Come See the Fair - Hardcover

Savit, Gavriel

 
9780593378663: Come See the Fair
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593378660 ISBN 13: 9780593378663
Verlag: Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

An unforgettable story of magic, mediums, and séances set during the Chicago World’s Fair from the author of the National Book Award finalist The Way Back.

Twelve-year-old orphan Eva Root travels the country pretending to channel spirits at séances. Her audiences swear their loved ones have spoken to them from beyond the grave. This, of course, is impossible.

But one day, Eva experiences another impossibility: she hears a voice in her head telling her to come to the World’s Fair in Chicago. There, she meets a mysterious magician who needs her help to bring magic to life. But as their work progresses, Eva begins to suspect that the project's goals may not be as noble as they seem. And when tragedy strikes, Eva will have to reach beyond death itself to unravel the mystery of the magician's plan—before it’s too late. 

From the author of the National Book Award finalist The Way Back comes a story of what to do when you get burned by the magic you’ve been looking for all your life.

“Gavriel Savit is an alchemist. Fusing history and magic with the shimmering ghost light of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, he has conjured a perfect potion of adventure and suspense. I was spellbound from the first page.” —Candace Fleming, award-winning author of The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh and Murder Among Friends

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Gavriel Savit is the author of The Way Back, a National Book Award finalist, and Anna and the Swallow Man, which the New York Times called "a splendid debut." His books have been translated into nineteen languages. He lives in Springfield, Illinois, with his wife and children.

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1


Strange Fire


Mrs. Jenny Blodgett

presents:

the amazing

Little Eva Root

Clairvoyant!

Spirit Medium!

Channeler of the Voices of the Dead!

Her Uncanny Abilities shock the senses!

She brings forth the Messages of the Departed!

Come and see!

Come and See!

COME AND SEE!


During the first week of June 1893, these handbills were unavoidable in the village of Nadab, Ohio. Mailed ahead, they were as common as coal dust by the time Mrs. Blodgett and Little Eva arrived--piled by the door at the Hofmann Emporium, boot-trodden and filthy on the floor of Wilson’s Saloon--and wherever Mrs. Blodgett encountered them, she bent to add the following lines:


Wednesday at 8:00

Back room at Wilson’s

35¢

Just. Like. Magic.



It began--as everything does--with a spark.

Mrs. Blodgett had started drinking early that day, and her hands shook as she struck at the matchbox: two times, three. A puckered woman on the front bench was fanning herself against the summer heat, and Mrs. Blodgett had to turn her back to the audience for shelter from the breeze.

With a final strike, the match head burst into flame. Glaring over her shoulder, Mrs. Blodgett lit the candle.

The presence of this candle, like so much of the evening, was theatrical: it allowed Little Eva to begin the performance by lifting the light out of the room like a grand curtain.

And séances are always better in the dark.

The truth was that Eva Root had not been particularly little in quite some time. Years before, when Mrs. Blodgett had first trotted her out, the description really had been apt--a tiny seven-year-old, wide-eyed, rosy-cheeked. But she was nearly twice as old now, and the passing days had stretched and sharpened her like the fires of a forge: every day a new town, every night a new bed, and in between, train car after train car after train car. By the time they found themselves in Nadab, they’d given well over a thousand séances in the little towns that had budded up from the steel boughs of the railroad--Carthage, Kansas; Finisterre, Iowa; Goshen, Nebraska--and though she no longer had the smoke screen of innocence to hide behind, Eva had learned all she needed to know about passing on the communications of the dead. Which, of course, was impossible.

But all the same--she had a way of making it seem as if it were not.

From the back of the room, Eva considered Nadab’s paltry little crowd. Not counting herself or Mrs. Blodgett, there were five of them there--more than had been at the smallest séance she’d given, but not by much. They were mostly old, too, which muddled things: the more one lives, the more one loses.

She took a deep breath. It wasn’t her favorite trick, but there was always the war to rely on: practically everyone over forty had lost someone who’d served in blue or gray.

Cannon fire, gun smoke, The Union forever, hurrah! boys, hurrah! . . . It was going to be that kind of night.

She flexed her fingers.

Someone in the slack, sweating audience let out a little fart, and this seemed to deplete Mrs. Blodgett’s already scarce reserves of patience.

“Fine,” she said. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my privilege to present to you Miss Eva Root, a young innocent touched with the power to channel the voices of the dead. Kindly give her your attention, and in return, she will show you things that you never thought possible.”

This speech had once been considerably longer--and considerably better--but then Mrs. Blodgett had once cared.

“Eva?”

Five heads swiveled back to stare at her. She stumbled forward.

“There?” she said, blinking at the chair that had clearly been set out for her.

This performance of uncertainty generally made a better impression when Mrs. Blodgett responded in some way, but she had already begun to wobble gently around the room snuffing the gas lamps.

Swallowing, Eva slid into her seat. Soon only the flickering candlelight was left.

“It works better in the dark,” she whispered. “Can I . . . ?” and she gestured to the candle.

Her eyes passed slowly over the faces before her. This was the most important part of the evening, this moment of anticipation. She could make all the right guesses, say just the right things, and still, if these people didn’t want her to do impossible things for them, then she simply couldn’t.

The lady on the front bench gave a curt little nod--engaged, but not terribly enthusiastic. Three rows behind her, though, was a man with an unkempt beard who smiled kindly.

That was good: a foothold.

Eva pressed her eyes shut, leaned forward, and blew. The candle guttered and died.

Darkness.

Now she began to thicken her breathing with effort.

“I hear thunder,” she said. “Men yelling. There’s smoke. Fire.” She went quiet for a moment. “Is it . . . a storm?”

Somewhere in the room, a chair creaked.

“But there’s no rain,” she said. “No, not a storm.” Another little pause. “Is it thunder? Or . . . ?”

“Cannon,” said an eager woman in the third row. “It’s cannon.”

Eva turned her head immediately. “Yes.”

“Was he afraid?” said the eager woman.

To be sure, it would’ve been kinder to say that whomever this woman was thinking of had died without suffering. But that would’ve made for a rather duller séance. And besides--the more you agreed with them, Eva found, the more people began to believe you.

She nodded sadly. “There’s quite a lot of fear. But gratitude, too. He wants you to know that he thought of you before the end.”

“Me?” said the eager woman.

Eva chuckled. “He knew you’d be surprised.”

“Oh,” said the woman fondly.

Eva didn’t know whom they were talking about, of course, but it didn’t matter--the woman in front of her did, and her certainty filled in Eva’s sketchy outline with a memory so clear it almost seemed to breathe.

That was how it worked.

Eva spent a fair amount of time on the eager woman; she was well disposed to believe, and Eva had a tendency to make her guesses work even when they were a bit wide in their aim. By the time Eva moved on, the woman was sniffling softly: a job well done.

The lady in the front row came next. She was the sort who wanted to be won over--a little reserved, a little skeptical--but Eva, as always, was patient, and mere minutes later, she was forgiving the lady for her unkindness to a niece who (Eva was almost certain) had fallen to her death in a well.

And then, in a flash, everything changed.

Eva had just turned to engage the man with the unkempt beard when, with a spark and a sputter, the dead candle at her elbow flared back to life.

She made a sound somewhere between a gasp and a yell, and was on her feet before she knew it.

“What is it?” said the woman in the front row.

The candle was burning bright, its flame tall and unwavering. Eva wasn’t sure what to do. Nothing like this had ever happened before.

“Someone,” she said, improvising madly. “Someone is here with us.”

And this was truer than she knew.

“Who?” said the woman in the front row. “Who...

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Verlag
Knopf Books for Young Readers
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593378660
ISBN 13 
9780593378663
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
336
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@phaidon.com
gpsr@phaidon.com

Zähringerstraße 24
Berlin
10707
Deutschland

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