INTRIGUE. TENSION. LOVE AFFAIRS: In The Historical Romance series, a set of stand-alone novels, Vivian Stuart builds her compelling narratives around the dramatic lives of sea captains, nurses, surgeons, and members of the aristocracy. Stuart takes us back to the societies of the 20th century, drawing on her own experience of places across Australia, India, East Asia, and the Middle East. Joe Gorman, son of a New York policeman and product of a West Side slum, is more serious-minded than the majority of interns at the Franklin General Hospital. To him, medicine is his life, it is all that matters to him — he is, as his colleagues jokingly tell him, dedicated. He has no time for love, even when he meets the beautiful Kay Loren, for he has set his star and modelled himself on his chief surgical resident, Tony Kulka, one-time Hungarian freedom fighter and now a refugee. But, in this exciting story set in a big American hospital, Joe learns new values. From the moment when Mickey Hanrady, member of a teen-age street gang called the Eagles, enters his life, he is caught up in the human side of his patients' problems, and is forced to reassess many of his most cherished beliefs — including those he holds on the subject of love.