A large-hearted reimagining of beloved all-American legends, this epic debut novel brings men of myth Paul Bunyan and John Henry alive like never before, teaming up for an adventure quest with deeper interrogations of race, class, and industrialization.
Paul Bunyanlegendary larger-than-life American lumberjackis a man down on his luck. With a load of family debts on his broad back, he ekes out a miserable miners life in Lump Town, a bleak hamlet controlled by famed industrialist El Boffo. When Bunyan''s wife Lucette falls ill with a disease caused by the toxic mineral Lump, he embarks on a quest to save her. His only guide: the Chilalia mysterious creature who speaks only in questions.
Bunyans path leads to The Windy Cityand to John Henry. Henry is not yet the steel-drivin man known to folklore, but a fugitive on the run from a rigged, racist prison system. As Bunyan and Henry strive to reunite with the families they love, they must work together to solve riddles, forge weapons, brawl with a behemoth, and confront at every turn the relentless, duplicitous El Boffo.
A richly imaginative reinvention of myth, Bunyan and Henry is at once a timeless quest, a fresh origin story, and an urgent modern fable that wrestles with the two sides of the American dreamits wild idealism and cruel underbellyto inspire the awakening of the folk hero in us all.
