Fever

Name: Fever
Author: Mary Beth Keane
ISBN: 9781451693416

by Mary Beth Keane

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.…

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"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."

NPR Books We Love — 2013 · apps.npr.org