The Great Bravura
A Novel
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Since adolescence, Bravura and salt of the earth Susie have been partners in magic and best friends, as well as occasional bedmates. But when the two performers hire the mysterious and alluring Lena as a third banana to jazz up the act, Bravura falls madly in love. Lena believes in magic—and not just the rabbit-out-of-a hat kind. She encourages Bravura to believe in her own supernatural powers, and when Susie balks, conflict ensues. Things really go south during the classic “Disappearing Box” act, when Susie disappears for real. With her pal presumed dead, and Bravura the prime suspect, the magician must act quickly to find Susie—hopefully alive! To prove her innocence, Bravura must uncover the holes in her own story—even if it means incriminating herself, and her precious Lena, in the process.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dearman's inspired if flawed first novel charts the efforts of a brash female magician in 1948 to reconcile her feelings for two very different women. The Great Bravura, daughter of renowned con artist Se or Bravura, performs a successful magic act at the Club Algeria in New York City with her faithful assistant and sometimes lover Susie, a country girl with an overly stylized Brooklyn accent. When the club owner tells them that the routine needs new blood, Bravura and Susie audition for an assistant and meet the mysterious Lena, with whom Bravura is instantly smitten. A romantic relationship quickly develops, with Susie becoming the third wheel, so when Susie vanishes from the Disappearing Box contraption, it's suspected that Bravura had a hand in dispatching her former best friend. Lena, who's a strange combination of smoldering temptress (complete with a cultish father figure and two lesbian mothers) and recalcitrant child, tries to lead Bravura down a dangerous path, but the magician eventually realizes that she must go back to her own disastrous past namely, her father's betrayal of her to find clues to Susie's disappearance and her own redemption. Journalist Dearman (Bang the Keys) hams up the period-specific dialogue, cheapening what could have been an intriguing love story spiked with crime.
