Set in a Newark neighborhood during a terrifying polio outbreak,Nemesis is a wrenching examination of the force of circumstance on our lives.

Bucky Cantor is a vigorous, dutiful twenty-three-year-old playground director during the summer of 1944. A javelin thrower and weight lifter, he is disappointed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his contemporaries. As the devastating disease begins to ravage Bucky'splayground, Roth leads us through every inch of emotion such a pestilence can breed: fear, panic, anger, bewilderment, suffering, and pain. Moving between the streets of Newark and a pristine summer camp high in the Poconos, Nemesis tenderly and startlingly depicts the condition of childhood, Cantor's passage into personal disaster, and the painful effect that the wartime polio epidemic has on a closely-knit, family-oriented Newark community and its children.