Because The End of October, by Lawrence Wright, is fiction, I figured I was safe and wouldn’t have sleepless nights after reading it (as was the case with Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone and Laurie Garrett’s The Coming Plague). “Medical thriller,” I thought. “Sounds good.” So, even though it is May 2020 and we are in the midst of a global pandemic with COVID-19, I was happy to receive a copy from Knopf Doubleday and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review and jumped right in. I was intrigued and admittedly hoped that it would have a positive tone or perhaps a happy ending (vaccine, anyone?) and that the current reality might thus become a bit less unsettling. Dare to dream, right?!

In this riveting story, a devastating virus begins in Asia and starts to spread around the globe. (Ouch). As things unfold, an epidemiologist/microbiologist named Henry Parsons begins to investigate on behalf of the World Health Organization, traveling to a refugee camp (or possibly an internment camp? I’m not sure and am too freaked out to go back and check) in Indonesia. A man who is infected with the virus leaves Indonesia to join the millions of worshippers who are headed to Mecca for the annual hajj. Yikes! Henry and a few others (including a Saudi prince) try to quarantine the whole bunch. What could possibly go wrong?

Meanwhile, the Deputy Director of Homeland Security in the U.S., who happens to be a woman from Russia, thinks biowarfare might be involved, and then global relations start to snap (sound familiar?). A really bleak picture of life in the U.S. unfolds as the population is decimated while religious, scientific, and governmental institutions fall apart. TBH, I was getting more and more freaked out as I read.

I don’t do spoilers, so I won’t reveal what happens to either Henry and his family or the world at large, but I WILL say I have definitely not been sleeping well. The book is packed with accounts of historic plagues and pandemics, information about viruses and pathogens. Heavy on factual data, it is not too technical for the general reader…but may be too scary for some. Wright is a terrific writer. Five stars.