Posies

Posies is the common name for WAKS disease (the initials are never explained). It is a disease which infects and kills everyone by the age of twenty-one, though most people die a few years before then. Posies causes discolored marks to break out on the skin, which ultimately form sores, cause fevers, and cause the body to shut down in death. The cause and origin of posies is unknown; but, it is known that the disease broke out some eighty years before the events of the novel in the northeastern United States. It led to massive migration and evacuation for both those that could afford to leave and those not infected. It is commonly believed that the disease is not dangerous to whites but very dangerous to blacks. There is a cure for posies which is held by the Europeans, Russians, surviving Americans to the west...