Invitation for a grand tour of Europe fully paid by a rich relative--doesn’t that sound like any 18-year-old girl’s fondest dream? Nelly Bly wannabe, Jemima "Jemmy" McBustle, can’t decide whether the trip would be blessing or curse.  She stands at the crossroads. Should she continue her struggle to forge a career in a man’s world? More than anything else, she wants to be her own woman, and yet it would be much, much easier to marry well and follow the dictates of society and her own family.

Jemmy has found herself deep in lemons often enough to learn to make lemonade. Her editor Suetonius Hamm adds a spoonful of sugar. He names her foreign correspondent for the St.Louis Illuminator's society page. But wherever she goes, trouble seeks her out. New York City brings everything from child rescue to oriental gifts to an interview with the governor himself--the fellow with the big stick--Teddy Roosevelt.

What do a stylish hat, a bottle of Munyon's Elixir and fifty thousand pounds of silver mean to Jemmy? Find out in an Atlantic crossing like no other in New York to London with Doctor Crippen.

Homeopathic doctor and sometime dentist Harvey Hawley Crippen (September 11, 1862-November 23, 1910) fascinates me. It’s certainly true that in 1910 his blustery wife Cora disappeared. It is also true that he and his mistress Ethel, who was dressed as a boy, were caught while attempting to flee to Canada aboard the SS Montrose. But was the dismembered body in Crippen’s cellar his wife or even a woman?

It is also true that Dr. Crippen sailed from Liverpool to New York on June 1, 1899 and may well have taken the March 11 trip bound for Europe earlier that year. This book is my version of what he might have been like a decade before he became a household word.

Dr. Crippen often crossed the Atlantic as representative of Munyon’s homeopathic remedies. Before the Food And Drug Act of 1906, anyone could whomp up potions and elixirs and claim they could cure everything from ingrown toenails to cancer. I was shocked to discover that the contents of  “Patent” medicines were not “patented” at all. Laws of the day protected only the advertising--the labels. The ingredients inside could include anything from harmless molasses and water to something to give them a medicinal kick--something such as a touch of strychnine. Most had hefty portions of alcohol and/or opiates. The concoctions made people feel better for at least a little while, so the makers made millions.