The year is 1932. Blue bell Lawrence has lost everything. Her mother, father and brother were drowned in a shipwreck and the house she was left in has burned to the ground. Blue was badly injured in the fire with her legs burnt in the thigh area. She has been taken from hospital by her two great aunts who have old fashioned notions of care. They have made Blue lie still in bed for months and, as a result, the skin between her legs has healed fused together at the top. She can barely walk, just shuffle.
Further to her pain from her injuries, she seems to be getting sicker and sicker and her hair is falling out. Blue misses her Chinese maid and friend Mah who rescued her from the fire. The aunts have taken her to a remote country town away from the city she grew up in. Lonely, she looks out of the window and sees that a circus is in town. Her aunts refuse to let her go so she sneaks out in the night to see it herself.
And thus begins a life Blue had never dreamed possible. She learns that she is being poisoned possibly by her aunts for her inheritance, and so runs away with the circus where her injured legs are perfect for her to pretend to be a mermaid in the sideshow Freak show tent. There are so many mysteries behind the people who work in the circus - Madame, the owner and sometime clairvoyant, Getrude the trapeze artist who dreams of bigger things and various other people with shady pasts who have all joined the circus because there is nowhere else to go. And then there is Sheba, a very intelligent and tame elephant .
Running from her aunts and the police, Blue learns to be a master of "hiding in plain sight" with he circus friends who are always "on the road to Gundagai". Then a night time incident brings the group to the property of Drinkwater, the home of a strong but kind woman called Matilda and the circus starts to reveal its mysteries. Great read, couldn't put it down. I haven't read any others in the saga but you don't need to as this book is populated by new characters and places. ( )