{"product_id":"church-of-marvels-9780062367563","title":"Church of Marvels","description":"\u003cp\u003eA ravishing first novel, set in vibrant, tumultuous turn-of-the-century New York City, where the lives of four outsiders become entwined, bringing irrevocable change to them all.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNew York, 1895. Sylvan Threadgill, a night soiler cleaning out the privies behind the tenement houses, finds an abandoned newborn baby in the muck. An orphan himself, Sylvan rescues the child, determined to find where she belongs.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOdile Church and her beautiful sister, Belle, were raised amid the applause and magical pageantry of The Church of Marvels, their mother's spectacular Coney Island sideshow. But the Church has burnt to the ground, their mother dead in its ashes. Now Belle, the family's star, has vanished into the bowels of Manhattan, leaving Odile alone and desperate to find her.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA young woman named Alphie awakens to find herself trapped across the river in Blackwell's Lunatic Asylum--sure that her imprisonment is a ruse by her husband's vile, overbearing mother. On the ward she meets another young woman of ethereal beauty who does not speak, a girl with an extraordinary talent that might save them both.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs these strangers' lives become increasingly connected, their stories and secrets unfold. Moving from the Coney Island seashore to the tenement-studded streets of the Lower East Side, a spectacular human circus to a brutal, terrifying asylum, \u003cem\u003eChurch of Marvels\u003c\/em\u003e takes readers back to turn-of-the-century New York--a city of hardship and dreams, love and loneliness, hope and danger. In magnetic, luminous prose, Leslie Parry offers a richly atmospheric vision of the past in a narrative of astonishing beauty, full of wondrous enchantments, a marvelous debut that will leave readers breathless.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eParry, Leslie:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - \u003cp\u003eLeslie Parry is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her stories have appeared in \u003cem\u003eThe Virginia Quarterly Review\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eThe Missouri Review\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eThe Cincinnati Review\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eThe PEN\/O. Henry Prize Stories\u003c\/em\u003e, among other publications. She was recently a resident at Yaddo and the Kerouac House. Her writing has also received a National Magazine Award nomination and an honorable mention in \u003cem\u003eThe Best American Short Stories 2013\u003c\/em\u003e. She lives in Chicago.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ecco Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51384135614738,"sku":"9780062367563","price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_290ef2f7-2a3e-43f5-84fb-c452c105a1f0.jpg?v=1750164314","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/church-of-marvels-9780062367563","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}