The Boneshaker by Kate Milford – Review

Think of an unholy combination of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery and HBO’s Carnivale and you might get some inkling of an idea what spine-tingling creepiness awaits you when you read Kate Milford’s suspenseful, goose-bump inducing, dare I say it – boneshaking – debut novel, The Boneshaker. It’s about thirteen-year-old Natalie Minks, of the small town of Arcane, Missouri, and it’s set in 1913. The very first sentence of the very first chapter, “The Town At the Crossroads,” hooked me and reeled me in: “Strange things can happen at a crossroads.” I swallowed the bait, hook, line, and sinker, and I just had to keep reading

Natalie has known all of her life that Arcane was an unusual town, filled with more than its share of strange people; but she never knew just how unusual it was until the red-haired Dr. Jake Limberleg’s Nostrum Fair and Technological Medicine Show rolled into Arcane with its bizarre tonics and evil automatons. The are still legends told in Arcane (Natalie’s mom relates the tale to her), of what happened to the Old Village, at the outskirts of Arcane, the last time Limberleg and his troupe came through the area before Arcane was founded – legends of the townspeople suddenly loosing all control of their legs, dragging themselves through the town, like automatons who are running down, or marionettes whose strings have suddenly been cut.

Her father, Ted Minks, is Arcane’s only mechanic, so Natalie has grown up around machinery and she’s fascinated by mechanical devices of all kinds, from bicycles to motorcars. Her dad helped her build a little clockwork flyer that they named Wilbur, a miniature of the Wright Brothers’ plane, though they can’t get it to work like it’s supposed to. He also built for her a beautifully restored red Chesterlane Eidolen, which she’s very proud of and considers to be “the fastest bicycle in the world,” though her friend, Miranda Porter, has doubts about it:

“How do you know it’s the fastest bicycle in the world? You don’t know that.”
“I helped my dad build it! I know what it’s made of!”
“Yeah,” Miranda yelled after her, “it’s made of bicycle parts, like any other bicycle! That’s all!”

But this particular exceedingly rare bicycle is not, as Natalie discovers, “like any other bicycle,” at all. It’s a boneshaker,for one thing – a bike or other mechanical contraption that will jar your bones when you try to ride it. Originally, instead of tires with air in them, “boneshakers had wooden or metal wheels, so every bump on the road went straight from the wheels to the frame to the rider.” Even though her father put more modern wheels on it, and springs, other aspects about the Chesterlane made it very difficult to get the hang of, such as the hinge in the middle of its frame. Its purpose was meant to be to “help it steer and turn better,” but the hinge, the placement of the pedals and the front wheel being larger than the back one makes learning how to ride it a definite challenge for Natalie. She’s proud of it, and wants to argue its merits to Miranda but since she’s not been able to ride it without crashing into things Natalie can’t prove the Chesterlane is fast to her friend.

When the town’s doctor, Doc Fitzwater, is called away to assist the town of Pinnacle, some hundred or so miles away, which is experiencing an epidemic of the flu, some of Arcane’s citizens wonder what will happen if they need a doctor while Fitzwater is gone. Mr. Finch, the pharmacist, is designated as Fitzwater’s fill-in, but pretty much the most he can do, if it comes down to it, is to dispense medicine. With no qualified doctor around, the stage is set for Dr. Jake Limberlegs to enter the plot.  Originally, because of a “rule” of Limberlegs that they weren’t to do business in any town within two hundred miles of one they’d just been in, he hadn’t planned on setting up his fair at Arcane, but when the left wheel of one of their caravans falls off and disappears as they’re passing through, Jake and his cohorts stay while Natalie’s father attempts to find a replacement wheel to fix the caravan. He and the Paragons decide to break the rule, and bring their evil brand of medicine to Arcane.

Finch and others ridicule Limberlegs for being a “snake oil salesman,” for making unsubstantiated claims for his patent medicines, and the miraculous healing powers that the four Paragons of medicine who travel with him possess.  They seem to be accomplishing miracles. They hint that they were the ones responsible for ending Pinnacle’s flu epidemic. With Doc Fitzwater not yet back, there’s no way for the claim to be proven, but that doesn’t stop most of the inhabitants of Arcane from believing it’s true. Even Natalie’s older brother, Charlie, buys some medicine for shakes he sometimes has had in the past. Natalie knows something’s just not right about Limberlegs, and has had visions about the fate of the Old Village, but she has no proof and is afraid no one will believe her if she tells them that Jake is evil.

The heart and soul of The Boneshaker,besides Natalie and her love for her family, comes from stories you might have heard about strange goings that it’s rumored sometimes happen at certain crossroads of towns. It’s where sometimes, if the stories can be believed, people have met and have made deals with the Devil himself. The story that Natalie’s mother tells her about an old black man, Tom Guyot, who had been a slave and also a soldier in the Civil War and who lives in Arcane, is one such tale.

While reading about Guyot, I could almost imagine listening to Charlie Daniels singing “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” because Tom’s tale is similar, to an extent. The Devil meets him at one of Arcane’s crossroads, and wants to trick Guyot into giving him his handmade metal guitar. Guyot doesn’t agree to give it to the Devil, no matter what is promised him. Tom makes a bet with the Devil that each plays a song on his own guitar. If the Devil wins, he’ll get Tom’s guitar, and Tom’s hands will be replaced with demon hands. If Tom wins, he’ll get to keep his guitar and his hands, and “the Devil would owe Tom a favor, with no strings attached.” Spirits will be the judges. Tom wins, but only through grace. Tom’s advice to Natalie to look whomever tries to intimidate her in the eyes and show no fear, like he did with the Devil and she later finds to be very useful.

There are many things I liked about The Boneshaker.There’s the feeling of suspense and a deep sense of creepiness that continues to build throughout the novel. There’s the aspect of having a thirteen-year-old girl be the book’s heroine, and the wondering about how can she succeed at saving everyone in the town, and Arcane itself, from becoming victim to the plague of gingerfoot that Dr. Jake Limberlegs and the Paragons spread from town to town. Kate Milford is a wonderfully descriptive writer, and she draws her readers almost magically into the world of what life’s like in a small town in Missouri in 1913. She centers the novel in reality, by making references to famous celebrities like the Wright Brothers, and that makes the fantastical events that follow seem to be – while very twisted and strange – also a part of what life was like in Arcane.

By making the main villain of The Boneshaker a “snake oil” salesman, a person who traveled from town to town selling patent medicines – ones which might or might not cure people, and might do more harm than good – the author takes a type of person who really existed, someone like the man Dorothy meets in Kansas in The Wizard of Oz before she travels via tornado to Oz – making him more realistic. Sure, he’s done business himself with the Devil, and it cost him dearly (you don’t want to see what his hands look like when he removes his gloves) and he’s responsible for destroying towns wherever he goes, but he does represent a type of person you might expect to encounter traveling from town to town at the turn of the last century.

The Boneshaker is a brilliantly crafted tale that will live in your nightmares. It has beautiful black-and-white illustrations by the artist Andrea Offerman in it that enhance the novel’s mood and atmosphere. The Boneshaker should probably not be read by younger kids, but I would say that anyone from at least the fifth grade up should be able to deal with the scarier aspects of it. If you love reading way cool suspenseful, page-turning fantasy novels grounded in reality that will cause shivers to run down your spine, then you’re sure to want to read Kate Milford’s debut novel, The Boneshaker!