THE NURSE AT BAKER HOSPITAL

Cullity’s historical novel explores a dubious cancer hospital in the 1930s.

Della King is a nurse in Kansas City in 1939. Americans across the country suffer from financial hardships of the Great Depression, and Della is no exception. She journeys to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, for what seems to be an excellent opportunity: She will work at the Baker Hospital, a place that claims “Cancer is Curable.” The hospital, founded by charismatic radio personality Norman Baker, thumbs its nose at cancer treatments approved by the American Medical Association. Instead of being subjected to invasive surgeries and x-rays, patients are put on a strict diet and given mysterious injections. While the hospital turns some who are “hopeless cases” away, the staff claims, prior to Della's arrival, that they have never lost a patient. Della is initially impressed; she is well-paid and seems to garner more respect as a nurse than she is used to. But things quickly go awry, and after a woman under Della's care dies, she begins to question everything around her. Are the people who leave the hospital actually cured? What is in those injections? Why all the apparent internal secrecy? The book builds on intriguing real events: Norman Baker was an actual person who engaged in medical quackery until he faced criminal charges. This novel makes a studied exploration of his methods and the environment that allowed such bunk to thrive. (Part of the appeal was the harshness of other cancer treatments; any alternative might be preferable to, say, having all of one’s teeth removed due to gum cancer.) Other considerations of the period are not as well fleshed out—there are occasional musings on the difficulties of being a single woman like Della, with one character commenting flatly, “Marriage doesn’t really help a woman’s aspirations, does it?” Such moments do not paint as lively a picture as that of the madman at the helm, willing to harm countless people for financial gain.

An engrossing story that exposes past medical fraud at an astonishing level.