Author Night at Nora Navra Library: Elisa Speranza

Triage

When the ghosts of war won’t stay buried, a former Army nurse must find a way to heal—or risk losing everything. 

In 1951 New Orleans, Laura Marino works as a nurse at Charity Hospital. She’s been home from World War II for six years, but peacetime has brought its own challenges. She’s frustrated at work, and her childless marriage to Nicholas, a surgeon she met in the Army, is strained. 

Laura is devastated when news arrives that Frances, her best friend from the front, has taken her own life. Turning to the wartime journal she has kept hidden away, Laura is plunged back into memories of the bonds forged amid chaos on the front lines of North Africa, during the siege of Anzio, and at a refugee camp in Italy. 

While her husband takes on an overseas assignment, Laura wrestles with her grief and guilt over Frances’ death. Then she meets Boyer, a wounded veteran who shares her pain. Their connection is intense—and dangerous, threatening to upend her life entirely. 

Triage is an intimate portrait of a woman’s hard-won journey through love, loss, and a quest for redemption.

Elisa M. Speranza is a writer, literary citizen, and the author of two historical novels, Triage (2026) and The Italian Prisoner (2022), a finalist in the Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Competition. She writes because she believes a good story, well told, can improve the human condition. She is drawn to characters who’ve been kept in the shadows and deserve their due, especially women. Elisa is board chair and an instructor for the nonprofit New Orleans Writers Workshop (NOWW). She has been a featured author at the Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival, the Louisiana Book Festival, the Salem (MA) LitFest, and Islanders Write. 

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