Ragtime Dudes at the World's Fair (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780989510400)

It's 1904. St. Louis, birthplace of the hottest new music craze, Ragtime, is hosting a World's Fair that everyone wants to see.

Three fun-loving New York dandies are already planning to attend the Fair when a newspaper photo of them dallying with a colleen from Brooklyn sets a pair of Irish boxers on their trail. With the pugilists mere days behind them, they hastily hop a train to St. Louis.

Aboard a Pullman sleeper, the dandies meet three sisters from New Jersey, free-thinkers whose view of morality seems to match the dandies' own. Quickly, they pair off in couples for a romantic journey. But as the train nears St. Louis, the sisters reveal they are going to the Fair to meet marriageable, titled, European aristocrats. That obviously precludes the New Yorkers.

They arrive for opening day of the largest world's fair ever held-a dazzling sight. Over the next two weeks, the dandies keep bumping into the sisters; the sisters keep snubbing them; and the pursuing boxers keep just missing them.

As the Irishmen close in, the New Yorkers hear of an art colony forming out West, and the idea of opening an emporium in distant New Mexico seems as brilliant as the Fair's electric lights. The men rush to buy enough goods to start a business and get out of town before the boxers find them.