Behind the Book
BEHIND THE BOOK
It started in a hospital room. Two night shifts over the course of twenty-four hours. I had been an inpatient pediatric nurse for a year, but it was the first time I was assigned to the care of an actively dying child.
I was terrified, of being so close to death, of the raw proximity of it, of failing miserably as a nurse. But my patient’s family had created a space that felt like home, full of voices and warmth and a vast, unyielding love. And from the moment my shift began, I understood that I had never in my career been a part of something more important, that for as long as she was my patient, I would carry the weight of her soul.
Those two nights changed me as a nurse, and as a person. The Moonlight Healers is a reflection of those changes, when I came to understand that death, even the death of a child, can contain multitudes—grief and darkness of course, but also beauty and true healing.
I wanted to write a story where the characters grapple with the same issues I did working as a nurse in a hospital, particu larly in terms of end-of-life care. The idea of a magical healing touch was twofold. One, touch is absolutely a real tool nurses use. Therapeutic touch is something we learned in nursing school, a real evidence-based intervention that can alleviate pain. Two, it was an easy, and enticing, next step to imagine a world where that touch could be amplified, where it becomes a superpower that can take away any amount of suffering.
I always knew that nurses were going to be at the core of this story, and I chose the setting of World War II France for Helene because of the richness of nursing history during wartime, the struggle she would face as a healer surrounded by the carnage of war. The H?tel-Dieu (translated quite poetically to hotel of God) was a real hospital run by the Catholic Church in Rouen, and while my characters are fictional, Cecelia is very loosely based on a real-life Augustinian nun and hero of the French resistance, Agnès-Marie Valois, also known as the “Angel of Dieppe,” who did put herself between a Canadian soldier and a German luger. Her real life is even more remarkable than fiction and worth delving into.
As for the present-day setting, the orchard outside Crozet was inspired by two orchards near where I live, where bears roam and the trees explode with pink every April. There is a natural magic to the Blue Ridge, where the mountains are ancient and the sky glitters with fireflies, where life still feels a little bit wild. I knew that the magic abilities of these characters would be both grounded and enhanced by such a setting.
This book may have started in a hospital room, based off my own experiences as a scared nurse, but it ultimately became a love letter to all nurses, to the ones I learned from and worked beside, to the real-life healers. I hope you’ve enjoyed this story. I hope it has sparked tough questions, but most of all I hope it has left you with the same hope and light my characters find, even in the darkest nights.