Untitled walkathon novella

Two childhood friends set off on a 24-hour walkathon, puzzling over a letter that claims Amelia Earhart (d. 1937), who was last seen in their city before her final flight, is still alive.

Soon enough, they find that the letter points to several disappearances… they walk their city in hopes of righting the course.

This walk explores gentrification as apocalypse. The characters traverse their hometown and rediscover its quirks and charms that make it altogether unique, while mourning what was. All while the ground shifts beneath them. They dream up lost worlds, car-less worlds, with canoe-share in place of bikeshare, spirited worlds tied up in the hands of elites.

I anchor the mystery in the Boston metro: stewarding the past and present life of its walkable ‘streetcar suburbs,’ to speculate the worlds we lose as its neighborhoods and minds upscale.

Today, the streetcar suburbs–Cambridge, Somerville, Medford– are known as dense, transit-linked, walkable communities. They developed because of horse-drawn railroads and electric trolley lines built a few hundred years ago, those that would later form the oldest subway in America. Today, many early lines are gone; and though few were rebuilt; cars often rule the road; as the tree canopy disappears; the last remaining landlots are up for grabs. Land is speculated and sold and we are convinced that growth is inevitable. As the pseudoburbs reach peak density, will they still be walkable, or even livable? What future must follow a black hole?