Fever

"Early in the 20th century, Typhoid Mary was an iconic figure. In this fictive treatment Mary Mallon, a cook, becomes suspect when families she has worked for begin to die of a mysterious ailment. Blamed for the epidemic, Mary is imprisoned in an isolated bungalow on an island in Manhattan’s East River. Well-researched as it is, Mary Beth Keane’s Fever builds a story of Mallon and her inner life that goes well beyond the facts. In this novel we come to care deeply about Mallon, a woman who’s not especially beautiful or gentle, but brave and headstrong and doomed."