Fever 1793
Laurie Halse Anderson (2000)
“A fourteen-year-old girl must grow up overnight when yellow fever turns Philadelphia — the nation's capital — into a city of the dead.”
Fever 1793— Summary & Analysis
by Laurie Halse Anderson · published 2000 · 251 pages · Contemporary Young Adult
A user-friendly study guide for Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson (2000): a high-level plot summary, full chapter-by-chapter analysis, theme breakdowns, character profiles, and 30 essay questions designed for middle-school, high-school readers. Unlike a stock summary, sumsumsum.com adds a diction analysis drawn from Laurie Halse Anderson’s actual text, and reading-difficulty guidance (Easy, 1/10) so students, teachers, and lifelong readers know what they are walking into.
“A fourteen-year-old girl must grow up overnight when yellow fever turns Philadelphia — the nation's capital — into a city of the dead.”
Short Summary
In the summer of 1793, fourteen-year-old Matilda 'Mattie' Cook lives above her mother's coffeehouse in Philadelphia, dreaming of wealth and dodging chores. When yellow fever strikes the city, Mattie's world collapses: her mother falls ill, her grandfather dies on the road north, and she herself barely survives the disease. Alone and orphaned in all but name, Mattie rescues an orphan named Nell, reunites with the free Black cook Eliza and the heroic members of the Free African Society, and ultimately rebuilds the coffeehouse — and herself — from the wreckage the epidemic leaves behind.
Detailed Summary
Philadelphia in August 1793 is the young nation's capital, a thriving port city of fifty-five thousand people where President Washington walks the streets and coffeehouses hum with commerce. Fourteen-year-old Matilda 'Mattie' Cook lives above the Cook Coffeehouse on High Street with her widowed moth...
Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis
If you liked Fever 1793, read next
Start with A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe — The original epidemic novel — Defoe's 1722 account of London's Great Plague is the literary ancestor of everything Anderson does with Philadelphia. Then try My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier — Another Revolutionary-era YA novel that refuses to sanitize history — both books trust young readers to handle death, moral complexity, and the gap between American ideals and American reality. Or pivot to The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare — Colonial-era YA historical fiction with a strong female protagonist — Speare paved the path Anderson walks, though Anderson is grittier and more politically explicit.
For comparative essays, pair Fever 1793 with
The strongest comparative pairing is Hatchet (Gary Paulsen) — The canonical YA survival narrative — same age group, same coming-of-age-through-crisis structure, but Anderson adds historical and communal dimensions Paulsen's solo wilderness lacks.
Each of these pairings opens a clean thesis path on shared themes, period diction, or formal influence — useful for AP Lit / IB / first-year college comparative essays.
More from Laurie Halse Anderson and the scholars who study Anderson
Other works by Laurie Halse Anderson: Chains (2008, 316 pages), Speak (1999, 198 pages). Reading two or three of these in sequence reveals Laurie Halse Anderson’s recurring obsessions and stylistic signatures more clearly than any single book can.