Anthony Flacco

IN THE MATTER OF
NIKOLA TESLA A Romance Of The Mind

by Anthony Flacco

In The Matter Of Nikola Tesla places the reader squarely behind the eyes of the 20th Century's greatest inventive genius. Events play out within the framework of a unique love story. Tesla's inscrutable personality becomes clear in his motivations and sympathetic to the reader because the device of his mysterious Muse (based on his real-life description of her) allows us to enter the mystery of his solitary life. Only his thoughts and dialogue are fiction - the action is historically accurate.

Fans of historically accurate books with strong love stories (such as "Cold Mountain") will respond to Tesla's lifelong imaginary "Muse," as he himself described her. Tesla's story about the source of his inspirations was never believed during his life -- this book simply takes him at his word about the driving force of his incredible inventive imagination. Even so, his gratifying relationship with her only partly explains his 86 years of complete social isolation. The ghost of his deceased father, the devout Reverend Tesla, also torments him with a plague of doubts throughout the story.


Although the book is fictionalized through Tesla's eyes:
This story is populated with historical figures who actually played major roles in Tesla's life. Author Mark Twain was a frequent visitor, George Westinghouse robbed him of millions, Thomas Edison portrayed him as a lunatic in an attempt to suppress his inventions, and J.P. Morgan manipulated his funding to prevent him from building his Universal Power System. Tesla was aided by John Jacob Astor, but lost that friend when Astor died on the wreck of the Titanic in 1912.
Tesla is among the 20th Century's greatest forgotten heroes - a European by birth, and an adopted U.S. citizen who radically changed our world but suffered the worst of human ingratitude in return.

Why the time is right for this book:
Nikola Tesla's lifelong goal was to solve the problem of how to supply free, unlimited electricity to the entire planet. He knew that universal power could end poverty forever. Today, everyone knows about the world's energy crisis. They will be especially sympathetic with the mind that tried so hard to avert this for us, and with the fascinating eccentricities of his personality.
It is also a known fact that the U.S. Secret Service raided Tesla's New York hotel room the day he died and confiscated all of his papers before his body was taken away. Those papers remain unaccounted for today.