LIGHT AND AIR

A 10-year-old becomes a patient at a tuberculosis sanitarium in 1935 New York.

Halle’s world is transformed when Mama begins coughing up blood one afternoon. Halle and Papa take her to the J.N. Adam Hospital in western New York, a 20-mile drive from their home. The sanitarium is stately and impressive, and, as their local doctor has pointed out, it welcomes everyone, regardless of race or socioeconomic status. But at home, Papa becomes short-tempered and remote. Wrapped up in his own worries, he seems oblivious to Halle’s unhappiness. At school, Halle is shunned by classmates afraid of the disease. When Halle sets off on foot to get to her mother, she’s stricken with sickness and becomes a patient at the hospital. Eventually Halle is placed in a dorm room with three other girls: Flossie, whose mother is a nurse at the hospital; Vivian, whose delicate paleness Halle finds striking; and Rita, an older girl whose well-off parents are uncomfortable around Flossie, who is Black (most characters are cued white). The book takes place nearly a decade before the use of antibiotics for TB, when treatment focused on fresh air and sunlight. Descriptions of the hospital’s open-air porches and daily routines are smoothly incorporated, and Halle’s fears for her own health and longing for her mother are relatable.

A vivid work of historical fiction that explores how infectious disease can intersect with daily life.