Suffering in the Land of Sunshine

In Abel's hands, Charles Willard's illness narrative becomes both a patient's account of his experience with tuberculosis in the years before antibiotics, and a text that reveals the complex interaction between gender, race, class, and illness in the construction of an individual's sense of self.

~Arleen Marcia Tuchman, author of Science Has No Sex: The Life of Marie Zakrzewska, M.D.

Through the rich narrative of one man's encounter with tuberculosis, this book displays the difficulties and contradictions of living with a chronic disease, much of which can transcend the particular time and place to help us understand the individual and broader family and social experiences of living with illness.

~Judith Walzer Leavitt, University of Wisconsin, Madison

"It is Abel's detailed and engrossing portrait of this suffering middle-class WASP in turn-of-the-century Los Angeles that most clearly reveales the ways in which public health practice and discourse actively constructed racial and class difference."

~American Historical Review

Though most obviously suited for courses in medical sociology or history, the compactness of the book, its accessibility and its emphasis on themes of gender, social class and the sociology of deviance make it a suitable candidate for inclusion in other courses as well. This is an illuminating portrait of suffering and a valuable contribution to the existing literature on the history and experience of tuberculosis in the United States.

~Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and