The Tales of Alvin Maker is a series of six alternate history fantasy novels written by American novelist Orson Scott Card, published from 1987 to 2003 (with one more planned), that explore the experiences of a young man, Alvin Miller, who realizes he has incredible powers for creating and shaping things around him. Overview The stories take place on the American frontier in the early 19th century, a fantasy setting based on early American folklore and superstition, in a world in which folk magic actually works and manifests differently by race, and many Caucasian characters have a limited supernatural ability, or “knack,” to do some task to near-perfection, while Native Americans manifest nature magic and people of African ancestry can work voodoo. The stories involve a number of historical events and figures, but as a creation of alternate history. The primary divergence is the survival of Oliver Cromwell from the illness that killed him in reality, thanks to a physician secretly having a magical healing knack (Cromwell considered such knacks evil witchcraft). What was documented as the Colonial United States is divided in the books into a number of separate nations, including a smaller United States whose capital is Philadelphia and whose largest city is a Dutch-settled but increasingly English-speaking New Amsterdam. It displays much stronger Native American influence in its culture and society between New England and Virginia and extending westwards to Ohio. (New England is a colony of a Republican England where the Restoration never occurred thanks to Cromwell’s survival.) A monarchy on the southern portion of the Eastern Seaboard (where the real-world Carolinas, Georgia, etc. are) known as the “Crown Colonies” was founded by the House of Stuart in exile. An autonomous region known as Apalachee is centered on the Appalachian Mountains. Canada remains controlled by France while Florida and Nueva Barcelona (the real-world Louisiana) are colonized by Spain. Real-world Mexico is an indigenous empire but is facing the prospect of war from the United States and European powers. In addition, many of the historical figures are either presented as caricatures or bear only superficial resemblance to their historical persons. Some of the historical figures are also accorded knacks, such as Benjamin Franklin (not a character, but repeatedly mentioned), who is said to have been a Maker, and Napoleon, who has the abilities both to make others adore and obey him and to see others’ great ambitions.