Malaria

Malaria in Little House on the Prairie

     In the novels written by Laura Ingalls Wilder, based on her own life during the 19th century in the U.S., the Ingalls family's trials and travails are told as they move from their house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, to the Indian Territory outside of Independence, Kansas. Laura left Wisconsin as a child, and moved to Kansas with her parents and two sisters.  The novels tell how Pa builds their homestead from the ground up, and how they must dig a well before they are settled.  Upon moving to the new territory, the Ingalls family becomes sick from "fever'n'Ague," known today as malaria.    

Malaria in The Cay

     In this children's novel by North Carolina author Theodore Taylor, Philip is a young boy who lives with his parents on the island of Curacao, off the coast of Venezuela.  Because of the threat of Germans invading during WWII, Philip's mother decides to take him with her on a ship back to the U.S.  The ship is torpedoed, and Philip is left floating on a raft with a black man from the West Indies named Timothy.  They reach a cay together on the raft, and have only small supply of food with which to survive.  Philip received a head injury when the ship was torpedoed and is now blind.  Philip must depend on Timothy to teach him how to be independent.  Philip's skills are then tested when he must take care of Timothy after he falls ill with malaria.