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Rated of 5

Ann and Peter Brooks have two daughters: twelve-year-old Kate and seven-year-old Maddie who live in the comfortable suburb of Columbus, Ohio. Their baby, William, had died causing unspeakable grief for Ann and Peter which has affected their relationship irreparably. One night while driving home from a family get together, Peter announces that they should separate and spend some time alone. He tells Anne that he “still loves her”, but he’s “not IN love with her anymore.” As expected, Kate and Maddie don’t take the news of their parents split very well. Peter collects some clothing and moves into a small one-bedroom apartment, leaving the house for Ann and the girls.

Peter is a Professor at the School of Veterinary Medicine but is now doing research. After a year of separation, Ann is feeling confident that she can deal with any problems or hardships. But, just before Thanksgiving, a serious and dangerous crisis hits and topples everybody’s world upside down. Out at one of the lakes close to their home, Peter and some duck hunters have discovered hundreds of blue-winged teal birds, mottled brown and cream bobbing upside down in the lake. They soon learn that the avian influenza virus H5N1 is loose in their community. Everyone is trapped inside their homes making life and death decisions in an environment where even opening your front door could mean the end of you and your family.

Ann now has to make choices that will affect the lives of Kate and Maddie and others around her. Quarantined in their own home, Ann is soon forced to make her first of many life or death decisions!

An excellent debut novel geared for everyone.

Rated of 5

Ann and Peter and their two daughters are beautifully drawn as earnest but humanly flawed people who are faced with not only the threat of the deadly virus, but also with the failure of the systems that sustain them because of the deaths of so many people--no electricity, no phone, no transportation to get food on market shelves or into homes. And the family must face the breakdown of the community into a dangerous, fragmented, rule-less, everyone-for-him/herself environment. The family's decisions and coping actions are often heartbreaking. There is a thread that is tied up at the end of the book that seemed unnecessary, since the issue did not seem clear in the flow of the story. But that aside, I loved this book and can't wait for more from Carla Buckley.