The Kingdom of Ohio

Recently arrived in Manhattan in 1900, Peter Force joins a labor crew that is helping to construct the new subway system. In New York he meets a mysterious woman who claims to have traveled into the future from a place he knows all too well. But the frontier kingdom never existed quite as she claims. Todd McClaren gives a soft-spoken, carefully navigated reading that allows the author's beautiful descriptions to woo the listener with their simplicity. McClaren's tone is straightforward, his pace relaxed. Overall, McClaren's delivery is so smooth that it's easy to get lost in this genre-crossing novel. L.B. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

September 21, 2009
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.