Saving the World

ALVAREZ' S resplendent new novel takes us into the worlds of two women swept up in campaigns against the scourges of their day. Alma Huebner, a Latin American novelist transplanted to the United States, is writing another of her bestselling family sagas. Her husband works for a humanitarian organization dedicated to health and prosperity in developing countries. He wants her to go with him, but she demurs. She must finish her newest novel. In truth, Alma is sidetracked by the story of a much earlier idealist, Francisco Xavier Balmis, who in 1803 undertook to vaccinate the populations of Spain's American colonies against smallpox. To do this, he needed living " carriers" of the vaccine. Enter Isabel Sendales y Go mez, the rectoress of La Casa de Exposito s. Isabel selects twenty-two orphan boys to be the carriers and joins them on the voyage. Her bravery inspires a very different novel from Alma. A brilliant novel-within-a-novel, "Saving the World pits ambition against altruism-- and, in the process, tells the radiant stories of two courageous women.