Search - Fever 1793

Historical novel that puts you squarely in that period. Dramatic and emotional; fascinating.

What can I add that hasn't already been said?

I enjoyed this book. The characters were well-drawn, the plot was good, the story was fact paced, the imagery was gook, and it covered an interesting subject: what happens so the hearts and minds of ordinary people when a deadly epidemic strikes home.

The narrative follows Mattie, an intelligent teenager who has problems with her widowed mother and daydreams about ways to transform her mother's coffee shop. Then, the first deaths from yellow fever appear in Philadelphia. Soon, society and morals in the city fall apart in general and Mattie's life is torn apart.

When her mother sends her to the country with her grandfather, they are suspected of being sick, thrown from the farmer's cart from men who set themselves up as protectors of the small farming community, and their possessions stolen. Her mother, who eventually recovered from the disease, follows her to the farn just to find out that her daughter never arrived.

When Mattie returns to the city, she finds fear, hunger, and suspicion everywhere. Eventually, she moves in with her family's freed black maid and her family, ends up rescuing an orphan toddler whose mother has died from the fever, helps struggling families, and learns how to look outside her own problems to love and care for others.

Overall, I found this book to be a good, quick read with a decent message of caring and hope. I would recommend it.

Another one of the best books of all time. Written about a young girl in the late 1700's. A great coming of age story.

I really enjoyed this book. It is a nice, fast read.

FEVER 1793 satisfies the desire for strong female protagonists in historical fiction, and establishes Laurie Halse Anderson as a supremely multitalented author. Mattie experiences problems that modern girls can relate to: the desire to escape the drudgery of being worked by her mom in the coffeehouse, financial independence. Many people swear by this book, but I think I might have read it a bit too late, for I felt the plot was a little choppy—what I believed would’ve been the climax happened early on in the book, and I spent the last two-thirds floundering and trying to get back on track. Nevertheless, the characters are well-developed, and there is enough excitement that this should appeal to young girls.

An almost frightening story when you realize how real it was back then, and how real something like that could be again.
Fascinating and moving.