Pam Fessler is an award-winning correspondent with NPR News, where she covers poverty, philanthropy, and voting issues. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland.
"[F]ascinating.... A remarkable and vivid case study for exploring
issues of patients’ rights, the ethics of clinical research and the
notorious American tradition of intermingling concerns about
disease with anxieties about immigration and the proper scope of
public-welfare management.... Ms. Fessler’s meticulously researched
account illuminates the endless ways, large and small, in which
those confined to Carville sought to determine the shape of their
own lives."
*Laura Kolbe - Wall Street Journal*
"Fessler presents inspiring and tragic stories of patients who
mostly experienced Carville as a prison, sometimes a sanctuary....
Heartbreaking and infuriating."
*Tony Miksanek - Booklist*
"NPR correspondent Fessler’s polished and compassionate debut
examines the history of Hansen’s disease (the modern name for
leprosy) in America through the story of the Louisiana Leper Home
in Carville, La. Fessler profiles several patients (most of whom
were sent to Carville by mandatory state reporting laws), including
her husband’s grandfather, and New Orleans debutante Betty Parker,
who fell in love with a fellow patient and ran away with him....
Her well-researched and articulate account humanizes sufferers and
caregivers alike, and offers hope in the medical field’s ability to
halt the spread of contagious illness. Readers will be enlightened
and encouraged."
*Publishers Weekly*
"Fessler [makes] the residents, and their doctors and the Daughters
of Charity nuns who cared for them, come alive in this telling. The
treatment of those living with Hansen’s Disease has had a quiet and
shameful history, but Fessler allows for people’s voices to be
heard in their own words. A heart-wrenching story of little-known
social history."
*Marcia G. Welsh, Library Journal*
"[A] fine history, by turns heartbreaking and infuriating. . .
Fessler paints a clear picture of a class of people who were
confined at Carville typically for life, isolated, stripped of
their identities [and] their civil rights. . . Vignettes of the
patients, some tracked over decades, humanize the story. . . A
caustic story told with empathy and a sharp eye for society’s
intolerance."
*Kirkus Reviews*
"NPR journalist Pam Fessler has put her considerable professional
and personal skills to work, unmasking the history and stigma of
this ancient disease. That stigma, which lingers despite scientific
evidence, dissipates with this book. Fessler’s skills as a
journalist and humanist shine new light on old terrors, with
well-told stories of lives and science."
*Susan Stamberg, special correspondent, NPR*
"Pam Fessler’s powerful book combines fascinating medical history
with a deeply moving family story about a disease that has been
misunderstood and stigmatized since the Old Testament."
*David Maraniss, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good American
Family: The Red Scare and My Father*
"Pam Fessler's extraordinary knack for storytelling brings home the
shameful history of discrimination and exile of those battling
leprosy. At the same time, she lifts up the resilience and humanity
of a community largely erased from our history. It's a moving and
passionate appeal to our consciences."
*E.J. Dionne, author of Code Red: How Progressives and Moderates
Can Unite to Save Our Country*
"Throughout my professional life, I’ve traveled to many places and
at many times tried to explain Carville to people around the world.
Compared to Pam’s efforts mine were feeble. This is an excellent
story of my hometown."
*James Carville, political strategist*
"Carville’s Cure is a powerful story of all the ways that
infectious diseases bring out the best and the worst in people:
hope and fear, science and faith, humanity and cruelty. It is the
very best kind of history: one that is alive with the people whose
story it tells, and one that teaches us how to face challenges we
will face in the future. It will move you."
*Ron Klain, former chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden and
White House Ebola response coordinator, 2014–15*
"By turns heart-wrenching, inspiring, and infuriating, this is a
fast-paced and highly readable account of attempts by patients,
their families, doctors and American society in general to deal
with the worlds’ most misunderstood disease. Written with the eye
of an experienced journalist and the voice of a novelist, this book
tells the story—stranger than fiction—of the patients, nuns,
doctors, movie stars, and politicians who have struggled to come to
terms with the stigma and discrimination attached to leprosy. The
book is painstakingly researched and documented, and unfolds
dramatically through the words of the patients and other
participants through their letters and personal papers as well as
newspaper accounts and interviews."
*David Scollard, retired director, National Hansen’s Disease
Program*
"Behind barbed wire on a onetime sugar plantation on the Louisiana
bayou, generations of Americans who had the bad luck to contract
leprosy were forcibly confined by their own government, stripped of
their most basic rights, and left to suffer and die. Pam Fessler,
by shining a light on their stories—including a surprising family
connection of her own—has redeemed them. She has also left us with
a sobering reminder of the costs of demonizing disease and provided
a must-read for this time of new infectious threats."
*Meredith Wadman, M.D., Science magazine reporter and author of The
Vaccine Race: Science, Politics and the Human Costs of Defeating
Disease*
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