While I primarily read cozy mysteries, I
read other genres as well. I enjoy learning about a variety of
subjects and am periodically able to pursue these interests by reading
some nonfiction titles. Today I’d like to shine a spotlight
on one such book, Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism by Barbara Weisberg.
From the book jacket:
March 1848. Mysterious knocks are
heard in a little house in rural New York, throwing the community into
turmoil. Are the children who live there-Kate and Maggie Fox, sisters
aged eleven and fourteen-making the raps to trick their parents?
Or are the girls mediums for otherworldly messages? From a battery of
strange sounds and the excitement they create, modern Spiritualism is
born.
Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism
follows the remarkable story of the Fox sisters, who were catapulted
to fame after word spread that they communicated with spirits. Within a
few years tens of thousands of Americans were flocking to seances. An
international movement developed. Yet forty
years after those first knocks, the sisters shocked the country by
denying that they had ever been in contact with the dead. Shortly after,
in another stunning reversal, they changed their story again and
reaffirmed their faith in the spirit world. Were the
Fox sisters con artists who had taken a childhood prank too far? Or
were they really in touch with “voices from beyond”?
In this riveting biography, Barbara
Weisberg traces not only the lives of Kate, Maggie, and their
family-including the girls’ shrewd and charismatic sister Leah-but also
the social, religious, economic, and political forces that helped
shape the Spiritualist movement. A vivid, compelling overview of a
remarkable period in U.S. history,
Talking to the Dead provokes questions about belief systems, the
power of celebrity, the wish to reconcile faith and science, and the
timeless quest for knowledge about life after death.
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