Vivid scenes from America’s forgotten pandemic.
Against the backdrop of the 1918 influenza epidemic, two sisters offer refuge to an abused child.
Dallas’ first-person narrator is 24-year-old Lutie, short for Lucretia, a fashion illustrator for a downtown department store that caters to Denver’s upper class. Lutie lives with her older sister, Helen, who, as a nurse, is dealing firsthand with the misery attending the epidemic. As the novel begins, Lutie, among a small, fearful throng, witnesses the death throes of a soldier on a public street. This is only one instance of Dallas’ graphic depictions of the course of the influenza pandemic in one city, many of which resonate today—although not necessarily the “death wagons” patrolling the streets or the widespread acceptance of public health measures. Lutie arrives home to find Ronald Streeter, the sisters’ downstairs tenant, stabbed to death in the kitchen, Helen standing over him with an ice pick in hand as his 10-year-old daughter, Dorothy, cowers nearby. We soon learn that drunken, depraved Streeter abused his wife, Maud, and had raped Dorothy, also offering her to his crony, Maud’s equally depraved brother. Helen’s fiance, Gil, a medical student also overworked during the pestilence, helps remove the body to a vacant lot, hoping one of the “wagons” will dispose of it along with the anonymous remains of flu victims. As the sisters make a home for the traumatized Dorothy after Maud dies of flu, complications pile up. Long-suppressed secrets emerge as the uncle tries to interfere with the sisters’ adoption case. The parents of Peter, Lutie’s fiance, who is killed in the war, offer staunch help. Dallas makes a worthy effort to use the parlance of the day, erring on the side of formal, somewhat stilted speech on the parts of all but the guttersnipe characters. Aside from these obvious villains, the characters are well intentioned and unfailingly kind, including two hard-boiled detectives. The novel is seeded throughout with tragedy, but the overriding message is hope, and the overarching adversary is not human but a virus.
Vivid scenes from America’s forgotten pandemic.Pub Date: April 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-2502-7788-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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