Fever - Mary Beth Keane

nFrom the bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes, a novel about the woman known as Typhoid Mary, who becomes, in Keane's assured hands...a sympathetic, complex, and even inspiring character (O, The Oprah Magazine). nMary Beth Keane has written a spectacularly bold and intriguing novel about the woman known as Typhoid Mary, the first person in America identified as a healthy carrier of Typhoid Fever. n nOn the eve of the twentieth century, Mary Mallon emigrated from Ireland at age fifteen to make her way in New York City.

Brave, headstrong, and dreaming of being a cook, she fought to climb up from the lowest rung of the domestic-service ladder. Canny and enterprising, she worked her way to the kitchen, and discovered in herself the true talent of a chef. Sought after by New York aristocracy, and with an independence rare for a woman of the time, she seemed to have achieved the life she'd aimed for when she arrived in Castle Garden.

Then one determined medical engineer noticed that she left a trail of disease wherever she cooked, and identified her as an asymptomatic carrier of Typhoid Fever. With this seemingly preposterous theory, he made Mallon a hunted woman. n nThe Department of Health sent Mallon to North Brother Island, where she was kept in isolation from 1907 to 1910, then released under the condition that she never work as a cook again.

Yet for Mary--proud of her former status and passionate about cooking--the alternatives were abhorrent. She defied the edict. n nBringing early-twentieth-century New York alive--the neighborhoods, the bars, the park carved out of upper Manhattan, the boat traffic, the mansions and sweatshops and emerging skyscrapers--Fever is an ambitious retelling of a forgotten life.

In the imagination of Mary Beth Keane, Mary Mallon becomes a fiercely compelling, dramatic, vexing, sympathetic, uncompromising, and unforgettable heroine.n