![]() ![]() ![]() Her budding friendship with able new assistant Bridie Sweeney, one of the ill-treated “boarders” at a nearby convent, gives Julia a glimpse of how unwanted and illegitimate children are abused in Catholic Ireland. Donoghue depicts these deliveries in unflinching detail, but the gruesome particulars serve to underscore Julia’s heroic commitment to saving women and their babies in a world that does little for either. 31, 1918, Julia arrives to learn that one of her patients died in the night, and over the next two days we see her cope with three harrowing deliveries, only one of which ends well. The disease makes labor and delivery even more high risk than normal. Julia Power works in Maternity/Fever, a supply room converted to handle pregnant women infected with the flu. ![]() These details provide a thrumming background noise to the central drama of women’s lives brought into hard focus by pregnancy and birth. A nurse in a Dublin hospital battles the ordinary hazards of childbirth and the extraordinary dangers of the 1918 flu.ĭonoghue began writing this novel during the 1918 pandemic’s centennial year, before COVID-19 gave it the grim contemporary relevance echoing through her text: signs warning, “ IF IN DOUBT, DON ’ T STIR OUT,” an overwhelmed hospital bedding patients on the floor, stores running out of disinfectant. ![]()
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