Step back in time to this full-blooded, deep-spirited American saga
Before the Civil War, the lives of three siblings raised at the Lockhouse on the National Mall take dramatic turns as they rebound from the death of a baby in the canal. The oldest, Betsy, and mother of the drowned child, must accept God's punishment for her life as a whore in Washington's most prestigious bawdy house. Frank, non-religious, seizes the opportunity to move upriver and learn his Uncle's businesses on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal. Lilly, the youngest, is scarred for life, renounces God, and begins an education that will bring her to her life work.
As the characters transform, so does the National Mall. From 1848, when the Washington Monument is dedicated, to Emancipation Day, 1863, the Lockhouse and stench of the City Canal persist, while the Capitol grows wings and a new dome, the first botanical garden appears, and the Smithsonian "castle" opens. Only for the Mall to become home to thousands of soldiers – and then their hospital.
While the siblings struggle with whom or what they believe in, the country's leaders do the same as a spectrum of views on slavery and its abolition create the third change in our political party systems bringing us the newly formed Republican Party. Scenes of political times up to and including the Civil War read like current events.
This family saga of emerging feminist, businessman, and naturalist holds attention with its cast of characters from Senators to freemen, slaves, and contrabands, from bargemen to inventors, and from the explorers of the Megatherium Club to the child soldiers of the Civil War.
