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Title details for The Fervor by Alma Katsu - Available

The Fervor

by Alma Katsu
Traci Kato-Kiriyama
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
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. 

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    April 26, 2022

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593552438
      • File size: 294400 KB
      • Duration: 10:13:19

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 29, 2021
      Katsu (The Hunger) weaves myriad perspectives into a powerful historical horror novel centered on the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. A Japanese meteorologist travels to a windswept island; a hesitant Oregonian minister worries he worships his wife more than God; a Japanese immigrant interred in Camp Minidoka fiercely defends her mixed-race daughter while not quite daring to hope for the return of her white husband from the Pacific Front; and a sharp Nebraska journalist is less interested in the married man she’s seeing than in the fireball that explodes over their trysting site. At first, these characters seem linked only by their eerie encounters with tiny, translucent spiders, an apparition in a kimono, and the remnants of what appear to be paper parachutes. It takes some time for deeper connections to come into view—pace is not a selling point here—but throughout, the meticulous and compassionate portraiture, placed against the backdrop of what evils humans do to one another, creates a horror that renders even the creepiest spiders merely decorative in comparison. Horror readers looking for sharp social commentary should snap this up. Agents: Richard Pine and Eliza Rothstein, InkWell Management.

    • Library Journal

      September 1, 2022

      Japanese folklore and American World War II history blend together in the latest twisty, horror novel from Katsu (Red Widow). It is 1944 and strange balloons are falling in the Midwestern United States. Reporter Fran Gurstwold and her editor see one, and she takes pieces of it home with her. Preacher Archie Mitchell takes his wife Elsie and some neighborhood children on a picnic; they see a balloon and all but Archie are burned to death in a horrendous explosion. Meiko Briggs and her daughter Aiko are in a concentration camp for those of Japanese descent in Idaho, where a strange disease Meiko calls "The Fervor" is running rampant. What do they all have in common besides balloons? Tiny translucent spiders and sightings of the mythical Japanese kitsune demon. Narrator Traci Kato-Kiriyama is expressive and paces events well. She is especially moving when expressing Meiko's sadness and pessimism about the United States. Louis Ozawa narrates very brief, intermittent chapters from the viewpoint of Meiko's father. VERDICT Katsu keeps the plot and questions moving in this intriguingly complicated horror story that offers many parallels to anti-Asian racism and violence in the U.S.--B. Allison Gray

      Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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