Quarantine

Smolens (The Schoolmaster’s Daughter) delivers an intriguing but somewhat flat story of late 18th-century sea-faring suffering. In June 1796, the ship Miranda pulls into the harbor of Newburyport, Mass., her crew all-but-destroyed by a terrible illness (faces “grossly swollen,” tongues “thick and black”). Dr. Giles Wiggins is forced to quarantine the ship in the harbor, angering the ship’s owner, the doctor’s wealthy, elder half-brother, but this precaution doesn’t stop the illness from spreading into the thriving port town. The doctor’s mother, who lives unhappily with the doctor’s half-brother and has been looking to rid herself of him, sees a possible solution in the growing lawlessness around her. Though the narrative is complex to the point of becoming baffling, Smolens’s research puts the reader right in the moment, and his keen understanding of human nature during turmoil makes for a fascinating read. Though light on action, the relationship between the characters, and in particular Mrs. Sumner herself, will satisfy. (Dec.)