A unique story about a town that reverse quarantines itself during the 1918 flu epidemic and WWI simultaneously. While the first half of the book was a bit of a crawl through backstories of many characters, the second half was quite engaging and i found the pace pick up significantly. Sympathy for the main protagonist, Philip, wasn’t terribly organic, and I often found myself annoyed at his impotency when it came to decision making and standing up for himself. All in all, probably could’ve been edited down, but I’m glad I read this book. It wasn’t a story I’d heard told before and it offered some history I hadn’t been aware of before. 

I wanted to love this book. I learned a lot from it and it was well-written. My biggest complaint is that I just…didn’t care about the characters. I think it would have been better if it was told from the perspective of a single character, allowing us to become connected to that person, instead of an omniscient narrator switching around.