A Pygmalion story with a mystery twist, Zimmerman's second novel (after
The Orphanmaster)
takes us on an over-the-top romp through 1870s America, courtesy of its
titular heroine. Our deeply unreliable narrator, 22-year-old medical
student Hugo Delegate, and his robber-baron family rescue a ravishing,
raven-haired feral girl, Bronwyn, from a freak show in the Wild West
town of Virginia City, Nevada, and set out to turn her into New York
society's most envied debutante. It's not long, however, before Hugo
notices that his adopted sister's male admirers often end up dead,
mutilated in ways that remind him of the razor-sharp metal claws that
Bronwyn used as her sideshow stage props. Is she a brutal murderer? Or
could Hugo himself be responsible—a man who suffers from the occasional
"involuntary excursion into a violent mental twilight" and, oh, has a
thing for knives? The pace sometimes falters, as Zimmerman dips in and
out of a cast of thousands, ranging from real-life figures to some
admirably imagined eccentrics, and shows off her considerable historical
research. But stick with this
haute penny dreadful and be
rewarded with a rip-roaring conclusion that it's hard to see coming.
Consider this the compulsively readable love child of Edith Wharton and
Edgar Allan Poe.