Chilling Secrets, The Best Sort Of Escape: The Ice Merchant
Galveston, TX, October 12, 2016 ― Serious readers perfectly understand the advantage of well-written fiction: it’s an escape from whatever ails you, whenever it’s convenient. The Ice Merchant, Paul Boor’s newest novel, set in Galveston, TX in 1889, is a tale of the post-civil war ice trade, new medical schools, trafficking in corpses, the discovery of a cure for yellow fever, and a chilling reminder of our human frailties.
The story begins in 1889, when a shrewd Yankee ice merchant, Nicolas Van Horne, is carving out a profitable side-business. Deep in his ship’s icy hold, dozens of human cadavers lie between the huge blocks of ice. On this delivery, his first to Galveston’s new Medical School, Nicolas is enthralled by Galveston’s lady scientist Rene Keiller, but he also makes the ghastly discovery that he’s been trafficking in murdered boys.
It will take Rene’s help to eventually solve the puzzle his ice holds . . . but first he must overcome his personal demons, including morphine addiction, even as he becomes inextricably entangled in lovely Rene’s experimental work on the most dreaded killer of their time, yellow fever.
Paul Boor, M.D., is a scientist and professor at Galveston’s medical school, the oldest west of the Mississippi, and home to the highest-level, infectious Bio-Lab. His first novel, The Blood Notes of Peter Mallow, was a modern biomedical thriller acclaimed as “real, raw and on the edge.” In The Ice Merchant, Dr. Boor goes back in time to explore the history of medical research and the body trade, while spinning a tale of romance and human imperfection.
For more information, please visit: theicemerchant.com
The Ice Merchant
Publisher: Argo-Navis
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0786754931
ISBN-13: 978-0786754939
Amazon readers say:
“This book is a true gem. First of all, it is well written throughout, without … the mistakes that non-professional authors often make. Second, it is quite different from most books I have read and tells a haunting tale with the story happening in Galveston, TX, and upstate New York, written with great authority and historical insight. Third, the story is realistic for the time (the end of the 19th century) and the language has the right tilt for the time. And last but not least, the book kept my interest from the first to the last page and offered a number of unexpected twists and turns.”
“Here’s a book to ‘sink your teeth into!’ I thoroughly enjoyed the story partly set in Galveston in 1899. Intriguing premise about procuring bodies for a medical school – very believable. The characters were believable and I cared about the welfare of the protagonist and others who were struggling to find the cause and cure of yellow fever. A ‘must read’ for Galvestonians and anyone interested in the history of the Gulf Coast prior to the devastating 1900 storm.”
