Such mixed feelings about this. I am not great at reading books where there are alternate chapters with two different stories. In this case there was one “here and now” story about a woman in Vermont managing with her depression and life in a small town. In the other, the subject of her next book, a real life tale of a woman who goes abroad to help spread the smallpox vaccine in the “new world” in the very early 1800s. Both neat stories, their intermingling was a little difficult and, near the mid-end of the book, one of the characters you’ve grown to like gets killed in a senseless way which was a startling plot device. Want to read more about the smallpox story Not totally sure how I feel about picking up other books by Alvarez.