Violence haunts 1915 Atlanta and so does the golem a group of girls creates
A dark, lyrical blend of historical fiction and magical realism, The Curators examines a critically underexplored event in American history through unlikely eyes. All of Atlanta is obsessed with the two-year-long trial and subsequent lynching of Jewish factory superintendent Leo Frank in 1915. None more so than thirteen-year-old Ana Wulff and her friends, who take history into their own hands—quite literally—when they use dirt from Ana’s garden to build and animate a golem in Frank’s image. They’ll do anything to keep his story alive, but when their scheme gets out of hand, they must decide what responsibility requires of them. The Curators tells the story of five zealous girls and the cyclonic power of their friendship as they come of age in a country riven by white supremacy.
The Games Clayboy The Leo Museum Coloring Book The Smutch Easter Egg Hunt Spider’s Nest Coin Toss Dumpling Factory Making Good Skipping Rope Swapping Stories Hide and Peek Invisible Ink Mudman Spider’s Nest Reprise Pinky Swear Home Video Shadow Puppets Shadow Puppets: Part II Snoops Alphabet Soup The Night Witch: A Secret Game
Acknowledgments
MAGGIE NYE is a writer and teacher whose work has been supported by MacDowell, Tin House, and the St. Albans Writer in Residence program. The short story from which this novel grew was published in Pleiades.
Named a must-read Southern book of the summer by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A Deep South Magazine Summer Reading List selection
“This novel is quite unlike anything I’ve read: transportive, lyrical, inventive, and socially engaged. The Curators marks Maggie Nye as an exciting new voice in fiction.” —Chicago Review of Books
“A lyrical exploration of both myth and the mob mentality that endangers us all.” —Southern Review of Books
“Nye’s narrative poetically and darkly conveys the uncertainties and anxieties experienced by the girls as they mature to womanhood while struggling to understand the horrific circumstances of Phagan’s murder and Frank’s lynching. Part Southern Gothic, part Frankenstein, all thought-provoking.” —Kirkus
“[The Curators] follows no formula. I love that this is the story of an obsession and where it takes these girls. It's also a story of adolescent friendships, specifically friendships between young girls. A concise, compelling, really emotionally wrought story that I think is worth reading.” —Peter Biello, Georgia Public Broadcasting
“A tale of obsession within the collective, The Curators is a fearful, splendid debut that is both eerie and elegant in its telling.”—Justin Torres, winner of the National Book Award
“The Curators is astonishingly self-assured, and not only for a debut novel; I can’t recall a historical fiction I have enjoyed or admired more in recent years. Just as the novel’s protagonists seek to narrate their own lives on their own terms, so does the novel take historical facts and make them into the best—and truest—kinds of fictions, proving by example just how more “true” a novel can be than a piece of journalism or a historical record. Indeed, it made me think of how necessary fiction is in this regard; there are things only fiction can say about the past, and about the present, and I’m thankful to Nye reminding me of this.” —Maryse Meijer, author of The Seventh Mansion
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