Boilermaker

Rex Knight, a native West Virginian and Afghan War vet, was mysteriously teleported from a peaceful surveying job into a war along the semi-lawless frontier of an alternate Appalachian world of Civil War era technology, slavery, drugs, cotton, and competing colonial empires. With Rex’s help, the indigenous Wapitis have prevailed in their confrontation with warlord James Donnelly and the not-quite-human Ichneumons. Rex, having survived the war between the Wapitis and the warlord’s mercenaries, faces the age-old human challenge of making a living in an alien world. He believes an opportunity exists in the new invention: river steamboats, if their boilers would stop exploding. A young female slave claims to have solutions to that problem and Rex’s other predicament. She’s willing to barter. He’s not sure either of them can afford her price for helping him.