ABSTRACT
Wallace, the Stegners' youngest boy, lay hot and delirious beside his mother, Hilda, in the Eastend, Saskatchewan, schoolhouse, his streaming nosebleed staining their clothes and bedding. The room, which normally housed the third and fourth grades, was swollen with sickness. Victims of the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918 lay crammed into the four-room brick building, including much of the town and many of the strongest men remaining on the home front during World War I. The virus preferred the lungs of strong, young adult men, bolstering the theories of those who blamed the epidemic on German-propagated germ warfare. 1
