THE PRISONER OF HELL GATE

Nonfiction

Typhoid Mary and pungent stew

THE PRISONER OF HELL GATE

By Dana I. Wolff

212 pp. Picador

Reviewed by Dennis C. Rizzo

Dana Wolff is a pseudonym; something adopted to hide a real identity. The Prisoner of Hell Gate might also be considered a pseudonym. The book's eerie premise is well-conceived and then hidden in an undergrowth of information dump and affected events. At 212 pages this really should be a novella and might work better as a short story or expanded to a full-length piece. I read it in about two hours.

That said, The Prisoner of Hell Gate has hidden merits. The East River in New York City is a place long associated with the disposition of unwanted members of society, whether via prisons, asylums, or mob hits. It is on North Brother Island that Wolff strands her characters. The now-abandoned island hosted one of New York's most notorious asylums and was also the scene of one of the most atrocious cruise ship disasters of the early 20^th Century. It is too good to pass over for a horror story – you can't make this stuff up. We anticipate some serious horror. 

Josh speaks of how nineteenth-century New Yorkers used the East River islands as a way to banish the sick and forlorn from their sight. On Ward's and Blackwell's and other islands, the built quarantine hospitals and orphanages and poorhouses and retirement homes for disfigured Civil War veterans. Later they built madhouses and prisons.

Then the tale begins to unwind. Wolff spends far too much time detailing the Hell Gate section of the East River and the various biological and sanitation issues encountered in New York over the centuries. Granted, the story revolves around one of the most notorious contagion carriers in the history of the City – Typhoid Mary. Wolff misses the chance to make this story capture us because she lets her historical facts take over.

The premise is that, through some quirk of evolution, the contagion (and possibly Mary) survived to the present day. So far, so good. Nevertheless, the group of public health graduate students we're following are too lightly developed to makes us care much about their eventual trials and terrors. On the other hand, much writing is spent telling us about various public health issues in New York which have only peripheral relevance to the main story and could have been better dispensed through dialogue or set within scenes. The antagonist – Mary – also takes pages detailing her past and interacting with ghosts of the cruise ship victims, who are trapped on the island for eternity. All well and good, but The Prisoner of Hell Gate suffers from the details rather than drawing strength from them.

I struggled with a lack of closure, extraneous material, and with suspension of disbelief. For example, the main protagonist among the university students, Karalee Soper, carries a camera. The camera does have great significance in detailing her upbringing, about which we are given far too many (and repeated) references. The camera is an effective tool to develop her backstory, and perhaps offers insight into Karalee's insecurities. But, other than to link Karalee's ancestor with the “evil” element, Typhoid Mary, the camera serves no real purpose to the story and soon becomes a redundant accessory.

She picks up here camera again – the new camera. It is better technically than the Canon ever was, but no more loved in her mind. She lifts it to her eye and uses the backs of her friends' heads to frame the peak of the dilapidated hospital building that pokes up from the treetops on the island. ...

Between two scrubby bushes, a large spiderweb glistens in rays of sunshine. She takes a picture of the spider – long front legs poised in a stretch; plump abdomen. It's a big one. It might be the most well-fed spider in all of New York.

The camera could play a major role in developing the horror. Wolff has Karalee impulsively snapping pictures of the island and asylum ruins, from which we might expect latent images. However, Karalee uses 35mm film and, since she does so, and has no darkroom, we never see any outcomes of those shots. It's a tool overused.

Karalee picks up her camera – she lost its case somewhere along the way – and wills herself to the window. The voices are no louder from here, but they persist, overlapping one another, reverberating. She lifts the viewfinder to her eye and peers out through the dirty glass panes into the relic of the old plaza, dimly lit by a fading moon. Nothing moves below.

The premise is a good one for Gothic-style fiction, but Wolff never takes us past the surface except when she provides historical details easily found on Wikipedia. Wolff has brought us pages chock full of eerie and gross-horrible components which likely appeal to those who cry “yuck” at puke, spiders, rats and bodily functions. 

Now at a vigorous boil, the rabbit stew throws off pungent steam that causes Mary's eyes to water. The steam condenses on the grease-soiled kitchen tiles that line the walls; she wipes a finger across one tile and rubs her slick fingertips together, meditating over the boiling pot.

The flies have licked up all the rabbit blood from the butcher block – or maybe the rats ventured out when she left the room.

One pundit quoted by the publisher calls it a “dazzling tour de force.” It isn't. One might have expected more sophistication and depth from a publisher-turned-writer. That said, it is a good, short read for a rainy weekend at the cottage and it's priced right. I won't spoil the ending.