Bøger af Joan La Blanc

AT 4 PM ON A HOLIDAY WEEKEND IN 1943, the Pennsylvania Railroad's premier express departs Washington's Union Station for a high-speed run to Penn Station in New York City. Among the 541 passengers in its sixteen coaches are a disillusioned war widow and a Navy submarine officer on route to an exciting new duty. Over the next hours, these strangers discover they share not only adjoining seats but the same final destination-Portsmouth, New Hampshire-and an intriguing attraction. As the Congressional Limited barrels into Philadelphia, however, Fate intervenes to tear them apart and change their lives in ways neither could have foreseen. Based on an actual disaster, Lucky in Love explores the challenges this couple faces in the aftermath of that eventful journey. Thoroughly researched and richly detailed, this is the latest in Joan La Blanc's series of engaging historical romances backgrounded by World War II.

ORDINARY ANGELS, the fourth and concluding novel in a series about young nurse Anna Donovan, begins with Anna's homecoming at the end of World War II. Though still caught up in recollections of her hospital-ship romance with Chaplain Mark Whitmore, she jumps into marriage to Dr. Jim Millett, to whom she was engaged before she joined the Navy. Yet even as her plans come to fruition, the shadows of her past darken this wonderful new life. Forced to confront the ghosts of former losses, Anna suffers a breakdown that threatens to rob her of everything she holds dear. Eventually, however, she learns the painful lessons she's avoided before, and embraces the future with a new sense of the love and fulfillment it promises.

MINISTRY OF ANGELS is the second of a series of four carefully researched and beautifully written historical romances about young nurse Anna Donovan. It begins just after her Navy husband is lost at sea early in World War Two. In October, 1943, after the loss of both her Navy officer husband and the baby they were expecting, 25-year old widow Anna Donovan leaves her parents' New Hampshire home to work as resident nurse on a remote, isolated island off the coast of Maine. Hoping to find new purpose for her life, she moves into an old hotel operated by Jean Cropper, a troubled young woman with her own history of serious loss. Their fragile friendship grows even shakier when a German U-boat blows up offshore and Jean becomes involved with a fugitive enemy sailor. Meanwhile, Anna is increasingly attracted to Jim Millett, the crippled doctor she works for, but with no expectation he'll ever share her passion. Tragedy briefly draws them together, but soon dashes her hopes of ever winning his love. Caught up in an old pattern of retreat from painful situations, she leaves the island to volunteer for the Navy Nurse Corps. But the past will follow her even to war. What exactly is Anna Donovan searching for? And will she ever return to Hope Island?

INNOCENCE OF ANGELS is the first in a linked four-volume series of carefully researched and beautifully written historical romances about young nurse Anna Donovan's life before, during, and after World War Two. The second volume, MINISTRY OF ANGELS, follows Anna to the Maine coast after her husband is missing in action, presumed killed, early in World War Two. ODYSSEY OF ANGELS takes her deep into the hell of the Pacific War as an ensign nurse aboard USS Compassion, a Navy hospital ship. ORDINARY ANGELS follows her return to marriage, civilian life, and a measure of peace. In Spring, 1941, as war looms closer, young Anna Moss's life seems on course for a secure, comfortable future. Not only does she have a good job as a nurse in a naval hospital, she's engaged to a promising young writer who shares her values of diligence, thrift and moderation in all things. Then she meets Dan Donovan, a new patient on her ward. Intrigued by this handsome but brash young submarine officer, she's challenged to experience more of life than she's previously dared. Eventually unable to resist his charms, she's caught up in a wartime world where the romance is heady, the risks great and the realities stark. Yet even as she faces loss, sorrow and an uncertain future, she's comforted by the knowledge that she's followed her dreams into a love deeper and richer than she ever imagined. A love too good to last, perhaps, but one she'll never forget, with a man she'll remember forever.

To the World War Two battlefield casualties evacuated from bloody Pacific beachheads to the clean white beds of hospital ships, the Navy nurses who care for them seem like angels. For young war widow Ensign Anna Donovan, however, the unrelenting stresses of this duty soon begin to chip away at her morale, eventually revealing a side of her that's anything but angelic. Far from family, friends and fiancé, at sea aboard the hospital ship USS Compassion, she's horrified to find herself irresistibly drawn to Mark Whitmore, a charismatic but married chaplain. Eventually her need for respite from the endless stream of young men torn apart in this enormous conflict overrides loyalty to the man she's engaged to back home in Maine. As the war reaches its bloody climax, Anna soothes her conscience by rationalizing that all that really matters is that she performed her duty steadfastly and honorably. The rest - the private, personal falls from grace - will fade when she resumes her interrupted civilian life with the man she truly loves. But is this a plan, or just a delusion? And when she leaves the ship, the friends she served with, and the man who shared her illicit passion, what will happen in that bright postwar future so many men died to win for her?