Dee Andrews

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Historical Fiction Confronts 1918 Influenza Pandemic

the sun is but a morning star

In winter of 1918, Dr. Lorne Miller ponders the season’s influenza. A young farm boy had knocked on his office door, his parents dying. And then two more young men unexpectedly died. Boys their age were dying in the mud on the western front of the Great War, not on the plains of Kansas. Confounded by unusual symptoms and rapid deaths, Lorne makes a decision he will regret the rest of his life. Alternately narrated by Lorne, seeking redemption and a vaccine, and his daughter Helen, who joins the army as a nurse, father and daughter rely on inner strength, innovation, and purpose to persevere in the midst of war and disease.

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“The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”

—Henry David Thoreau

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