The Boneshaker

Why I picked it up: Cool cover (which depicts very relevant scenes from the novel instead of something abstract), even cooler premise. They had me at crossroads demon.

What I thought: This was a top 2010 read for me. Good and evil battle for human souls in a dusty, rural, close-knit Midwestern town in the early 1900s. A crossroads demon, a doctor who sold his soul to save lives but winded up cursing those he helped, a musician who once beat the devil in a fiddle contest, and an ambiguous larger-than-life trickster all converge around 13-year-old Natalie, who is the key to ending the holding pattern all these figures have been in for 100 years. Natalie's combination of innocence, bluntness, and quick-thinking make her the perfect heroine show more for this tale of outwitting the devil. This book melds real aspects of Americana -- Jack tall tales, clockwork automata, traveling medicine shows and snake-oil salesmen -- with a supernatural premise, and it all comes together perfectly. show less

Don't let the Young Adult label fool you, this is a terrific eerie thriller involving bicycles, carnivals, patent medicines, automatons and the Devil. Set in a mysterious Southern town near the crossroads, the narrative follows young Natalie Minks as she tries to deal with a nefarious patent medicine troupe who are bewitching the townspeople. Built on legendary elements, this book is totally original and a compelling read.

Like Bradbury’s classic Something Wicked This Way Comes, Kate Milford’s The Boneshaker is a spooky circus mystery-adventure set in a Midwestern town, and featuring young protagonists who must reckon with the insinuation of evil into their lives. Realizations about both mortality and morality loom large. The Boneshaker has more of a Western feel, though, shaded with near-apocalyptic gloom; the seductions of the circus have an even more explicitly diabolical flavor.

As protagonist, Natalie is an intriguing foil to the unearthly disruptions of Limberleg’s Nostrum Fair: inquisitive, skeptical, mechanically minded, a little bristly and imperious. Admirably, her inquisitiveness extends to the emotional realm, as increasingly throughout show more the book, she tries to get inside the heads of the people she’s known for all her life, but frequently taken for granted. From the townspeople who have encountered evil in its various forms before, including her own mother, she gleans haunting snatches of narrative that deepen the novel’s Biblical mythos and lend it an absorbing sense of grandeur and pathos.

Unfortunately, Milford’s prose, though carefully detailed, is on the flat and list-y side, even when she write scenes that should be demonically animated:
“She didn’t have to be told to run. The harlequin lunged after her. She sprinted and dodged, not caring which twists and turns she took in the maze of tents. Bells jingled overhead; the harlequin had taken to the wires again. Her feet kicked up dust and slid on old straw. The things in her arms stirred restlessly. The Amazing Quinn raced alongside and above on a wire parallel to her path.”
And so on; the rhythm and syntax remain monotonous, and the descriptive choices expected. It’s troublesome, too, that one of Natalie’s mentors seems to have been tipped out directly from the Magical Negro mold. “Nothing to do but play my guitar and dispense advice to white folks in need, doot de doo…”

What Milford does do beautifully is frame rational-minded Natalie’s collision with the realization that the world is insistently, terrifyingly irrational. Her town and the crossroads are much older and stranger than she thinks they are; many of the adults around her have known far more suffering and struggle than she could have imagined; and moreover – worst of all, even – they, too, are fallible and vulnerable. Milford has things to say, too, about the power of story and memory, and weaves in the usual YA subplot of learning to stand your ground in the face of fear and threat, but Natalie’s coming to grips with the pervasiveness of evil and mortality is by far the most affecting narrative strand.

I won’t be seeking out the sequels, but all in all, The Boneshaker was an entertaining read, both thoughtful and suspenseful, with satisfying lashings of American folklore and Christian mythology. I’d recommend it as a companion for a thunderstormy summer afternoon. show less

Wow. This story of Natalie and how she saves her little midwestern town from Dr Limberleg (of the Nostrum Fair and Technological Medicine Show, who by the way made a deal with the devil a while back) is amazing. Kate Milford's evocative language puts the reader squarely in the early twentieth century and she blends history and fantasy effortlessly. No horrific ghosts or monsters here, but I have to say I haven't been this chilled reading a story in a long time. I think it's the little guy in the harlequin outfit that really adds that element of dread. An excellent, engaging, thought-provoking tale that packs a wallop.

Oh, so delightfully, artfully creepy. Kate Milford knows how to get under a reader's skin with scenes that feel like they're unfolding before your eyes. This is a story about the power of storytelling and the courage it takes to stare down the Devil himself when everything you hold dear is at stake.

Stay Away from the Crossroads...

We've all heard about what can happen at the crossroads. It's where a person's path can change, sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad. And that's where the Devil stands, waiting to tempt. But it's not the devil that comes to the small turn-of-the-century town of Arcane (1913), but Doctor Jake Limberleg's "Nostrum Fair and Technological Medicine Show".

After Limberleg's wagon looses a wheel at the crossroads, he decides to set up shop. He and his "4 Paragons of the Sciences" offer restorative cures via the sciences of phrenology, hydrotherapy, magnetism, and amber therapy. At first, the town is skeptical, but gradually they succumb to the group's soft sell, and it's then that it becomes apparent show more that there's a hidden cost for every asking.

Our witness to events is young 13 year-old Natalie; a girl who takes her own tom-boy path, showing more interest in machines than dresses. The 'smoke and mirrors' of Limberleg's Medicine Show offends her and she finds herself compelled to dig down and find out what's really going on.

In a way this is very much a coming-of-age story. Natalie finds that the reality of her childhood isn't the reality she is going to spend the rest of her life in. Her family isn't as strong as she thought, and her even her father isn't the invincible, all-knowing person she thought. A wonderful, layered Young Adult tale.

TALKING POINTS:::
This is Kate Milford's first book and it's a doozy. Well written it's beautifully paced. There's none of that mid-book sluggishness; and though there's a promise of further books to come, the ending is completely satisfying.

Other strengths include well drawn characters and a gentle unfolding of one mystery after another. And while the review copy I read doesn't have finalized art, it promises to be exactly right. (Yay! for the inclusion of art. I'm an adult and I love art.)

As far as age range, I'd say that this is a book for 13+. There's no bad language, sex, nor adult situations.

4 to 4.5 STARS. Younger readers will likely to find this to be entirely new and innovative. Old reading geezers like myself will find one or two familiar elements. I think of it as a homage. But all in all, very good writing, good characterization, lots that's original.

Enjoy.

Pam T~
(booksforkids-reviews) show less

There are not many YA novels that are genuinely creepy/scary--this one definitely is. Fun read that asks some very profound questions. Highly recommended.