Truevine

More like 3 1/2 stars... This book isn't as much about the brothers as I would have liked, but I did enjoy the circus stuff (ties in well with my recent read, Queen of the Air, about Lillian Lietzel, who is mentioned here on a few occasions). Some of the race stuff was interesting as well, but there too it felt just touched upon. There are a lot of interesting ideas in this, but there are too many in the end so it suffers a bit.

Read Harder 2017: Read a book that is set within 100 miles of your location.

Oy vey. This book was all over the place.

There was a lot of history here that was very interesting that I didn't know about a city right up the road from me, but the narrative splintered in so many directions, over such a broad range of topics, that it gave me whiplash. Was this a book about two brothers who were kidnapped? Or was it about the history of the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus? Or was it about racism's ugly history in Roanoke, Va.? Or was it about the lawyer who finally made sure the brothers were getting paid for their work? Or was it about the urban renewal housing crisis in Roanoke? Or was it about the woman who clearly didn't trust the author to write this book about her uncles — so much so that it took her 25 years to give the author permission to write it?

The central theme about the two young, albino, black boys from Virginia who became circus phenomena could have been a tight, interesting narrative on its own. So I'm torn, because partway through, I wished that this had been a series of interconnecting short-stories instead of one long narrative, since there wasn't enough source material to make it a compelling 10+ hour book on its own (I listened to the audio). But then, an hour or two later, I couldn't figure out how it would have worked as a short story collection either, so I'm stuck. I can't provide any useful feedback about how to make this book better! Rawr!

The tagline of this book was also somewhat misleading, because the author admits there is controversy about whether the boys' mother agreed to let them join the circus temporarily, or whether they were kidnapped by the circus. And then they willingly went back to their life in the freak show after she had spent a whole bunch of years looking for them! And finally, my biggest disappointment: It wasn't until the last hour of listening that one of the brothers came to life as a character. Once I knew the author — a trained journalist! — was capable of making a character seem real enough to touch, I was so bummed that so much of the book was her telling, and not showing, the two brothers' fascinating story.

Ultimately a weak 2.5 stars, because I did enjoy parts, but it could have been about half the length.