Saving the world
Subtitle: a novel
By: Julia Alvarez
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Published: 2005
Place of publication: Chapel Hill, NC
Language: eng
Number of pages: 368
Description: "Alma Heubner's husband, Richard, goes to the Dominican Republic to help eradicate AIDS, while Alma, a bestselling Latina writer, stays at home in Vermont to work on a story about a real, ill-fated 19th-century expedition chaperoned by Doña Isabel Sendales y Gómez, the spinster director of a Spanish orphanage who agrees to vaccinate 20 of her charges with cowpox and bring them from Spain to Central America to prevent future smallpox epidemics. While the leader of the anti-smallpox expedition, Dr. Francisco Balmis, and Richard see their missions collapse in defeat, Doña Isabel and Alma surmount their personal depressions to find inner strength."--Publishers Weekly.