Eliza and Mattie bring them back to the coffeehouse and nurse them there. For a time, this arrangement works, but then the three young children all contract yellow fever. Eliza has been living with her brother, elderly mother, and nephews, and she agrees to allow Mattie and Nell to move in with them as well. Mattie decides to care for Nell, and shortly thereafter, she runs into Eliza, who had worked at the coffeehouse as a cook. By chance, she finds a young girl named Nell who has been orphaned in the plague. Mattie and her grandfather try to defend themselves they succeed in scaring off the thieves, but her grandfather dies due to injuries from the confrontation.
After a few days, thieves break into the house. Mattie and her grandfather move back into the coffeehouse, although it has been robbed and looted in their absence, and they find it very difficult to obtain food and other necessities. Cook is not there, and the chaos of the disease-ridden city makes it impossible to find out what has happened. Due to the skilled care she receives, Mattie makes a full recovery, and then she and her grandfather return to the coffeehouse to reunite with her mother. Mattie awakens to find herself being cared for in a hospital, where her grandfather had been able to take her. Mattie manages to provide food and water for her grandfather while he recovers, but collapses herself, having contracted yellow fever while caring for her mother. Because the other travelers are fearful of contagion, Mattie and her grandfather are abandoned outside of the city with no way to get back.
On the way there, her grandfather becomes sickly and is accused of having yellow fever. Reluctantly, Mattie and her grandfather begin the journey to stay with family friends, the Ludingtons, in the countryside. Mattie does the best she can to care for her mother, but both her mother and the doctor who is treating her recommend that she be sent away to avoid contagion. However, before a decision can be reached, Mattie's mother falls seriously ill. Many people have different opinions on the best way to control the epidemic, and within Mattie's family, there are debates about whether she should be sent to the country for her own safety. Amidst the intense summer heat, residents of Philadelphia begin to sicken and die from a strange disease that is eventually identified as yellow fever. Mattie Cook is a 14-year-old girl who lives with her mother and grandfather and helps them to run a thriving coffeehouse business. The novel begins in August 1793, in the city of Philadelphia.
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