Brad Goldberg

For the last few years, I've been living in  the 19th Century. 1896 to be exact. In that year, Theodore Roosevelt was the President of the New York City Police Commision, and Nellie Bly, the country's most famous investigative reporter, had returned to writing for Joseph Pulitzer's The World. The result of this time travel is Summer and Ice, my latest novel, which combines the burgeoning Manhattan of The Alienist and HBO's The Gilded Age. It is inspired by the true life of Nellie Bly. The novel begins when a series of macabre murders threaten to end Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt's career and ultimately puts Nellie Bly in mortal danger.

In Summer and Ice, Bly and Roosevelt are brought together to investigate these murders, which echo elements from Bly's exposé on Blackwell's Island Asylum, Ten Days in a Mad-House. The investigation plunges Bly and Roosevelt into the darkest recesses of New York City politics, pitting them against the powerful liquor industry, callous slumlords, and other unsavory denizens who thrived on the corrupt politics of New York before Roosevelt became police commissioner. If Roosevelt can't solve the gruesome killings plaguing his city, he will never become president or much of anything else.

When dark-money forces have Nellie Bly kidnapped and held hostage by the maddest and most dangerous inmate ever to have spent time in Blackwell's Island Asylum, they use Nellie to blackmail Roosevelt into deciding between his campaign of reform and Nellie Bly's life.

I am currently seeking representation for Summer and Ice.

The first seeds for Summer and Ice were planted when I read Doris Kearns Goodwin's double biography of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, The Bully Pulpit. In it there was a brief mention of Theodore Roosevelt, as New York City Police Commissioner, walking the streets of the city incognito late at night to find policemen who were shirking their duty. It occured to me there might be material for some short stories revolving around his "Midnight Rambles." There was something intriguing about the future president of the United States roaming the streets of New York in the small hours of the morning looking for miscreants on the police force. That he was frequently accompanied by his friend, muckraking reporter Jacob Riis, further piqued my interest.

I don't remember how Nellie Bly came into my consciousness for this project. I was aware of Ten Days in a Mad-House, her expose of Blackwell's Island Asylum, but didn't know the specifics. Once I learned that she was a working journalist in New York City at the same time Theodore Roosevelt was the police commissioner. I was intrigued with the idea of them working together. The more I learned about this amazing woman, the more I wanted to feature her in a novel. Not only did she get herself committed to the most notorious asylum in New York to write about it, but she also challenged Jules Verne's fictional trip around the world in eighty days. She bested Phileas Fogg, Verne's circumnavigator, by eight days. She also beat a fellow journalist who set off in the opposite direction hoping to steal Nellie's thunder. She lived in a tenement as laborer to write about conditions for young women trying to survive on piece work, and later in life when she inherited her husband's factory, she introduced amenities for her workers that would still be considered progressive. She championed suffragists, Cuban independence, workers, and the poor. The more I read about her, the more I admired her. In real life, she and Roosevelt never met. This was a stunning error of history that had to be corrected. In Summer and Ice, these two amazing personalities work together. History is exonerated.