Written In the Stars

 Thank you Judy Schmidt for selecting "Pull of the Stars" by Emma Donoghue and for hosting our Irish event!  We learned and shared as we discussed this book which was set in Dublin, Ireland and dealt with the 1918 Pandemic.  The main character was a nurse/midwife who's patients had the influenza as they went into labor.  The information was well researched and we all learned more than we ever knew about complications during childbirth.  Life began and life ended.  Although one might think this subject would be off-putting, it seemed to draw us all in and we appreciated the story.  It seems so timely having been written during the Covid Pandemic.  "The human race settles on terms with every plague in the end, or a stalemate at the least.  We somehow muddle along, sharing the earth with each new form of life."  The plague is a form of life, "a creature with no malign intentions, only a craving to reproduce itself much like our own."