This is the story of Sue Barton's first year of training as a probationer and then as a student nurse. Sue, with her red hair and eager spirit, is a very likable person—direct, outspoken, capable of mistakes, capable also of warm attachments and a courageous devotion to the service which she soon loves. With her pals, Kit and Connie, she submits to the discipline and rigorous training which are required of every good hospital nurse. Her love of humor gets her in and out of several scrapes: she tumbles into the laundry chute; she tries to defend her fellow student from the inevitable hazing; she gets into an amusing pickle with an Italian patient who speaks no English. Her warm heart and delightful spirit make friends for her among the patients and even win the occasional approbation of the stern staff. Her femininity has more than a casual effect on Dr. Barry, the ablest of the young interns. Sue's student years are alive with color and incident: the tests which she must pass to win her cap; the mistakes, very human in themselves, which almost ruin her career; her struggle with a delirious patient, a struggle which tries her courage to the utmost; Christmas in the hospital, when the entire staff comes together for one spontaneous celebration. Whether or not a reader has the ambition to become a nurse, she will find in this story a true picture of the training school of a great hospital and a heart warming friendship with a fun, joyous young woman.

A refreshing and authentic story of a nurse's life. In this story, redheaded, vivacious Sue Barton finishes her training and goes on to the many experiences, both humorous and exciting, that a pretty young nurse can meet in a great modern hospital. Though Sue and her friends, Kit and Connie, are more mature than they were as students, they are still able to get into occasional trouble with the Head Nurse. It is enthralling to follow Sue into new hospital experiences such as her first experience in the operating room, and the operation when she assists the brilliant but fiery-tempered doctor for whom nothing is ever right. Later she has her training in the care of newborn babies and their mothers. Deeply immersed as she is in her work, Sue struggles with the conflict of her love for her career and her growing affection for Dr. Barry, who continues to show as much interest in the pretty young nurse as he did when she was just a student.

Sue Barton, Visiting Nurse follows Sue and her friend Kit as they venture to New York City to join the Settlement Nurses, created by Lillian Wald.

Sue Barton, Rural Nurse. At twenty-three, high-spirited and courageous young Sue Barton goes to practice in the White Mountains - working with Dr. Bill Barry. Bill had proposed persistently and at last, gladly, Sue decides to marry him and help him with his country practice. But fate, in the form of personal tragedy, a typhoid epidemic, and the hostility of the town to Bill as a doctor, step in to complicate their lives. It is a wonder that a hurricane could lead not to further tragedy but to a potentially exciting future for Sue, Bill, and all of Springdale.

With her student days behind her and her career well underway, Sue and Bill, now married, together try to run a little hospital in the New England hills that was presented to the community by the town's wealthiest citizen, Elias Todd. Sue is Superintendent of Nurses, and her old friend Kit is helping her along with many of her fellow students from her years of training. After all the exciting nursing adventures these two girls have shared together, one might think they would find their new work rather tame. It is anything but tame for Sue, however, with that irrepressible street urchin, Marianna, as a student nurse; with Jean Ditmarr, sophisticated New Yorker, thinking she could put something over on the young Superintendent; with Dr. Bill so busy being a good doctor that Sue feared for a while he might not prove such a good husband; and above all, with the mysterious disappearance of the hospital sheets! Sue Barton is at her best with all the excitement and fun that this nurse seems destined to find in her nursing profession. The authentic setting of rural hospital life is the perfect backdrop for another great Sue Barton story.

Sue Barton, Neighborhood Nurse. Sue Barton left her position as Superintendent of Nurses at the Springdale, New Hampshire Hospital in order to raise a family. Now she and Dr. Bill have three children: six-year-old Tabitha and the four-year-old twins, Johnny and Jerry. Sue is happy in her job as wife and mother until she goes to a reunion of her class in nursing school where the accomplishments of others make her feel as if she is stagnating. Yet Sue finds herself using her talents in countless ways as she nurses the neighborhood. She finds work for a disabled farmer; she pinch-hits for the visiting nurse; she helps bring the famous artist, Mona Stuart and her teenage daughter Cal together. And always something is happening at home for Sue and Bill and their faithful Veazie Ann to cope with - Jerry's strange tantrums, Johnny's disappearance in the woods with his little friend Anne, Tabitha's attempt to run away. Are Sue's training and abilities wasted on all these daily and personal small problems? Her customary humor and warm good sense help her decide.

Nothing ever stands still in Sue Barton's household. Just when Sue thinks that she has everything under control, with Tabitha at school, the twins and baby Sue in good health, bang comes the discovery that Dr. Bill, her husband, is in trouble. He comes down with pneumonia on a fishing trip, and when they get him out of the woods he is ordered off to a sanatorium for six months. The emergency brings all of Sue's energy to the surface: she applies for and quickly receives a job as staff nurse at the Springdale Hospital, where she had once been Director of Nurses. She returns to the hospital feeling like an old fire horse, forgetting her troubles in the happiness of the old routine - temperatures, bed making, medicines, all the care of sick and frightened people. Sue enjoys working directly with patients far better than executive work, and it isn't long before she is involved in staff personalities and problems. Not all of those deal strictly with nursing. There is the love affair of a student nurse and a fancy-free intern which need an expert prod from Sue. Sue Barton's talent for getting into and out of a tangle of human relations propels her through her personal and professional ups and downs in this final tale of the enchanting red-headed nurse from New Hampshire.