This is a very good, smart, effective book about an infectious disease quickly taking over a whole Southern California town, and the local and nation response to the spread of the virus. It's also a philosophical book which ponders on the nature of dreams, the scale of time, and whether we can ever truly know if something is happening in real life or is just a vision, a blurring of past, future and imagination. It's also an emotional book about several individuals at very different points in their lives dealing with personal crisis. Mei is a shy, introverted, 18 year old college freshman. Her roommate is the first person to be struck down by the virus. Soon, several more people from her dorm fall ill and the whole wing is put on quarantine. Nathaniel is a biology teacher at the college who thinks they are making too big a deal of it when all school classes are suspended until further notice. He hasn't been paying much attention to the news, worried about his husband who has become unresponsive in a nursing home. Ben and Annie are adjunct professors who moved to town recently with their new baby. They are horrified when they learn that the donated milk they have been receiving might be contaminated by the virus spreading in the hospital, striking down nurses and doctors as well as the families who gathered at the bedsides of the ill. Catherine is a doctor who is trapped in the hospital when it too is put on lock down. Sara and Libby live next door to Ben and Annie- they decide to hide alone in their house after their paranoid, survivalist father falls ill. Each of these characters and more must get through an interconnected series of worst scenarios, but the book never feels hopeless or horrific. It's tone is compassionate and sympathetic towards each character, all of them just people doing their best in the middle of a terrible situation.