The Kingdom of Ohio
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3.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
An elderly man living in present-day Los Angeles is forced to revisit the history he has spent years trying to deny-the tale of a young frontiersman who comes to New York City in 1901 and quickly finds a job digging the first subway tunnels. He meets a beautiful mathematical prodigy who speaks of the vanished Kingdom of Ohio. Against the electric, mazelike streets and tunnels of New York City at the beginning of the mechanical age, the couple will find themselves involved with Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, J.P. Morgan-and wrestling with the nature of history, technology, and the unfolding of time itself...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Flaming's debut mixes time travel, historical grit and an alternate history of the American frontier in a romance with a fantastic bent. A contemporary antiques dealer, after coming across an old photo, unspools the story of Peter Force, newly arrived in 1900 New York from Idaho, as he joins a crew of laborers toiling in grim conditions to build the subway system. A chance encounter throws Peter into the path of Cheri-Anne Toledo, a troubled woman who claims to have traveled seven years into the future from the Lost Kingdom of Ohio, a small frontier kingdom over which her father reigned. Cheri-Anne's plight, and his feelings for her, drags them into the orbits of a crusty J.P Morgan and of dueling inventors Thomas Edison and Nicola Tesla. As Peter and Cheri-Anne evade the powerful forces invested in Cheri-Anne, the moment when their lives and the contemporary narrator's intersects looms closer and closer, creating palpable suspense. The journey through the seedier side of New York's Gilded Age, with reprisal killings for labor agitators and nights spent in drunken dance halls, is an arresting contrast to classic time-travel themes. This is a real crowd-pleaser.
