The Pull of the Stars

A Novel

By: Emma Donoghue

Narrated by: Emma Lowe

In Dublin in 1918, a maternity ward at the height of the Great Flu is a small world of work, risk, death, and unlooked-for love.

"Donoghue's best novel since Room" —Kirkus Reviews

In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders—Doctor Kathleen Lynn, a rumoured Rebel on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney.

In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other's lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.

In The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue once again finds the light in the darkness in this new classic of hope and survival against all odds.

The lnfluenza Pandemic of 1918!

I wrote a review for Goodreads. The review written for another
book was shortened for them when l wrote one for Audible

Call the Midwife and the Sufragettes

If you have seen or heard about the TV series: Call the Midwife, on PBS, and you love the series, you will love this book. Raw humanity, history about to change, and female heroes, that risk it all! A time where England started to wake up, become more modern at the cost of so many, yet some stood up and did it the right way. They did their jobs, respecting the sacred lives of others, withstanding critique, eager to learn how change things for the better. This book is a trip back in time, worth reading and thinking about how blessed we are today. There will always be hard work, but these women paved the way for so many positive things we enjoy now. I can highly recommend this book, you will not regret it. Performance is excellent.

Not for the faint of heart, but a must listen.

This beautifully written and narrated novel will grab you by the heart and won’t let go. The story of a few days in an Irish maternity ward where women try to survive childbirth and the 1918 pandemic simultaneously. Cared for by the type of nurse, and assistant and at least one physician that everyone deserves but seldom experiences. This book is graphic in its descriptions of L&D in 1918 (and some things never change). It is difficult to listen to at times because it is heartbreaking, yet it is brilliant and beautiful and hopeful and well worth the journey.

Powerful

This book was soooo good! Covering three days in an Irish hospital during the flu of 1918, it is a book of heartbreak, hope, and love

Breathtaking!

I’ve barely been able to do anything else since I began listening to this wonderful book. It is heartbreaking, filled with love and devotion and incredibly graphic medical events. The courage and pain shared by women delivering their babies and the heroic Nurse Julia in the 1918 flu epidemic was gorgeously written by Emma Donoghue and narrated from the heart by Emma Lowe.
This book and performance will stay with me for a long, long time. Thank you so much.