Taryn's comments:
Mattie Cook is a young girl living with her widowed mother and grandfather above their family's coffeeshop. It is 1793, and Philadelphia was then the capital of the United States.
When the Yellow Fever breaks out, thousands of people die and the rest begin fleeing the city. When her own mother becomes feverish, Mattie is ushered out into the country with her grandfather. When they return, Mattie cannot find her mother, and Mattie's struggle to survive the epidemic is far from over. As Mattie puts it, "Though we had all healed of the fever, some of the wounds were in the heart and would mend slowly."
I listened to the unabridged audiobook version of this book. This is a nice piece of historical fiction. I really liked the quotes at the beginning of each chapter. One that stuck with me was: "Doctors waving and disputing, death's pale army still recruiting..." which is a quote from Phillip Frenau's poem "Pestilence: Written During the Prevalence of a Yellow Fever." I also liked the appendix, which included a lot of historical information about the Yellow Fever.
When the Yellow Fever breaks out, thousands of people die and the rest begin fleeing the city. When her own mother becomes feverish, Mattie is ushered out into the country with her grandfather. When they return, Mattie cannot find her mother, and Mattie's struggle to survive the epidemic is far from over. As Mattie puts it, "Though we had all healed of the fever, some of the wounds were in the heart and would mend slowly."
I listened to the unabridged audiobook version of this book. This is a nice piece of historical fiction. I really liked the quotes at the beginning of each chapter. One that stuck with me was: "Doctors waving and disputing, death's pale army still recruiting..." which is a quote from Phillip Frenau's poem "Pestilence: Written During the Prevalence of a Yellow Fever." I also liked the appendix, which included a lot of historical information about the Yellow Fever.
No comments:
Post a Comment