ONE OF US, by Dan Chaon
Blame P.T. Barnum for American voyeurism. In the years before the Civil War, his Manhattan “museum” showcased spectacles of all kinds: beluga whales, a “Fiji mermaid” (actually a mummified monkey’s head and torso stitched to a fishtail), a bearded lady, the famous conjoined twins Chang and Eng.
Crowds flocked to gawk at garish scams as well as disabled humans; tens of millions of visitors purchased admission. But what flourished in New York didn’t stay in New York: Traveling circuses took the huckster’s business model on the road, turning a quick buck at the expense of gullible farmers and shopkeepers.
These pulp entertainments form the backdrop for Dan Chaon’s captivating new novel, “One of Us,” set in 1915. As the book opens, Bolt and Eleanor Lambkin, mind-reading twins on the cusp of puberty, have just lost their last parent. Escaping the clutches of their villainous Uncle Charlie, they flee Ohio on an orphan train with their dead father’s coded diary and a weighty secret.
These lost lambs are scooped up by the impresario Harland Jengling in Iowa, finding refuge amid “Jengling’s Emporium of Wonders” (a play on the Ringling franchise) as it rides the rails across the Prairie States. Carrot-haired and plain-faced, the twins are nonetheless a study in contrasts: “Folks sometimes assume that Bolt is a simpleton, especially next to Eleanor, who is bright-eyed and tart-tongued, who looks grown-ups in the eye and answers their questions without stumbling,” Chaon writes. “It has proven to be an effective disguise.”
The pair settle into a rhythm: Eleanor assists a tattooed carousel manager while Bolt babysits for the young Rosalie, a fortuneteller with a scrunched infant’s face like a tumor on the back of her skull. Meanwhile, Charlie continues to pursue them, occasionally slaughtering whole families along the way to calm his nerves. (Although not an actual blood relation, he’d known and admired their dad; wrangling his way into their lives feeds an emotional obsession.)
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