In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Jocelyn Cullity’s novel The Nurse at Baker Hospital is a compelling historical literary mystery.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
“An engrossing story that exposes past medical fraud at an astonishing level.”
In her own words, here is Jocelyn Cullity’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel The Nurse at Baker Hospital:
Set in 1939 and based on a true story, The Nurse at Baker Hospital follows a young nurse who takes a job at Norman Baker’s infamous cancer hospital in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Although I didn’t listen to Billie Holiday while writing the novel, her music haunted my imagination throughout the process. As I researched the era, Holiday’s voice embodied the contradictions at the heart of the story—hope and despair, glamour and hardship, intimacy and loneliness. Her songs became intertwined with my characters, especially Della, a working-class nurse from Kansas City, and Celia Washington, a wealthy New Yorker seeking a cure that might have been too good to be true. These songs belong to the emotional landscape of the novel and to the lives of the two women at its center.
“Easy Living”
While researching Kansas City’s jazz scene in the late 1930s, I learned about the tea pads—after-hours joints where musicians gathered to listen to music, smoke marijuana, and escape the constraints of everyday life. Imagining Della in the tea pads helped me understand her longing for community months before she arrived at Baker Hospital.
Della first meets Celia Washington while Billie Holiday’s “Easy Living” plays in Celia’s private hospital room. One of the sickest patients at Baker Hospital, Celia has traveled from New York City seeking Norman Baker’s cure. She’s brought her Victrola, packed in a portable leather suitcase, along with a collection of Holiday records. The song immediately carries Della back to the tea pads she frequented in Kansas City, places where she could go alone and still feel welcome.
“Strange Fruit”
Celia and her husband have had the opportunity to hear Billie Holiday perform “Strange Fruit” at Cafe Society. Their wealth grants them access to the clubs and concert venues that Della could never afford. Instead, Della’s musical education comes from the tea pads of Kansas City, where musicians welcomed her in to dance until morning.
“Strange Fruit” also reminds me that while Norman Baker marketed miracle cures to desperate patients, America was confronting other forms of brutality and injustice. Holiday’s recording anchors the novel in a wider national story beyond the walls of Baker Hospital, and the Ozarks.
“A Fine Romance”
Often, after midnight, when Della sits beside the very ill Celia, Billie Holiday sings softly from the record player. The song reflects Della’s own romantic disappointments, but it also serves as a counterpoint to Celia’s marriage. In 1939 Arkansas, Celia’s interracial marriage is not recognized and may even place the couple in danger. Yet theirs is the most loving relationship in the novel.
The irony of “A Fine Romance” reaches beyond the characters’ personal lives. Its title could just as easily describe Norman Baker’s hospital itself—a beautiful promise that turns out to be something far less than advertised.
Jocelyn Cullity’ s historical novel, Amah & the Silk-Winged Pigeons (Winner, Best Book Awards, 2018), was published in English by Inanna Publications (Canada) and Rupa (India), and translated into French and Tamil. The Envy of Paradise (Finalist for Multicultural Fiction, International Book Awards, 2020), was also published by Inanna Publications. Cullity is the Director of the Stokes Center for Creative Writing at the University of South Alabama.