By Michael LeRoi. Opening film, advancing as you scroll: dawn mist drifts over the great mounds by the river, and a huge furred figure half-appears at the forest edge before thinning back into fog. An immense antlered face carved in a cliff wakes, ember light rising in its stone eyes, then settles back into rock. A world's-fair Ferris wheel turns in night mist, blue-white electricity threading its spokes, until everything softens into violet dusk.
Cahokia is a speculative alternate history told across three books and one bloodline — the hidden story of a family who are not quite human, and the Universe that quietly depends on them. Two are out now. The third is being written.
What does it mean to be human? How do human rights apply to non-humans? How can race equality be applied if the race is unidentified? Discrimination happens to everyone, no matter their age, gender or race. Nicholas Kumanov just wanted to be like the average hybrid human — but he and his ancestors are destined to watch over and protect the world from others, and from itself.
Cahokia is a high-concept, speculative alternate-historical fiction based on true events: a family of immigrants holding an ancient genetic code comes to Flat River, Missouri in the late 1800s pursuing the American Dream, only to find the suppression and discrimination worse than in Macedonia. Nearly escaping capture, they flee from Flat River to St. Louis to meet the father's longtime friend, Nikola Tesla. At the World's Fair they observe secrets hidden in plain sight — the existence of giants, and technology soon secreted away — all while being pursued by three mysterious groups who want to either protect or steal the genes that hold the key to the Universe.
While only the men of their race go on to become Nephilim Warriors, or Watchers, for the first time in their species' existence it is their youngest, handicapped daughter who evolves into a super being — turning their whole patriarchal system upside down. Eventually settling on a farm in Illinois in the shadow of Monk's Mound, they uncover mysteries surrounding the area and the Mississippi, connecting their new home and the legend of the Piasa Bird to the creation of the Universe.
Book One · out now
A mythic historical adventure · Book One of the Cahokia trilogy
Flat River, Missouri, in the last days of the 1800s. An immigrant family arrives carrying a secret older than history, and a father determined to live the American Dream on his own terms. Then comes the one night that changes everything.
Book Two · out now
A mythic historical adventure · Book Two of the Cahokia trilogy
The Kumanov Family is in deep trouble. They've just escaped being thrown on boxcars at gunpoint to find themselves stranded at the St. Louis Union Station with only the clothes on their back and their belongings packed into two trunks. Not only is Nicholas burdened with the guilt and shame of rejecting his ancestral destiny, but his choices have led he and his family into a dangerous corner with no sign of escape. With the help of a psychic horse and his long-time friend, Nikola Tesla, Nicholas finds a place of peace long enough to wait out a major flood preventing them from reaching their destination. Guided by his Native American spirit friend, Raven Wolf, Nicholas navigates between the physical and spirit world in the search of a farm adjacent to the largest human-made earthen pyramid…Cahokia Mound. As the flood waters subside, Nicholas treats his two little girls to one of the biggest revelations of technology the world has ever seen…The 1904 World's Fair. Will his pregnant wife and mother-in-law be safe in their hotel room while Nicholas risks even more by taking two adolescent girls straight into the den of his adversaries?
in progress
Being written now. A later edition may invite readers into a community choice of endings.
The opening
The prologue to Book 1 — in the voice of its narrator, Nicholas Kumanov.
Most of the world knows of my people this way…
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans who bore children to them. These were the heroes of old, warriors of renown.
Here is my story. My name is Nicholas Kumanov. I am of the Annu; the first people.
At the beginning of time, Love established the Universe. Soon after, Love realized it wanted to continue creating. So my people were created as ultimate custodians of this, and all other realms Love created, both physical and other dimensional, and to protect every living being within.
Once a male of our people claims a mate and establishes a family, he is required to take the years of warrior training given to him by his grandmother from the age of five to twenty-five, leave his family, and guard all four corners of the known and ever-expanding Universe, never to return home again.
The honor of caring for everything and everyone also came with a curse. My father and every father before him had to abandon his family for the sake of the Universe. After witnessing the hardship and burden this put on the women of our family, I became increasingly jealous of the ones I would be defending — the hybrid humans.
Over the millennia, it seemed the hybrid humans were becoming less and less grateful for their allowed residence here and more and more bent on destroying the very things we were trying to protect. Every day they are given the privilege of living in a literal paradise in comparison to some of the other places they could have been placed within these limited bounds only to squander what their limited minds deem worthy.
Now the hybrid humans have reached the limits of their primitive technology, they seek not only what is beyond their reach, but also forbidden, entrance through the many portals leading to the underpinnings of the entire Universe. Only a trained Warrior Nephilim can open these portals. Any attempts by a hybrid human to open a portal, let alone try to pass through, would not end well.
In order to help us guard the ever-expanding Universe, we have created several horrifying beasts of undeniable terror designed to dissuade the hybrid humans from ever considering such a feat. However, if they were to be successful at either, the entire Universe would be at the careless mercy of its ignorant inhabitants.
I have a problem with that. There is no way I am going to put the ungratefuls ahead of my wife, two born children, one on the way, and their grandmother. I have worked too hard for too long to just leave my family alone to fend for themselves all for the sake of ancestral obligations. That is not my idea of The American Dream and that is what I am here to live.
After using my gifts to amass a small fortune while in New York, I took my wife and her mother to a small Missouri town where we had been living a simple yet happy human-like life. No one here knows much else about us besides the fact we immigrated from Europe, along with many other new residents. Most of the people from my land of origin took jobs digging the numerous mines opening up in the area. I decided, however, to follow my intuition by avoiding mass hard labor in exchange for opening my own bakery where I eventually grew to supplying products to stores in outlying towns. One might even say my pretzel recipe made me a local celebrity.
Everything seemed to be going just fine…until that one night.
Book One · out now
Find out what happened that night.
A family carrying a code older than history, an inventor who kept secrets, and a stretch of the Mississippi where American myth frays into something far older.
An immigrant family chasing the American Dream in the mining towns of the late 1800s, and finding the discrimination worse than the home they left behind.
The father's oldest friend is Nikola Tesla — and at the World's Fair the family glimpses secrets hidden in plain sight: giants that shouldn't exist, and technology that quietly disappears.
A farm in the shadow of the great mound, where the Mississippi's oldest legend connects to the very creation of the Universe.
For the first time in their people's history, it is the youngest, handicapped daughter who evolves — turning a patriarchal order upside down.
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