In 1925,
earthquakes and a rising sea level left Lower Manhattan submerged under
more than thirty feet of water, so that its residents began to call it
the Drowning City. Those unwilling to abandon their homes created a new
life on streets turned to canals and in buildings whose first three
stories were underwater. Fifty years have passed since then, and the
Drowning City is full of scavengers and water rats, poor people trying
to eke out an existence, and those too proud or stubborn to be defeated
by circumstance.
Among them are fourteen-year-old
Molly McHugh and her friend and employer, Felix Orlov. Once upon a time
Orlov the Conjuror was a celebrated stage magician, but now he is an old
man, a psychic medium, contacting the spirits of the departed for the
grieving loved ones left behind. When a seance goes horribly wrong,
Felix Orlov is abducted by strange men wearing gas masks and rubber
suits, and Molly soon finds herself on the run.
Her flight will lead her into the
company of a mysterious man, and his stalwart sidekick, Joe Golem,
whose own past is a mystery to him, but who walks his own dreams as a
man of stone and clay, brought to life for the sole purpose of hunting
witches.