Review by Booklist Review
Henry's debut blends carnival culture and the economic depression and racism of the American South in 1939 with African mysticism, wrapping it around a young woman's struggle to find her place in the world. Liza Meeks has an affinity for communicating with animals, a gift inherited from the parents who abandoned her, but she cannot control and does not fully understand it. To escape a dreary job, Liza joins the G. B. Bacchanal Carnival, hoping to earn enough money to find her long-lost sister. Among the carnies are two fierce Dahomey Amazons, a storytelling pygmy with unsavory appetites, a game runner with an uncontrolled shape-shifting tendency, and a gigantic strongman and his fortune-telling wife. Some of them serve an African demon with an insatiable taste for the souls of young children, who unknowingly has a connection to Liza. The story's finale seems a bit rushed but the journey to get there is well worth the trip through beautifully descriptive prose that fully captures the places, people, and time period. Offer to fans of dark circuses.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Henry's eerie debut unveils the haunting world behind the scenes of a 1930s carnival. The traveling G.B. Bacchanal Carnival is more than the typical mix of lion tamers and contortionists. This one-of-a-kind operation boasts an interracial cast of tricksters, entertainers, and oddities--and plucky young Black woman Eliza Meeks is determined to join them. Though initially turned away, she's accepted into the carnival after using her gift for communicating with animals to save an alligator wrestler from becoming gator food during a performance. Now she hopes to use her newfound financial freedom and the mobility of the carnival to search for her missing sister, Twiggy. She leverages her knowledge of the American South to become the person to set the carnival's course and steer it onto her sister's trail. But as Eliza learns to love the eccentric group of misfits that are her coworkers, she also learns dark secrets about the carnival, her own abilities, and the history of "her people." Henry skillfully layers historical realism with fantastic elements to explore the way times of desperation test the ethics of oppressed communities. The rushed ending will disappoint some readers, but the journey there is well wrought. Henry is a writer to watch. Agent: Mary C. Moore, Kimberley Cameron & Assoc. (May)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
In the 1930s, a young woman uses her ability to communicate with animals to find a home with a traveling carnival. Eliza Meeks can't talk to animals, exactly, but she can send images to them and get images back. Separated from her beloved baby sister, Twiggy, Liza does housework for a nasty woman who owns the Baton Rouge boardinghouse where she lives. When the G.B. Bacchanal Carnival comes to town, Liza manages to salvage a disastrous alligator-wrestling match, and the carnival's proprietor, Clay Kennel, is so impressed that he offers her a job as an animal performer. At the same time, he orders her to steer clear of a strange red trailer. Inside the trailer is Clay's boss, the true owner of the G.B. Bacchanal Carnival, Geneva Broussard. Only Geneva isn't her real name, and she's not remotely human--she's an ancient demon who devours the souls of children, and Liza may be the only one who can stop her. Henry's debut draws on a rich history of folklore from various African traditions as well as African history and Black American history, and almost the entire main cast is Black. The carnival setting works perfectly for bringing together various strange and magical people who aren't at home anywhere else. The extended cast is all finely detailed, but too much time spent on supporting characters destabilizes the plot before it finds traction again with Liza heading into the finale. Come one, come all, this magical carnival has all the delightful dangers a reader could wish for. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
