THE HOUSE ON HENRY STREET The Enduring Life of a Lower East Side Settlement

This well-produced audiobook is a tale for these times. In 1893, young nurse Lillian Wald, visiting a dying patient in the immigrant community of New York's Lower East Side, recognized that poverty and slum living was itself a public health emergency. Her solution was to settle in the neighborhood herself, recruiting other medical personnel and welfare workers to join her. Their enterprise became the Henry Street Settlement House, an iconic institution that has provided health, social, and cultural services for over 125 years to shifting populations of New Yorkers. This is a stirring account of people who saw enormous need and invented ways to help that truly matter. It's written in a lively style, and Kate Mulligan commands attention with her elegant and skillful performance. B.G. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine [Published: NOVEMBER 2020]