A novel · Available now
Tomorrow's Coffee by John Midolo
Some discoveries change the world. The greatest ones change the people who make them.
A physics teacher builds a machine in his Cleveland garage to make electricity practically free. It sends him six weeks into the future instead — and he comes back with a notebook.
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The Book
Every morning Patrick Carver grinds his coffee, crosses the yard to his garage, and works on a machine he believes will make electricity practically free.
The machine does something else. It puts him six weeks into the future for twelve hours, then sets him down in the same second he left.
Maria Davinci is his engineer and his oldest friend, the one who insisted on every safety. She is also the one he keeps a secret from.
Patrick comes back with a notebook. In it is a week of Cleveland Guardians scores that haven't been played yet. He tells himself he only wants proof, so he sets rules. Moneyline only. No parlays. No chasing. Tell Maria before the next step.
Six losses, one win, and seven bets he cannot lose.
The rules hold for about a week. The machine holds a little longer — long enough to pour the same cup of coffee twice, and to let a neighbor watch Patrick cross his own yard while he is teaching a class across town.
Then, on a hot afternoon in June, the lights go out from Cleveland to Toronto — and Patrick knows why.
Thirty-one hours later the power comes back. A man has died in a stalled elevator, and Patrick has to decide what he owes.
Because tomorrow has never depended on knowing the future. Only on keeping your promises.
Set in the unmistakable neighborhoods of Cleveland, Tomorrow's Coffee is a near-future novel about accidental time travel, friendship, restraint, and the distance between what a person can do and what they should.
The True Part
On August 14, 2003, the lights went out from Ohio to Ontario. I was living in an apartment building in Rochester, New York, and I spent that night walking my elderly neighbors up the stairs, one landing at a time.
I never forgot how fast an ordinary Thursday becomes something else when the power stops, or how quiet a city gets, or how much of what we call civilization turns out to be a handful of people deciding to be decent to each other in the dark.
Twenty-three years later, that night is a chapter. The blackout in Tomorrow's Coffee is fiction. The stairs are not.
About the Author
John Midolo has spent a lifetime solving real-world problems, leading healthcare innovation, improving complex systems, and asking the same question that drives every engineer: "There has to be a better way."
Tomorrow's Coffee is his first novel.
He lives in the Rochester, New York area with his wife, Cathy, where coffee is always fresh, ideas are never finished, and tomorrow is approached with equal parts optimism and caution.
The son of a Cleveland police officer, John is available for book clubs, library talks, and interviews — see below.
News from the garage
An occasional note — a few times a year, not a few times a week — about readings, the hardcover, and whatever comes after Tomorrow's Coffee. Your address is never shared and you can leave any time.
Prefer Amazon's alerts? Follow John Midolo on Amazon to hear about new releases.
Contact
Book clubs, libraries, bookstores, press, and readers with a question: write to john@johnmidolo.com or use the form. Reading-group guides and review copies are available on request.