The Steel Horse: The Rambles of a Bicycle
A bicycle tells its own story, and that's the delightful novelty at the heart of this late-Victorian adventure. Our narrator is an "Expert Columbia" who has been urged by its companions (including the famous Canvas Canoe from earlier books) to recount the summer Joe Wayring and his two friends Roy Sheldon and Arthur Hastings cycled from one end of their state to the other. What begins as a carefree vacation rapidly becomes a string of misadventures: rough roads, unexpected obstacles, and the small dramas that befall traveling youth in 1890s America. The bicycle's voice is wonderfully earnest and slightly pompous, taking its role as historian quite seriously while remaining aware of its own absurdity. Castlemon captures a world where the bicycle was still a marvel, where friendship meant facing perils together, and where a summer-long journey could feel like reaching the ends of the earth.
