How did illness affect Tillie Lerner Goldfarb after her 1931 arrest?

Following her arrest in late 1931 for fomenting worker protests while attending a communist training school in Kansas City, Tillie Lerner Goldfarb contracted what was likely pleurisy or incipient tuberculosis during her incarceration.1

This illness ultimately facilitated her release in early 1932. Following her release, her husband, Abe Goldfarb, took her to Omaha and subsequently to Faribault, Minnesota, where she stayed with his sister to recover. It was during this period of convalescence in Faribault that she began writing her novel focused on the experiences of poor workers during the Great Depression.12