Palm of His Hand

The Palm of His Hand

Olive Gail BonninG

Madeline has enjoyed a holiday at home and has decided to return to the workforce. She discovers to her horror that the only position available is at the hospital on Palm Island, where approximately 2,200 inhabitants are either Aboriginal, or of Aboriginal descent.

Her duties also demand that she apply her Midwifery training, an area of nursing she has avoided for ten years. Four weeks earlier, Maddy had committed her life to the Lord Jesus Christ. Confronted by her deep racial prejudice, and an intense fear of Midwifery, she is in deep turmoil. Travel with Madeline while the Holy Spirit works on her heart, as the potter does clay. Finally, she realises that the subsequent offer of another position away from the island cannot tempt her to leave her new home.

Olive Gail Bonning lives at Ingham, a small rural town in North Queensland. Gail spent from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s in the nursing profession, a period which included a tour of duty on Palm Island. Her time on Palm Island was one of the highlights of her nursing career and she resigned from nursing not long after she left the Island. This work is a fictional account of a true story, and is Gail's first novel. Each day Gail would go for a walk with her dog 'Jack' and the Lord clearly impressed upon her not only the title of the book, but also the heart of each chapter, about which she embellished the story.