Guest Post + Bookmark Giveaway: Julie Chibbaro (Deadly)

Everyone, please welcome the lovely Julie Chibbaro, author of Deadly. A huge thank you goes out to Jessica from Confessions of a Bookaholic for setting up this tour! Deadly will be released tomorrow, make sure you run out and buy it. :)

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Julie Chibbaro grew up in New York City wondering how so many people could live together without infecting each other with mortal diseases. After attending Performing Arts High School for theater, she ran away to Mexico, where she survived an earthquake and a motorcycle crash and learned a little something about death. Returning to New York, she decided to create her own fictional characters instead of playing one. Julie Chibbaro is the author of Redemption, which won the 2005 American Book Award. Julie teaches fiction and creative writing in New York.

For more info on Julie, visit her sites:

-Website

-Twitter

-Facebook

-GoodReads

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Deadly by Julie Chibbaro

Reading Level: Young Adult

Release Date: February 22, 2011 (Tomorrow!)

Publisher: Atheneum

Pages: 304

Summary: A mysterious outbreak of typhoid fever is sweeping New York. Could the city’s future rest with its most unlikely scientist? If Prudence Galewski is ever going to get out of Mrs. Browning’s esteemed School for Girls, she must demonstrate her refinement and charm by securing a job appropriate for a young lady. But Prudence isn’t like the other girls. She is fascinated by how the human body works and why it fails. With a stroke of luck, she lands a position in a laboratory, where she is swept into an investigation of the fever bound to change medical history. Prudence quickly learns that an inquiry of this proportion is not confined to the lab. From ritzy mansions to shady bars and rundown tenements, she explores every potential cause of the disease. But there’s no answer in sight—until the volatile Mary Mallon emerges. Dubbed “Typhoid Mary” by the press, Mary is an Irish immigrant who has worked as a cook in every home the fever has ravaged. Strangely, though, she hasn’t been sick a day in her life. Is the accusation against her an act of discrimination? Or is she the first clue in a new scientific discovery? Prudence is determined to find out. In a time when science is for men, she’ll have to prove to the city, and to herself, that she can help solve one of the greatest medical mysteries of the twentieth century.

Book Trailer:

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Guest Post + Giveaway:

DEADLY (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster, Feb. 2011) Julie Chibbaro

A mysterious outbreak of typhoid fever is sweeping New York. Could the city’s future rest with its most unlikely scientist?

If Prudence Galewski is ever going to get out of Mrs. Browning’s esteemed School for Girls, she must demonstrate her refinement and charm by securing a job appropriate for a young lady. But Prudence isn’t like the other girls. She is fascinated by how the human body works and why it fails.

With a stroke of luck, she lands a position in a laboratory, where she is swept into an investigation of the fever bound to change medical history. Prudence quickly learns that an inquiry of this proportion is not confined to the lab. From ritzy mansions to shady bars and rundown tenements, she explores every potential cause of the disease.

But there’s no answer in sight—until the volatile Mary Mallon emerges. Dubbed “Typhoid Mary” by the press, Mary is an Irish immigrant who has worked as a cook in every home the fever has ravaged. Strangely, though, she hasn’t been sick a day in her life. Is the accusation against her an act of discrimination? Or is she the first clue in a new scientific discovery?

1) Thank you Julie for taking the time out to do this guest post. I am honored to have you on my blog. Your latest YA novel, Deadly, sounds great! What inspired you to write it?

JC: Thank you, Eleni! Inspiration is an elusive element, sort of like magic, only not so easy to conjure. What happened was, I was doing research for a book I wanted to write about Houdini, and stumbled on the story of Typhoid Mary. As a kid growing up in a grimy NYC, I believed the urban myth everybody always told me about her, that she was a mass murderer, a psycho killer who poisoned thousands of people intentionally. When I read her real story, it shocked me. I found out that her name was Mary Mallon, that she was a cook for rich families in New York City at the turn of the 20th century. The weird thing about her, the thing she never believed, was that she carried the typhoid fever in her body without ever getting sick from it. She unintentionally spread the germs in her cooking. Most people who ate her food got the fever, and some died.

2) Typhoid fever is the cause of many illnesses in your plot, what made you decide to choose this sickness? How did you research this subject?

JC: Like my main character Prudence, I’ve always been fascinated with illness and epidemics. I’m a reader of medical mysteries, which Deadly is. I also found the typhoid fever epidemic pretty similar to the story of epidemics today. Mary was the first known “healthy carrier,” meaning she could spread the disease without getting sick from it, and that resonated with me because I know that’s the same for HIV and a number of other diseases. I wanted to explore what that might be like for the person carrying the illness, as well as those affected by her.

Research is the most fun and frustrating part of looking back at history. It’s kind of like a game of telephone. Historians typically disagree with each other, or write their own perspective of what happened, so I always have to sort things out for myself. I looked at newspapers (reading the advertising of the day really takes me back), photos, read articles written by Mr. Soper and letters written by Mary. I visited the Tenement Museum, which is an actual apartment building in NYC preserved from that time period. While I did read a lot of books to write this one, I tried not to get too lost in the research. I wanted more to imagine who lived during this time, and how they lived.

3) Throughout Deadly, who was your favorite character creation and why?

JC: I felt very close to Prudence. I gave her my mother’s maiden name, and used some of my own family’s personality traits to shape her. She’s a sensitive rebel who wonders about deep things, and I loved looking at the world through her wonder.

4) Are you currently working on any other projects?

JC: Yes. I just finished a book about two teens, a graffiti artist and a budding writer, whose troubles at home lead them to live in the parks of NYC. Right now, as well, I’m doing research for another historical novel based on a true story about a female serial killer (this time, a woman who intentionally killed).

5) Last but not least, do you have anything you want to say to your current and future readers?

JC: My biggest hope is that I will be able to make the past come alive for my readers.

Want to win a signed bookmark? Enter below!

-Five people will win signed Deadly bookmarks.

-This contest is for U.S. residents only.

-Deadline ends tonight at midnight eastern time!

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