Silt
A Historical Novella
by Chris Geier
PAPERBACK $17.99
EBOOK $7.99
HARDCOVER $29.99
PDF (PAY-WHAT-YOU-CAN)
Cincinnati, 1856. German immigrant Werner Bosenbach has a part-time job collecting shady debts and a full-time drinking habit. When he is hired by a wealthy widow to hunt down those responsible for her husband’s death, Werner is drawn deep into a city bursting with corruption, nativism, and long-simmering racial tension. From violent dock workers and crooked marshals, to operators of the underground railroad and the slave hunters they oppose, Werner must navigate the dangers and divisions of his adopted home to find some answers and, with any luck, some lager.
Appealing to fans of Raymond Chandler’s drunken detective Marlowe meets Cormac McCarthy’s oddball preachers and wanderers, and filled in at the cracks by the immersive atmosphere of Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, Silt travels to the overlooked past of the Midwest with a story that still rings all too familiar today, humming with debut author Chris Geier’s poetic prose and unique eye for detail. Part mystery, part thriller, part crime noir, part literary historical, Silt brims with dark humor and timeliness.
Content Warning: coming soon
Praise
“So much packed into such a compact length: an engrossing hard-boiled detective yarn, a rich evocation of 19th-century Ohio in all its discontents, and a meditation, finally, on what it means to be American. With its singing prose and gripping story, Silt is an accomplished debut, and Chris Geier is a writer to watch.”
—Louis Bayard,
Author of Courting Mr. Lincoln
“Geier gives us a vividly savage Cincinnati of 1856 and a uniquely vicious bounty hunter to navigate it, Werner Bosenbach, “the Dutchman.” The balance of gritty, historical detail that mires the reader in the setting’s filth and a bloody pacing that intensifies the suspense makes Silt an arresting novella.”
—Kevin Catalano,
Author of Where the Sun Shines Out
“Geier is a storyteller whose work is rooted in history, but it’s not the history we know. His characters have the distanced authenticity of our friends-of-friends, the woman so-and-so told you about, from that place that one time. Their dilemmas lie in the spaces between their desires, consciences, and capabilities, and Geier displays their secrets like trinkets in a shop window, showing us their most intriguing angles to draw us in. Silt is a hell of a read.”
—Schuler Benson,
Author of The Poor Man’s Guide to an Affordable, Painless Suicide
“Chris Geier packs one hell of a story into these pages—a thrilling, alcohol-fueled tour of 1850s Cincinnati, brimming with lush details and larger-than-life characters. Silt goes down like a slug of good whiskey—smooth, with just the right amount of burn.”
—Sara Rauch,
Author of What Shines from It
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• Fiction | Novella | Historical Noir
• 5” x 8” Perfectbound Trade Paperback
• Cream Paper, 146 Pages
• Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-946580-13-9
• Paperback ISBN-10: 1946580139
• Hardcover ISBN-13: Coming Soon
• Hardcover ISBN-10: Coming Soon
• Ebook ISBN-13: Coming Soon
• Ebook ISBN-10: Coming Soon
• LCCN: Not Registered
• First Edition: March 3, 2020
• Short URL: acpbook.link/silt
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Cover design by Leah Angstman, using public-domain images and maps of Cincinnati in the 1850s, courtesy Dustin Marks at Cincy Map Collection.
About the Author
CHRIS GEIER lives in western Massachusetts with his wife and children. Silt is his first book.
Media & Images
• Reviewed by Jeff Vande Zande
• Listed in Entropy’s “Quarantine Reading: Books You Shouldn’t Forget to Buy”
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