Flight of the Wild Swan (Bellevue Literary Press 2024), a historical fiction novel written by Melissa Pritchard, portrays the complicated and inspiring life of Florence Nightingale. Written in a chronological manner, Pritchard showcases Nightingale’s ambitious nature and gritty determinedness from her childhood years in Derbyshire, England, to her adult years as a nurse in Constantinople, Turkey, during the War on Crimea. In Pritchard’s rich and detailed portrayal of Nightingale, the reader learns not only of a courageous woman who rejects marriage proposals in favor of forging her own path as a nurse, but also of the broader structural challenges and constraints women encountered in the nineteenth century.
Florence Nightingale was a distinctive child. She collected rocks and shells and explored the natural world. When needed, she cared for the injured birds and rabbits she encountered. She read books about science and studied mathematics extensively. What was remarkable about Nightingale, however, was not only these activities, but her ability to reflect on them with a mature and inquisitive mindset.
Nightingale felt different – and often alone. She was surrounded by family, her mama, papa, and sister, Parthenope, but at a young age she realized her dreams and aspirations ran contrary to her family’s expectations. She was trapped in an iron cage. Her mama compared her to a wild swan. She was impossible to tame.
In her novel, Pritchard shows how Nightingale’s care for small creatures evolved into concern for the ill and impoverished children living in her wealthy family’s tenant housing. Nightingale wanted to spend time with these children and families and assist them with their difficulties. This was met with disapproval from her family. Pritchard writes of Mrs. Nightingale’s reaction to her daughter, Florence, feeding bread and porridge to a family on one occasion:
“’This obsession with helping the poor, coming home late every night, must stop now.’ Mrs. Nightingale is striding fast, swinging her lantern to throw a wider light.”
In her novel, Pritchard reveals the deep religious convictions connected with Nightingale’s aspirations. As a child, she questioned if God loved mice and snakes any less than humans. When she was age sixteen, she felt called by God to serve:
“Then I see nothing but Light; the trees themselves have vanished. I sit on an immaterial dais in a hall that stretches to infinity, made of dazzling Light. From a core place deep within me, timeless, not of this earth, I hear God. You are to end the world’s suffering.”
As the novel unfolds, Pritchard depicts Nightingale’s struggles with finding her path, as well as her steadfast courage with forging forward including when she became supervisor of nurses at a war hospital. There Nightingale encountered countless rats, a dead body in the nurses’ living quarters, and no food.
A testament to the exceptional writing skills of Pritchard, Flight of the Wild Swan is filled with vivid imagery. The narrative arc is captivating. The book is divided into eighteen sections. Within each of these sections are smaller fascinating chapters. Sometimes a chapter is a scene. Other times, it is a letter from Nightingale to a family member, or a simple list of activities she intends to complete. There is a tempo to Pritchard’s book, enticing the reader to turn the page and learn what happens next.
Flight of the Wild Swan evokes questions. How did Pritchard learn so much about Florence Nightingale? What did this research entail? How did Pritchard compose different scenes, such as when Nightingale visited Middlesex Hospital in 1854?
“Wringing out a piece of flannel from a tin basin of water, I wash her body, lay a lint cloth of turpentine and belladonna over her abdomen. From its swelling, she is four, perhaps even five, months pregnant.”
Were there particular scenes that were difficult for Pritchard to write?
Flight of the Wild Swan will be appealing to readers interested in biographies. It will be welcomed by those concerned with women’s rights. It will find a home with those seeking a rich story with excellent character and plot development. Not to be read only once, Flight of the Wild Swan will be revisited again, including by this reviewer, for the pleasure of learning more deeply from Pritchard’s exceptional writing.
Melissa Pritchard
Melissa Pritchard, author of twelve books, has received numerous awards, including the Flannery O’Connor Award, the Carl Sandburg Award and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. A PEN/Nelson Algren finalist, she has received three Pushcart Prizes, two O.Henry Prizes and been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Howard Foundation, the Hawthornden Foundation, the Bogliasco Foundation, the Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation and the Carson McCullers Center. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in such publications as O, The Oprah Magazine, The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune Paris Review, Ploughshares, Conjunctions, A Public Space, The Southern Review, LitMag, Chicago Quarterly Review and The Gettysburg Review.
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