Ship Fever (1996) is a collection of seven short stories and one novella by Andrea Barrett, which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Drawing on Barrett’s background in science and its history, the stories move between the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, blending historical fiction with themes of discovery, regret, and isolation. Many of the pieces feature scientists and naturalists, including Carl Linnaeus, who appears in “The English Pupil” and is referenced in others. Barrett also highlights women constrained by gender roles yet driven by intelligence and curiosity, as in “The Behavior of the Hawkweeds” and “Rare Bird.” Alongside these explorations of science and gender, the collection examines fractured families, troubled marriages, and the weight of choices, as in “The Littoral Zone” and “Soroche.” The title novella, Ship Fever, follows a young Canadian doctor at a quarantine station during the Irish immigrant crisis, where typhoid devastates ship after ship. Across the collection, Barrett interweaves science, history, and human struggle to reveal how ambition, love, and loss shape lives.
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