The Story is About   +  novel

Guest Post: Julie Chibbaro, Deadly

Julie Chibbaro

Books:

  • Redemption
  • Deadly

Website | Buy the Book


A mysterious outbreak of typhoid fever is sweeping New York.

Could the city’s future rest with its most unlikely scientist?

If Prudence Galewski is ever going to get out of Mrs. Browning’s esteemed School for Girls, she must demonstrate her refinement and charm by securing a job appropriate for a young lady. But Prudence isn’t like the other girls. She is fascinated by how the human body works and why it fails.

With a stroke of luck, she lands a position in a laboratory, where she is swept into an investigation of the fever bound to change medical history. Prudence quickly learns that an inquiry of this proportion is not confined to the lab. From ritzy mansions to shady bars and rundown tenements, she explores every potential cause of the disease. But there’s no answer in sight—until the volatile Mary Mallon emerges. Dubbed “Typhoid Mary” by the press, Mary is an Irish immigrant who has worked as a cook in every home the fever has ravaged. Strangely, though, she hasn’t been sick a day in her life. Is the accusation against her an act of discrimination? Or is she the first clue in a new scientific discovery?

Prudence is determined to find out. In a time when science is for men, she’ll have to prove to the city, and to herself, that she can help solve one of the greatest medical mysteries of the twentieth century.



Guest post: Topic: Why is DEADLY described as a "medical mystery" verses the generic "historical fiction?"

This is a great question, Kristi. I think there’s a natural mystery in illness and epidemics. A whole bunch of people get sick and everyone wonders why. Why are they getting salmonella (and typhoid fever is a type of salmonella)? It takes a medical investigator (or epidemiologist) to trace it back to the spinach or eggs. Where is the H1N1 coming from, or the avian flu, or HIV/AIDS? Did one person start it? Is it a bacteria or a virus? Is it contagious, carried by a person, spread in food? What person? Which foods?

This intrinsic medical mystery is what Deadly is mostly about. It takes place in history, yes, a real time period in history, but the key driving element is the epidemic at the heart of it.

The more historical part came when I started to wonder about my main character, Prudence. I wanted to explore what it might be like for a girl living at that time period to get caught up in solving the mystery. How did she help trace the epidemic to Typhoid Mary? It takes deductive reasoning and logic to uncover the source of a typhoid epidemic sweeping NYC in 1906. What did girls do back then when they were smart? Did she curl up and die of boredom, or did she use her great brain, her girl power? What might it be like to be a powerful, curious, sensitive girl at that time? That gave me a second mystery – would Prudence overcome the societal bounds that kept her tied to the standard “girl” occupations – midwife like her mother, factory work like her neighbors, secretary or nanny to rich banker families?

Or, would she follow her passion for uncovering the mysteries of the human body?

There are so many elements to this story that I feel are still very significant to readers today, still fresh and meaningful. I think kids still struggle with questions of what they want to do with their lives. Do you follow your passion? How do even figure out what you’re passionate about? Where do you begin? These are all questions Prudence thinks about. So I think Deadly is a lot of things, medical mystery, historical fiction, confessional diary, personal ponderings.

Maybe you can tell – I find labels limiting. Deadly is a novel based on a true story. Whatever you want to call it, I hope readers will find it inspiring.



Thanks so much Julie for stopping by! I should have my review of Deadly up today, or sometime tomorrow!