This is a story of hope and survival. Self-reliance and traditional family values help our family to stick together and outlive the flu pandemic crisis. In the process of overcoming this struggle, our family becomes stronger, as does American society. Throughout this life changing experience, there are elements of self reliance, fear, death of a loved one, courage, family conflict, self preservation, life's lessons, going back to the simple basics, and so much more. Although this book was written as fiction over two years ago, much of it has already come true. My hope is to create more public awareness and help people to prepare themselves and their families for the imminent calamity that one day each of us will likely have to face. On that dreadful day when the deadly contagious pandemic affects your our own family, we all will know in our hearts that we did not do enough to prepare for it, and if it just so happens that we do live through it, we will live out the rest of our lives burdened with the knowledge and the guilt of that unforgiving fact. The Difference Between Life and Death: Outliving the Flu Pandemic of 2009" was awarded second place in the Young Adult Fiction category of the 2009 Premier Book Awards, and was a Finalist in the Fictional Short Story category for the Indie Book Awards 2009.

One man coughed a deep cough that sounded like he had fluid in his lungs. I thought that if any of these people were not already sick they sure were going to make each other sick standing here. Some women had small babies in their arms and I wondered why anyone would bring babies here, of all places? Then I saw an elderly black woman who could only take small, slow steps in her white house slippers. She had two younger ladies holding on to each of her arms, and one of them closest to me said, “Come on Grandma.” They still had a long way to go to get to the end of the line, and all for what? After that I had to leave. As I turned to walk away I thought to myself, the humanity...how could we have let this happen to us? I’m not one to be crying very much, especially for people I do not even know, but I started to have tears in my eyes. What’s happened to humanity? A terrible thing has happened to humanity! A heavy cloud of gloom came over me and I felt a weight on my shoulders. I felt the presence of death. I had a premonition come to mind that this long line of everyday people would soon become a line of black shadows of doomed people. The more I thought about it, the deeper it sunk in and I became overwhelmed with emotion. The death clock was ticking, the reaper was watching, so I put on my dark glasses to hide my teary eyes and went home.

Dennis Miner has a B.A. degree in Speech Communication and a M.A. degree in Communication Studies from California State University, Sacramento. He is retired from the U.S. Army with the rank of Major. He currently lives in a log cabin in a forest in Northern California.