Clara Wintermute is speechless when she sees Gaspare Grisini's masterful puppetry at work. All she wants for her birthday is another puppet performance and her father, a wealthy doctor, grants her wish, not only because money is not a factor, but because Clara is his only living child, following the death of the other four due to cholera.
The big night comes at last and Clara is mesmerized not only by the act, but by the two orphans, Lizzie Rose and Parsefall, that help in the performance. When Clara goes missing the night of her birthday, the first thought is that she has run away with the children. However, there is something much darker at work than the children could ever fathom.
Grisini's past is painstakingly shoveled to the surface along with other dark truths about Lizzie Rose and Parsefall's paths in the short time they have been on earth. The children are faced with uncertainty as they hastily leave London in search of a better life, but their destination is wrought with deception.
This book is a boiling cauldron of magical spells, deceit, and broken souls in search of something that will mend them. This book teeters between Junior and Teen Fiction, with a few choice words and higher vocabulary pushing it one way and the childish idea of puppets (though, it couldn't be further from childish) pushing it another.
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