Make me a city

The tale begins with a game of chess and on the outcome of that game hinges the destiny of Chicago. A variety of irresistible voices deliver the many strands of this novel: those of the long-unheralded founder of Chicago a bombastic speculator and booster and the first woman to report for the Chicago Tribune. The stories of loggers miners engineers and educators teem around them and each claim the narrative in turns painting a pastiche of the city's rise.