The Ringmaster's Wife

Colin Keary, on a recruiting trip for Ringling Brothers Circus, rescues Lady Rosamund Easling from a creek. In America for a final adventure before her arranged marriage, Rosamund agrees to accompany Colin to check out the circus. There she meets acrobats, bareback riders, and a tattooed lady. Her new friends open Rosamund's eyes to the exotic and often uncompromising world of circus life, but as her determination to join the performers grows, she encounters sabotage and veiled threats. Interspersed with Colin and Rosamund's story are vignettes about Mable and John Ringling that move between the late 1880s and the 1920s. Mable's journey from farm girl to business icon provides Rosamund with a model of strength and acceptance. With rich descriptions, attention to detail, mesmerizing characters, and an understated current of faith, this work evokes writers such as Kim Vogel Sawyer, Francine Rivers, and Sara Gruen. The author's third novel (after The Butterfly and the Violin) transports readers to a turn-of-the-20th-century wonderland, the world of the Big Top.