Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross
1915
In 1915, as Europe bleeds in the first modern war, three American girls abandon their comfortable lives to serve. Beth, Patsy, and Maud Stanton, cousins bound by privilege and restlessness, answer the call in ways their sheltered existences never prepared them for. When Maud arrives trained as a nurse and announces her plan to join the Red Cross abroad, her cousins refuse to stay behind. Uncle John's yacht, the Arabella, becomes their unlikely vessel for crossing the Atlantic. What follows is neither romance nor typical adventure, it is L. Frank Baum's sole direct engagement with the machinery of modern warfare, filtered through the brave but bewildered eyes of young women thrust into the horrors of industrial conflict. The novel pulses with the earnest patriotism of its moment yet carries genuine weight when depicting what bullets and shells do to human bodies. These girls go to war not as heroines of fantasy but as witnesses to suffering. Baum, the wizard of Oz, strips away magic to confront the real world.
