Somewhere in France - Tapa dura

As World War I rages, a collection of letters home from Major William Lloyd to his wife, Emma, on Long Island describes life as a doctor on the front lines in France and his growing obsession--apparent to everyone but himself--with a young French nurse working with victims of "trench" fevers

e Gardiner's gripping and elegant new novel opens, World War I is raging and letters home from Major William Lloyd describe his life as a volunteer doctor in charge of a base hospital in the "zone of advance."
        The Major's new command is both dream and horror to this upright son of an old New York family, bred to Victorian virtue and duty. Supplies are erratic, sanitation abysmal. Some of his nurses are behaving like trollops and an old prep school enemy turns up as his adjutant.
        On the home front, the doctor's anxious wife, Emma, has troubles of her own. Her daunting mother-in-law has moved the family to her Long Island estate to escape city germs. Her two sons, one of enlistment age, are developing alarming pacifist sympathies, and the flag-waving chauffeur is spreading rumors about them. Her teenage daughter is growing up too fast.