Category: Learn History Through Fiction

“If being a vamp meant that men like those at Paddy’s would snort and leer at me, I was no longer sure I wanted to emulate Theda Bara” (On the Shore). In this WWI coming-of-age novel, a young girl in a Lower East Side tenement in 1917 looks with distaste at the drunks stumbling out of a nearby saloon. Three years later, from 1920 to 1933, prohibition would be the law of the land in the U.S. But in Russia, the government sale of vodka had been banned in 1914. Ten years earlier, the Japanese had easily overcome the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War because the Tsar’s troops were too inebriated to fight. So, although a third of the government’s revenues came from the sale of vodka, Tsar Nicholas II banned it when the country entered WWI. Anger over prohibition from peasants, workers, and the military was a contributing factor in the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, which brought down the Tsar’s empire. Read more about On the Shore, a touching immigrant tale that spans time, place, and culture in NOVELS.

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp on January 27, 1945. An estimated 400,000 Holocaust survivors are alive today. Most were children during the Nazi reign of death. Childhood trauma of such magnitude carves deep scars in one’s mind and body, but can also build skills of resilience. As Holocaust survivors age, we hurry to capture their true stories while they are still with us. The horrors they endured are almost beyond human imagination. However, as a fiction writer, I’m called upon to use my imagination to conjure those experiences and make them real for readers. See my stories “Golo’s Transport,” in which an angry old man confronts the trauma of his parents sending him away on the Kindertransport from Germany to England on the eve of WW II (The Madison Review, Fall 2017) and “Orphan Camp,” which examines how the resilience that allowed Jewish children to survive during WWII made them resistant to adoption afterwards (Summerset Review, Winter 2019). Read more about these and my other stories in SHORT STORIES.

100 years ago today ago, on January 5, 1921, suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst harangued the jury at London’s Guildhall to protest her arrest on the charge of sedition. Pankhurst said she faced death many times for her beliefs and was not afraid to do so again. She was sent back to Holloway prison, and continued to speak out against the suppression of women, fascism, racism, and economic inequality. Read about strong women fighting social norms in an American immigrant family during that era in On the Shore. Order on Amazon. Read more about the book in NOVELS.

When Spanish flu cases spiked in 1918, then as now, revelers were warned not to trade their health-saving masks for Halloween masks. Street celebrations and indoor parties were prohibited. People were reminded that dancing was nonessential and that blowing horns spread germs and disrupted the sleep of the sick. State and city bans may have curtailed those seeking treats, but the number of tricks rose. Dallas police, for example, reported overturned bread boxes, an absconded horse, and a stolen piano. Read more about the deadly Spanish flu pandemic a century ago in On the Shore (1917-1925), a tale of conflict between generations in a Lower East Side immigrant family (see NOVELS).

In May 2020, after a series of posts about quack cures for the 1918 Spanish flu, I posted a recap of my favorites. I thought I was done with the series, but like COVID-19 itself, recurring spikes led me to investigate more. Finding plenty, I began a new series. Here’s (another) recap of the most outlandish ones: Powerful electric light (touted by a Swedish physician); Dr. Oddbody’s Cure All Elixir (the name says it all);and Creophos (a tonic that was 16% alcohol). Read about these bogus fixes and others in posts beginning August 14, 2020. Read more about the deadly Spanish flu pandemic a century ago in On the Shore, a tale of conflict between generations in a Lower East Side immigrant family (see NOVELS).

Quack cures purchased to treat the 1918 Spanish flu varied with income. Wampole’s Paraformic Lozenges, only 25 cents a bottle, “protects you in public places.” Johnson’s Anodyne Liniment, equally cheap, was “an enemy to germs.” Rich folks could rent an electro-therapy Violet Ray Machine for $4 a week, also good for acne and kidney stones. Shoe stores stressed keeping feet dry with new foot ware; grocers touted onions; and druggists declared hot water bottles “assistant flu chasers.” Read more about the deadly Spanish flu pandemic a century ago in On the Shore, a WWI tale of conflict between generations in a Lower East Side immigrant family (see NOVELS).

Audacious ads for medicines to treat the 1918 Spanish flu included Laxative Bromo Quinine (“Tablets used by every civilized nation to throw off attacks of colds, grip, and influenza”) and Creophos (“A scientific tonic and internal antiseptic to build up the constitution”). None worked, but many generated profits for those peddling them. Read more about the deadly Spanish flu pandemic a century ago in On the Shore, a tale of conflict between generations in a Lower East Side immigrant family (see NOVELS).

Pandemics highlight alternative fixes from around the world. During the 1918 Spanish flu, faith healers in India molded human figures with flour and water and waved them over the sick to lure out bad spirits. In China, people went to public baths to sweat out evil winds and smoked too yin qiao san, a powder of honeysuckle and forsythia to fight “winter sickness.” In the west, claiming the flu “an exaggerated form of grip,” Hill’s Cascara Quinine Bromide promised relief, while a Nova Scotia man recommended fourteen straight gins in quick succession. Read more about the deadly Spanish flu pandemic a century ago in On the Shore, a tale of conflict between generations in a Lower East Side immigrant family (see NOVELS).

Though hucksters touting quack medicines are rarely challenged, the U.S. Surgeon General during the 1918 Spanish Flu, Rupert Blue, warned the public that there was no cure and urged patience until a vaccine was developed. The Public Health Service cautioned that “many alleged remedies do more harm than good.” Alas, then as now, knowledgeable officials were often not heeded. Read more about the deadly Spanish flu pandemic a century ago in On the Shore, a tale of conflict between generations in a Lower East Side immigrant family (see NOVELS).