The Last Town on Earth is a very well paced, vividly detailed, and all too believable novel of a Washington lumber town that shuts its borders during the influenza outbreak of 1918. The elements of isolationism, national labor politics, and federalized townsmen acting as draft marshals come together sharply, among rich characters whose failures and heartbreaks seem the natural outgrowth of living roughly amid the land around them. Well worth reading.Another fictional take on the influenza outbreak of 1918 that I’d recommend is Wallace Stegner’s 1940 novel [book: On a Darkling Plain], now out of print.
