Rust on the Allegheny

A multi-generation family saga set in a Pennsylvania town that changed the world.

In 2019, a man takes a copyediting job at his local newspaper. In 1939, a boy stands outside a theater and hatches a plan to sneak in. And on a cold, rainy night in 1982, a college student gives a bloodied hitchhiker a ride. Not one of these individuals is aware of how these seemingly isolated events will change their lives forever, or the inexorable connections between them.

Rust on the Allegheny is a cozy historical fiction novel told through the shifting perspectives of multiple generations of the MacCulloch family, a bloodline said to be cursed by perennial misfortune. It is the story of one family’s messy and at times dysfunctional relationship with their hometown of Latonia City, Pennsylvania, where moldering Victorian manors and empty art deco theaters chronicle the rich heritage and industrial downturn of America’s Rust Belt, with glimpses of hope for the future.