The Return of the Raven Mocker by Donis Casey

 This is book #9 in the Alafair Tucker mystery series by Donis Casey. I have not read the whole series but was particularly interested in this book because it takes place in 1918 during the (drum roll) Spanish flu epidemic. While it is fiction and there is a mystery to be solved, I found the description of the flu, how it spread in the town where this series takes place and how people dealt with very interesting. Being that we are in the middle of a similar epidemic I wanted to read this book.

About: "World War I is raging in Europe, but as the deadly influenza pandemic of 1918 sweeps like a wildfire through Boynton, Oklahoma, Alafair Tucker is fighting her own war. Her daughter, Alice, and son-in-law, Walter Kelley, have both come down with the flu, and Alafair has moved into town to care for them after quarantining her young children at their sister's farm. Boynton as a whole isolates itself like an old English plague village, discouraging anyone from coming into town and the residents from traveling outside. A new doctor applies science to treating the stricken, but Alafair applies all she knows about hygiene, nutrition, and old and trusted country remedies. Unable to aid her sons and sons-inlaw fighting overseas, this is danger she can combat. 

One autumn afternoon, screams coming from next door alert Alafair that Alice's neighbor, Nola Thomason, and her son Lewis have suddenly and unexpectedly succumbed. Yet there is something about the way the pair died that causes Alafair to suspect their deaths were due to poison rather than to influenza. The epidemic is so overwhelming that it is many days before the only doctor left in town can confirm Alafair's suspicions; neither Nola nor Lewis died of the flu. The only witness to their deaths, twelve-year-old Dorothy Thomason, a special friend of Alafair's daughter, Sophronia, is so traumatized that she is rendered mute. Were Nola and her son murdered, and if so, why?

The usual motives for murder are greed, or jealousy, or hatred. Or could it be, as Alafair fears, that the Raven Mocker, the most dreaded of the Cherokee wizards or witches, the evil spirit who takes to the air in a fiery shape to rob the old, the sick, and the dying of their lives, is hunting victims and bringing misery to the innocent?"

I really love the story telling of life in the early 20th century in this series. The songs the little girls sing I remember singing in the '60's. I love the story of the small town, farming community. I lived in one as a small child and many things in the book remind me of that. The mystery is good - what happened to the Thomason's? 

I  reading a true account of the Great Flu Epidemic also. I guess I am looking for signs of an end to this one. Funny how many similarities I am seeing. The symptoms are very similar with the terrible headaches, the fevers and the pneumonia. Because of the time and record keeping of that time, they are not sure how many people actually died of the flu in 1918 but the estimate is 30-50 million worldwide with 600,000 being Americans. There were no antibiotics or vaccines then. Why some people got it and some did not is unknown. Safety measures taken were similar; home made masks were worn,  deliveries were iffy, quarantines were in effect. Houses in those times were marked with a red cross to indicate they had the flu. 

My grandparents were children during that time. I knew them all and they never spoke of that flu epidemic. As an amateur genealogist, I have not seen any of their parents or siblings that appear to have died from it, except maybe one. A great uncle was in WWI in England and died of pneumonia in 1918. I had that information for years but now I wonder if he had the Spanish flu. 

No one knows why it went away. One theory is that all of the people that were vulnerable got it. When "it" had no other good hosts to replicate, it died out. Hmmm

Well I recommend this book for not only a good story and mystery but to read about what that pandemic was like. 

Here is the title of the nonfiction book I am also purusing: The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry. (I wonder if they will have to change that title.) t is much drier reading of course but has great pictures of everyone in masks in 1918, hospital wards, military camps etc.