Author(s): Starling Lawrence

Fiction

"The Lightning Keeper" is a sweeping epic novel of ambition, love and enterprise in America. It is the story of an unlikely Romeo and Juliet romance at the dawn of the electric age, with the nation balancing on the brink of world war and a scientific revolution. In 1914, Toma Pekocevic is a penniless immigrant in New York, recently escaped from the bloody politics of the Balkans that have claimed most of his family. Also a gifted inventor, he designs a revolutionary water turbine while working with Harriet Bigelow, scion of a proud Connecticut iron-making dynasty now fallen on hard times. Their attraction is immediate and overwhelming, but every circumstance is against them. Toma is eventually drawn inside the industrial empire of General Electric, his machine an essential cog in its grand scheme to provide electricity to the entire country. After he loses Harriet to a wealthy politician, his invention is all he has - but Toma is determined to win her back. The stage is set for a confrontation that could change not only his life but the course of scientific progress.