August 1793. Fourteen-year-old Mattie Cook is ambitious, adventurous, and sick to death of listening to her mother. Mattie has plans of her own. She wants to turn the Cook Coffeehouse into the finest business in Philadelphia, the capital of the new United States. But The "Fever" begins to spread...

Volunteering with her friend Cecile at a crowded New Orleans orphanage during the yellow fever epidemic of 1853, Marie-Grace discovers that it is not just the orphans who need help.

An affluent black family fights against illness and death when a terrible outbreak of yellow fever strikes New Orleans in the summer of 1853.