London, 1849. This is Mary. She’s twenty-three years old. And she’s dying of cholera for the second time. Mary is a rag sorter. She works in a warehouse sorting rags—old clothing, fabric scraps, linens—that will be pulped into paper or recycled into cheap cloth. The rags come from everywhere: ∙ Hospitals ∙ Workhouses ∙ Ships ∙ Slums ∙ Cholera wards ∙ Typhoid houses ∙ Clothes stripped from corpses Mary’s job is sorting them by type and quality. She handles them all day. Shakes them out. Separates wool from cotton, silk from linen. The dust fills the air. She breathes it constantly. The rags carry disease. Cholera. Typhoid. Smallpox. Scarlet fever. Whatever killed their previous owners. Mary caught cholera last year from contaminated rags. Nearly died. Survived. Went back to work—she had no choice. Now she has it again: ∙ Violent diarrhea ∙ Extreme dehydration ∙ Muscle cramps ∙ Losing liters of fluid daily ∙ Skin cold and gray ∙ Can barely stand She’ll be dead within two day...