The ancient Greeks connected poppies with sleep because of the sedative nature of its sap. After her daughter Persephone was abducted by Hades, the gods gave Demeter, the goddess of harvest, a poppy to help her sleep. Afterwards, poppies sprang from Demeter’s footsteps. She transformed her mortal lover, Mecon, into a poppy.
Death and sleep have been intertwined concepts for a long time. In the Bible, Daniel 12:2 describes the dead as "those who sleep in the dust of the earth.” Shakespeare has Hamlet compare sleep to death (line 72).
“They now came upon more and more of the big scarlet poppies, and fewer and fewer of the other flowers; and soon they found themselves in the midst of a great meadow of poppies. Now it is well known that when there are many of these flowers together their odor is so powerful that anyone who breathes it falls asleep, and if the sleeper is not carried away from the scent of the flowers he sleeps on and on forever. But Dorothy did not know this, nor could she get away from the bright red flowers that were everywhere about; so presently her eyes grew heavy and she felt she must sit down to rest and to sleep.” –L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz
At the same time, a French woman Anna Guérin was also promoting silk poppies. The director of the “American and French Children’s League,” Ms. Guérin adopted the poppy as the charity’s emblem. The charity provided war veterans, women, and children with fabric to make artificial poppies, which were then sold to help fund the rebuilding of war-torn regions of France and to assist orphaned children. In Britain, a similar campaign raised money to help Veterans in find employment and housing.
Agnes Day, the main character in A Blaze of Poppies begins her story on a ranch in the dry New Mexican desert. It leads her to the field hospitals of France, where she witnesses the death and destruction of war first hand. But it is poppies that blaze the trail back to her beloved ranch.