The following version of the novel was used to create this study guide: Wright, Lawrence. The End of October. Random House, April 28, 2020. Kindle.

The historical fiction novel The End of October by Lawrence Wright paints a disturbing picture of a world in which people are unable to work together to fight a global pandemic because they are torn apart by suspicion, paranoia, and their own ideas about good and evil. Henry Parsons, deputy director for infectious diseases with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, was drawn into the fight against the Kongoli flu when he was sent to the camp where the disease was first identified. In his search for a vaccination, Henry must face the horrors of his past.

When the World Health Organization (WHO) was informed of a strange hemorrhagic fever that had killed 47 people in Kongoli Number Two Camp, Henry was sent to Indonesia to retrieve test samples. Henry planned to return home in two days, in time for his son’s birthday. Instead, he was put in quarantine after he performed a rudimentary autopsy on a dead doctor and was sprayed with fluids. After his time in quarantine, Henry discovered his cab driver, who had been exposed to the disease, had gone to Mecca. Once Henry discovered that cases of the fever were being reported there, Henry called for people to be quarantined there. Tensions between the Iranians and Saudi Arabians escalated when a Muslim from Iran was shot for trying to escape the quarantine. Ultimately, the pilgrims revolted and broke free, escaping into the desert, taking sickness with them.

Because of the quarantine and travel bans, Henry was unable to get home to his family. He tried to get passage to an American military base on a small ship, but that ship was ordered by American warships to turn around. Henry jumped from the ship, hoping the Americans would take pity on him. When Henry said that he was a doctor, he was allowed on board. A submarine crew had been requesting a doctor because there were cases of Kongoli on board that boat. Henry could get passage back to America on that submarine. Henry agreed despite the danger. During the trip, more and more members of the crew grew sick and died. Using what little equipment and resources he had on board, Henry tested a weakened version of the virus on the commander’s pet birds. Only one of the six birds, the one given the lowest concentration of the virus, survived, but Henry still injected himself with the weakened virus. He got very sick, but survived. The rest of the crew was inoculated. Henry determined that the weakened virus activated the body’s immune system to fight off the disease without killing the host. Henry was later credited with having created a stopgap vaccine.

Meanwhile in the United States, Kongoli was killing millions of people. The President was among those who were dead. Grocery stores were closed and supplies were in short supply. Jill, Henry’s wife, died after she was infected with the virus when she visited her mother in the nursing home. Helen, Jill and Henry’s preteen daughter, dug a grave and buried her mother. Even though she had never driven before, she drove herself and her little brother to the relative safety of their aunt’s farm after a man broke into their house and tried to rape Helen.

Meanwhile, health officials tried to impress upon politicians how necessary it was to put all of their resources into fighting Kongoli. Politicians, however, were distracted by the conflict in the Middle East and their belief that Russia was trying to draw the United States into war. It was speculated that Russia had bio-engineered the virus as a new form of warfare. Additionally, Russia launched a cyber war on America by interfering with its power grid.

Henry finally arrived home in Atlanta. He excavated the grave in the backyard and discovered his wife was dead. He could not put together from the clues in the house what might have happened to Helen and his adopted son, Teddy. He returned to work during the day and spent his evenings searching for his children. One day, Henry mentioned October Revolution Island, an uninhabited island where it was believed that the Soviets once had a bio-warfare lab. Nandi, a lab tech, noted that a group of polar bears had been relocated to that island after they made their way into a town and began making a nuisance of themselves. A week after the bears were relocated, the GPS trackers on their collars indicated they all stopped moving. Henry wondered if the deaths were caused because Kongoli was being tested on that island.

The next day, when Catherine Lord, the chief medical officer at the CDC in Atlanta, heard about October Revolution Island, she sent Henry to Washington to meet with Matilda “Tildy” Nichinsky the new national security advisor for the country. Tildy wanted to know how likely Henry thought it was the Russians had created Kongoli and how they should respond.

Henry and Tildy were joined by Jürgen Stark, a man who was Henry’s boss when they worked together at Fort Detrick, a facility in America where bioweapons were created. Henry was not pleased to see Jürgen because Jürgen had manipulated a viral agent that Henry created. The agent was intended to incapacitate the victims. When Henry tested it on mice, the mice recovered with no bad effects. Jürgen convinced Henry to let him use this agent on a group of narcoterrorists in the Brazilian jungle. Henry was devastated to learn that the people were killed by the virus. He further learned that a tribe of Cinta Larga Indians living downwind from the narcoterrorist camp had also been impacted by the virus. When Henry investigated that camp, the only person he found alive was one heavily pregnant woman. He delivered her child, and the baby survived. Henry took the baby home with him. He and Jill adopted him.

Since that time, Henry had researched his agent and found what Jürgen had done to it to make it deadly. Because the President was looking for a deadly agent to use on the Russians in response to Kongoli, Jürgen offered Henry’s agent. Henry and Jürgen were taken back to Jürgen’s lab to recreate the virus. Henry refused to make the virus once he arrived at the lab, but Jürgen already had the concoction created. He explained he had arranged to have Henry with him so Henry could not create an antiserum and save the population. Because Henry was a forward thinker, he had already created an antiserum and distributed that formula worldwide.

The novel ends with Henry reunited with his children. They have taken up Dixon’s offer to stay on the submarine until the biological and cyber attacks between Russian and the Americans have ended. They have one mission, to determine what happened on October Revolution Island. Henry and SEAL team who accompanies him finds that the laboratory on the island is abandoned and has not been used in years. They do, however, find the carcass of a mammoth, an animal that died out thousands of years prior. Mammoths had died of a strain of the flu very similar to Kongoli. The dead polar bears surrounded the mammoth. It is inferred that the Russians attempted to clone a mammoth, but also resurrected the flu virus that killed them. When a member of the SEAL team asks Henry what he will list as the cause of Kongoli, he responds: “We’re going to say that we did this to ourselves” (376).