Savage Girl

Starred review from January 13, 2014
The prologue of Zimmerman’s superior historical thriller will suck most readers in instantly. On the night of May 19, 1876, 22-year-old Hugo Delegate awaits the arrival of the police at a house overlooking Manhattan’s Gramercy Park, the site of a savage murder committed by either him or a “girl murderess.” Hugo soon reveals that the victim, a “longtime acquaintance and sometime friend,” is but the latest in a series, and after his arrest, he presents the complex backstory to his defense attorney. Flashback to June 1875. Hugo, a Harvard student recently released from a sanatorium, accompanies his family on a cross-country trip. In Virginia City, Nev., he becomes fascinated with a sideshow freak, the so-called Savage Girl, allegedly raised by wolves. Hugo’s parents decide to civilize the girl, and introduce her into society on their return to New York. Zimmerman (The Orphanmaster) keeps the truth hidden until the end, combining suspense with an unsettling look into a tormented mind. Agent: Betsy Lerner, Dunow, Carlson, and Lerner.

February 15, 2014
A formal, measured tempo only heightens the tension in Zimmerman's second historical fiction-cum-thriller (The Orphanmaster, 2012), this one set in the 1870s and concerning a serial killer whose rampage ranges from a rough mining community in Nevada to upper-class Manhattan. The novel opens in 1876 with narrator Hugo Delegate, Harvard-educated scion of one of New York's wealthiest and most socially connected families, locked up for the gruesome murder of another New York dandy. He willingly claims his guilt--though that guilt is far from certain--but his expensive lawyers demand he tell them the true story from the beginning. Hugo starts with his family's visit to Virginia City, Nev., home of his father Freddy's silver mine. Soon, Hugo's parents, eccentric liberals interested in the nurture/nature debate raised by Darwin, are eager to adopt a young girl they have discovered in a Virginia City freak show, the owner of which claims she was raised by wolves. Of unknown origins, she speaks Comanche as well as a smattering of English, and her performance involves a set of mechanical claws and a swimming tank. The girl, whose name turns out to be Bronwyn, travels on the Delegates' private train to New York, where the Delegates plan to put one over on their friends My Fair Lady-style by having her debut as a fashionable young lady. But one grisly murder after another seems to follow in Bronwyn's wake, the victim always a man who has shown his attraction to Bronwyn's considerable charms. Is Bronwyn, with her animallike instincts, the killer? Or is it Hugo, with his past mental problems, his capacity to black out and his love for Bronwyn that borders on jealous insanity? Neither Hugo nor the reader is sure right up to the satisfying if melodramatic end. Zimmerman's dark comedy of manners is an obvious homage to Edith Wharton, a rip-roaring murder mystery more Robert Louis Stevenson than Arthur Conan Doyle and a wonderfully detailed portrait of the political, economic and philosophical issues driving post-Civil War America.

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March 1, 2014
Debutante or demon? The title character of Zimmerman's gripping historical novel seems to be a little bit of both. Discovered in a Nevada mining town by a wealthy couple determined to overcome the savage girl's apparent feral upbringing, Bronwyn is introduced by them to Gilded Age Manhattan's high society. But as the couple's son, the novel's narrator, can attest, she is perhaps not as innocent as she seems. All revolves around the central question of whether Bronwyn or the captivated narrator is responsible for the trail of bloody crimes left in their wake. Suffused with a gothic aura of dark suspense, this is a finely wrought psychological work from the author of The Orphanmaster (2012), rich with historical detail. The mystery stretches from society's heights to its absolute depths and touches everything between, always increasing in dramatic tension. Zimmerman's settings spring off the page, from the stinging dust of the American desert to the dank despair of the Tombs prison in New York. Immensely readable, Savage Girl takes the reader by the throat and doesn't let go.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

October 1, 2013

Said to have been raised by wolves, 18-year-old Bronwyn is taken from 1875 Nevada to Gilded Age New York by a ridiculously rich couple to be polished up and introduced to high society. Alas, her lovers have a way of ending up dead. A follow-up to Zimmerman's engrossing debut, The Orphanmaster.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2014

Wealthy socialite Hugo Delegate and his family rescue the "Savage Girl" from a carnival sideshow and bring her back to their mansion in 1870s New York. Reportedly captured as a child and raised by a Comanche tribe, she instantly captivates Hugo with her boldness and energy. The Delegates undergo a campaign to socialize Savage Girl with limited success. Meanwhile, violence follows this young woman across the country, as men she flirts with end up mutilated and dead. In this follow-up to her acclaimed debut, The Orphanmaster, Zimmerman offers a fanciful and occasionally surreal take on a Gilded Age New York that is reminiscent of Caleb Carr's The Alienist or even Edgar Allan Poe. Most of the novel is narrated by Hugo recounting events in an extended flashback, which feels jarring and out of place. More successful are the action-packed final chapters. VERDICT This is best for fans of Zimmerman's first novel and readers who like their historical novels tinged with darkness. [See Prepub Alert, 10/1/13.]--Laurel Bliss, San Diego State Univ. Lib.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.