Debs Blog Tour: Winnie's War by Jenny Moss

Today I'm super excited to be hosting Jenny Moss, author of Winnie's War, a debut novel set against the backdrop of the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918.

About the book:

Life in Winnie's sleepy town of Coward Creek, Texas, is just fine for her. Although her troubled mother's distant behavior has always worried Winnie, she's plenty busy caring for her younger sisters, going to school, playing chess with Mr. Levy, and avoiding her testy grandmother. Plus, her sweetheart Nolan is always there to make her smile when she's feeling low. But when the Spanish Influenza claims its first victim, lives are suddenly at stake, and Winnie has never felt so helpless. She must find a way to save the people she loves most, even if doing so means putting her own life at risk.

About the author:

Jenny Moss is a former NASA engineer (yes you read that right, she really is a rocket scientist -- how cool is that!?!?). She earned a master's degree in literature and taught writing as an adjunct at University of Houston-Clear Lake. Winnie's War is her first novel. She lives with her two teenagers in Houston, Texas.

My thoughts:

Rather than bring you interview questions, I wanted to give my own thoughts on Winnie's War since I was lucky enough to read an ARC of it.  Before I even opened the book I was excited by the premise -- diseases fascinate me.  And even more than disease, how people handle disease fascinates me.  While Winnie's War doesn't deal with the Spanish Flu directly (and what I mean by that is that it's not a treatise on the disease) it uses it as a backdrop to thrust the main character, Winnie, into the adult world.  

The flu comes to her town and suddenly everything changes and she has to examine her whole life against this new threat.  I really think Jenny did a great job of balancing everything and intertwining Winnie's own personal problems with the larger problems of those around her.  Because when it comes down to it, I think every girl growing up has these moments in her life that are all encompassing to her and I loved seeing the interplay between these moments and the larger issues of her world.  

Hopefully that makes sense.  In the end, I thought it was a very rich book of Winnie trying to figure herself and her world out and I'm really looking forward to what Jenny Moss comes up with next!

Congrats Jenny on your debut!!