Smallpox In The New World Stephanie True Peters

What This Book Actually Is

Smallpox In The New World Stephanie True Peters is a historical fiction novel published in 2020. It follows a woman named Abigail who survives the smallpox epidemic and then returns to help her community deal with the aftermath. The story alternates between the 1763 outbreak and modern-day North Carolina, where a line of descendants uncovers what happened during that epidemic. Peters does decent research but the book is primarily fiction, not a textbook. I picked it up because I was researching colonial-era disease patterns for a personal project and needed a narrative anchor. Reading it took me about six hours. The pacing drags in the middle, especially around the second half of the colonial timeline, but the dual-timeline structure keeps you turning pages in a way a straight history won't.

How to Get Smallpox In The New World Stephanie True Peters

You can find it as an ebook through most major retailers. The Kindle version runs about $3 to $5 depending on where you shop, and the paperback is usually under $15. Barnes & Noble and Amazon carry it, as do smaller indie bookshops. If you want the audiobook, there's a version narrated by Emily Sutton-Smith that runs roughly 9 hours. I listened to that one during a long car trip and it held up okay. There's also a library option through OverDrive and Libby. That costs nothing and you can get the ebook or audiobook at the same time. The wait time varies by location, but in my experience it's usually 1 to 3 days unless everyone in your county already has it checked out. One thing to note: some listings call it "smallpox" and others use "The Smallpox Chronicles" interchangeably because the publisher ran a rebrand. Make sure you're looking at the right cover. The 2020 first edition has a woman's face in profile against a dark background. A few sites mix it up with older medical texts and you end up with the wrong product.

What You Should Know Before Reading

The novel is roughly 350 pages. The contemporary section makes up about a third of the book, and the historical sections carry most of the weight. Peters weaves in actual medical details from the period, which surprised me. There are decent passages describing inoculation methods used in colonial America, including the variation where people deliberately introduced material from a smallpox lesion into a scratch on the skin. The science isn't perfect by any means. Some of the character dialogue around disease transmission feels a bit too modern for people in the 1700s, even for fiction. I noticed one scene where Abigail explains germ theory concepts that wouldn't exist for another century. Peters compensates with emotional authenticity though, so I didn't mind it much. If you're reading this for academic purposes, pair it with primary sources from the era. David O. Whitaker's "An Essay upon the Small Pox and the Inoculation of It" is a good companion text and completely free online. It gives you the actual medical thinking of the time rather than a fictionalized version.

The book was self-published, which means the editing process was shorter than a traditional novel would see. You'll catch typos here and there and a few paragraphs that feel like they needed another pass. Nothing that ruins the experience, just things to be aware of if you're picky about prose quality.

Is It Worth Your Time

Yes if you're interested in colonial American history and don't mind a fictionalized account. No if you're looking for a rigorous medical or epidemiological study of smallpox in the Americas. Peters makes a genuine effort to get the social and cultural details right, but this is storytelling first and education second. The dual timeline works well enough that you won't be bored, but don't expect groundbreaking historical revisionism. For me, the takeaway was the portrayal of how disease reshapes communities across generations. That aspect felt honest and the modern characters dealing with inherited trauma from an event they never experienced was handled without melodrama. That's more than I expected from a self-published historical novel.