Dreaming of a better life for herself, Lydia, an Irish-American shopgirl from South Boston, gets her chance when she marries medical student Henry Wickett, the scion of a Boston Brahmin family, but her life is turned upside down when Henry quits medical school to promote a patent medicine and the world is swept by the devastating Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 35,000 first printing.