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The Healers' War
Paperback
General FictionHistorical Fiction
ISBN13: 9781806451944
Publisher: Olive Collins Author
Published: Jun 14 2026
Pages: 368
Weight: 1.08
Height: 0.76 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Set against the backdrop of the Biafran War (1967-1970), one of the twentieth century's most devastating yet overlooked humanitarian disasters, The Healers' War follows the intersecting fates of three unforgettable characters whose lives are forever altered by conflict, faith, and survival.
When Eastern Nigeria secedes to form the Republic of Biafra, civil war erupts. As government forces tighten their blockade, starvation becomes a weapon of war. Cut off from the outside world, millions face hunger, disease, and displacement as villages are destroyed, families are scattered, and entire communities struggle to survive.
While most expatriates flee the besieged territory, a group of Irish missionaries choose to remain. Refusing to abandon the people they serve, they establish feeding centres and health clinics across the war-torn countryside. When conventional supply routes are cut off, they help construct a hidden airstrip deep in the bush, enabling clandestine relief flights to bring food, medicine, and humanitarian aid into the starving enclave under cover of darkness. Night after night, aircraft risk enemy fire to deliver desperately needed supplies and evacuate children requiring urgent medical treatment.
Among the missionaries is Valerie Corrigan, a young Irish woman who arrives in Nigeria believing she has been called to a higher purpose. Long before she set foot in Africa, she had heard stories of the region through her boyfriend, Oscar, a businessman with interests in Eastern Nigeria. But when Valerie discovers Oscar's betrayal, heartbreak shatters her plans for the future. Seeking meaning and redemption, she joins the missions-one of thousands of Irish women who travelled overseas during the twentieth century to work as teachers, nurses, and health workers in Catholic missions throughout Africa.
At first, Valerie throws herself into her work with idealistic certainty. She hopes to heal the sick, serve the poor, and bring the Catholic faith to communities she barely understands. Yet as she acclimates to the unfamiliar landscape, language, and customs of Igbo society, she begins to question many of the assumptions she carried from home. As political tensions mount and rumours of violence spread, Valerie finds herself caught between competing loyalties, conflicting beliefs, and a growing awareness that good intentions do not always lead to good outcomes.
Then Oscar unexpectedly reappears. His return unsettles her carefully rebuilt world. Determined to keep her distance, Valerie focuses on her mission work, but the past proves difficult to escape.
Amid the chaos, Valerie meets Azubuike, a precocious nine-year-old boy whose understanding of the world has been shaped by oral tradition rather than clocks and calendars. In his village, time is measured through shared memory and significant events: The Year the River Burst Its Banks, The Year the People Disappeared, The Year the White Women Came to Teach. Forced to leave home because of his mother's instability, Azubuike is sent to live with the missionaries. There he must navigate an unfamiliar existence governed by foreign customs, Christian teachings, and Western ideas of time and progress.
As famine spreads and violence intensifies, an unlikely friendship develops between Valerie and Azubuike. Through one another, they gain new perspectives on faith, belonging, and identity. Yet neither can escape the consequences of the war unfolding around them.
As the conflict deepens, so too does the moral complexity of Valerie's mission. She witnesses extraordinary acts of courage and compassion, but also encounters hypocrisy and troubling failures within her own congregation. The certainty that once sustained her begins to fracture. Torn between duty and conscience, faith and doubt, Valerie finds herself fighting a personal battle as devastating as the war itself.
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