Catfish and Calliopes

About the Book

CATFISH AND CALLIOPES is a story for ages nine through fourteen about a fifteen-year old boy growing up in a small town near the Ohio River. The year is 1916. This valley once knew Charles Dickens, John Audubon, runaway slaves and pioneers. Now sternwheelers splash past with cargoes of glass, steel, pigs, and passengers, headed for Pittsburgh or New Orleans. Showboats bring life to small river towns. Walt Carlisle is running away from home and a strict father. The final issue is potato bugs. The last straw: his father’s order to pick potato bugs in the garden on a blistering June afternoon. By chance and by choice Walt finds himself working aboard the packet boat CITY OF CINCINNATI, downbound for Louisville, and later, on the beautiful sternwheeler QUEEN CITY. After still another great adventure aboard the GOLDENROD showboat, he returns to finish growing up in his home town, a wiser young man.

About the Author

Mary Corsi Kelley is the daughter of an Italian immigrant who discovered the wonders of Rome while he was an adolescent apprentice to a Roman shoemaker. Some of Mary's earliest books were her father's picture books of Rome. Naturally, she had to see the city -- which she has done at length, on ten occasions. Mary is a history graduate of Berea College in Kentucky, and earned an M.S.W. from the University of Michigan. She and her husband live in Ann Arbor; her interests include writing historical guidebooks, travel articles, and children's books having to do with history.