Word Count 145K includes 7K factual Appendix.
Draft blurb:
As the 2012 Republican convention disperses, the nominees, dozens more GOP dignitaries, and their spouses are sharing the coughs and sneezes of common colds. But their symptoms turn unexpectedly grisly, and soon Republican VIP deaths in droves startle the nation. Within weeks, the epidemic is decimating the country’s political class.
An urgently convened government taskforce takes physicians Frank Dunne of USAMRIID and Seanna Balfour of the CDC from careers on bureaucratic autopilot into a maelstrom. A departmental turf war erupts over control of the task force and whether the pathogen is natural or bioterrorism. Investigation reveals that the “Republican Flu” originated with an overseas outbreak of a hitherto unknown hemorrhagic fever. The novel virus is terrifyingly infectious, horrifically virulent, and evolving in a way thought impossible.
Dunne and Balfour must mine the medical data for the key to controlling a growing global pandemic. Frank’s breakthrough genetic hypothesis charts a path, but the answer remains elusive. The relentlessly spreading disease puts the upcoming election in jeopardy, posing an unprecedented constitutional crisis. When Seanna’s stubbornly methodical epidemiology warns of near apocalyptic consequences, they advise a quarantined president and a panicking nation to resist the disease with drastic measures on a scale never imagined. While fighting their own fears for the lives of those they love, Seanna and Frank race to develop a treatment before the deteriorating civil order frays beyond repair.
Draft blurb:
As the 2012 Republican convention disperses, the nominees, dozens more GOP dignitaries, and their spouses are sharing the coughs and sneezes of common colds. But their symptoms turn unexpectedly grisly, and soon Republican VIP deaths in droves startle the nation. Within weeks, the epidemic is decimating the country’s political class.
An urgently convened government taskforce takes physicians Frank Dunne of USAMRIID and Seanna Balfour of the CDC from careers on bureaucratic autopilot into a maelstrom. A departmental turf war erupts over control of the task force and whether the pathogen is natural or bioterrorism. Investigation reveals that the “Republican Flu” originated with an overseas outbreak of a hitherto unknown hemorrhagic fever. The novel virus is terrifyingly infectious, horrifically virulent, and evolving in a way thought impossible.
Dunne and Balfour must mine the medical data for the key to controlling a growing global pandemic. Frank’s breakthrough genetic hypothesis charts a path, but the answer remains elusive. The relentlessly spreading disease puts the upcoming election in jeopardy, posing an unprecedented constitutional crisis. When Seanna’s stubbornly methodical epidemiology warns of near apocalyptic consequences, they advise a quarantined president and a panicking nation to resist the disease with drastic measures on a scale never imagined. While fighting their own fears for the lives of those they love, Seanna and Frank race to develop a treatment before the deteriorating civil order frays beyond repair.