The Museum of Extraordinary Things
Alice Hoffman
Scribner
<p>Mesmerizing and illuminating, Alice Hoffman's <I>The Museum of Extraordinary Things</i> is the story of an electric and impassioned love between two vastly different souls in New York during the volatile first decades of the twentieth century.<br /> <br />Coralie Sardie is the daughter of the sinister impresario behind The Museum of Extraordinary Things, a Coney Island boardwalk freak show that thrills the masses. An exceptional swimmer, Coralie appears as the Mermaid in her father's "museum," alongside performers like the Wolfman, the Butterfly Girl, and a one-hundred-year-old turtle. One night Coralie stumbles upon a striking young man taking pictures of moonlit trees in the woods off the Hudson River.<br /> <br />The dashing photographer is Eddie Cohen, a Russian immigrant who has run away from his father's Lower East Side Orthodox community and his job as a tailor's apprentice. When Eddie photographs the devastation on the streets of New York following the infamous Triangle...</p>