Clara's Journal: And the Story of Two Pandemics

Clara’s Journal provides a peek into life in rural America during the early 20th century through the eyes of an 18-year-old high school senior who shares her everyday life as well as her experience living through the unprecedented 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.
Eighteen-year-old Clara Mae Horen lives on a small farm near Cresbard, South Dakota, and bears witness to young friends and neighbors dying from the deadly flu. While she attends plays with friends, completes her weekly chores around the farmhouse, studies algebra, falls in love, practices the piano, and indulges in her love for candy, the United States is embroiled in its own triumphs and struggles: the fight against the pandemic, World War I, the fight for women’s suffrage and the 19th Amendment, the expansion of transcontinental railroads, Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations Tour, the Omaha and the other Red Summer 1919 race riots, and its relationship with Native Americans such as the Lakota Sioux on the Cheyenne River Reservation.
Using the journal of her grandaunt, Vickie Oddino weaves a fascinating story of life in the early 1900s, elaborating on the particulars Clara discusses and drawing comparisons to the pandemic we are living through today. Enjoy a step back in time as we explore a community devastated by the 1918 influenza and a people who have more in common with us than we might suspect.