This is early 20th-century adventure fiction at its most exuberant. Owen Clancy is a young man with grease in his veins and ambition in his heart, heading west toward Phoenix and a fresh start. When he witnesses a devastating car accident, he steps into a world of broken machines, broken dreams, and the cunning scheming of men who profit from both. His gift for understanding the inner workings of automobiles turns him into something the era worshipped: a motor wizard, a problem-solver who can coax life back into dead engines and see solutions where others see only wreckage. The novel pulses with the raw energy of a civilization learning to move on wheels. Every garage is a battlefield, every broken piston a mystery to solve. Standish captures a moment when cars were still miraculous, when the people who could master them held a kind of magic. Owen's journey tests whether a clever young man with steady hands and sharper wits can carve out a place in a world racing toward the future. For readers who want to feel the romance of early automotive culture, who enjoy protagonist-driven adventure where brains and bravery matter equally.
