DEAR AMERICA & DEAR CANADA: Spanish Flu

Lois Lowry wrote one of my favorite series, the Anastasia Krupnik books. While they're my favorite bits of her writing, Like the Willow Tree is definitely one of the best of the revamped Dear America series additions.

The catalyst of the story is the Spanish flu, which wipes out the main character's parents and infant sister near the beginning of the book. The main character and her older brother are taken in by their maternal uncle and his wife, although the wife is an utter bitch for no reason that's ever explained and the uncle finally gives in to her pressure and takes the children to the Sabbathday Lake Shaker community.

The Shaker way of life is interesting and watching Lydia adjust to it is an enjoyable read. There are elements I like, but definitely plenty I don't. Like Lydia, I think the no pets rule is silly, especially because dogs and cats are called "unclean." Now if they had that rule to avoid an animal showing favoritism to one Shaker or another, I could see it, as they're all big on equality there. But unclean? That's a load. I also didn't like that they took her grandmother's ring from her. She even offered to not wear it, just to keep it in a drawer to look at, but they wouldn't allow it, yet she was allowed to keep a box that her brother made. Why one thing and not the other? I don't like their dismissive attitude toward the children's families, as there's nothing wrong with honoring where one came from.

And of course, there's the completely illogical idea of a celibate community. How do you think you're going to continue to grow if you don't create your own new generations? Clearly they didn't think that one through, which is why there only two of them left. Really. Just two people. There were three, but one died earlier this year.

My nitpicks of their society aside, this is a great book. I always prize ones that teach me something and I learned a lot here.

Fiona's Dear Canada book is a little more involved in the flu itself, with it not just flashing by causing devastation like it did in the DA book. Hers also has a lot of family drama. The grandmother character is a grade A bitch. The father actually loved the mother's twin sister, but ended up married to the mother instead, because both he and the sister were being pigheaded idiots. The mother and aunt are one of three sets of twins. The main character and her sister are identical and their older sisters are fraternal. The mother isn't in the book, having died after the birth of the only brother, but the aunt stays on to help the father raise the family. Fiona slowly uncovers their family mystery and the father and aunt get married in the end, which finally drives the godawful grandmother out of the house. So all this is going on after a long lead up, which culminates in the younger set of twins being sent to two different places to escape the Spanish flu. However, Fiona uses her twintuition to realize that something's not right and ends up going home, where she sees her sister has the flu. With Fiona's help, Fanny makes it through, but not long after, one of the older twins catches it and dies. It's after her death that the drama really starts up.

It sounds complicated, but it makes sense as you read it. This is definitely one of the more dramatic DCs though, although not to the level of some of the rerelease DAs.

So with these two, we finally wrap up World War I. I think there were six that centered on the war and the stuff going on at the same time. I'm getting a little break from war with the next nine books, but then we jump into World War II, which has a whopping fourteen books set between 1941 and 1944. And after that, there are only a handful left! This is the last leg of the DA reread.