Wildwind, Sharon

(Sharon Grant Wildwind)

PERSONAL:

Born in LA. Hobbies and other interests: Paper and fiber arts.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Alberta, Canada. E-mail—cml@wildwindauthor.com.

CAREER:

Writer, artist, and nurse. Certified gerontological nurse, working with the elderly. Teaches mystery appreciation and writing workshops. Military service: Army nurse, Vietnam War.

MEMBER:

Sisters in Crime, Story Circle Network, Romance Writers of Alberta, Mystery Writers INK, Alberta Playwriters Network.

WRITINGS:

"ELIZABETH PEPPERHAWK/AVIVAH ROSEN MYSTERY" SERIES

(As Sharon Grant Wildwind) Some Welcome Home, Five Star (Waterville, ME), 2005.

First Murder in Advent, Five Star (Waterville, ME), 2006.

Soldier on the Porch, Five Star (Waterville, ME), 2007.

OTHER

(As Sharon Grant Wildwind) Dreams That Blister Sleep: A Nurse in Vietnam (memoir), River Books (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada), 1999.

Also author of the Poe's Deadly Daughters blog.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sharon Wildwind makes quilts and is a paper and fiber artist. She is also a certified gerontological nurse, and she works with older women to encourage them to write memoirs. Wildwind was an army nurse during the Vietnam War, and she has written a memoir about her experiences while stationed in Vietnam. The book, titled Dreams That Blister Sleep: A Nurse in Vietnam, was published in 1999. The memoir, taken from the journal Wildwind kept at the time, begins on May 14, 1970, and ends on May 14, 1971. Throughout the year, Wildwind chronicles the time she spent in the towns of Qui Nhon and Pleiku in Vietnam. By day, Wildwind works in the emergency room, intensive care, or one of the recovery wards. By night, her memoir relates, she sleeps in a tin-roof hut made of wood and sandbags. Wildwind describes how she is surrounded by death and records her emotional struggles under the strain of her day-to-day life treating mortally wounded soldiers. Susan Wittig Albert, critiquing the book for Story Circle Book Reviews, was much impressed, stating that Dreams That Blister Sleep portrays "real experiences in a terrible place and time that nobody wants to remember. But we must remember and acknowledge it, or we will be doomed to repeat it. Sharon Wildwind's journal is a window into an experience that is too horrible to remember, too powerful to forget."

Six years after publishing her memoir, Wildwind published Some Welcome Home. A year later, she published First Murder in Advent. Both books are part of the "Elizabeth Pepperhawk/Avivah Rosen Mystery" series, which features dual protagonists Elizabeth Pepperhawk and Avivah Rosen. Elizabeth is a military nurse in Vietnam, and Avivah is the first female military police officer to serve in Vietnam. The third novel in the series, Soldier on the Porch, was published in 2007. The story begins in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1973, as a local veteran's hospital is bombed. Elizabeth and Avivah are both at the hospital during the explosion, as is Avivah's former commanding officer, Major Henry Campos. Campos is killed in the explosion, along with one other patient, an older man named Zeb Blankenship. Avivah knows that Campos was previously involved in a military cover-up that has yet to be exposed. This, coupled with his suspicious death, leads several investigators to question Avivah. Applauding the book in a Kirkus Reviews article, a critic stated that the book "has an appealing cast of regulars and a terrific sense of time and place."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Wildwind, Sharon, Dreams That Blister Sleep: A Nurse in Vietnam, 1999.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, February 1, 2005, Jenny McLarin, review of Some Welcome Home, p. 947.

Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2007, review of Soldier on the Porch.

MBR Bookwatch, February 1, 2005, Harriet Klausner, review of Some Welcome Home.

ONLINE

Cruse'n with Lonnie, http://lonniecruse.blogspot.com/ (January 16, 2006), Lonnie Cruse, author interview.

Sharon Wildwind Home Page,http://www.wildwindauthor.com (June 16, 2008).

Story Circle Book Reviews,http://www.storycirclebookreviews.org/ (July 20, 2001), Susan Wittig Albert, review of Dreams That Blister Sleep: A Nurse in Vietnam.