The Lightning Keeper - by Starling Lawrence (Paperback)

About the Book

Sparks fly in Lawrence's blend of romance and historical fiction, set against the struggle to harness electricity in the early 20th century. Skillfully intertwining fact and fiction, the author generates an electric history of ideas, kindled by the flames of capital and passion.

From the Back Cover

This is the story of an unlikely love at the dawn of the electric age in America. In 1914, Toma Pekocevic is a penniless immigrant in New York recently escaped from the bloody politics of the Balkans that has claimed most of his family. He is also a gifted inventor who 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's invention is all he has after losing Harriet to a wealthy politician, but he is determined to win her back, setting the stage for a confrontation that could change not only his life but the course of scientific progress.

Review Quotes

"The Lightning Keeper is a great novel, a transcendent and enduring American novel. I loved it." - Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird
"Skillfully intertwining fact and fiction, Lawrence generates an electric history of ideas, kindled by the flames of capital and passion." - Publishers Weekly
"A splendid novel . . . Starling Lawrence has immense gifts as a writer. His book is a true reading pleasure--an old-fashioned, sprawling and patient unfolding of a century that is the mark of indispensable storytelling." - --Howard Norman, author of In Fond Remembrance of Me
"Lawrence blends science and romance into an immensely readable story; his descriptions ... are as exciting as they are beautiful." - Library Journal (starred review)
"Lawrence has created a very American saga." - Booklist