Swampy's Florida

Resort Nurse by Diana Douglas

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is part of my Florida book collection.

I picked this up noticing the Florida location and considered it a romance novel. I hadn’t read one before. However, after reading the book, it’d be more accurately described as a life novel. There are romantic overtones, but this is just as well following a lady as she takes a new job at a hotel in the Key Sud hotel somewhere amongst the Florida Keys. Based on hints given in the book, I’d guess on Big Pine Key. Seems the author would mention Key West. Though, some distances mentioned don’t seem to be that far down the Keys.

Location information is a bit lacking, but a number of Keys, Homestead, Miami and Miami Beach are mentioned. The author knows a bit about driving from Dade County through the Keys by her descriptions and must have traveled it herself.

The story was a bit predictable to me involving the turn in the story. Which guy the nurse ended up with was not as obvious. Overall the writing is direct and well done. Very good dialogue. Douglas does a tremendous job of depicting a teenager in the 1960s.

This 1969 book further shows me how poorly books today are assembled. From writing, to story to the actual publication, what’s happened to the book industry? If books today were at a higher caliper I would give this book a lower rating. Due to appalling mess of the book industry in the past fifteen years or so, i have to give this a higher rating. This book is certainly cheaper and better written and I didn’t notice any misspellings or punctuation issues I see in so many of today’s books.

Bottom line: I recommend this book.

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Something I learned after I wrote the review is that ‘Diana Douglas’ is actually Richard Wilkes-Hunter (1906-1991), who wrote under quite a number of pen names. ‘Resort Nurse’ was one of a series of medical romance novels he wrote.

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