Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: A Life Consumed

A Life Consumed: Lilly Samson’s Dispatches From The TB Front by Diane Sims 2008

Diane Sims writes the story of her aunt Lilly Samson, from a collection of letters written during the 1920s. Lilly was a dedicated letter writer as so many were from that time period. She was a young teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in Northern Ontario outside of Sault Ste. Marie. It was there that she contracted tuberculosis and this is where the story begins.

Lilly was sent to a sanatorium on Muskoka Lake in Gravenhurst, the first of its kind in Canada. It was a very difficult disease to cure and patients spent many months on bed rest. It practiced the regimented treatment of TB, or consumption, as it was called. Thanks to her extensive letter writing and also thanks to the fact that her mother kept all of her letters, we are able to get a realistic and poignant view of what it must have been like to live in a time where TB was so prevalent and lifethreatening.

It is the place that Lilly spent the last months of her life. Through her letters we learn about the medical views of the times as well as the personal challenges the patients and their families were forced to endure. The author, Diane Sims, is the daughter of Lilly’s youngest sister. Through extensive research and with the help of Lilly’s letters, she recreates a time of uncertainty and sadness, but also a time of discovery and hope.