Overview

"In the fall of 1916, America prepares for war—but in the town of Tamarack Lake, the focus is on the sick. Wealthy tubercular patients live in private cure cottages; charity patients, mainly immigrants, fill the large public sanatorium. From within their isolated community, they grapple with some of the most thrilling scientific discoveries of their time—X-ray technology, chemical and biological weapons, changing theories of atomic structure—and their limitations. Prisoners of routine, they take solace in gossip, rumor, and, sometimes, secret attachments. When the well-meaning efforts of one enterprising patient lead instead to a tragic accident and a terrible betrayal, the war comes home, bringing with it a surge of anti-immigrant prejudice. With The Air We Breathe, Andrea Barrett has crafted a ""majestic, breathtaking, [and] thrilling"" (San Diego Union-Tribune) novel that brilliantly illuminates the inescapable heartbreak of war."

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9781324065999

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[A] potent, engrossing portrayal of life at a turn-of-the-century sanatorium...[Barrett has] an unusual--and utterly haunting--narrative voice.-- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) [Barrett's] gift for story, for mining America's past, and her ability to construct a specific moment in the quest for knowledge are remarkable.-- Philadelphia Inquirer Barrett eloquently blends scientific elements like TB and chemistry with her diverse characters' hopes and heartbreaks to bring the book to crackling life.-- Entertainment Weekly Barrett's powers of historical evocation, especially her knowledge of the scientific preoccupations of the time, are impressive.-- The New Yorker Details of New York tenements and of the sanitarium's regime are vivid and engrossing.-- Publishers Weekly Every page seems so vibrant, its people so alive...Majestic, breathtaking, thrilling.-- San Diego Union-Tribune [The Air We Breathe] is a deft and quietly wrenching tale of human misunderstanding.-- Library Journal Barrett's writing has a quality of reflective mildness, a restraint which some might call quiet...There is an elegance of tone, but an enormous amount happens. The Air We Breathe is turbulent and dramatic, full of longing and death and lust, the yearning to cover one's own life and way in the world.-- Boston Globe Here [in The Air We Breathe], as in several of her other works of fiction, including the National Book Award-winning Ship Fever, Barrett enriches her story with science...In fact, her style, always stylish and exact, is at its most compelling when she's describing her characters' engagement in their scientific studies.-- The Atlantic

Author Information

Andrea Barrett is the author of Natural History, the National Book Award–winning Ship Fever, and Pulitzer Prize finalist Servants of the Map, among other works of fiction. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Award, she lives in the Adirondacks.

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