Little Souls: A Novel [Paperback]

Winner of the 2023 Colorado Book Award for Historical Fiction

ADenver Postbestseller

Sandra Dallas'sLittle Soulsis a gripping tale of sisterhood, loyalty, and secrets set in Denver amid Americas last deadly flu pandemic.

Colorado, 1918. World War I is raging overseas, but its the home front battling for survival. With the Spanish Flu rampant, Denvers schools are converted into hospitals, churches and funeral homes are closed, and horse-drawn wagons collect corpses left in the street. Sisters Helen and Lutie have moved to Denver from Iowa after their parents deaths. Helen, a nurse, and Lutie, a carefree advertising designer at a fashionable womens store share a small, neat house, and each finds a local beaufor 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 for the womans 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 manDorothys fatherin 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 flu victim.

Meanwhile Lutie also worries about her fianc? over there. As it happens, his wealthy mother harbors a secret of her own and helps the sisters as the danger deepens, from both the murder investigation and the outbreak.

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