The Pull of the Stars

A beautiful, sad, poignant book about the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, taking place in Dublin, Ireland where it hit young pregnant women doubly hard.

Very timely as it was published in the first year of the recent pandemic, making it especially resonate. The author is a master at creating suspense in a tiny space, basically one room.

This incredibly moving novel, set in Dublin in 1918, tells the story of a nurse, Julia, who works in the maternity ward of a hospital.

During the height of the terrible flu epidemic, Julia must risk her own life in order to save the lives of the women under her care. I love learning about the medical world, and the history of women as healers. The story features a real doctor – Dr. Kathleen Lynn – a pioneering medical woman who, along with brave women like Julia, saved lives against all odds. 

I’m stretching the category here. The Pull of the Stars was marketed as a mainstream novel and it’s more recent than my other picks, so you may have heard of it.
It’s a compelling book, and when it turns to same-sex attraction in the final pages, it closes a circle that by then is crying out to be closed. But what I love about it is that the story engages with a full world: the 1918 flu epidemic, the stifling hand of the Church in Ireland, the demands of nursing at a time when medicine could do so little.

I… show more.

Once, when I was in graduate school studying to become a historian, I met a woman my age who was a midwife.

I was hit with a surprising wave of regret, like I’d found the profession I was meant for but too late, after I’d already chosen another path. Both parts of me, historian and wannabe midwife loved this book, which is set in the maternity ward of a London hospital during World War II.

Nurses are in short supply, so the protagonist is quickly promoted from washing the bedding to delivering babies—which, it turns out, she’s very good at.… show more.

Dublin 1918, Nurse Julia Power works in an understaffed maternity hospital in the city centre at the time of the Spanish Flu. In the dark intensity of this ward, Julia battles the pandemic trying to save the lives of those women and babies under her care alongside a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney. There is inevitable loss, with the worlds of those left behind irrevocably changed. In this tender book that features a cameo appearance of one of Ireland’s greatest heroes, Doctor Kathleen Lynn, Donoghue produces a story that is both tragic and uplifting in a period of social and… show more.

In a 1918 Irish hospital, a nurse for mothers-to-be is in quarantine for three days due to a contagious flu.  Nurse Power, together with a rebellious doctor and a young volunteer, struggle to make it through, birthing babies while trying to keep all their patients alive without knowing what virus they are battling. Donoghue is always a treat to read, and the story is a solemn reminder that the 21st century didn’t invent pandemics.