Book overview Alma Katsu

The Fervor by Alma Katsu: Summary and Study Guide

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Quick facts

  • Author: Alma Katsu
  • Published: 2022
  • Genre: Literary historical horror
  • Setting: World War II-era United States, primarily the Minidoka internment camp in Idaho, with scenes in Oregon, Nebraska, Montana, and 1927 Shikotan Island, Japan
  • Narrator: Third-person limited, alternating among multiple characters (Meiko, Fran, Archie, Aiko), with first-person journal entries from Wasaburo Oishi

Short Summary

The Fervor (2022) by Alma Katsu is a literary historical horror novel set during World War II. The story follows Meiko Briggs, a Japanese American woman interned at Camp Minidoka in Idaho, who becomes the target of a secret biological experiment involving tiny translucent spiders carried by Japanese fire balloons. When her daughter Aiko escapes the camp and follows a spirit fox across the desert, she carries her grandfather Wasaburo Oishi's Esperanto journals, which reveal the spiders' role in the disease called

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