Summary
A jazz-age Joan of Arc with earphones instead of armor, Jessie Emerson deciphers the crackle of the ether and hears the republic’s heart fibrillating beneath white-tie soirées and yacht-club laughter. Into her velvet-draped laboratory glides Von Prague—champagne in his grin, cyanide in his cufflinks—who beguiles the debutante into copying a War Department cipher that will soon detonate across factory skylines like a second sunrise. The filament of trust between patriot and parvenu glows, then snaps, as coded lightning zigzags from attic antennas to munitions docks, from Iowa cornfields to Brooklyn piers, sketching a clandestine cartography of sabotage. Enter the theoscope: a brass-and-quartz third eye that liquefies stone into gossamer, turning every ballroom wall into a diorama of treason and every battleship into a toy in a child’s bathtub. When its inventor, Lieutenant Blake, is shanghaied by faux-bluejackets and dropped through a trapdoor into the Hudson’s black crepe, Jessie—no longer a society ornament but a semaphore Fury—hoists the device onto her shoulder like a bazooka of revelation and peers through night itself to fish her cousin from the brink. What remains unsung—episodes three through twelve, vanished into nitrate nirvana—haunts the celluloid like a half-remembered sin, leaving us clutching a fragmentary epic that feels simultaneously prophetic and antique, a newsreel from a country that never quite existed yet already fears its own reflection.
Synopsis
Episode One: Jessie Emerson, a young American society belle with a serious turn of mind, has adopted wireless telegraphy as a hobby. While experimenting she is visited by Von Prague, a social adventurer, who is really the chief of America's enemies within, although posing as a loyal citizen of his adopted country. A code message picked up by the young woman operator attracts his attention and he suggests that she copy it and turn it over to Lieutenant Blake, an inventor who has been working upon a marvelous invention which promises to overthrow the traditional methods of warfare. Securing the confidence of Jessie, Von Prague copies the message and then directs one of his agents to steal the secret code used by the government. That night a group of plotters meet at the Von Prague home and, with the aid of a map, enter into a detailed discussion of spy and intrigue activities in the United States, such as I.W.W. agitations in the West, the destruction of munitions factories in the East and the inauguration of pro-German propaganda in the Middle West. The code message stolen by Von Prague proves to be from the War Department ordering Captain Taylor to begin the work of hunting down spies and plotters. In the meantime one of the plotters, disguised as a workman, plants a bomb which destroys a factory with loss of life, and escapes. Captain Taylor meets Jessie, who offers her aid in tracking down the enemies of her country. Captain Taylor obtains for her a position in a private wireless station where she will be able to intercept suspicious messages. She reports for duty at a time when the air is filled with mysterious code messages flashing across the seas and over the continent. Episode Two: Lieutenant Blake, having completed the model of his theoscope, invites his cousin, Jessie, to witness the initial test. This remarkable invention enables its user to pry into secrets hidden by walls and distances. Word of its completion is speedily carried to Von Prague by Blake's assistant, a spy. Looking through the theoscope, Jessie observes a battleship sailing for action in foreign waters, and in the air a government aeroplane performing unusual stunts. She also finds that she can peer through the walls of an apartment house, and is so enthused over the invention that she urges her cousin to give it to the government at once. The following day Blake meets General Norton, who becomes interested in the theoscope and arranges to send Blake to Washington with it that night. Von Prague hears of these plans and determines to learn the secret of the invention which would make secret military operations, night raids and aeroplane bombardments impossible. Two false bluejackets meet Blake at the pier. He finds too late he is not being taken to his ship. The sailors overpower him and take him to the den of the plotters, where he is offered the choice of giving up the secret of his invention or death. He chooses the latter, and then the spies offer him money. This, too, is refused, and in the fight that follows Blake knocks down Von Prague and is about to escape when he is set upon from behind and knocked out. He is dropped through a trap into the river. Jessie, with the aid of the theoscope, locates Blake in the den of spies, and immediately rushes to the river to rescue him. [Plot summaries for episodes 3-12 were not published.]
Review Excerpt
"
Nitrate ghosts don’t merely haunt; they gossip. And right now, in some climate-sealed vault, the emulsion of A Daughter of Uncle Sam is whispering cocktail-party treason across 105 winters. What survives—episodes one and two—plays like a Rockefeller Center Christmas ornament hurled against the mirror of modernity: jagged, glittering, drawing blood from anyone who tries to pick up the pieces.
Jane Vance’s Jessie Emerson arrives first as a flurried sketch: gloved hands adjusting cat-whisker diod..."
