by Kate Milford
Read by: Erin Moon
Content: some intense moments (the Devil’s pretty scary), some violence, some disturbing images (if it were a movie). Language is probably suitable for someone reading on a 5th grade level. Has the feel of an older Middle Grade book, so I’d probably put it in the YA section (grades 6-8) at the bookstore.
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It’s 1914, and 13-year-old Natalie Minks has a pretty good life. Her father is the local mechanic — bicycle, mostly, but he’ll tinker with cars — and her mother tells the most amazing stories about their town, Arcane. Natalie herself has a predisposition for both: she loves tinkering with her father as well as listening to her mother’s stories.

Then one day Dr. Jake Limberleg’s Nostrum Fair and Technological Medicine Show comes to town. It was a fluke — their front wheel came off at the crossroads, and they decided to set up shop while they waited for Mr. Minks to fix their wagon. And that’s when the Trouble starts. Natalie, for better or for worse, is tuned into it and with her frienemy Miranda (I think that’s what her name was; I can’t look it up in the book!) and her trusty Chesterlane Eidolon bicycle (a bone shaker of an old thing that would be the fastest in the world, if Natalie could ever ride it), she decides to take on Limberleg and solve the mystery, saving her town. If she can.

I don’t know how I can write about the way this captured my attention. Sure, I was on a long drive to Austin, and it had my full attention anyway, but I didn’t want to stop listening. Milford has taken the idea of a Faustian Bargain — you know: those stories where a character meets the Devil and then outsmarts Old Scratch? — and elevated it. Not only is there two elements to this bargain, but we get historical elements thrown in as well. The traveling medicine show (I loved the Paragons of Science, even though they were Evil), the bicycles, the references to the “war” (which took me a minute to realize they meant the Civil War): it all added Atmosphere, which made the fantasy element, the bargains with the Devil at the Crossroads, that much creepier.

(It also helped that I kept thinking about this song:)

In short: a winner of a book.