Take a trip back in time to visit the spectacle of the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, courtesy of Anika Scott. In her latest novel, “Sinners of Starlight City,” we see and experience the sights, sounds, and smells of the fair through the eyes of Rosa Mancuso, who performs at the fair as the mysterious and sultry Madame Mystique. We also meet, in a connection seemingly unrelated at first, eighteen-year-old Mina Gallo, who is imprisoned in a house in Cicero, waiting for the birth of her child. Her mafioso family is embarrassed at her unwed state and wants to have the child taken to an orphanage, Mina returned to the family, and life to continue as it was before she made what is in their eyes an unsavory alliance with someone of color.
What we come to find out is that these two women are related; cousins, in fact. And while they only knew each other for a short time in their early childhood, the connection is enough for Rosa to help Mina escape from the house, and for Mina to repay that favor later. Both women are determined to accomplish their goals. Mina’s goal seems innocent enough. She wants to keep her baby. But when the baby is born too early, she also knows that the only way her infant might survive is if she’s taken to the World’s Fair, where there is a new invention, an incubator, that will keep her baby warm and oxygenated. The problem then becomes how to get her baby back after she survives, thanks to that incubator.
Rosa’s goal is less savory. She is looking for revenge. When she was merely a teenager, her family was brutally murdered in their home in Sicily by someone she thought was a friend. Rosa barely escaped with her life, and since then, she has survived, but only with the constant thought of getting revenge for her family.
Revenge is a central theme of the story. But Scott also cleverly juxtaposes ideas about race alongside the rise of fascism in Italy. We see from actual quotes how many in America shockingly and openly supported and cheered fascism. Examples of racism in Chicago are rampant in the story, as are “noble” thoughts about honor and family pride. Rosa’s Italian family was horrified when her mother married a Black man with whom she had fallen in love. When he was killed in race riots, her mother went home with her child to her family for support. But eventually, she and Rosa went to Sicily to live.
Mina studied to become a nurse and fell in love with a Black surgeon. But before they could be married, he was killed, leaving Mina pregnant and alone. Her father and his brother, remembering their sister, Rosa’s mother, decide that the best thing for Mina is to take away her child so she can return to her previous life. What Mina wants is not part of the equation.
One issue that Scott forces us to consider is whether revenge is really worthwhile in the end. Will Rosa be better off once she gets the revenge she has sought for so long? Does her family’s adherence to the Italian code of revenge help the members of the family or harm them? There are also characters who must forgive those who abused them, and some who must atone for the harm they have perpetrated on others. Are there ever circumstances that make violence acceptable, even moral? Have our feelings about race in this country changed as much as might be expected over the past ninety years? We think about those questions as we contemplate the decisions both women make in this gripping novel.
This review was first posted on Bookreporter.com.