Aiko Briggs in Alma Katsu's The Fervor: Character Analysis

Overview of Aiko Briggs in The Fervor (2022) by Alma Katsu — Character Analysis & Role in the Plot, Themes, and Key Questions Answered. Aiko Briggs is the mixed-race daughter of Meiko Briggs, an Issei woman, and Jamie Briggs, a white crop-dusting pilot. She is a child caught between two worlds: too Japanese for the white community and too white for the Japanese community at Camp Minidoka. Over the course of the novel, Aiko transforms from a frightened girl plagued by nightmares into a resourceful survivor who walks hundreds of miles alone, guided by a spirit fox, carrying her grandfather Wasaburo Oishi's Esperanto journals that hold the key to understanding the spider-borne disease at the heart of the story. Her journey connects the novel's two narrative threads—the internment camp outbreak and the Gearhart Mountain explosion—and her dual inheritance of folklore and scientific curiosity makes her the novel's bridge between two ways of knowing. For a broader view of the novel's structure, see the main book page.