I'm in a rut with historical fiction, I guess. But the subject of this one intrigued me. It takes place in Philadelphia in 1918, the year of the Spanish Flu epidemic. Thousands of people died a gruesome death, and many parents lost children, and many children became orphans. The main character, Pia, a thirteen year old whose family is from Germany, loses her mother and is then responsible for her baby twin brothers. (Her father is fighting in the war.) Summarizing the plot would give it away so I'll just say it has a lot of twists and turns, many of them completely preposterous.
As I read, I kept switching from "Jeez, this is interesting" to "Are you kidding me???" But it was definitely a book that had to be finished to find out how it all ended for Pia and others.
The writing is ok but definitely needed more editing. Pia does something she regrets, and in almost every chapter she had to wallow a little more in that regret....over and over. Enough! We got it the first time! I became quite good at skimming these parts.
It gets great reviews and I do recommend it if the subject is of interest. - June
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