TLC Book Tour - Review - The Virgin Cure - Ami McKay

Happy Independence Day America!!!

Title:    The Virgin Cure

Author:  Ami McKay

Review:  I enjoy reading historical/fiction and this one did not disappoint.  The story unfolded fast enough to keep me turning the page, but not too fast to giveaway the ending.  I sure am glad that I live in this day and age and not back then when there was little or nothing for people who were poor.  The idea of selling your children so you and the rest of the family could eat is just awful.


The title was interesting and as I read it explained what it actually meant.  Some diseases have been thought to have been cured by having sex with a virgin, of course that is an old wives tale and yet it is still believed in some countries around the world(it doesn’t cure anything.)  The young girl in this book, Moth, is going to have things her way even if it kills her.  She is not giving herself to anyone for nothing, her street smarts keep her from being taken by the local men who prey on the young of the neighborhood.  She is well beyond her years in maturity and guts, but she had lived on the streets and kept her mother from starving for many years, so this makes sense.  Young, but smart and wiry.

This book made me really think about the way things were and about the way things are now.  Sexually slavery is still alive and well in this world.  How after all the advances we have made have we not found a way to change that?  This book will surprise you, it will shock you and yet it will make you smile and even shed a few tears at the end.  It will also make you want to hug your daughter, really tight.

Publisher:  Published 2012 by Orion PublishingGroup (first published October 25th 2011)

Copyright: 2011

Pages:  368

ISBN:    9781409143499

Quick Review: 4.5 Stars out of 5. 

Where Did I Get the Book:  Sent by the publisher for the TLC Tour.

Synopsis:   The much-anticipated follow-up to the phenomenon that is The Birth House, The Virgin Cure secures Ami McKay's place as one of our most beguiling storytellers.

"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 her forever. The summer she turned twelve, her mother sold her as a servant to a wealthy woman, 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, where eventually she meets Miss Everett, the owner of a brothel simply known as "The Infant School." 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.

Through the friendship of Dr. Sadie, a female physician, Moth learns to question and observe the world around her, where her new friends are falling prey to the myth of the "virgin cure"--that deflowering a "fresh maid" can heal the incurable and tainted. She knows the law will not protect her, that polite society ignores her, and 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.

Author Biography: Ami McKay’s debut novel, The Birth House was a # 1 bestseller in Canada, winner of three CBA Libris Awards, nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and a book club favourite around the world.

Her new novel. The Virgin Cure, is inspired by the life of her great- great grandmother, Dr. Sarah Fonda Mackintosh, a female physician in nineteenth century New York. Born and raised in Indiana, Ami now lives in Nova Scotia.

Other Reviews:  Kirkus Reviews, Book Hooked Blog, Book Reporter