Ragtime Dudes

It's 1904. St. Louis, birthplace of the hottest new music craze, Ragtime, is hosting a World's Fair that everyone wants to see. Three fun-loving New York dandies are already planning to attend the Fair when a newspaper photo of them dallying with a colleen from Brooklyn sets a pair of Irish boxers on their trail. With the pugilists’ mere days behind them, they hastily hop a train to St. Louis. Aboard a Pullman sleeper, the dandies meet three sisters from New Jersey, free-thinkers whose view of morality seems to match the dandies' own. Quickly, they pair off in couples for a romantic journey. But as the train nears St. Louis, the sisters reveal they are going to the Fair to meet marriageable, titled, European aristocrats. That obviously precludes the New Yorkers. They arrive for opening day of the largest world's fair ever held-a dazzling sight. Over the next two weeks, the dandies keep bumping into the sisters; the sisters keep snubbing them; and the pursuing boxers keep just missing them. As the Irishmen close in, the New Yorkers hear of an art colony forming out West, and the idea of opening an emporium in distant New Mexico seems as brilliant as the Fair's electric lights. The men rush to buy enough goods to start a business and get out of town before the boxers find them.

Ragtime is new, Victorians are out, and free love is on the rise. New York dandies Bryce, Jack, and Morgan open an emporium in the nascent art colony of Taos, New Mexico, promising to bring metropolitan culture and the latest wonders from the St. Louis World's Fair. The problem, none of them knows how to run a business. Free love? That they understand. Soon, the handsome young New Yorkers meet freethinking women ready to test the mores of a new century. With too little capital, their venture struggles until a leading member of Taos society begins holding teas for her inner circle at their store. But, just as the business starts to thrive, the ladies usurp the tea parties to hire a Protestant pastor and are sent a recently ordained Universalist minister. Calamities pile up. The Universalist's sermons don't go over well in Catholic Taos and the ensuing religious conflict hurts the emporium's business. Meanwhile, the men lose a lucrative Gramophone deal, and while, Morgan's trying to fix that, they get, shaken down by a brothel owner. Then, Jack's landlady dies, leaving him responsible for her nearly grown daughters. Oh yeah, and Bryce quits to join a peyote cult. Yet even as the partners fail at transforming Taos, Taos begins to transform them. And, by the time the emporium goes belly up, they are ready to start their lives over again.

Ragtime is old hat, World War I is over, and the Roaring Twenties are underway. Cherie, an American flapper, living-it-up in Paris, never intends to go back to her tiny hometown, Taos, New Mexico. But while, visiting her sister in New York, a telegram brings word that an old friend, Morgan, is dying. Ragtime dudes Morgan and Jack, and wife Abigail, helped the sisters when their mother died. Now it's time to repay the favor. They arrive in Taos to find Abigail overwhelmed, Jack's in denial about Morgan's fate, and Abigail's son, Cyrus, is suffering from shell-shock-just like veterans Cherie's seen in Paris. Touched by his plight, Cherie nurtures him. It's not long before they fall in love. Abigail fears that once Cherie returns to Paris, Cyrus will be worse off than before. Cherie misunderstands and thinks mother hen wants her out of the picture. When Bryce, another friend from the days of ragtime, arrives, Morgan experiences a brief rally and asks to be driven to a place in the Taos Mountains he's always found spiritual. On the mountaintop, the Parisian flapper, the ragtime dudes, and their strange, extended family find themselves at the threshold of a thin place in this charming sequel.