The Leper, Steve Thayer
The Leper, Steve Thayer
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

The Leper

Author: Steve Thayer

Narrator: Corey M. Snow

Unabridged: 11 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/29/2019


Synopsis

John Eric Severson is a veteran of the First World War, a Marine Corps captain who once got lost in a forest behind enemy lines and unknowingly led his men into a leper colony. Now, five years later, he is an idealistic schoolteacher in a tough, working-class neighborhood where earning a high school diploma is something most of his students can only dream about. Severson vows to educate every one of them. But he quickly learns there is one student the tall, handsome Swede cannot control. The lovely Bernice DuFresne. Her wit and charm are no match for him, and halfway through the school year he swears at himself for falling in love with one of his own students. Their love affair is of the highest risk, but they manage to hold on to their secret until the fateful day he is diagnosed with the dreaded disease and literally chased from the school.

Stalked by the ghosts of his past, Severson begins an odyssey that takes him down the Mississippi River and into the swamps of Louisiana . . . to a colony so miserable its existence is only rumored. His desperate escapes from this hellhole become murderous as he tries to return to a place and time, and to a woman, that he loved. Finally, banished to the Hawaiian island of Molokai, and still hoping to one day return home, he becomes a leprosy settlement sheriff . . . and a living legend.

About Steve Thayer

Steve Thayer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Weatherman and Silent Snow, as well as The Wheat Field and Ithaca Falls. He lives in his hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Dianne

Last night I finished, “The Leper,” and Thayer has restored my faith in modern writers as story tellers. I tend to avoid modern writers because they simply can’t tell a story properly. The reader is forced to flip back and forth in the book, searching for clues to seldom-referred-to characters or si......more

Goodreads review by Diane

Fascinating juxaposed against Molokai I am torn as to which book I loved more. Both are incredibly haunting. I was in tears by the end of The Leper, seriously I seem to be drawn to books about insiders and outsiders, and if a leper isn't the quintessential outsider I can't think of anyone more deser......more

Goodreads review by Shaun

You can't have a leper as the hero? A fascinating telling of the abusive treatment and effective life imprisonment and/or extrajudicial killings doled out to lepers in the US in the twentieth century. Recounted by an almost mythical character spanning the period from the end of the Great War to the R......more

Goodreads review by Valerie

Heartbreaking story about shunned, despised people who lose all their rights. They cease to exist in the eyes of the public.......more

Kudos to the author who tackled a taboo subject and turned it into a well-written, informative story. I laughed, cried, and thoroughly enjoyed the rich tapestry of characters, history, and locales all blended into a book you cannot miss! My Kindle version was well-edited and easy to read. Please put......more