I Recommend: Makiia Lucier, A Death-Struck Year

I’ve gone back and forth over recommending this novel, because it is timely in a scary way. Even the cover offers a shudder that it didn’t when I read it last year.

It’s set during the flu pandemic of 1918—eerily, the locale is the Pacific Northwest. As it begins, the flu is far away for seventeen-year-old Cleo Berry. When it first arrives in Portland, she thinks that she will stay on the sidelines in the comfort of her home. But when the local Red Cross calls for volunteers, she finds herself compelled to answer. She ends up in the thick of it, acting with a selflessness she didn’t realize she possessed, finding love in the midst of peril.

The book squarely faces the ravage of disease and the presence of death, but it offers a message of courage, compassion, and hope. Despite the grim subject—grimmer because it’s so close to home right now—I felt uplifted by this story.