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.