The Healing Hand (Barbara Cartland's Pink Collection 80)

Tania, the lovely daughter of the late Lord Amesly, leaves her school in Paris and is travelling by train to Boulogne when her train crashes into another one. She is helped and befriended by a charming young Englishman – Captain Rupert More – and with him she reaches the ferry and unexpectedly meets two friends of her parents, Charles and Selina Bracebridge.

Rupert becomes captivated by Tania, but since he is a soldier he may be sent away to war at any moment and cannot declare his hand. Back in London Tania finds that her stepmother is extremely hostile and only wants to push her out of her own home and as she is now Tania’s Guardian she insists she marries Lord Watford a widower who wants a son and heir.

Terrified at the idea of having to marry someone she does not love, Tania runs away to the Bracebridges and begs them to hide her. The Bracebridges are close friends of Florence Nightingale, who has just accepted the task of reorganising a small Hospital in London and the Secretary for War is determined that Florence should look after the troops wounded in the Crimean War.

How after hiding with Florence Nightingale, Tania escapes from England. How she works with the wounded soldiers in the British Military Hospital in Scutari. And how after the Battle of Inkerman she finds happiness at last is all told in this unusual romance by BARBARA CARTLAND.

Barbara Cartland was the world’s most prolific novelist who wrote an amazing 723 books in her lifetime, of which no less than 644 were romantic novels with worldwide sales of over 1 billion copies and her books were translated into 36 different languages. As well as romantic novels, she wrote historical biographies, 6 autobiographies, theatrical plays and books of advice on life, love, vitamins and cookery. She wrote her first book at the age of 21 and it was called Jigsaw. It became an immediate bestseller and sold 100,000 copies in hardback in England and all over Europe in translation. Between the ages of 77 and 97 she increased her output and wrote an incredible 400 romances as the demand for her romances was so strong all over the world. She wrote her last book at the age of 97 and it was entitled perhaps prophetically The Way to Heaven. Her books have always been immensely popular in the United States where in 1976 her current books were at numbers 1 & 2 in the B. Dalton bestsellers list, a feat never achieved before or since by any author. Barbara Cartland became a legend in her own lifetime and will be best remembered for her wonderful romantic novels so loved by her millions of readers throughout the world, who have always collected her books to read again and again, especially when they feel miserable or depressed. Her books will always be treasured for their moral message, her pure and innocent heroines, her handsome and dashing heroes, her blissful happy endings and above all for her belief that the power of love is more important than anything else in everyone’s life."