A Review of 'Fever 1793' by Laurie Halse Anderson

"It's late summer 1793, and the streets of Philadelphia are abuzz with mosquitoes and rumors of fever.  Down near the docks, many have taken ill, and the fatalities are mounting.  Now they include Polly, the servig girl at the Cook Coffeehouse.  But fourteen-year-old Mattie Cook doesn't get a moment to mourn the passing of her childhood playmate.  New customers have overrun her family's coffee shop, located far from the mosquito-infested river, and Mattie's concerns of fever are all but overshadowed by dreams of growing her family's small business into a thriving enterprise.  But when the fever begins to strike closer to home, Mattie's struggle to build a new life must give way to a new fight-- the fight to stay alive."

I love Laurie Halse Anderson as an author and she didn't fail to disappoint me with Fever 1793.  This book is different from Speak and Wintergirls in that it's a piece of historical fiction.  I was drawn into this book by Mattie and her seemingly ordinary life.  She was so sweet and she had big plans for her family's business.  But then terror ripped through her life as well as everyone else's lives.  Mattie was forced to grow up faster than a fourteen-year-old should have to.  She sees her town die off a little at a time and people come to collect the dead.  She returns home and finds that her home has been ransacked and pillaged.  She has had to survive with little help from people around her.

Reading about Mattie making her way through difficult time such as these kept my eyes glued to the page.  I couldn't put this book down.

You'll become attached to the characters and you'll be so horrified by what's going on in Mattie's world that you won't be able to look away even if you want to.

This is a good book for middle school readers and an excellent piece of historical fiction.

I give 'Fever 1793':

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude