Beautiful, brilliant, and conveniently well-off scientist is able to move from the realm of science into that of parenthood successfully surviving suburban unrest fueled by fear and religion and circumventing the worst aspects of totalitarianism. Other characters, rather lost in the background.

An enjoyable story, strongly driven by the social effects of a new virus on the US (and in an adhoc manner, the rest of the world)--this story skirts around the edge of many "outbreak" stories providing a new scientific twist to a somewhat hackney plot. My largest complaint is that none of the characters manage to be that interesting in their own right. Additionally, although the story spends a good bit of time on the scientific questions concerning the mechanism of genetic change indicating how a subspecies might come to be created in a single generation, the longer term story is really thematically concerned with why there would be a change like this and the effects on society. But that theme is rather unexplored particularly from any scientific aspect in this book. It might have been better to end the story earlier--perhaps at the birth of the main character's child or even prior to that.