Arvada Physician John Andrews Recovers WWI Red Cross Nurses in New Novel

The dust motes dance in the shafts of afternoon light hitting a smudged cork bulletin board. It’s quiet in the small office, save for the squeak of a swivel chair and the scrape of a key in a lock. Trudy Cunningham steps in, her dark blue serge uniform crisp, the Army Nurse Corps pin gleaming on her collar. She’s not just visiting. She’s waiting for Alice Simmons to decide if she’s got the stomach for the war.

This isn’t just a scene from a book. It’s the moment Alice Simmons stops trying to force her way into the men’s club of journalism and starts doing the work.

John Andrews, an Arvada-based retired critical care physician, knows the difference between a press release and the grit of actual service. He wrote An American Nurse in Paris to fix a historical blind spot. The nurses of the American Red Cross and the US military did the heavy lifting in World War I. The public barely noticed. Andrews decided to make them the center of the story.

The book launches Alice Simmons, a medical journalist, into the thick of it. She’s blocked by the misogynistic walls of the US Army and the American press corps. Her big break isn’t a byline. It’s a nursing job in a Red Cross military hospital.

It’s a pivot from reporting the war to surviving it.

Andrews didn’t just guess at the details. He lived them, in a sense. He’s a retired critical care physician. He’s been a volunteer firefighter, an EMT, and a medical officer. He’s watched women in the field do the hard, unglamorous work that keeps people alive. He wrote this novel in honor of the excellent women nursing and medical professionals he’s worked with.

The story starts with Alice talking to her best friend, Trudy. Trudy’s father, Ira, is Alice’s journalistic mentor. They’re meeting Major Ab Johnson for breakfast in a nearby café. It’s Memorial Day, 1918. The German “Paris Gun” is lobbing shells at random throughout the city. The threat is real. The fear is palpable.

Andrews, who lives in Arvada, didn’t start with this specific scene. He started with his sons, both US Marines. He wanted to write fiction for Marines to read on deployment. He wanted to take them into the Battle of Belleau Wood, a key USMC battle that many young Marines know by name only but not by experience.

It was a complex series of battles. It was a challenge to distill into a single novel. So, Andrews split it. An American Nurse in Paris and its companion, Our Desperate Hour, started as one project. They ended up as two. The excerpt from Chapter 14 serves as the opening scene for both, shown from different viewpoints.

Alice is equivocating. She’s torn between continuing her struggle to report and joining the Red Cross Nursing corps. The excerpt captures that tension. Alice looks like she’s been beat up after pulling an all-nighter in nursing school. She’s mentally exhausted. Physically, she’s okay.

Trudy arrives on the SS Caserta. She’s kept on the upper decks — “officer country” — to protect their virtue. Jack Johnson, Ab’s son, was on the boat with her. They’d had a falling out over Jack joining the marines. Alice is still holding out for Bill, a private who’s in France, though the Second Division moves so much the mail never catches up.

The scene is intimate. It’s personal. It’s not about grand strategy. It’s about two women in a dusty office, deciding their next move while the world burns outside.

Andrews’ point is clear. The women who served were not just background noise. They were central to the victory. Their role has garnered little prior attention. This novel fixes that.

The book is part of Andrews’ Novels of the Great War Series. He writes across historical, young adult, military, and animal fiction. But here, in the quiet of the office, the focus is sharp. It’s on Alice. It’s on Trudy. It’s on the choice to stay and fight, not just observe.

The Paris Gun doesn’t care about your title. It doesn’t care if you’re a journalist or a nurse. It just drops shells. Alice Simmons has to decide if she’s ready to take them.

The short version? The women were there. They did the work. And for a long time, nobody really looked. Andrews is making them look.