Saving the World by Julia Alvarez

Description:

"Latina novelist Alma Huebner is suffering from writer's block and is years past the completion date for yet another of her bestselling family sagas. Her husband, Richard, works for a humanitarian organization dedicated to the health and prosperity of developing countries and wants her help on an extended AIDS assignment in the Dominican Republic. But Alma begs off joining him: the publisher is breathing down her neck. She promises to work hard and follow him a bit later.

The truth is that Alma is seriously sidetracked by a story she has stumbled across. It's the story of a much earlier medical do-gooder, Spaniard Francisco Xavier Balmis, who in 1803 undertook to vaccinate the populations of Spain's American colonies against smallpox. To do this, he required live "carriers" of the vaccine.

Of greater interest to Alma is Isabel Sendales y Gómez, director of La Casa de Expósitos, who was asked to select twenty-two orphan boys to be the vaccine carriers. She agreed— with the stipulation that she would accompany the boys on the proposed two-year voyage. Her strength and courage inspire Alma, who finds herself becoming obsessed with the details of Isabel's adventures.

This resplendent novel-within-a-novel spins the disparate tales of two remarkable women, both of whom are swept along by machismo. In depicting their confrontation of the great scourges of their respective eras, Alvarez exposes the conflict between altruism and ambition."

My thoughts:

I especially liked the chapters about Isabel, the doctor Don Francisco Balmis and the orphan children as they cross the Atlantic and then the Pacific oceans. The modern-day story about Alma, Richard and the Dominican clinic was exciting towards the end, but didn't fully grab my attention as much as the historical account. I did like reading the author's notes at the end of the book concerning the Royal Smallpox Expedition.

Date read: 3/31/2007
Book #: 28
Rating: 3* = good
Genre: Fiction

ISBN-10: 156512510X
ISBN-13: 978-1565125100
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Year: 2006
# of Pages: 384
Binding: Hardcover