The Woman with the Cure

Cullen’s winning historical (after The Sisters of Summit Avenue) draws on the life of Dorothy Hortsmann, a doctor whose contribution to the development of the polio vaccine helped eradicate the disease. In 1940, Dorothy is rejected from Vanderbilt’s residency program because she’s a woman. Later, the chief of medicine offers the same spot to a “D.M. Hortsmann” and is surprised when Dorothy shows up. (“She won’t last,” is his verdict.) A clinical epidemiologist, and often the only female doctor among esteemed scientists such as Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, Dorothy dedicates her life to confirming her hypothesis (rejected at the time by the scientific community) that polio travels through the blood to the nervous system, and along the way she becomes a Yale fellow and professor, and travels extensively to polio outbreaks. She falls madly in love with heroic Arne Holm, who saved 7,000 Danish Jews from the Nazis, but, as Cullen writes, “crushing a disease” would always be her first love. Dorothy is humble and underfunded, and her research and findings are often either overlooked or duplicated by men who take the credit—until her discovery opens the door for the vaccine. Cullen’s portrait of the steadfast, self-sacrificing Dorothy hits home and is made more stirring by the vivid depictions of young polio patients. This author is writing at the top of her game. Agent: Margaret Sutherland Brown, Folio Literary. (Feb.)