OK, it's a lousy picture, but I had to paste it from the website so you can see at least something. I had the opportunity to read an advance of this book and wanted to tell you about it...a little. Friend Laurie, don't be critical of this review....remember my qualifier....if I finished it that meant I liked it.My preference is historical fiction and I scored with this one. This is the story of Mary Mallon, or better known to us as Typhoid Mary. Mary was a carrier, she didn't actually have or ever have the disease but she carried and spread it. To make it worse, she was a cook. And a darned good one, too. She loved to cook and served some of the 'best' families on the East Coast. She tasted and put the spoon back into the pot. She wasn't the most meticulously clean person after her bathroom breaks. She never made the connection to the deaths that seemed to always be happening when she was around because not everyone she cooked for got sick or died if they did get sick. Times were different, people didn't understand germ spreading, hand washing, and carrying diseases. But this was an area of medicine that was growing fast and Mary did not escape the attention of the medical community. Connections were made. She was found, arrested and sent to an island hospital where tuberculosis patients were quarantined from the rest of New York City. After three years she was allowed to leave. But only if she promised to never again do the one thing she loved to do - cook. I'm not going to say too much more. Just know if this had happened to me, I would have probably responded to the authorities the same way she did.
Watch for this to be published after the first of the year. I recommend it highly, even to Friend Laurie.
I have been quilting, I just can't show it to you yet. Shhh....it's a secret...but it IS finished! HoHoHo!
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