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Light and Air
Additional information
| Author | Mindy Nichols Wendell |
|---|---|
| Genre | Middle Grade – Historical |
| Release Date | January 2, 2024 |
| Publisher | Holiday House |
Description
It’s 1935, and tuberculosis is ravaging the nation. Everyone is afraid of this deadly respiratory illness. But what happens when you actually have it?
When Halle and her mother both come down with TB, they are shunned—and then they are sent to the J.N. Adam Tuberculosis Hospital: far from home, far from family, far from the world.
Tucked away in the woods of upstate New York, the hospital is a closed and quiet place. But it is not, Halle learns, a prison. Free of her worried and difficult father for the first time in her life, she slowly discovers joy, family, and the healing power of honey on the children’s ward, where the girls on the floor become her confidantes and sisters. But when Mama suffers a lung hemorrhage, their entire future—and recovery—is thrown into question….
Light and Air deals tenderly and insightfully with isolation, quarantine, found family, and illness. Set in the fully realized world of a 1930s hospital, it offers a tender glimpse into a historical epidemic that has become more relatable than ever due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As Halle tries to warm her father’s coldness and learns to trust the girls and women of the hospital, and as she and her mother battle a disease that once paralyzed the country, a profound message of strength, hope, and healing emerges.
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
About the Author
I’m an Indiana girl by birth, I spent most of my childhood in western Pennsylvania. My little hometown had one stoplight and one blinker light. Amish buggies clip-clopped by our house morning and evening.
As a quiet kid who loved stories, I spent a lot of time reading. When my dad was in graduate school in Muncie, Indiana, my three siblings and I shared a tiny bedroom in a small apartment. At night, my dad would lie on the floor with his head on a big shaggy stuffed dog and tell us stories about two hippopotamuses named Daisy and Lullabelle. One of my fondest memories of Indiana is checking out books from the bookmobile that pulled up in front of our apartment complex once a week.
When we moved to Pennsylvania, we lived in a bigger house with more bedrooms. So my mom, who was a teacher and an expert at reading aloud, sat in the hallway between the room I shared with my sister and the room my brothers shared and read to us at bedtime. We fell asleep listening to Rabbit Hill, Charlotte’s Web, and all the Beverly Cleary books.
When I was in fourth grade, I got my first pair of glasses. For the next six years, I failed every eye test I took. My ophthalmologist told my parents I should stop reading so much. Luckily, they didn’t listen; they just kept getting me new glasses.
So I happily read my way through elementary school, junior high, and high school. When it was time for college. I wanted to major in English, but I didn’t think I wanted to be a teacher like my parents. So I majored in Theatre. I married my college sweetheart before my senior year. We moved to New Hampshire after I graduated. I sold furniture and clothing, waited tables, and worked at an electric company before deciding I wanted a career, not just a series of job. We left New Hampshire and went back to school in my husband’s hometown in western New York.
After completing my master’s degree in English, the English Department hired me to teach freshman composition. A few years and three kids later, I started teaching literature and writing classes for future elementary school teachers: a dream job for a girl who loved to read and write. All those years of teaching middle grade novels was the perfect preparation for writing my own book, and that brings me to today.
My first book, Light and Air, is a MG historical novel set in 1935. Much of the book takes place in a tuberculosis sanatorium, inspired by the ruins of the J.N. Adam Memorial Hospital in nearby Perrysburg, New York. I am currently at work on a companion novel set thirty-five years later.
