Downing Dora Nine

Aviation as you’ve never known it, formed in the crucible of a Great War —on American soil, with American blood, in the continuing struggle between the Sovereign States …

Aviation has just been born, in a world that has followed a historical trajectory very different from our own. The United States Constitution was never ratified; the United States was never formed. Instead, North America is occupied by five separate sovereign nation-states that emerged after a century of violence from the original thirteen colonies.
The story revolves around two young fliers, Englishman William Hastings and Prussian Heinrich von Gotha, who get tangled in a looming conflict within the Sovereign State of Carolina. As a result they become the world’s first veterans of aerial warfare. All of the technological terrors that Europe experienced with the coming of World War I have been transported to North America through the magic of fiction.
The story is illustrated in a style reminiscent of the early 20th century. The combination of prose and paint, so rare in modern fiction, provides a vibrant portal into this brooding world.