Dee Andrews

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Historical Fiction Confronts 1918 Influenza Pandemic

historical fiction confront influenza pandemic

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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“Not until we are lost do we begin to find ourselves.”

—Henry David Thoreau

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Socially Distant Life During the 1918 Flu Pandemic

1918 Influenza Pandemic

Now that our world is living through the COVID-19 pandemic and practicing social distancing, it’s been interesting to see the similarities and differences to life during the 1918 flu pandemic. I’d love to hear about your experiences with social distancing and life during the COVID-19 pandemic. Should we increase or decrease our vigilance as our first wave recedes? What do…
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relief work during 1918 Spanish influenza

Vigilance Urged as Grip Wave Recedes

1918 Influenza Pandemic· Research

This headline from the New York Times could be talking about new cases of COVID-19 falling off, but it refers to the 1918 Spanish influenza. Then, too, New York was trying to find the fine line between optimism and pragmatism. “Health Commissioner Copeland was optimistic, but in discussing the figures he said that eternal vigilance was alone the price of…
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1918 flu pandemic blue patients

Spanish Flu Symptoms

1918 Influenza Pandemic· Medicine in WW1· Research

Symptoms of the Spanish flu, the name given to the 1918 flu pandemic, differed from seasonal flu symptoms in surprising ways. While the onset brought about familiar fever, body aches, and a sore throat, the illness progressed quickly to bleeding from the nose or ears and petechial hemorrhages, bleeding under the skin that looked like a spreading red rash. Victims…
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Little Women have to go out into the world

New Women: Jo March and Jane Eyre

Research· The New Woman

Jo March in Little Women has long been an inspiration for my novel’s main character Helen. When considering which books and heroines Helen would have read in the early 1900s, Louisa May Alcott and her story about family or independence, love or career, and domesticity or adventure would have given Helen much to ponder. Other books that guided the development…
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