Before We Disappear
A beautiful theatre magician, The Enchantress, took orphan Jack Nevin off the streets and made him one of her assistants. Accused of stealing another magician’s trick while performing in Paris, the Enchantress and her entourage head for the 1909 Seattle World’s Fair. When not helping the Enchantress, now 16-year-old Jack steals wallets, picks locks, and cracks safes.
At age four, Wilhelm Gessler was kidnapped from his family home by a murdering psycho, Theodore (Teddy) Barnes. Using only the power of his mind, Wilhelm can instantly move objects and people, even himself, from one place to a nearby spot. Teddy uses Wilhelm’s magic to steal valuables but controls him with shackles and drugs when the two are not together.
Teddy takes Wilhelm, now also 16, to the World’s Fair. There, Teddy and the Enchantress become rival magic performers. The Enchantress orders Jack to scout Teddy’s show. Jack discovers Wilhelm and yearns to free him from Teddy’s sinister hold. The two teens fall desperately in love. Teddy and The Enchantress develop ever more spectacular tricks and capers up to the end of the fair. Through secondary characters, Hutchinson layers in more social issues—women’s rights, racism, and prohibition.
The magic trick preparations and performances, the fair activities, and the players are well drawn. The story arc is engaging. Will Teddy be exposed? Can Jack free Wilhelm? Who will win the magician rivalry? The strong women finding their way in a man’s world, racial prejudice, and clever bootlegging each play out to interesting resolutions. However, the many passages of the young lovers pining for each other and scheming to be together safely will strike some readers as too repetitive.
