Wall Street Journal's Ten Books You'll Want to Read This Spring
Indie Next Pick, April 2019
Spring Okra Pick from the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance
In rural north Georgia two decades after the Civil War,
thirteen-year-old Lulu Hurst reaches high into her father's bookshelf
and pulls out an obscure book, The Truth of Mesmeric Influence. Deemed
gangly and undesirable, Lulu wants more than a lifetime of caring for
her disabled baby brother, Leo, with whom she shares a profound and
supernatural mental connection.
"I only wanted to be Lulu Hurst, the girl who captivated her brother
until he could walk and talk and stand tall on his own. Then I would be
the girl who could leave."
Lulu begins to "captivate" her friends and family, controlling their
thoughts and actions for brief moments at a time. After Lulu convinces a
cousin she conducts electricity with her touch, her father sees a unique
opportunity. He grooms his tall and indelicate daughter into an
electrifying new woman: The Magnetic Girl. Lulu travels the Eastern
seaboard, captivating enthusiastic crowds by lifting grown men in parlor
chairs and throwing them across the stage with her "electrical charge."
While adjusting to life on the vaudeville stage, Lulu harbors a secret
belief that she can use her newfound gifts, as well as her growing
notoriety, to heal her brother. As she delves into the mysterious book's
pages, she discovers keys to her father's past and her own future--but
how will she harness its secrets to heal her family?
Gorgeously envisioned, The Magnetic Girl is set at a time when the
emerging presence of electricity raised suspicions about the
other-worldly gospel of Spiritualism, and when women's desire for
political, cultural, and sexual presence electrified the country.
Squarely in the realm of Emma Donoghue's The Wonder and Leslie Parry's
Church of Marvels, The Magnetic Girl is a unique portrait of a
forgotten period in history, seen through the story of one young woman's
power over her family, her community, and ultimately, herself.
