Love in the Shadow of Death explores the professional and intertwined lives of doctors as they and their family members come down with the COVID. It also delves into the suffering of their patients as they recover or die alone in the hospital. A new, fictional variant, named Pi, that solely affects the brain and causes Amnestic Brain Fog, brings about considerable turmoil and debate as to whether the virus was created in a lab to be selectively released in New York. One doctor embarks on unearthing the mystery. This powerful novel, set in the pandemic years, brings us close to the mystery of love in a time of destruction and death. It tells the story of lovers caught in the grips of mortality; their luminous, ebullient lives misted over in a world subject to rapid change. Beautiful and profoundly moving, it is emotionally accurate, and wise. Gomes’ creation of the Pi variant causing Amnestic Brain Fog, is imaginatively immense. —Grace Schulman, author of seven exclaimed books of poetry including, New and Selected Poems, and winner of the Frost Award for Lifetime Achievement in American Poetry. She is currently Distinguished Professor Emerita of English, Baruch College, C.U.N.Y. Everyone in the world of this novel is threatened by the presence of Covid, each one’s fate an uncertainty. It is all seen through the eyes of a physician, Jeff Anderson, an infectious disease specialist with a central role in fighting the challenges of the pandemic, accentuated by the personal dilemma of finding the people he loves most transformed into patients he is committed to cure. Again and again, love and friendship face an urgency. For Jeff, what would have been a medical challenge if his cases had been strangers becomes an emotional crisis when those in danger are the people who make his life worth living. In this novel, Gomes through his characters and his creation of a new Pi variant speaks directly to his readers, aware each of us must cope with the vulnerabilities of a new, and constantly mutating, unfamiliar virus. —Walter Cummins, author of more than 10 books including Knowing Writers. He is an Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Fairleigh Dickinson University. This powerful novel, set in the pandemic years, brings us close to the mystery of love in a time of destruction and death. It tells the story of lovers caught in the grips of mortality; their luminous, ebullient lives misted over in a world subject to rapid change. Beautiful and profoundly moving, it is emotionally accurate, and wise. Gomes' creation of the Pi variant causing Amnestic Brain Fog, is imaginatively immense. -Grace Schulman, author of seven exclaimed books of poetry including, New and Selected Poems, and winner of the Frost Award for Lifetime Achievement in American Poetry. She is currently Distinguished Professor Emerita of English, Baruch College, C.U.N.Y. Again and again, love and friendship face an urgency. For Jeff, what would have been a medical challenge if his cases had been strangers becomes an emotional crisis when those in danger are the people who make his life worth living. In this novel, Gomes through his characters and his creation of a new Pi variant speaks directly to his readers, aware each of us must cope with the vulnerabilities of a new, and constantly mutating, unfamiliar virus. -Walter Cummins, author of more than 10 books including Knowing Writers. He is an Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Gomes creatively and masterfully uses the rapid mutation of the Corona virus to fictionally create the Pi variant that selectively affects the brain causing Amnestic Brain Fog in his friend Jacques, the playboy intervention cardiologist and several other patients. "The scene looked like a human bog with some patients floating around as they circled their beds aimlessly in an awkward maze-like formation staring into nothingness, zombie-like, while others lay on their beds, heads bobbing, all attired in the same blue scrubs." Gomes is a masterful storyteller in the vein of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. -Umesh K. Gidwani, MD, MS, FCCM, FACC, FCCP, FSCAI, Professor of Medicine Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Chief, Cardiac Critical Care, Zena and Michael A. Wiener Cardiovascular Institute; Director, Cardiac ICU, Mount Sinai Hospital and System Director, ICCM Patient Safety and Quality. A new variant causing Amnestic Brain Fog invades the high stakes world of Jeff's mentor Jacques, the playboy heart specialist, that strips him of memory and self. The variant begins to spread, and suspicions surround the Center designed to study it. A thriller, a passion play, a poetry of disease, Gomes' prose is supple enough to illuminate the scientific as well as the metaphorical. His imagery is often stunning. "As their vines opened my mouth wide the alliums with their long stems entered my throat and went down my windpipe." Gomes has written an impassioned and essential novel about a turnin