When President Lincoln issues a call for one-thousand men to join the Union Army, the citizens of St. Paul, Minnesota form an Alliance Committee, to replace police and fire personnel who have answered the call to arms. For one boy, selected to patrol the city's most notorious district, Lowertown, it is a quick lesson in maturity. In a gripping tale of historical fiction, capturing time and place with visceral efficiency, Karl Vanghen's latest is an intimate portrayal of an American city caught up in one of the most tumultuous periods of our nation's history. Devon Finch, a student, and Randolph Finch, a policeman, grew up as the Mississippi River became a bedlam of activity following Minnesota's acceptance into the Union. Seventeen-year-old Devon must watch as his older brothers heeds the president's call for volunteers. Having joined the Alliance Committee to protect the city against a population both moral and profane, Devon finds himself in the most infamous section of the city, Lowertown, a place reputed to be the bawdiest town on the river. Lowertown is filled with an extraordinary cast of characters, river men, honorable men, women both decent and despised, prostitutes and gamblers, whose lives weave a rich life-tapestry in a city known to accumulate every type of humanity, from the high to the low, and those in between. Devon's innocence is quickly stripped always as he descends into an adventure filled with love, fear, and a danger that explode into a life-threatening horror destined to end his life. Part history, part romance, and altogether engrossing, Vanghen's third novel continues his trademarks: attention to detail, acute sense of time and place, and captivating exploration of the spaces within the human heart. Filled with unforgettable characters that range from the innocent to the rugged and those in between, Lowertown is an intimate portrayal of war and its effect on one family, in one of America's burgeoning frontier cities.
