A little bookish fun...

Title:  Whispers Beyond the Veil
Author:  Jessica Estevao
Genre:  Historical fiction/mystery
Setting:  Old Orchard Beach, Maine, 1898
Main Character:  Ruby Proulx

5 Things to know about Ruby Proulx:  

• She was raised by her father and grew up traveling the medicine show circuit with him, helping to sell his "miracle" elixir to the needy and gullible.
• On the side, she tells fortunes using her dead mother's Tarot cards.
• She knows how to read people and can lie without batting an eye, but she has a good heart.
• When her father's latest get-rich scheme ends up killing a man, Ruby runs to Hotel Belden in Old Orchard Beach, which is owned by her Aunt Honoria whom she's never met.
• In order to help save her Aunt's hotel--which caters to the Spiritualist crowd--she pretends to be a medium who can speak to the dead even though her only psychic ability is the voice she occasionally hears advising her what to do (because it turns out, Ruby is clairaudient just like her mother was).

My thoughts:  This is a fun read. I like this time period. And Ruby is a great character, as are the other people she meets at the hotel, like Mrs. Doyle, the stern housekeeper who knows when someone is lying to her, and the two elderly Velmont sisters who are hoping to contact their dead father through Ruby. Then there's Officer Yancey who is investigating the recent murders at the hotel and who suspects that Ruby is somehow involved. Even though she's not. And while this isn't the most tightly woven mystery I've ever read, the few flaws and loose ends here and there didn't stop me from enjoying it. In fact, I liked it enough to have already put the next book in this series on hold at the library. 

Happy Reading!

We Hear the Dead...

Maggie:  I began the deception when I was too young to know right from wrong. No one suspected us of any trick, because we were such young children. We were led on by my sister purposely and by my mother unintentionally. Only with the passing of time did I come to understand the consequences of my actions.

Kate:  Maggie has a different understanding of all the events that have happened since that night in Hydesville long ago. To her the spirits were always a game. For my sister Leah they were a means to an end. For my mother, a miracle. And for me they were my life's calling. I have no regrets.

So begins Dianne K. Salerni's fictionalized account of the Fox sisters and the Spiritualist movement they spawned with their spirit rappings and messages from the dead. It was in a small house in Hydesville, New York, where these first ghostly encounters happened, but Maggie's and Kate's notoriety quickly spread. Their older sister Leah soon had them performing to much wider audiences, traveling from New York to Philadelphia and back. It seemed nearly everyone at that time was interested in the afterlife and in communicating with the dead. So much so some were even willing to pay for the privilege.

This is such an interesting time period in American history and Salerni does a good job of portraying the Fox sisters and relating the facts of their stories.  But I have to say, this one was a bit of a slog for me. Maggie is the main narrator, but it's like she's relating things that happened to her in the past. And maybe that's why this novel lost some of its immediacy. I actually preferred Kate's chapters, but they were few and far between.  It's not a bad read. And I did learn a lot about the Fox sisters and their lives that I didn't know before. Another bonus? This is one of the books that I chose to read for Lark's 2017 Backlist Reader Challenge because it's been on my TBR list for years. So, despite it being a a slow read, I managed to finish it! I just wish it had been a little more compelling...or 100 pages shorter.

Happy Reading!

P.S. I did really enjoy Salerni's other novel, The Caged Graves, which is more of a gothic mystery and would be a perfect October read.