Sparrow’s Song by Marilee Aufdenkamp

Sparrow’s Song  

By Marilee Aufdenkamp

Publication Date: September 18th, 2026

Publisher: Old Fort Press

Pages: 292

Genre: Historical Fiction / WWI Fiction

Shortly after Kathryn Scheibel leaves her cigar‑making job in 1917, she enters the Army School of Nursing, a pioneering WWI nurse‑training program that offers the education she’s longed for but couldn’t afford. More than two decades later, her career carries her, as an instructor, into the Cadet Nurse Corps, the federal WWII nursing‑education initiative created to support the war effort. There she sees the same pressures she once felt now directed at students with even fewer protections. When two Black students are treated unfairly, Kathryn must decide how to respond.

Sparrow’s Song is a sweeping, intimate novel about resilience and belonging, rooted in the real history of wartime federal nursing education and the evolving landscape of modern American nursing. At its heart is a young immigrant woman pushing herself toward the advantages she’s convinced education will unlock, even as that drive pulls her away from the people and heritage she loves.

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Marilee Aufdenkamp

Marilee Aufdenkamp is a retired nurse educator who taught undergraduate nursing for twenty-six years before turning her full time focus to historical fiction. She writes early to mid twentieth century stories grounded in immigrant experience and working class life.

Her debut novel, Sparrow’s Song, was inspired by her early nursing career in Nebraska, where she came to admire the Germans from Russia she cared for at the end of their lives.

Originally from Southern California, she has spent her adult life in Nebraska.

Connect with Marilee:

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Amazon Author Page (to follow) • Goodreads