One Smart Indian [signed] [first edition]

"Moments Captured" is a novel based loosely on the work and life of the pioneering 19th century photographer Eadweard Muybridge. The book traces the camera's development from total immobility to Muybridge's invention of the world's first motion picture projector in 1879. I feature the photographer's work with Leland Stanford and the ingenious technical breakthroughs that enable Edward (I've adopted the simpler name for the fiction.) to stop time and capture the trotting horse in motion. The novel is not a biography. I've altered history by having Edward fall in love with the dancer Holly Hughes-- thus his quest to catch her in motion, to examine beauty in its multiple and ever-changing aspects. I think of "Moments Captured" as a technological romance.The novel journeys through the American West, and later takes up chilly, high altitude residence in the Sierra Nevada to document the inch-by-inch progress of the transcontinental railroad during the worst winter on record. "Moments Captured" features one murder, one attempted murder, an effort to liberate a Chinese prostitute, the eye-opening 1876 U.S Centennial Exhibition, and a dance performance in which Holly captivates her San Francisco audience only to be booed when she publicly announces her objections to the corset, which encases the body of every single woman in the audience. When Edward temporarily deserts Holly to document the progress of the Central Pacific for her sworn enemy Stanford, the "his and her" betrayals result in tragedy. A spectacular murder trial, an attempt on Muybridge's life, Edward's tireless documenting of human and animal locomotion, Holly's escape abroad in the effort to forget both her dead and live lovers, these elements lead, at the book's end, to a tentative reconciliation between Holly and Edward.