The Fever

<p>...transports modern pandemic survivors into the bedchambers clinics and graveyards of a thriving American port laid low by pestilence...<strong>-Earl Swift author of <em>Hell Put to Shame: The 1921 Murder Farm Massacre and the Horror of America's Second Slavery</em></strong></p><p><span style=color: rgba(83 90 98 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Richly reported and eloquently written this true story transports readers back to 1855 into a raging epidemic that feels eerily prescient.</span><strong>-Lane DeGregory winner of the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing</strong></p><p><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>In the summer of 1855 the nation cast its eyes on the working-class port of Norfolk and Portsmouth Virginia. A ship named the </span><em style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Benjamin Franklin</em><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)> had steamed in from the West Indies harbor of St. Thomas-where yellow fever had hopped from ship to ship that winter-and tied up at a dock for repairs.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>The ship unleashed the seeds of an epidemic on an unsuspecting population and it didn't take long for the first victims of yellow fever to fall. In the 100 days from late June 1855 until the first frost quelled the mosquito population residents of the two cities confronted an unknown and unseen airborne stalker that killed one of every three people. </span><em style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>The Fever</em><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)> is the never-before-told story of the deadliest epidemic in American history. It's the story of a summer when the only things that mattered were life and death.</span></p>