My New Friend, "FEVER 1793" by Laurie Halse Anderson

 

Me and my new friend, Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson

Hello. My name is Bobby Keniston, and my only friends are books. 

My new friend is Fever, 1793 by the brilliant Laurie Halse Anderson. 

This piece of late middle-grade/YA historical fiction by Laurie Halse Anderson is told in an honest voice, is well-researched, and makes history relatable for both the young reader and older reader (like me) alike. 

"Fever 1793" is set in Philadelphia during a vicious outbreak of the yellow fever in the late summer of 1793. Our narrator is Mattie Cook, who lives with her Mother and Grandfather (her father died years ago), and works at the Coffeehouse her mother runs. Life, though not without its annoyances, like a strict Mother who is already worried about who she will court and marry, Mattie lives a happy existence in the coffeehouse, listening to her Grandfather's old stories about his soldiering life in the Revolutionary War, and talking to Eliza, the cook at the coffeehouse, a free black woman who is part of the Free African Society. 

But then suddenly the yellow fever epidemic hits. Bells toll with each death. People who can afford to flee the city. The market disperses, people leave their infected loved ones out to die, and mass burials and death carts are not uncommon on the streets. 

Though Mattie's mother falls ill and sends her daughter away to the country to avoid the pestilence, a mishap occurs and Mattie and her Grandfather are abandoned. It is here that Mattie's journey of learning how to take care of herself and find inner strength and determination she didn't know she had really takes off. 

Laurie Halse Anderson is perhaps best known for the brilliant and essential "Speak," and is a writer who excels at first-person narrative. Readers will want to keep turning pages and learn Mattie's story. 

And now, in our current times, the story of a mass illness feels all the more relevant and chilling. 

One way in which Anderson excels is in giving us a sense of the grave, communal sense of loss in the wake of this epidemic. How the loss impacts an entire society. 

I only wish I could feel that this same sense of respectful loss were with us now.