Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir

Cassandra Alexander, a registered nurse and romance novelist in the San Francisco Bay Area, presents a memoir in Year of the Nurse, sharing firsthand accounts from herself and her colleagues during the pandemic. Organized by months from February 2020 to July 2021, the book intersperses reflection with tweets and e-mails serving as primary sources that highlight the compounding impact of institutional complacency and misinformation on the already overwhelmed American medical system. Through raw and unfiltered narratives from the hospital frontlines, Alexander gives voice to the anger, sorrow, and exhaustion experienced by nurses nationwide. By revealing the shocking details of pandemic nursing, such as the emotional toll of witnessing countless deaths and the dire lack of medical equipment, she bluntly documents the nurses’ struggles. Alexander calls for significant structural reforms in the medical industry, citing the mass exodus of nurses due to burnout and PTSD as a warning sign for an already burdened and neglected field. Drawing parallels between COVID nursing and the treatment of Vietnam War veterans, she exposes how nurses were hailed as “heroes” during the pandemic but subsequently abandoned by the government as the virus receded. Alexander demands recognition for the collective suffering of nurses and criticizes the Trump administration’s leadership failures in managing the crisis.