The Poppy Women is the first title in The Maitland Trilogy, by bestselling author Margaret Dickinson.

Also amidst the horror of the trenches, friendship will survive .

Thwarted in her desire to become a doctor like her brother Robert, Pips Maitland rebels against her mother’s wants that she settle down and increase children. However, when Robert brings house a pal from medical college, Giles Kendall, it appears perhaps Pips might fall deeply in love with an acceptable suitor in the end. But the calendar year about The Poppy Ladies is usually 1914 and the future can be uncertain. Hearing that her father’s friend, Dr John Hazelwood, can be forming a traveling ambulance corps to take to leading lines, Pips is set to become one of its nurses and asks Alice Dawson, her maid, to go with her. Robert and Giles offer their services as doctors, and Alice’s brother William joins them as a stretcher bearer.

Nothing could have prepared them for the horrific sights they encounter. Shifting their unit close to the fighting to offer first aid as fast as possible places all of them in constant danger. But also amidst the barrage of shelling and gunfire, the unending blast of wounded being taken to their post, the love between Pips and Giles survives and blossoms just like the poppies of Flanders areas.