That is a satisfying experience. Mary Razzell's Salmonberry Wine deals with the choice and first experiences of a career. But in recent years the world of work has been strangely absent from or peripheral to the major concerns of the YA novel. Mary Razzell puts work centre stage in this novel about a young woman's first few months in nurse's training. But Sheila is no Cherry Ames, and the daily realities of hospital life are explicitly and grittily portrayed.
Nursing is shown as exhausting, frustrating, messy and tragic work.
Yet we sense the joy of Sheila's realization that she is in the right place. The major moral predicament involves a young woman patient, pregnant and suffering from unexplained symptoms. Sheila, headstrong and compassionate, questions the diagnosis and treatment of this patient. She leaves the hospital and returns home. Razzell handles the technical challenge of a sequel very adroitly.