Three or 4 pregnant women are housed here during the 3 days the novel takes place, and sometimes a newborn or two.\u00a0 The main character is a young nurse who has been put in charge of the women, because no other nurse is available.\u00a0 She recruits a very young helper, virtually off the street with no experience, to help in the chaos.<\/em><\/p>\n This historic novel is intense, and suspenseful, bouncing from crisis to crisis.\u00a0 Because of the pandemic, the hospital staff is dropping like flies, as are the patients.\u00a0 There just are not enough doctors or nurses to care for the patients.\u00a0 Our heroine, Julia Power, is very capable, but she is not a doctor and has never been in charge of a ward before.\u00a0 She\u2019s running on very little sleep, and has little time to eat.\u00a0 When Bridie, a young, energetic girl shows up and says she\u2019ll help, Julia, against her better judgement, agrees, after being assured that Bridie has had the flu.<\/em><\/p>\n The patients are well-developed characters who are suffering in different ways.\u00a0 Some die but their babies survive, some live but lose their babies.\u00a0 Some are likeable, some are not.\u00a0\u00a0 The new helper, Bridie, is a whirlwind of activity, doing everything she\u2019s asked in record time, very observant and a fast learner.\u00a0 The reader falls in love with her very quickly.\u00a0 As does Julia, leading to the tragic end of the novel, but there is an example of finding bright spots in the middle of darkness.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n The novel points up the similarities of this pandemic of over 100 years ago to Covid in current times, and also shows that we haven\u2019t learned that much!<\/em><\/p>\n Nancy also writes about “A Year of Wonders,” by Geraldine Brooks: [This novel] is a slower paced novel about the plague in the 1600\u2019s in a small village in England.\u00a0 As villagers start to sicken and die in grotesque ways, the village leader, a man of the church, realizes what\u2019s happening, and convinces the entire village to quarantine.\u00a0 They get supplies by leaving lists of needs with money at a drop off place, and in return a villager from a nearby village brings supplies.\u00a0 The author realistically draws the reader in and makes us feel the fear and pain.\u00a0 She evokes the feel of living in a small community where everyone is dependent of everyone else to do the right thing.<\/em><\/p>\n The heroine, Anna Frith, a poor and uneducated young woman who has lost her husband, and an almost-lover, and her 2 little boys, works for the reverend and his wife.\u00a0 She and the wife become very good friends and the main caregivers in the village, learning about herbs and poultices from the local \u2018witch\u2019 who succumbed.\u00a0 Over the course of a year there are many tragedies and incidents of rebellion and conflict.\u00a0 Just when the Reverend has convinced the villagers to burn everything they own, all their possessions, his wife contracts the sickness, and dies.\u00a0 Shortly after, the plague runs its course and dies out.\u00a0 As the Reverend and Anna begin to pick up the pieces, some very shocking news comes out, and the novel ends in a surprising way.<\/em><\/p>\n Nancy recommends both of these books whole-heartedly. The interesting thing about some of these fairly recent books is that they were written before COVID-19 broke out, but are very timely for us during this recent pandemic. The ones regarding the 1918 pandemic were probably inspired by the 100th<\/sup> anniversary of the Spanish flu. But a book written in 1939, only 20 years after that pandemic, Katharine Anne Porter\u2019s book, \u201cPale horse, pale rider,\u201d includes a novella that takes place in Denver during the 1918 pandemic. My friend Liz told me about this one, as well as a course at OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning), which started January 5th<\/sup>,\u00a0Ages of Plagues, taught by Margaret Creighton and Rob Smith, a remote 5 week course which \u201cdraws on the recent and not-so-recent past to examine literary responses to plagues.\u201d It would be interesting to know what books they recommend to read, to give us perspective on this past year.<\/p>\n All this is to remind of the power of fiction to help us learn about the past, and give us a basis for understanding our world today. \u00a0 <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A year ago, most of us could never have imagined the year we\u2019ve had \u2013 and the continued social distancing,\u00a0 wearing masks, and general fear has been wearing, oh, so thin. While vaccines are now on the radar, we still have a ways to go before the world goes back to \u201cnormal.\u201d Sometimes, reading about … Continue reading Pandemics and plagues of the past : in literature<\/span> ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/liclblog.townoflongisland.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ferry-riding-during-COVID-19.jpg\")
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