A Death-Struck Year by Makiia Lucier (review)

At seventeen, Cleo Barry frets over her lack of direction in life, envying the certainty felt by her classmates. Then the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918 hits the Pacific Northwest, and she becomes a Red Cross volunteer, delivering instructions and basic supplies to neighborhood residents, arranging transportation and care for the sick, and tending to the ill at the makeshift hospital within the Civic Auditorium. The sights and smells are gruesome and the emotional toll is high, but Cleo’s own childhood experience—spending all night in a ravine with the body of her father and her dying mother following a carriage wreck—compels her to return day after day and to bring succor to the sick and scared. The other volunteers bring new friendships, role models (a compassionate but no-nonsense nurse), and even a love interest, in the form of a wounded World War I veteran returned to medical school. As the epidemic crests and she learns what she’s capable of, Cleo realizes that perhaps she’s not so ordinary after all. Lucier has done her research, creating a compelling work of historical fiction alongside a more timeless journey of self-discovery. She includes thoughtful details of the time period (a new pamphlet on birth control circulates among the women), rounding out the reader’s understanding of Cleo’s world. The sickbed depictions are sobering but not gratuitous, and the romance, while pleasing, takes a backseat to the more pressing details of life and death and to Cleo’s personal direction. Readable and informative, this is for a lover of Anderson’s Fever, 1793 (BCCB 10/00) or general historical fiction fans who appreciate a touch of romance with their world events.