Summary:
Cleo is a sheltered girl living in a boarding school in Portland, Oregon in 1918. The Spanish influenza is starting to spread and kill hundreds. There does not seem to be anything that can stop the flu, which is devastating the nation. Against orders, Cleo decides to leave her quarantined boarding school and return home to wait out the epidemic alone, but when she hears the Red Cross is desperate for volunteers, she decides to offer her services to a small makeshift hospital. While there, she meets a medical student, Edmund, and a romance kindles between the two of them. Cleo helps to save lives, cares for the dying, and realizes how thin things can be stretched all in the name of helping out.
My thoughts:
This is a very sad book. I definitely felt an emotional connection to it and got sucked into the story. I also learned quite a bit. It seems like it is historically accurate (at least as close as Google would tell me) and is written in a way that everything is very accessible. I love how Cleo's romance evolves with Edmund, but it is almost a background to the absolute focus on caring and helping one another. It really is so nice to have something that really shows the strength of people sticking together.
Cleo is a sheltered girl living in a boarding school in Portland, Oregon in 1918. The Spanish influenza is starting to spread and kill hundreds. There does not seem to be anything that can stop the flu, which is devastating the nation. Against orders, Cleo decides to leave her quarantined boarding school and return home to wait out the epidemic alone, but when she hears the Red Cross is desperate for volunteers, she decides to offer her services to a small makeshift hospital. While there, she meets a medical student, Edmund, and a romance kindles between the two of them. Cleo helps to save lives, cares for the dying, and realizes how thin things can be stretched all in the name of helping out.
My thoughts:
This is a very sad book. I definitely felt an emotional connection to it and got sucked into the story. I also learned quite a bit. It seems like it is historically accurate (at least as close as Google would tell me) and is written in a way that everything is very accessible. I love how Cleo's romance evolves with Edmund, but it is almost a background to the absolute focus on caring and helping one another. It really is so nice to have something that really shows the strength of people sticking together.
