The author of the visionary New York Times bestseller Dread Nation returns with another
spellbinding historical fantasy set at the crossroads of race and power in America. It is 1937
and Laura Ann Langston lives in an America divided-between those who work the mystical arts and
those who do not. Ever since the Great Rust a catastrophic event that blighted the arcane
force called the Dynamism and threw America into disarray the country has been rebuilding for
a better future. And everyone knows the future is industry and technology-otherwise known as
Mechomancy-not the traditional mystical arts. Laura disagrees. A talented young queer mage from
Pennsylvania Laura hopped a portal to New York City on her seventeenth birthday with hopes of
earning her mage's license and becoming something more than a rootworker. But four months later
she's got little to show for it other than an empty pocket and broken dreams. With nowhere else
to turn Laura applies for a job with the Bureau of the Arcane's Conservation Corps a branch
of the US government dedicated to repairing the Dynamism so that Mechomancy can thrive. There
she meets the Skylark a powerful mage with a mysterious past who reluctantly takes Laura on
as an apprentice. As they're sent off on their first mission together into the heart of the
country's oldest and most mysterious Blight they discover the work of mages not encountered
since the darkest period in America's past when Black mages were killed for their power-work
that could threaten Laura's and the Skylark's lives and everything they've worked for.
