This is a historical fiction that is interesting to read and is multi faceted. I will dive right into the story.
Claire Shipley is dealing with patients at the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research in New York. l. She is a photographer paid to take photographic evidence on the condition of the arrivals. Claire’s own daughter had died seven and a half years ago. Her husband left her and her younger son, Charlie, was with her.
She witnesses the evolution of penicillin and its use – though not officially sanctioned yet – in saving lives. We learn that she is there covering the use of penicillin for the Life magazine as a photographer.
She interviews the wife of a patient, an upper class man who got infected through a scratch while playing tennis in an exclusive club. She also remembers her own daughter, who fell and scraped her knees, and was dead three days after that.
The wife describes how the small scratch, which seemed of no account at all, developed into his being in a coma in a hospital in a short period thereafter.
They meet a patient, Edward Reese who is near death. Dr Stanton is trying out an experimental drug called penicillin, recently discovered as an excretion from a fungus mold by a doctor called Alexander Fleming. He has to fly by the seat of his pants, because the dosage to use and the frequency are all not known. He uses penicillin grown in his own hospital by the efficient nurse Brocket. Patsy, Edward’s wife, is at her wits’ end, because she does not know whether her husband will survive even one more night.
When penicillin finally shows its efficacy, Doctor Stanton is thrilled. What kind of gets you to sit up and take notice is how people used to die for all kinds of ailments : tuberculosis was a killer; so was diphtheria; meningitis was a menace. Will all this be cured by this extract from a fungus called penicillin? A side story is Claire’s good-for-nothing husband who reports from England about the war and the simple minded devotion of Claire’s son Charlie to his father, who does not even deign to write a letter to his own son. (Claire and he have been divorced for a few years).
Claire is astounded to find, the very next day, that the patient was not only recovering but was sitting up in bed, reading the paper and having normal conversations.
Claire tries to concentrate on her work – produces photographs for the story she will write, wandering around the outside of Rockefeller Institute where no one normally is even allowed, taking pictures.
There are scenes where a Russian exile – a fellow scientist called Sergei – now stops analyzing sewer waters inspired by the success of the ‘mold expellant’ penicillin. The background of War (after all, the Pearl Harbor attack had just happened) adds a layer of colour to the story.
It is heartrending to see how Edward relapses into a severe reaction when they have run out of penicillin for the next dose on time (their capacity is very limited and governed by the fungal biological process).
Even though Claire makes the cover of Life with a coverage of another story, she is overcome with disappointment when her story regarding penicillin is scrapped by the magazine.
Dr Stanton surprises her by inviting her to dinner – in a phone call.
The story veers off in a different direction where Claire and Charlie have established connection with her rich but estranged father and how for Charlie’s sake she bites back bitter questions she wanted to ask her own dad. Charlie and her father Rutherford seem to be developing a nice bond.
Jamie and Claire develop a closeness when she sees how decent he is, and finds that he is interested in her too. Jamie continues to work with the military.
The story proceeds and branches into multiple layers which make this a multifaceted and lively story to read. It is part love story – Claire’s first husband, Bill Shipley a non caring, non supportive, selfish man, ending in divorce. Charlie’s continued worship of his father, and Claire’s encouragement of it (as she does not want her views to influence the relationship of Charlie with the absent father). Then there is the ever present developments of WW II in the background, starting with the bombing of the Pearl Harbour and the continued setback to the Allies (including US and Russia) in the war’s developments – reversals come fast and furious. Then there is the scientific developments regarding the new ‘miracle’ drug called penicillin. Lovely.
Penicillin production is now taken over by the government and Jamie is in the army base trying to help deliver it to the troops. There is not enough to go around the people, whose relatives are sick, are desperate and besiege the Rockfeller research institute in the hopes of getting their hands on one.
As Jamie and Claire get close together, and Charlie and Rutherford also like him, he finds peace and is as close to home as he has felt in years.
Jamie and Claire get close and get into a relationship and Jamie is mobbed when he tries to take Claire out for dinner with the desperate people trying to put their hands in his pockets in the hopes of finding penicillin vials there.
Meanwhile, in the sample collected by Tia, who is the lead researcher in Jamie’s lab and also his sister, she notices a peculiar blue colour and effect. She wonders if she has found an alternative and the trials on rats are also going well.
But she is found dead at the foot of a hill and the death is ruled ‘accident’. An investigative journalist and a government investigator doubt it. Jamie is stuck in deep grief.
Jamie, remembering that Tia had talked of a miracle development of an unusual blue colour, goes to her lab. He finds that not only is the vial missing, but also the documentation has been torn off. He now suspects foul play.
Meanwhile, Rutherford is offered a miracle drug by Nick, an assistant to Jamie and he buys it from him. He has bought out a medicine lab from Hartford, and makes plans to produce it there.
When Claire somehow gets into the lab and takes pictures, she finds that her house has been vandalized and the pictures stolen. She is shaken. We later learn that it was the work of some agents employed by Rutherford, though he did not know that they would break into his own daughters house at that time – when he found out, he immediately fired them and hired another crew to protect his industrial secrets.
When Charlie suddenly runs a high fever, Claire goes crazy with fear of losing him too. Rutherford makes a decision to use his untested drug. Jamie uses himself as a guinea pig to ensure that it won’t kill Charlie before trying it on Charlie. Charlie survives but unexpectedly goes deaf.
When this medicine was tested on interned Japanese, they found that these side effects (blindness in some, deafness in others) occur there too.
Jamie, when he looks at the brilliant blue colour of the vaccine, accuses Rutherford of murdering his sister and walks out on both Claire and Rutherford. Claire is heartbroken.
Claire meets Bill, her husband accidentally and finds that he has remarried. Knowing him to be a tenacious reporter, she gives him all the details on Tia’s death and the miracle medicine. He gets too close to the truth and the government investigator Andrew Barnett arranges for his accidental death while traveling in a train. This is so that penicillin does not become a scandal when the government is trying to use it to help the troops in WW II
Nick meanwhile dies when a Japanese bomb falls on his floating hospital (ship) that carried penicillin to the troops. We realize now that he did not kill Tia but he did steal her medicine to make money for himself. (And he sold it to Rutherford for much less than he hoped to get for it).
We realize through the reporter Marcus Kreindler that it was Sergei who killed Tia. He was an agent for the Russians but was converted as a double agent (after the event) by the FBI.
Claire confronts her father and accuses him of murdering Tia and breaking into her house. He denies the death
Now add the layers of murder mystery and emotional drama to the layers you already have and you have a rich tapestry as the background for the story. It keeps your full interest by this time.
The ending is realistic and the decisions that all the characters have to make feel real. The story is told very well – this has not many happy endings, and the aches and yearnings of the characters come through, but it feels good.
It deserves more credit than I see in review blogs and I would rate it at least a 8/10
= = Krishna
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