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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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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This advertisement in the New York Times during the 1918 influenza pandemic caught my attention, and I wondered if the advice on Spanish flu cures would apply to our 2020 coronavirus pandemic. “Avoid crowds, coughs and cowards, but fear neither germs nor Germans!” Given that World War I was raging across the world, it makes sense that people feared the…
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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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Life was pretty fun last week during the Historical Novel Society conference. Hundreds of historical fiction authors came together for three days of inspiration, presentations, and discussions. One of my favorite events was a coffee klatch discussing the New Woman hosted by historical fiction authors Hazel Gaynor and Stephanie Lehmann. “The New Woman,” as the media branded her in the…
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