The Circus in Winter [Paperback]

From 1884 to 1939, the Great Porter Circus makes the unlikely choice to winter in an Indiana town called Lima, a place that feels as classic as Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, and as wondrous as a first trip to the Big Top. In Lima an elephant can change the course of a man's life-or the manner of his death. Jennie Dixianna entices men with her dazzling Spin of Death and keeps them in line with secrets locked in a cedar box. The lonely wife of the show's manager has each room of her house painted like a sideshow banner, indulging her desperate passion for a young painter. And a former clown seeks consolation from his loveless marriage in his post-circus job at Clown Alley Cleaners.

In her astonishing debut, Cathy Day follows the circus people into their everyday lives, bringing the greatest show on earth to the page.

PRAISE FOR THE CIRCUS IN WINTER
Day's collection of linked short stories is as graceful as any acrobat's high-wire act. -SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

This is one circus act that doesn't rely on dependable gimmicks to keep the audience amused.
-THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

[Cathy Day's] elegantly juggled debut collection of interconnected stories . . . conjures a bigger picture of family-and of America . . . [A] bright tent of storytelling. -ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

CIRCUS PROPRIETORS are not born to sawdust and spangles. Consider this: P. T. Barnum was nothing more than a dry-goods peddler-that is until he bought a black woman for $1,000, a sum he quickly recouped by displaying her as George Washington's 161-year-old mammy. Barnum's business partner, James Bailey, was born little Jimmy McGinnis-an orphaned bellboy transformed into circus mastermind, a man who taught army quartermasters the science of transporting masses of men and equipment by rail. Before trains, circuses traveled by horse-drawn wagons (and were called mud shows for obvious reasons) and by riverboat. If it hadn't beenlc&