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A mysterious outbreak of typhoid fever is sweeping New York. Could the cityâ€™s future rest with its most unlikely scientist? If Prudence Galewski is ever going to get out of Mrs. Browningâ€™s esteemed School for Girls, she must demonstrate her refinement and charm by securing a job appropriate for a young lady. But Prudence isnâ€™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 thereâ€™s no answer in sightuntil the volatile Mary Mallon emerges. Dubbed â€œTyphoid Maryâ€ by the press, Mary is an Irish immigrant who has worked as a cook in every home the fever has ravaged. Strangely, though, she hasnâ€™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, sheâ€™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.

Julie Chibbaro is also the author of Redemption, which won a 2005 American Book Award. She teaches fiction and creative writing in New York City. You can visit her at JulieChibarro.com.

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September 7, 1906

I know that one day I won’t be on this earth anymore. A world without the physical me—what will that look like? I’ll seep down into the soil, become a plant, a tree; I’ll be falling leaves, yellow, crunching under a child’s feet until I am dust. Nothing. Gone.

Every September, the shivers come over me, thoughts of my brother’s terrifying death, and the questions—why did his short life end? Why do people have to die?

I write here, trying to explain, each word a stepping stone. These words illuminate my past; they bring me forward, to the future. They help me remember.

Without my writing, I would suffer an emptiness worse than I feel now.

Today there are great holes in me. I feel like a secret observer, separate from everything that goes on around me. Peering from my window just above the storefronts of this creaky building on Ludlow Street where I’ve lived since the morning of my birth, I watch Mrs. Zanberger at the vegetable cart below. She argues with Miss Lara over the price of onions the way she does every Sunday. Behind her, Kat Radlikov drags her heavy skirt through the mud, her belly swollen, her husband hiding in the shadows of their rooms. In front of the grocer’s, Ruth Schmidt smiles under her patched parasol at Izzy Moscowitz, who works too hard to notice her. I see the Feldman sisters from upstairs chasing each other through puddles like boys, with finally a morning free from the factory. Under the butcher’s canopy, their mother talks with other mothers from the neighborhood, their faces dark with worry.

I know them, these girls and women, I’ve seen their families grow, they’ve seen mine get smaller. When I’m in their company, I listen to them trade recipes and sewing tips, I smile at their gossip about each other, yet I can’t find a word to add. My eyes get stuck on the sadness in their mouths, or their red, chapped hands, and suddenly I’m imagining their lives—what they dream about when no one is looking, or what they might be like with fewer children. The women talk around and over me; somehow I feel like I’ll always be looking at them through a distant window.

Even at school, I feel this. When classes started this week, I had in my mind the birth I’d attended with Marm the night before—Sophie Gersh came due around midnight and her mother pounded at our door, her fear thrusting us from our beds. Marm and I rushed after the frightened woman, running full gallop the two blocks to her daughter’s apartment, where the girl’s husband stood outside wringing his hands, and she lay keening in the bedroom like a poor abandoned child. I took my place at the head of the bed, where I held Sophie’s hand and wiped the sweat from her teary eyes and assured her the birth would be good, that all would come out as we planned. Below, Marm did her magic; Sophie’s water broke, she was ready. Working together, the three of us encouraged her baby to come forth into this world. His birth happened easily, a miracle, one of those rare times when Marm and I can clean up the infant and hand him to his mother and happily return to our own beds. We napped an hour before rising to face the day, which was my first day of school.

My schoolmates kissed—we don’t see each other through the summer months; the girls had matured, their faces and bodies grown longer or fatter. I smiled at Josephine, who had become impossibly taller and thinner and prettier, and Fanny, whose round face had finally found its cheekbones. I brushed their cheeks with my lips. I searched their eyes for the start to a conversation; I wanted to tell them about the birth, or Benny, but Josephine started talking about her new job at the perfume counter at Macy’s. She described the glamorous ladies who bought the most expensive ounces, the delicate fabrics they wore, their jewels and dogs. She didn’t stop until Mrs. Browning came in with stout Miss Ruben, our teacher for the year. My heart dropped when I saw it was her. Miss Ruben’s eyes swept the room imperiously and settled on me.

She said, “Girls, I see that some of you are still lacking in the most basic charms. We must correct that situation now. This is your last year before you are released into the world. There is no time left to waste!”

I turned my eyes away from hers and concentrated on the smoke I could see puffing from the stack of the building next door. My stomach soured at the thought of spending my last year with her. Miss Ruben hasn’t liked me since third grade.

At afternoon lunch, I sat in the common room nibbling on my potato knish, listening to Jo and Fanny, feeling as if my insides were made of India rubber and all their words bounced around without touching me. I again attempted to tell them about the beautiful boy whose birth I had witnessed that very morning, but Josephine’s exuberant chatter drowned out my words before I could form them.