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Caroline Woods takes a page from history, combining fact with fiction, to create “The Mesmerist” an absorbing historical fiction novel that I flew through in a day, its story addictive. The book is set in Minneapolis in 1894 at The Bethany House, a real-life charitable home for young women fallen on hard times, most pregnant with nowhere else to go. A large percentage of these females were prostitutes, desperate women forced into working in brothels, which were numerous in the area. Once with child, they were cast aside.
During that time there was an increased interest in mesmerism. In the Author’s Note, Wood writes, “Spiritualism, the belief in invisible means of communication with the living and the dead—séances, telepathy, hypnosis—enjoyed great favor in late Victorian American, as a nation of mourners endeavored to contact their Civil War dead.”
The story opens in The Bethany House with 63-year-old Abby, treasurer and board member of the Sisters of Bethany, concerned about an “unannounced arrival,” a pathetic, newly pregnant woman the home names Faith, who seems to have strange powers and is later dubbed “ghost girl” by the other women. Faith arrived at the home bedraggled on a stormy night clad in a heavy satin gown. She’s uncommonly attractive, a radiant beauty, but she doesn’t speak.
An aura of mystery is established with Faith’s introduction keeping us guessing at Faith’s backstory, which is divulged late in the book’s exciting conclusion, when everything falls into place.
To help smooth Faith’s transition into the home, Abby decides to have her share a room with May, another major player in the narrative. May will soon leave Bethany House, her one-year stay nearly at an end. (It was Bethany Houses’ policy to provide room, food and training for a job, for one year. Once the babies were born, the women could keep them or put them up for adoption.) Faith has concern about the approaching deadline. She fell out of favor with her family when she had sex with the man her father set her up to marry. When she told the man she was pregnant, he left May with child and nowhere to live.
May can get back in good graces with her family if she can marry. She has her sights set on Hal, a man who appears well off and interested in her. It’s imperative that Hall not find out where May lives—she must appear above reproach and will go to any means to appear as innocent as the driven snow. May is a trickster, and as she continues to see Hal, she learns she may have met her match in him, also a master at illusion.
As their romance develops, suspicions and rumors about Faith grow, rendering her friendless among the 30 residents of Bethany House. Faith and May form a relationship, but its tenuous and built on mistruths, their connection to an unsavory character nearly leading to their downfalls.
“The Mesmerist” will capture readers’ attention with its well told, fast-paced story, one that centers on a true crime that occurred in Minneapolis in 1894, and the people who were involved. The man at the center of the crime, according to Woods’ Author Notes, could have been the country’s first serial killer, a man rumored to have “hypnotic powers.”
