Tonic and Balm - Softcover
Fiction. African & African American Studies. It's 1919, a time when traveling medicine shows can still find audiences eager to buy miracle "cures" and watch old-fashioned variety acts onstage. Stephanie Allen's novel TONIC AND BALM follows one such troupe, Doc Bell's Miracles and Mirth Medicine Show, as it winds through Pennsylvania, struggling to stay afloat amidst internal discord and dwindling revenues. Doc Bell's show, which features both black and white performers, includes a song-and-dance team whose marriage is fraying, a sword-swallower and her charming but fickle lover, and a medical doctor in a downward spiral of alcoholism. Performers and crew alike are caught off-balance when the show takes on a new addition, a young woman with hydrocephaly, who finds herself cast into a dismaying role as a sideshow exhibit.
Set against a backdrop of rural poverty and a wave of anti-black violence, TONIC AND BALM examines the tenuous solidarity and shifting alliances of people on the fringes of society.
"Uses [the medicine show] to explore larger issues of race, class, and gender...Gives us characters who defy stereotypes."—NPR
"Fearlessly offers the B-side of American culture—more sultry, racially turbulent, eccentric, harrowing, even redemptive."—Howard Norman
"A fascinating look at [an] itinerant troupe and their hardscrabble world. Black, white, hetero, gay—about the only thing the performers share in common is their poverty, a trait which also marks their audiences...Highly recommended."—Historical Novels Review
"An unforgettable chorus of con men, roustabouts, and 'freaks' that broke my heart while also leaving me uplifted and wanting more."—David Haynes
"The multivocal narration of the troupe makes the book resemble its subject. Each new story is another act, another performer...An unusual book on an unusual topic, and a fine fictional chronicle of a lost art."—Masters Review
"Entertaining and deeply affecting... TONIC AND BALM, ... like the medicine show itself, is wonderfully strange and haunts the imagination long after the players have exited the stage."—Small Press Picks
"Even as [the characters] fight against each other..., they push harder to remain connected...We are with them at each moment, pulled in deeper and deeper at every turn of the page."—Fiction Writers Review
"Restores the voices of overlooked American exiles, a troupe of people striving for their day in the sun."—Cathy Day
Set against a backdrop of rural poverty and a wave of anti-black violence, TONIC AND BALM examines the tenuous solidarity and shifting alliances of people on the fringes of society.
"Uses [the medicine show] to explore larger issues of race, class, and gender...Gives us characters who defy stereotypes."—NPR
"Fearlessly offers the B-side of American culture—more sultry, racially turbulent, eccentric, harrowing, even redemptive."—Howard Norman
"A fascinating look at [an] itinerant troupe and their hardscrabble world. Black, white, hetero, gay—about the only thing the performers share in common is their poverty, a trait which also marks their audiences...Highly recommended."—Historical Novels Review
"An unforgettable chorus of con men, roustabouts, and 'freaks' that broke my heart while also leaving me uplifted and wanting more."—David Haynes
"The multivocal narration of the troupe makes the book resemble its subject. Each new story is another act, another performer...An unusual book on an unusual topic, and a fine fictional chronicle of a lost art."—Masters Review
"Entertaining and deeply affecting... TONIC AND BALM, ... like the medicine show itself, is wonderfully strange and haunts the imagination long after the players have exited the stage."—Small Press Picks
"Even as [the characters] fight against each other..., they push harder to remain connected...We are with them at each moment, pulled in deeper and deeper at every turn of the page."—Fiction Writers Review
"Restores the voices of overlooked American exiles, a troupe of people striving for their day in the sun."—Cathy Day
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Stephanie Allen is an NEA fellowship recipient whose first book, the story collection A Place between Stations, was a Hurston-Wright award finalist.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherShade Mountain Press
- Publication date2019
- ISBN 10 0998463434
- ISBN 13 9780998463438
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages220
- Rating
Buy New
Learn more about this copy
US$ 31.66
Shipping:
US$ 12.52
From United Kingdom to U.S.A.
Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace
Stock Image
Tonic and Balm
Published by
Shade Mountain Pr
(2019)
ISBN 10: 0998463434
ISBN 13: 9780998463438
New
Paperback
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Brand New. 208 pages. 8.75x6.00x0.50 inches. In Stock. Seller Inventory # zk0998463434
Buy New
US$ 31.66
Convert currency