This is my COVID Lockdown project. It is the experimental blending of several genres. It's a detective story that begins at the El Paso office of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in 1875. That also makes it historical. A huge balloon arrives with a group from the British Ethnographic Society. With them is George James Frazer, a young academic from Cambridge who wants to study the Apaches. The balloon is commanded by Rose Green, a beautiful young woman who is the daughter of Confederate secret agent Rose Greenhow. The balloon is surveying for minerals and is a threat to the USA and the Apaches and Mexico. A young Apache boy working for Pinkerton's becomes Frazer's guide. He says that Apache witches can fly...and later proves it by flying himself! The balloon intrudes on a sacred place and its crew encounters multiple troubles but Frazer, left with the Apaches, almost becomes one of them. Pinkerton's is hired to find the balloon and the missing heir to a wealthy Chicago family. Two detectives, one of them newly hired and suspected of being an agent of the Confederate government in exile in Britain, go in search of the heir. Their journey takes them to a curious small town taken over by a hotelier whose customers come from far way; very far away. Famous gunfighters are one of the amusements provided with showdowns and barfights every day. The Strangers win every fight. The missing heir has been arrested for killing a Stranger in a bar fight. He cannot buy his way out of it and aYears ago, ppeals to the detectives for help. There are also romantic, magical subplots.
