Ex Post Facto

On a Saturday morning in October, less than a month before the 2010 mid-terms, Stella Lykins nurses a headache of over-indulgence, and witnesses a thin stranger appear and disappear in her kitchen, right between the table and the stove. In July of 1882 in an otherwise empty pasture, young farmer Jacob Burdon encounters a woman seated at a table. In January 2138, Doctors Rabenhorst and Gujarat labor to actualize an idea conceived by visionary recluse Albinius Boole. The doctors struggle with phenomenon inexplicable, a time-jumping fugitive, and his pursuant, and unwittingly launch a week of confusion and chaos for Northwood’s former residents of two centuries.
Multiple eras intersect on a single plot of ground, the Midwestern town of Northwood, where 19th-Century agraria, contemporary suburb, corporate technocracy, and borderless urbana all weave together. The world, of course, is imperfect, and Northwood is no exception, a little town built over a wound in time.
A tale told in the guise of paranormal memoir, historical pastoral, sci-fi farce, hero’s journey, and theatre-of-the-unlikely, Ex Post Facto is a darkly (or at least dimly) comic novel of doubt, witness, seclusion, connection, community, friendship, the finality of choice, and the enigma of Fruit Pie the Magician.