"[2] The academic Deborah Philips has written that "Nursing is consistently constructed in the Sue Barton books as an appropriate means for a young woman to achieve some measure of financial independence and professional status and to contribute to the general good".

[1] Katherine Ashenburg notes the "current of worry that runs through the series, a to-and-fro rumination about a woman's difficulties in combining an independent life with marriage, a profession with a family".

She meets her friends, Canadian Katherine (Kit) Van Dyke and socialite Constance (Connie) Halliday, in this book, and her future husband, Dr. Bill Barry.

Sue manages to have a number of adventures as she trains, including falling down a laundry shaft and saving a feverish patient from jumping out of a window while recovering from appendix surgery.

Serving as visiting nurses, they are educating families on how to take care of the sick, teach them about hygiene and health as well as getting employment and financial aid as well.

Sue sets herself up as a visiting rural nurse in the town of Springdale, New Hampshire and winds up in the middle of a typhoid outbreak and a sudden dam accident.

However, her marriage to the new Senior Physician Bill is not smooth sailing and Sue questions her ability to provide a proper nursing training for her students.