Guest Blogger ~ Millicent Eidson

Three years since my initial guest blog in 2022 (https://ladiesofmystery.com/?s=eidson), my microbial mystery world has expanded to multiple disease threats worldwide. It’s a good time to catch everyone up.

For decades, I was immersed in zoonotic diseases transmitted from animals. Scientists estimate that three-quarters of new or emerging infections are zoonoses.

As a veterinarian working in public health, I dropped smelly baits from a helicopter over the Adirondacks to vaccinate raccoons against rabies. I tracked down people with explosive diarrhea from a scenic New Mexico train ride. I coordinated reporting and collection of dead birds when West Nile virus showed up in the western hemisphere.

Serious illnesses and deaths are tragic but stamping out disease outbreaks is exciting. Each cluster of ill people is a mystery for a disease detective. Everyone knows about Rizzoli and Isles from the wonderful Tess Gerritsen thrillers. But veterinarians exposed to deadly hantavirus when collecting infected mice are less familiar medical heroes.

When I retired from fulltime work as a veterinary epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and two state health departments, I continued part-time teaching about zoonoses to graduate students. It’s rewarding to open up the eyes of new public health practitioners to the fascinating world of zoonoses. But I wondered if I could do the same for the general public.

Our daughter is adopted from China like thousands of orphans with the one-child policy. In my fiction, I wanted to explore how it might feel for someone whose Asian role models are replaced by Anglo, Hispanic, and Native American cultures embedded in a rich landscape.

And many of us struggle with mental and physical health challenges from birth, injury, or illness. Can someone wrestling with that history contribute fully to our demanding, fast-paced world?

So Maya Maguire was born, inspired by my daughter’s heritage and my own with mostly Irish ancestors. Like me, Maya Maguire starts her public health career after completing years of work toward veterinary and master’s degrees. Unlike me, she’s a bit of a genius and completes all her training young, adding further stress when expected to perform at the level of other more mature CDC trainees.

The initial three novels primarily immerse us in Maya’s world, other than diary excerpts from a mysterious young boy facing his own roadblocks near the Arizona/Utah border. In “Anthracis,” Maya is in her first year of training as a CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service officer stationed in New Mexico. Along with veterinary and physician colleagues, she battles perplexing new means of anthrax infection in the Southwest.

Her second year of EIS training still finds Maya in the Southwest, tackling tick-borne Borrelia infections across Arizona and New Mexico. Then she joins a colleague based in Norway on outbreaks in multiple European countries and north Africa. Personal relationships are impossible to balance with her work obligations.

In “Corona,” Maya experiences the COVID-19 outbreak along with all of us, first in Arizona, then in Denmark with infected mink, and finally in her home country of China to find its origin in bats. Like many, she won’t escape the pandemic fully unscathed.

Mosquitoes bring “Dengue” from Puerto Rico to New York City, then New Mexico and Hawai‘i. This novel expands the MayaVerse by alternating point-of-view chapters between Maya and her public health veterinarian mentor, Faye Simpson. Faye’s a kick-ass character in her late sixties, transplanted from a childhood on a Colorado ranch to a career with the New York City health department.

“Ebola,” available this summer, broadens even more with the perspectives of multiple male characters confronting the virus in West Africa, New York City, and New Mexico. Maya’s finishing a final training year with the CDC and Faye is retired from fulltime public health work but still enmeshed in Ebola crises.

These brief summaries only touch on the lively characters in the stories. Fred Grinwold and Nancy Bingham are Maya’s physician supervisors in New Mexico and Arizona. Their early romance and outbreak puzzles are available along with other Faye Simpson stories in “Microbial Mysteries,” my short story collection.

Sci fi thrillers are entertaining but sometimes based on pure imagination. For a peek into the exciting real world of zoonotic disease control through the perspective of colorful and compelling characters, join me in the MayaVerse!

Dengue: A Microbial Mystery

Is dengue the next pandemic? Two veterinary medical detectives, decades apart in age and experience, battle the tropical disease on the mainland, then in Hawai‘i. Even in paradise, people can’t escape blood-thirsty mosquitoes spurred on by a warming climate. Join these resilient women as they push through personal challenges to discover the scientific truth and stop the relentless death toll.

From reviews:

Maya Maguire is a deeply complex character, with a backstory that contains both heartache and joy. I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know her … As for the medical terminology in the book … You’re in capable hands. Dr. Eidson uses real-life medical words and situations in the book, but they’re always put into a context that allows the reader to understand exactly what’s going on. (As an aside, the research that must have gone into this book is mind-blowing.)

Buy Links: https://books2read.com/millicenteidson/  or  Dengue: A Microbial Mystery (MayaVerse): Eidson, Millicent: 9781955481168: Amazon.com: Books

Millicent Eidson, a master of intrigue and suspense, weaves her literary magic through the pages of the Maya Maguire microbial mystery series. With a keen eye for detail and a passion for scientific puzzles, she invites readers into a world where microbes hold secrets more treacherous than any criminal. Millicent’s career as a public health veterinarian and epidemiologist began at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. After days filled with pathogens and outbreaks, the nights belonged to whispered tales of microbes dancing in her imagination. Upon retirement, her passion for storytelling blossomed into the MayaVerse, https://drmayamaguire.com/.

She can be found at Facebook, Millicent Eidson, | LinkedIn, Millicent Eidson (@EidsonMillicent) / Twitter, and Millie Eidson (@drmayamaguire) • Instagram photos and videos