Tuberculosis Is Everywhere

Do you ever have that experience when suddenly a topic you never bothered to think about before is everywhere in front of you? Lately, for me, tuberculosis has been showing up all over the place — in historical fiction, in non-fiction, and even in the TV shows I watch (namely, Bramwell). From the telltale bloody handkerchief to the sanatorium, TB is a frequent plot element, but as I realized it’s also the infectious disease that kills the most people each year (edged out by COVID for 2020-2022).

Breathing Room by Marsha Hayles (2012)

Evvy is a tuberculosis patient at Loon Lake Sanitorium in Minnesota in 1940. (As a Carleton grad, I was tickled that Evvy’s home is in Northfield, and there are brief mentions of Carleton and St. Olaf.) Evvy must follow the strict rules of the sanitorium, but also makes friends and develops a love of poetry during her stay. She is not spared the heartache of losing friends, and the backdrop of World War II emphasizes the life and death stakes.

Light and Air by Mindy Nicols Wendell (2024)

Halle and her mother are both patients at a sanitorium in upstate New York in 1935. Since her mother is in poorer health than Halle herself, she is able to enjoy some freedom while in the sanitorium and finds a community and friends there, but worries for her mother overshadow everything. Like in Breathing Room, no one surrounded by TB patients is spared loss, though, and Halle must cope with death.

Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green (2025)

Unlike the two previous books, Green’s non-fiction volume deals with TB in the present. Green points out that while many of us in the wealthy world think of consumption as a problem of the past, it is very much still a deadly illness. Green weaves in the history of the illness with stories of a tuberculosis patient he met in Sierra Leone named Henry. Henry is charming and optimistic while battling drug-resistant TB. Green implores readers to think about the injustice of how many people continue to die from this curable disease — the drugs are where the disease is not, and the disease is where the drugs are not.