I wasn’t sure I was ready to read a book set in a pandemic, seeing as we’re still in the middle of one ourselves, but I did and it turned out to be the best book I read this month.

Emma Donoghue’s The Pull of the Stars is set in Ireland during the 1918 flu pandemic, over three days at the end of October 1918—when the Irish were fighting not only the flu pandemic but also World War I. For the characters in the story, neither had any end in sight. (The war ended on November 11, 1918, almost two weeks after this story concludes. The flu pandemic lasted two more years.)

The main character, Julia Power, is a nurse assigned to a special hospital ward for pregnant mothers who have the flu. The flu has left the hospital short-handed, and Julia struggles to balance her now-overwhelming duties with the care of her brother, a veteran suffering from PTSD.