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Brief Summary Of The Book Fever By Mattie Cook

1214 Words5 Pages

In the book Fever, I, Mattie Cook, survived one of the most gruesome and deadly summers ever. During the summer of 1793, I survived the epidemic of the dangerous and unforgiving Yellow Fever. 5,000 of the 40,000 Philadelphian citizens died of the Yellow Fever. However, so many more came down with the fever, including me and my Mom, Lucille Cook. I have such a story to tell, about the terrible summer of 1793. It was August; I was working hard in our family coffeehouse. My grandfather, mother, myself and our servant, Eliza, were running one of the most successful and prosperous. It was a normal day; we were setting up our shop and waiting for our assistant, Polly. However, after a long time, she still had not shown up. That was when we heard …show more content…

Doctors were frantic; going from one patient to another. There was just no method or theory about how the fever was spreading. Each day, more and more people were dying or becoming infected. The capital of the United States knew, this was no ordinary epidemic. Days passed, and the city turned into chaos. Doctors had categorized the fever as the Yellow Fever. With more people becoming sick, more were leaving the city to go to the country, where the threat was not as imminent. However, the strong stayed and helped with the crisis. Our family decided to just remain careful to try and prevent the disease from leaking in. Unfortunetly, on September 2nd, my mother fell terribly …show more content…

"Highwaymen", he informed us. I saw three men armed with guns approaching us on horseback. As I was waiting then to offer surrender, the "Highwaymen" turned out to be patrols for the country. They were supposed to check us for the fever before we were allowed to enter the country. I tried to wake up Grandpa, but he seemed to be sound asleep. When he finally woke up, he started coughing. The patrols immediately thought that Grandpa was ill, so the farmer ditched us, without giving us our stuff. We tried to survive on our own, eating and cooking wild game. I lost hope that we would make it back to the coffeehouse alive. On the third day on our own, I fainted beside my

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