American Baroque

In the summer of 1835, a mysterious stranger wanders into the sleepy burgh of Mohawk, Indiana. With his prophet's beard and coffee sack frock, bearing a mad gleam in his eyes ignited either by glory or cider, the man seems an errant saint. To his ragged band of followers, his word carries the weight of revelation. To his enemies, he is at best a dangerous fraud, at worst, something more insidious still. His name is Johnny Appleseed, and Mohawk will never be the same.

With the help of his disciple and scribe, ex-schoolmaster and itinerant dreamer Jacob T. Morris, Appleseed must win over Mohawk’s no-nonsense inhabitants, provided the county judicial system and his own murky and faintly sinister past don’t catch up with him first…

From vengeful and violent ex-disciples, to suspicious doctors, sexually voracious village belles, shrewd circus ringmasters, a coven of witches, and one flagrantly impious cocker spaniel, Appleseed must contend with a motley cast of colorful frontier folk, walking the thin line between adulation and crucifixion—all with a knowing smile and an ever-present flagon of the most potent cider this side of the Mississippi.

Who is Johnny Appleseed - sage or charlatan, conjuror or quack—and what, essentially, is the difference?