Sir Thomas More by Hals Holbein (Accessed via Wikipedia ) During lockdown, we had Time. Remember that? I was in my probationary year of teaching: almost certainly among the most exhausting years for any profession. All my time had been taken up with school work, and I regularly stayed at school until after 6pm, having arrived there at eight in the morning. Now, children, this is not sustainable and, very soon, I decided I didn’t like working where I was. Then I realised that I didn’t like teaching at all. But, in fact, neither was particularly true: I just needed to be true to myself and to say no, which would give me the ability to manage my work/life balance in a more appropriate way. What does this have to do with historical fiction, I hear you say? Well, during March 2020, we went into lockdown and suddenly I went from working ten-hour-days to ten-hour-weeks. I met up with my class on Google Meet, I put work up for them on a meticulously designed Google Classroom, but I just h...
It's #HistFicThursdays again, and this week I'm delighted to be sharing a guest post from Renee Yancy, as part of her Coffee Pot Book Club tour. A little over 100 years later, we are once more in a pandemic. Find out about the inspiration and backdrop Renee used for More Precious Than Gold in her guest post below. But first, let's meet the book..
Blurb
A young woman refuses to become a pawn in her grandmother’s revenge scheme and forgoes a life of wealth and royalty to pursue a nursing career as America enters WWI and the Pandemic Flu of 1918 wreaks havoc in New York City.
More Precious Than Gold is available via Amazon UK - Amazon US - Amazon CA - Barnes & Noble - Kobo - Apple Books
Guest Post
The Pandemic Flu of 1918 affected not just the lives of Bellevue nurses but nearly the entire world.
The administration of Bellevue Hospital gave their student nurses the option of going home while the deadly Pandemic Flu of 1918 raged through New York City. Not a single one of Bellevue’s student nurse chose to leave.
And eleven of those student nurses lost their lives while serving their patients.
That’s dedication.
My historical novel, More Precious Than Gold, takes place against the background of WWI and the Pandemic Flu.
My protagonist, Kitty Winthrop, eighteen years old, is a student nurse at Bellevue Hospital in New York City.
It is difficult today to imagine the horror of the situation these student nurses found themselves in. Antibiotics hadn’t been discovered yet, and the treatment regimen for flu patients consisted of aspirin, fluids, and morphine or laudanum. Overwhelmed by the sheer number of patients, the nurses could barely keep up with the all the blood and bodily fluids produced by the sick and dying.
The Pandemic Flu of 1918 depressed the average life expectancy of adults in the US by almost 10 years.
The graph displays data from the years 1910 to 1960. Research on the Pandemic Flu of 1918 continues to the present day.
I finished the manuscript for this story in 2018, two years before COVID hit. Never in a million years did I think I would ever find myself in the middle of a modern day pandemic. Some of the similarities are eerie. And some things that people in 1918 experienced didn’t happen here, thank the Lord.
Now, let's meet the author:
Renee Yancy is a history and archaeology nut who works as an RN when she isn’t writing historical fiction or traveling the world to see the exotic places her characters have lived.
A voracious reader as a young girl, she now writes the kind of books she loves to read—stories filled with historical and archaeological detail interwoven with strong characters facing big conflicts. Her goal is to take you on a journey into the past so fascinating that you can’t put the story down.
When she isn’t writing, Renee can be found in the wilds of Kentucky with her husband and a rescue mutt named Ellie. She loves flea markets and collecting pottery and glass and most anything mid-century modern.
You can follow Renee on these links:
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete