Deadly

by Julie Chibbaro
Hennepin County Library paperback 293 pages
genre: historical fiction

Prudence Galewski is sixteen and interested in science. Her father left for the Spanish-American war in 1898 after her brother Benny died. She and her mother have been waiting for him to come back for eight years.

Interesting story (especially in connection with reading Yellow Death and Zeitoun the same weekend - the study of disease and an unjust imprisonment) but ultimately a bit too slow for me. I liked the journaling-style storytelling, but Prudence was too cautious a heroine for me. I can't picture my readers connecting with her. I enjoyed the author's notes at the end. An interesting task - to make Typhoid Mary seem more human and understandable. Again, I'm incredibly glad to live in an era of more advanced scientific understanding than the turn of that century!