The setting of this historic novel is clearly understood through Anderson’s descriptive writing. Things are not as they once were, and for Mattie, there is still more grief, but also reunions and new friends. After they recover, and the epidemic wanes, they head home to the coffeehouse. But, everything changes after Lucille falls ill, Mattie and her grandfather leave the city, and both are struck ill. A joyful moment for Mattie is when she runs into Nathaniel Benson at the market, and teases herself about her attraction to him. As the chapters progress more people in the city dies, and the church bell tolls for each. Many people seem to want to blame the illness on anything but the fever, including Mattie’s mother because they know how the disease devastated the city only thirty years before.

Conversations in the coffeehouse turn to gossip concerning the origins of the illness, and debates about whether it is really Yellow Fever.

Soon it is learned that Polly has died from a sudden illness. On this day, Polly, the serving girl is late for work in the coffeehouse. Mattie’s father died in an accident when she was just a little girl, the coffeehouse is a respectable business for a widow and her father-in-law to run. She is the coffeehouse cook, and Mattie thinks of her as a best friend. Eliza, an African American, is free like most blacks in Philadelphia. Mattie, lives over a coffeehouse with her mother (Lucille), grandfather, a parrot, and a cat. As usual she has slept in and needs to hurry to get to her chores in the garden. Set in colonial, Philadelphia, the story begins with 14-year old Matilda (Mattie) Cook waking up to the sounds of the street noise and the buzzing mosquitos. Mattie’s daydreaming days are interrupted by an epidemic of Yellow Fever, and she needs to find the strength to pull things back together. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.īonus: Appendix: Historical accounts and contexts – 1793 in Philadelphia. GradeSaver, 8 January 2021 Web.Published: 2000. Previous Section Test Yourself! - Quiz 4 Buy Study Guide How To Cite in MLA Format Barkley, Danielle. 'The Thucydidean Moment: History, Science, and the Yellow-Fever Controversy, 1793–1805.'Journal of the Early Republic.

Bring Out Your Dead: The Great Plague of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793. Viruses, Plagues and History: Past, Present, and Future. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.īilly Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Mosquito empires: ecology and war in the Greater Caribbean, 1620 - 1914. Updated and revised by Aaron Suduiko January 08, 2021.

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