About the Book
She gave up everything — and changed the world.
A riveting novel based on the true story of the woman who stopped a pandemic, from the bestselling author of Mrs. Poe.
In 1940s and ’50s America, polio is as dreaded as the atomic bomb. No one’s life is untouched by this disease that kills or paralyzes its victims, particularly children. Outbreaks of the virus across the country regularly put American cities in lockdown. Some of the world’s best minds are engaged in the race to find a vaccine. The man who succeeds will be a god.
But Dorothy Horstmann is not focused on beating her colleagues to the vaccine. She just wants the world to have a cure. Applying the same determination that lifted her from a humble background as the daughter of immigrants, to becoming a doctor –often the only woman in the room–she hunts down the monster where it lurks: in the blood.
This discovery of hers, and an error by a competitor, catapults her closest colleague to a lead in the race. When his chance to win comes on a worldwide scale, she is asked to sink or validate his vaccine—and to decide what is forgivable, and how much should be sacrificed, in pursuit of the cure.
My Review
I was absolutely riveted with this story. When I read historical fiction I often like the focus to be on female heroines, and Dorothy Horstmann is that indeed. The Woman With the Cure is based on the true events surrounding Dorothy and a few names that might sound familiar – Salk and Sabine to name a couple – but Dorothy was not a pivotal person I was aware of. My family has been touched by polio – an uncle who contacted the disease as a young child and has been wheelchair-bound most of his life, and I remember my mother telling me stories of her childhood and getting the polio vaccine in a sugar cube at school. I was drawn to this story because I wanted to understand more about a pandemic that came before the pandemic I lived through and the brilliant people who fought to understand and fight the disease.
This novel is a beautiful blend of history and fiction, and I learned more than I could have anticipated. Not only in scientific research and how women have always been in science, but in how the country reacted to a disease that was stealing young children at an alarming pace. The fear I felt for these characters while reading about another child getting sick, another child being put into iron lungs, and an especially emotional scene with parents that drive their sick daughter to get care under Dorothy – it’s hard yet somehow easy to imagine a time like that. This timely novel puts 2020 into perspective and the fear we felt as a world and the scientists that were racing to find a vaccine. There are many parallels that can be drawn from this read, and to say not only could I not put it down, but I was talking to everyone about this book – including the magnificent work of one Dorothy Horstmann.
5 stars
