quotRemarkable..<strong>Saving the World</strong> depicts the need to belong to something greater and mo enduring than ourselves. The Washington Post Book World... » 

quotRemarkable..Saving the World depicts the need to belong to something greater and mo enduring than ourselves. The Washington Post Book WorldWhile Alma Huebner is researching a new novel she finds her real storyand her salvationin a littleknown but staggering historical footnote the Royal Expedition of the Vaccine. In 1803 Don Francisco Balmis embarked on a twoyear sea voyage to rescue the New World from smallpox. Accompanying him were twentytwo orphan boys acting as live carriers and their guardian Isabel Sendales y Gmez. As Alma digs deeper into Isabels life she finds her own power to commit an act as lifechanging as Isabels.In Saving the World Julia Alvarez author of perennial bestsellers including How the Garca Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies takes us into the worlds of quottwo women living two centuries apart who each face a crisis of the soul when their fates are tied to idealistic menquotPublishers Weekly.8220Fresh and unusual and thoughtprovokingly sensitive.8221 The Boston Globe8220A gripping story of love politics greed and good intentions.8221 MSNBC.com8220Suspense and suppressed romance lend Saving the World the tension of a pageturner.8221 The Dallas Morning News8220Engrossing expertly paced.8221 People While writing her novel Alma is sidetracked by the story of a much earlier idealist Francisco Xavier Balmis who in 1803 undertook the vaccination of the populations of Spains American colonies against smallpox and who needed living carriers of the vaccine so that it could survive the travel time across the ocean. Reprint. «