Best Horror Books by Alma Katsu

After Mieko Briggs’ husband enlists as an air force pilot, Mieko and her daughter, Aiko, were taken from their Seattle home and sent to an internment camp in remote Idaho. Never mind that Aiko is American-born. All the American government saw was their Japanese heritage. “I wanted to bring the history to the forefront of the story because there were decades of racist propaganda against the Chinese and the Japanese,” Katsu explained. “People assume that the people in the camps dressed in kimonos, had Japanese names, and only ate Japanese foods. But no, they were American in every way. It showed me how much education still needs to be done.”

Meiko and Aiko try to maintain elements of their old life when a disease starts to spread. It starts as a cold, quickly escalates to violent aggression, and then death. Mother and daughter team up with a reporter and a widow to investigate. But it quickly becomes clear that something evil is in the camp. And it wants to be let into the world.

“The Fervor is a very personal book. I’m half-Japanese, my mom is Japanese and she came to the United States after the war,” Katsu said. “But she had been maltreated after coming here, and it changed her as a person. My husband’s entire family had been interned at Topaz in Utah.

She continued: “I heard stories from the family, but less than you’d think. My husband’s family owned a florist business in Berkeley, California. That was a huge financial setback for them. In 1983, they totaled that the cost to the people who lost their homes and equipment was $2.7 billion. I hope how people were affected and how they felt and how important this still is, comes through in the book.”