Every alert American boy and girl is familiar with the emblem of the Red Cross and has some notion of the work continuously and wonderfully performed by this organization in the interest of our nation and of all humanity. Yet, comparatively few are sufficiently acquainted with the facts about Clara Barton, that richly endowed and courageous woman who, on the single-handed and against terrific odds, formulated the American Red Cross—and thereby made her own long-cherished dream become reality. 

Clara Barton was certainly one of the great women of America. Certainly her story is an amazing one; born in a Massachusetts farmhouse in 1821, she was destined to be an integral figure in history, to be the confidante of presidents, the friend of foreign kings, emperors and potentates, the skilled nurse, the powerful executive—the servant of the poor and the suffering for whom she had always such overwhelming tenderness. Her life of ninety years, covering a span vital in the development of the United States she loved, has the color and variety, the interplay of plot and action and coincidence usually found only in fiction. It is an epic of endeavor, gallantry and ultimate triumph.

Here in a quick moving, vivid, authentically documented narrative is the living story of Clara Barton for young people. In it we see her moving against the background of her times, pictured as a forceful, many-sided character; the little girl growing up in old New England, the successful schoolteacher and Patent Office clerk, the "Angel of Mercy" on Civil War battlefields, the indefatigable searcher for "missing men" the valiant heroine of the Franco-Prussian War—and finally, the founder of the American Red Cross, which was the most glorious of her innumerable achievements.

Every young American will be proud of Clara Barton and wish to read her story. No other American has more nobly embodied those principles and ideals which are the heritage of true patriotism.

From the dust jacket