SECOND SIGHT
by Gary Blackwood
More brilliantly re-envisioned history from the author of Year of the Hangman (2002), this time set in brawling, bustling Civil War Washington. Using present tense and authorial interjections delivered in a tone of mystery, Blackwood shepherds readers into the theatrical world, where, after years of hardship, Nicholas Ehrlich and his teenaged son Joseph are enjoying a rapid rise, buoyed by their ingeniously designed new mind-reading act. Understandably dazzled by the public’s adulation and the chance to hang out with the renowned likes of John Wilkes Booth, Joseph is nonetheless able to keep his sense of perspective (usually), thanks to his friend Cassandra, a frail orphan who really is gifted with second sight—and whose fragmentary visions of President Lincoln are taking on an increasingly ominous cast. But how to persuade anyone to believe her? The suspense really begins to rev up when Joseph begins catching whiffs of conspiracy from more earthly quarters. Blackwood draws almost exclusively upon historical people and events, sets them in the most vivid evocation of the time and place since Jennifer Armstrong’s Dreams of Mairhe Mehan (1999) and caps his mesmerizing thriller with a stunning twist. (Historical fiction. 11-13)