They were Olympic, Britannic and the ill-fated Titanic. In the early 1910's, there were three sister ships built for the White Star Line for passage from London to New York primarily. This is the third book by Kate Eastham I've read and it was relatively enjoyable with the unique aspect of beginning on a cruise ship liner to becoming military hospital during the war. Her current fiction is set during the World Wars and will be published by Bookouture. With her passion for history, Kate aims to continue making visible the lives of ordinary yet extraordinary women from the past.

Having thought that she would never find anything to replace the work in nursing that she loved, she is now equally immersed in her writing, drawing on years of experience and the stories told by so many patients. An idea for a novel was born and her first book, ‘Miss Nightingale’s Nurses’, was published by Penguin in 2018, closely followed by three more in the series.

Inspired by the achievements of Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole during the Crimean War she was also captured by the sheer grit and determination of other 'ordinary women' whose voices from the past are seldom heard. Determined to make the most of this new role ‘working from home’ she cleared a space at the kitchen table for a pile of books and a writing pad and started to make notes on the history of nursing. Kate Eastham trained as a nurse in the late 1970s and enjoyed a long career before a change in circumstance meant that she needed to be a full time carer for her partner.

The Sea Nurses by Kate Eastham