Jordan Peele’s Get Out meets Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Abandoned at birth on Chicago’s South Side, Henry Lewis’s life could have easily become a cautionary tale. But the good nuns at St. Vincent’s Orphanage prepared him for a life outside their walls. . . even if he was Black.
Twenty-five years later, Henry is still plagued by the questions of the past and his prospects for the future. With the White soldiers coming home from the war and more Southern Blacks heading north in search of a better life, his prospects for the future seem bleak. His job, home, and family have become the shackles that bind him in the prison of his mind. He longs to be free of it. . . for at least a little while.
When Henry learns the circus has arrived in his Bronzeville neighborhood, he sneaks away in the night, hoping to find a brief escape from his troubles. When he arrives, he discovers all the circus performers and patrons are White. Stranger still, they couldn’t have been more welcoming. With a world of distractions all around him, he finally feels free. Madam Calista draws the Tarot cards, answering the questions that plague his mind. John Daily, the charismatic Ringleader, introduces him to a world of wonder and offers opportunities he could have never imagined. He can have it all, so long as he abandons everything and everyone he’s ever known.
But the circus paints a bright facade over a dark past, and the freer he feels, the more bound he becomes. It isn’t until his life goes into a downward spiral of alcoholism, theft, and murder that he realizes the circus had set out to destroy him. What he can’t seem to understand is why? He needs to break away. But before he can save his future, he’ll have to discover the sinister truth about his past. The stakes are high, and time is running out.
$0.99 on Kindle.
