Midland Fair - Edward Williams

Every family has a map. The Murphys had one that changed everything.

Midland Fair is a sweeping, richly imagined work of historical fiction that traces one family’s extraordinary journey -- from the ancient forests of Europe to the teeming streets of nineteenth-century America -- across generations, continents, and centuries of upheaval.

It begins in the Reisenthal Valley, a hidden mountain refuge where the Manrovii people have lived untouched by the outside world for a thousand years. When one restless young man finally leaves, everything changes. What follows is the saga of the Murphys: pioneers, strivers, wanderers, and survivors who find themselves caught up in the full current of American history -- from the Erie Canal to the Illinois frontier, from the gleaming spectacle of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair to the labor strikes of Pullman, from the gilded excess of the Gilded Age to the trembling edge of a new century.

Written with the voice of a classic Victorian novelist and the sweep of an epic, Midland Fair is a story about contingency and purpose, about the lives we inherit and the ones we forge for ourselves. Edward Williams’s debut is a rare thing: a novel of ideas that is also a genuine page-turner, populated with unforgettable characters whose fates feel both inevitable and entirely surprising.

For readers who love Hilary Mantel, Edward Rutherfurd, or E.L. Doctorow -- this is the novel you’ve been waiting for.