In June 1915, Laura Holland and Mildred Forbes sailed from Montreal to serve as nursing sisters in the Great War. In a letter written on the voyage, Mildred promised Laura’s mother, “I will always take the best care I can of Lollie ... I would rather be torpedoed than ... separated."This letter, the first of dozens that Laura and Mildred wrote to friends and relatives over the following four years, hints at the nurses’ remarkable friendship. An inseparable duo, they cared for each other through sickness and health, air raids and bombings, unrelenting work and adventurous leaves. Unfolding like an epistolary novel, these carefully curated and contextualized letters transport readers from the dire conditions of hospitals in Greece to the efficiency of casualty clearing stations in France, from camel rides in Egypt to the royal palaces of Britain. Together, Laura and Mildred’s words offer unprecedented insight into the daily lives of Canada’s First World War nurses, from the privations of Gallipoli to the heavy casualties of Passchendaele and beyond. Mildred and Laura’s war-torn exchanges challenge the popular myth of nurses as wartime angels. Instead, their letters are filled with the nurses’ fears and frustrations, humour and keen observations, revealing how they relied on friendship, wry wit, and professional ethics to carry on in the face of mismanagement, discrimination, illness, deprivation, and trauma. | War-Torn Exchanges by Andrea McKenzie, Paperback | Indigo Chapters