Phase Six

February 15, 2021
Paced like a prophetic thriller, this novel suggests that "pandemic" is a continuing series. Shepard has frequently employed research as a foundation for his literary creations, but never before in such pulse-racing fashion. He's set this narrative in the near future, when the threat of Covid-19 has passed but provides a cautionary lesson. And what have we learned from it? Not enough, apparently, as an outbreak within an extremely isolated settlement of Greenland begins its viral spread around the globe. Readers will find themselves in territory that feels eerily familiar--panic, politics, uncertainty, fear, a resistance to quarantine, an overload of media noise--as Shepard's command of tone never lets the tension ease. Eleven-year-old Aleq somehow survives the initial outbreak, which takes the lives of everyone close to him, and he may provide the key to some resolution if anyone can get him to talk. The novel follows the boy and the pandemic from Greenland to a laboratory facility in Montana as, in little more than a month, the virus or whatever it is, spread by touching, traveling, breathing, has infected some 14 million around the world. Jeannine Dziri and Danice Torrone, a pair of young researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who have dubbed themselves the "Junior Certain Death Squad," find themselves on the front lines as they attempt to balance personal relationships (which occasionally read like plot contrivances) with all-consuming professional responsibilities. Meanwhile, the pandemic proceeds relentlessly. "APOCALYPSE II?" screams a Fox graphic amid "the social media cacophony," as mass hysteria shows how human nature can take a horrible situation and make it so much worse. And though the novel builds to a sort of redemption, it suggests that there will be no resolution to the current pandemic beyond nervous anticipation toward the ones to come. Channeling Pasteur, Shepard promises--or threatens--"It will always be the microbes that have the last word." All the narrative propulsion of escapist fiction without the escape.

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March 22, 2021
In this disappointing apocalyptic thriller from Shepard (The Book of Aron), a pandemic—exponentially more lethal than Covid-19—originates in a remote Greenland village and spreads worldwide, infecting millions within weeks. Eleven-year old Aleq, one of the only survivors of the initial outbreak, may hold the key to finding a way to stop the seemingly uncontainable contagion. The CDC tasks two investigators, epidemiologist Jeannie Dziri and lab wonk Danice Torrone, to inspect the decimated village in hopes of finding clues to head off a looming global disaster. While Dziri tries to find insights in the emotionally battered boy’s memories, Torrone crunches data in a race against time as more people become sick and die horrific deaths. The author has clearly done some impressive research into infectious diseases, but some readers may have a visceral reaction—not so much because of the heartbreaking similarities to the coronavirus and the millions who have died because of it, but because of the plot’s predictability and the lack of an ending. Shepard has done better.

April 1, 2021
Disasters often charge Shepard's incisive, unsettling fiction, including the historical short stories in The World to Come (2017). In his riveting and tragic eighth novel, Shepard looks ahead instead of back, dropping us into a post-COVID-19 future and onto the front lines of a new pandemic so ferocious and baffling it rates the World Health Organization's highest risk level, Phase Six. In a small settlement in Greenland, two mischievous boys, Malik and Aleq, frolic among gruff adults living hand-to-mouth lives as the ice sheets shrink, mines pollute, and permafrost melts. By the time investigators for the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service--epidemiologist Jeannine, of Algerian descent, and white MD Danice--arrive, the death toll is horrific. The two women fall quickly in love, but Jeannine has to bring traumatized Aleq, who seems immune to this mysterious disease, to a high-security lab in Montana, while Danice stays behind. Shepard tracks the heavy emotional toll on the women, their keen medical sleuthing, and the "cyclonic clusterfuck of bureaucratic hysteria and infighting" among governmental officials who learned nothing from COVID-19. Shepard writes with drilling authority about Greenland, epidemiology, the challenges women doctors and scientists face, and the confounding complexities of the microbial world. With word-by-word artistry, fluid compassion, and deep insights, Shepard emphatically dramatizes epic failures, self-sacrificing dedication, desolation, and love.

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