Took me forever to finish this – don’t know why because it was very good. It’s the story (fiction) of Thphoid Mary or Mary Mallon of County Tyrone. She arrived in New York in 1883 and between 1899 and 1915 worked as a talented cook for a number of wealthy families. Several people for whom she cooked suffered typhoid and died. A medical detective, George Soper, tracked the source of infection to Mary. As she had never been ill she could not accept the accusation. She was hot tempered and fought them but was caught and quarantined on North Border Island in the East River in 1907 for three years.
She was allowed to return to the city by a sympathetic health commissioner with the promise never to cook for anyone again. She was found a job as a laundress, which she hated – it paid less and certainly didn’t satisfy her creativity. She broke her promise and found work in a bakery, where Soper again found her. This time she did escape and enjoyed a period of freedom.
All through her New York life she was living with a German (Alfred) immigrant and they were very happy in the beginning. Then he would not stay in steady employment and began to drink heavily. While she was on North Border, he rooms with a widow, sobers up, and promises to marry his landlady. He does not. But Mary will not take him back and he drunkenly sets fire to a stable where he had worked and is burned. He goes West. When he returns Mary does take him in. He is sober and life is temporarily good once more. However, Mary caves and starts cooking for a maternity hospital. Typhoid follows and again Soper finds her. Alfred dies of drugs (to which he has graduated because of pain) and Mary spends the last 23 years of her life back on the island.
The sadness is she can never really accept she is the cause of typhoid.
“…she wondered whether it was possible for a person to know something and not know something at the same time. She wondered whether it was possible to know a truth, and then quickly unknow it, bricking up that portal of knowledge until every pinpoint of light was covered over.”