The opening scene of Scott Alexander Hess’s new novel, River Runs Red, is equally powerful and uncomfortable: Orphan-turned-derelict Calhoun McBride, living in 1891 St. Louis, turns tricks on the banks of the Mississippi River, the fictitious Snopes Brewery standing in the distance. Soon, he’ll meet Clement Cartwright, the ambitious architect who designed a skyscraper—the world’s first—called the Landsworth Building. Their introduction will set off a scandal in St. Louis that culminates in a court trial in the book’s final chapters.
Hess, who grew up in St. Louis but lives in New York City, found inspiration for the novel from perhaps an unexpected source: his mom. “My mother’s going to be 94. The older she gets, the more stories she tells.” From her, he borrowed the tale of his great-grandfather Henry C. Tulley, an engineer on the Wainwright Building, the 10-story Chestnut Street beauty designed by Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler the year in which River Runs Red is set. It was one of the earliest skyscrapers.
Researching his forebear’s work led Hess to the Lemp Brewery—Snopes in the book—and then to other St. Louis period references. The challenge for the author? The many fascinations of the city during this time.
“Of all my books, it was the most rigorous research I’ve had to do,” Hess says. “There was so much I kept discovering, and everything would bring me something new.”
Hess reads from River Runs Red at 7 p.m. August 1 at Left Bank Books.
