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Chaucer’s Books to virtually host Bram Stoker Award-winning author Alma Katsu
STEVE PARKE PHOTOGRAPHYAlma Katsu
Chaucer’s Books will host Bram Stoker Award-winning author Alma Katsu, virtually, to talk about her horror novel “The Fervor” at 6 p.m. April 27.
The Fervor is set in 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. With a keen and prescient eye, Ms. 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.
Ms. Katsu is the award-winning author of six novels, most recently “Red Widow,” “The Deep” and “The Hunger.” She is a graduate of the master’s writing program at Johns Hopkins University and received her bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University. Prior to the publication of her first novel, Ms. Katsu had a long career as a senior intelligence analyst for several U.S. agencies. She currently resides in West Virginia with her husband.
To watch the event on Zoom, go to https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85873880920.
To watch on YouTube, go to https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRVxV4ZOqkmnBj8TvT25NFQ.
email: kzehnder@newspress.com
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