Great book set in San Francisco at the turn of last century. Lizzie is the daughter of a doctor who loves following him on his house calls and secretly wants to also be a doctor. But this is a time when girls were expected to go to finishing school and then marry a rich husband, not have a career. Lizzie's world is thrown into chaos when her beloved housekeeper and cook Jing ( who has looked after her and her brother since their mother died) is trapped in Chinatown under quarantine due to rumors of the bubonic plague. She does everything in her power to try to break past the police guards in an effort to return him home - dressing as a boy, pretending she is a nurse, etc. Lizzie has an incentive to do this in not just her love for Jing but also because of who she has discovered hiding in JIng's closet in his room.
A story of the struggle for women to be taken seriously, the power of the press and the infancy of immunisations, as wells as the early racial tensions in the city of San Francisco. Lots of unexpected twists and turns and the monkey ....they are waiting to see if it dies of the plague to prove that the quarantine is warranted. ( )