Magruder's Curiosity Cabinet by H.P. Wood

What a delightful surprise this book was!

My sister in law started giving the same books to my mother and me (and her own self!) for Christmas a few years ago so that we could do a family book club.  This is one of those books!  She gave me all sorts of disclaimers - she had not read it, wasn't sure it would be any good, etc etc.  I always feel like with a random selection like this, you win some and you lose some.  Well, this one was a winner.

In further full disclosure, this is also a fictional account of a black plague like disease hitting Coney Island, NY, so that was also a surprise considering I picked it up to read during 2020's Pandemic Quarantine.  Truth is stranger than fiction, eh??

In 1904, 19-year old Kitty Heyward is newly arrived in NY from England after a traumatic discovery, only to be traumatized again by being mysteriously separated from her mother.  Enter a con man, a half man, a machine man, and a half and half, among other Colorful Carnival Characters.  Kitty and the others begin to form a new family while facing an unknown assailant in both the illness and the city's reaction to it as well as the "normal" and now increased discrimination towards the carnies.

The author debuts tremendous talent and potential with this book in my opinion.  She tackles so many issues with kindness, education, humor, tenderness and honesty.  The book alternates narrators so we get a view of life on both sides of the economy, while several of the characters also come to a new understanding of their own prejudices - and that works both ways.  No matter which character's head we are in, the reader feels fully invested and the characters are fully fleshed out.  Everything from automatons to leopards to gender fluidity to politics to fleas are covered here.

After all, real life is circus, too. 


PS - even with a handful of f-bombs, I would let my older teenagers read this one.  Not really historical fiction as there was no plague in NY at that time, but the other themes of acceptance of physical deformities, differing lifestyles, working together, and forming families are really well done here. As is the writing, which sometimes for me overrules all else.  I will definitely be searching up this author!!!