CANR
WORK TITLE: WONDER DRUG
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://jennifervanderbes.com/
CITY: New York
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: LRC 2014
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1974, in New York, NY; children: two daughters.
EDUCATION:Yale University, B.A. (magna cum laude); Iowa Writers’ Workshop, University of Iowa, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and educator. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh, PA, reporter; University of Wisconsin—Madison, James C. McCreight fiction fellow, 2000-01; Colgate University, Hamilton, NY, Olive B. O’Connor fellow in creative writing, 2001-02; Iowa Writers’ Workshop, University of Iowa, Iowa City, visiting assistant professor, 2003-04. Guggenheim Fiction Fellow; New York Public Library Cullman Center Fellow; Public Scholar, National Endowment for the Humanities, 2019-20.
AWARDS:Grant, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; Athena List winner, 2022, for screenplay.
WRITINGS
Contributor of short fiction to Best New American Voices 2000, edited by Tobias Wolff, Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 2000. Contributor of essays, short stories, and reviews to publications, including the New York Times, Granta, Wall Street Journal, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Washington Post, and the Atlantic. Also author of the stage play, Primating.
SIDELIGHTS
Jennifer Vanderbes is a writer who was born and raised in New York City. Inspired by The Diary of Anne Frank, she began keeping a journal of her own at age twelve. Her interest in literature continued through high school and college, and while a student at Yale University, she enrolled in a class taught by Robert Stone that she credits as the turning point of her career. “He was not only devoted to his students and available,” Vanderbes told Washington Post Book World contributor Marie Arana of Stone, “he was willing to say the uncomfortable thing.” “By the end of a semester with him,” Vanderbes added, “I’d written one hundred pages of solid stuff.” A few years later, while researching archaeological expeditions, Vanderbes came upon the idea for Easter Island. She later attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop as a Truman Capote Fellow.
Easter Island
In 2003 Jennifer Vanderbes published her critically acclaimed debut novel Easter Island. In the work, Vanderbes interweaves the stories of two women, separated in age by sixty years, who discover the mysteries of Easter Island. In the London Guardian, Rachel Hore called the work “part travel adventure, part absorbing scientific discovery, part love story.”
The novel follows Elsa Pendleton, a young Englishwoman, and Greer Faraday, an American botanist. Following the death of her father in 1912, Pendleton hastily marries the much-older Edward Beazley, a Royal Geographic Society anthropologist who is assigned to study Easter Island’s giant moai statues. The recently widowed Faraday arrives on the island in 1973, still grieving the husband who plagiarized her work, thus damaging their marriage. A third narrative, involving the fate of World War I German Admiral Graf Von Spee, is intertwined with the women’s stories. “The heart of the story … is the island’s impenetrable mysteriousness, and Vanderbes extracts considerable drama and tension from questions not susceptible to final answers,” according to a Kirkus Reviews critic. A Publishers Weekly reviewer stated that the author “knows how to craft suspense, and the narratives—while with vivid historical and scientific detail—move forward on the strength of her fully realized characters.”
Strangers at the Feast
Vanderbes’s second novel is Strangers at the Feast. In the book, the main character, Ginny Olson, hosts a Thanksgiving dinner attended by members of her family. Ginny is a single anthropology professor who has just returned from India. While abroad, she adopted a seven-year-old girl who is mute. Douglas, Ginny’s brother, is one of the attendees of the dinner. He brings along his wife and three kids. Douglas’s construction business has just failed. Their father, Gavin, has been badly affected by his time serving in the military in Vietnam. Meanwhile, their mother, Eleanor, supports him without questioning his behavior. Ginny’s oven breaks, so the whole family moves the party to Douglas’s house. They do not realize that a group of teenagers has broken into the house.
Strangers at the Feast received mixed reviews. A writer in Publishers Weekly stated: “Vanderbes spins her wheels on a toothless Corrections-lite family saga.” “Excessive back story overshadows forward momentum in a compassionate though schematic portrait of middle-class characters in crisis,” suggested a contributor to Kirkus Reviews. In a more favorable review of the book, Booklist writer, Joanne Wilkinson, described it as “an inventively plotted, highly readable novel.” Joy Humphrey, a Library Journal critic, called it “an absorbing and suspenseful story.”
The Secret of Raven Point
Vanderbes’s following book is The Secret of Raven Point. In an interview with Megan O’Grady, contributor to Vogue.com, Vanderbes discussed the inspiration behind the book. She stated: “I began work on this novel during the 2003 invasion of Iraq with little more than the desire—shared by many at that time—to understand the unanticipated consequences of war. World War II, having earned a sort of historical gold star for being the morally unambiguous conflict of the twentieth century, seemed a good starting point. … All of my novels have looked at women living or, more particularly, working in male worlds; I like the unexpected pressures and powers that women discover in those spaces, the way they’re forced to define themselves.”
The book is set in 1943. The protagonist, recent high school graduate Juliet Dufresne, has signed up to work as a nurse on the battlefield. While abroad, she looks for her missing brother, and she works with Dr. Henry Willard. Willard uses psychiatry to help patients, including a suicidal deserter called Christopher Barnaby. Christopher may know about the fate of Juliet’s brother.
In a review of the book on the Books with Cass website, a contributor wrote of Vanderbes: “She tells a meaningful tale, and I would highly recommend this to anyone who loves WWII based novels.” A writer on the Village Books Blog commented: “Historically speaking, Vanderbes’s story is quite accurate. She lists an impressive number of sources in her acknowledgements, and the details that she includes give a very visceral feeling to Juliet’s everyday life in the hospital.” “There are many disparate parts that make up The Secret of Raven Point and Vanderbes writes them flawlessly,” remarked Swapna Krishna, contributor to the S. Krishna’s Books website. Krishna added: “It’s rare that literary fiction is this compulsively readable; it’s something that Vanderbes has done well in the past, and this wonderful novel is no exception.” “Juliet is a vital narrator with a fresh, compelling perspective,” wrote Sabina Murray in the Washington Post. Similarly, Library Journal writer, Vicki Briner, suggested: “Readers will fall in love with the delightful Juliet.” Wilkinson, the contributor to Booklist, described The Secret of Raven Point as “an homage to our armed forces and a moving personal story of emotional growth.” “What begins as formulaic turns unusual and affecting as the emotional depths of Vanderbes’s story slowly emerge,” asserted a critic in Kirkus Reviews.
Wonder Drug
(open new)Vanderbes published Wonder Drug: The Secret History of Thalidomide in America and Its Hidden Victims in 2023. The account looks into the history of thalidomide use in the United States. Life magazine published a piece in 1962 illustrating the number of severe birth defects in babies in England and Germany after their mothers had taken the sleeping pill thalidomide in the early months of their pregnancy. Cincinnati-based drug company William S. Merrell gave away thalidomide to hundreds of doctors across the United States while petitioning the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve it. Ultimately, the FDA rejected its application but not before it had been used by some 20,000 patients. This led to deformities in those children born to mothers who had taken it. The account notes that no effort was made to rescind the samples that had been given out. Vanderbes covers all sides of the issue, additionally interviewing those who were directly impacted by use of the drug.
In an interview in Literary Hub, Vanderbes shared: “I published three novels before Wonder Drug—so I would say the storytelling craft of long-form fiction shaped how I approached this initially unwieldy material.” Booklist contributor Karen Springen claimed that “this is a medical must-read.” Springen noted that “Vanderbes makes a complex and important story understandable, ending with an epilogue about thalidomide today.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor called it “a significant work about a horrifying example of widespread pharmaceutical negligence.” The same reviewer commented that Vanderbes “weaves the various strands of her riveting tale together with aplomb.”(close new)
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Book, July 1, 2003, Penelope Mesic, review of Easter Island, p. 81.
Booklist, May 15, 2003, Marta Segal Block, review of Easter Island, p. 1641; May 1, 2010, Joanne Wilkinson, review of Strangers at the Feast, p. 46; December 15, 2013, Joanne Wilkinson, review of The Secret of Raven Point, p. 26; June 1, 2023, Karen Springen, review of Wonder Drug: The Secret History of Thalidomide in America and Its Hidden Victims, p. 13.
Christian Science Monitor, May 29, 2003, Ron Charles, “Enigmas in Stone;” March 6, 2014, Jane Moginot, review of The Secret of Raven Point.
Guardian (London, England), May 24, 2003, Rachel Hore, review of Easter Island, p. 28.
Independent Sunday (London, England), May 10, 2003, review of Easter Island, p. 19.
Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2003, review of Easter Island, p. 569; June 1, 2010, review of Strangers at the Feast; November 1, 2013, review of The Secret of Raven Point; June 15, 2023, review of Wonder Drug.
Library Journal, March 15, 2003, Barbara Hoffert, review of Easter Island, p. 118; April 1, 2010, Joy Humphrey, review of Strangers at the Feast, p. 71; November 15, 2013, Vicki Briner, review of The Secret of Raven Point, p. 84.
New York Times, June 15, 2003, Michael Upchurch, “Head Cases,” p. 17.
Observer (London, England), May 18, 2003, Lisa Allardice, “Enigma Variation a la Mode,” p. 17.
Publishers Weekly, May 19, 2003, review of Easter Island, p. 52; June 21, 2010, review of Strangers at the Feast, p. 30; September 30, 2013, review of The Secret of Raven Point, p. 42.
San Francisco Chronicle, June 29, 2003, Megan Harlan, “Digging for Meaning on a Mysterious Island.”
Times (London, England), May 10, 2003, Carola Longe, “Tendrils of Time,” p. 19.
Vogue, March 1, 2003, Joanna Smith Rakoff, “Passionate Nomads,” pp. 422-23.
Washington Post Book World, December 7, 2003, Maria Arana, “Jennifer Vanderbes: All in Her Head,” p. 5.
ONLINE
Bookreporter, http://www.bookreporter.com/ (April 26, 2004), Bethanne Kelly Patrick, review of Easter Island.
Books with Cass, http://www.bookswithcass.com/ (January 21, 2014), review of The Secret of Raven Point.
Jennifer Vanderbes website, http://jennifervanderbes.com (August 7, 2023).
Literary Hub, https://lithub.com/ (July 11, 2023), Teddy Wayne, “Lit Hub Asks: 5 Authors, 7 Questions, No Wrong Answers.”
S. Krishna’s Books, http://skrishnasbooks.com/ (February 25, 2014), Swapna Krishna, review of The Secret of Raven Point.
Village Books Blog, http://villagebooksblog.typepad.com/ (February 13, 2014), review of The Secret of Raven Point.
Vogue.com, http://www.vogue.com/ (April 12, 2014), Megan O’Grady, author interview.
Washington Post Online, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ (February 17, 2014), Sabina Murray, review of The Secret of Raven Point.
Weekend Edition, Sunday, https://www.npr.org/ (June 25, 2023), Ayesha Rascoe, “Jennifer Vanderbes on Her Book ‘Wonder Drug.'”
Jennifer Vanderbes Author Pic.jpeg
JENNIFER VANDERBES
Author Biography
Jennifer Vanderbes is an award-winning novelist, journalist and screenwriter whose work has been translated into sixteen languages.
Her first novel, Easter Island was named a "best book of 2003" by the Washington Post and Christian Science Monitor. Her second novel, Strangers At The Feast, was described by O, The Oprah Magazine as "a thriller that also raises large and haunting questions about the meaning of guilt, innocence, and justice." Her third novel, The Secret of Raven Point, was hailed as “unputdownable” (Vogue) and “gripping” (New York Times), and Library Journal wrote: “the only disappointing thing about this book is that it has to end."
Her first non-fiction book, Wonder Drug: The Secret History of Thalidomide in America and Its Hidden Victims, was published by Random House and HarperCollins UK in June 2023, receiving early starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus and Booklist. People Magazine called it "fascinating and compassionate" and Publishers Weekly called it "a deeply researched and chilling must-read."
Primating, Vanderbes's romantic comedy about primatologists at a chimpanzee research station, premiered at the Arkansas Repertory Theater in 2021. She also writes regularly for film and television and she was named a 2022 Athena List Winner for a feature script she wrote for Paramount. Her screenwriting was also honored in 2022 by the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and The Atlantic, and her short fiction has appeared in Granta, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Best New American Voices.
Her books have received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the New York Public Library. She was named a 2019-2020 NEH Public Scholar for her work on Wonder Drug.
Vanderbes received her B.A. in English Literature, Magna Cum Laude, from Yale and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She lives in New York City with her two daughters.
Jennifer Vanderbes
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Jennifer Vanderbes was born in New York City. She received her B.A. in English Literature from Yale and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.After graduate school, she was awarded a McCreight Fiction Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin, and then the Creative Writing Fellowship at Colgate University.
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Jennifer Vanderbes
Born New York City
Education Yale University
Iowa Writers' Workshop
Occupations
Novelistjournalistscreenwriter
Jennifer Vanderbes is an American novelist, journalist and screenwriter.
Biography
Early life
Vanderbes was born in New York City. She attended the Dalton School and earned a B.A. in English magna cum laude from Yale University. While at Yale, she began writing for the Yale Daily News and was featured on CBS Evening News for her investigation into a suspicious egg donor agency that was then closed down due to her reporting. She graduated from Yale in seven semesters, and worked at CNN during her junior year. After Yale, Vanderbes worked as a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette before moving to Iowa City to attend the Iowa Writers' Workshop as a Truman Capote Fellow.
Career
After receiving her MFA in Fiction Writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she studied with Pulitzer Prize-winner Marilynne Robinson, Vanderbes was awarded creative writing fellowships at the University of Wisconsin[1] and Colgate University.
In 2003, her debut novel Easter Island (Dial Press) was named one of the best books of the year by The Christian Science Monitor and The Washington Post Book World, and was translated into sixteen languages. The novel combines adventure, mystery, and archaeology in several plotlines linked to Easter Island, the remote South Pacific island famed for its immense Moai (statues). Vanderbes was named to People Magazine's annual "It List".
In 2007, Vanderbes published her second book, Strangers at the Feast. The novel depicts two Connecticut families, one white and one black, connected by gentrification and a horrific crime on Thanksgiving Day in 2007. Oprah Magazine called it "a thriller that also raises large and haunting questions about the meaning of guilt, innocence, and justice."
Her third novel, The Secret of Raven Point (2014), follows a young WWII army nurse determined to find her older brother who’s gone missing in action in Italy. The New York Times celebrated the "two separate mysteries [that] create and maintain suspense throughout this gripping World War II coming-of-age novel." The Washington Post called it “fresh, compelling… War gives men and women a chance to become monsters or heroes, and Vanderbes finds her footing exploring these two extremes…[ Juliet] is a companionable protagonist... she emerges from the experience as someone altered yet not conquered by war….Vanderbes performs admirably.[2]” And in a starred review, Library Journal said about it, "Readers will fall in love with the delightful Juliet, who is a smart and courageous heroine....the only disappointing thing about this book is that it has to end."[citation needed]
During graduate school, Vanderbes wrote a one-act play called "The Applicant" which was produced by the Soho Rep theater in New York. In 2014, she returned to playwriting, and her two-act play, Primating[3], about primatologists in Africa, was optioned by Tony-award winning producers Jeffrey Richards Associates,[4] . The play revolves around two of the world’s leading primatologists, who reunite at a chimp reserve twenty-five years after a dashed love affair. The headstrong, brainy ex-lovers use what they know about primate behavior to justify their own lives, igniting a full-blown battle of the sexes - and wits - as they pit man against woman and ape against man. The play had its world premiere in August 2021 at the Arkansas Repertory Theater in Little Rock, Arkansas, celebrated by Broadway World as a "very smart, witty play.[5]"
She also writes for film and television, developing projects with HBO, Netflix, Bravo, TriStar, Fox and Paramount. In March 2022 she was named an Athena List winner for a biopic she wrote for Paramount.[6] In July 2022, she won a New York Foundation for the Arts Playwriting/Screenwriting Prize. In November 2022, the Hollywood Reporter announced her as the winner of the Athena Film Festival's Sloan Development prize. She was a Story Editor on Season 22 of NBC's Law & Order.
Vanderbes has been awarded a Guggenheim Fiction Fellowship, a New York Public Library Cullman Center Fellowship, and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Book Grant.[citation needed]
Her short fiction has appeared in Granta[7], Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Best New American Voices 2000. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times,[8] The Wall Street Journal,[9] and The Atlantic.[10]
Her first investigative non-fiction book, Wonder Drug: The Secret History of Thalidomide in America and Its Hidden Victims, was published by Random House and Harper Collins UK in June 2023. Publishers Weekly called the book "a deeply researched and chilling must-read".https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-525-51226-4[citation needed] People magazine called Wonder Drug "fascinating and compassionate". Vanderbes was named an NEH Public Scholar for her investigation into the thalidomide scandal.[citation needed]
She lives in New York City.
Jennifer Vanderbes on her book 'Wonder Drug'
June 25, 20237:59 AM ET
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Ayesha Rascoe, photographed for NPR, 2 May 2022, in Washington DC. Photo by Mike Morgan for NPR.
Ayesha Rascoe
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NPR's Ayesha Rascoe interviews author Jennifer Vanderbes on her new book, Wonder Drug, about the sleeping pill Thalidomide, which caused birth defects when taken by pregnant women.
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AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
In the 1950s and '60s, thousands of babies were born around the globe with shortened limbs. Their arms and legs looked like seal flippers, and they were often missing fingers and toes. They were called "thalidomide babies" after the drug responsible for those birth defects. Thalidomide was never approved for sale in the U.S., but it ended up in medicine cabinets here anyway. Jennifer Vanderbes tells the story of how that happened in her new book "Wonder Drug: The Secret History Of Thalidomide In America And Its Hidden Victims." She joins us now. Welcome to the program.
JENNIFER VANDERBES: Hi. Thanks for having me.
RASCOE: You know, we tend to think of, like, Big Pharma as something that's, like, happened more recently. But you write about how pharmaceuticals were the most profitable industry in the country in the 1950s. Like, were you surprised to find out, like, how big the industry was back then?
VANDERBES: I was. I mean, what I hadn't known prior to this project was that World War II is really this turning point for the industry, and the government subsidies that go into pharmaceuticals to sort of help win the war give this young industry a lot of infrastructure and a big boost that allow it to really take off after the war. But you don't have government regulations necessarily keeping up at that point.
RASCOE: It really felt like the wild, wild West back then. Like, especially, you know, you get the Food and Drug Administration finally created, but then it didn't seem like they were always that rigorous.
VANDERBES: Right. So the Food and Drug Administration really starts to get some worthwhile powers around 1938. The problem and the big surprise in this story is that there was a bit of a loophole in this idea that drug firms - so what they were supposed to do was run some human safety trials. What the drug firm that was interested in getting thalidomide on the market did was sort of turn that requirement into getting doctors interested in the drug while they were awaiting FDA approval.
RASCOE: That's how it got out to all these people. They were using it to kind of sell it and build buzz.
VANDERBES: Yes. And what this particular drug firm did was they used their salesmen - they were called detail men at the time. They send these detail men across the country, and they tell them to go and approach doctors on a scale that they'd never done before, right? Like, go into hospitals, look at the lobby plaque and find the name of the biggest doctor you can find. Go to them, tell them that you think they're so special that they should get this drug before FDA approval. Tell them that it's so safe that they shouldn't really worry about actually gathering experimental clinical data.
So these doctors take this information at face value. They get interested. They start handing it out to their patients for a variety of conditions and symptoms, everything from headaches to morning sickness to menstrual cramps to indigestion, believing that this drug has been thoroughly tested, is super safe, and that they're just - and that FDA approval is imminent, that this was just, you know, a little bit of a paperwork holdup.
RASCOE: There are obviously a lot of heroes in this book. One of the heroes is Frances Kelsey. Thalidomide was the very first drug that she was assigned to review when she took a job at the FDA. But she doesn't just rubber-stamp her very first thing. She really looks into it when there was a lot of pressure for her not. Like, why do you think she did that?
VANDERBES: So she was a very meticulous scientist. I mean, I think that was her innate nature - I mean, in sort of prowling through, you know, her archives over the six years that I worked on this project, you know. But you have to remember that she entered pharmacology in the late 1930s, which was a completely new and male field at the time. And in fact, she only gets admitted to be a researcher at the University of Chicago's pharmacology department because her name, Frances, is gender ambiguous and she is mistaken for a man. I think, given the nature of the fields that she worked in, I think she always had to work a little bit harder and be a little more meticulous, and she could not afford to make mistakes. So, yes, she - I think she was sort of battling that sexism her entire life and was an incredibly good scientist.
RASCOE: So, you know, many of these babies that were injured by thalidomide - I mean, yes, they had serious defects, but they grew up mentally intact and they've been able to have, you know, very full lives. Like, can you tell us about a few of them?
VANDERBES: I'll start maybe with a story of a woman that I met through the process of researching the book, and her name is Jean Grover. Jean is born with a variation of phocomelia, which affects both her arms and both of her legs. And her mother was told at birth, essentially, your child has no arms or legs. The child won't survive, don't see her. Send her to foster care and kind of move on with your life. No one at the hospital told Jean's mother that she was the fifth baby born in a very short span with the same condition. Phocomelia is so rare that most obstetricians will never see a single case in their practicing lives. Her mother's not told this, and then she's sort of casually asked if she went to Canada to get thalidomide.
RASCOE: They're trying to put it on her. Like, maybe you went somewhere. Yeah.
VANDERBES: Right. Are you such a pill popper that you - and, like, you know, Jean's mother had never even left the country, right? So she just decided this was God's will. She goes about her life. She doesn't see her daughter. Finally, the mother works up the courage to go visit her daughter after all this time, sees her, falls in love and says, we're bringing her home.
Fast-forward - Jean is a mother of four, a graphic designer, you know, one of the most creative, resilient people you can ever meet. But it took her most of her life to realize that she was a victim of thalidomide. Her mother recalled being given what she were told were vitamins for nausea. She was simply never made aware that thalidomide was distributed so widely. Her mother didn't know it. She didn't know it. So Jean is one of what I'll say are, ballpark, a hundred U.S. victims or people who believe that they were harmed by thalidomide who've just started to find each other and also navigating what are significant physical disabilities while receiving no support from the government - none.
RASCOE: That's Jennifer Vanderbes, author of "Wonder Drug: The Secret History Of Thalidomide In America And Its Hidden Victims." Thank you so much for coming on the program.
VANDERBES: Thank you so much, Ayesha.
Lit Hub Asks: 5 Authors, 7 Questions, No Wrong Answers
Featuring Caleb Azumah Nelson, Kate Myers, Richard Russo, and More
By Teddy Wayne
July 11, 2023
The Lit Hub Author Questionnaire is a monthly interview featuring seven questions for five authors with new books. This month we talk to:
Nishanth Injam (The Best Possible Experience)
Kate Myers (Excavations)
Caleb Azumah Nelson (Small Worlds)
Richard Russo (Somebody’s Fool)
Jennifer Vanderbes (Wonder Drug: The Secret History of Thalidomide in America and Its Hidden Victims)
*
Without summarizing it in any way, what would you say your book is about?
Kate Myers: Archaeological comedy, sweating profusely, being forced to rely on the weak links, repatriation, the Olympics, bad breakups.
Nishanth Injam: Superficially, about India and the Indian diaspora. About immigration and home. But actually, the book is about yearning. Full stop. The goal is yearning. Because the world we live in wants us to live on the surface. Feel the water around our knees and return to the shore. This book is about trying to live inside water.
Richard Russo: Inheritance and all that trails in its wake: money, the lack thereof, property, genetics. And, yes, reckoning.
Caleb Azumah Nelson: Family and community. Falling in love for the first time. The joys and freedom of music and dance. Feeling like everything is possible in the summertime.
Jennifer Vanderbes: Corporate greed, shoddy science, bureaucratic fumbling, heroes and villains, the wild west of early Big Pharma… and a close look at human resilience in the face of stunning adversity.
*
Without explaining why and without naming other authors or books, can you discuss the various influences on your book?
Richard Russo: My father and his working-class buddies, ball-busters all. My having done hard physical labor as a young man. Robert Benton’s movie of Nobody’s Fool. Turning seventy.
Jennifer Vanderbes: I published three novels before Wonder Drug—so I would say the storytelling craft of long-form fiction shaped how I approached this initially unwieldy material. For example, the book is mostly set in the 1960s, and I wanted to use the voices of characters from present day, characters we have not yet met, in between the early chapters to create a narrative tension that would carry the reader forward.
I wanted to set the stakes and take people on an emotional journey. I also wanted to create a primary source collage that allowed the reader to “discover”—as I had—some of the jaw-dropping incriminating documents at play. I wove in stand-alone excerpts of letters, court depositions, and newspaper articles. The epistolary novel is probably the purest version of that kind of storytelling. I borrowed from that tradition, as many fiction writers have, and let some real-life documents speak for themselves.
Nishanth Injam: Deep travel. Landscape photography. 19th-century Russian literature. Telugu short stories. The films of Terrence Malick, Andrei Tarkovsky, Wes Anderson, Mani Ratnam, Pa Ranjith, and Satyajit Ray. Online criticism by Richard Brody, Hilton Als, Namwali Serpell, and Parul Sehgal. Marxist literature and thought. Long solitary walks.
Caleb Azumah Nelson: Black music (Jazz, soul, R&B and grime). Poetry. The concision of shorter novels. Portrait photography. Painting.
Kate Myers: The Getty Villa, workplace comedies, WASP culture, Serena Williams getting told to control herself on the court, summer camp.
*
Without using complete sentences, can you describe what was going on in your life as you wrote this book?
Caleb Azumah Nelson: Touring my first book. Directed my first film. A lack of sleep and a lot of fun.
Nishanth Injam: Despair. Suicidal ideation. Corporate deadlines. The particular loneliness of being an immigrant. Job. MFA. Relentless grief. Job. Isolation. Small pockets of joy, large volumes of torment. Suffocation.
Kate Myers: Calling off a big wedding, training for and running the LA marathon, moving across the country back to my hometown, starting over again. Pregnancy and the insane early months of having a newborn.
Richard Russo: Covid. Lockdown. Turning inward. Life pared back to essentials: reading, writing, family and friends.
Jennifer Vanderbes: Single parenting two daughters, caring for my aging parents, the pandemic… It was, to say the least, a challenging time!
*
What are some words you despise that have been used to describe your writing by readers and/or reviewers?
Jennifer Vanderbes: “Exhaustively researched”—it’s a very kind description, but all I see is the word “exhaust.” The research—which took me to archives around the country—was exhaustive and exhausting.
Caleb Azumah Nelson: This might sound like a cop-out but I don’t know I despise or dislike the way my work is described; the work is an exchange and everyone will bring their own meaning to it and I made peace with that real quick.
Nishanth Injam: So far not a lot! I think someone said my writing offers little risk. Grateful for the read but I chafe against that. I’ve risked everything to write what I’ve written. What they probably mean is that my stories are not situated to provoke, to ask questions and provide critical commentary. But that’s not really my aesthetic. I don’t want to use art to make a point, to provide thought that can be easily banished afterwards. I don’t want my questions to be the end-all. I’m trying to be in communion with you, to co-exist on a deeper level.
Kate Myers: Strong female characters.
Richard Russo: I seldom read reviews because, for me, there’s just so little upside. Praise evaporates in an instant, where criticism burrows and lingers because, having been raised Catholic, I assume it’s all merited, my many defects deeply rooted in character, not artistry. A shame, since artistry can be addressed.
*
If you could choose a career besides writing (irrespective of schooling requirements and/or talent) what would it be?
Nishanth Injam: Expedition designer. I’ve this intense craving to travel to the most remote places, and soak in the beauty of those places, and share a possible route map to elation.
Jennifer Vanderbes: Hmmm… Archaeologist? I definitely like digging for buried evidence; I’d prefer to do it outdoors!
Kate Myers: Therapist. I love listening to peoples’ problems.
Caleb Azumah Nelson: I’d be a chef or a musician for sure.
Richard Russo: In order to become a writer, I had to put down the 12-string guitar that allowed me to make ends meet throughout grad school. It was a good decision, but when the right song comes on the radio, I still have a powerful urge to pick that guitar up again, plug it into a powerful amp, step up to the mic, and live that other life.
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What craft elements do you think are your strong suit, and what would you like to be better at?
Richard Russo: My ear has always been much better than my eye. As a result, my dialogue and scene-writing are much stronger than my descriptions of the physical world. It’s hard to describe well what you haven’t taken the time to really look at. That’s where the real work comes in for me.
Nishanth Injam: I’m fairly decent at a number of craft elements, but my strength is emotion. I can drop you into the pathos of a character in less than a page. Sometimes that’s all I want to do, but it’s hard to breathe in that realm. I wish I had a stronger ear for dialogue, for capturing the specific twangs of utterances. And I’m always chasing syntax, trying to merge beauty and accessibility. I’d like to fail better at that.
Kate Myers: Teasing out the absurd from the everyday, comic voice, a strong sense of place, creating an ensemble. I need to get better at everything. Most urgently, better at dwelling on and digging into darker emotions with my characters—always struggling with my own WASPish avoidance—and improving my pacing.
Caleb Azumah Nelson: A lot of my work is mostly composed of atmosphere and texture of place and space; there are other genres I want to work in which might require more focus on plot.
Jennifer Vanderbes: I think structure is probably my strong suit. I’ve always liked stories with large scope, unfolding in a variety of places, in various times—it’s usually a fun puzzle to assemble those parts into a cohesive narrative. What would I like to be better at? Everything else.
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How do you contend with the hubris of thinking anyone has or should have any interest in what you have to say about anything?
Caleb Azumah Nelson: I guess, first and foremost, I know the work has to satisfy something in me first, before it can make its way out into the world. For me, each hand my work touches is a beautiful bonus, and I’m always humbled when anyone takes any interest in my work.
Richard Russo: Writing is how I think, not what. Discovering what you believe and testing your beliefs through the medium of words is what allows you to discover who you are. There’s no hubris in that unless you’ve concluded that you’re pretty great.
Kate Myers: Poorly. Only thing that mitigates it sometimes is reading books that are extremely popular. Some are really bad and some are absolutely incredible and life-affirming—both of those help.
Jennifer Vanderbes: With my novels, I suppose there was ego on the line. With this book—the true story of a massive drug scandal that injured thousands of babies, including a few hundred U.S. victims who were gaslit for their entire lives and denied any justice—I have no compunction about shouting from rooftops that people should take an interest in this subject! I’m just the messenger.
Nishanth Injam: Most people will not care. Invisibility is the default condition of being a brown immigrant. I can say my piece without worrying that I’m taking up space. But it’s important that I say it, because if I don’t speak at all, who am I really? I’m not here to be a truth-teller or a storyteller or a third-world-country explainer. I’m here to offer love. Isn’t that why we read books in the first place?
Vanderbes, Jennifer WONDER DRUG Random House (NonFiction None) $28.99 6, 27 ISBN: 9780525512264
A novelistic investigation of the shocking story of thalidomide in the U.S.
In 1962, an article in Life magazine alerted readers to the severe birth defects suffered by babies in Germany and England whose mothers had taken the allegedly safe sleeping pill thalidomide early in their pregnancies. What the piece didn't mention was the fact that the drug was also circulating widely in the U.S. At the time, Cincinnati-based drug company William S. Merrell was not only pressuring the FDA to approve its version of thalidomide; it was also distributing samples of the drug to more than 700 doctors, who passed it on to approximately 20,000 patients as well as to other physicians. Although FDA approval of thalidomide was blocked--largely through the efforts of implacable medical reviewer Frances Kelsey, who, unusually for the time period, "held both an MD and a PhD and had forged a career in the hard sciences while married with children"--little effort was made to retrieve the drug samples that had been distributed to doctors. As a result, dozens of children were born with shortened limbs and a variety of other defects. In a wide-ranging, thoroughly researched, and suspenseful account, novelist Vanderbes creates a compelling cast of heroes and villains: Kelsey and the researchers she enlisted to help her study the drug on one side; and the unscrupulous administrators of the drug companies, both in the U.S. and Germany, where the drug was developed and insufficiently tested in a company run by former members of the Nazi Party, on the other. Interviews with those who were born with damage caused by the drug--some of whom were abandoned by their parents--add another compelling, emotional layer to the text. The author weaves the various strands of her riveting tale together with aplomb, and she clearly explains even the most puzzling aspects of it.
A significant work about a horrifying example of widespread pharmaceutical negligence.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Vanderbes, Jennifer: WONDER DRUG." Kirkus Reviews, 15 June 2023, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A752723043/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=27579193. Accessed 19 July 2023.
* Wonder Drug: The Secret History of Thalidomide in America and Its Hidden Victims. By Jennifer Vanderbes. June 2023.432p. Random, $28.99 (9780525512264); e-book (9780525512271). 615.
In this exhaustively reported look at the reckless use of the sedative thalidomide, pre? scribed for everything from insomnia to nausea during pregnancy, Vanderbes practices "show, don't tell" journalism at its best. She mines archives and interviews 283 victims, scientists, lawyers, doctors, and journalists to figure out how the premature distribution of a horrifyingly understudied drug led to more than ten thousand babies born with "flipper-like seal limbs.'" The short answer: Blame corporate greed, shoddy research, and regulatory failures. Victims give heartbreaking insights. Eileen Cronin, born in Cincinnati in 1960, says her mom didn't feel any kicks during pregnancy: "Then I was born missing legs." Even though the FDA never approved thalidomide, the pharmaceutical company gave out samples in the U.S. and set up about 750 "studies" involving 15,000 patients. Vanderbes highlights heroes, such as FDA medical reviewer Frances Oldham Kelsey, who doggedly asked for more information, and cardiologist Helen Taussig, who, in 1962, said, "The evidence is overwhelming that thalidomide causes a specific and ghastly malformation." Journalists also stepped up, including Harold Evans in the United Kingdom, who published a newspaper series that got the word out. Vanderbes makes a complex and important story understandable, ending with an epilogue about thalidomide today. This is a medical must-read.--Karen Springen
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
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MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Springen, Karen. "Wonder Drug: The Secret History of Thalidomide in America and Its Hidden Victims." Booklist, vol. 119, no. 19-20, 1 June 2023, p. 13. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A754222952/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=2476d662. Accessed 19 July 2023.