When I first was inspired to write The Great Trouble, about Dr. John Snow and the London cholera epidemic of 1854, I fell into the same trap many of the elementary students I speak to at author visits do.

I thought of it as an inspiring story of perseverence and achievement -- and something in the past.

But now each day brings report of new outbreaks. The latest is in Mexico, probably stemming from the Haiti outbreak. In October 2013, a suit was brought against the UN for negligence caused by UN peacekeepers' poor sanitary conditions leading to contamination of drinking water.

When I was writing my book, I thought I was mostly writing about the past. I imagined the scene in which Dr. Snow speaks words attributed to him by his colleague, Henry Whitehead:

"You and I may not live to see the day, and my name may be forgotten when it comes, but the time will arrive when great outbreaks of cholera will be things of the past; and it is the knowledge of the way in which the disease is propagated which will cause them to disappear."

I was wrong to think that my story just about the past, just as Dr. Snow was wrong to think that knowledge alone is enough.
The Great Trouble: A Mystery of London, the Blue Death, and a Boy Called Eel