New York, 1895. Sylvan Threadgill finds and rescues an abandoned baby while cleaning privies behind a ten ement. The Church of Marvels, a Coney Island sideshow, has burnt to the ground, leaving Odile and Belle Church' s mother dead in its ashes, and Belle has vanished. Alphie awakens to find herself in Blackwell' s Lunatic Asylum, where she meets a girl with an extraordinary talent that might save them both. As these strangers' lives become increasingly connected, their stories and secrets unfold.
From the Coney Island seashore to the tenement-studded streets of the Lower East Side, a spectacular human circus to a terrifying asylum, Church of Marvels takes readers back to turn-of-the-century New York, offering a richly atmospheric narrative that will leave readers breathless.
