As first frost arrives and the epidemic ends, Mattie's sufferings have changed her from a willful child to a strong, capable young woman able to manage her family's business on her own. Later, after much hardship and terror, they return to the deserted town to find their former cook, a freed slave, working with the African Free Society, an actual group who undertook to visit and assist the sick and saved many lives.
Mattie's comfortable and interesting life is shattered by the epidemic, as her mother is felled and the girl and her grandfather must flee for their lives. In the foreground of this story is 16-year-old Mattie Cook, whose mother and grandfather own a popular coffee house on High Street. Like specters from the Middle Ages, gravediggers drew carts through the streets crying "Bring out your dead!" The rich fled to the country, abandoning the city to looters, forsaken corpses, and frightened survivors. During the hot mosquito-infested summer of 1793, the dreaded yellow fever spread like wildfire, killing people overnight. At the close of the 18th century, Philadelphia was the bustling capital of the United States, with Washington and Jefferson in residence. Fever 1793 is based on an actual epidemic of yellow fever in Philadelphia that wiped out 5,000 people-or 10 percent of the city's population-in three months. On the heels of her acclaimed contemporary teen novel Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson surprises her fans with a riveting and well-researched historical fiction. Suddenly, her struggle to build a better life must give way to something even more important - the fight to stay alive. Then tragedy strikes the coffeehouse, and Mattie is trapped in a living nightmare. "Fever" spreads from the docks and creeps toward Mattie's home, threatening everything she holds dear.Īs the cemeteries fill with fever victims, fear turns to panic, and thousands flee the city. She wants to turn the Cook Coffeehouse into the finest business in Philadelphia, the capital of the new United States.īut the waterfront is abuzz with reports of disease.
Fourteen-year-old Mattie Cook is ambitious, adventurous, and sick to death of listening to her mother. I released the handle and the bucket splashed, a distant sound.Īugust 1793.
Her mother repeated that over and over, 'she sewed by candlelight after dinner.' And then she collapsed." "And?" I waved a mosquito away from my face. "I spoke with her mother, with Mistress Logan," Mother answered softly, looking at her neat rows of carrots. "Where's Polly?" I asked as I dropped the bucket down the well.
0 kommentar(er)
