In this fictional memoir, August Rick has his dream job working at the prominent Lemp Brewery as assistant to the vice-president.  While working to launch the Falstaff Inn, the brewer's restaurant at the upcoming 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, August reconnects with boyhood friend Lucas Gebhardt, a City Hall employee and follower of temperance philosophies in a city packed with breweries and saloons.  As gang violence continues to climb around the city, another boyhood friend Edward Lally, a police detective, works to investigate the people behind the violence.  August chronicles his life and times in the months before and during the great fair.