The Last Freakshow: Flame and Fortune(1 The Last Freakshow)

THE LAST FREAKSHOW "Prepare to board the runaway train of THE LAST FREAKSHOW as it speeds through an American century with a wonderful and lunatic troupe of misfits and oddities - and the human spirit in all its absurd beauty. A huge, sprawling yet cohesive page-turner, S.E. Johnson's epic is at turns brilliant, hilarious, heartbreaking, disturbing - and constantly surprising. This is no sideshow, THE LAST FREAKSHOW is the real deal, the big top, the main event." DOUGLAS CLEGG, Author of NEVERLAND and THE HOUR BEFORE DARK. *** BOOK ONE: FLAME AND FORTUNE "Everyone used to wave when the carnival came through town. Young and old; men and women and everyone in between. We'd sit in our train cars, watching those we breezed past, their hair blowing, faces alight with the possibilities of our unique performances. There was something special about a travelling show, something about being there and gone, a mercurial existence creating everlasting impact, memories to fill a lifetime and more. Our carnival was more than that, though, greater than all the rest, because we had the best freakshow in the world. We were known for our oddities, our inborn talents, and how we used them to entertain. We were a family not of blood but close association. Each of us chose the other: we misfits and outcasts, so much closer than true kin for that reason. We never loved anyone more than we loved each other. "We're a century removed from the birth of the Cortez Family Carnival, and many of us are dead and gone, but those of us still among the living recall them all with perfect clarity: the love and the passion, the trials and tribulations. Although we've grown apart, for reasons we shall explain in the following manuscript, each one of us lives on in one another's memories: Father Thyme and Mother Nurture, Cy, Trixie, and Bobble, the Go-Go Gals, Jinx and Carol and Willy. Even Panties the Chimp. All of them an indelible, detailed work of art painted on the mosaic canvas of our souls. "We've a long way to travel but, like every lengthy journey, ours begins with a single step. All tales, fact or fiction, begin in media res. A faux start, so to speak, because before the Cortez Family Carnival, there was a birth, yet even that birth is not the beginning. Much came before, but those people, places, and things add nothing to the narrative, so we will set out on our journey of a million miles with..." *** "If John Irving and Stephen King collaborated on a century-spanning American epic while channeling Ray Bradbury's ghost, this is the book you would get. S.E. Johnson is an absolutely dazzling, virtuoso storyteller who has planted his flag with this hugely imaginative, tender and bruising saga of the Cortez Family Carnival. Sure to be discovered and championed as an absolute classic." JOSH BOONE, director of "The Fault in Our Stars" THE LAST FREAKSHOW: FLAME AND FORTUNE is book one in a five book series.