John Wells

The Plague Year: a Novel John Wells

Set against the backdrop of a deeply troubled, psychotic female student infecting men with the AIDS virus and a fanatical board member taking over the college, The Plague Year is a Swiftian black satire of college life in the mid-nineties. This haunting detective story echoes Daniel Defoe's The Journal of the Plague Year in its stunning depiction of the horrors and fears of a spreading disease. The Plague Year is a searing indictment of modern college life and delves deeply into the self-absorbed, narcissistic lives of some contemporary college students. When a favorite professor does not return for the school year, two students, Danny, a journalist for the school paper, and Emily, a philosophy major, join forces to find out why the professor did not return to teaching. Their findings are shocking and the whole school is thrown into turmoil. In the end, readers will become strangely attracted to these college students, who yearn to escape the emptiness of their lives and find meaning in a chaotic and disturbing world.