Yesterday's Dead by
Pat Bourke is a middle grade novel set in Toronto in 1918. Meredith Hollings is a 13-year-old girl who must leave her small hometown of Port Stuart to become a maid for a doctor's family in Toronto. Her father left and was killed in the war, and their family's store isn't bringing in quite enough. She regrets having to leave school, since she dreamed of becoming a teacher someday (and who will hire a teacher who didn't even go to high school?).
Meredith decides, however, that her time in Toronto will be an adventure, and she may just get a little more than she bargained for with that. The rest of the household staff are mostly pleasant - kind Mrs Butters runs the kitchen and helps her to feel more at home; Forrest, the chauffeur and sort of jack-of-all-trades for the house; Mrs O'Hagan, who doesn't live in the house, but comes to clean and do the laundry. Mrs O'Hagan's son, Tommy, is also very nice, and he offers to show Meredith around the city on her day off. Parker, the butler, on the other hand, is not very pleasant at all. He seems to find fault with everything Meredith does, and is generally a grouch.
The members of Doctor Waterton's family are perhaps a different story altogether, apart from the doctor himself. The eldest, fifteen-year-old Jack, is a flirt who teases Meredith every time he sees her; Maggie, who is Meredith's age, is a brat with airs of entitlement; the youngest, Harry, is a handful - he's always getting into something, mainly the sugar.
Despite some of the difficulties, Meredith is doing her best and doing a pretty good job, but when the
Spanish influenza sweeps through Toronto, it doesn't skip the doctor's house. Meredith has her work cut out for her trying to get all the regular housework done while also taking care of the members of the household who have fallen victim to the flu. The doctor is detained for days at the hospital as waves of people are brought in, and he's ordered them all to quarantine themselves inside the house - no one goes in, no one leaves - to try and keep anything from spreading even further. He doesn't know, however, that nearly everyone in the house is now ill, and Meredith is running the place nearly on her own. People around the city are dying every day - will she be able to maintain everything in the house until Dr Waterton gets back? She's been relatively lucky so far, but with all their lives in Meredith's hands, what will happen if she also falls ill?
