Fever by Mary Beth Keane

Fever presents a fiction account of the woman known to history as "Typhoid Mary" - Mary Mallon. The novel is divided into five parts beginning with a prologue, Habeas Corpus, Liberty, His Banner Over Me Is Love, and an Epilogue.

The Prologue has Mary remembering working at the Kirkenbauer's in the summer of 1899 - the first time typhoid struck a house while she was employed. This incident is to haunt Mary for the remainder of her life, because of the little boy, Tobias, who dies from typhoid.

In Habeas Corpus tells the story of Mary's incarceration and her attempts to secure a release from quarantine. It is 1907 and Mary tells how she is tracked down and arrested, taken first to Willard Parker Hospital where she is asked to submit to gallbladder surgery. When she refuses, Mary is sent to North Brother Island to be quarantined. Eventually she is given her own little cottage and her meals are provided for her. She must provide samples of her urine and feces.

She writes her lover, Alfred Briehof, and asks him to find a lawyer to help her. However, Alfred isn't much help to her, writing to Mary only nine times in her first year on North Brother. In 1909, Mary does eventually get a lawyer, Francis O'Neill, who manages to get a hearing for Mary. O'Neill tells Mary that she should swear before the judges that she will not cook anymore and that this will allow her to be set free.

Mary and O'Neill prepare for the hearing while life goes on for Mary on North Brother. Interspersed are flashbacks of Mary remembering a time when she purchased the exact same hat as her wealthy employer, Mrs. Bowen, the time when the wealthy tried to organize a food collective, and when little Elizabeth Bowen became ill. Other flashbacks in this part of the book include her early life in Ireland as a poor orphan living with her grandmother, her arrival in New York where she lodges with her Aunt Kate and her husband, Paddy Brown, her first jobs as a laundress, and the first time she meets Alfred. The reader also learns about Mary and Alfred's tumultuous relationship that is further strained by his alcoholism and chronic unemployment.

At the hearing Mary manages to meet with Alfred, who misses her but seems distant. Mary is sent back to North Brother and she almost gives up. Eventually Alfred comes to visit her at North Brother and tells her that he is engaged to marry another woman, Liza Meany who is a widow. This is a very low point for Mary in her life. Mary gains her freedom when a new Health Commissioner, Lederle is installed. She heads back to New York and finds employment as a laundress.

In Liberty, we learn more about Albert's life and how he tries unsuccessfully to straighten his life out. When he learns that Mary is set free he tries to see her but she won't have anything to do with him. This rejection affects Albert deeply, causing great hardship and suffering in his life.

In His Banner Over Me Is Love, Mary and Albert eventually find one another but the past cannot be rekindled. Their lives have been irreparably altered and yet the more things have changed, the more they are the same, with Mary basically supporting Albert by earning a living as a cook. This of course, has the expected result of her causing more outbreaks of typhoid and her eventual permanent incarceration.

The Epilogue sees Mary in her old age still struggling to deal with her situation and her conscience revisiting the Kirkenbauer incident and perhaps finally recognizing that she did in fact cause a child to die and that maybe she might have known this all along.

Discussion

Mary Beth Keane presents a riveting fictional account of a young Irish woman known forever to history as "Typhoid Mary". Typhoid Mary was the name (among others) given to thirty-seven year old Mary Mallon who was one of the first people known to modern medical science as a healthy carrier of disease. Mary had never had typhoid herself, but carried in her gallbladder, Salmonella typhi, the strain of bacteria known to cause typhoid. Mary admitted to rarely washing her hands after using the bathroom and when cooking. The bacteria was transmitted to others through any uncooked food Mary Mallon prepared, causing them to become sick with typhoid.

At the time Mary lived, the early 20th century, scientists were just beginning to understand the role of micro-organisms, such as bacteria, in illness. It was not known that a person could be completely healthy yet make others sick by being a carrier of harmful bacteria. This was a relatively new discovery.

Mary's trouble began in 1906 when she worked as a cook for the Warren family at Oyster Bay, a place not known to suffer from typhoid outbreaks. Six people became ill from typhoid. Warren hired Dr. George Soper, a sanitation engineer, to try to find the cause of the outbreak in his home. Soper learned that the family had hired an Irish cook three weeks prior to the outbreak and soon discovered that many other outbreaks followed the employment of this same cook. He discovered the cook was Mary Mallon, an Irish immigrant. When Soper approached Mary, asking her to give stool and urine samples, she refused to believe him, was outraged by his request and refused. Eventually, after several attempts to obtain convince Mary that she was spreading illness wherever she went, Mary was arrested and sent to North Brother Island where her stool samples tested positive for the typhoid bacteria.

After several hearings, Mary was allowed to go free if she promised not to seek employment as a cook. She attempted to work as a laundress, but eventually returned to working as a cook and this led to her infecting more people with typhoid. In 1915, a major outbreak of typhoid at Sloane Hospital for Women resulted in Dr. Soper finally catching up with her and she was once again sent to North Brother Island where she remained for the rest of her life.

It's hard to comprehend Mary's behaviour today, but at the time, Soper's theory was very new and many people did not understand how a healthy person with no sign of disease could cause others to become ill. In addition, public health policies had no way yet of dealing with such a situation, so authorities were at a loss as to how to proceed. Mary was also well aware of the prejudices that existed at that time against immigrants, especially those from Ireland. She felt she was being unjustly targeted.

Keane does a wonderful job telling Mary's story from her perspective providing the reader with an account that is rich in detail and informative. Keane's portrayal of Mary allows us to see how she might have felt, how she might have viewed herself, and those who pursued her within the context of her own time. 

That the author did a great deal of research is evident in her writing. Keane provides vivid descriptions of life in New York City at the turn of the 20th century. It was a fetid, stinking mess, city streets full of rotting garbage, decaying horse carcasses, and overwhelmed with horse shit from the thousands of horses working the streets everyday. She also provides significant details about Mary Mallon and her life on North Brother, as well as the hearings to free Mary.

Fever attempts to give to Mary Mallon, what history has not and that is a measure of humanity. Keane encourages her reader to try to understand how Mary might have viewed her unusual situation, what she experienced as her life was turned upside down by something she didn't understand, in a time when prejudices ran strong against immigrants and those who had stepped outside of genteel society's parameters. Mary feels she is being singled out because she is a single working woman who lives with a man to whom she is not married. Mary notes how the wealthy, when looking for domestic help, don't inquire so much about their skills, but rather seem more focused on their religiosity.

"They all say they want a good cook, but what they want even more is a worthy project."

Mary did not want to be a project and was understandably humiliated and angered at such treatment.

Mary's lover, Albert Briehof was a genuinely unlikable character. Albert was a German immigrant who could not hold down a job, was an alcoholic and eventually a drug addict. He was unable to  commit to anything or anyone in life. Mary's attraction to him was both puzzling and annoying.  Her forced incarceration on North Brother ultimately destroyed their relationship, although Keane implies that it was already failing by the time she was sent to the island.

Fever will definitely appeal to fans of historical fiction and would make an excellent choice for a book club selection. There are plenty of themes and issues to explore for group discussion including the rights of patients with communicable diseases, the prejudice against Irish immigrants, the treatment of Mary Mallon, and social class distinctions in early 20th century America.

Nova ran a program called The Most Dangerous Woman in America in 2004 which was based on the book, Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health by Judith Walzer Leavitt. It provides excellent background into the unusual case of Mary Mallon.

Book Details:
Fever by Mary Beth Keane
New York: Scribner 2012
306 pp.

DVD Movie: Oranges and Sunshine 2010

In 1986, Margaret Humphreys was a child protection officer working in Nottingham, England. Incredibly, she stumbled upon one of the most astonishing and horrendous secrets safeguarded by the British government for over eighty years. In the movie which is based her book, Empty Cradle, one day after work Margaret is approached by a woman by the name of Charlotte, asking her to help her locate her family. Charlotte had been visiting from Australia where she lives and she tells Margaret that all she knows is that she, along with a large group of children, were sent over by ship in the 1940s and 50s to Australia. Charlotte was four years old at the time. She was told her mother had died and she was unsure of her true name and her birth date.

At first Margaret is reluctant to get involved until one day in her post-adoption group therapy session, one of the attendees, Nikki, tells the group that out of the blue she got a letter from someone claiming to be her brother Jack and that he lived in Australia. Nikki cannot understand how this can be. As she tells the group more, Margaret realizes that this must be more than a coincidence and she decides that she must look into what is going on.

Margaret researches Charlottes birth certificate and manages to track down her mother, reuniting the two women. When she meets Charlottes mother, Margaret learns that she had been told her daughter was adopted out to a family.  She never knew her daughter had been sent to Australia. And she had always hoped to get her daughter back, not see her adopted out.

Margaret eventually meets Nikki's brother Jack, who seems devastated over what happened to him. In an attempt to learn more about the children, Margaret flies to Australia on her own time and using her own funds to determine how many other children have had a similar experience and to try to understand the scope of what happened.

Eventually Margaret and her husband, Mervyn uncover a migration scheme so widespread that there is no way the British government could not have known about it.They discover that these "forced migrations" began as early as 1900 and lasted until 1970. During that period of time there were "waves" of forced migrations and there were so many children involved that upper levels of government would have had to have given permission, including the Home Secretary. All of the children were in care and it was evident that these children were systematically deported. These schemes were run by charities and churches, among them, the Christian brothers.

Margaret, through her visits with children who were forcibly sent to Australia, learns that many suffered abuse, both emotional, physical and sometimes sexual, and worked as virtual slaves. Some received little educating and were basically indentured slaves. All this despite being told they were going to a warm country where there was plenty of sunshine and they could pick oranges off the trees.

Margaret attempts to get the organizations involved in the migrations to accept responsibility and acknowledge that they did a great wrong to these adult children and their families. It took 23 years before the British and Australian government finally issued an apology for the child migration schemes. More than 130,000 children had been deported. Margaret, with the help of her husband, continue their work today of helping reunite children with their families.

Discussion

Oranges and Sunshine deals with this difficult subject in a forthright way but one that also demonstrates how the forced child migration affected the children, their mothers and how it continues to affect them to this day. Emily Watson does a stellar job portraying Margaret Humphreys in a performance filled with intelligence, gentleness and subdued passion. She is never deterred from her mission of finding these "lost children" even when her personal safety is at stake. Eventually the stress of dealing with so many people who have been hurt takes its toll on Margaret and she is diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. She tries to keep her distance and set personal boundaries but the breadth and depth of the tragedy is so overwhelming that she is unable to accomplish this. Watson conveys this with such utter realism that we forget we are watching a movie.

The effect of her work is especially well portrayed in the scenes with Len (David Wenham) near the end of the movie. Len is a man who has been deeply affected by his experiences; by his own admission he stopped crying at the age of eight. Wealthy enough to afford a private detective to find his mother, he is at first doubtful of Margaret's intentions and her ability. Yet after finding his mother for him, Margaret is challenged by Len to go to Boys Town at Bindoon to see what he and other child migrants experienced. She doesn't want to but in the end she agrees. Bindoon is in the middle of nowhere, and as Margaret and Len look down from afar at Boys Town, we see a colossal structure built by child migrants who were at the mercy of the Christian Brothers and who suffered some of the worst abuse. The cinematography effectively captures the isolation and the fear these children must have felt as they saw themselves being driven far from any town or village.

When Margaret sees this place she is terribly shattered because she feels that what she is doing is not enough. But Len tells her, "You feel it for all of us because we can't...You're in there for us. You're fighting for us. So let the rest go. Just let it go."

Oranges and Sunshine is based on the book, Empty Cradles by Margaret Humphreys. The film was produced by Emile Sherman and Camilla Bray who also produced The King's Speech. The Oranges and Sunshine website (orangesandshunshine.com.au ) has more information on the making of the film and the actors involved.

Snow Falling in Spring by Moying Li

Snow Falling in Spring written by Moying Li, a native Chinese born in Peking, is a factual account of her life in China before, during and after the Cultural Revolution. Moying Li paints a picture of a communist China which still had retained some of its charm, social structure and traditions.

In 1958, at the age of four, Moying Li experienced the Great Leap Forward, followed by the Cultural Revolution which began in 1966. As a teenager, she saw her opportunities for education thwarted and her dreams shattered. She witnessed the humiliation of teachers and her school's headmaster who hung himself. Her own beloved Baba (father) was sentenced to a labour camp and her mother, dean of students at a nearby university.
Moying writes of her baba's books and how he taught her to love books, reading and learning. One day in 1968, soldiers showed up at their home and systematically destroyed all of her families copies of books, some old and valuable.

"After everyone had left, I closed the door and all the windows and sank to the cold stone floor, my face buried in my arms. The sun was setting, and darkness was creeping into the house. Our bookshelves now stood naked in the shadows - like proud but defeated warriors."

His strength of spirit is shown when he sent Moying Li a secret letter outlining books she could read to develop her mind during this dark time, complete with a list of which friends still retained copies. In this way, he prepared his daughter for the day when the Cultural Revolution would be over and maybe things would return to normal.

Moying Li's prose is easy and fluent. This well written account of a person now approaching middle age gives cause for Western readers to reflect on how different our lives have been. A highly recommended read for those interested in 20th century Chinese history.

Book Details:
Snow Falling In Spring: Coming of Age in China during the Cultural Revolution
by Moying Li
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux