The following excerpt from In the Shadow of War, takes place in April 1935 in a hospital in Cairo, Egypt. Middle sister, Jessie Fry Khalid, is living in Cairo with her husband Dr Aziz Khalid and their daughter, Shani, her mother-in-law Layla, and her sister-in-law, Zara in the Khalid family home, Alumanina. Jessie, who had met her Egyptian husband during the Great War when she was stationed in Egypt working as a British army nurse, is now studying to become a doctor. In this scene she faces prejudice from male teaching staff and students owing to her gender.

Jessie pulls on her white hospital gown as she rushes down the hospital corridor toward the orthopaedic ward, almost upending an orderly carrying a bedpan in the process.

‘Sorry, Ibrahim! So sorry!’ she says as she collects the notebook she has dropped on the terrazzo floor. ‘Have you seen Dr Salah and the other interns?’

‘Ward 6. You are late, Dr Khalid. He will not be pleased.’

‘I know. It couldn’t be helped. The students were protesting on the Corniche again and it slowed all the traffic down.’

The orderly shrugs. ‘This is life.’

Jessie waves at him as she hurries toward Ward 6. ‘I hope Dr Salah is as understanding!’

Outside the open doors to the ward, Jessie pauses to catch her breath. She pats her hair into place and enters the eight-bed ward as unobtrusively as she can manage.

‘Dr Khalid! So good of you to make the time to join us.’

She winces apologetically. ‘I’m sorry, Dr Salah. It won’t happen again.’

The doctor smirks as he addresses the interns gathered around the bed of a patient whose plastered leg is suspended from a complicated pulley system attached to the ceiling. ‘It seems we must adjust our schedules to women, now, gentlemen. It was so much easier when they understood their place resided in the home. It seems that the British have a great deal more than the Sudan to answer for.’

Jessie feels the blood rise in her cheeks. What an arse! How dare he say things like that! This is the twentieth century, not the Dark Ages. She catches the eye of one of the male interns who leers at her before turning his attention back to Dr Salah’s case assessment.

She spies Fatima Zahra fruitlessly attempting to peer between the shoulders of two of the interns on the far side of the patient’s bed.

Why does it have to be so difficult? Why are the men so angry at women’s progress? We all have brains and ability. Why do they close ranks against us when we want nothing more than the chance to live the lives we wish and which we have trained for? Are they so insecure?’

‘… yes, Dr Hamdy, you are correct. Traction is used to control pain from muscle spasm. Anyone else? What are the other reasons we use traction to heal a broken limb?’

Jessie raises her hand. Dr Salah glances at her then nods to another intern. ‘Dr Nabil?’

‘It maintains anatomical reduction.’

‘Indeed. Can anyone else tell me what anatomical reduction is?’

Jessie clears her voice. ‘Dr Salah, if I may?’

Silence falls over the ward as even the patients and nurses turn to stare at the impudent woman.

The chief surgeon stares at Jessie coldly. ‘Can anyone else tell me what anatomical reduction is?’

Anger flashes through Jessie, prodding her to push through the wall of interns to the patient’s bed. ‘Anatomical reduction involves the aligning of the fragments of the broken bone to reconstruct the fractured bone as precisely as possible. The goal is to allow the bone to recover its original form as closely as possible as it heals.’

The doctor glares at Jessie and turns back to the other interns. ‘Once again, can anyone tell me the benefits of anatomical reduction?’

Author Bio –

Adrienne Chinn was born in Grand Falls, Newfoundland, grew up in Quebec, and eventually made her way to London, England after a career as a journalist. In England she worked as a TV and film researcher before embarking on a career as an interior designer, lecturer, and writer. When not up a ladder or at the computer writing, she often can be found rummaging through flea markets or haggling in the Marrakech souk. Her second novel, The English Wife — a timeslip story set in World War II England and contemporary Newfoundland — was published in June 2020 and has become an international bestseller. Her debut novel, The Lost Letter, was published by Avon Books UK in 2019. Love in a Time of War, the first in a series of four books in The Three Fry Sisters series, was published in February 2022. The second in the series, The Paris Sister, was published in February 2023, and the third book in the series, In the Shadow of War, was published in March 2024.