Stranger in Two Worlds

In this sweeping, full blooded novel, a practiced storyteller relates an odyssey which moves from the old hemisphere to the new and spans the period from the Sepoy Mutiny to the famous Chicago fire. As a small child Justin Kelly knew hunger, disease, and constant fear of death in the siege of Lucknow. His mother had eloped with a sergeant in the British army and destiny found them in the stricken city at a time when extermination of the last British inhabitants seemed almost certain. Justin will lose both his parents in the siege and to his utter bewilderment is sent to Ireland, where a cold and polished grandfather undertakes his care. Justin is determined to surmount the confusion of his heritage and search for a way of life uniquely his own. Through an entanglement with a beautiful Fenian firebrand, through near ambushes and escapes, through a descent into the Dickensian slums of London and finally to America. There at last, on the ashes of the Chicago fire, he builds his career.