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http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/796450039

Saving the world a novel

Latina novelist Alma Huebner is suffering from writer's block and is years past the completion date for yet another of her bestselling family sagas. Her husband, Richard, works for a humanitarian organization dedicated to the health and prosperity of developing countries and wants her help on an extended AIDS assignment in the Dominican Republic. But Alma begs off joining him: the publisher is breathing down her neck. She promises to work hard and follow him a bit later. The truth is that Alma is seriously sidetracked by a story she has stumbled across. It's the story of a much earlier medical do-gooder, Spaniard Francisco Xavier Balmis, who in 1803 undertook to vaccinate the populations of Spain's American colonies against smallpox. To do this, he required live "carriers" of the vaccine. Of greater interest to Alma is Isabel Sendales y Gómez, director of La Casa de Expósitos, who was asked to select twenty-two orphan boys to be the vaccine carriers. She agreed -- with the stipulation that she would accompany the boys on the proposed two-year voyage. Her strength and courage inspire Alma, who finds herself becoming obsessed with the details of Isabel's adventures. This resplendent novel-within-a-novel spins the disparate tales of two remarkable women, both of whom are swept along by machismo. In depicting their confrontation of the great scourges of their respective eras, Alvarez exposes the conflict between altruism and ambition.

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  • "En 1803, Isabel Sendal y Gomes dirige un orphelinat à La Corogne, dans le nord de l'Espagne. L'arrivée de Francisco Xavier Balmis, médecin chargé par le roi d'Espagne de faire le tour du monde pour vacciner les populations contre la variole, bouleverse sa vie. Défigurée dans le passé par la maladie, elle décide de l'assister dans sa mission."
  • "Een Dominicaans-Amerikaanse schrijfster die een medische expeditie rond 1800 naar de Nieuwe Wereld tot onderwerp heeft, ontdekt parallellen met haar eigen leven."
  • "Latina novelist Alma Huebner is suffering from writer's block and is years past the completion date for yet another of her bestselling family sagas. Her husband, Richard, works for a humanitarian organization dedicated to the health and prosperity of developing countries and wants her help on an extended AIDS assignment in the Dominican Republic. But Alma begs off joining him: the publisher is breathing down her neck. She promises to work hard and follow him a bit later. The truth is that Alma is seriously sidetracked by a story she has stumbled across. It's the story of a much earlier medical do-gooder, Spaniard Francisco Xavier Balmis, who in 1803 undertook to vaccinate the populations of Spain's American colonies against smallpox. To do this, he required live "carriers" of the vaccine. Of greater interest to Alma is Isabel Sendales y Gómez, director of La Casa de Expósitos, who was asked to select twenty-two orphan boys to be the vaccine carriers. She agreed -- with the stipulation that she would accompany the boys on the proposed two-year voyage. Her strength and courage inspire Alma, who finds herself becoming obsessed with the details of Isabel's adventures. This resplendent novel-within-a-novel spins the disparate tales of two remarkable women, both of whom are swept along by machismo. In depicting their confrontation of the great scourges of their respective eras, Alvarez exposes the conflict between altruism and ambition."@en
  • "In Alvarez's appealingly earnest fifth novel (after A Cafecito Story), two women living two centuries apart each face "a crisis of the soul" when their fates are tied to idealistic men whose commitments to medical humanitarian missions end in disillusionment. Alma Heubner's husband, Richard, goes to the Dominican Republic to help eradicate AIDS, while Alma, a bestselling Latina writer, stays at home in Vermont to work on a story about a real, ill-fated 19th-century expedition chaperoned by Doą Isabel Sendales y Gm̤ez, the spinster director of a Spanish orphanage who agrees to vaccinate 20 of her charges with cowpox and bring them from Spain to Central America to prevent future smallpox epidemics. While the leader of the anti-smallpox expedition, Dr. Francisco Balmis, and Richard see their missions collapse in defeat, Doą Isabel and Alma surmount their personal depressions to find inner strength. Alvarez depicts her two heroines with insightful empathy and creates vivid supporting characters. But her effort to find resonating similarities between the intertwined plots sometimes feels contrived, and the details of Doą Isabel's odyssey slow the momentum. The narrative culminates in a compelling scene in which greed and ineptitude trump idealism, dramatizing the question of whether the means are ever justified by the ends."@en
  • "Alma, una novelista, está sufriendo del síndrome de la página en blanco y sigue retrasada con su nueva novela. Sin embargo, su novela se desvía aún más cuando descubre la historia de un idealista, Francisco Xavier Balmis, quien en 1803 emprendió una campaña para vacunar a las poblaciones de las colonias españolas en América contra la viruela. Para hacer esto, Balmis necesitaba "portadores" vivos de la vacuna. De mayor interés para Alma fue Isabel Sendales y Gómez, rectora de La Casa de Expósitos, a quien se le pide seleccionar a veintidós muchachos huérfanos para ser portadores y luego los acompaña en el viaje. Su valor inspira a Alma a escribir una novela muy distinta a la que tenía planeada originalmente. Una novela dentro de otra, este libro enfrenta a la ambición y al altruismo y, en el proceso, cuenta las historias radiantes de dos mujeres valientes. --Desde la descripción de la editorial."
  • "From the Publisher: While Alma Huebert is researching a new novel, she finds her real story-and her salvation-in a little-known but staggering historical footnote: the Royal Expedition of the Vaccine. In 1803, Don Francisco Balmis embarked on a two-year sea voyage to rescue the New World from smallpox. Accompanying him were twenty-two orphan boys, acting as live carriers, and their guardian, Isabel Sendales y Gómez. As Alma digs deeper into Isabel's life, she finds her own power to commit an act as life-changing as Isabel's. In Saving the World, Julia Alvarez, author of perennial bestsellers, including How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies, takes us into the worlds of "two women living two centuries apart [who] each face 'a crisis of the soul' when their fates are tied to idealistic men"-(Publishers Weekly)."@en
  • "Alma Heubner's husband, Richard, goes to the Dominican Republic to help eradicate AIDS, while Alma, a bestselling Latina writer, stays at home in Vermont to work on a story about a real, ill-fated 19th-century expedition chaperoned by Doña Isabel Sendales y Gómez, the spinster director of a Spanish orphanage who agrees to vaccinate 20 of her charges with cowpox and bring them from Spain to Central America to prevent future smallpox epidemics. While the leader of the anti-smallpox expedition, Dr. Francisco Balmis, and Richard see their missions collapse in defeat, Doña Isabel and Alma surmount their personal depressions to find inner strength."
  • "While Alma Huebert is researching a new novel, she finds her real story-and her salvation-in a little-known but staggering historical footnote: the Royal Expedition of the Vaccine. In 1803, Don Francisco Balmis embarked on a two-year sea voyage to rescue the New World from smallpox. Accompanying him were twenty-two orphan boys, acting as live carriers, and their guardian, Isabel Sendales y Gómez. As Alma digs deeper into Isabel's life, she finds her own power to commit an act as life-changing as Isabel's. In Saving the World, Julia Alvarez, author of perennial bestsellers, including How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies, takes us into the worlds of "two women living two centuries apart [who] each face 'a crisis of the soul' when their fates are tied to idealistic men"-(Publishers Weekly)."
  • "Suffering from writer's block, Alma finds herself enamored of a story involving Isabel, director of La Casa de Expósitos, who selected twenty-two orphan boys to be live carriers of the smallpox vaccine in 1803."@en

genre

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  • "Fiction"
  • "Fiction"@en
  • "Psychological fiction"
  • "Psychological fiction"@en
  • "Historical fiction"
  • "Historical fiction"@en
  • "Downloadable Workman Publishing ebooks"@en
  • "Electronic books"
  • "Electronic books"@en
  • "Novels"
  • "Belletristische Darstellung"

name

http://schema.org/name

  • "Salvare il mondo"@it
  • "Salvare il mondo"
  • "Saving the world a novel"
  • "Saving the world a novel"@en
  • "Para salvar al mundo"
  • "Saving the World"@en
  • "Para salvar el mundo"@es
  • "Para salvar el mundo"
  • "Die Mission der Isabel Gómez Roman"
  • "Saving The World"@en
  • "Een betere wereld"
  • "Saving the world : a novel"@en
  • "Saving the world : a novel"
  • "Sauver le monde"

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