HOBBADEHOY RISING

An orphaned teen in the notorious Five Points district of lower Manhattan in 1854, Pencil’s cursed to scavenge the unforgiving streets where trust is a stranger.

Even as slavery has divided the nation, the good Pencil comes across is as rare as a precious gem buried in the manure-strewn streets of Gotham. The shady adults who surround him believe he’s a “hobbhadehoy,” a youth who hasn’t quite reached manhood. Despite years of neglect, he hasn’t lost his empathy for others and a fledgling sense of justice. As the lieutenant of a pack of street rats, he craves greater control of his life. His luck finally runs out when through someone’s treachery, he faces significant prison time.

Pencil’s grasps another opportunity when he’s shipped off to Ohio on one of the first “orphan trains.” Life on the farm proves to be a different challenge under the demanding, and occasionally drunken, thumb of his new guardian. Ultimately, he’s forced to flee, a much stronger physical specimen than when he arrived.

Pencil ends up in Cleveland, where a daguerreotypist takes him under her wing. She teaches him about capturing images on glass and copper while trying to impress upon him the importance of trust. Encounters with corpses, kidnappers, and grave robbers test his acceptance of the idea … and justice.

* * * * *

WORKING THE ANGLES

In 1937, G-men came to tame what some of them proclaimed as the toughest town in America . . . Akron, Ohio.Clueless to the agents’ presence, lanky eighteen-year-old Dietrich, Deet, Jenkins’ major challenge is his acclamation to the noisy, soot-filled milling department of the Consolidated Rubber Company and its accompanying labor tensions. During his first night on the job, he extricates his Black trainer from a misunderstanding prompted by their racist foreman before helping his mentor rescue a co-worker’s mangled hand from a milling machine.. A few months later, after his rubber worker father falls into a mysterious coma, the same foreman offers Deet an opportunity to make more money—the door-to-door selling of the company’s household rubber products where he can double his wages working only a couple afternoons a week. As his family’s new breadwinner, Deet sees it as a godsend. However, he quickly learns that part of his salesman role is to be a missionary, someone who badmouths the rubber workers’ union to his customers. After confiding this experience to his girlfriend, he quits the sales position and is unjustly fired that night. Plant workers stage a sit-down strike later that day and regain Deet’s job.Challenges mount as circumstances discombobulate Deet’s life from all angles—his parents’ are assaulted in their home; his uncle’s drinking problem threatens to ruin his car repair business; Parkinson’s weakens his father; his brother has been duped into criminal activities; and his Cleveland cousin is knee-deep in Hitler’s American fan club, the fascist German American Bund. As the threat of a major strike looms over his factory, Deet finds an escape from the woes surrounding him in the arms of a beautiful union activist from New York. Unfortunately, his girlfriend finds out and drops him. Deet finds himself untethered from a needed anchor. The F.B.I. enters Deet’s life, questioning him about suspected communist activity within the plant. The G-man offers some assistance for his jailed brother . . . if he does the Feds’ bidding. While there’s a risk his co-workers could suspect him of being a communist sympathizer, Deet agrees to the mission in order to help his brother. A local councilman, who’s been of assistance to the Jenkins’ family in various instances, offers his legal skills pro bono in defending Deet’s brother and possibly getting the murder charge reduced. Deet gladly offers to do some menial delivery runs for the lawyer. On one of those deliveries, Deet learns the cargo he’s carrying happens to be army-issue Springfield rifles. Deet’s shocked to learn the councilman is heading the local ring of white nationalists, who’ve been conspiring to overthrow the government. The councilman and his henchmen plan to murder Deet. As Deet is knocked unconscious in the group’s warehouse hideaway, the F.B.I. breaks in to arrest them and rescue Deet. Although his father has passed away, Deet has made amends with his girlfriend, and his precision drawing skills have been noticed by the plant’s superiors, who offer him a new career as a draftsman.

Book ExcerptS
HOBBADEHOY RISING
“Young man, I don’t view you as an overly religious sort, but even if you were, I’d tell you the same thing—we are all but earthly vessels, and it is our souls with which our Heavenly Father is concerned. Take these misfortunate paupers. As earthly vessels, their lives were cracked and broken, of little value to anyone else. In death, they have renewed value.”“That certainly would be your opinion. What about their families and loved ones?” I kept my eyes focused beyond the bobbing of heads and handles.“Good question. What about them? If they were not all alone in this world, why did they end up here with nameless markers? However, in my hands these vessels will impact society in a powerful way.”“I don’t see how slicing and carving them up can be considered a worthy ending for anyone.”“That is cruel and undeserving, but also the belief of many without a scientific inclination. Look at it from your present situation—are you reading books about making daguerreotypes, or is Miss Victoria allowing you to take part in the process?”I wasn’t quite sure what Snarkwether was driving at, so I paused before addressing him face-to-face. “Well, she is teaching the steps, slowly but surely.”“As I would expect. If you had a gold watch, handed down over the years from your ancestors, would you take it to someone who’d never opened the cover of such a watch in his life?” In his lantern’s light, his lips barely moved as he spoke.“No.”“Why not?” His perfectly rounded eyebrows peaked.“Having never looked inside ...   who knows how much damage he could do to the watch?”“Since you say you’re familiar with death, what if you were shot in the chest, and you needed the bullet removed from between your heart and lungs to save your very life. Who would you prefer? A novice surgeon who’s never dissected human flesh and has never experienced the inner workings of the human anatomy or a surgeon of whatever age who has actually operated on bodies, be they living or dead?” He pulled the lapel of his coat close to him.I scanned the dark horizon of the graveyard, sensing the logic of the doctor’s argument before turning back towards him. “I see what you’re saying, but there must be another way.” I looked toward the students whose work was almost done. “This is truly ghoulish.”