The Impresario

Philadelphia, 1840: John Quincy Adams once hailed Rian Krieger as a 'once-in-a-generation prodigy in the world of business... or perhaps mayhem.' Now sixteen, Rian is determined to one day run Krieger Locomotive, and her father, Otto, has belatedly embraced her ambitions. However, not all is rosy in Rian’s world. She is reconciled to being The Oddity: the girl who hates dresses and wears a shirt and trousers to work, who prefers to go unnoticed in a crowd, and if noticed, likes it when strangers mistake her for a boy. When a new development complicates things-and here comes the mayhem-she is heartbroken to learn her body is betraying her, forcing her to ask who, or what, is Rian Krieger?Otto, confident that the depression is now behind them, starts building a costly new factory. When the depression comes roaring back, placing the Krieger family’s fortunes in jeopardy, Rian must put aside ambition and body distractions to become a public and controversial businessperson-an impresario, an individual who assumes great financial risk to develop and implement an event. Meanwhile, in Columbia, South Carolina, Olivia Tucker and her enslaved half-brother, Topper, send inflammatory 'Notes from Jasper,' stories of the everyday horrors inflicted on the enslaved, to be published in Northern newspapers. Their collaborator in the North? Rian Krieger.The Impresario is the fifth novel in Rian Krieger’s Journey, a sweeping saga of ambition, self-discovery, and resistance in a transforming America.