Surgeon and Army veteran Susan Neuhaus is no stranger to writing, having produced articles for medical journals, a non-fiction military history book, a bilingual children’s book and now a full-length adult novel, The Surgeon of Royaumont.Â
It’s 1914 and Clara Heywood, a graduate doctor, begins her medical career at Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney. Not only is the British Empire on the cusp of war, Clara, who is among the first cohorts of female doctors to practice, is fighting the social battle of acceptance.Â
When war does break out, the fledgling Australian Army won’t allow women to join as doctors, only nurses. Months after seeing her unofficial fiancé, also a doctor, off to war, she heads to Europe in search of a way to serve at the frontlines. She makes her way to Royaumont Abbey, a Scottish Women’s Hospital on the Western Front in France, where, under the guidance of Miss Frances Ivens, she faces the brutal journey of becoming a surgeon in war.
Even though the hospital’s medical staff – from surgeons to anaesthetists, nurses and orderlies – is made up almost entirely of women, Clara still experiences the need to ‘prove herself’, especially to those with differing opinions on how a hospital ward should be run. The friendship she finds with pathologist Dr Elsie Dalyell – a fellow Australian who graduated a few years ahead of her – helps Clara face the surgical workload and family pressures to return home.
It may be her first novel, but Neuhaus weaves together multiple strands of medical and war history with a deft hand, ensuring the pace of the story is maintained and not bogged down by details that would’ve surely been at hand from the depth of research needed to recreate the Abbey’s world. It’s also clear that only someone with Neuhaus’ medical training and experience of overseas military deployment could’ve produced this amazing insight into the snap decisions that need to be made on an operating table while simultaneously facing an enormous number of lives needing to be saved.     Â
This novel also continues the advocacy work of shining a light on over a dozen female doctors who served in WWI, including other noted inspirations for this story, Dr Mary de Garis and Dr Vera Scantlebury, whose service was only permanently recognised recently – for de Garis, a bronze footpath plaque in central Geelong was unveiled in 2019 and a statue of Dr Scantlebury was unveiled in 2023.
Read: Book review: The Defiance of Frances Dickinson, Wendy Parkins
The Surgeon of Royaumont breathes life into these historical figures in a very easy and accessible way.
The Surgeon of Royaumont, Susan Neuhaus
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 9781489277534
Pages: 384pp
RRP: $34.99
Publication date: 2 April 2025
