Fever,1793

Fever, 1793
Author: Laurie Halse Anderson
Genre: Historic Fiction
Grades: 5-9

Matilda "Mattie" Cook is a 14 year old girl living in a coffee house in Philadelphia with her mother, grandfather, and pets. Mattie is a typical teenager daydreaming and arguing with her mom. One day, servers at the coffee shop don't show up because they came down with a case of the fever and suddenly die. Mattie's mom ends up catching the fever, and the doctors decide to start draining her blood in effort to cure her. Her mom not wanting Mattie to fall ill sends her to the countryside with her grandfather, during her trip Mattie and her grandfather falls ill, but ends up surviving. They return home, find the home looted, and the grandfather ends up getting killed. Later, Mattie and her friends try to rebuild the coffee house, and her mom eventually returns healthy but weak. This is a good book to describe what happened to people during the time of ther yellow fever.