Manna from Hell

A Bulgarian crop researcher goes to help a famine village in Sudan. He spends years irradiating crop seeds with neutrons to increase their yields. He only gets incremental results until he grows despondent during a brutal famine and abandons his usual cautious protocols. Incredibly, this results in a staggering bounty--an unexplainable "Manna from Heaven." However, a bloodthirsty general destroys the village and imprisons the Bulgarian while forcing him to work supporting his plans. To make matters worse, soon a mysterious and deadly syndrome starts spreading within the region's people and grows to threaten the lives of millions.Is it somehow related to the agricultural miracle? A newly minted French epidemiologist and an American journalist team up to investigate only to eventually discover that the heavenly bounty is really a "manna from hell."

-- Peter Hussey