Ladies night at the Dreamland

"At the Dreamland, women and girls flicker from the shadows to take their proper place in the spotlight. In this lyrical collection, Sonja Livingston weaves together strands of research and imagination to conjure figures from history, literature, legend and personal memory. The result is a series of essays that highlight lives as varied, troubled, and spirited as America itself. Harnessing the power of language, the award-winning essayist breathes life into subjects who lived extraordinary lives--as rule-breakers, victims, or those whose differences thrust them into view--bringing together those who slipped through the world largely unseen with those brought into public view, but even then, their images were often fleeting or faulty, so that they remain relatively obscure. Included are Alice Mitchell, a Memphis society girl who murdered her female lover in 1892, Maria Spelterini, who crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope in 1876, May Fielding, a 'white slave girl' buried in a Victorian cemetery, a trio of murder victims, an Irish ancestor, a child exhibited as a curiosity, the sculptors' model Audrey Munson, the Fox sisters, Valaida Snow, a Harlem Renaissance trumpeter and many more"--Provided by publisher.