The Spirit Room

Read The Spirit Room Storyline:

A captivating historical novel about two independent-minded sisters in Victorian era AmericaSet
in New York state in the late 1850s, two sisters are forced into
becoming hoax mediums by their reprobate father in the wake of their
mother's death. Following a short apprenticeship with a renowned
Spiritualist and her clairvoyant assistant, 17-year-old Izzie and
13-year-old Clara Benton set up shop with Papa in a rigged séance parlor
dubbed The Spirit Room. The intelligent, self-educated Izzie
shows genuine psychic talent but fears the spirit-world voices she hears
are like her mother’s, which she believes drove her mother to madness
and early death. Vowing to return if Clara or her siblings need her
protection, Izzie flees the family Spiritualism enterprise to go to
Rochester with a new husband, a doctor specializing in “water-cure”—a
trendy health spa therapy that the doctor soon begins to practice on his
new wife. Clara, meanwhile, finds the Spirit Room gradually
transformed, under her father's will, into a center for something much
more malicious than hoax séances.Becoming separated both
physically and emotionally by complex turns in their paths, the young
sisters, as the story unfolds, are becoming women. But will they be able
to come out whole without each other?In her noteworthy debut
novel, Marschel Paul peppers her narrative with cultural and political
references, from Madame Bovary to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, that
effectively serve as touchstones for the story's themes of women’s
independence and the power of female relationships—whether they be
sisters, mentors, allies, or friends.