Flight of the Wild Swan

Keep the scientist, the statistician, the nurse. Preserve the myth. History a jumble of half-truths anyway. Let the fire eat her rage, her failures. Let her become what each generation needs her to be. A light to lead the others. from Flight of the Wild Swan by Melissa Pritchard This is the story of F......more

Such an exquisite book! I've just finished it--a novel of beautiful, lyrical prose that reads like a dream vision, as if Melissa Pritchard were channeling Florence Nightingale for real. Pritchard is always a most lyric prose writer, but the thorough research she conducted, so delicately fretting the nov......more

There is so much to say about Nightingale. She is fascinating. Beautiful and wealthy, she hobnobbed with the leaders of the day, several who fell in love with her despite her unfeminine interests in math and medicine. She was a classic difficult woman and she had the standard problems: Her family wo......more

Flight of the Wild Swan, by Melissa Pritschard. An extraordinary novel of the life of Florence Nightingale, a pioneer on having women participate in society on a professional way through nursing. It’s a story of courage, resilience and of not stopping even when everything appears against her. Her in......more

"Those lesser-known aspects of her identity (Florence Nightingale) are what ASU Professor Emeritus of English Melissa Pritchard hopes to bring to light in her new book, “Flight of the Wild Swan.” I found this novel extraordinary--Ms Nightingale became real and more humanistic to me. I believe even n......more