Empire of Thread Book I

In the Appenzell region of nineteenth-century Switzerland, Felix Hasler grows up in a world where even relentless labour is barely enough to survive. His family is among the many home workers who embroider late into the night yet remain dependent on merchants, manufacturers, and inspectors. These men control the orders, the wages, and often the fate of entire families.

Felix learns at an early age that poverty is caused not only by deprivation, but also by a system designed to keep people powerless. He refuses to accept this life. His journey takes him from Appenzell to St. Gallen, along the Rhine to Rotterdam, and finally across the Atlantic to America.

There, he encounters a world of technological innovation, economic opportunity, and stark social divisions. The farther Felix travels, the more clearly he understands that power is exercised through more than money. It works through fear, dependence, silence, and the knowledge of who controls work, property, and the future. Felix meets people who support him, others who seek to use him, and still others whose lives force him to question his own convictions.

Against a backdrop of home-based labour, trade, factories, an Atlantic crossing, and the struggle for a new beginning, a story unfolds about exploitation and advancement, love and betrayal, courage and loss, and whether a person can escape a predetermined path without becoming part of the very power he once set out to resist.

Empire of Thread – Book One opens an ambitious historical trilogy spanning eastern Switzerland and America, revealing how closely individual lives were bound to the economic and social upheavals of the nineteenth century.

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