Mirror Books to publish NHS health visitor's professional confessional

Mirror Books will publish Handle with Care: True Confessions of an NHS Health Visitor by Rachael Hearson. 

Executive editor Jo Sollis acquired world English rights from Rebecca Winfield at David Luxton Associates. The memoir will be published in June 2020. 

Hearson joined the NHS in 1979. She has worked as a nurse, a midwife and for the last 30 years as a health visitor in the West Country. 

In Handle with Care Hearson talks about the highs and lows of her career, including the time she was chased down an isolated stairwell by knife-wielding man in a homeless hostel, how she unwittingly visited a brothel and how she helped all sorts of families from those living in squats to those in stately homes. 

Sollis said: "I fell in love with Rachael’s story from the first page. Her warm personality and wit shine through this book. She brings compassion, an amazing sense of humour but also dignity and professionalism to families in desperate need. Her narrative style makes this memoir a heart-warming human drama in every sense."

Hearson described her book as "a love letter to my fellow health visitors as well as the mothers that we support and, of course, the National Health Service."