Ship Fever and Other Stories

Andrea Barrett · b. 1954 · United States

Why it matters

Linked stories follow nineteenth-century naturalists and doctors at the edges of what their era understood, the title novella tracking a young physician through a lethal typhus epidemic among Irish famine emigrants. Barrett's National Book Award winner treats scientific history as genuine drama.

At a glance

Period scientific detail spread across multiple linked stories asks for patient, attentive reading.