Read the book and enjoy it but don't think you're reading an historical novel. The story would have been as good under a totally different name and then would not be guilty of gross manipulation of history. But when a story is so far from reality I think it is inappropriate to use actual names. So yes, the author can write an engaging story. She could have called this Gonorrhea Sally and it would have been equally accurate. The author borrowed a name and used a story as a backdrop to create a piece of fiction.
Reading the other reviews really gave me a chill in that people believe they are reading history. In fact, it's so far from Mary's story that I must drop stars because it pretends to be historical fiction. However, even the most cursory dip into the available information on the real "Typhoid Mary" and you'll be shocked at how little of this book is based or even near the actual story. This is indeed an interesting and well-written piece of fiction. In the hands of Mary Beth Keane, Mary Mallon becomes an extraordinarily dramatic, vexing, sympathetic, uncompromising, and unforgettable character. She defied the edict.īringing early 20th-century New York alive - the neighborhoods, the bars, the park being carved out of upper Manhattan, the emerging skyscrapers, the boat traffic - Fever is as fiercely compelling asTyphoid Mary herself, an ambitious retelling of a forgotten life. Yet for Mary - spoiled by her status and income and genuinely passionate about cooking - most domestic and factory jobs were heinous.
She was released under the condition that she never work as a cook again. In order to keep New York's citizens safe from Mallon, the Department of Health sent her to North Brother Island where she was kept in isolation from 1907-1910. Working in the kitchens of the upper class, she left a trail of disease in her wake, until one enterprising and ruthless "medical engineer" proposed the inconceivable notion of the "asymptomatic carrier" - and from then on Mary Mallon was a hunted woman. Mary Mallon was a courageous, headstrong Irish immigrant woman who bravely came to America alone, fought hard to climb up from the lowest rung of the domestic service ladder, and discovered in herself an uncanny, and coveted, talent for cooking. A bold, mesmerizing novel about the woman known as "Typhoid Mary", the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever in the early 20th century - by an award-winning writer chosen as one of "5 Under 35" by the National Book Foundation.
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