High Bridge

by Michael Miller

Overview

Upstate New York in the mid-19th century is a cauldron bubbling with the lure of fast fortunes, religious zealotry, and battles for civil liberties. This fervor centers on the Erie Canal, which successfully supports scores of villages brimming with opportunity. One such village, Fayetteville, shapes the lives of two future American leaders.

High Bridge tells the stories of a young newlywed, the only child of freethinking abolitionists, and a prankster lad who grows up in the large family of an austere reverend. Despite their different childhoods and worldviews, they form an unlikely friendship. Can they combine their skills to solve a mystery and vindicate a Black man accused of murder?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781646638116
Publisher:	Koehler Books
Publication date:	03/23/2023
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.85(d)

About the Author

Michael Miller was born in a small town in New Jersey similar to Fayetteville, NY. He played baseball, delivered the daily newspaper, and tramped through the woods. Through small town life, he learned to respect people regardless of their backgrounds and appreciate the gifts each person brought to the world. Miller continues to get great joy from his family, exploring the outdoors, and his volunteer community service.

Editorial Reviews

"A deftly crafted and inherently absorbing read from first page to last. . . entertaining and thought-provoking, original and memorable."

-Midwest Book Review

"Great novelists can reveal more about the past than the best historian. We in the profession don't like to admit this, but writers can provide a sense of place, time, tension, sight and sound that those of us bound by the convention of footnotes cannot achieve. Michael Miller is such a writer, and High Bridge a book that brings to life late 19^th century America's politics of sex, race, money and power. A most enjoyable and useful read indeed!"

-Jeffrey A. Engel, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University

"With no existing historical proof available on how much a young Grover Cleveland may have known or interacted with Mrs. Gage during this time, Miller fills in the gaps with compelling fiction. He tells a wonderful story of what might have been, truly capturing the essence that history knows both Cleveland and Gage to be: honest, fair, and defenders of human rights. As a historian and a native of the Fayetteville-Manlius area, I can attest to Miller's impeccable research in writing this fascinating novel."

-Laurence L. Cook, author of Presidential Coincidences, Amazing Facts, and Collectibles, and Symbols of Patriotism: First Ladies and Daughters of the American Revolution

"A highly engaging and thought-provoking journey into what might have resulted if suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage and future president Grover Cleveland, who lived in the upstate village of Fayetteville at different times, had instead known each other and become friends. By endowing them with a twenty-first-century social justice consciousness, the author skillfully invites us to consider the issues they faced, which we still do today."

-Sally Roesch Wagner author of The Women's Suffrage Movement, We Want Equal Rights!: The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on the Women's Rights Movement, and Matilda Joslyn Gage: She Who Holds the Sky

"A moving and inspirational novel, beautifully rendered, with evocative themes and fascinating characters. Author Michael Miller's depiction of nineteenth-century Upstate New York leaps off the page with vibrant images, pitch-perfect language, and nuances of customs and behaviors. The book's themes are particularly relevant; the nascent perspectives of nineteenth-century progressives with respect to inclusivity and equality, which the book so vividly portrays, are still unrealized-and are in fact currently under attack in our nation."

-Robert Steven Goldstein, author of Will's Surreal Period, Cat's Whisker, Enemy Queen, and The Swami Deheftner

"Michael Miller's High Bridge is a cleverly written historical novel that imagines the suffragette, abolitionist, and free-thinker Matilda Gage befriending a young Grover Cleveland in the New York town where both lived."

-Carter Taylor Seaton, author of The Other Morgans

From the Publisher