Light and Air
It’s 1935, and tuberculosis is rampant and greatly feared throughout North America. The mayor of Buffalo establishes a large hospital, called a Sanitorium, in the nearby hills, where patients suffering from tuberculosis can be treated using kindness, sunshine and fresh air. When ten-year-old Halle learns her mother has been diagnosed with tuberculosis, and is to be admitted to the Sanitorium, she insists on going along to see where her mother will be.
Later, upset by her father’s apparent lack of care for her, she decides to set off cross-country to visit her mother. The trek is too far, the terrain too difficult. When she is found, she is exhausted and coughing blood, so she herself is taken to the Sanitorium as a patient. But still she is not allowed to visit her mother.
With the help of two boys, also patients, and the beekeeper Melchior, Halle manages to sneak brief nighttime visits with her mother. She overhears something that shocks her and, believing she is the cause of the slowness of her mother’s recovery, she tries to run away again.
This delightful little book would make an ideal gift for a child aged 8–12. It is a parable showing that while medical technology has advanced to where we now treat tuberculosis with drugs, in an earlier time, personal humane care was available in some places. The simple treatments – fresh air, sunlight, good food and kindness – are a reminder that while technologically we are far advanced, we might have lost sight of some basic components vital to human health.
The author has given us a children’s story with insight as well as a complex plot and characters. She maintains an emotional tension throughout, yet the book is easy to read. It is not easily forgotten.
