Little Souls: A Novel

Sandra Dallas

Apr 2022 · Sold by St. Martin's Press

About this ebook

Sandra Dallas's Little Souls is a gripping tale of sisterhood, loyalty, and secrets set in Denver amid America’s last deadly flu pandemic

Colorado, 1918. World War I is raging overseas, but it’s the home front battling for survival. With the Spanish Flu rampant, Denver’s schools are converted into hospitals, churches and funeral homes are closed, and nightly horse-drawn wagons collect corpses left in the street. Sisters Helen and Lutie have moved to Denver from Ohio after their parents’ death. Helen, a nurse, and Lutie, a carefree advertising designer at Neusteter’s department store, share a small, neat house and each finds a local beau – for Helen a doctor, for Lutie a young student who soon enlists. They make a modest income from a rental apartment in the basement. When their tenant dies from the flu, the sisters are thrust into caring the woman’s small daughter, Dorothy. Soon after, Lutie comes home from work and discovers a dead man on their kitchen floor and Helen standing above the body, an icepick in hand. She has no doubt Helen killed the man—Dorothy’s father—in self-defense, but she knows that will be hard to prove. They decide to leave the body in the street, hoping to disguise it as a victim of the flu.

Meanwhile Lutie also worries about her fiance “over there”. As it happens, his wealthy mother harbors a secret of her own and helps the sisters as the danger deepens, from the murder investigation and the flu.

Set against the backdrop of an epidemic that feels all too familiar, Little Souls is a compelling tale of sisterhood and of the sacrifices people make to protect those they love most.

Ratings and reviews

Set in 1918, Denver Colorado, in the middle of WWI and the Spanish Flu Epidemic. This book hits close to home with the current Covid pandemic in our country. The masks, the closures, and the shortage of medical staff to deal with the epidemic. Schools in Denver were closed to use the schools as hospitals for those ill with the Spanish Flu. Two sisters, Helen and Lutie struggle with day to day activities during this time. Lutie's fiancee Peter is overseas fighting, Helen is a nurse engaged to a doctor. Both Helen and her fiancee are working frantically to save those ill with the influenza. With everything going on in the city, due to the influenza and because of it Lutie and Helen find themselves in charge of a young girl when her mother dies from the flu and her father abandons her. That's small stuff compared to tragedies and trials that follow later in the story. It is truly a harrowing story but filled with loved for one small child that has everyone under her spell and the sisters willing to do anything to save her. This was a great read and I would recommend it. Thanks to Sandra Dallas for writing a great story, to St. Martins Press for publishing it and to NetGalley for making it available to me to read and review. All Comments are my own.

About the author

Sandra Dallas, dubbed “a quintessential American voice” by Jane Smiley in Vogue, is the author of over a dozen novels, including Prayers for Sale and Tallgrass, many translated into a dozen languages and optioned for films. Six-time winner of the Willa Award and four-time winner of the Spur Award, Dallas was a Business Week reporter for 25 years covering the Rocky Mountain region, and began writing fiction in 1990. She has two daughters and lives with her husband in Denver and Georgetown, Colorado.