The Invention of Everything Else - Paperback

by Samantha Hunt (Author)

Winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, New York City thrums with energy, wonder, and possibility in this magical novel about the life and last days of Nikola Tesla.

It is 1943, and the renowned inventor Nikola Tesla occupies a forbidden room on the 33rd floor of the Hotel New Yorker, stealing electricity. Louisa, a young maid at the hotel determined to befriend him, wins his attention through a shared love of pigeons; with her, we hear his tragic and tremendous life story unfold. Meanwhile, Louisa discovers that her father--and her handsome, enigmatic love interest, Arthur Vaughan--are on an unlikely mission to travel back in time and find his beloved late wife.

A masterful hybrid of history, biography, and science fiction, with Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Mark Twain making appearances, The Invention of Everything Else is an absorbing story about love and death and a wonderfully imagined homage to one of history's most visionary scientists.

Back Jacket

Full of vivid imagery, sounds, memories, and dreams, this novel is a sweet story of just how normal it is to be different.
Boston Globe

From the moment Louisa first catches sight of the strange man who occupies a forbidden room on the thirty-third floor, she is determined to befriend him. Unbeknownst to Louisa, he is Nikola Tesla inventor of AC electricity and wireless communication and he is living out his last days at the Hotel New Yorker. Winning his attention through a shared love of pigeons, she eventually uncovers the story of Tesla's life as a Serbian immigrant and a visionary genius: as a boy he built engines powered by June bugs, as a man he dreamed of pulling electricity from the sky. The mystery deepens when Louisa reunites with an enigmatic former classmate and faces the loss of her father as he attempts to travel to the past to meet up with his beloved wife. Before the week is out, Louisa must come to terms with her own understanding of love, death, and the power of invention.

"Remarkable . . . It is a rare thing for a writer to conjure belief and true understanding, but with The Invention of Everything Else, Samantha Hunt has accomplished exactly that."
Philadelphia Inquirer

"Dazzling."
Vanity Fair

"Ingenious."
Marie Claire

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A Book Sense Pick

Samantha Hunt is the author of the acclaimed first novel, The Seas, which in 2006 won a National Book Foundation award for writers under thirty-five. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker and McSweeney's. She lives in New York."