We Hear the Dead -- Dianne K. Salerni

Maggie: I began the deception when I was too young to know right from wrong. No one suspected us of any trick, because we were such young children. We were led on by my sister purposely and by my mother unintentionally.

Kate: My sister has used the word "deception." I object to her use of that word, for I do not believe that I have ever intentionally deceived anyone.

So opens We Hear the Dead, a fictionalized account of the careers and lives of Maggie and Kate Fox, the sisters credited with kicking off the spiritualism movement. What starts off as a prank--an attempt to rid themselves of an annoying relative--snowballs into a news story, accusations of witchcraft, a new life, an entrance into polite society (though not exactly a place in it), and a new religion.

Even though I already knew how the story of the Fox sisters ended*, Dianne K. Salerni did a great job of making me care about the journey. For the most part, I found her writing really engaging, the characters true-to-life, and the emotions honest and, at moments, sharply painful. It's a bit uneven: The scenes she imagined tend to be stronger than the scenes that are documented, as those scenes and dialogue -- especially Elisha Kent Kane's stories -- feel as though she was constantly flipping back-and-forth between her manuscript and her reference materials while writing. Overall, though, it's successful -- it kept me reading, emotionally involved, interested and entertained.

SPOILER IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE STORY: I was impressed that the end of the romance -- a romance that I knew was doomed -- made me weepy. That's rare for me. If I know Things Don't Go Well, I don't usually allow myself to get invested. But I couldn't help it here.

From what I remember about the Fox sisters, she sticks pretty close to the true story -- or, at least, as much of the true story that's known. (Though, since so much of the story is based on hearsay, parts of it are pretty open to interpretation.) The characters feel real, and Salerni writes about all of them** with empathy -- which is impressive, as it would have been easy to cast Leah Fox as a villain. She chooses to end on a highish note -- before everything really went bad -- which was a relief, and she includes a list of further reading, which is always excellent.

There were a few typos, which is always distracting and unfortunate, but hopefully those'll be corrected when the book gets reprinted.

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*Not well.

**Well, not Elisha Kent Kane's family, but that's understandable.

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Related:

Talking to the Dead (A biography of the Fox sisters)
Inside Job (A hilarious novella that deals with a fake medium and a real ghost)
A Drowned Maiden's Hair (Spiritualism)
The Explosionist (Spiritualism)
The Vespertine (Spiritualism)
Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

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Book source: My local library.

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Read for the 2011 Historical Fiction Challenge.