The most recommended books about the Spanish flu

I love immigrant stories. This story begins with a young man who trains in medical school in Chicago but longs to serve in a small town.

Dr. Pierre Sartor was new in a small Iowa town 100 years ago when the influenza pandemic broke out. He forged a partnership with what is now Mayo Clinic, which was beneficial his entire career. Dr. Sartor's box of treasures was passed to his son, who later gave it to his daughter, setting her on an exciting journey of discovery for Dr. Pierre Sartor's granddaughter.

It is an important chapter in Iowa history, medical history, and of a well-loved Iowa country doctor who had immigrated from Luxembourg.

I read this book as background reading for writing my own virus-based novel, and it was an absolutely fascinating study of the response to a pandemic that took place almost exactly a century ago. It covers everything from the role of the First World War troops’ demobilisation on spreading the virus, to the impact of poverty on infection rates, to why young, fit people were the most likely to die of the illness. And, of course, why it was called Spanish Flu in the first place (spoiler alert: not because it came from Spain!)

Based on a real-life WWI nurse, this novel is about Julia Stimson who supervised dozens of British nurses in Rouen, France. Horrific battle injuries and a deadly influenza that infiltrates their camp put Julia to the test, all while she tries to advocate for her nursing staff and navigate the egos of some of the male doctors. But when one doctor falls for her, she must decide how this relationship squares with her career aspirations. This book is a wonderful way to learn about this amazing woman who wants to put her career first.

The ‘decade of centenaries’ from 2013-2023 has seen a plethora of books published about events during the Irish Revolution of a hundred years ago or so. Most of them have a glaring omission in that they do not mention, or only barely mention, the great influenza pandemic (the Spanish Flu) of 1918-1919, despite the fact that infection rates and mortality rates were extremely high. Milne’s book tackles the subject head-on, and fills a gap in the narrative of the pivotal decade 1913-23 in Irish history. The high quality of the research is evident in the enormous level of detail throughout the book, and Milne has given a human voice to many of the victims’ families by including survivor memories passed down through the generations. A sombre, thought-provoking read!

Awakenings is the novel-length true story of the patients comatose for decades from sleeping-sickness, a disease that reared its head in the 1920s and then died out.

I consider Oliver Sacks the master storyteller of medical mysteries, and he kept me completely riveted with his descriptions of watching these patients wake up when given the drug L-Dopa, re-entering the world after many decades. The story gives me chills every time I think about it.

It always seemed unfair to me that not only do we get just one life, but we only get to live it once. So I fell in love with this novel from the moment I read its premise: Ursula Todd is born and dies and is born again… and again… and again.

I love that she doesn’t remember her previous lives except as vague intuitions that help her avoid making the same mistakes twice–and I also love that avoiding those mistakes often means she makes other (often fatal) mistakes. I found this book funny, moving, and thought-provoking, but what I love most about it is the way its down-to-earth, realistic style allowed me to fully inhabit the impossible conceit at its heart. 

This is a novel about a young man who must decide between pursuing a career in baseball or marrying a woman he loves, the daughter of a midwestern farming family.

The author knows what it’s really like to live on a farm in Iowa, and it shows. His characters fully inhabit that world. Although the story is about one man’s ambition, love, and uncertainties, it’s capacious enough that we all can see ourselves in it.

The story encompasses heartbreak and hope and is written subtly and with insight. It’s the kind of book that keeps you thinking long after you finish it.

Eventually, my travels to understand and write about the times in which I had been born took me to the Auschwitz concentration camp near Krakow, then to its source in Berlin and some excellent walking tours into the heart of its lights and shadows – which is much of the world of Philip Kerr’s fictional Bernie Gunther. A 1930s Berlin detective, Bernie must navigate the attempt to maintain a humanity that is both moral and faulted in a time of brutality and absurdity over the course of fifteen novels that will puzzle through the human dilemma of World War II Europe. Field Gray, which ranges from the Spanish Flu epidemic of World War I to the corruption of 1950s Cuba is perhaps the most comprehensive of the series.

During the flu pandemic of 1918, the author, Katherine Anne Porter, became deathly ill but recovered. Published over twenty years later, Pale Horse, Pale Rider is her fictionalized account about falling in love with a soldier during the war, then fighting to survive the influenza outbreak. I love that Porter drew from her own experience to write this short novel. (She disliked the term novella.) Pale Horse, Pale Rider is a beautifully written story about a devastating disease.

By now, it should be obvious that I’m a pushover for stories that reveal the lengths to which we will go for the people we love. In An Ocean of Minutes, Polly agrees to time travel to the future as a bonded laborer to save her boyfriend Frank's life during a deadly flu pandemic—only to be stranded five years later than planned in a strange, divided America.

Though a somewhat depressing read, Polly’s determination to make her way back to Frank had me shouting encouragement from the wings.

Incidentally, this novel was published in 2019, before the word "pandemic" became part of our everyday vocabulary. This eerie relevance added an extra layer of poignancy to the story, making Lim's world feel all the more vivid and unsettling.