Fever

A lesson: there used to be (and in some parts of the world, still are) innumerable dread diseases in the throes of which one regularly might die. For example, there was tuberculosis (aka consumption), there was yellow fever, and there was typhoid fever. Fever is the story of Typhoid Mary, the Irish cook who was the first asymptomatic typhoid fever carrier identified by U.S. health authorities.

Essentially, Mary Mallon left illness - and death - in her wake, with outbreaks at virtually (literally?) every home where she was hired. Once the authorities caught on, she was arrested and confined to Brother Island - a leper colony of one, except the leper carried typhoid. After doctors determined she was only a danger to society when she cooked, she was released with the agreement that she would never cook again. This lady loved cooking so much, though, that she couldn't keep her promise. (I know, I don't get it either.) You see where this is headed - more jobs, more outbreaks, until she was caught again and and sent back to Brother Island where she lived for the next 20-odd years, until she died as a rather old woman of pneumonia.

As for Fever by Mary Beth Keane. I liked it. A lot. It's similar in style and tone to Doc (which I linked to in the first paragraph), or even to Paris Wife. My one complaint, and it's relatively minor, is that unlike Paris Wife and Doc which seem to have been researched within an inch of their lives, it's hard to know where fact end and fiction begins with Fever. I read an interview with Keane where she talked about her mind being piqued because of the lack of first-person accounts about the case, so I knew going in that it was more a work of fiction than the others, but still I wanted to know what degree of truth there was to Mary's relationship with Alfred Briehof, whether she had ever worked for the Kirkenbauer family (she did work for the Bowens, another of the families mentioned in the book), and some of the other minor characters.

Keane has done a great job of building a complex and nuanced character in Mary Mallon. While the exact degree of truth versus fiction may be impossible to know, she was undoubtedly a complicated woman, probably not wishing typhoid on anyone, but certainly not taking the preventative measures necessary to prevent spreading it. I ended up feeling like she got what was coming to her, but they certainly were different times.

I should not that, having read about Hetty Green immediately before reading about Mary Mallon, I was fascinated at the contrast between Hetty Green's New York and that of Mary Mallon. Considering those differences was very interesting.