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From Bloomberg Businessweek writer Michael Smith and Jonathan Franklin, author of 438 Days, now comes the highly-anticipated new book CABIN FEVER: The Harrowing Journey of a Cruise Ship at the Dawn of a Pandemic- a harrowing narrative of the Holland America cruise ship Zaandam, which set sail with a deadly and little-understood stowaway-COVID-19-only days before the world shut down in March 2020.



In early 2020, the world was on edge. An ominous virus was spreading on different continents, and no one knew what the coming weeks would bring. Far from the hot spots, the cruise ship prepared to sail from Buenos Aires, Argentina, loaded with 1,200 passengers-Americans, Europeans and South Americans, plus 600 crew. Less than a week would pass before passengers and crew aboard Zaandam begin to fall sick. As the world's ports shut down, Zaandam was repeatedly denied safe harbor everywhere, leaving everyone on board in a maelstrom of uncertainty, paranoia, and fear. With only two doctors aboard and few medical supplies to test for or treat COVID-19, and ever-dwindling food and water, the ship wanders the oceans on an unthinkable journey.



In a sea of wide-angle COVID books, CABIN FEVER is a compact thriller set in a terrifying floating microcosm-danger, perilous story twists, and creeping dread are woven into every page. Fear of the unknown ran rampant on board and gives the book a riveting, atmospheric feel. Smith and Franklin take readers behind the scenes of the ship's complex workings, and belowdecks into the personal lives of passengers and crew who were caught unprepared for the deadly ordeal that lay ahead: From a retired American school superintendent on a dream vacation with his wife of fifty-six years and an Argentine psychologist taking this trip to celebrate her sixty-fourth birthday, who's suddenly paralyzed with fear by increasingly alarming news reports, to an Indonesian laundry manager who's been toiling on Holland America cruise ships for thirty years, sending his monthly paycheck to his family back home.