Phoebe Yates Levy Pember was a passionate Confederate and managed a hospital through the Civil War. Her memoir offers a window into daily life for acculturated Southern Jews and Jewish women in Christian high society in the South.

Early in the twentieth century, trained nursing was not considered a suitable profession for a young Jewish woman. Jewish quotas on admission to nursing school were maintained well into the twentieth century, and nursing education continued be characterized by Christian underpinnings as late as the 1950s, stunting the prominence of Jewish nurses.