Captivity by Deborah Noyes: A review

It took me awhile to appreciate Noyes' "Captivity," a fictional account of a real mid-19th century family of spiritualists who lived in Rochester, NY.  The Fox sisters actually did learn how to "rap" up the spirits for seances in the second half of the 19th century.  Maggie Fox and her sisters traveled around the country giving demonstrations and seances, and she did exchange letters with explorer, Elisha Kent Kane of Philadelphia.  I have rarely thought about spiritualism and have never considered reading about the history of this phenomenon/form of 19th century entertainment.

The chapters alternate between a fictionalized account of how the Fox sisters and their mother claim to hear noises and receive messages from the dead, and the story of Clara Gill and her father, transplants from London to the wilds of Rochester, NY in the 1840s and 1850s.  Gill is a fictional character, and it is her moving story of love denied leading to an isolated spinsterhood that is the more compelling story.  It is also the more redemptive story.  While Maggie is at the end able to help her friend, Clara, to free herself from the ghosts of her past, Maggie is trapped by her ghosts and eventually drinks herself to death.

The central theme of the book comes in a chapter where Pratt, Clara's chaperone is talking with Will, the animal keeper who has fallen for Clara.  Will says to Pratt: "...Above and beyond what an unjust world will impose, every person's a slave to choce. We make them, and they make or unmake us in turn."  Essentially, the book is an exploration of the choices the main characters make throughout their lives and the impact that those choices have on the themselves and the people around them.

It took awhile for me to care about these characters-- particularly Maggie Fox and her intended, Elisha Kane, but in the end, I found this a fairly deep exploration of the main theme of the choices that make or break each of the characters and their circle of family and friends.

Liz Nichols