Gail Nightingale is a ghost. She has lived since the days before the battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War. Gail was a nurse. She was caring for the wounded soldiers. Gail was just like Florence Nightingale. There was a coughing sickness that was spreading across the land. Gail Nightingale joins a group of healing women to cure the plague. Gail Nightingale was there to hear Abraham Lincoln give the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves. Gail was like a bird that needed to be set free from the cage of her mortal body.
Gail Nightingale falls in love with a wounded soldier named Williamson Blacksmith. Then, Gail journeys through time. She endures the struggles of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. She is a conductor on the underground railroad. Gail is an abolitionist along with Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. She also meets Frederick Douglass in New York. Gail then hovers through the post-Civil War reconstruction. She find herself in the Industrial Revolution.
Her brother Robert Nightingale survives the Civil War. He ends up becoming a gold miner in the Wild West state of California. Robert falls in love with Robin. They have a son, called Robbie, or Robert Nightingale II.
Runaway slaves and pioneers travel on covered wagon trails to Oregon and California. The pioneers meet Wild Bill, Buffalo Bill, Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, Jesse James, and a Buffalo Soldier named Cowboy. Later Robert and Robin become successful enough to take a trip on the doomed ship, the Titanic!
The pandemic is spreading after every war. Even Abraham Lincoln had the coughing sickness before he was assassinated. Gail wants to stop the coughing sickness. She meets with women all over the world to find the cure. The cure for the sickness is hidden in ancient herbs and elixirs. This story is the beginning of the search for the cure of what we now call the coronavirus, coughing sickness. There will be a book two that will continue the tale of Gail Nightingale. She goes through history from the first pandemic of 1918 Spanish influenza. Gail Nightingale goes all the way to WWI, WWII and to the present coronavirus pandemic.
Opposites Attract: The Hawk & the Dove Poem
If happiness is to laughter as sadness is to tears, is fighting akin to courage as running away is to fear? Pain is to the wounded as pleasure is to the healed. Any emotion is real enough to feel. Men died, and women cried over the bloody battlefield. Failure is to losing as success is to winning. Anything worth fighting for is worth defending. Don't kill the messenger because of the message she is sending. The tattered flag is what the nation is mending. Strong men will be shattered, and broken if they are opposed to changing and bending.
Gunfire burned across the hot summer land. He's got the whole world in his hand. He lifted up a dying man. Fire is to heat as ice is too cold. A child is too young as grandfather is too old. War is like hell, but no one can un-ring a bell. Getting up takes more effort to mend the mistake when you fell. You can't live without water, and hope is the well.
The slaves ran away from the warm South, to go to the cold North to fight. Is the bark of the war worse than its bite? The dogwood tree has deep roots that will not die. Cutting down the tree for the firewood would not be a lie. The war cut deep wounds. Women and children cried. The family tree of slavery spreads its branches toward freedom. Free and dumb, not knowing what to do or how to speak. If the willow tree breaks its branches, does it not ever weep? War is sowing the seeds that we reap. Into the ground blood will seep, flowing like a deadly creek. The trees planted with evil need more than one drop to leak. The black crows cry louder than a peep. Strong tree roots are never weak. The leaves search for the sunlight. They do not cease to seek.