EPIDEMIC

Two children journey to find their missing mother and discover a country ravaged by disease in this YA novel.

This first book in Boglisch’s Elifer Chronicles series deals with topics that resonate with the contemporary moment, including governmental and public reactions to a seemingly unstoppable virus. Veronica Elifer, a single parent living in Claremore, an autonomous town, with two children, Maxwell and Karina, remains haunted by the day when a mysterious official took away her husband, Felix. Now, four years later, Maxwell and Karina return from school to find their home ransacked, Veronica missing, and “men dressed in dark clothing with sparkling medallions and cuffs stepping out of black cars” to pursue them. Maxwell and Karina have never suffered any kind of illness before, so when they make their way to an isolated town, they can’t comprehend a disease that “starts as a simple cold” and progresses to “pockmarks, swollen eyes and shallow cheeks, along with…open wounds and thin skin” before death. The omniscient narrator’s voice has a casual tone, and it’s a style that occasionally results in awkward phrasing: “On either side were men dressed in uniforms that resembled tuxes. Their eyes were covered in sunglasses and their mouths covered in doctor masks.” However, the novel’s great mystery has to do with how Felix’s and Veronica’s disappearances are related to the epidemic, and Boglisch, the author of Demon Song (2019), handles this aspect impressively. Just as an important piece of information seems about to be revealed, a character defers it—as when the twins ask Lex, their newfound friend and benefactor, what he means when he refers to “clean” children. As a result, readers will feel compelled to keep turning the pages of this timely novel.

An engagingly suspenseful dystopian drama.