Smart and fun, The Kingdom of Ohio is a compelling read
An inventive, engaging, and intelligent book, Matthew Flaming’s The Kingdom of Ohio surprised, intrigued, and delighted me. Set primarily in New York in the early 1900s, Flaming tells the tale of Peter Force and Cheri-Anne Toledo, his narrator a present-day antiques dealer who uncovers an old photograph of the pair and relates their s tory to us. When we meet him, Peter has just arrived in New York and soon secures employment as a labourer, working underground digging subway tunnels. He meets Cheri-Anne, who is beautiful, sophisticated, and perhaps crazy. Even though he is unsettled by much of what she says, talking of kingdoms and of studying with the famous Nikola Tesla and of not knowing how she got to New York, Peter is attracted to Cheri-Anne and helps her as she tries to understand what has happened to her. As we follow them as they attempt to solve this mystery, we are presented with another. Who is the narrator, and how does he – or she – know so much about what happened to