Truevine

June 20, 2016
The lives and fortunes, or misfortunes, of Willie and George Muse—two black albino brothers who were better known by their circus names, Eko and Ito—constitute the underpinning of this ramshackle book by journalist Macy (Factory Man). In 1899 the brothers, both under the age of 10, were at work in a tobacco field in Virginia, when they were kidnapped. They were displayed as freaks for the following 13 years and exhibited in various circuses and sideshows. They were labeled sheep-headed men from Ecuador, ministers from the African kingdom of Dahomey, Ethiopian monkey men, and, most famously, ambassadors from Mars found in a wrecked spaceship. In 1927 the brothers were reunited with their mother after years of her strenuous efforts to get them back. They returned as side-show performers under better, though often disputatious, contractual conditions. There’s a page-turner buried in Macy’s meandering account, but multiple backstories—circus history, Roanoke history, Jim Crow life for blacks and whites, Macy’s personal memoir (growing up in Roanoke, writing this book, building a relationship with a surviving Muse family member), and snippets from scholarly writing—disrupt the reader’s focus.

May 15, 2016

Author of the New York Times best seller Factory Man, Macy tells the shocking true story of two African American brothers who were kidnapped in 1899 and displayed as circus freaks even as their mother spent nearly three decades trying to get them back. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2016

Two years after the debut of FX's TV series American Horror Story: Freak Show comes a true story that situates so-called circus "curiosities" firmly in U.S. history. In the rural hamlet of Truevine, VA, circa 1899, a circus agent gathered up two boys--brothers who happened to be both African American and albino. For decades, George and Willie Muse performed with various carnival freak shows around the country. Objectification of these individuals typified an era in which lynchings were rampant, Southern blacks were trapped in poverty and illiteracy, and disabilities and deformities were treated as opportunities for commodification and entertainment. Conversely, Macy (Factory Man) points out that carnivals offered a haven for marginalized members of society, including LGBTQ people, and that though the Muse brothers' mother later claimed the boys had been abducted, she may have handed them over to the white circus manager to try to give her children a better life. VERDICT A rambling, colorful, and thought-provoking medley of human stories intersecting with one another in carnival tents and Virginia backlands, this solid popular history has much to offer regarding issues of race, family, disability, and spectacle. [See Prepub Alert, 4/25/16.]--Michael Rodriguez, Univ. of Connecticut

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 1, 2016
A consummate chronicler of the American South spotlights the extraordinary history of two kidnapped African-American brothers enslaved as a circus sideshow act.Expanding on her 2001 co-authored article series in the Roanoke Times, journalist Macy (Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local--and Helped Save an American Town, 2014) reconstructs the folkloric yet true story of brothers George and Willie Muse, who, in 1899, at ages 9 and 6, toiled on a sweltering tobacco farm in Virginia. As black albinos bearing golden dreadlocks, the boys were considered "genetic anomalies" yet visually ideal when spied by Candy Shelton, a white bounty hunter scouring the area for "freaks" to enslave in circus sideshow acts. As circus entertainment crested in popularity at the turn of the 20th century, Macy writes, much money was to be made by sideshow managers eager to exploit those with physical abnormalities. Despite being falsely told that their mother had died, the Muse brothers went on to become "among the top tier of sideshow headline grabbers," internationally known to Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey audiences as "Eko and Iko, the Ecuadorian Savages." Macy vividly illustrates circus life during the 1920s, and she movingly depicts how the brothers' protective, determined mother, Harriett, eventually discovered and rescued them almost a decade and a half later. She sued the circus only to have George and Willie (along with little brother Tom) inexplicably return to the big top under Shelton's management with decidedly mixed results. The story draws on years of diligent, investigative research and personal investment on the author's behalf, and it features numerous interviews with immediate family, neighbors, distant relatives, Truevine townsfolk, and associated friends, most notably Nancy Saunders, Willie's fiercely outspoken primary caregiver. Macy absorbed their own individual (and often conflicting) interpretations of the Muse kidnappings, condensing and skillfully braiding them into a sturdy, passionate, and penetrating narrative. This first-rate journey into human trafficking, slavery, and familial bonding is an engrossing example of spirited, determined reportage.

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Starred review from August 1, 2016
Macy's exploration of the long-hidden fate of two young African Americans and how that fate illuminates the atrocities of the Jim Crow South is as compelling as Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2012). Both books star victims of systemic abuse. Both shine a light on treatment of African Americans in the twentieth century. And both are absolutely stunning examples of narrative nonfiction at its best. The story Macy uncovers starts with the kidnapping of two sharecropper brothers in Truevine, Virginia, both albinos, who were abducted by a circus agent from the field where they were working and forced into the circus in 1899, members of one of the wildly popular freak shows. The Muse brothers toured the country, performing at Madison Square Garden, becoming celebrities based on humiliation. Macy's own story of how she tracked down what happened to the brothers, how their mother searched for them, and how they eventually escaped the circus is riveting in itself, as she follows their trail from one photograph seen on Facebook through documents and hundreds of interviews. In the process, Macy exposes the casually cruel treatment of African Americans during the sharecropping era, and she provides a fascinating look at the circus, which, she notes, was among the main sources of entertainment for Americans from the 1840s through the 1940s. Certain to be among the most memorable books of the year.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)