The Boy and the Brothel Madam

In 1849, sixteen-year-old Cyrus Kirkpatrick is alone and stuck 3,000 miles from home, stranded in the dusty, violent, and chaotic boomtown of San Francisco. All Cyrus wants is to find his way home to New York and reunite with his best friend, the only person in his life who truly understands him. But after an unintended visit to a risqué peep show, he runs afoul of Ah Toy, the notorious Chinese brothel madam and one of the most powerful women in San Francisco. Suspecting him to be someone else who cheated her, the madam violently indentures him to work off a debt that isn’t his. To survive, Cyrus evolves into his captor’s emissary to the White power structure of the town, becoming enmeshed in San Francisco’s treacherous underworld where his morals bend and shift. But if he wants a chance at ever returning home, Cyrus must not only evade marauding vigilantes, destructive fires, and a vengeful crime boss, he must find his way back to his own sense of right and wrong, or else be doomed to pay for the increasingly corrupt life he leads and lose his home forever. The Boy and the Brothel Madam is Noel C. Cilker’s debut novel, filled with intrigue, the power of unlikely connections, and the price people pay for the lure of easy wealth. It is an unflinching descent into the turbulent Gold Rush town of San Francisco. "Cilker's captivating, wide-eyed narrative of Cyrus's adventures and his immersion into the world of early San Francisco’s Chinese population will remind the reader of Mark Twain's Roughing It." - Gillian Bagwell, author of The Darling Strumpet "An imaginative, multi-layered coming-of-age story that unfolds in the vibrant, chaotic world of Gold Rush-era San Francisco, all set against a backdrop of astonishing natural beauty." - Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, co-author of Competing Visions: A History of California "Like Treasure Island: a lot of dramatic developments and a fun journey." - Paul Giurlanda, Professor Emeritus, Saint Mary's College of California View Less