Welcome

This website is an introduction to Among the Wonderful, a novel by Stacy Carlson. Enjoy the exhibits on display and if you'd like to stay in touch about the book's journey into print, you can do so here.

About the book

 

In the autumn of 1840, PT Barnum purchased an outdated museum on the corner of Broadway and Ann Street in Manhattan. He was a newcomer to the city and still unknown to the world, but with uncanny confidence and impeccable timing he transformed the dusty natural history collection into a great ark for public imagination. Among the Wonderful is the story of this museum’s short, extraordinary reign as America’s most popular attraction.

What is the value of a life’s work when its paradigm is overtaken by a new age? In different ways, Emile Guillaudeu and Ana Swift, the book’s two heroes, both struggle with this question as the novel unfolds. To taxidermist Emile Guillaudeu, nature’s greatest beauty lies in its rational taxonomy, as represented by his meticulous arrangements of mounted specimens throughout the museum. A recent widower and estranged from his best friend and benefactor, Guillaudeu clings ever more fervently to this idea of a thoroughly classified world. When Barnum takes over the museum, Guillaudeu's attempt to maintain order in this increasingly chaotic microcosm propels him on a journey into the still-wild upper reaches of Manhattan Island, where his encounters with men and beasts force him to look beyond his strict taxonomy at a wild, chaotic world that contains the possibility of a new life.

Even though the giantess Ana Swift is plagued by chronic pain and jaded by a world of gawkers, she is hopeful as she arrives in Barnum’s museum. Working without a manager for the first time, she can present herself as she wishes. But does this constitute real freedom? With Ana, the narrative moves beneath the museum’s baffling surface to visit the lives of Barnum’s Representatives of the Wonderful. Among them are a card-playing bearded lady who becomes Ana’s confidante, a family of Italian acrobats, a pair of conjoined twins, and a band of Sioux Indians; soon their relationships and conflicts transform the museum into a vibrant, sometimes violent, community.

By seeing the world through Ana's eyes, readers experience the quest of a pragmatic, worldly, and very lonely woman to find meaning beyond the spectacle she creates, even as she knows that her body’s swift degeneration is leading her to an untimely end.

Among the Wonderful is a story of art and deception, anomaly and community, science and magic, in an era when a culture of imaginative speculation gave way to the modern age. At Barnum’s American Museum, the exhibits climb out of their cabinets and walk among visitors who had paid to call them wonderful.