Books: Taking the Cola Cure

In her debut novel, 2000's Bee Season, Myla Goldberg intricately etched four members of a contemporary Jewish family and set them in motion against one another, charting the repercussions of even their subtlest interactions. For her follow-up, the author changes tack completely, striving for the historical epic. In Wickett's Remedy (Doubleday; 336 pages), the travails of Lydia Kilkenny, a young woman from an impoverished Irish Catholic family, are rooted in such global events as World War I and the 1918 flu epidemic that left millions dead.

Raised in the lowly confines of South Boston, Lydia goes to work in an upscale department store, where she meets medical student Henry Wickett, the neurasthenic scion of a Brahmin family. The two soon marry. With a newfound robustness that he attributes to Lydia's love, Henry decides to chuck his studies and create an elixir to combat loneliness. He intends its curative powers to result from encouraging letters he includes with the product rather than any medicinal properties of the liquid. The remedy is only mildly successful, but it attracts a business partner, Quentin Driscoll, who envisions turning the sweet-tasting tonic into a bottled carbonated beverage.

As the flu ravages Boston, it upends Lydia's life, claiming many loved ones as well as any semblance of a comfortable existence. Meanwhile, Driscoll is building QD Soda into a Coca Cola--like conglomerate.

The chronicling of Lydia's struggles is rather straightforward, but it is only one element of the novel. At the end of each chapter, Goldberg drops in imagined conversations between soldiers on leave or on their way to war, passages from a QD Soda newsletter and letters Driscoll wrote in his old age that illuminate the unethical rise of his beverage empire. Additionally, she excerpts actual news stories of the day. Lastly, in the margins of each page are voices from the dead commenting on or clarifying plot points. For example, when, early in the book, Henry fails to appear at the department store for a lunch date, the main text recounts that Lydia "was seized by an odd constricture of her throat ... he had never been late before," while the margin notes reassure, "Henry was not late ... he was at that moment hyperventilating behind a mannequin."

There's a lot going on here, some of which is underdeveloped. Other parts are just plain distracting, particularly the notes from beyond, which are more often hokey than profound. But Goldberg is a skillful, smooth writer who has clearly done her research, and readers who can tune out the noise will be rewarded. --By Michele Orecklin