This book plops you right in the middle of the Spanish Flu. You feel its presence in the first few sentences, and it never really lets up. The young Pia can feel its presence, even if she doesn't necessarily understand what it is, or can't know what the impact will be until it hits home. The bereft Bernice is wrapped up in her own grief knowing too well what it takes. With these two voices, you have two sides of what it would have been like to be living in 1918, mid-WWI America. Pia and her mother tries desperately to show how American they are, despite their obvious German heritage, and Bernice can't understand why her American child has to wait for obvious foreign treatment-seekers.
What a harrowing read living in the world we know live in with a new pandemic knocking on our doors uncaring about class, race, age, gender, or circumstance.
The cover grabbed me, as did the title. The pages past the cover did not disappoint.
What a harrowing read living in the world we know live in with a new pandemic knocking on our doors uncaring about class, race, age, gender, or circumstance.
The cover grabbed me, as did the title. The pages past the cover did not disappoint.