Winner of the 2004 ForeWord Book of the Year Award
Toronto in 1856 is industrializing with little time for scruple or
sentiment. When Reform politician William Sheridan dies suddenly and his
daughter Theresa vanishes, only one man persists in asking questions. A
former suitor of Theresa's, bank cashier Isaac Harris has never managed
to forget her, despite her marriage to another man. Thrust into the role
of amateur detective, he must now struggle with the demands of his job
and the shortcomings of the fledgling city police. He also faces the
hostility of Theresa's powerful husband, a steamboat and railway
magnate. Harris's search takes a grisly turn when, in a valley outside
of town, he finds human remains decked in traces of Theresa's finery. If
she is dead, who is responsible? And who cares to find out, apart from
the man who wooed her too timidly and now would do anything to make up
for it? Death in the Age of Steam whirls the reader through a richly
realized Victorian landscape, from Niagara Falls to Montreal and north
as far as the shores of Lake Superior. It's a world at once near and
exotic, a world of noise and smoke and churning pistons, but a world
still very familiar to denizens of the 21st century.
