The Beautiful American

Praise for Jeanne Mackin's novels:
"I read [this novel] in two sittings, eager to learn how the lives and love stories turned out, and simply fascinated by the historical accuracy....Before I realized it, I was swept up in Marie and Helen's intersecting worlds: those they make, those they inherit, those they intuit, those they're hauled into by others. One of the book's many charms is how wisely it reveals the values and passions of two women from very different eras who, nonetheless, have everything in common... What a treat this novel is, a wonderful collision of eras that's sensuous and ethereal at the same time, but also full of compelling mysteries."
--Diane Ackerman, author of A Natural History of the Senses


"A sensitive, affectionate, and appealing portrait of [Maggie Fox,] the uneducated girl who at fourteen escaped rural poverty and a drunken, abusive father to become America's first and most famous Spiritualist medium."
--Alison Lurie, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Foreign Affairs



"[Mackin's] narrator, while asserting that she is no 'hagiographer of spurious mystics,' is an engaging woman, solid in her station, widely conversant with the deeper reaches of the paranormal, and magically involved with her quest. Here she leads the mind in a chase as she finds herself temped to believe in the return of departed spirits, in a prose that is as amiable to read as the palm of a hand. A haunting book in every way. Masterly and fervent."
--Paul West, author of The Secret Lives of Words



"Jeanne Mackin has written a multilayered, multigenerational story of a spirited encounter with the spirit world. One hundred and fifty years are but the brief blink of an eye under this author's imaginative scrutiny, and she enlivens in the The Sweet By and By both the quick and the dead." --Nicholas Delbanco, author of What Remains