A research obsession

I've never been one for reading much non-fiction, especially ponderous tomes on subjects about which I know nothing. But, with a kernel of an idea to invent the fact that my great-grandfather died in the 1918-19 "Spanish Flu" epidemic, I figured I needed to know a little something about this pandemic. Coincidentally, my husband and I were browsing a book store a mere few days after I had committed to writing something and this tome leapt off the shelf into my hands. Even as I bought it, I was pretty sure I would only skim it. It was big, heavy, thick, full of medical jargon.

But finish it I did. And then another, and another. And that was pretty much all the books on the subject, at that time. Not much had been written about this worldwide event. And, my reading showed me why: At the time it had struck, people were just sick to death of death. WW1, or The Great War as it was then known, had taken quite enough people to last a lifetime. If only that had been true. The flu epidemic came along literally at the end of the war, and by itself it took between 20 to 50 million people worldwide. At that magnitude, the Spanish Flu did indeed get short-shrift in terms of publicity.

I loved the books I read and learned so much. At the time of my reading, it was fairly recent that scientists had definitively shown why so many of the flu's victims were young, healthy adults. It had baffled researchers for years. It's the very young and the very old who are supposed to die from the flu, not vital adults in the primes of their lives. After reading THE ONE THAT SOLVED IT, here's my English Major's understanding of the scientific reason behind so many young deaths: Their own healthy bodies had been their worst enemies once the bug entered their systems. It was similar to an allergic reaction. An allergic reaction is the body's over-reaction to an invader. If you've got hay fever, it's your nose and lungs that might over-react. If you ingest the Spanish Flu germ, the same mechanism is at play. The lungs go ahead and produce mucus to keep the bug out of tissues, except it does it so fast that the patient ends up drowning from within.

My book, Inmate, opens with Papa turning purple. Purple. That original detail is what sticks with me to this day, 10 years and the reading of three major books later. Drowning in your own fluids because your immune system is healthy? Now that's just not fair.