When it comes to selecting settings, I am a creature of habit. I usually pick the time and place of a novel weeks, if not months, in advance. On occasion, though, I break form. This was one of those times.
Until I finished The Lane Betrayal in February, I struggled with where to set the second novel in the Time Box series. San Francisco in both 1849 (gold rush) and 1906 (earthquake) was a possibility. So was Philadelphia in 1876. The city hosted the Centennial Exposition that year. Neither setting grabbed me.
Then I read about the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, a fair in Chicago that introduced the Ferris Wheel, Cracker Jack, the automatic dishwasher, and scores of electrical innovations. When I learned that 1893 was also the year of a severe economic depression, class conflict, and H.H. Holmes, America's Jack the Ripper, I decided to jump into that exciting and turbulent time. The Fair, the continuation of the Lane family saga, is the result of that decision.
For the Lanes, six time travelers from 2021, five months in the Gilded Age is a chance to catch their breath following a perilous and tragic journey to 1865. While physicist Mark Lane, 53, and wife Mary try to build a home in the Windy City, their children use the time to grow. Fun-loving Laura, 22, befriends a mischievous Irish artist. No-nonsense Jeremy, 19, falls hard for an engaged debutante. Younger daughter Ashley becomes a teenager. Former Army officer Jordan, 26, finds his answers elsewhere. Still grieving the death of a murdered lover, he trades Chicago for rough-and-tumble Virginia City, Nevada, where he finds adventure, purpose, and new romance.
Robert Devereaux has no intention of letting the Lanes rest. Determined to recover two time machines his former business partner stole from him, he sends assassin Silas Bain on two missions to retrieve his property and eliminate a pesky family. The billionaire commits his company to finding the Lanes, even as one of his trusted aides, a Lane confidant, secretly attempts to undermine him.
Like The Lane Betrayal, The Fair offers suspense and thrills, particularly in the last twenty chapters. Unlike the first book, it focuses primarily on relationships and motives. Readers see different sides of Mary, Jordan, and Jeremy; learn more about Devereaux and Bain; and view the limitations of 1893 through the eyes of its women.
They also see the fair. From the day President Grover Cleveland launches the exposition to the day the Lanes leave it, readers see one of history's greatest spectacles in all its glory. They see an event that is still in the news 127 years after it closed its doors.
The Fair is the second of five planned books in the series, which spans the century from 1865 to 1963. My seventeenth novel goes on sale today at Amazon.com and its twelve international sites.