Overview
In the smoldering shadow of the Great Chicago Fire, where ashes replaced a once glittering empire, fourteen-year-old Jeremy O'Reilly uncovers a blaze far deadlier than flames: a lie at the heart of his life. Ten years on, in 1881, the city's North Side gleams with rebuilt mansions and whispered fortunes-but Jeremy's world is a powder keg of deceit. Orphaned in spirit if not in name, he chafes under parents who peddle forged relics of the inferno to wide-eyed tourists, their South Side cunning ill-hidden behind silk and silver. The more he digs into fragmented memories of that fateful night-screams in the smoke, a stranger's desperate embrace-the more a chilling certainty haunts him: these swindlers aren't his blood kin. Armed with street smarts, a pilfered map of the city's underbelly, and a hunger that could torch his fragile future, Jeremy vows to unearth his true origins. But in a Chicago where secrets burn brighter than gaslights, the truth might consume him whole. What if the fire didn't just destroy his past... it stole it?
- | Author: Bailey Mapp
- | Publisher: Independently Published
- | Publication Date: Nov 04, 2025
- | Number of Pages: 196 pages
- | Binding: Paperback or Softback
- | ISBN-13: 9798273000056
