The Second Life of Mirielle West
A Haunting Historical Novel Perfect for Book Clubs
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- £8.99
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
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.
PRAISE FOR AMANDA SKENANDORE’S BETWEEN EARTH AND SKY
“Intensely emotional…Skenandore’s deeply introspective and moving novel will appeal to readers of American history.”
—Publishers Weekly
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
If you’re looking for an uplifting novel, prepare to be raised to the rafters. Mirielle West has it all—wealth, status, and a social circle packed with the glamorous celebrities of 1920s Hollywood. But everything changes when a routine visit to the doctor lands her with an unthinkable diagnosis: leprosy. Author Amanda Skenandore takes us on an emotional roller-coaster ride as Mirielle is snatched away from her pampered life and taken to live at the Louisiana Leper Home in Carville—indefinitely. Skenandore is stunningly sophisticated when it comes to navigating both medical issues (she’s a registered nurse) and the incredible history of Carville, a real place where patients like Mirielle were quarantined for years or even decades. But what captured our attention even more was Mirielle’s journey. She may start out spoiled, entitled, and in denial, but with her upper-crust status ripped away by the disease, she’s forced to discover a joy in caring for others that makes her old life pale in comparison. Though she arrives at Carville hoping to heal her body, The Second Life of Mirielle West is a rejuvenation of the spirit.
