When Helen West is contracted to write a definitive essay on Maggie Fox, the founder of American Spiritualism, she begins to wonder if departed spirits do indeed return to comfort their loved ones. After all, Maggie Fox made a living by convincing people that the dead spoke through her. By incorporating tricks such as rigging apples on strings for knocking noises, her seances attracted the likes of Horace Greeley and Mrs. Abraham Lincoln.Throughout the course of her research, Helen, recovering from the death of her lover, develops a strange, unexpected kinship with Maggie. When she hears knocking in her old farmhouse in upstate New York, she can`t help but question if it is her old lover attempting to communicate with her.Is death the end? To what lengths will people go to comfort themselves after the death of a loved one? Helen confronts these questions and others in a captivating, haunting novel that effortlessly weaves together two stories that take place over one hundred years apart.AUTHORBIO: Jeanne Mackin is the author of several historical novels including The Frenchwoman and Dreams of Empire. She lives in upstate New York and teaches writing at Ithaca College.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The strange-but-true history of Maggie Fox, 19th-century founder of the American Spiritualist movement, haunts a 20th-century journalist in this double-barreled tale of love and loss. Mackin (Dreams of Empire; Queen's War; etc.) skips between Fox's story and that of middle-aged magazine writer Helen West, who takes on an assignment to write an essay about Maggie and her sister Katie. In 1848, the two inventive children drew crowds by claiming that they were receiving spirit messages at their home in upstate New York; in fact, they had devised a clever system involving hidden hammers and cracking joints. The "Hydesville Rappings," as they were dubbed, gained popularity, and the Fox girls were swept off to New York City, where they performed s‚ances for the likes of Horace Greeley. As Helen uncovers this bizarre tale, she begins to feel a kinship with Maggie, an unhappy child who grew up too quickly in a harsh environment. Like Helen, who has been mourning the death of her married lover, Jude, for three years, Maggie also lost her one great love, Arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane, and spent the rest of her sorrow-filled life communing with his ghost. Although Helen is not a believer at first, she soon finds herself spooked by mysterious bumps in the night. She believes she feels Jude's presence, and a desperate hope of seeing him again persists even as a new man attempts to woo her. Mackin shifts skillfully between these two atmospheric worlds, and once she tones down the overwritten prose of the first few chapters, the dual narrative acquires rhythm. Intelligent if predictable in its setup, the novel pays homage to two strong women separated by history but united in spirit.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Is death the end? Do ghosts exist? What is faith? Mackin examines these and related issues in a totally nonmacabre manner, telling in tandem two stories that take place about 150 years apart. In 1998, journalist Helen West, while mourning the death of her married lover, Jude, researches the strange life of Maggie Fox, called the Founder of American Spiritualism. Maggie became famous after 1848 when, with her sisters' help, she developed a large following eager to contact the spirits of dearly departed loved ones. Helen becomes involved with her subject and with the concept of the possibility of returning spirits. Can they comfort those they love? Can one enter a loving relationship with another before finding closure with the deceased, previous loved one? This well-written tale is sympathetically conceived and entertainingly presented. Recommended.DEllen R. Cohen, Rockville, MD
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A haunting tale,
By
This review is from: The Sweet By and By (Hardcover)
It does start out slow ~~ but once you get into the story, you become enmeshed with the characters within the story. Helen is a free-lance writer who is asked to write about Maggie Fox, one of the Spiritualist leaders in the 19th century. The two women's stories parallel one another and sometimes become entwined. Helen is still coming to terms with the death of her lover who died tragically in Rome when she starts the research on Maggie. And throughout the telling of Maggie's story, Helen tells her story as well. And it is a fascinating insight into the grieving process. For some of us, it takes longer to get over the death of a lover than it does for some others. Helen was plagued with insomnia, the "knocking" sound that entered her house, watching her friends move on with their lives and the third-year anniversary of her lover's death coming up ~~ it was beginning to be too much. Also, the story was set in the deepest and most bitterest of winters as well ~~ like a frozen life slowly coming to a thaw. It is an interesting read. It may not be one of my most favorite books in the world, but I've gained a new insight to what the Spiritualist movement really was to the Victorians. And I've gained an insight that not all is lost when a lover dies ~~ life still moves on. It is a haunting tale and one that you cannot put down easily ~~ but it's one that you're glad to have read.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An intimate sojourn through the centuries.,
By Book Maven (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Sweet By and By (Hardcover)
I read this novel in two sittings, eager to learn how the lives and love stories turned out, and also fascinated by the historical accuracy, the textures of everyday life. Before I realized it, I was swept up in Maggie and Helen's intersecting worlds: those they make, those they inherit, those they intuit, those they're hauled into by others. One of the book's many charms is how wisely it reveals the values and passions (the erotic scenes are fabulous) of two women from very different eras who, nonetheless, have everything in common.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
EDDYS OF TIME AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT,
By
This review is from: The Sweet By and By (Hardcover)
Jeanne Mackin's novel about Helen West, a freelance writer who is commissioned to produce a magazine article on Maggie Fox, the founder of the American spiritualism movement, begins simply enough with this premise, then spirals with increasing power and depth into a maelstrom of time and the human spirit. Mackin's writing skills gently but firmly take the reader by the hand -- we are led into the reality of the lives of the two women, moving gracefully back and forth across time as their indivdual stories unfold.As her article progresses, and West learns more about her subject, parallels between their lives -- often very subtle -- emerge, drawing the two women, born over a century apart, inexorably closer to one another. Maggie's life is over, of course -- and in many ways Helen feels that her life is over as well. Casting a clear, discerning eye on Maggie's methods of sham and fakery, Helen senses a hint of reality, of true belief, at the core. Through a series of seemingly unexplainable incidents, Helen begins to sense light shed upon events in her own life -- light that seems to emanate from the life of Maggie Fox. Unable after three years to gain any sense of closure following the death of her lover, Helen feels herself -- and her sanity -- slipping away. She feels a great burden of guilt from which she is unable to free herself. Opening the life of Maggie Fox for her article is like opening Pandora's box -- the more she learns, the more questions she has. Can the spirits of the dead really communicate with the living? Was everything Maggie Fox stood for really nothing but fakery and parlor tricks? Was Maggie's public 'confession' heartfelt, or was it simply revenge? Helen West searches for the answers to these and many more questions, both about the Fox sisters and about her own life -- and through her, Jeanne Mackin allows us to ask them of ourselves as well. Mackin's own research into the lives of the Fox sisters goes very far in adding a great deal of plausability to her story. Maggie Fox and her sisters held 'sittings' and seances for the rich and famous of their time -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Horace Greeley, Abraham Lincoln's widow, and many other notables. The author lets us see that anyone -- rich and famous, or poor and faceless -- can feel enough pain, can ache enough to want to believe in the 'services' the sisters offered. Her characters are developed subtly and completely -- they are human and believable. The burning questions in Helen's heart are ones we would well ask if we were in her shoes -- and Mackin's formidable, well-honed skills as a writer put us right there. This is an intelligently written, imaginatively conceived novel -- very entertaining and fulfilling, and well worth the read.
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