It Gives You Strength

A mashup of science fiction, historical fiction, and fantasy, set in New York during prohibition, the characters interact with actual historic figures, including mobster Jack “Legs” Diamond, heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey, and World War heroine Edith Cavell.

The story follow an alien anthropologist, Tashan Zho, on a rescue mission to the distant planet Earth in 1926. Zho, is transported into the dying body of bootlegger Ryan Costello. Immediately following his death, Costello’s body is reanimated by the alien. Unfortunately, Zho’s new “host body” is so damaged from a decade of alcohol abuse that the alien’s memory and vital files are corrupted. All that remains of Zho’s mission plan is one phrase: “Find the one called Mike Kelly”.

Complicating matters, the alien soon discovers that Kelly is, himself, the leader of a criminal gang of World War veterans, who are battling mobster Jack “Legs” Diamond for control of the lucrative Canada/New York rum-running market. Upon recognizing Costello’s enhanced abilities and physical strength, Kelly forces the alien into the mob. Since Kelly is his only chance of discovering and completing his mission, the alien agrees. Costello soon recalls his critical task - to free an alien child from the Craig Colony, which they interpret to be a prison camp, before his home world, Dagan, dispatches its “rescue armada”. A force so massive and clumsy that its mere entry into the Earth’s atmosphere would devastate the planet.

By setting part of the plot in the Craig Colony, a little-known state institution in which patients with seizure disorders were essentially warehoused, the novel raises awareness of the human rights violations that occurred there.