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 story 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 these two? The book occasionally returns to the narrator, who adds extra information to the story that is clearly insider knowledge. Is it Peter? Is it Cheri-Anne? I went back and forth between the two, and sometimes wondered if the narrator was a third person, someone not yet introduced. This was an effective device, which added another layer of complexity to the tale.

Flaming weaves fact into fiction with great effect. He creates a sound backdrop to his story: the growth of New York at the turn of the last century, the building of the subway system, the science and scientists of the day, such as Tesla and Edison, and the burgeoning economic importance of New York and financiers like J.P. Morgan. With this firm footing in reality, Flaming introduces Cheri-Anne, who claims to be from an independent kingdom within the United States, founded by the Toledo family of France, the kingdom of Ohio. And he almost sells it, with academic footnotes and references to newspaper articles. I started to wonder if it was in fact real.

I considered breaking away from the book to search online to see if I could determine if this kingdom had some basis in fact. I think this would have broken the spell he had cast, halting the suspension of my disbelief. But I didn’t follow through. The unintended effect of the footnotes and side bars was to divert me from the core story, and since they didn’t aid in moving the narrative forward they started to become work, unfortunate in a novel that was such a pleasure to read. On a positive note, all of this is presented early in the book, and the pace picks up quickly after this point.

Flaming skilfully draws from several genres – science and science fiction, fantasy and history, romance and mystery – to create a singular novel that is fresh, clever, and above all entertaining. If you are looking for something that is unlike what you are reading now, this is it. And even if you are not looking for something different, you should still pick up The Kingdom of Ohio. You won’t be disappointed.

(The Kingdom of Ohio is published by Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam. This review copy was provided courtesy of Penguin Books Canada.)