Church of Marvels - by Leslie Parry (Paperback)

About the Book

"New York, 1895. Sylvan Threadgill, a night soiler cleaning out the privies behind the tenement houses, finds an abandoned newborn baby in the muck. An orphan himself, Sylvan rescues the child, determined to find where she belongs. Odile Church and her beautiful sister, Belle, were raised amid the applause and magical pageantry of The Church of Marvels, their mother's spectacular Coney Island sideshow. But the Church has burnt to the ground, their mother dead in its ashes. Now Belle, the family's star, has vanished into the bowels of Manhattan, leaving Odile alone and desperate to find her. A young woman named Alphie awakens to find herself trapped across the river in Blackwell's Lunatic Asylum--sure that her imprisonment is a ruse by her husband's vile, overbearing mother. On the ward she meets another young woman of ethereal beauty who does not speak, a girl with an extraordinary talent that might save them both. As these strangers' lives become increasingly connected, their stories and secrets unfold. Moving from the Coney Island seashore to the tenement-studded streets of the Lower East Side, a spectacular human circus to a brutal, terrifying asylum, Church of Marvels takes readers back to turn-of-the-century New York--a city of hardship and dreams, love and loneliness, hope and danger"--Amazon.com.

Book Synopsis

A ravishing first novel, set in vibrant, tumultuous turn-of-the-century New York City, where the lives of four outsiders become entwined, bringing irrevocable change to them all.

New York, 1895. Sylvan Threadgill, a night soiler cleaning out the privies behind the tenement houses, finds an abandoned newborn baby in the muck. An orphan himself, Sylvan rescues the child, determined to find where she belongs.

Odile Church and her beautiful sister, Belle, were raised amid the applause and magical pageantry of The Church of Marvels, their mother's spectacular Coney Island sideshow. But the Church has burnt to the ground, their mother dead in its ashes. Now Belle, the family's star, has vanished into the bowels of Manhattan, leaving Odile alone and desperate to find her.

A young woman named Alphie awakens to find herself trapped across the river in Blackwell's Lunatic Asylum--sure that her imprisonment is a ruse by her husband's vile, overbearing mother. On the ward she meets another young woman of ethereal beauty who does not speak, a girl with an extraordinary talent that might save them both.

As these strangers' lives become increasingly connected, their stories and secrets unfold. Moving from the Coney Island seashore to the tenement-studded streets of the Lower East Side, a spectacular human circus to a brutal, terrifying asylum, Church of Marvels takes readers back to turn-of-the-century New York--a city of hardship and dreams, love and loneliness, hope and danger. In magnetic, luminous prose, Leslie Parry offers a richly atmospheric vision of the past in a narrative of astonishing beauty, full of wondrous enchantments, a marvelous debut that will leave readers breathless.

From the Back Cover

A sideshow performer, a pair of asylum escapees, and an orphaned boxer converge in Parry's intricately braided novel of secretsand hidden identities."--O, The Oprah Magazine

New York, 1895. A newborn baby is found abandoned in the muck of the privies behind a row of tenement houses. Her fate becomes the responsibility of four strangers, whose own lives become increasingly connected as their stories and secrets unfold. Moving from the Coney Island seashore to the tenement-studded streets of the Lower East Side, a spectacular human circus to a brutal, terrifying asylum, Church of Marvels takes readers back to turn-of-the-century New York--a city of hardship and dreams, love and loneliness, hope and danger. In magnetic, luminous prose, Leslie Parry offers a richly atmospheric vision of the past in a narrative of astonishing beauty, full of wondrous enchantments, a marvelous debut that will leave readers breathless.

"This quite literally marvelous novel takes you on a hallucinatory ride through old New York, until the four threads of its protagonists' lives tangle and tighten like a noose. Irresistible."--Emma Donoghue, author of Room

Review Quotes

"This quite literally marvelous novel takes you on a hallucinatory ride through old New York, until the four threads of its protagonists' lives tangle and tighten like a noose. Irresistible." - Emma Donoghue, author of ROOM
"[U]tterly captivating... In her first novel, Parry, a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, has proven herself more than capable of sustaining suspense, with a succession of cliffhangers compelling us to turn the page... It's hard to say more without spoiling it, but once all of the pieces have fallen into place, this book demands a second read." - Kansas City Star
"[U]tterly captivating... In her first novel, Parry... has proven herself more than capable of sustaining suspense, with a succession of cliffhangers compelling us to turn the page... this book demands a second read." - Kansas City Star
"This is not your everyday New York City novel. Set in 1895 in Coney Island and the Lower East Side, the novel follows separate lives and sets each on a weird and magical journey and has them all intertwining in a delicate dance as the novel progresses." - Refinery29, 21 New Authors You Need To Know
"Read this book for its gorgeous writing, for its Gilded Age, a marvel of richly-imagined éblouissance and finely-grained squalor. But most of all, read it for the moment when everything you thought you knew about one of its heroines turns upside down, leaving you breathless, astonished, and blessed." - Ellis Avery, author of The Last Nude
"Rarely have I read any novel that gripped me so viscerally from the first page, and continued to stoke my burning interest to the last... its plot is wound like a Swiss watch and its characters devastatingly real. This book is important for more reasons than I can list." - Lyndsay Faye, author of Gods of Gotham
"An incredible first novel by a gifted writer who doesn't leave a single narrative thread dangling." - The Missourian
"Parry's writing is smooth and descriptive, and she imbues these misfit characters and shabby, sometimes horrifying settings with energy and depth. Beautifully written, Parry's imaginative novel is most successful when exploring the limitations and complexities of gender and sexuality during its historical period." - Kirkus Reviews
"[A] beautifully written tale ... I loved the circus-seaside atmosphere mingled with the grit of turn of the century New York, the cast of characters possessed with such spirit to survive in terrible circumstances, and the bittersweet finale. A skillful triumph, undertaken with masterful scope." - Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist
"Read Leslie Parry's debut for its gorgeous writing. Read it for its Gilded Age, a marvel of richly-imagined éblouissance and finely-grained squalor. But most of all, read it for the moment when everything you thought you knew about one of its heroines turns upside down, leaving you breathless, astonished, and blessed." - Ellis Avery, author of The Last Nude
"[A] well-written, gripping, Dickensian first novel... Parry has constructed a heartbreaking, compelling tale that almost incredibly ends with a modicum of hope for those in the fin de siècle lower class of the Gilded Age." - New York Journal of Books
"One heck of a story, actually three narratives that intersect... t's laden with mystery and action, making it a novel to speed through, simultaneously appalled and addicted. It's an incredible first novel by a gifted writer who doesn't leave a single narrative thread dangling." - The Missourian
"Church of Marvels" is rich with the uncommon and strange; it is full of odd and confounding turns. It is, simply, marvelous. - Minneapolis Star Tribune
"A vibrant blend of the literary and the historical" - Brooklyn Daily Eagle