Latest Description
An impresario
is an individual who assumes great financial risk
to develop and implement an event.
Philadelphia, 1840: John Quincy Adams once hailed Rian Krieger as a “once-in-a-generation prodigy in the world of business . . . or perhaps mayhem.” Now sixteen, Rian is determined to one day run Krieger Locomotive and her father, Otto, has belatedly embraced her ambitions.
However, not all is rosy in Rian’s world. She is reconciled to being The Oddity: the girl who hates dresses and wears a shirt and trousers to work, who prefers to go unnoticed in a crowd, and if noticed, likes it when strangers mistake her for a boy. So, she is heartbroken when a new development complicates things—and here comes the mayhem—her body is betraying her, forcing her to ask who, or what, is Rian Krieger?
Otto, confident that the depression is now behind them, starts building a costly new factory. When the depression comes roaring back, placing the Krieger family fortunes in jeopardy, Rian must put aside ambition and body distractions to become a very public, and controversial, businessperson—an impresario.
Meanwhile, in Columbia, South Carolina: Olivia Tucker and her enslaved half-brother, Topper, send inflammatory Notes from Jasper—stories of the everyday horrors inflicted on the enslaved—to be published in Northern newspapers.
Their collaborator in the North? Rian Krieger.