Literature, Historical Fiction -- 4 stars
Set in Philadelphia during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, this is a story of one young German immigrant girl's fight to survive. Pia Lange's father is away fighting in the war, her mother is ill, and there is no food for her infant twin brothers. When desperation makes her leave the twins alone in a quest for help, Bernice Groves, an immigrant hating neighbor, steps in. While Pia struggles to reunite her family, Bernice makes it her life's work to tear immigrant families apart. One of them will lose. ---- The Oliver Twist-ian plot follows a pre-prescribed blueprint for hardscrabble orphan tales, but that didn't diminish the enjoyment I got from this book. The descriptions of immigrant life, and particularly the pandemic itself offer a highly atmospheric background for feisty Pia and the well developed secondary characters (both good and bad) who share her story. There is an other-worldly element to Pia that was a bit out of type for a book based on an historical event and that I felt added nothing, but it is a minor flaw. A feel good story for the long days of a modern pandemic. Don't we all deserve a happy ending?
No comments:
Post a Comment