The Swiss Nurse

The true story of an astonishingly brave woman who saved hundreds of mothers and their children during the Spanish Civil War and WWII.

January 1939. Isabel Dueñas, pregnant and alone, is desperate to escape her beloved Barcelona when it’s invaded by Franco's troops at the end of the Spanish Civil War. After marching for days in the dead of winter, Isabel eventually crosses the border into France and stumbles, weak and afraid for her baby, to an abandoned manor that’s been converted into a maternity ward just outside Elne, France. There, she gives birth to a daughter and vows to stay with The Mothers of Elne and assist the Swiss nurse who saved her—Elisabeth Eidenbenz.

But even as the civil war on one side comes to a brutal end, rumors of a second war brew from the north. Elisabeth and Isabel are forced to take increasingly dangerous risks to protect the mothers and children under their care from the Nazis and the Vichy regime.

Powerful, absorbing, and inspired by a real-life heroine who saved hundreds, The Swiss Nurse is a magnificently uplifting story of beauty and the ripple effects one person can have on generations to come.