Books
Book 1, The Conductor
Rule #1 in the Underground Railroad: If someone doesn’t need to know something, you don’t tell them.
Philadelphia, 1835. The journey begins. Eleven-year-old Rian Krieger has been kicked out of her third school for fighting. Desperate, Rian’s father Otto shifts her education to his carriage factory. Rian’s new life is perfect for two reasons: she doesn’t have to wear a dress and the jobs in the shop fascinate her. This confounds Otto, for he dreams that Rian will one day become a wife and helpmate to a powerful husband and they will rule Philadelphia society.
The City of Brotherly Love is a roiling stew of rivalry, prejudice, and change; German artisans, Irish immigrants, the largest population of free Blacks in America. Steam engines choosh throughout the city. Workers dig ditches for new gas street lights. The fledgling railroad industry hints that change will soon come even faster. Rian is swept into this racial and economic turmoil by three charismatic mentors. Foreman Jules Freeman, one of the few Black men in Philadelphia placed in charge of whites, introduces Rian to the secretive Underground Railroad. Rian’s Irish cousin Seamus strives to prove himself amidst the hostility of Otto’s German workers and launches a new fire brigade with a controversial mission. Next-door neighbor Lucretia Mott finds her voice as a stirring abolitionist.
Rian befriends Olivia Tucker, the daughter of slave owners from Charleston who summer in Philadelphia. Together, they plot to free Olivia’s mammy from enslavement. Secrets pile up. Rian finds that she must apply Rule #1 to many parts of her life.
Book 2, The Coachman
Philadelphia, 1837. On six occasions, twelve-year-old tomboy Rian Krieger has escorted self-emancipated fugitives to the next station on their flight from enslavement. When Rian’s father, factory owner Otto Krieger, learns that she is a conductor on the Underground Railroad, he renews his plans to send her to a finishing school in Switzerland. This is a fate Rian cannot abide, as it means she would have to wear a dress all the time.
The Workshop of the World. Philadelphia bustles with commerce. The siren song of increased prosperity prompts Otto to make bold decisions. Then, the Panic of 1837 descends, strangling businesses and straining the social and economic fabric of the city. Otto’s factory and home are at risk of foreclosure.
Otto’s problems are potentially resolved when two visitors from Tsarist Russia enter his factory. Rian must decide: Can the Russians’ mission help her solve her Switzerland dilemma as well?
Book 3, The Blackmailer
1838
St. Petersburg, Russia’s Window to the West. Thirteen-year-old tomboy Rian Krieger has run away to Russia to help her uncle and cousin build a railroad for Tsar Nicholas I. But there’s a problem: Rian is posing as her uncle’s coachman, a boy. The Tsar takes note of Rian’s bravery and resourcefulness and asks her (meaning orders her, for a request from the Tsar of All the Russias is in fact a command) to spend her days in his palace as companion to Grand Duke Konstantin, his 10-year-old son.
Philadelphia, U.S.A, the “Workshop of the World.” An economic depression has created massive unemployment and thrown the city into turmoil. Jules Freeman, who fled from slavery eighteen years ago, is a busy man. He struggles to keep his fledgling business afloat. He makes ends meet as foreman at Krieger Coach. His home is a station on the Underground Railroad. Then, he is asked to take on a huge task that intrigues and challenges him.
Book 3 of Rian Krieger’s Journey immerses Rian, Jules, their families, friends, and enemies in a history that has been ignored for almost two centuries.
Book 4 The Prodigy
Philadelphia U.S.A. 1838. Like America, the Krieger companies are clawing their way back from the Panic of 1837. Fourteen-year-old Rian Krieger knows this because she starts every workday as her father’s bookkeeper and the money is flowing in. When the accounting is up to date, Rian scoots to her real love: the production floor of Krieger Locomotive.
To Rian, idleness equals bad, but not in a “rich people are industrious and the poor are idle” sort of way. If Rian doesn’t immerse herself in a task that demands total concentration—bookkeeping, drawing a new part for a locomotive, pouring molten iron into a mold, caulking a boiler—dark thoughts gnaw their way loose like rats escaping from a burlap bag. You are The Oddity: The girl who hates girly-girl things. The girl who wears boys’ clothing. The girl who intends to run Krieger Locomotive some day.
Then an exploding steam engine puts Rian’s plan in jeopardy and makes way for a host of new rat-thoughts.
Rian’s father, Otto, bets everything—factories, home, reputation—on his assumption that the railroad industry will lead America out of the depression. He has to be successful, for if he doesn’t build a fortune, how else will his daughter marry well?
And in South Carolina, Olivia Tucker, the daughter of plantation owners, rebels against her destiny; a life of privilege built on the backs of the enslaved. Olivia enlists Rian in a long-distance conspiracy to burn the daily cruelties of the South’s slave system into the American consciousness.
In Books 5 - 10, Rian will fall in love, flee to Newport, Pennsylvania, become a stationmaster in the Underground Railroad, join the fight for women’s suffrage, travel to San Francisco during the Gold Rush, return to Philadelphia after a harrowing journey, fight in the Civil War, make and lose fortunes, and come to terms with who Rian Krieger really is.
