North Carolina’s Heroes of Healing
A close-up of the Appalachian State University scrubs worn by Mountaineer nursing students. Photo by Marie Freeman
“All of nursing is focused on caring for others to make the world a better place.”
Dr. Phoebe Pollitt, an App State retired associate professor of nursing
Dr. Phoebe Pollitt. Photo by Marie Freeman
The Nurse Historian
As a nurse, educator, and historian of nursing, Phoebe Pollitt has spent her career studying and celebrating the accomplishments of nurses past and present. After receiving her bachelor’s degree in nursing from UNC Chapel Hill, Pollitt worked as a home health nurse and as the first school nurse in Watauga County, where she focused on tobacco and teen pregnancy prevention. She went on to earn two master’s degrees and holds a PhD in curriculum and instruction from UNC Greensboro. She is the author of nearly 50 articles, three books, and numerous presentations, many of which tell the stories of North Carolina�
If a handful of characters were transported from Anne Tyler’s Baltimore to tiny Boyne City, Michigan, they might act a bit like the ones Katherine Heiny has gathered in
Early Morning Riser. But Heiny’s gentle exploration of how we tiptoe and often stumble through the minefield of love is both fresh and consistently entertaining.
When second grade teacher Jane Wilkes meets Duncan Ryfield, they quickly fall in lust. But Jane’s attraction to Duncan, a handsome and capable woodworker who’s more skilled at starting projects than he is at finishing them, is complicated by the discovery that he is, as a friend politely puts it, “extremely . . . social” meaning he’s slept with most of the available women in this part of rural Michigan. In particular, Duncan has a puzzlingly close relationship with his ex-wife, an aggressive, opinionated real estate agent, even though it’s been many years since their divorce and her remarriage.