Lindsay Eagar's dazzling YA debut welcomes us backstage at the Family
Fortuna circus, where wonders lie in wait to steal your breath away. You
won't believe your eyes!
Beaked. Feathered. Monstrous. Avita was born to be a star. Her tent
sells out nightly, and every performance incites bloodcurdling screams.
She's the most lucrative circus act from Texas to Tacoma, the crown
jewel of the Family Fortuna, and Avita feeds on the shrieks, the gasps,
the fear. But when a handsome young artist arrives to create posters of
the performers, she's appalled by his rendering of Bird Girl. Is that
all he sees? A hideous monster--all sharp beak and razor teeth, obsidian
eyes and ruffled feathers? Determined to be more, Avita devises a plan
to snatch freedom out from under the greased mustache of her charismatic
father, the domineering proprietor and ringmaster. But will their
fragile circus family survive the showdown she has in mind? By turns
delightful and disturbing, bawdy and breathtaking, horrific and
heartfelt, this electric and exquisitely crafted story about a family
like no other challenges our every notion of what it means to be
different--subject to an earful of screams--and to step out of the
shadows and shine anyway.