Fever 1793

3 Pages 655 Words

It's the year 1793 and the only thing little fourteen-year-old Mattie Cook needs to worry about is how to avoid her mother’s scoldings. Her mother was always the perfect girl. Always up stitching quilts, spinning wool, she constantly kept herself busy. There was never a moment to spare. Mattie lives with her mother and grandfather in Philadelphia in an apartment over their family business, a coffeehouse.


Young adult readers will honestly enjoy this book because this is the story about a young girl who the readers can really relate to. While reading the book, you feel drawn towards and close to our heroine, Mattie. Historically accurate and excellent at describing vivid and bone chilling images, Laurie Halse Anderson puts the reader smack-dab into 1793 and onto the streets of Philadelphia. Mattie’s father had dreams about owning their own coffeehouse. Bustling with people from all over the city, it seemed like a cheerful dream to look towards. Unfortunately, her father died when he fell off of a ladder and broke his neck while trying to fix up the place for the grand opening. As far back as Mattie can remember, her father had been the only person who could make her mother laugh and smile. Since his death, their happiness has to ceased and life is no longer all smiles but “a battle and Mother a tired and bitter captain.” Her mother is too busy trying to run the business and barely has time to listen to Mattie ramble on about her great ideas for turning the Cook Coffeehouse into the finest business in Philadelphia.

Towards the end of the summer an outbreak of yellow fever spreads like wildfire.“ ‘Where’s Polly?’ I asked. ‘I spoke with her mother’ Mother answered softly, ‘It happened quickly. Polly sewed by candlelight after dinner and then she collapsed. Matilda, Polly’s dead.’” The fever then spreads from the docks and creeps up the front steps of Mattie’s home and threatens her family and friend...