Meet: Natalie Minks
Occupation: Tinkerer
Location: Missouri
Genre: Steampunk, Fantasy, YA
The Boneshaker
by Kate Milford
illustrated by: Andrea Offermann
Published: May 2010
Romance steam gauge: none
Description from the amazon:
Thirteen-year-old Natalie Minks loves machines, particularly automata—self-operating mechanical devices, usually powered by clockwork. When Jake Limberleg and his traveling medicine show arrive in her small Missouri town with a mysterious vehicle under a tarp and an uncanny ability to make Natalie’s half-built automaton move, she feels in her gut that something about this caravan of healers is a bit off. Her uneasiness leads her to investigate the intricate maze of the medicine show, where she discovers a horrible truth and realizes that only she has the power to set things right.
Set in 1914, The Boneshaker is a gripping, richly textured novel about family, community, courage, and looking evil directly in the face in order to conquer it.Interview with Kate Milford at Age of Steam:
Can you tell us what The Boneshaker is about?
KM: It’s set in Missouri in 1913 in a crossroads town called Arcane. Shortly after Arcane’s doctor goes to the aid of a nearby town suffering from a flu epidemic, Jake Limberleg’s Nostrum Fair and Technological Medicine Show rolls into town, and although everybody’s skeptical at first, the hucksters win the town over pretty quickly.
Only a few people get a really bad feeling about Limberleg and his cohorts, and one of them is Natalie Minks, who’s the thirteen year-old daughter of Arcane’s bicycle mechanic. So of course, it falls to Natalie to save the world from a bunch of diabolical snake oil salesmen.
That’s the short version; there’s also Old Tom Guyot, who’s kind of a Robert/Tommy Johnson figure who met the Devil at the crossroads and beat him in a head cutting—a musical duel.
There’s Jack, a drifter who happens to be passing through town at the same time as the Nostrum Fair for very specific reasons.
There’s Simon Coffrett, who rented space to Jake Limberleg for the Fair and lives a mansion in a grove where albatrosses roost and the trees are hung with dozens of wind chimes.
There’s a vicious harlequin, a lonely demon, and a mechanical fortune-teller that quotes Edgar Allan Poe.
Basically, the book’s a big collection of Weird Stuff I Think Is Cool.
*** steampunk book giveaway - courtesy of the author***
Sign up on one of the SteamPink giveaways to own a copy of this book.
* Thanks to Giada for alerting me to this new one!
* image source silhouette
