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.
I spend a fitful night tangled in my sheets. In the morning, I gather the stories the literary society has collected and written, and I pack them into the bottom of a fruit basket. I cover them with apricots in case I’m stopped along the way. Then I dress in a dark skirt and a shirt and, slip in the morning light.
With my eyes peeled for anyone who might see me, I traipse through the tree line along the side of the newspaper building with my skirt hiked over my shoes to keep the burrs from sticking to my hem. Then I knock on the back door like Weylan told me to. Three quick raps. A pause. Two more.
The door flies open so fast, he must have been standing next to it waiting for me. He pulls me into the darkness, and into a short hall. There are rooms on either side, their doors open at odd angles, and the sunlight streaming in the roofline windows makes triangles on the floor.
He motions for me to follow him down the hall. “Did anyone see you?”
“No.” I pull the pages from the bottom of the basket as I follow him down the hall. “How long do you think it will take?”
“No idea.”
A room this large should feel emptier than it does. Chairs and stools are scattered around with no rhyme or reason, pushed out of the path of the last people who worked here. Counters run along two walls. All sorts of letter trays and boxes of letters clutter the place. It smells like damp concrete. Like rocks and old wood.
This isn’t his first time here in the daylight. I can tell by how easily he moves, pushing letter cases around on the counter. I spread the pages out in order, and he hands me a little metal tray with a locking slide on one end.
“It’s a composing stick,” he says. “This lever sets the column width. We’ll line the letters up in this tray, here. You put them in upside down.”
“That’s a relief,” I say. “Much easier than backwards.”
“It still takes time, but at least we can work together. We can work on separate stories and piece them together when we’re done.”
It’s too finicky a task for much talking, and our silence is easy at first, comfortable and warm, but questions worm into the quiet, and I can’t resist indulging them.
“You don’t trust me?” I ask.
“I do now. Generally, I don’t trust anyone.”
“I’m honored then.”
“Is this like what your father did in Stoke?” he asks.
“No, not at all. He gave speeches.”
“He worked with coal?”
“Not his whole life, but yes.” The words fall out of me easily. “When my parents were young, it was a small village. A few houses, mostly farms. A chapel. Then someone found coal, and people sold off their farms in pieces. Their sons started working there, like my father. They liked the company store and all it promised, but they traded their lives for a pittance. Didn’t realize they were selling their souls until it was too late.”
“What do you miss the most?” he asks.
“My life,” I say with a snort. “The little things, honestly. It was a beautiful place to live, but I miss the tall clock in the sitting room. The sound of people walking on the porch. How the front door slammed. The smell of the kitchen. I miss the woods around us, because I knew every tree. And I miss my father’s pen.”
“His pen?” Weylan almost laughs.
“It’s silly. I know. It wasn’t silver or anything fancy. Just carved wood.
“What happened to it?” He lifts a full block of text and places it on the galley tray.
“Lost when we moved. The bank said it all had to be sold, everything but our clothes. It belongs to someone else now. It’s my turn. Can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” he says.
“Did you ever look into the fish? Were you ever so angry you wanted to know why they made people sick?”
He raises a shoulder. “The truth belongs to powerful people like Whitaker. It’s easier to let them have it.”
“You can’t honestly believe that.” I pluck a comma from a tray and place it at the end of line. It makes a satisfying click as I press it into place. “That doesn’t sound like you at all. Besides, that’s a reality they’re shaping, not the truth.”
Weylan says nothing for so long that I think I’ve offended him. He works with his head down, finishing a line and topping it with a lead slug. He feels far away.
“All of these people told their stories,” I say. “They—”
“I’m not telling mine.” His voice isn’t rough but it’s definitive.
“No, I suspect if you wanted to, you would have by now. I just mean that putting it into words can be good.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” he says. “But once you put it out there, people can do what they want with it. They can twist it. Change it. Call you a liar. I prefer cold facts.”
Facts. Another thing we have in common. I would chase them to the end of the earth. “That’s fair.
The silence falls on us again, and I’m torn between apologizing and not being sorry at all.
“I didn’t mean to push,” I say. That much is true. This strange club we belong to doesn’t mean we feel the same, and that’s fine. He doesn’t need or want my apology; I can tell by his smile. No offense meant, none taken.
“I’m afraid,” he says.
“Afraid of this? Of what they’ll do if they find out it was us?”
“No. Of the truth.” He places a full block of letters on the galley and starts over. “Because once you know the truth, you might feel even more powerless. I want to build my own life, my own future. Not have it taken from me or dictated. I can’t do that if it all feels pointless.”
“So what made you want to help us, then?” I ask with a great deal of hesitation. “If you don’t want to know the truth—”
He turns to face me, his elbow on the counter, inspecting his thumb. The lead makes our fingers gray and metallic, as if we’ve been mining for something precious.
“I offered because I met someone who wasn’t afraid of the truth. Someone who went looking for it. And I want to know her more.”
My breath catches in my throat. He makes an odd sort of melancholy wince, like he’s choking back a disappointment, and I don’t know if it’s with himself or with me, but I do know this is the best and worst thing I could have heard because every moment I’m with Weylan feels less lonely. It feels like action, like my heart has momentum, and revenge eats at me less since I met him. It’s direction and hope, all mashed together, and the lightness I feel with him I can only describe as relief and whatever the opposite of alone is. Since I met Weylan, my life has a purpose even more salient than the acid cloud of vengeance that’s hung over me, and not only is it distracting, it’s the kind of thing I could get used to. I could come to crave being with him. But that means I’d have something to risk losing, and I’m never going to let myself lose another thing again.
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Jennifer M. Lane
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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