Cleo is starting her final year of school, and she's at loose ends: her friends are making plans for college, for marriage, for the rest of their lives, but Cleo has no idea what she wants to do with herself. She's stuck boarding at school for six weeks while her guardian brother and SIL are traveling, but she's not there very long before the school is quarantined due to the Spanish Influenza. Cleo sneaks out and goes home, expecting their housekeeper to be back in a few days. Cleo finds some sense of purpose when she finds an ad from the Red Cross, looking for volunteers with cars to help educate people and transport the sick, and seeing how few others there are helping, decides to stay and care for patients. 
 It's an interesting take on the Spanish flu epidemic, but at the end of the day it reads like a lot of Wealthy Girl Finds Meaning in Humble Servitude stories. (I don't want to label it class tourism, exactly, but, if the dainty shoe fits and gets puked on, well.) The flu stories usually center on the hard-hit east coast--Philadelphia, New York, Boston--but we're out in Portland, Oregon here. 
 Some new elements, but ultimately a re-tread of other flu-based historical fiction.