"Uncrashable Dakota"

Andy Marino was born and raised in Clifton Park, New York. He graduated from NYU and currently lives in Queens. He is the author of Unison Spark.

Marino applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Uncrashable Dakota, and reported the following:

Uncrashable Dakota concerns the 1862 discovery of flight by a hapless Union soldier, a long-simmering family feud, and the fate of the world’s most magnificent airship—not to mention a very odd species of beetle.

If you’re the kind of person who likes being plunged into fight scenes for which you have no context, page 69 is for you! Feel free to skip right on down to the excerpt.

For everybody else, here’s what’s going on: Hollis, grandson of the aforementioned soldier and heir to the Dakota Aeronautics empire, has been fighting with several menacing crewmen who have entered his family’s stateroom for a nefarious purpose. Explaining that purpose would spoil a plot point, so you’ll just have to trust me re: nefariousness. All you really need to know is that Hollis is torn between throwing himself back into the fray or fleeing down a back hallway.

Page 69 also marks the end of a chapter, so the excerpt is really short.

In the corner, Steward Bailey groaned, head lolling from one side to the other. The crewman by the door planted a boot in his ribs, and he slumped forward.

Hollis was faced with a decision that he had no time to ponder: lunge at the big man’s legs and try to catch him off balance or scramble through the dining room and out the servants’ door?

Take him down.

Already his body was obeying a more reasonable and insistent command, hurtling through the kitchenette, past a wooden block of razor-sharp steak knives, handles facing out.

Go back and fight.

The knives were behind him. He crashed through the door and out into the empty, undecorated hallway, where he did what his mother had told him to do.

The thing his mother told him to do was run! To find out if he ever returns for those steak knives, you’ll just have to read the book.

Learn more about the book and author at Andy Marino's website.

--Marshal Zeringue