Billy Boustany, the protagonist in Eric von Schrader’s A Universe Less Traveled, is trying to hold on to a dying electronics retail empire in an era when Amazon is king. When Billy stumbles into an alternate St. Louis, he sees the dimension as a welcome escape from the stresses of work. In “HD” St. Louis, he finds a near-utopia. There’s just one problem: A secret police force tasked with keeping outsiders from infiltrating HD St. Louis—even those who do so unknowingly—is aware that Billy’s there. “I’ve always been someone who wondered why St. Louis turned out the way it did,” says von Schrader, who spent most of his life here before decamping to California. In a series of dreams, he envisioned the world that would eventually become HD St. Louis. “In the city, people are worried about vacant lots and abandoned buildings,” von Schrader says. “The first thing I thought about was What if it was completely different? What if it was a massive dynamic city that was the envy of the world? Then I had to get into What would have happened that might have made it that way?” The book’s answer: Another time traveler, stockbroker James Whittemore Hines, escapes into alternate St. Louis and avoids the effects of the 1929 market crash. But there’s another disaster awaiting him. An earthquake levels downtown buildings and causes a mass exodus from the city. Hines has a proposal to save it—but it’s a bold one. Von Schrader’s goal was to write an engrossing fantasy. “My other goal,” says the author, “was to say, ‘Things don’t always have to be the way they are.’” In A Universe Less Traveled, we see what might have been.
Von Schrader will discuss A Universe Less Traveled on Facebook Live at 7 p.m. Thursday. Left Bank Books hosts the event.
