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With dazzling dexterity, Goldberg has fashioned a novel that beautifully combines the intimate and the epic. Wickett?s Remedy announces her arrival as a major novelist.
Doubleday
September 2005
Featuring: Lydia Wickett
336 pages ISBN: 0385513240 Hardcover
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Historical
In a multidimensional, intricately wrought narrative, Myla
Goldberg leads us back to Boston in the early part of the
twentieth century and into two completely captivating
worlds. One is that of Lydia, an Irish American shopgirl
with bigger aspirations than your average young woman from
South Boston. She seems to be well on her way to the life
she has dreamed of when she marries Henry Wickett, a shy
medical student and the scion of a Boston Brahmin family.
However, soon after their wedding, Henry abruptly quits
medical school to create a mail-order patent medicine
called Wickett’s Remedy, and just as Lydia begins to adjust
to her husband’s new vocation, the infamous Spanish
influenza epidemic of 1918 begins its deadly sweep across
the world, irrevocably changing their lives. In a world turned almost unrecognizable by swift and sudden
tragedy, Lydia finds herself working as a nurse in an
experimental ward dedicated to understanding the raging
epidemic—through the use of human subjects. Meanwhile, a parallel narrative explores the world of QD
Soda, the illegitimate offspring of Wickett’s Remedy,
stolen away by Henry Wickett’s one-time business partner
Quentin Driscoll, who goes about transforming it into a
soft drink empire. Throughout the novel we hear from a chorus of other voices
who offer a running commentary from the book’s margins,
playing off the ongoing narrative and cleverly illuminating
the slippery interplay of perception and memory. Based on
years of research and evoking actual events, Wickett’s
Remedy perfectly captures the texture of the times and
brings a colorful cast of characters vividly to life—none
more so than Lydia, a heroine as winning and appealing as
Eliza, the beloved spelling champion of Bee Season.
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