Bertha “Van” Edwards North, a nurse for most of her adult life, wrote this book more than 60 years ago. The manuscript was rejected by publishers at the time and it was dismissed in the mid-1960s as too tawdry. But today, its unvarnished truth resonates and is acceptable, even tame by today’s standards. Its fiction reveals lives rarely spoken of—quiet, complex, and real—and their fates. My grandmother died 23 years before I started editing this unpublished work of hers. In many ways, this book is a bridge back to her voice. Both the beginning and
the end, the first and the last. While fictional, it is also semi-autobiographical.

It is now time to publish it with a proper dedication to her children, Gloria, George, Jeanne, Linda, Camilla and Terri, to her many grandchildren, to her mother, Rosa Lee M. Edwards, her father, William H. Edwards, and her stepfather, McKinley Edwards, and all her brothers and sisters who so influenced her life. Those people in Downsville, N.Y., now long dead, but with shadows of themselves in this book, deserve a nod from my grandmother. 

Also, to Holly, Kathleen, Will, Meg and their children, Grace and Mara. Friends like the late Melody Currey, Rev. Robert F. Tucker, Nikki Munroe and Tony Sciolto who helped me in immeasurable ways, too.

And to Dr. Barry Lewis for helping me discover the emotional resilience, coupled with insight, to reconcile the loss of my grandmother and to make editing of this book possible; to Drs. Steven R. Fera, C. Steven Wolf, Rob P. Weinstein, Michael B. Fischer, William H. Ramsey and Brendan Campbell, along with Garry Lapidus, PA-C, for their candor, friendship and sensitivity, so much a part of the medical profession my grandmother prized.