The Hatbox Baby [Hardcover]

Carrie Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 22, 2000

The year is 1933, and on a sweltering summer morning, a baby is delivered in a hatbox to the Century of Progress Exposition - The World's Fair - in Chicago. The very, very tiny baby, born three months early, is brought by his desperate young father to the fair's famous incubator doctor, who exhibits live premature infants to the fair's gawking crowds. This doctor, the father hopes, will save his son. Before the summer ends and the fair closes, a remarkable cast of characters will come to have an investment in the fragile baby's life - Dr. Lep Hoffman, the doctor who cares for him; Caroline Day, the fair's beautiful fan dancer; and St. Louis Percy, the fan dancer's cousin, friend, and protector, whose stake in the baby's future becomes the most serious of them all.

In the strange world of the fair, a place of freaks and marvels, mysteries, miracles - and even murders - the notion of what is "normal" is suddenly in question. Inspired by the real life and work of an early neonatologist, Carrie Brown once again celebrates love's transforming power with a richly imagined, deeply affecting story.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Chicago's 1933 World's Fair boasts both scientific marvels and carny-style showmanship in Barnes and Noble Discovery Award winner Brown's entrancing third novel, the two main attractions being fan dancer Caroline Day and the world-renowned premature baby doctor, Leo Hoffman, who exhibits his preemies in the "Infantorium." The fair provides a convenient backdrop against which to chronicle the transient lives of an eclectic collection of "fair people," and some of those characters come vibrantly to life. Brown's (Rose's Garden; Lamb in Love) beguiling narrative shifts points of viewAfrom the homuncular St. Louis Percy (Caro's cousin, sidekick, and sometimes confidant) to the taciturn Dr. Hoffman, who is devoted to the care of his mostly abandoned, imperiled infants and who hopes someday to get his innovative incubator hospital out of the freak-show sector and into the scientific one. A tiny, very premature baby boy is brought to Hoffman's door in a hatbox, deposited by a distraught young father, who then enters the theater where Caro dancesAand is brutally and inexplicably murdered. Over the young father's body, the doctor and the dancer meet, their fates linked by the circumstances surrounding the abandoned child. The hatbox baby's young mother is too frightened to find out what happened to her child, who soon becomes the chief object of fascination of nearly every character in the novel. The romantic pairing of Dr. Hoffman and Caro blossoms dreamily amid more substantial developments involving the staff and management of the incubator hospital, the local controversy about the "exhibition" of humans, and the sympathetic story of St. Louis, eager to forge a life away from traveling fairs. Brown's dramatic and multifaceted tale doesn't simply rest on the intrigue of a moment in American medical history when premature infants were displayed as "freaks." While she navigates readers through the complex intersections of medicine, social responsibility and free enterprise, her lyrical, touching story succeeds on the strength of her affection for the characters she accords dignity and a yearning for love. 8 city-author tour. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Confirmed bachelor Dr. Leo Hoffman is a pioneer in neonatal intensive care who finances his research into and medical care of destitute babies by charging admission to his educational programs at fairs and amusement parks. During the summer of 1933, while working at his premature baby exhibit at the Chicago World's Fair, he saves the life of a special "premie"Dand finds love in the process. This book is another unexpected little jewel from Brown (Lamb in Love, Rose's Garden). One would not expect such unusual subject matter to be poetic and beautiful as well as engrossing, but the author's brilliance has struck yet again. This is a moving story about complex, interesting characters who love deeply, and it is wonderful. Most highly recommended.DBettie Alston Shea, formerly with P.L. of Charlotte & Mecklenburg Cty., NC
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books; 1st edition (September 22, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565122992
• ISBN-13: 978-1565122994
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,002,318 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dreamy quality of novel also a reader's dream, December 10, 2000

By 

Laura G. Carter "Castlebreaker" (Reidsville, NC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Hatbox Baby (Hardcover)

I love it when I discover an author so gifted and talented that reading his or her current book makes me salivate at the thought of going back to savor previous works! Such is the case with Carrie Brown's "The Hatbox Baby" - the title of which alone was enough to intrigue me. And I must say that the book lives up to - and, indeed, beyond - its innovative title.

The novel tells the story of a baby which is brought to Dr. Leo Hoffman's premature baby exhibit at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. The baby's frantic father has brought him to Dr. Hoffman - considered to be a world-renown specialist in what are today called "premies" - on the advice of the midwife who helped deliver the baby. "If anyone can help your baby, HE can," she tells the baby's father.

As the father first hunts frantically for the exhibit and then, once he's found it, loiters hesitantly outside the doctor's tent, Ms. Brown demonstrates her ability to build and maintain suspense while evoking the dream-like unreality of the fair atmosphere, with its carnival trappings, misshapen participants and crowds eager for titillation and entertainment.

Careful and thorough characterizations leave the reader with clear pictures of Dr. Hoffman, Caroline the Fan Dancer (whose risque exhibition/dance show is located next door to the baby exhibit) and St. Louis, the pseudo-dwarf who is both friend and adopted family to Caroline, among others. Ms. Brown knows how to elicit the reader's sympathy for and understanding of the people that populate this novel and this connection is established through her fine writing and ability to place the reader within the minds and worlds of her characters.

And, over all, looms the World's Fair - entertaining, nightmarish, ridiculous, pathetic, but always present and always clearly delineated. This backdrop, with its focus on the future and its marvels to come, still never manages to escape the fact that some things - both good and bad - are eternal and ageless.

Of course, there is The Hatbox Baby itself and the questions it and its fellow exhibits raise, including asking the reader to consider just what is "normal" anyway. This novel is a brilliant and unforgettable work, and I recommend having time at your disposal once you begin reading it because you will not want to put it down.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Hatbox Baby is a find!, April 22, 2001

By 

Rebecca Brown "rebeccasreads" (Clallam Bay, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Hatbox Baby (Hardcover)

On a sweltering summer morning in 1933, a baby is delivered in a hatbox to Infantorium at the World's Fair & a mystery of love lost & found begins among the freaks & marvels of the Century of Progress Exposition.

Somewhere in that hot midwestern city, a young woman is giving birth, with the help of a neighboring midwife, to an infant unlikely to survive. The father, in desperation snatches up the living babe & rushes off to the World's Fair because he'd read about a doctor who could save premature babies.

It is the life of this tiny baby, born too early, that brings strangers together in a bond of desperate hope, frantic escapes & heartwarming redemption in a far-away time our grandparents might remember well.

A beautifully researched & written adventure of a special time & a particularly strange place. A fascinating read!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great world to live in for a few days, August 18, 2002

By 

traceybeehive "traceybeehive" (Laguna Beach, Calif.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hatbox Baby (Paperback)

I really fell in love with this book. It was a cross between Geek Love and The Ciderhouse Rules (two of my favorite books). It was odd and sad and beautiful at the same time. I just liked the idea of living amoung the people at the Chicago Worlds Fair in 1933 when things that we take for granted now were just being discovered. The author did a great job of putting you right on those streets in that era with characters you start to really to care about.
Some people complained about the ending and I can kind of see their point. There is not a lot of resolution but if you read it just to go on a trip into the strange and awesome world of carnivals and the people who inhabit them you will love the ride.