Professor Colin Ayres has spent years researching the strange story of Galina, Arizona, a sleepy border town ripped apart by violence and paranoia after the outbreak of a mysterious illness in 1960. Colin is certain the Galina Incident was simply a case of mass hysteria. But when his partner, Alonzo, starts exhibiting strange symptoms, Colin is shocked to realize they are the same as those that emerged in Galina decades ago.
As Alonzo's condition worsens, Colin scrambles to piece together what really happened during that terrible summer in the past. He uncovers a story of murder, corruption, and fanaticism. The deeper he digs, the more he becomes convinced that what happened in Galina wasn't mass hysteria after all.
When others start to develop the same eerie symptoms, Colin must confront the possibility that someone-or something-is driving the plague. Guided by rumours of a person who found a way to stop the plague in the sixties, Colin races to find answers before the disease destroys Alonzo and everyone else it touches.
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[Anza stood at the window and watched her father's truck bump down the driveway]***
(@RAPublishing, 21 January 2020, 356 pages, ebook, copy from the author and voluntarily reviewed)
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I loved the premise of this book, sixty years ago residents in a small Arizona town are besieged by paranoia and violence that brings the town it its knees and in the current days their ancestor start to exhibit the same behaviour. I had to know what it was all about. I also loved the cover. This novel is split between two timelines and the events weave back and forth between both. This is my favourite kind of non-linear storytelling. I don't read sci-fi a lot but this is exactly the kind of book I enjoy. The events in both eras are well-written and engaging and the characters are fleshed out. I loved the fact the characters are just ordinary people caught in unsettling and extraordinary events, not X-Men. I had so many questions reading this. What's really happening? Why did it stop 60 years ago? Why did it start again? Does someone know the truth? This is a great book.