Sage Adair

The year is 1902. John Sagacity Adair, "Sage" to his friends, is a wealthy restaurant proprietor in Portland, Oregon. Beneath the flickering gaslights of his elegant eatery, Mozart's Table, Sage appears urbane and attractively shallow. Yet, he is someone altogether different. Haunted by memories of an impoverished childhood, Sage seeks acceptance by City's financial elite only so that he can expose their secrets. After nearly two years of social maneuvering, he has won an invitation to Arista Dunlop's exclusive soiree. By the end of that night, more questions are raised than he thinks can be answered. What is the secret deal Portland's financiers are so eager to hide? Did his cook's nephew knife the brutal railroad guard? And, why has his Chinese colleague chosen such an inopportune time to make the distracting observations that "a soul needs unbreakedness?" Nothing is turning out as Sage planned. Few know that Sage's past has led him to working as a secret operative of the growing labor movement. Though eager to pursue leads overheard at the soiree, the entreaties of Sage's cook bring a halt to his plans. Her nephew stands accused of murder. While Sage knows that the railroad guard deserved to die, he also knows that it is up to him to prove the young boy innocent. Donning the clothes and persona of America's turn-of-the-century itinerant workers, Sage seeks answers to the two seemly disparate questions: Who really killed Clancy Steele? What is the secret deal the financiers are trying to hide? Obscuring his quest like a low-hanging cloud is Fong's comment about the soul's need for unbreakedness. The ensuing search takes Sage into hobo jungles, rural farms, bordellos and logging camps only to have the answers finally emerge in the drawing room of one of Portland's wealthiest citizens. Timber Beasts is the first book in a series that relies on historical facts for the structure of an exciting, fast-paced story. The novel is based on an actual land fraud scheme and authentically depicts Pacific Northwest's vibrant ethnic, social, and economic milieu at the turn of the twentieth century.

This fifth book in the series thrusts Sage Adair into an unfamiliar landscape and social milieu - a situation that challenges his skills and endangers his life. It's 1903 and a range war is brewing in Central Oregon. An enemy's extortion sends Sage on a wild stagecoach ride into the Crooked River country's deep canyons and parched valleys. There he finds cowboys blazing dead lines across the rangeland that sheepmen and their animals dare not cross. The threat is real. Already two shepherds lay dead in remote mountain meadows and soon, another sheep man dies. This time, the murderer attacks his victim in the heart of Prineville - the area's fastest-growing town. As Sage races to avert the conflict, he discovers these people of the central plateau are embroiled in a crisis not of their own making. And he learns that, unless he and his unlikely allies act quickly, these hardy folk will turn on each other. As the deaths mount, Sage faces a different kind of deadline. If he doesn't uncover the murderer stalking the sheepmen, their restraint will snap - catapulting the entire region into a war where neighbor will slaughter neighbor. This fast-paced, well-researched, and compelling novel lays bare the historical forces that threatened and, ultimately, shaped Central Oregon and its people.

During a blistering 1903 summer, Portland's steam laundry women are working ten hellish hours a day. Exhausted and ill, they demand a nine-hour workday. Sage Adair, and his mother, Mae, join their fight until the women begin disappearing. Desperately searching for the missing women, Sage and Mae face grave danger midst suffragettes, prostitutes, social workers, white slavers, arsonists, and heartless bosses. This series presents stories with a progressive viewpoint on history, detailing the ways, in which ordinary people caused extraordinary social and economic changes. Its setting is the very early 1900's, during a time, when wealth and power was concentrated in the hands of a few, creating a popular uprising among ordinary citizens that resulted in a better United States and world. Each book in the series offers historical notes, which identify the actual facts, upon which that particular story is built.

Progressive History with a Mystery Twist Arson, murder, kidnapping and false accusations abound in this seventh book of the Sage Adair series which crafts its early twentieth century stories around actual historical events and people. In Slow Burn what begins as a simple assignment--helping the city's firefighters unionize, catapults Sage into firefighting's front lines and into solving the deeper mystery of who is burning down the city and why..This fast-paced action mystery has been likened to the Wild, Wild West meeting Howard Zinn--where the battle is frequently against that time's 1%.

Progessive History With a Mystery Twist The eight Sage Adair Mysteries are set in 1902, Portland, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. These adventure stories highlight the positive changes made by that era's progressives at a time when wealth and power were concentrated in the hands of a few. One reviewer wrote: "Authentic and well-researched, these historical mysteries show a colorful and corrupt city full of complex and shady characters. Sage Adair is a secret operative who works on behalf of the growing labor movement, pursuing his mission into hobo jungles, lumber camps, seedy saloons and the drawing rooms of the rich. Using authentic historical details, the books show readers a different Portland (OR), a time when houses of prostitution flourished, illegal votes bought judges, and employer opposition to unions took the form of murder." The writing style is simple and spare. The principal characters, who are multi-racial and multi-ethnic, work collaboratively and optimistically.

Sage Adair is working on mundane business accounts when an urgent message arrives. Within hours, he and his friends are struggling to comprehend the harsh reality of Indian reservation life. They journey into that strange and dire world to fight greed. Soon things turn ominous when an Indian Service inspector is murdered and time starts running out for a prominent tribal leader. As they and their tribal allies begin uncovering the reservation's secrets, a small boy disappears, taking the biggest secret with him. This ninth Sage Adair story inserts historical facts into a fast-paced adventure mystery unfolding within the deadly confines of an Indian boarding school and reservation.