What if John Henry had a son?
Twelve-year-old Ray is haunted by the strangest memories of his father, whom Ray swears could speak to animals. Now an orphan, Ray jumps from a train going through the American South and falls in with a medicine show train and its stable of sideshow performers. The performers turn out to be heroes, defenders of the wild, including the son of John Henry. They are hiding the last of the mythical Swamp Sirens from...

In The Nine Pound Hammer, John Bemis introduced middle-grade readers to a whole new approach to epic fantasy, founded on characters and themes from American mythology and lore, including the legend of John Henry. Now in the third and final book, the heroes come together at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago for a final confrontation with a businessman and tycoon who is in fact an ageless evil known as the Gog. With his Dark Machine, he intends...