Deadly -- Julie Chibbaro

From Deadly:

September 14, 1906.

Marm suggested I go to the employment agencies to look for work, as well as checking the boards and the newspapers. I sent letters to six job advertisements in the American, and two from the board, but no one has made any offerings. I feel it has nothing to do with my skills, as I can type faster than any girl in our class, and I've told no one that I'm Jewish, so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I know I shouldn't despair, but I can't help hearing that little squeak of fear that nothing will ever change, that I'll be at Mrs. Browning's School for Girls for the rest of my days, leaning to draw portraits and tally numbers in French and paint with watercolors and fashion a proper skirt.

Shortly after writing that diary entry, sixteen-year-old Prudence Galewski applies for a secretarial position at the Department of Health and Sanitation. Her obvious interest for science, though, results in a slightly different job offer: She is offered, and accepts, employment as an assistant to Mr. George Soper, a sanitation engineer.

George Soper, unlike our narrator, was an actual person. He's best known for discovering and proving the cause of an outbreak of typhoid fever that swept New York City: Mary Mallon, or "Typhoid Mary", who carried and passed on the sickness, though she herself had no symptoms.

Deadly was the darling of the blog world a while back, and I was glad to finally read it. There were certain aspects that definitely made me understand the buzz -- Prudence's desire to follow her intellectual passions rather than her romantic ones, the story of Mary Mallon, the line drawings and captions that pepper Prudence's journal, and OH, the lovely cover art -- but over all, I didn't love it quite as much as some readers.

Except for a few moments, it felt emotionally flat, and Prudence's voice sounded much younger than girl who's on the verge of adulthood. Both of those points could certainly be argued: For one, Prudence is a passionate person, but she keeps a close watch on herself, and keeps it all buttoned-down, at least outwardly. She may need to carry that seeming calm over into her journal to keep herself contained. As for Prudence's voice, well, she may seem young because she is young. But I still thought she sounded younger than sixteen.

Despite that, I loved some of the passages in which Prudence writes about science. She's clearly so absorbed and fascinated, she writes beautifully about topics that aren't traditionally written about with flair, and her tenacity and determination are inspiring. But many of the passages that deal directly with known history -- specifically the tracking of Mary Mallon, the interactions with her and the court case -- read more like historical reenactments than like something Prudence was actually experiencing. So that detracted from the verisimilitude.

My issues aside, I'll have no reservations about recommending it to young scientists: Prudence's personal journal serves as an inspiring one, but the mix of scientific triumph and personal horror in Mary Mallon's life story serves to keep the book from ever coming close to becoming a simple You Can Do It, Girls!

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Book source: ILLed through my library.