Reversing the River
an online historical novel
Published by Great Jones Street, 2017
serialized on Medium
More citizens are falling ill from unsafe drinking water, and the negligence of Chicago’s industry is to blame. When the city’s Sanitary District unveils a solution, they elect renowned bachelor, Charles Randolph Price, as a trustee. Having grown weary of luxury and rumors of his incompetence, such an undertaking is exactly what Charlie needs. After all, how difficult could it be to reverse the river’s flow?
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Read an excerpt:
Sitting on the cold stoop as snow flurried around him, Jozef felt as useless as a third boot. Upstairs, his wife was huddled deep in Ludwika’s bed, in the front room where the window was. When any of them were sick, that’s where they lay to get better or to die: little Janka with the fever was the last one, and she had passed on after a long, terrible week; mass was being said at St. Casimir’s in two Sundays. Now his wife, Krystyna — not sick, but with a baby that had been coming for too many hours, so it was her turn in Ludwika’s bed, her turn to lie in the front room.
He had resisted, wanting her to stay in the back bedroom; yes, it was on the airshaft, dark and dank, crowded with the bedding for the little girls, but wasn’t it better for Krystyna to be in a place she knew — the faded wallpaper with the roses, the cracks in the ceiling zigzagging like summer lightning? — “she’ll be fine back here,” he had said, but the women ignored him, lifting Krystyna, pulling her, prodding her into the front, into the bed where people died. How Ludwika could sleep with those ghosts, but she did.
“Go,” they told him. “We’ll take care of her.”
“But…”
“Go,” and he was nudged out the front door, and one of them even stood there, arms folded like a sentry, watching him clump down the four flights of stairs to be sure he was gone.