"...transports modern pandemic survivors into the bedchambers, clinics, and graveyards of a thriving American port laid low by pestilence..."-Earl Swift, author of Hell Put to Shame: The 1921 Murder Farm Massacre and the Horror of America's Second Slavery

"Richly reported and eloquently written, this true story transports readers back to 1855, into a raging epidemic that feels eerily prescient."-Lane DeGregory, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing

In the summer of 1855, the nation cast its eyes on the working-class port of Norfolk and Portsmouth, Virginia. A ship named the Benjamin Franklin 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.

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. The Fever 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.