The Second Life of Mirielle West

 Old Woman Creek
by Amanda Skenandore | Literature & Fiction |
ISBN: 1496726529 Global Overview for this book
Registered by wingminesaynwing of Huron, Ohio USA on 10/18/2021
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1 journaler for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by wingminesaynwing from Huron, Ohio USA on Monday, October 18, 2021
"No two persons ever read the same book."--Edmund Wilson

By registering this book, I am sharing this book with the wider world--enjoy!



The Second Life of Mirielle West is a historical novel primarily set in 1926-1927. The story is told through the perspective of the protagonist, Mirielle West, who has her life upended when it is discovered she has leprosy. As an aside, leprosy is not quite represented like it is in the Bible; however, there are some similarities like the way people are treated (persons affected with leprosy were required by US law to be quarantined and treated).
As the novel opens, an accidental burn has landed her in the hospital, and a small lesion on her hand causes the physician to send her to another hospital for further tests. From there, her life spirals out of control when the dermatologist there takes some cells from her lesion, studies the microscope slide, and tells her she has leprosy.
This discovery starts Mirielle on a train journey (she and her trunks are stuffed into a dark, dirty boxcar with a few other people who also have leprosy) across the country to the leper colony called Carville in Louisiana. By the way, the Carville National Leprosarium existed until 1999 when it was finally closed because the funding was stopped, the advances in treatment, and few patients, but I digress.
Mirielle West, a young socialite from California, is married to the silent screen actor Charlie West and has two young children, one of whom is less than a year of age. She is forced to leave them, but she fully expects to return home, resuming her days of playing hostess, as soon as she is cleared of this “misdiagnosis.”
Once she arrives at Carville, however, she is checked again, and the diagnosis is confirmed. With a swift cure, Mirielle should be heading back to California and her family, or so she thinks. In order to protect her husband and children from the stigma, Mirielle becomes known as Patient 367, and takes an alias (Pauline Marvin). What she soon finds out that she, and all the other patients there, are considered lepers and confined to Carville.
For some time, she remains aloof from the other patients especially those person with more severe cases, but eventually she finds herself. She becomes involved by working in the clinic and becoming friends with some of the other patients. Over time, Mirielle and her friends become a true community.
If only she can go twelve months straight free of the disease or a cure can be found, will she be able to return to her family in California. Will she ever have twelve months of clean test results? Or will she remain at Carville for the rest of her life like most of the other people including children?
The story of Mirielle West’s incarceration at Carville, and her past history is heartbreaking. At times, Mirielle is hard to like. She is selfish and self-absorbed; she often hurts others’ feelings; she is uncaring and downright rude, but then she can also be charming and kind. Still, the stigma associated with the disease follows them all of the patients within the walls of Carville.
Although the focus of the novel is how Mirielle copes with her life with leprosy, there are secondary characters with whom the reader will root for as well. Irene, Frank, Hector, and Jean are just a few of the characters who become important to the story.
Her family consisting of Charlie, Evie, and Helen are never far from Mirielle’s thoughts as noted by the letters she writes and those she receives. They stay off-screen, but are essential to the story.
As mentioned above, the book read was an ARC. The presumption by this reader is that any typos and other manuscript issues have probably been corrected in the final copy. There was one glaring anachronism, though, that bothered this reader (and hopefully it was corrected in the final edit). The Christmas carol, “The Little Drummer Boy,” was not written until 1941 while the most of the story takes place in 1926-1927.
Overall, this novel features some of the realities of those who were forcibly imprisoned in America’s only leper colony during the twentieth century. Having sympathetic characters put a face on this devastating disease helps, for there are still people today who battle leprosy, which has been renamed Hanson’s disease.







Journal Entry 2 by wingminesaynwing at Huron, Ohio USA on Saturday, July 30, 2022
I have passed it on to book group friends, who are sharing it with other group book friends. I don't know if I will get it back or not, and frankly, it is okay if I don't. So, it is traveling (basically a wild release).

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