Witch in the White City: A Dark Historical Fantasy/Mystery (Neva Freeman Book 1), Nick Wisseman [best novels for students .TXT] 📗

massaged some of the historical details. For example, the Cold Storage fire occurred in July, not October; Sol Bloom’s righthand man went by the name Archie, not Wahib; and the mayor of Chicago was shot by the troubled Patrick Prendergast, not Roland. I’m sure I unwittingly altered other facts. But the Fair’s grandeur and scale were as I described them, if not more so—you can find acres of pictures via a quick internet search for “World’s Columbian Exposition.”

Other sources I consulted included the following:

Spectacle in the White City: The Chicago 1893 World’s Fair, by Stanley Appelbaum.

The World’s Columbian Exposition: The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, by Norman Bolotin and Christine Lang.

Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief: The Great Chicago Fire, the Haymarket Bomb, and The Model Town of Pullman, by Carl Smith.

The Pullman Case: The Clash of Labor and Capital in Industrial America, by David Ray Papke.

All the World’s A Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876-1916, by Robert Rydell.

Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class, by Larry Tye.

“All the World is Here!”: The Black Presence at White City, by Christopher Robert Reed.

The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition, by Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, I. Garland Penn, and F. L. Barnett.

Many thanks to my critique partners (Cordia Pearson, Ellis Knox, Brook McKelvey, J. A. Andrews, and Mikhaeyla Kopievsky), my beta readers (Julianne David, Laura Larsen, and Sarah Wisseman—hi Mom!), and my lovely and supporting wife (Ginger Wisseman).

If you liked Witch in the White City, would you mind leaving a review? Even a few words would be awesome—it really helps. Or, to get a free story, in-depth book reviews, and occasional updates about new releases, subscribe to my monthly newsletter at https://www.nickwisseman.com/newsletter. I promise not to do anything nefarious with your email address.

About the Author

NICK WISSEMAN LIVES in the woods of Michigan with his wife, kids, ten dogs, sixty cats, and forty horses. (The true number of pets is an order of magnitude smaller, but most days it feels like more.) He’s not quite sure why he loves writing twisted fiction, but there’s no stopping the weirdness once he’s in front of a computer. You can find the complete list of oddities on his website: https://www.nickwisseman.com

For a sample of The Red Wraith, another of Nick’s historical fantasies set in Early America, read on.

The Red Wraith (Excerpt)

THE MIDDAY SUN FESTERED like a corrupted wound, and Naysin still didn’t know how to save his people.

He shook his head, sending his hair—smoky gray, despite his mere twenty-one winters—sweeping across his ankles. Naysin was sitting cross-legged on the earthen pyramid’s broad summit, staring at a patch of crabgrass as he waited for the other shamans he’d summoned to aid him. He couldn’t actually see their ascents; the mound’s sides were steep, and he’d positioned himself at the summit’s center. But he could picture the ascenders perfectly. In appearance, they were unchanged from the second morning of the last moon, when Tay had helped him plant the beacon.

“Naysin?” she lisped.

He didn’t look up; he could visualize Tay as clearly as the ascenders. After hours of pacing, she’d finally sat next to him, double-bladed rainstick balanced on her thighs and deceptively milky eyes scanning the summit’s perimeter. His earth-toned breechcloth contrasted sharply with her brilliant tunic and feathered leggings.

“You had a question?” she asked gently.

Spirits and lakes. How long had he kept her waiting? “Forgive me ...” His focus had warbled like a blue jay since Tay spotted Quecxl, the first ascender to arrive. The fellow original man had been little more than grit on the horizon, but through some vestige of the beacon, Naysin had envisioned him fully: muscular build, middling height, and badly pocked skin shaded somewhere between Tay’s dusky brown and his own muted red. Quecxl wore a loincloth and a sleeveless poncho, and with each step he chanted a different word, to which the gull perched on his shoulder bobbed its grimy head.

Had the pair seen who waited for them on the pyramid? Naysin doubted it. Few creatures’ eyes were as sharp as Tay’s, and Quecxl and the bird’s had likely been fixed on the monument itself. It had clearly known better days; weeds obscured the north side’s crumbling steps, and the mound’s once-smooth slopes had been sullied by erosion and burrowing animals. But the peak remained the highest point in the flatlands, and the dirt edifice still emanated authority.

Naysin and Tay had moved back from the summit’s edge once the other ascenders came into view. He’d blinded them to each other’s presence, but they’d still chosen to climb separate sides of the pyramid, as if claiming them for their respective races. Quecxl churned up the north slope, eschewing the treacherous stairs. Conquering the east side was Amadi, a tall night skin whose ill-fitting breeches were as ragged as his salt-and-pepper beard. His chest gleamed with tattoos of glyphs and beasts, and he walked with a limp as he carried on a whispered conversation with himself.

That aside, Amadi seemed relatively calm. So did Quecxl. Maybe they hadn’t heard what Naysin had wrought since their last meeting. But on the south slope ...

“What of the burned man?” Tay asked, intuiting where Naysin’s thoughts had turned.

He considered the pale man for another breath as the stout Anglo used an exposed root to steady himself. His ropy blond hair only partially concealed the fire scar protruding from his collar, and the equally red imprint of an open palm on his forehead had grown no less horrific since their clash at Fort Kaska. In his free hand, he clutched a dragonhead blunderbuss as if his life depended on pulling its trigger. Perhaps it did. “He’s sweating,” Naysin said eventually. Ironically, the burned man appeared to be feeling the heat more than anyone else.

“Pleasant. And Isaura?”

The Espan had chosen the west side, her creamy skin every bit as beautiful as Naysin remembered. Both ankles clinked with bracelets,