But she rises to the occasion, with the help of a young volunteer.Īt first, Julia is unimpressed by Bridie Sweeney who, in her early twenties, seems to know so little about the world. Julia Power is proud of her nursing skills and qualifications but, on the eve of her thirtieth birthday, she hadn’t expected to have sole charge of a makeshift three-bedded ward for expectant mothers who also have flu. This is the backdrop of Emma Donoghue’s touching novel about the joys, hazards and horrors of childbirth in Dublin a century ago. In an Ireland still colonised by Britain, and equally oppressed by the Catholic church, health staff must also battle poverty, malnutrition and ignorance, amid political turmoil, civil and international war. The front-line, without vaccines or ventilators, was as harrowing as the trenches. Think we’ve had it bad lately? The influenza pandemic of 1918 killed more people than the First World War.
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