Parkplace Books in Kirkland will present Mary Cronk Farrell, author of “Pure Grit: How American World War II Nurses Survived Battle and Prison Camp in the Pacific” at 7 p.m. May 6.

In the early 1940s, young women enlisted for peacetime duty as U.S. Army nurses. But when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 blasted the United States into World War II, 101 American Army and Navy nurses serving in the Philippines were suddenly treating wounded and dying soldiers while bombs exploded all around them. The women served in jerry-rigged jungle hospitals on the Bataan Peninsula and in underground tunnels on Corregidor Island. Later, when most of them were captured by the Japanese as prisoners of war, they suffered disease and near-starvation for three years. Pure Grit is a story of sisterhood and suffering, of tragedy and betrayal, of death and life. The women cared for one another, maintained discipline and honored their vocation to nurse anyone in need–all 101 coming home alive.

The author, formerly an award-winning television journalist, is now a children’s author and syndicated columnist and lives in Spokane.

Parkplace Books is located at 348 Parkplace Center in Kirkland. For more information call 425-828-6546.