Fever 1793

Montana Marsh
Mrs. White
Honors World History
October 15, 2014

Main Characters:
Matilda Cook- Main character, protagonist, young girl
Lucille Cook- Mother of Matilda
Eliza- Chef at the coffeehouse, surrogate sister to Matilda
Grandfather- Former military man, helps Matilda
Polly- worker at the coffeehouse

Summary:
Matilda "Mattie" Cook is a 14 year old girl that lives in Philadelphia and runs a coffeehouse with Lucille (her Mother), Eliza, Polly, and her grandfather.  One day Polly comes down with a fever and dies, shaking the entire family to the core. After Polly's death, many people start to fall ill and the rumor of yellow fever circulates and chaos ensues, though "Philadelphia suffers fevers every August" (38). This causes Mattie's mother to want to send her to the Ludington's farm upstate. Mattie refuses, but then her mother gets the yellow fever. Her "Mother shivered so hard, her teeth rattled. Even with all the blankets in the house on her, she could not warm. She lay under the faded bedding like a rag doll losing its stuffing, her hair a wild collection of snakes on the pillow, her cornflower blue eyes poisoned with streaks of yellow and red" (67). Scared that Mattie will get the fever too, Lucille sends her and Grandfather to the Ludingtons farm and Mattie finally agrees to go. Going with a farmer, everything is going fine until the carriage is stopped by town guards and they think Mattie and her grandfather are sick. The farmer tosses them off of the carriage and leaves them to die by the roadside. But Mattie nurses her grandfather back to semi-well health, until she herself gets the fever and passes out. She wakes up in Bush Hill hospital, being nursed back to health by French doctors who know how to cure yellow fever. She recovers, and she and Grandfather go back to the coffeehouse to find it looted and ransacked. Wanting to make the best of the situation, Mattie gets food and water and they live quite peacefully until robbers come and kill Grandfather in a fight. Looking at Philadelphia with a hateful gleam now, Mattie wonders, "How could the city have changed so much? Yellow fever was wrestling the life out of Philadelphia, infecting the cobblestones, the trees, the nature of the people" (119). Heartbroken, Mattie finds Eliza, but with a little girl named Nell on her hip she found on the side of the road. Eliza takes Mattie and Nell in, as long as she works and cooks. Nell and Eliza's nephews contract the yellow fever however, and Eliza and Mattie move them to the coffeehouse. Finally, frost comes back to Philadelphia and the fever breaks. Mattie's mother comes back, weak but cured, and Mattie builds the coffeehouse back to its former splendor. 


Quotes
"Philadelphia suffers fevers every August" (38). Grandfather says this while chatting at the coffeehouse with some of the patrons, scoffing at the people who are freaking out at the yellow fever. This is actually a little bit of situational irony, considering he dies because the fever made him so weak.
 "Mother shivered so hard, her teeth rattled. Even with all the blankets in the house on her, she could not warm. She lay under the faded bedding like a rag doll losing its stuffing, her hair a wild collection of snakes on the pillow, her cornflower blue eyes poisoned with streaks of yellow and red" (67) This describes the conditions most people who contracted yellow fever had. Mattie's mother, once so strong, now is forced to lay in bed like a rag doll.
  "How could the city have changed so much? Yellow fever was wrestling the life out of Philadelphia, infecting the cobblestones, the trees, the nature of the people" (119) Mattie's observation goes to show how hard times can change peoples beings and cities. If something happens that shakes the usual routine up, most people and places cannot handle it.

Author Qualifications
Laurie Halse Anderson is an American writer best know for children and young-adult novels. She won the Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 2009 for her contribution to young adult literature. Anderson tends to write honest, tough themes for her books such as sickness, rape, body issue disorders, etc. Fever is one of her more lighter topics, surprisingly. In 2000, Anderson's Fever, 1793,   received two starred reviews, won many state and national awards, and was a Publishers Weekly Bestseller. The Gifford Family Theatre even created a stage play in Syracuse, New York adapted from the novel.

Critique
 Fever is a wonderfully written book I couldn't put down. The characters and plot are very gripping, appealing to the emotional side of readers. Mattie's story is one you can easily relate to, especially if you have lost a family member. My only complaint would be that the text was so big, and the writing itself was a little beneath my usual level of reading.