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| About the Book |
Book Title: Downriver
Series: The Poison River Series (Book 1)
Author: Jennifer M. Lane
Publication Date: May 28, 2024
Publisher: Pen & Key Publishing
Pages: 344
Genre: Historical
Any Triggers: Death, Violence
A sulfur sky poisoned her family and her heart. Now revenge tastes sweeter than justice.
It’s 1900. In a Pennsylvania coal town tainted by corruption and pollution, Charlotte's world collapses when her parents meet a tragic end. Sent to a foster family in a Maryland fishing village, she’s fueled by grief and embarks on a relentless quest for justice against the ruthless coal boss, Nels Pritchard.
But Charlotte is no ordinary girl. She shares the fiery spirit of her father, whose powerful speeches inspired worker riots. With a burning desire for vengeance, she sets out to uncover the truth behind Pritchard's crimes, unearthing a shocking connection between the town's toxic air and the lifeless fish washing up on the shore of her Chesapeake Bay foster town.
To expose the truth, Charlotte builds a network of unexpected allies. There are gutsy suffragists, a literary society of teenage girls willing to print the truth… and Weylan. The captivating young man lost his own family to Pritchard’s poison. He offers support, but Charlotte questions his true motives when he lures her to break the law. Could she be falling into a dangerous trap, leading her to a fate worse than poison?
With her unwavering spirit and determination, Charlotte must forge alliances and navigate a web of treachery before Pritchard seeks his own ruthless revenge.
The newest book by award-winning author Jennifer M. Lane is perfect for fans of Jeannette Walls’ Hang the Moon and the fiery protagonist in The Hunger Games. Join Charlotte in this small town, coming-of-age dystopian historical saga as she finds resilience, courage, and triumph in her search for identity, independence, and her true home.
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This title is available to read on #KindleUnlimited.
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Author Bio:
A Maryland native and Pennsylvanian at heart, Jennifer M. Lane holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Barton College and a master’s in liberal arts with a focus on museum studies from the University of Delaware, where she wrote her thesis on the material culture of roadside memorials.
Jennifer is a member of the Authors Guild and the Historical Novel Society. Her first book, Of Metal and Earth, won the 2019 Next Generation Indie Book Award for First Novel and was a Finalist in the 2018 IAN Book of the Year Awards in the category of Literary / General Fiction. She is also the author of Stick Figures from Rockport, and the six book series, The Collected Stories of Ramsbolt.
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Website: www.jennifermlanewrites.com
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| Read An Excerpt |
Excerpt 1: Chapter One
Three generations of the Morris family have worn quite a path on this floor. With the house nearly empty and the rugs gone, a path stands out. Through the keeping room, past the spot where Father’s old chair used to be, and into the dining room. Past little scrapes dug into the floor where table legs sat.
One last glance in the kitchen. The calendar is still pinned to the side of the cupboard, stuck in January of 1900. I lost the will to turn the pages as four months of sickness fell on the house and people streamed through to offer up their pity. Neighbors. Friends. The doctor with his lies and excuses. Father’s friends, who once sat around our table plotting the uprisings. The speeches I wrote are nothing but ashes now. Burned in the stove just like Father asked.
It’s like life is decomposing here, and all that’s left is bones.
The people. The chairs. Tables. Beds and the wardrobes. Almost everything in my life is gone, except Emmett and the grandfather clock. It chimes one last time, ten minutes past the hour, ticking out of time on its way to the end. I bite back the urge to topple it to the floor and stomp it to smithereens just to keep that stupid bank from taking one more thing.
“Charlotte?” Emmett calls me from outside. “Sophie’s here.”
“One minute.” I take one last glance around the kitchen where Mother should be. A fine layer of coal dust has settled on everything since she died. I’ve been doing my best to keep up with it to impress the people from the state, but I gave up on it when they gave up on me. It’s a good thing our home is farthest from the mine or everything would be black. We might be sicker. The distance may be what spared me.
I take in my last breath of home and step out the door onto the porch. The sun-warmed wood smells like endless summer days that belong to a different version of me.
Emmett clings to the pigsty fence with one hand, doubled over with a coughing fit while our cousin Sophie looks on in horror. They’re just months apart, both of them fifteen. Emmett’s too young to be falling apart like this, and Sophie’s too young to be losing so many people.
Emmett shivers despite the heat, dabbing the cuff of his sleeve against his bleeding gums.
“He’s getting worse,” Sophie whispers.
“Yeah.” The shaking started a few weeks before.
His cheeks are still pink though, not splotchy and red yet. That comes just before the poison really sets in, before teeth start bleeding and falling out. Before the body falls apart.
I tug a handkerchief from my pocket and hand it to him. He glares at me and swats me away until something makes him change his mind, and he sighs and snatches it from my hand. He’s been like this since he started getting sick, grumpy and bitter all the time. Resentful about needing help, I suppose. I can’t blame him for being angry. Being shipped off to God knows where, far from his friends, but he won’t talk about it. The only silver lining to leaving Stoke is the chance that Emmett might put some weight back on, stop coughing and bleeding from the gums so much, when we put some distance between us and this awful place. That’s what they say, anyway.
“I’m sorry your father will never know for sure what causes that smell.” The wind picks up, and Sophie brushes hair from her eyes and winces at the horizon.
“Pritchard says it’s harmless.” I shrug and scowl. The man is a liar and a monster.
Some days that smell wraps around the house and seeps inside. On days like that, we shut the windows and play games. We make up stories and dream about hopping on a train and going west to become silent film stars. At least, we used to. Before life got too heavy to carry.
“How long is—” Emmett coughs, a deep rattling in his lungs. He wheezes and ratchets his breath back to a voice close to being steady but not quite. “Is it gonna take that orphan court man to show up?”
“He should be here soon.” I kick at a fence post, and dirt falls from my shoe.
“I wish you could live with us.” Sophie’s eyes grow red again.
“Don’t,” I plead. My pendulum swings between tears and a strange numbness. In between, there are people. People who want to buy our things, tell me they’re sorry nothing could be done. People from the bank who won’t let us stay because Father took out a mortgage. People who say I’m not capable of paying it back. People from the state who wouldn’t let Emmett and me stay together until I nearly drowned them in letters. It’s all too much. “Your mother hasn’t room for us with ten children in the house. She can barely feed all of you. Besides, we’ll be back. I promise.”
“You can’t promise that,” she says.
“Yes, I can.”
“What do you want to… Why do you…” Emmett’s breath hitches with a cough. “Why come back?”
“Because it’s home.”
“You’d be better off running and never looking back,” Sophie says. “Get Emmett through school like you promised. Make some new friends. Get as far away as you can. And you can write me a million letters now that you aren’t writing speeches.”
I shoot daggers at her with my eyes, because Emmett never knew. She mouths the word sorry at me. I doubt Emmett heard, though, over his hacking.
The unmistakable sound of a horseless carriage turning onto our lane makes Sophie wrinkle her nose and raise her shoulders to her ears.
“Duryea,” Emmett says.
The odd beast grumbles like a metal dragon, flying along in a cloud of dust.
“Those God-awful things are so loud.” I shove my hands deep into the pockets I’d sewn into my skirt.
Sophie grabs me by the shoulders, growing serious and looking an awful lot like her mother which means she looks like my father, and my throat wells shut again. “I guess we’re not running off to make silent films, then?”
“Doesn’t seem like it.”
The air between us thickens, and I blink up at the clouds, hoping Sophie won’t make me sob. I am not leaving this place in tears. I will leave with my chin up.
“Are they driving you all the way there?” Sophie presses her hand against her stomach as if the goodbye makes her sick.
“Just to the station.” I hold in my breath. I don’t want to remember home this way, the smell of rotten eggs and the salty taste of tears.
Sophie pulls me in, squeezing me so tight my ribs might break. “Maryland seems so far.”
Far, but our only option. The alternative was being shipped to opposite ends of the universe. Lucky for us, someone either took pity on us or got tired of hearing from me and found a place sixty miles away in Maryland.
Emmett leans across the fence and spits a wad of pink on the dry ground.
The horseless carriage gets closer and it’ll drown us out soon. I reach down for the handle of my suitcase, and sun glints off a shiny black coal lump nestled in the dirt. One of Father’s carvings. My little coal lion. Father would sit at night on the porch and whittle, carving away at spare clumps of coal. He made a whole circus for me over the years. It must have fallen out of a crate when they took everything away.
I dust him off and trace the little chisel marks in his mane.
“I haven’t thought about those in years.” Sophie smiles.
He won’t be safe in my pocket, so I tuck him in my suitcase among my things. Back straight and knuckles white, gripping the handle for dear life, I refuse to look back at my home again. Though I keep telling myself I’ll hear my parents’ voices in my head forever, that they aren’t tied to this place, I know if I look back, I’ll hear them call me to dinner, and I can’t bear it. I won’t say goodbye.
The Duryea pulls to a stop and Emmett hops down off the fence. He chats with the driver, a portly man with a wiry white beard who looks like he belongs behind a desk, squinting at an account book, not driving a spine-crunching horseless carriage.
“I wrote you this.” Sophie reaches into her pocket and pulls out a wrinkled letter. “Don’t read it until you’re settled.”
I nod and cross the hard-packed dirt path that leads from the porch to the car, climb in next to Emmett, the suitcase on my lap. The three of us press together on the seat with Emmett in the middle. It smells like oil and leather and hot metal.
I give Sophie one last wave and face forward. If I blink enough and stare at the floor, my tears will dry up before they fall, and Emmett won’t call me a sissy. And if I don’t look back, I won’t have to see Cousin Sophie fade into the distance. I won’t have to watch the only home I’ve ever known, stripped to the bone yet packed full of memories, fade into the cloud of exhaust and coal dust. For now.
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(note: Helen has not yet read the book herself)
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Thank you for hosting Jennifer M. Lane today, with an intriguing excerpt from her new novel, Downriver.
ReplyDeleteTake care,
Cathie xx
The Coffee Pot Book Club