by Philip Roth
First published 2010
The summer of 1944 scorches Newark, New Jersey. As a raging polio epidemic sweeps through the city, a terrified community watches helplessly as their children succumb to the cruel disease, faces etched with paralysis or condemned to iron lungs. In the stifling heat, a close-knit family is forced to confront the unthinkable when their athletic young son falls gravely ill. In the race to save him, they'll be tested by the physical and emotional ravages of a merciless outbreak that threatens to tear their world apart.
Genres: american-fiction, 20th-century, family-drama, disease
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-drama, medical-trauma
Setting: New Jersey, Newark, Newark (N.J.)
Period: 20th century
280 pages · Hardcover · Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Content warnings: death