Fever Season The Story of a Terrifying Epidemic and the People Who Saved a City

While the American South had grown to expect a yellow fever breakout almost annually, the 1878 epidemic was without question the worst ever. Moving up the Mississippi River in the late summer, in the span of just a few months the fever killed more than eighteen thousand people. The city of Memphis, Tennessee, was particularly hard hit: Of the approximately twenty thousand who didn't flee the city, seventeen thousand contracted the fever, and more than five thousand died-the equivalent of a million New Yorkers dying in an epidemic today. Fever Seasonchronicles the drama in Memphis from the outbreak in August until the disease ran its course in late October. The story that Jeanette Keith uncovered is a profound-and never more relevant-account of how a catastrophe inspired reactions both heroic and cowardly. Some ministers, politicians, and police fled their constituents, while prostitutes and the poor risked their lives to nurse the sick. Using the vivid, anguished accounts and diaries of those who chose to stay and those who were left behind, Fever Seasondepicts the events of that summer and fall. In its pages we meet people of great courage and compassion, many of whom died for having those virtues. We also learn how a disaster can shape the future of a city.

Originally trained as a journalist, Jeanette Keith obtained her Ph.D. in history from Vanderbilt University in 1990 and is currently professor of history at Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. She is the author of several books, including Country People in the New South and the award-winning Rich Man's War, Poor Man's Fight.

“Keith delivers a rewarding must-read for both history and public health buffs.”—Publishers i(starred review) “Jeanette Keith’s compelling account of one of nineteenth-century America’s worst disasters vividly illustrates how noble, and how ignoble, human beings can be in a crisis. This is a masterful work of narrative history—gracefully written, richly informative, and deeply thoughtful. It should be read by everyone interested in America’s past and everyone who has ever wondered what it is like to experience utter catastrophe.”—Stephen V. Ash, Professor of History, University of Tennessee, author of Firebrand of Liberty
“Bravo! Jeanette Keith is an exceptional writer who takes us on a voyage through the trauma of the 1878 yellow fever epidemic in Memphis. Her insights draw a vivid picture of how important it is to understand that individuals can make a huge difference in the everyday life of a city and its future. The late nineteenth-century was a time of dramatic change in a United States reshaped by war, economic turmoil, complexities of ethnic and racial diversity, as well as high unemployment, and globalization. There is much to learn from this story that could help with today’s similar cornucopia of challenges.”—Kriste Lindemeyer, Dean of the Rutgers-Camden Faculty of Arts and Sciences, author of The Greatest Generation Grows Up