What's the Next Big Thing?

Authors talk 
about their WIP 

US Army Nurses Liberated from captivity in the Philippines, February 1945.

Thanks Author Meghan Nuttall Sayres for tagging me in the Next Big Thing Blog Hop!


What is the working title of your book?

Pure Grit: How American Military Nurses Survived War in the Pacific and Japanese Prison Camp

Where did the idea come from for the book?

My cousin wrote a paper for nursing school about these Army and Navy nurse POWs in WWII.  She e-mailed me her paper and as soon as I read it I knew I had to write a book about these brave women.

What genre does your book fall under?

Pure Grit is non-fiction for teens.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Pure Grit is the story of 79 U.S. nurses captured POW by the Japanese after the American surrender of Bataan and Corregidor in 1942.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
Pure Grit is represented by Stephen Fraser of the Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency and will be published by Abrams Books for Young People.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I wrote the first draft in a little over two months, but this was after I had written in-depth proposal which also took at least two months, before which I had been researching this story off and on for several years.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Pure Grit is sort of a combination of  Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream  by Tonya Lee Stone and The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw.

Who or what inspired you to write this book? 

I have been deeply inspired by the Army and Navy nurses I wrote about in Pure Grit. These women learned combat nursing under fire when the Japanese attacked the Philippines shortly after bombing Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. They treated thousands of wounded and dying soldiers in jerry-rigged jungle hospitals. When forced to surrender they stuck together and continued to nurse the sick and dying. The courage and strength of these women kept them alive through three years’ isolation, disease, and starvation. They are true American heroines and I’m so proud to be able to tell their story.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

Romance! Though Pure Grit is a story of war and prison camp, it is also a story of the triumph of the human spirit and the power of love.

 I'm tagging Author John Bladek--Check out his next big thing! writer Sharon Himsl's blog Shell-tales-sails.

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