Fifteen-year-old Connie Sinclair runs away from home and the father who is abusing her. It's 1924, a tough world for a single girl without food or a place to live. Connie is resourceful and boards a train taking her to a big city where she hopes to make a life for herself. She meets many interesting characters along the way, one of them a nurse who inspires her to enter a hospital nurses training program. To do this she lies about her age and education but gets room and board in exchange for hours of long, hard and tedious work. In her two years there, Connie learns a lot-how to care for patients, treatments for common diseases, and how to get along with all types of people. A hospital fire brings the false life she has created for herself to the surface. Runaway Girl: A Nurse's Story reveals the strength and resiliency of nurses, traits that have indentified the proffesion from time immemorial.