Phase SiX

In a tiny settlement on the west coast of Greenland, 11-year-old Aleq and his best friend, frequent trespassers at a mining site exposed to mountains of long-buried and thawing permafrost, carry what they pick up back into their village, and from there Shepard's harrowing and deeply moving story follows Aleq, one of the few survivors of the initial outbreak, through his identification and radical isolation as the likely index patient.
 
While he shoulders both a crushing guilt for what he may have done and the hopes of a world looking for answers, we also meet two Epidemic Intelligence Service investigators dispatched from the CDC--Jeannine, an epidemiologist and daughter of Algerian immigrants, and Danice, an M.D. and lab wonk. As they attempt to head off the cataclysm, Jeannine--moving from the Greeland hospital overwhelmed with the first patients to a Level 4 high-security facility in the Rocky Mountains--does what she can to sustain Aleq.
 
Both a chamber piece of multiple intimate perspectives and a more omniscient glimpse into the megastructures (political, cultural, and biological) that inform such a disaster, the novel reminds us of the crucial bonds that form in the midst of catastrophe, as a child and several hypereducated adults learn what it means to provide adequate support for those they love. In the process, they celebrate the precious worlds they might lose, and help to shape others that may survive.

“If you’ve been waiting for the great novel of the COVID-19 era, it’s in your hands.  I read Phase Six with a galloping heart. With heroic humor and a poet’s ear and eye for what makes humanity worth saving, Shepard’s polyphonic novel of contagion and collapse is also the story of love’s unlikely survival in the most hostile conditions.”   — Karen Russell 

“I devoured the first hundred pages before I knew what was happening.  If I’d been in a bookstore, I’d have sat on the floor… Shepard has managed to make art out of our crisis with a thought-provoking work of fiction that sustains our emotions, and also shames our policy-makers.”   — The New York Times Book Review 

"Jim Shepard not only writes at the cutting edge of literature, he is the cutting edge of literature… A great book for our times: the past, the present, and those that — we hope — are yet to come.”   — Colum McCann 

“Paced like a prophetic thriller… Shepard has frequently employed research as a foundation for his literary creations, but never before in such pulse-racing fashion.”   — Kirkus Review (starred review) 

“Completely believable, totally absorbing, and fast-paced… What’s really special about this novel is that it was mostly written during the time before COVID transformed us medically, scientifically, and emotionally.  Speculative fiction becomes real life, with all of its terrifying consequences.”  — The New York Journal of Books  

“One of the next great works of speculative fiction… Instead of writing a COVID novel (already passe) or a post-COVID novel (brace yourselves, people) Shepard has written a next-COVID novel: a terse, scientifically detailed but deeply human account of how the next pandemic might play out,”   —The Irish Times  

“Riveting and tragic… With word by word artistry, fluid compassion, and deep insights, Shepard emphatically dramatizes epic failures, self-sacrificing dedication, desolation, and love.”   — Booklist (starred review) 

“Stellar.. Phase Six cultivates an agonizing sense of dread… It’s an impressive work of literature.”   — Los Angeles Times 

“Ingenious… At once gripping and difficult to bear.”  — The New Yorker 

“The novel moves between the personal and the scientific in a way that is at once informative, suspenseful, and heartfelt— a balance that Shepard manages with remarkable grace… Reminding us of our precarious place among the world’s infinite possibilities.”   —Minneapolis Star Tribune 

“Fast-paced, suspenseful… While the novel is thrilling, it’s less of a thriller than a love story — an ode to family, friends, lovers, hard work, and the beautiful, heartbreaking innocence of childhood.”   — Associated Press 

“Imagining catastrophe is, now more than ever, an essential task, and no one does it better than Jim Shepard.  At once scary and timely, funny and absorbing, Phase Six is a must read.”     — Elizabeth Kolbert