Face of the Earth

Smallpox was wiped off the face of the Earth more than 30 years ago, but an outbreak on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico has claimed one life, and the disease is spreading. The conclusion that the outbreak is the result of a terrorist attack is official U.S. policy, but the facts don’t add up to terrorism. Tipped off by a former classmate teaching in Farmington, Sarah Lockford, a Washington Post reporter, teams up with Jake Overman, a medical researcher from the Centers for Disease Control, to investigate the outbreak. As the National Security Council debates, the White House readies plans for a retaliatory attack against Iran. A cabinet member with a grudge deploys Army personnel to New Mexico to make sure no one stands in the way of a military response. The Navajo community is secretly shut off from the rest of the world. Roads are guarded, and all incoming and outgoing communications are blocked. The only leak was the phone call to Sarah, and Sarah can’t be found. She evades surveillance and travels through the wilderness to the outbreak site, where she and Jake discover its surprising origin. Forced into a cross-country game of cat and mouse, they race to get their scientific evidence to the President in time. If they fail, the U.S. may launch a nuclear attack. FACE OF THE EARTH is fiction, but all of the scientific and U.S. policy information in the novel has been scrupulously fact-checked. The story is frightening because everything in it could happen.

Doug and Linda Raber are scientists who have spent their careers investigating the interplay of cutting-edge science and U.S. foreign and domestic policy. After graduating with bachelor's and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry from Dartmouth and the University of Michigan, Doug spent 20 years on the chemistry faculty at the University of South Florida. In 1990, he moved to Washington, D.C., as Director of the Board on Chemical Sciences & Technology at the National Academy of Sciences, where he directed studies on topics ranging from chemistry research and development, to forensic analysis of bombings, to combatting terrorism. He is a sought-after consultant in science policy arenas. Linda graduated in chemistry and history from the College of William & Mary and began her career as a legislative aide in the Senate before moving to a chemistry research position at the National Institutes of Health. She worked as a reporter at Chemical & Engineering News for more than 20 years before going solo in 2010. The Rabers have homes in both the Nation's capital and in West Virginia, near the two ends of the C&O Canal that runs alongside the Potomac River. Both locations serve as backdrops for FACE OF THE EARTH, their first novel.