Queen of Hearts

Brooks, Martha. Queen of hearts. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2011. ISBN 978-0-374-34229-6.

Plot Summary:

Queen of Hearts portrays the story of Canadian teenager Marie-Claire and her fight with tuberculosis. Set in the 1940’s, she is moved to a sanatorium with little privacy, abundant grief, and challenges galore. As she fights the disease, Marie-Claire builds new friendships and even meets her first love. 

Critical Analysis:

Queen of Hearts is a story of life, death, healing and love. The story is well written and painfully honest. The book is set in Canada during World War II.  Marie-Claire and her two younger siblings are diagnosed with Tuberculosis and forced to move to a sanatorium for treatment. Marie-Claire, who comes from a modest farm family, finds it challenging to adjust to life at the Sanatorium. Marie-Claire shares a room with a young girl who comes from a much wealthier family, and both girls learn that a person’s wealth is not as important as many think. In this story, Marie-Claire must learn to adapt to living in the sanatorium, which includes breathing treatments, surgeries, and “chasing the cure.”

Cultural markers included in this book are Canadian patriotism shown by the patients; French names, including Maman and Josée; and war-time vocabulary. Since the majority of this story takes place in the sanatorium, the reader doesn’t get much insight into life in Canada during the 1940’s. The reader does gain a great familiarity of living with Tuberculosis, the challenges within, and the fight to survive.

Reviews:

Booklist:

Set in a tuberculosis sanatorium in Canada during the early 1940s, this moving perspective of the home front during wartime is told in the first-person, present-tense voice of Marie-Claire, who at 14 is infected with TB and must move with her younger brother and sister from their Manitoba farm to a treatment center, where they are separated. Over nearly three years, she suffers not only the crushing physical symptoms of her disease but also loneliness, fury at her parents, and overwhelming sorrow and guilt when her little brother dies. So weak at first that she cannot get out of bed, she slowly recovers, but others do not. Along with the medical details--lesions and treatments, infection, collapsed lungs, fluoroscopy--the personal drama drives the story, from scenes of Marie-Claire venting furiously to her sweet, supportive roommate abou. this stupid pathetic plac. to surprising reversals. Marie-Claire falls in love, but there is no easy resolution, especially with her distant dad. Readers will be held by the story's heartbreaking truths, right to the end.

School Library Journal:

It is 1940, and Canada, along with the rest of the world, is at war. Marie-Claire, 15, lives on a farm with Maman, Papa, and her younger brother and sister. Never easy, life gets much harder after down-on-his-luck Oncle Gerard comes to stay and then dies from tuberculosis in the local infirmary. Soon, Marie-Claire and her siblings are diagnosed with TB and consigned to the same institution. Adventuresome and headstrong Marie-Claire is confined to a bed next to painfully cheerful Signy and told to be a "patient patient." When her brother dies just before Christmas, Marie-Claire must come to terms with the blame she has placed on herself for having taken him to visit their Oncle, as well as her father's inability to deal with what has happened to his children. The novel provides an intriguing glimpse into the now-unfamiliar world of TB sanatoriums. From a scene in which the women tan naked to soak up the sun to Marie-Claire's stolen moment spent flying a kite by moonlight with her new love, the story is played out in small moments, sometimes heart-wrenching, sometimes sweet, and always poignant. Brooks masterfully re-creates a TB sanatorium through the protagonist's experience and believable characters. A well-drawn, innocent, yet compelling work of historical fiction.

Connections:

This book can be used in a study about World War II, Tuberculosis, or Canada.

Check out the following titles also about Tuberculosis…

Graff, Nancy Price. Taking wing. New York: Clarion Books, 2005.

Hayles, Marsha. Breathing room. New York: Henry Holt, 2012.