Warning: Be sure to allow for some late nights of reading if, like me, you are unable to stop reading this THE SECOND LIFE OF MIRIELLE WEST by Amanda Skenandore. I was pulled in from the beginning, and I absolutely had to know what happened to Mirielle, as well as other characters in the book.
Set in the 1920s, this book delves into Hansen's Disease, known as leprosy back then. I had no idea that there were sanitariums in the United States strictly to house those who had leprosy.
The main character of this novel is Mirielle West, a wealthy socialite, wife of a silent film star, and mother. Once it is determined that she has leprosy, she is taken by train to Carville, Louisiana to the U.S. Marine Hospital Sixty-Six. There she is forcibly quarantined with other patients in a huge facility run by nuns. This book details Mirielle's struggles as she learns to live a new life away from her family and the comforts of home.
THE SECOND LIFE OF MIRIELLE WEST was fascinating. I had never read any of Amanda Skenandore's other historical novels, but now I will be reading all of them. She is a gifted storyteller.
The glamorous world of a silent film star’s wife abruptly crumbles when she’s forcibly quarantined at the Carville Lepers Home in this page-turning story of courage, resilience, and reinvention set in 1920s Louisiana and Los Angeles. Based on little-known history, this timely book will strike a chord with readers of Fiona Davis, Tracey Lange, and Marie Benedict.
Based on the true story of America’s only leper colony, The Second Life of Mirielle West brings vividly to life the Louisiana institution known as Carville, where thousands of people were stripped of their civil rights, branded as lepers, and forcibly quarantined throughout the entire 20th century.
For Mirielle West, a 1920’s socialite married to a silent film star, the isolation and powerlessness of the Louisiana Leper Home is an unimaginable fall from her intoxicatingly chic life of bootlegged champagne and the star-studded parties of Hollywood’s Golden Age. When a doctor notices a pale patch of skin on her hand, she’s immediately branded a leper and carted hundreds of miles from home to Carville, taking a new name to spare her family and famous husband the shame that accompanies the disease.
At first she hopes her exile will be brief, but those sent to Carville are more prisoners than patients and their disease has no cure. Instead she must find community and purpose within its walls, struggling to redefine her self-worth while fighting an unchosen fate.
As a registered nurse, Amanda Skenandore’s medical background adds layers of detail and authenticity to the experiences of patients and medical professionals at Carville – the isolation, stigma, experimental treatments, and disparate community. A tale of repulsion, resilience, and the Roaring ‘20s, The Second Life of Mirielle West is also the story of a health crisis in America’s past, made all the more poignant by the author’s experiences during another, all-too-recent crisis.
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