In Part VII, not only is Clara running a hotel in Montrose, Colorado, she has to deal with the flu epidemic of 1918. My great-grandmother wrote about the deadly disease and how it affected her and her family in seven paragraphs of an autobiography that was 148 hand-written pages long.
When writing Never Done I expanded those seven paragraphs into 23 pages. Below are a couple of passages from the novel. In the first excerpt I share a bit of what I came across during my research.
As the disease spread, chatter filled the phone lines, some people claiming the disease was a secret
weapon unleashed by the Germans. Children began jumping rope to a new ditty.
I had a little bird,
It’s name was Enza.
I opened the window,
And in-flu-enza.
The 1918 flu was especially hard on the people of Colorado, and in this second excerpt Clara tries to reassure her daughter and calm her nerves.
“Nobody is going to die here,” Clara said without raising her voice. “After they rest for a few days, they’ll be fine. I can’t throw people out. Where would they go? Every hospital in the state is full, and no one is going to take them into their homes.”
“This is a plague, Mother, a plague! Shops are padlocked. Theaters closed. The streets are nearly
empty.”
Clara smoothed Pearl’s dark brown hair off her brow. “Don’t be so dramatic, Baby. People don’t
survive a plague. The trains are still running. So is the stage.”
If you'd like to read more about this disease known as the Spanish flu, scroll back to my post from November 9th. As you'll see, I was so fascinated with what I learned in my research I had to write more about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment