The Ringmaster's Wife

3.75Greats:Historical research: I loved the facts and fictionalization of John and Mable Ringling's romance. It was precious to get a sense of how deeply he loved her and how she wise she was in undergirding his efforts. (The references in the back were interesting; evidently her influence had been a stabilizing influence on his spending/earning habits also.)Circus details: I've actually read a few period books about the circus, detailing many facts that felt familiar when reading this story. It was great to be able to read through this story and have the details spring off the page just as vividly as those other authors who actually got to see the true circus in the period when it was touring.Period literature: Oh, it steals my heart when an author makes the effort to actually find out what books were popular when the characters lived. Not every classic was a bestseller at first, and not every bestseller became a classic. Adding in [b:The Heir Of Redclyffe 1383791 The Heir Of Redclyffe Charlotte M. Yonge https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1183148456s/1383791.jpg 1373815] and other lesser known books delights every corner of my book-loving heart.Characters: Loved John and Mable...but also loved Rose and Colin! Especially the scene in the ring when he starts playing the violin!Not so greats:The timeline: I still love “Butterfly and the Violin” best out of the dual-timeline novels I've read. At times this was choppy, and I felt cheated of a few scenes that had to suffer. It felt more like vignettes in places, rather than getting to fall right into a story and live in it for several hundred pages. This did improve after the halfway point.Historical oops: Often I find many of these, yet here there was just one—but this one kind of jumped out at me; when Colin fishes Rose out of the water when they meet, there's a mention that she was a woman driving a car alone as though that was odd or before its time. It would have been better phrased to make it clear that her impediment to driving was actually her parents' standards or disapproval; I have an entire shelf full of old books from the decade before WW1 where women were quite at home behind the wheels of early cars and only enlisted chauffeurs if they did not wish to drive or had plenty of money. I wouldn't have noticed it, I dare say, if I weren't well read in the genre of early cars...Overall, an enjoyable book, though personally I still am partial to [b:The Rose in the Ring 17795934 The Rose in the Ring George Barr McCutcheon https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png 6321543] and [b:A Peep Behind the Scenes 6091317 A Peep Behind the Scenes Amy Catherine Walton https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1234475740s/6091317.jpg 1618811] as my first two circus-tale loves. (These are both very old books.)For lovers of: dual timelines, jazz age, circus, fictionalized historical-figure tales, horses, and romance.