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Amy Sorrells is my guest this week, and she chats with us about her fascinating new book, Miracle at the Sideshow. This novel includes the history of baby incubators and how the world came to know about them and accept them because, in part, of their display at the sideshow at Coney Island. Truly a wonderful read.
Miracle at the Sideshow by Amy Sorrells
A deadly fire. A sensational sideshow. And a baby fighting for its life.
Eighteen-year-old Sophie Rosenfeld dreams of a resplendent life in America after escaping the pogroms in Eastern Europe, only to lose her family in the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Besides Sophie, the lone survivor is her niece, Mercy, a premature baby the city hospital calls a “weakling” and refuses to save. When it is rumored Mercy’s only hope lies in the dark and dangerous Coney Island freak shows, free-spirited but despairing Sophie takes the chance. Will life in the spotlights lead her to the life and love she’s always imagined, or will another devastating fire force her to return to the ashes of tenement life forever?
Overview
New York City at the turn of the twentieth century is as captivating as it is macabre and as magnificent as it is barbaric, as young Sophie Rosenfeld is about to learn. She yearns for life beyond the dreary tenements, but losing all her family except for her fragile niece, Mercy, in the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire has left her with little opportunity. Sophie has to save Mercy’s life, but to do so she must follow a mysterious man to the only place in the world that saves premature babies: Dr. Martin Couney and his Coney Island side show.
Even as society threatens to shut down Dr. Couney’s life-saving work for premature babies, Sophie joins him in fighting for their lives. Amidst the glittering menagerie of lights, astonishing sights, and her new friends, including the handsome acrobat Nicholas, Sophie begins to find hope.
From the lavish, dangerous shores of Coney Island, to the harsh but at times tender tenement life, Sophie’s heart is split wide open by a roller coaster of unrelenting tragedies, and she finds herself doubting the faith that has always buoyed her. Will Nicholas and her new friends be just the salve Sophie needs to help assuage her grief? Or will she be forced to return to a life that stifled her?
Against a backdrop of romance and unexpected escapades, Miracle at the Sideshow brings to life two back-to-back true stories of fire and injustice that shocked the nation into improving worker safety, and which led to techniques still used in neonatal intensive care units today to save the lives of premature babies.
Get your copy of Miracle at the Sideshow by Amy Sorrells.
A long-time believer in the power of story to change lives, Amy’s diverse writing career includes nearly three decades of freelance writing including medical journal publications and a popular op-ed newspaper column in addition to her books.
Praised by reviewers for the way they both poetically and accurately portray real life hardship and hope, Amy’s novels are inspired by social issues which break her heart and the redemption that can be found therein. The driving mission behind all her writing is to bring words of hope to a hurting world.
Amy’s novels have been short-listed for various fiction awards, and How Sweet the Sound won the 2011 Women of Faith Writing Contest before it was acquired by publishers. Since then, she has published three more, stand-alone novels, Then Sings My Soul, Lead Me Home, and Before I Saw You. Her non-fiction devotional, 40 Days of Hope for Healthcare Heroes, was written during the pandemic as a dedication to her healthcare colleagues and healthcare workers everywhere.
When she’s not writing, Amy is an RN and loves doting on her husband, three young adult sons, and their golden and labrador retrievers at their home in central Indiana. If there’s leftover time after that, she enjoys DIY projects and long hikes in the woods.