Hazel Hayes finds out that she’s pregnant (the result of an affair with her married professor), just as a series of violent attacks by women start unfolding around her in New York City. As it becomes clear that these attacks are related, and caused by some sort of disease that only affect blonde women, Hazel decides to flee to her home in Canada. Of course hysteria over the pandemic is gripping the world, and nothing about the journey is as easy as Hazel hopes it will be. She ends up finding refuge in the home of her (missing) former lover as the guest of his cheated-on wife, narrating the end of the world to her unborn child. The typical post-apocalyptic plague novel gets a breath of new life in this feminist take, which grapples as much with the significance of women’s appearances and relationships as it does with the ethics of quarantines and martial law.