Mona McAlpine’s best-selling memoir of her time as the only nurse on Fair Isle, Britain’s most remote island, was just the start of an incredible career.
She left her native Shetland Isles in 1969 to begin a 30-year adventure, nursing in South Africa at its most turbulent.
As a midwife in the township of Soweto she encountered tragedy and comedy, as well as frequent triumphs of the human spirit. Working in hospitals in Johannesburg she was an eyewitness to one of South Africa’s biggest and most heartrending crimes, before meeting the great and the good of the country, including the late President Nelson Mandela.
After 30 years, she decided to return to her home on the Old Rock: Shetland.
In A Midwife in Africa Mona tells her story with great verve and warmth. The book will inspire and move; it will evoke strong emotions, from laughter to tears. Mona captures brilliantly life in South Africa, as everything in that country changed for good.
