Fever: Mary Beth Keane

This was a novel based on "Typhoid Mary’s life. It starts with her remembering how her family in Ireland was nearly wiped out by Typhoid, but she survived. Later when she comes to the United States and becomes a cook by profession, she shows us how many of the people she cooked for suddenly became sick. A sanitary engineer puts it together that she is a carrier and getting people sick through her cooking. They lock her up on an island used to treat tuberculosis patients in order to keep her out of the public. She loses hope that it will be a temporary stay when they build her a small cabin. She stays there for three years. Then they learn of other people that are carriers, but since they are men and the bread winners for their family, they are not locked up. Eventually they let Mary go home with the understanding that she will check in at the office every 3 months and will not cook as a profession. She doesn't have a home to go home to though. Her "man", Alfred, was engaged to another. She finds a job as a laundress and rooms with a friend. Alfred decided he couldn't marry another woman and becomes a drunk again, Mary says she wants nothing to do with him and he then becomes a drug addict. Mary starts cooking for her friend and friend's children and when they don't become sick she believes she can cook again. She stops checking in at the office and gets work at a bakery, and then a hospital. She finds Alfred again and starts taking care of him and aids him in his drug addiction. The same time Typhoid springs up at the hospital Alfred dies. The Sanitary engineer is alerted by the Thyroid outbreak and finding Mary, locks her up for the last 23 yrs. of her life. By then Mary admits that the people must have died because of her.