Excerpt from Where the Light Enters by Sara Donati, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The captain turned toward her as she approached, a deep crease furrowing his brow.

"Mrs. Verhoeven," he said, his tone quite short. "You needn't concern yourself—"

He was trying to dismiss her, but Sophie had a lot of experience with people who thought she could be shooed away.

"You have no reason to know this," she interrupted him. "But I am a fully trained and qualified physician, registered at the New York City Board of Health. Professionally I use my maiden name, Dr. Savard." Briefly she asked herself when she had made this decision, and decided it didn't matter; it felt right.

"Captain, you have one female survivor"—she glanced over her shoulder toward the corner where Charles Belmain and his sister sat propped against the wall—"and she is in the last weeks of her pregnancy. She also has heatstroke, which may be fatal. How much ice do you have on board?"

Fifteen minutes later she was back in her cabin cutting the disoriented young woman out of her ragged clothes and then moving her into the hip bath lined with a sheet she took from her own bed. She spread a second sheet over the girl's swollen form and as she was tucking a rolled towel beneath her neck, there was a knock at the door.

She called to Mr. Belmain, who sat in the next room of the cabin suite drinking a bowl of broth. "That will be the ice. It needs to be chopped into pieces. Would you, please?"

It was a lot to ask of him, but she knew that some kind of activity would help him maintain his calm through what was to come.

Sophie was in constant motion for the next hour. Using a syringe without a needle she dribbled cool water into Catherine Bellegarde's mouth and massaged her throat when she was slow to swallow, pausing only to scoop more ice into the bath, to wipe the girl's face, to take her pulse and check her pupils. As if she understood that Sophie needed some encouragement, Catherine Bellegarde finally raised a hand to touch Sophie's damp wrist.

"Madame Bellegarde," she said in a calm, even voice. "Catherine. I am Sophie Savard, a physician. The survivors of the Cairo have been rescued, and now you're on board the Cassandra. You are safe. Your brother is safe." She repeated herself in French, and got in reply only a grimace. The girl touched her own head.

"You have a headache, I know. I have medicine for you. But you are very dehydrated and you must keep taking water while I get the medicine ready. Here's a clean cloth for you to suck on, can you do that?"

"My baby?"

"You feel it kicking, yes?"

Catherine Bellegarde smiled with lips that were puffy and cracked. Sophie smiled too.

Pip, who was clearly worried, settled himself on the bed where he could watch the patient, as vigilant as the best of nurses.

By noon the next day Sophie was beginning to believe that Catherine Bellegarde might revive and recover. Her temperature was close to normal, and her heartbeat had steadied. She had taken a pint of water and a pint of beef broth, and she was perspiring freely.

But her headache, never quite conquered, reasserted itself and then came roaring back. Sophie was helping her take a weak dose of laudanum when she realized the girl's eyelids had begun to swell. As had her hands. With a sense of dread she turned to get the small basin she had been using as a bedpan—a urine sample would tell her some things, even without a laboratory in which to test it—when Catherine Bellegarde began to seize.

Pip came to his feet and gave a fretful yip as she thrashed, looking to Sophie with something like accusation.

Now you really are imagining things, Sophie told herself, but she understood well enough: the accusation came from her own mind, where this new set of symptoms were adding up to something terrible.

Over the next hours as she tended her patient she took note of what was happening, and knew the truth even before a second and then a third seizure.

Excerpted from Where the Light Enters by Sara Donati. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.