Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother’s Quest
by Beth Macy
Macmillan, 432 pages, £18.99
Older readers will remember the travelling fairs that dotted the calendar of popular entertainment. Among their offerings were ‘freak shows’ starring bearded ladies, wild men of Borneo, tiny people, giants – a host of people with physical deformities and medical conditions who made a miserable living as ‘freaks’ for a gawping public. Truevine tells the story of one such show.
In 1899, brothers George and Willie Muse were kidnapped from their poor, illiterate black mother near the town of Truevine, Virginia. For years they were exhibited by small circuses, then by more famous ones, as objects of curiosity. Eko and Iko, as they were billed, had albinism, and were variously described as “sheep-headed” (they…
