Most provocative are the questions asked of Mary (and that she asks herself). The power of the press in her case is also examined, with newspaper articles throughout her ordeal sometimes condemning her, pointing out that she is a woman of “loose morals” living with a man to whom she is not married, and at times growing more sympathetic to her predicament. So why is Mary kept imprisoned? Is it because she was the first? Because she refuses to admit her guilt and cooperate? Or is it because she is a poor, unmarried Irish woman at the dawn of the twentieth century?

During Mary’s imprisonment, other healthy typhoid carriers are discovered and allowed to continue their lives as long as they take precautions to not spread the disease. Keane does an excellent job of addressing the many moral and societal issues that the story entails. This immigrant who has pulled herself up in the world through willpower and elbow grease and sees it all being ripped from her unjustly (she believes) turns out to be a character that is sympathetic, even admirable in her perseverant struggle against forces beyond her control.

Fever’s Mary is stubborn and short-tempered, but she is also a fiercely independent, self-made woman. Mary’s violent refusals to cooperate and her adamant denials that she was spreading disease convinced many that she was carelessly endangering others, or worse, intentionally spreading illness out of malice. Mary Mallon is certainly a controversial figure, and Keane has created a truly layered and vibrant portrait of this woman. Mary continues to resist testing and will not allow the doctors to remove her gall bladder, where they believe the germs are manufactured, so she is ultimately kept in isolation on a remote island in the East River for more than a quarter century. Soper, takes note of this and traces Mary’s movements until he becomes convinced that she is the source of the contagion-a healthy carrier of Typhoid fever.Īfter Soper confronts Mary and she refuses to go with him for testing, he has her arrested and placed into quarantine. But many families she cooks for fall ill with typhoid fever. But who was Typhoid Mary? In her rich, sympathetic, provocative historical novel Fever, Mary Beth Keane explores the woman behind the infamy.Īt the end of the nineteenth century, Mary Mallon emigrates from Ireland to New York City and works hard to climb the domestic service ladder until she becomes a sought-after cook for wealthy New York families. It is a name so well-known it has become an idiom in American English, referring to a transmitter not just of disease, but of anything harmful or catastrophic.

Fever book mary beth keane