In the spring of 1776, thirteen-year-old Elsbeth Culpepper wakes to the sound of cannons. Its the Siege of Boston, the Patriots massive drive to push the Loyalists out that turns the city into a chaotic war zone. Elsbeths fatherher only living relativehas gone missing, leaving her alone and adrift in a broken town while desperately seeking employment to avoid the orphanage.

Just when things couldnt feel worse, the smallpox epidemic sweeps across Boston. Now, Bostonians must fight for their lives against an invisible enemy in addition to the visible one. While a treatment is being frantically fine-tuned, thousands of people rush in from the countryside begging for inoculation. At the same time, others refuse protection, for the treatment is crude at best and at times more dangerous than the disease itself.

Elsbeth, who had smallpox as a small child and is now immune, finds work taking care of a large, wealthy family with discord of their own as they await a turn at inoculation, but as the epidemic and the revolution rage on, will she find her father?

ISBN: 9781416968269
Hardcover
Juvenile Fiction / Historical / United States / Colonial & Revolutionary Periods
Ages 10 to 14, Grades 5 to 9
416 pages