[4] Intended for middle-school-aged readers, Armstrong wrote this series of five books about an Irish family living in Swampoodle, Washington, D.C. during the Civil War.
The family- composed of a drunken father, his son- a bricklayer during the construction of the Capitol building- and his daughter Mairhe, who works at the Shinny, the local pub.
There, Mairhe hears patrons discussing the war; though she believes the Irish should not take sides, others see it as "a means to free slaves who will then push them even further down the economic scale in the competitive job market.
[9] Armstrong edited and contributed one piece ("Witness") to this collection, which features works by Ibtisam Barakat, Joseph Bruchac, Lisa Rowe Fraustino, Marijane Meaker, David Lubar, Lois Metzger, Gloria D. Miklowitz, Dian Curtis Regan, Graham Salisbury, Marilyn Singer, and Suzanne Fisher Staples.
Teacher compulsively collects information concerning the Fire-Us and the collapsed civilization in The Book, a scrapbook which she adds to in a trancelike state.
As the family comes to grips with their increasingly desperate situation, they encounter a disturbed older boy who wanders into Lazarus dragging a mannequin on his back.
An adolescent girl, Cory- named after a verse in Corinthians- has grown disillusioned with the movement after her older sister was "chosen" to become one of the leader's companions, and she joins the Family as they head to Camp David, where the President supposedly is, the Keepers hot on their trail.
At Camp David, it is revealed that the President is none other than the leader of the Keepers, and it was he who unleashed the original Fire-us in order to create the "Second Coming" of God while protecting himself and his followers in a bunker.
Because all of the children from Lazarus are pre-pubescent at the time the virus was first released, they were exempt from the fictional disease which affects only those who produce sexual hormones.
Angerman is mad with grief, having realized that the President is, in fact, his father, and yet left himself, his brother, Sam, and his mother to die while he saved his followers.
In the end, Cory manages to take the gun and lock herself and the President in one of the air-tight bunkers as the vial breaks, saving the world (it is implied she also shoots him and herself, rather than die of the disease).