Part of Series
FBI Agent Robert Cavanaugh has been transferred from the organized crime unit to the slow-paced field office for southern Maryland, where the biggest federal crime is the condition of the roads.But things take an unpleasant turn when a nurse at a local hospital notices a sudden increase in the incidence of fatal strokes among otherwise healthy black adults. The trail leads to a new strain of malaria that causes rapid blood clotting in people with sickle-cell trait, who begin to die. It's an unlikely natural mutation, yet there's no hard evidence of human intervention. Did a fringe hate-group arrange for a bioengineered weapon to decimate the African-American population? As more people die, Cavanaugh must convince the FBI to look for the answers before it becomes an epidemic that threatens millions of lives ... or even race war.
Author
Nancy Kress is an American science fiction writer. She began writing in 1976 but has achieved her greatest notice since the publication of her Hugo and Nebula-winning 1991 novella Beggars in Spain which was later expanded into a novel with the same title. In addition to her novels, Kress has written numerous short stories and is a regular columnist for Writer's Digest. She is a regular at Clarion writing workshops and at The Writers Center in Bethesda, Maryland. During the Winter of 2008/09, Nancy Kress is the Picador Guest Professor for Literature at the University of Leipzig's Institute for American Studies in Leipzig, Germany. Excerpted from Wikipedia.
