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Summary
Summary
From 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 ).
Mary 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.
On 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.
The 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.
Bringing 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.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Keane (The Walking People) rescues Typhoid Mary from her "cautionary tale" status by telling her true story. Apprehended by the New York Department of Health in 1907, following the deaths of the family for whom she cooks, Mary Mallon is turned into a guinea pig on an East River island with little to comfort her aside from rare letters from her lover Alfred. Slowly she builds a case to win her freedom and returns to a changed New York of Chinese laundries, tenement fires, and Alfred, now-destitute. Dogged by her reputation as a tainted woman, Mary defies the virus she carries by doing what she does best, even as her nemesis-the "medical sleuth" Dr. Soper (the novel's most engaging figure)-hounds her from kitchen to kitchen. There's a tremendous amount of retrospection and research circling the myth, but Keane, by staying so close to Mary, occasionally loses sight of what might have been a more lucrative subject: the birth of the health scare. Typhoid is frequently treated as though it's little more than a metaphor for difference or estrangement, and we don't entirely understand why Mary never seems to grasp the consequences of her actions. Still, as historical fiction, Fever seldom disappoints in capturing the squalid new world where love exists in a battlefield both biological and epochal. Agent: Chris Calhoun, the Chris Calhoun Agency. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A fictional portrait of Typhoid Mary, the Irish immigrant cook who spread disease and death among the cramped, unsanitary streets of turn-of-the-century New York. Opening with the arrest of Mary Mallon in 1907, Keane (The Walking People, 2009) moves back and forth across several decades to flesh out the famous plague carrier's character against a detailed social panorama. Mallon's arrival in 1883; her work ethic and ambition to rise from laundress to cook; her peculiar loyalty to work-shy Alfred Briehof, the alcoholic who refused to marry her--all these provide context as Keane explores Mary's treatment at the hands of the Department of Health. Quarantined first in a hospital and later on North Brother Island for two years, the "Germ Woman" eventually finds a sympathetic lawyer who works for her release on condition she never cooks for others. Liberated, Mary returns to laundry work in the city. Plague carrier she may be, but Keane's Mallon is a fiercely independent woman grappling with work, love, pride and guilt. Exhausted by the laundry and yearning to cook, Mary becomes a baker but is discovered by her nemesis, Dr. Soper. On the run, reunited with now morphine-addicted Alfred, she starts cooking at Sloane Maternity Hospital until realization and responsibility become unavoidable. A memorable biofiction that turns a malign figure of legend into a perplexing, compelling survivor.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* In this compelling historical novel, the infamous Typhoid Mary is given great depth and humanity by the gifted Keane (The Walking People, 2009). Irish immigrant Mary Mallon is eager to better her station in life and unafraid of hard work. When she is finally made a head cook, she is hired by some of the best families in Manhattan but unwittingly leaves a trail of disease in her wake. A medical engineer ultimately identifies her as a healthy carrier of typhoid fever and quarantines her on North Brother Island, where she is separated from her lifelong companion, Alfred Briehof, and forced to live in isolation. She is released three years later under the condition that she never cook again. But her inability to understand her condition, her passion for cooking, and the income she had become used to all conspire to lure her back into the kitchen. Keane not only makes of the headstrong Mary a sympathetic figure, she also brings the New York City of the early twentieth century to teeming life, sweeping readers into the crowded apartment buildings, filthy bars, and dangerous sweatshops of Upper Manhattan. Most movingly of all, she tells a great love story in depicting Mary and Alfred's flawed but passionate relationship. A fascinating, often heartbreaking novel.--Wilkinson, Joanne Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
MARY BETH KEANE'S first novel, "The Walking People," could stand as a historical sequel to her new novel, "Fever." The earlier book is the story of two Irish sisters who immigrate to New York in the early 1960s, accompanied by a young man who belongs to the "walking people," also known as the "traveling people" or tinkers. That novel is less about the anomalous position these itinerant peddlers occupy in Irish society than it is about the consequences of concealing from a child the circumstances of her birth. At the same time it's a long, fond portrait of a family. In "Fever," the Irish immigrant in New York is again the focus of the story, and as before the twin themes of social exclusion and exile are explored. But this time the immigrant's ordeal is harsher, and her fate more complicated than that of the characters in the slow, graceful pages of "The Walking People." Here the action has shifted from the recent past to the early 1900s, and the immigrant in question is Mary Mallon of County Tyrone - better known to us as Typhoid Mary. The facts are well established. She arrived here in 1883. Between 1899 and 1915 she worked as a cook in the homes of a number of wealthy families, and later in a hospital. Various people for whom she cooked suffered bouts of typhoid fever. Several died. A man named George Soper, a sort of medical detective, tracked the source of the infection to Mary. She was soon identified as the first known asymptomatic, or healthy carrier of the disease. A woman of robust temper, she cursed her accusers, attacked them physically and fled them when she could; to no avail. She was quarantined on North Brother Island in the East River in 1907. There she stayed for three years until a softhearted health commissioner allowed her to return to the city, as long as she never cooked for anyone again and regularly washed her hands. Mary was helped to find a job as a laundress. She hated it. "Her knuckles would itch and crack and bleed and cramp." And it paid a third or less than cooking did. Soon she was back in her old line of work. Again George Soper tracked her down. As Keane tells it, it was May 1912 and she was working in a bakery, but this time she escaped Soper's clutches. She enjoyed a period of freedom and, eventually, under a false name, found work as a cook in the Sloane Maternity Hospital. But as always, when Mary's in the kitchen, people get sick. And as always, her nemesis showed up. Soper "looked so pleased to see her that Mary wondered for a second if he could be there on other business." Thanks to his efforts, she was returned to North Brother Island, and there she spent the last 23 years of her life. A fascinating episode in modern medical history, in which the true hero is surely the indefatigable Soper. Why then tell Mary's story, and not his? It's hard to make a case for any great injustice here. Mary's quarantine was justified and not uncomfortable. She was given every chance to live in society, if she didn't cook. She was an unlucky woman, and she raged against her bad luck, at first because she didn't understand it. But she wasn't a martyr or a victim or a working-class hero, and later, when it seems she did understand the problem, she remained willfully blind and criminally irresponsible. So there's no good reason to valorize her - indeed, just the reverse - other than to celebrate the vigorous exception she took to having her bodily fluids tested frequently and her liberty curtailed. Keane does find a vein of gold in the sad story of Mary's long relationship with a fellow immigrant, Alfred Briehof, who was a ne'er-do-well alcoholic and later a drug addict, although in the early days the two were apparently happy. But this isn't the real story either. What's of paramount interest here is the mind of a woman who could not and would not understand why, being herself in good health, she sickened others, and then, when the evidence became overwhelming, got twisted up in grotesque knots of delusion, paranoia and self-deception. She lied to herself. Denied what she knew. Blamed others. She found reasons to discount the lab tests. "Their labs! Run by their people! I'm telling you, it's Soper." It was because she was Irish. It was because she was a woman. It was chance. "Well, a few got sick. . . . But it was a coincidence." And even: people die anyway. An intelligent woman, she clung to this state of fatal denial until finally, inevitably, almost gratefully she gave in. "If she'd brought typhoid to the hospital, to those new mothers, to those babies, then it was as they said, she'd brought it to the other places, too." Then there's this: "She wondered whether it was possible to know a truth, and then quickly unknow it, bricking up that portal of knowledge until every pinpoint of light was covered over." It's in the tender, detailed portrayal of willed ignorance collapsing in the face of truth that Mary Beth Keane has made of Mary Mallon's life a fine novel of moral blindness, and also remorse, of a sort. Mary Mallon raged against her bad luck, but she wasn't a martyr or a victim or a working-class hero. Patrick McGrath's new novel, "Constance," will be published in April.
Library Journal Review
In the early 20th century in bustling and grimy New York City, Mary Mallon (1869-1938) became a medical first when she was identified as a healthy carrier of typhoid fever. Unknowingly, the house cook was passing the disease to families around the city. Eventually, typhoid outbreaks were traced to Mary, and she was placed in isolation. She was released three years later on the condition she would never cook again, but that promise proved hard for her to keep. Keane's second novel (after The Walking People) tells the tragic tale of "Typhoid Mary" and the dangerous decisions she made while following her passion for cooking. The award-winning writer mixes literary imagination with historical fact to humanize the notorious Mary. Readers will question Mary's final choicesÅbut scrutinize the injustices committed against her and sympathize when she suffers. VERDICT Even for those who know the outcome, fiction fans will eagerly anticipate each new page where disease lurks behind every compassionate corner. Keane has replaced the "Typhoid Mary" cliche with a memorable and emotional human story. [Four-city author tour.]-Andrea Brooks, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib.., Highland Heights (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
