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Title: Mabel Stark was a real person ...
Review: It's a challenge for a novelist to write about an actual person. Hough did a pretty good job. Mabel's life, imagined and factual, was fascinating. Given her eccentricities and her rare talents, there was a lot of material here for an imaginative author. Hough takes a restrained approach while still creating for us a fascinating, difficult and empathetic character. The presentation of circus life in this novel is at the level of the high-lighted performers rather than the working stiffs as we encountered in Water for Elephants. By combining the information in both of these novels, the reader can get a good idea of the circuses of the first half of the 1900's. Just imagining the logistics of managing these huge enterprises is daunting in itself. Circuses played an important role in American life, and this novel allows us to glimpse that as well as experience Mabel Stark's life. Well done.
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