Fever: A Novel 
 by Mary Beth Keane 
 4 out of 5 stars 
 Advanced Reader Issue:Scheduled release date: Mar 12 2013 
 Fever. 
 The word seems almost innocuous now, but once it struck terror into the hearts of man. Fever, in the days before antibiotics and antipyretics like Aspirin and ibuprofen, was as likely to herald death as a gunshot or stab wound. And no one knew why. But even with the help of these medications, and the leaps of medical science, fever came fast in the night and took with it the lives of many where it passed. 
 In 1906 a private investigator traced a number of Typhoid Fever outbreaks back to one person... A Miss Mary Mallon, occupation: cook. 
 In Fever, Keane takes us into the mind of the infamous Typhoid Mary, detailing her world, he life, the motivations that drove her. At the time she was painted as a selfish villain by the press, but here we look from the perspective of a woman alone, merely trying to survive in a city known to this day for being harsh in its callousness. We explore the probability that her condition was never really explained adequately--after all, a woman could never understand matters of science. We look at Mary's world, both before and after her incarceration, and at the question of the rights of mankind through the microcosm of a single woman who possibly never understood what the term "carrier" meant. 
 Keane's work is a joy to read, carefully constructed to evoke turn-of-the-century New York, and she somehow manages to make the woman whose name has become a byword for spreading misery actually sympathetic. You feel for this Mary, who either doesn't understand, or can't allow herself to. 
 Definitely one to pick up for those who love the era, love historical fiction in general, or those who like to delve into alternate understandings of popular historical characters.