Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
“Not only is Fever a compelling read for anyone who gets drawn into medical mystery shows, it will also send shivers through anyone who’s ever felt the ill effects of gossip or hypocrisy.” O, The Oprah Magazine
Review
“Transforming a lived past into riveting fiction, Keane gives us a novel that thrums with life, and a heroine whose regrets, though entirely specific, feel utterly familiar.” Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe
Review
“[A] gripping historical novel…Mary Beth Keane gives Mary her own voice, creating a richly sympathetic and provocative portrait of the very real person behind the pariah.” Caroline Leavitt, The San Francisco Chronicle
About the Author
Mary Beth Keane attended Barnard College and the University of Virginia, where she received an MFA. She has been named one of the National Book Foundation's "5 under 35," and was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship for fiction writing. She currently lives in Pearl River, New York with her husband and their two sons. She is the author of The Walking People, Fever, and Ask Again, Yes.
Mary Beth Keane on PowellsBooks.Blog
Ask Again, Yes is a novel about two families who live as next door neighbors in a working class suburb of New York City...
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