The Labrador Response

Melissa Franckowiak is an MFA student and a practicing anesthesiologist in Buffalo, NY. Her short fiction piece, The Very Pertinent News of Gabriel Vincent DeVil, recently placed in the 86th Annual Writer's Digest Literary Fiction Awards, and her work has appeared in Nanny Magazine, Parent Co., MothersAlwaysWrite.com, Blood Puddles ,Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review, Ghost Parachute, and the anthology Children of Zeus, among other publications. She writes thrillers as Melissa Crickard. Melissa attended Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Buffalo, and after being awarded two Bachelor's degrees in Physical Therapy and Chemistry, she advanced toward her M.D. degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Melissa is the mother of two children, the owner of a chatty Panama Amazon parrot, and a lover of all things outdoors.

Melissa Crickard's knowledge of medicine combined with inspiration from the 2014 Ebola outbreak bring a terrifying element of reality to this thrilling story. Her exploration of racial tension separates this novel from others in its genre and will cement it in your memory.

When she's not working in the Emergency Department at George Washington University Hospital, Dr. Sara Sullivan lives an adventurous life. But the chance at another vacation seems to diminish with each passing day when the dangerous Labrador virus begins spreading throughout the capital, devastating the African American population and escalating racial tension. As a biracial woman, Sara begins to fear for her and her daughter's lives when mortality rates continue to grow, with no cure in sight. After being forced into quarantine due to exposure to the virus, her fear becomes reality. Escape is no longer a consideration-it's the only way she can save millions of lives, including her daughter's.



Sara's journey to find a cure becomes increasingly complex as she begins to unravel a conspiracy within the pharmaceutical industry and learns the disturbing truth about the disease's purpose.