17-year-old Sarah Hill leaves behind her home in Wales and enrolls at Hackney General Hospital, where she is due to start her training. Looking up at the rows and rows of little windows, there was no way Sarah could have guessed just what she was getting herself into... More than just a hospital, Hackney General was part of the community, just as much as the Adam & Eve pub the staff frequent. A place where the poorly children of Hackney were nursed to health, a place where young nurses would discover just want, they wanted from life, fall in love with shy photographers and grow into women. But it's not all smooth sailing in Hackney: for every baby that goes home to its loving family another is abandoned, unloved, or never gets to go home at all. Funny, warm and deeply moving, Sarah Beeson's poignant memoir captures both the heartache and happiness of hospital life and 1970s London through the eyes of a gentle but determined young nurse.
