How do you find the courage to take the next step—

when you're thinking you can't look at this shattered body?

when you realize that your choice may have cost a human life?

when you watch the person you love drift away?

"Called to Care" follows four nurses whose lives are connected by a simple, unassuming pendant as they confront the timeless pull to be of service. The stigma of illness, both physical and mental, and the centuries-old issues of substance use and addiction are woven throughout their stories.

At the start of America's bloody Civil War, Sarah Dunlap is pressed, unprepared, to help injured and dying men in eastern Tennessee's Battle of Shiloh. She is determined to become a "real nurse" at a time when nursing schools are in their infancy.

Charlotte Kolb, orphaned at nine, seeks to care for tuberculars like her mother and finds herself in the newly emerging sanitarium movement in the 1880s Western frontier.

Baby boomers and psychiatric nurses Will Swain and Ella Swensen yearn to use their skills and relationship to help fellow nurses face down the career-ending effects of substance use.

One hundred fifty years after this tale begins, the practice of nursing—founded on compassion, commitment to healing, and the continued pursuit of knowledge and skill—stands proudly today as a noble and trusted profession. "Called to Care" tells this story.