Following in the footsteps of The Birth House, her
powerful debut novel, The Virgin Cure secures Ami
McKay''s place as one of our most beguiling storytellers. (Not that
it has to… that is pretty much taken care of!)
"I am Moth, a girl from the lowest part of Chrystie Street, born to
a slum-house mystic and the man who broke her heart." So begins
The Virgin Cure, a novel set in the tenements of
lower Manhattan in the year 1871. As a young child, Moth''s father
smiled, tipped his hat and walked away from his wife and daughter
forever, and Moth has never stopped imagining that one day they may
be reunited - despite knowing in her heart what he chose over them.
Her hard mother is barely making a living with her fortune-telling,
sometimes for well-heeled clients, yet Moth is all too aware of how
she really pays the rent.
Life would be so much better, Moth knows, if fortune had gone the
other way - if only she''d had the luxury of a good family and some
station in life. The young Moth spends her days wandering the
streets of her own and better neighbourhoods, imagining what days
are like for the wealthy women whose grand yet forbidding gardens
she slips through when no one''s looking. Yet every night Moth must
return to the disease- and grief-ridden tenements she calls
home.
The summer Moth turns twelve, her mother puts a halt to her
explorations by selling her boots to a local vendor, convinced that
Moth was planning to run away. Wanting to make the most of her
every asset, she also sells Moth to a wealthy woman as a servant,
with no intention of ever seeing her again.
These betrayals lead Moth to the wild, murky world of the Bowery,
filled with house-thieves, pickpockets, beggars, sideshow freaks
and prostitutes, but also a locale frequented by New York''s social
elite. Their patronage supports the shadowy undersphere, where
businesses can flourish if they truly understand the importance of
wealth and social standing - and of keeping secrets. In that world
Moth meets Miss Everett, the owner of a brothel simply known as an
"infant school." There Moth finds the orderly solace she has always
wanted, and begins to imagine herself embarking upon a new
path.
Yet salvation does not come without its price: Miss Everett caters
to gentlemen who pay dearly for companions who are "willing and
clean," and the most desirable of them all are young virgins like
Moth. That''s not the worst of the situation, though. In a time and
place where mysterious illnesses ravage those who haven''t been
cautious, no matter their social station, diseased men yearn for a
"virgin cure" - thinking that deflowering a "fresh maid" can heal
the incurable and tainted.
Through the friendship of Dr. Sadie, a female physician who works
to help young women like her, Moth learns to question and observe
the world around her. Moth''s new friends are falling prey to fates
both expected and forced upon them, yet she knows the law will not
protect her, and that polite society ignores her. Still she dreams
of answering to no one but herself. There''s a high price for such
independence, though, and no one knows that better than a girl from
Chrystie Street.
