Aindreas: The Messenger, Louisville, Kentucky 1855 (Aindreas, 1)

McDaniel sets an ambitious pace in the arena of historical fiction with this first volume of a projected four-book series following the colorful and curious life of Aindreas Rivers. The little guy who gets jostled and pushed around by great events as he struggles to survive, Aindreas is a heroic underdog, with a generous heart. A 13-year-old Irish-Catholic boy living in gaudy and grubby Louisville, Ky., in 1855, a city where being Irish, Catholic, German or black usually means trouble. Aindreas is a messenger for a furniture manufacturer. Inquisitive and alert, he learns much and meets the high and lowbrows of city society, but he especially likes to hang around on the river front watching the steamboats on the mighty Ohio River. Described with homespun simplicity, Aindreas’s life is filled with wonder, uncertainty, responsibility and fear; he works hard to help support his impoverished family as his mother slowly dies from cancer. To make matters worse, the River! s are about to be evicted by their wealthy landlord, and Louisville is on the verge of racial, religious and ethnic anarchy as election day approaches and the Know-Nothing Party arms mobs of drunken thugs to intimidate voters. Aindreas’s beloved best friend, a middle-aged black slave named Isaac, is to be sold down the river, his family torn apart on the auction block, and Aindreas vows to find a way to help him. Aindreas is also cursed with seizures that scare him half to death, but these frightening episodes allow him to meet the mysterious Mr. Knight, who offers wise counsel. When Louisville explodes into violence, Aindreas acts to save Isaac and his family, and his family, and his Irish and German friends from danger. Making no pretense at sophistication, this is a well-crafted, exciting and heartwarming tale of a boy’s courage and innocence, somehow existing in a bleak society rife with corruption, bigotry and injustice. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY