So, we named our baby after a character in one of my favorite books. When I try to summarize the book in my own words, I tend to use words like “doomsday” and “time-travel” and “the plague” –which don’t exactly capture the essence of the literary reference. People who have read the book before, including a few fellow librarians and my father-in-law, seem to understand why we choose to name our baby Kivrin though.

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Copyright 1992 and winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards

Here is the (more eloquent than mine) description from the back of the book:
“For Kivrin, preparing for on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity’s history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be retrieved. But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin – barely of age herself – finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history’s darkest hours. Five years in the writing by one of science fiction’s most honored authors, Doomsday Book is a storytelling triumph. Connie Willis draws upon her understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering, and the indomitable will of the human spirit.”