Finished it today, and give it a thumbs up! It has elements of an action thriller, environmental thriller, romance novel, and tear jerker in one spot. Almost historical because almost all of it takes place in 1989, with a short chapter at the end bringing us up to the present.
Well done, and recommended reading for those who like to read a mix of science fact, action and romance, and a little 1980s history in dramatic fiction. Well developed characters, and even though we know the answers to parts of the medical thriller and crime drama, it is fun to have the various characters find the answers.
It is kind of funny that one of the original bad things, a bad reactor, has become, with the later developments of "good' reactors and the corrupt stopping of using the perfectly good Yucca Mountain nuclear disposal site, that safe nuclear reactors are part of our "green power' future. There are more waste to methane projects, a lot more wind generators and not nearly enough solar houses, now. Yosemite is no longer a place where you can just go for a romantic date without a two week notice anymore, so it is a look at a more innocent time when global warming and overpopulation had not reached the exponentially worse point they are at now.
There are a few points of slight errors, but nothing serious enough to take away from a great reading book. The expertise of the microbiology science more than made up for that. Five Stars!