Escape from the Underworld

By Bailey Mapp

In the smoldering shadow of the Great Chicago Fire, where ashes replaced a once glittering empire, fourteen-year-old Jeremy O'Reilly uncovers a blaze far deadlier than flames: a lie at the heart of his life. Ten years on, in 1881, the city's North Side gleams with rebuilt mansions and whispered fortunes-but Jeremy's world is a powder keg of deceit. Orphaned in spirit if not in name, he chafes under parents who peddle forged relics of the inferno to wide-eyed tourists, their South Side cunning ill-hidden behind silk and silver. The more he digs into fragmented memories of that fateful night-screams in the smoke, a stranger's desperate embrace-the more a chilling certainty haunts him: these swindlers aren't his blood kin. Armed with street smarts, a pilfered map of the city's underbelly, and a hunger that could torch his fragile future, Jeremy vows to unearth his true origins. But in a Chicago where secrets burn brighter than gaslights, the truth might consume him whole. What if the fire didn't just destroy his past... it stole it?

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0G16M8K5X
• ISBN13: 9798273000056
• Release Date: November 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 196 Pages
• Weight: 0.59 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"