Another Review at MyShelf.Com

Publisher: Coachlight Press
Release Date: June 2004
ISBN: 0971679045
Awards:  
Format Reviewed: Trade Paperback
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Genre:   Historical [1918, San Diego]
Reviewed: 2004
Reviewer: Rachel A Hyde
Reviewer Notes:  
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Voices Airy
By Catherine Karp


    After the death of her father, young Lucy Crumb leaves her childhood home in Topeka to join her older sister Rosalind in San Diego. She does this against the wishes of her family and friends, for her sister went away in disgrace after becoming pregnant when Lucy was a small child. While traveling down on the train, Lucy is taken under the wing of the wealthy Milnes who are going to the same place - the neat, organized Anna and her shell-shocked brother Joseph who are going to play such a part in her life. Rosalind now works from her rented home as a spiritual medium and is just as beautiful and captivating as Lucy remembers. But is she taking money under false pretences and telling the bereaved what they want to hear, or are her “voices airy” truly from the Other Side?

   There is a fascinating story in these pages that will keep you guessing as you wonder whether the protagonists’ fortunes will prosper or fail, and whether Rosalind is an altruistic saint or a conniving sinner. It isn’t a very long book, but there is plenty packed in here to enjoy and enthrall, but for me the best thing of all is the author’s tangible evocation of 1918 San Diego: shell-shocked veterans, cheap picture palaces where films are a recent invention, the streets full of masked people trying not to get the flu, and doctors prescribing strange medicines. At times it is like reading a newspaper from the time, or looking through a time portal to the way things were done back then. This mix of history and story in perfect balance is mesmerizing (to borrow a spiritualist term) and what good historical fiction ought to be about. Catherine Karp’s first novel Gilded (also reviewed on this site) was one of my top ten picks for 2002; this is in the same caliber.