Her Name is Mercy

"Sister Maria del Rey of the Maryknoll Sisters tells the dramatic and exciting story of Sister Mary Mercy and her medical work under frightful post-war conditions in Korea. A doctor, she found a real vocation too as a Maryknoll Sister. The story opens in Korea in 1951, with the landing of three Sisters at Pusan, the first women civilians allowed in the country since the Korean War began the year before. Their purpose was to help medically and spiritually the thousands to suffering refugees from North Korea who were flooding that area. This book is the story of how these few Maryknoll Sisters, working with the barest essentials and often without them, became the core of a hard-working, tremendously (under the circumstances) successful team of workers from every walk of life and from many different countries. The clinic which they started in 1951 treated 100 patients a morning, but by 1954 was treating about 2,600 in a day. Originally housed by makeshift methods--old cartons, tin cans flattened for the roof--the book ends with the construction of a ndw 160-bed hospital--the largest in Korea. These pages also tell the stories of many of the Korean refugees who found their way to the clinic over long, death-torn roads from their homes in the paths of the Communists. They are all pathetic in their hopelessness and yet the author brings out their uncrushable humor and their deep personal pride from which springs the inner fortitude which enabled them to go through unbelievable harships to reach the clinic and help. Although much of the book is devoted to the Korean story, the author in a series of flashbacks, tells also the background of Elizabeth Hirschboeck of Milwaukee who was to become Sister Mary Mercy." -book jacket.