"[Marshall's] work in responding to the challenge of exploring a little-known life should be an inspiration to other students of history … people across Canada will find it a pleasant way to become better acquainted with an attractive, interesting and unfamiliar contributor to our history." - Desmond Morton, McGill University

Give Your Other Vote to the Sister tells the story of Roberta MacAdams, the first woman elected to the Alberta legislature. In fact, she was one of the first two women elected to a legislature anywhere in the British Empire. Her triumph was extraordinary for many reasons. Not only did she run while serving as a nursing sister overseas during the Great War, but over 90 per cent of her electors were men - Alberta soldiers stationed in England and in the muddy trenches of the Western Front. Give Your Other Vote to the Sister describes MacAdams' journey overseas, her work at a large military hospital in London, and the personal sacrifices she endured during the war. It also chronicles Debbie Marshall's own journey to reclaim MacAdams' life, one that took her across Canada and to the places where MacAdams lived and worked in England and France. It was a search that would change her own perceptions about how and why so may women willingly participated in the world's first "great war."

Debbie Marshall is a writer, editor, and playwright. She is the author of Give Your Other Vote to the Sister: A Woman's Journey into the Great War, the story of Roberta MacAdams, a First World War nurse and politician. Her play Firing Lines is based on the Great War writings of foreign correspondent Beatrice Nasmyth, and was produced in conjunction with the Provincial Archives of Alberta in August 2012 at the Edmonton Fringe Festival.

Debbie also writes a monthly blog that features Canadian nurses who died during the First World War. To learn more, please visit www.rememberingfirstworldwarnurses.blogspot.ca.

Debbie Marshall's profile page

• Short-listed, Exporting Alberta Award, Canadian Authors’ Association - Alberta Branch