First published 2014
Seventeen-year-old Cleo Berry feels safe in Portland, Oregon as reports of Spanish Influenza deaths pour in from New York and Philadelphia. The distant tragedy seems worlds away until cases appear in the Pacific Northwest. Schools close, theaters shut down, and the city enters survival mode. Cleo refuses to stay quarantined in her boarding school dorms, choosing instead to ride out the pandemic at home. When the Red Cross calls for volunteers, she cannot ignore their plea for help. Working among the sick and dying, Cleo discovers she cares deeply about the strangers around her. She finds herself drawn to Edmund, a medical student and war veteran whose future remains uncertain. As bodies accumulate and the epidemic worsens, Cleo faces an urgent question that haunts her daily work: when will her own luck run out? The pandemic forces her to confront what she will risk for others and how much she will sacrifice for neighbors who were once strangers.
Genres: historical-fiction, medical, 20th-century
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, uncertain-future
Setting: Portland, Oregon, New York, Philadelphia, Pacific Northwest
Period: World War I, Spanish Influenza Pandemic
282 pages · Hardcover · Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Content warnings: death