Hospital Sketches

To commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the end of the Civil War, Diversion Books is publishing seminal works of the era: stories told by the men and women who led, who fought, and who lived in an America that had come apart at the seams.

LITTLE WOMEN made Louisa May Alcott a canonical writer, but it was HOSPITAL SKETCHES that first brought her acclaim. These four sketches, based on letters Alcott sent home during a six-week stint as a volunteer nurse for the Union Army, reveal the horrors of battlefield medicine. In her baptism-by-fire, Alcott treats the wounded soldiers from the Battle of Fredericksburg. As she grows into her role, Alcott brings grace and dignity to the badly injured men, and in her letters, she reveals a writer growing into her own immense talents, and a deeply perceptive observer of the life of a healing force in a grueling war.