Greedy and impatient, tuberculosis, the nineteenth-century plague, relentlessly devoured its victims. With its bone-shivering fevers, delirium, and blood-engorged lungs, the "red death" indiscriminately killed thousands, leaving shattered and defeated families its wake.

Set in the majestic, untamed Adirondack Mountains of New York more than a century ago, an extraordinary story unfolds about the little-known town of Saranac Lake. The town is home to a man with tuberculosis, also known as consumption. It is here that he, Doctor Edward Livingston Trudeau, finds a hopeful...

A rriving alone at the Willard Insane Asylum is daunting enough, but when you are a fifteen-year-old girl no longer wanted by your family, the implications are devastating. Iona Mueller's quirk of counting her steps, along with her exploits in the woods, proved to be too much for her parents, particularly her pregnant mother. Yet, it wasn't until she cut off her own hair that her parents took her to a doctor who declared her insane. Iona knows she isn't anything like the patients who bang their heads against the cinder walls until they bleed or run naked through the hallways. She must...