“The Strongman and the Mermaid”

Book two of three

Part love story. Part his story. Part her story. Part immigration story. Part survival story. Part America’s story. 

Turn of the century Donora, Pennsylvania…so hard to imagine having to quit school to help support her growing family. What about her dreams of a lemon scented home? Even harder to imagine growing up in a town where seeing the sun is a novelty. Immigrants competing for jobs. Favors. Lies. Hidden treasure. A pecking order of society. There was no guidebook to learn how to get ahead. Struggles. Traditions. Hope. Love. 

Can one find happiness in a hard scrabble life? How will they know if they’ve achieved all they can? What will they leave for their children? Is their love enough?

“After the Fog”

I know I’ve said it before, but books seem to find me. Threads of those stories start to intertwine. I find myself caught in the 1940s. Tesla, Edison, Oppenheimer,  Einstein, and Stan Musial. Tangled. Invention. Cigarette smoke. Steel mills. Baseball.

Our past shapes us, revealing our prejudices. Things we thought we had buried, play out in ways we never thought imaginable. Uncontrolled. Our environment adding to or taking away our pain. Secrets. Lies. Confession, and perhaps, redemption. How can we control the outcome of our lives? Justify the decisions we’ve made? How will we be judged? With empathy? Spite? My thinking has tumbled past Shoop’s novel, gathering steam in looking at this time in history with a different lens. Accepting what was. The wonder of the big idea. Yet, seeing what needed to change. Invention. Cigarette smoke. Steel mills. Baseball. A tangled mess.

The Invention of Everything Else

If you’ve lived a “peculiar” life, does that give an author license to exaggerate your eccentricities? I’m not so sure. This is NOT a work of historical fiction. Although there may be bits and pieces of Nikola Tesla’s life as part of the storyline, the bulk of this novel is fantasy. I felt slighted as I read. I wanted a true representation of Tesla’s life. The first few chapters held promise. The story jumped around. I was confused, a lot. It was like reading a fusion of genres. Not what I was expecting.