This book, as we’re told in the review revolves around a family’s survival (or not) during the Spanish Flu outbreak in Philadelphia. With that in mind, I anticipated the sample to be an introduction to said family but instead I was only introduced to the mother and the recently deceased infant brother. I found the language to read more like poetry as the mother talks of Death and how the loss of a child has affected her in unexpected ways. More surprising was the realization that the family moved to a Philadelphia to begin employment in a mortuary, a ghastly undertaking, I’m sure during a flu pandemic. I’m interested to see how being forced to face her own mortality not only through the loss of her son but as alluded to her other children and do many more as they are brought into her husband’s mortuary by the dozens continues to reshape the protagonists heart.