The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donahue (2020)

I found the author's first book incredibly painful to read, and yet it made me think through the natural sequence of trauma and also the public's appetite for scandal and intrusion into places they are not wanted or welcome.  While it was a darker corner of humanity, the prevalence of human trafficking and the boundaries of what can happen are not even close to the edge of what we know men do to women.

So, here we are at her second book.  It is set in a maternity ward in a Dublin hospital during the Spanish Flu.  Overwhelmed hospital staff are bedding patients on the floor, and stores have run out of disinfectant (sounding at all familiar yet). The pandemic is simply a backdrop for a memorable portrait of women’s lives scarred by poverty and too many pregnancies in a society that supports neither them nor their children.  The Catholic Church is called to judgment, as well it should be.   Her hero is Julia Power, a maternity nurse striving to save the lives of pregnant women at even greater risk than usual during labor and delivery because they have the flu. She has to care for them in a converted supply room barely big enough for three cots.  Equipment and personnel are both scarce.  All of this is set, for me, against the back drop of our current pandemic, where we are no better prepared to distance and protect both ourselves and others.  A powerful read.