The Electric Woman A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts

✍ Scribed by Fontaine, Tessa

• Book ID: 109910002
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Year: 2018
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 919 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780374717025

✦ Synopsis

A daughters astonishing memoir of pushing past fear, through life in a traveling sideshow and her mothers illness

Turns out, one lesson applies to living through illness, keeping the show on the road, letting go of the person you love most, and eating fire:

Two journeysa daughters and a mothersbear witness to this lesson in The Electric Woman.

For three years Tessa Fontaine lived in a constant state of emergency as her mother battled stroke after stroke. But hospitals, wheelchairs, and loss of language couldnt hold back such a woman; she and her husband would see Italy together, come what may. Thus Fontaine became free to follow her own piper, a literal giant inviting her to come play in the World of Wonders, Americas last traveling sideshow. How could she resist?

Transformed into an escape artist, a snake charmer, and a high-voltage Electra, Fontaine witnessed the marvels of carnival life: intense camaraderie and heartbreak, the guilty thrill of hard-earned cash exchanged for a peek into the impossible, and, most marvelous of all, the stories carnival folks tell about themselves. Through these, Fontaine trained her body to ignore fear and learned how to keep her heart open in the face of loss.

A story for anyone who has ever imagined running away with the circus, wanted to be someone else, or wanted a loved one to live forever, The Electric Woman is ultimately about death-defying acts of all kinds, especially that ever constant: good old-fashioned unconditional love.