Fever

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction	4-week checkout	Due 04-23-2024

"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."--Dust jacket.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Library Journal Review
Booklist Review
Publishers Weekly Review
Summary / Annotation

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Typhoid Mary! submitted by Sarah Block on June 27, 2014, 8:11am I really wanted to like this better than I did. The subject is fascinating, and the details in the book about typhoid fever, its spread and the attempts to stop it were informative. But I felt like the author couldn't decide whether to write this as a historical fiction (which she did) or a more traditional non-fiction book. After reading Fever, I think I would have preferred the latter. The narrative just wasn't very compelling. Too much time was spent on a side story about her boyfriend, and the parts where she imagined Mary's thoughts and mindset were interesting, but repetitive. The book did make me interested in reading more about the subject (particularly North Brother Island in New York City, which was where Mary was quarantined for much of her later life) but overall Fever just wasn't the story I'd hoped for.

Kind of sad submitted by allishaklausch on August 30, 2015, 12:31pm This was a good book that examined the life of Typhoid Mary. The treatment of her was not good, but part of it was that the medical authorities weren't taking her seriously and didn't explain things to her well enough