In the five years she had been away from her native New England, young nurse Sandra Colson had adapted quite well to her new life in Minnesota, had made friends, and had become a respected member of the staff at St. James Hospital. And yet, every fall, when the leaves started to turn color and drop from the trees, she could not free herself from the memory of New England and what might have been. What might have been if Dr. Bruce Jennings had been true, if he had meant all those things he had said.

But that was five years ago. Surely Sandy had picked up the pieces of her emotional life since then. Yet how much had she learned from that unhappy experience? Wasn’t she really in the same position with Dr. Rich Harvey, a young obstetrician working at St. James? Oh, it was true, he had never promised anything and their relationship had been strictly professional, but Sandy couldn’t help her feelings. The fact he was engaged to Aileen Gorman, her supervisor, a nurse who worked with clocklike efficiency, made things even worse. Every day Sandy had to face them both, and to see Aileen’s triumph reflected in the engagement ring she wore.

When Dr. Harvey offered her a part-time job in the Lamaze natural-birth clinic he intended to start, Sandy got a chance to use the extra courses in obstetrics she had taken. She also got a chance to see exactly how strong the armor she wore around her heart really was.

Nursing in the remote wilderness of northern Canada was a potentially perilous undertaking, but pretty Suzanne Hillard knew only exhilaration as the tiny pontoon plane splashed down on Gold Lake. Her new job as occupational health nurse for the Whiteoak Oil Company released her not only from the humdrum routine of a large general hospital but also from the overprotectiveness of her decorous aunt Geraldine.

Life at the tiny mining camp of Kupark was anything but decorous. Suzanne readily adjusted to living in a rough wooden cabin, taking her meals in the company cookhouse, and nursing out of a breathtakingly well-equipped trailer. The only thing that really bothered her — until she met Mark Bartell — was the knife she glimpsed in Pete Thunderchild’s hand. Resolutely she decided that the lank-jawed old man’s animosity would not inhibit her attempts to befriend his shy, beautiful daughter, Norell, a painter of rare talent.

And then there was the problem of the Mistaseni, the huge granite boulder that was revered as a god by the local Cree Indians. The sacred rock was right in the path of the company’s projected pipeline, and as chief engineer at Kupark, Mark Bartell would have to give the order to blow it up. A clash between him and Indian geologist Angus Bear seemed unavoidable.

Equally unavoidable was the explosive first meeting between the blond engineer and the dark-eyed company nurse, a confrontation that resulted in Suzanne’s being fired on the spot!

• Chapter 1: You Are Now Entering Penteath, Maine
• Chapter 2: Quint Loves Me! Loves Me Not!
• Chapter 3: Nature’s Physiotherapy Department
• Chapter 4: Ann Finds a Needed Friend
• Chapter 5: Dr. McNab Offers a Nursing Job
• Chapter 6: Ann Does a Venipuncture
• Chapter 7: Parthie Provokes a Crisis
• Chapter 8: A Sedimentation Rate Spells Trouble
• Chapter 9: Quint Has the answer to Her Question
• Chapter 10: Antibiotics vs. Nursing Care
• Chapter 11: A Growing Comradeship Suffers a Blight
• Chapter 12: Ann Loses Her Job
• Chapter 13: Riders of the Storm
• Chapter 14: Kitchen Turned Hospital
• Chapter 15: Ann Shares a Fateful Moment with “B.M.”
• Chapter 16: “Your Majesty!” Marie Antoinette of Maine
• Chapter 17: A Fright in the Night
• Chapter 18: Ann Is on Her Way!

Private duty in Marlin Point, Florida, was the last thing Cass Meredith wanted. The month-long assignment had been handed to her by Dr. Wellton, her friend as well as her boss, and he certainly expected her to accept it. The case itself was not what distressed the pretty twenty-two-year-old nurse. The patient was a young girl of fifteen who had epilepsy — certainly a condition with which Cass could sympathize. Cass, too, was an epileptic, and only because she had understanding parents was she able to live a full and normal life.

That life had, until recently, included a lanky young man named Tab Lyon. Handsome, devilish Tab wanted to marry Cass, but she had shied away from such a commitment. She had even suggested a trial separation that had led to his taking a job far from her Miami home — in Marlin Point!

Suffering from inner turmoil, Cass arrived in Marlin Point to discover that her assignment was more a bed of thorns than of roses. The patient, Sue Evans, was a sweet girl whom Cass instantly liked. But Sue’s fearfully overprotective mother had kept her a virtual recluse for years, and she made no attempt to conceal her resentment of Cass. So it was little wonder that Cass found herself leaning on the strong, comforting arm of Mrs. Evan’s’ brother, Max Quigley, a physical therapist who was in complete accord with Cass’s hopes to help Sue lead a free and happy life.

And then Sue experienced a frightening seizure…

Beatrice Wayne, S.R.N, sat thinking, shivering despite the tropic heat. How far away the clinic seemed and the chatter of the nurses snatching those quick cups of tea in the kitchens. At this hour they would be giving out medicines and tidying dressings before supper, after which the night-staff would take over. And here was she, three thousand miles away spending the night in a locked rest-house with the most dangerous man in the word; the most dangerous to her, at any rate, because she loved him.

How did she get into this compromising situation and what would happen next? It’s all told in this lively, absorbing novel, full of interesting characters and set against the colourful background of the Gold Coast.