This entertaining and deeply affecting novel-in-stories, set in 1919, immerses us in the lives and travails of various members of Doc Bell’s Miracles and Mirth Medicine Show, a traveling ensemble of musicians, acrobats, and other performers who, depending on chemistry or circumstance, find love or discord, common cause or conflict, with their fellow show members. Allen takes us into the heart of these relationships, and into the interior lives of individual characters, creating an illuminating and satisfying experience for readers.
Doc Bell, the founder and leader of the medicine show, is no doctor. Instead, his goal is to make as much money as he can from the snake-oil “cures” he peddles to the show’s attendees, mostly the rural poor. During his brief appearances in the novel, Doc Bell practices one of these two forms of deception: promising his audiences that his medicines will relieve whatever ails them, or pledging to his employees that the show’s declining sales are nothing permanent, that brighter days are just around the corner. In truth, this pledge is just another bill of goods. As even the Doc himself occasionally acknowledges, the show faces serious threats from, among other things, regulatory crackdowns on patent medicines and new forms of entertainment–mainly, motion pictures.
Performers and other crew members can’t help but notice the dwindling crowds, and their dwindling pay. And the sense that the medicine show may be winding down, after decades on the road, creates a backdrop of anxiety and uncertainty that colors almost every story in the book. Another troubling reality is the racial violence that is roiling the country, and to which the traveling troupe, which includes both black and white performers, seems especially vulnerable.
On top of all these difficulties, each character faces additional, personal challenges. For example, when a new guitar player joins a singer/banjo duo (Louise and Fleet), his talents inspire a jealousy in Louise that threatens to disrupt the duo’s act, their marriage, and more. Meanwhile, a sword swallower and the show’s costume designer fall deeply in love, but find their relationship–and personal safety–tested when the costume designer’s husband starts stalking her.
The central difficulty for one character, Antoinette, is hydrocephaly, which caused her head to swell to such a size that Doc Bell made her a sideshow attraction. Antoinette’s story–perhaps my favorite in Tonic and Balm–offers a thread of mystery and intrigue that runs through the entire book. She’s mysterious to fellow medicine-show members (and readers) mainly because she rarely speaks–yet there’s never any doubt that she’s busy thinking, passing judgment, and maybe even exerting supernatural powers, as at least one observer seems to believe.
A big reason for Antoinette’s silence seems to be her isolation, the result of being regarded as a “freak” by both attendees of Doc Bell’s show and most of the people who perform in it or help keep it running. She spends most of her days alone, in a dark room of whatever boarding house she and other black medicine-show performers have been consigned to. Evenings, she’s confined to her own tent at the show, where she’s billed as Sheba, Queen of the Nile. There, her only visitors are locals who pay to gawk at her.
Gradually and masterfully, Allen reveals the larger story surrounding Antoinette, in part by portraying the relationship she forms with a fellow show member and outcast, Dr. Sauer. Unlike Doc Bell, Sauer is a real doctor. But after being brought low by alcoholism fueled by a tragic loss, he turned to supporting himself through fake doctoring, in the service of promoting Doc Bell’s potions. The ways that Antoinette and Sauer connect over the course of the novel, and the consequences of this connection for both of them, show the redemptive powers of feeling valued and understood–no small thing in a world that shows little love for outsiders.
I came to care deeply about Antoinette and Sauer, and so many other characters in Tonic and Balm, which like the medicine show itself, is wonderfully strange and haunts the imagination long after the players have exited the stage.
Would My Pick be Your Pick?
If you're interested in ________, the answer may be "Yes":▪ Stories about unconventional characters or outsiders
▪ The workings and intrigues of traveling shows
▪ Historical fiction
