Nearly 100 years after the Spanish Flu, we are experiencing the turmoil of another infectious disease, COVID19, and we have yet to see what the fallout of this disease is. The Orphan Collector takes place during 1918 in Philadelphia, one of the cities where people did not take the threat of the Spanish Flu seriously and suffered direly as a consequence. I look forward to reading the story of Pia and her brothers during an analogous age, and hope others take the themes and story seriously.