New York, 1882. A dark, forbidding city, and no place for a girl with
unexplainable powers.
Deborah Schaumberg's gripping debut takes readers on a breathless trip
across a teeming turn-of-the-century New York and asks the question:
Where can you hide in a city that wants you buried?
Sixteen-year-old Avery Kohl pines for the life she had before her mother
was taken. She fears the mysterious men in crow masks who locked her
mother in the Tombs asylum for being able to see what others couldn't.
Avery denies the signs in herself, focusing instead on her shifts at the
ironworks factory and keeping her inventor father out of trouble. Other
than listening to secondhand tales of adventure from her best friend,
Khan, an ex-slave, and caring for her falcon, Seraphine, Avery spends
her days struggling to survive.
Like her mother's, Avery's powers refuse to be contained. When she
causes a bizarre explosion at the factory, she has no choice but to run
from her lies, straight into the darkest corners of the city.
Avery must embrace her abilities and learn to wield their power--or join
her mother in the cavernous horrors of the Tombs. And the Tombs has
secrets of its own: strange experiments are being performed on
"patients"...and no one knows why.