Unfortunately, the traits that enable him to force through these improvements - assertiveness, a domineering attitude, the belief that he is never wrong - are the same ones that may destroy the marriage. He takes over the hospital and makes some welcome changes. But Bear, Grace’s husband, does not survive the Depression, and Grace must become her own person and the mother her children need.Ī few years after Grace, Kitty leaves school to marry Charles Burton, a rich heir and an Englishman. She meets a traveling salesman and feels an immediate connection they soon marry. The novel also explores the politics of the time and the growing realization that the Great Depression is real and disastrous. They enroll in a new program to become registered nurses at the local hospital in New South Wales, but hit roadblocks and detours that transform their goals and their relationships. The four Latimer girls have their own dreams: Edda, to be a doctor Grace, to marry Tufts, to have a stimulating career and Kitty, to escape the burden of being a renowned beauty. Edda and Grace are 20 months older than Tufts and Kitty. With the same biological father but two mothers, the four Australian sisters in Bittersweet are comprised of two sets of twins. The success of her novels allowed her to give up medicine and write full time. Instead, she studied neuroscience in Sydney and eventually at Yale. McCullough herself was interested in medical school but developed an allergy to the surgical soap. The book proved so popular, it was listed by the British public at No. The Aussie McCullough is perhaps best known for her novel (and subsequent television miniseries) The Thorn Birds, a saga of forbidden love between a woman and a priest.

However, even the sweetness of their love for each other cannot outweigh the bitterness of the compromises life forces them to make. They all embark on the career for their own reasons, but the one constant is their love for each other, and this drives the storytelling. “Nothing is so sweet that there is no tinge of bitter in it.” So concludes Bittersweet, Colleen McCullough’s tale of four sisters who take one of the few professional avenues open to them in the early 20th century: nursing.

Bittersweet book colleen mccullough