The Fox's Tale

The Fox's Tale is a fantasy story describing Jack Fox, a teenager, surviving in a dog-eat-dog world. He and his mother, Lilly, a physically disintegrating alcoholic, get by under the protection of Gracie Hargreaves: a success in the shipping business and lifelong friend of Lilly and others. Their town is Snakeport, often called the Snake, in a country known as the South. There is no central government and the law is whatever your strength allows you to command. Southern technology involves horses, wind, and gunpowder used in rifled muskets with firing caps. Consider this story a variation on the American Civil War in the 1860s mixed with the English Civil War in the 1600s with hints of Roman arrogance at their peak around 200 A.D. The North-fat, dumb, and happy-after coercing, bullying, and defeating the South in a war fought one hundred years earlier, steals southern children for the menial work needed to maintain an advanced culture with a centralized government. Northern technology is based on the projection of energy by its citizens: horseless vehicles, advanced medicine, advanced architecture, and other advantages. The war deprived the South of its projectors. The North takes what it wants in natural resources and slaves but pays well enough to find allies in the South. Not all Northerners are projectors In the North energy projection ability decides your vocation in life unless you are female. Women in the north are appreciated above southern men but not by much. Southerners in the minds of northerners were stupid, criminal, and incapable. Jack Fox changes everything.