The Leper
978-0-87839-266-7
The New York Times bestselling author of The Weatherman and The Wheat Field continues his tradition of bold storytelling in a powerful and gripping novel that takes readers to dark and desperate places they never knew existed.
John Eric Severson is a veteran of the First World War—a branded Marine Corps captain who once got lost in a forest and unknowingly led his bedraggled men into a leper colony. Now, five years later, he is an idealistic school teacher in a tough, working-class neighborhood where earning a high school diploma is something most of his students can only dream about. Severson vows to educate everyone of them, but he quickly learns there is one student the tall, handsome Swede cannot control. The lovely Bernice DuFresne. Her wit and charm are no match for him, and halfway through the school year he swears at himself for falling in love with one of his own students. Their love affair is of the highest risk, but they manage to hold on to their secret until that fateful day he is diagnosed with the dreaded disease and literally chased from the school.
Stalked by the ghost of his own past, Severson begins an odyssey that takes him down the Mississippi River and into the swamps of Louisiana—to a colony so miserable its existence is only rumored. His desperate escapes from this hellhole become murderous as he tries to return to a place and time, and to a woman, that he loves. Finally, banished to the island of Molokai, he becomes a leprosy settlement sheriff—and a living legend.
