“It’s 1897. Gold has been discovered in the Yukon. New York is under the sway of Hearst and
Pulitzer. And in a few months, an American battleship will explode in a Cuban
harbor, plunging the U.S.
into war. Spanning five years and half a dozen countries, this is the
unforgettable story of that extraordinary moment: the turn of the twentieth
century, as seen by one of the greatest storytellers of our time. Shot through
with a lyrical intensity and stunning detail that recall Doctorow and Deadwood
both, A Moment in the Sun takes the whole era in its sights—from the
white-racist coup in Wilmington, North Carolina to the bloody dawn of U.S.
interventionism in the Philippines. Beginning with Hod Brackenridge searching
for his fortune in the North, and hurtling forward on the voices of a
breathtaking range of men and women—Royal Scott, an African American
infantryman whose life outside the military has been destroyed; Diosdado
Concepcíon, a Filipino insurgent fighting against his country’s new colonizers;
and more than a dozen others, Mark Twain and President McKinley’s assassin
among them—this is a story as big as its subject: history rediscovered through
the lives of the people who made it happen..”
