Young Auctioneers; Or, The Polishing of a Rolling Stone
1897
Sixteen-year-old Matt Lincoln is alone on the mean streets of 1890s New York. His father vanished into madness after losing both fortune and wife; his mother is dead; and Matt toils as an office boy for a tyrannical broker, his future as bleak as the city smog. But when he stumbles into adubious auction house and witnesses an innocent girl falsely accused, something stirs in him, a refusal to accept the world's cruelty. He teams up with Andy Dilks, a fellow dreamer trapped in the same dead-end, and together they hit the road, selling goods from town to town. It's a life of improvisation and near-misses, where every auction could flop or fortune could turn. The book crackles with the energy of two resourceful kids navigating a world that offers them no safety net, building themselves from nothing through wit and determination. For readers who love historical coming-of-age tales and stories of youthful self-reliance against all odds.
