When 10,000 athletes from 109 nations converge on the city of Wuhan, no one realizes the danger. Terrorists see the Olympic-styled games as an opportunity to strike. The struggle to stop them goes from 2,000-year-old Yellow Crane Tower to the pangolin pens of Huanan wet market.

Wuhan 2019 also explores the culture of one of China's fastest-growing cities, its long history and its scenic beauty. Dialogue is sprinkled with the witticisms of Confucius and the good nature of the Chinese people, but contrasted by their government's overbearing surveillance and internet censorship. The journey takes readers from bat caves in southern China to the emperor's summer palace in Manchuria, along the docks of Canton, into the gambling casinos of Macau, to the crowded pens of a Wuhan marketplace.