New book on a Canadian nursing sister and parliamentarian

Debbie Marshall, an Alberta writer and editor, has published a new book, Give Your Other Vote to the Sister: A Woman’s Journey into the Great War, through the University of Calgary Press. This biography covers the amazing story of Roberta MacAdams, the first woman elected to the Alberta legislature. As the University of Calgary Press release puts it:

In fact, she was one of the first two women elected to a legislature anywhere in the British empire. Her triumph was extraordinary for many reasons. Not only did she run while serving as a nursing sister overseas during the Great War, but over 90 per cent of her electors were men – Alberta soldiers stationed in England and in the muddy trenches of the Western Front. Give Your Other Vote to the Sister describes MacAdams’ journey overseas, her work at a large military hospital in London, and the personal sacrifices she endured during the war. It also chronicles Debbie Marshall’s own journey to reclaim MacAdams' life, one that took her across Canada and to the places where MacAdams lived and worked in England and France. It was a search that would change her own perceptions about how and why so may women willingly participated in the world’s first “great war.”