Come See the Fair

After Mrs. Blodgett adopts Eva Root from Miss Augusta Grandage’s Home for Unwanted and Destitute Girls, the seven-year-old is quickly schooled in the ways of running séances, a craft to which she is well suited. Nearly seven years later, a séance in Ohio yields more than the usual when a voice in Eva’s head tells her, “Come see the Fair!” Learning that Mrs. Blodgett plans to abandon her that night, Eva preemptively steals a wad of the cash she’s helped to earn and boards a train to Chicago, en route befriending a talented artist named Henry Poole. Henry is traveling to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, summoned there by his own drawings, which have been mysteriously taking the form of Chicago Fair panoramas—and, strangely, of Eva, whom he’s never met. There, a hidden, mysterious Pavilion of Magic, and enigmatic overseer Mr. Magister, quickly lure Eva, threatening to trap her and her abilities in a web of dark magic. Interweaving Chicago’s fiery history with a sinister world’s fair setting and a memorable heroine, Savit (The Way Back) sketches a complex, high-stakes take on magic’s underpinnings and seductive powers. Characters read as white. Ages 10–up. Agent: Catherine Drayton, Inkwell Management. (Apr.)