Wickett's Remedy
Subtitle: A Novel
Edition: First Anchor Books Edition
Publisher: Anchor Books
Published: 2006 October
Place of publication: New York, USA
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 370
ISBN-13: 9781400078127
Copyright date: 2006
Subjects: American Historical Fiction; Fiction; Fiction - General; Literary; Fiction / Literary; Influenza Epidemic, 1918-1919; Irish American women; Patent medicines
Description: Lydia Kilkenny is eager to move beyond her South Boston childhood, and when she marries Henry Wickett, a shy Boston Brahmin who plans to become a doctor, her future seems assured. That path changes when Henry abandons his medical studies and enlists Lydia to help him invent a mail-order medicine called Wickett's Remedy. Then the 1918 influenza epidemic sweeps through Boston, and in a world turned upside down Lydia must forge her own path through the tragedy unfolding around her. As she secures work as a nurse at a curious island medical station conducting human research into the disease, Henry's former business partner steals the formula for Wickett's Remedy to create for himself a new future, trying--and almost succeeding--to erase the past he is leaving behind.

Alive with narrative ingenuity, and tinged with humor as well as sorrow, this inspired recreation of a forgotten era powerfully reminds us how much individual voices matter--in history and in life.
(back cover)