Nemesis by Philip Roth

In the stifling heat of Newark, a terrifying epidemic is raging threatening the children of the New Jersey City with maiming, paralysis, lifelong disability and even death. This is the story of a wartime polio epidemic in the summer of 1944 and the effect that it has on a closely knit family oriented Newark community and its children.

At the center of the book, is a vigorous twenty-three year old playground director named Bucky Cantor. Focusing on Cantor's dilemmas as polio begins to ravage his playground and on the everyday realities that he faces, Roth leads us through every inch of emotion that polio brought to a community. Roth depicts a decent energetic man with the best intentions struggling in his own private war against the epidemic. Roth is tenderly exact at every point about Cantor's passage into personal disaster.

Questions are posed such as, what kind of choices fatally shape a life? How does the individual withstand the onslaught of circumstance?