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Your next favorite book
is waiting.
Alvarez's resplendent new novel takes us into the worlds of two women swept up in campaigns against the scourges of their day.
Alma Huebner, a Latin American novelist transplanted to the United States, is writing another of her bestselling family sagas. Her husband works for a humanitarian organization dedicated to health and prosperity in developing countries. He wants her to go with him, but she demurs. She must finish her newest novel.
In truth, Alma is sidetracked by the story of a much earlier idealist, Francisco Xavier Balmis, who in 1803 undertook to vaccinate the populations of Spain's American colonies against smallpox. To do this, he needed living "carriers" of the vaccine. Enter Isabel Sendales y Gómez, the rectoress of La Casa de Expositós. Isabel selects twenty-two orphan boys to be the carriers and joins them on the voyage. Her bravery inspires a very different novel from Alma.
"In this cleverly structured and seductive page-turner, Alvarez uses romance and suspense to leaven probing inquiries into plagues, poverty, and politics; altruism and self-aggrandizement ....." - Booklist.
"..her effort to find resonating similarities between the intertwined plots sometimes feels contrived..." - PW.
"... an unfocused attempt to make a statement about the haves and the have-nots .. Unfortunately, it does not bridge the chasm between authentic high-mindedness and sentimental twaddle." - Amazon.
"Alvarez's generosity of vision compensates for the not-altogether-convincing central conceit of her sixth novel." - Kirkus.
This information about Saving The World was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Brandon Cruz González/EL VOCERO DE PUERTO RICO
Julia Alvarez left the Dominican Republic for the United States in 1960, at the age of ten. She is the author of numerous works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including her beloved first novel, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, and In the Time of the Butterflies, which was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for its Big Read program. She was the subject of an American Masters documentary, Julia Alvarez: A Life Reimagined, on PBS and was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. She lives in Vermont.
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