The acclaimed author of the celebrated literary horror novels The Hunger and The Deep turns her
psychological and supernatural eye on the horrors of the Japanese American internment camps in
World War II. 1944: As World War II rages on the threat has come to the home front. In a
remote corner of Idaho Meiko Briggs and her daughter Aiko are desperate to return home.
Following Meiko's husband's enlistment as an air force pilot in the Pacific months prior Meiko
and Aiko were taken from their home in Seattle and sent to one of the internment camps in the
Midwest. It didn t matter that Aiko was American-born: They were Japanese and therefore
considered a threat by the American government. Mother and daughter attempt to hold on to
elements of their old life in the camp when a mysterious disease begins to spread among those
interned. What starts as a minor cold quickly becomes spontaneous fits of violence and
aggression even death. And when a disconcerting team of doctors arrive nearly more
threatening than the illness itself Meiko and her daughter team up with a newspaper reporter
and widowed missionary to investigate and it becomes clear to them that something more
sinister is afoot a demon from the stories of Meiko s childhood hell-bent on infiltrating
their already strange world. Inspired by the Japanese yokai and the jorogumo spider demon The
Fervor explores the horrors of the supernatural beyond just the threat of the occult. With a
keen and prescient eye Katsu crafts a terrifying story about the danger of demonization a
mysterious contagion and the search to stop its spread before it's too late. A sharp account
of too-recent history it's a deep excavation of how we decide who gets to be human when being
human matters most.
