This is Michael Maxwell with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.
Today, I am recommending The Swan Gondola a historical fiction novel by Timothy Schaffert.
Most Americans have read about the World’s Fairs in Chicago, St. Louis, and New York City. Whether you're fascinated by the American debut of then-scandalous artforms like belly dancing, interested in the megalomania of Robert Moses, or are horrified by the crimes of H.H. Holmes, America’s first serial killer, and his murder hotel, there are plenty of great books about those fairs for you to read. What is more elusive to readers are any books about the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition- another huge World’s Fair that happened just 90 miles south of Sioux City in Omaha, Nebraska!
Schaffert plops readers down in turn of the century Omaha, a town much wilder than the city we know today. Readers meet characters from across the fair’s glimmering White City with its central lagoon and its midway jam-packed with performers and charlatans. Readers follow a con-man ventriloquist protagonist as he falls in love with a woman who’s beheaded hourly as she plays Marie Antoinette in one of the fair’s carnival shows. While this detailed setting is true and pulled from the pages of history, the otherworldly quality of the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition almost gives this novel the feel of a fantasy book.
As a Prince and the Pauper-esque love triangle unfolds, this Midwestern phantasmagoria alternates between the dreamy and the nightmarish. Finishing this book made me feel like I have my own memories of attending this fair that happened nearly one hundred years before I was even born.
Check out The Swan Gondola by Timothy Schaffert and other historical fiction novels set in the Midwest at the Sioux City Public Library today!
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