It Changed Her

Author's Note: This piece is about the Cause and Effect in the story Fever 1793. I wrote this to demonstrate my understanding of Cause and Effect.

Mattie Cook lives in Philadelphia in 1793. She works at a family-run coffee shop, and lives with her family just above it. She has amazing goals of what she wants to happen to the little coffee house, and is working as hard as she can to make them happen. However, when local people started to get sick everyone was getting worried, and she was no longer focused on her dream.  Her main focus now, was trying to help save the people in her town. To top it all off, she still has to work at the coffee house, and try not to get sick. It was now the worst case of Yellow Fever that anyone could remember, and it was spreading quickly. So those who can leave Philadelphia, do.  Mattie tries to stay behind with her mother, until her mother gets sick and forced her and her grandfather out. As Mattie and her grandfather are getting a ride to a cousins’ house in the country, and away from the epidemic, they end up being stopped and turned back by some locals doing a ‘sick-sweep,’ convinced that they were infected with the illness.

 Without food or water for days, Mattie begins to notice that her grandfather is becoming sick. After locating an apple tree for food, Mattie falls down and everything went black. She wakes up in a hospital, 3 weeks later, and after another month of healing from the yellow fever, is now able to return home with her grandfather to Philadelphia. It turns out her grandfather had only had a small case of the summer fever that was normally around this time of year. Once Mattie returns home her mother and Nellie are gone, the store was robbed, and she loses her grandfather, who ends up dying after defending himself from the robbers. Mattie sets out to find Nellie, the coffee shop cook, and great family friend. She locates her and ends up staying with her to help care for her sick brother and his kids, since his wife had died of the fever. One snowy day, as Mattie and Nellie decide to stop by the old coffee shop Mattie’s mother suddenly arrives with Mattie’s aunt. That night Mattie and her mother moved back into the house. After her mother was back to full health, they reopened the coffee shop. To their surprise, everyone seems extremely happy to be back in town, and in the coffee shop. It feels like home again, although Mattie did miss some of the people, such as the old bank man, even the annoying lady that once lived next door, and especially her grandfather.

After the town had time to calm down, Mattie started to work hard on the goals she had for the coffee house. With more people coming, she was accumulating more money. Slowly but surely, Mattie was checking her goals off the list, and the old coffee house was starting to look just as she had dreamed. For some, the tragic epidemic made them fear the world. As for the people like Mattie, it only made them stronger.