THE

CAROUSEL
CARVER

A Novel by
Perdita Buchan
 Acknowledgments

T hanks to Tobin Fraley and Lourinda Brey for answering my carou-

sel questions, and to the Skirball Museum, Los Angeles, for access
to the transcript of an interview with the late Barney Illions.
Germantown, Pennsylvania

1912
 1

T he young man found the place after following the directions on

the piece of paper, matching the strange English names letter-by-
letter with the street signs he passed. Philadelphia Carousel Company.
The Gothic lettering of the sign over the door was hard to read, but the
flying horse had to mean something. The door was open. He entered
a huge room that looked like a battlefield—heads, bodies, and legs of
wooden horses piled on the floors and benches. Men in aprons looked
up from their work.
He held out his hands, blunt fingered, nicked and scarred by the
tools, a thumbnail blackened. He forced his tongue to form the words.
“I carve,” he said.
The old man gazed at him. He had frosty white hair and frosty blue
eyes. He looked more like the old world than the new. He pointed to a
small block of wood.
“Carve,” he said.
The young man sat down at a bench, picked up the block of wood,
and took the set of tools from the small canvas bag he carried. The
other carvers looked curiously at him. He looked back at them, at the
heads of horses they were coaxing from blocks of wood held in vises,
the flattened ears, the swirling forelocks, the rich loops of mane, wide
eyes, flared nostrils. He looked beyond them at the blue September
sky outside the window. He saw the Lipizzaner horses rushing across
it as they had rushed across the fields at Lipica. He saw them milling
in the stone stable yard, the foals black, the yearlings gray, the others
white. Watching them in his mind’s eye, he began to carve. He ate no
lunch, carved until the light weakened. He did not carve just a head, he
carved a miniature horse leaping into the cabriole. And then the old
man came over.
3
4 Perdita Buchan

“Ah,” he said.
Just that, “Ah.”
The young man got up, thinking he had failed. He walked down the
big room and out the door while the old man stood there turning the
little horse in his hands.
It was a boy who ran after him, an apprentice who mixed the glue
and swept the floors.
“Wait!” he cried. “Wait. The boss wants to hire you.”
“A job,” the boy continued, nodding his head vigorously. “Yes. A
job. Yes.”
Job. Yes. The young man understood.
“Tomorrow morning,” the boy said.
That night, they galloped through his dreams, the Lipizzaners; stal-
lions, mares, foals. They leapt into all the figures of the haute école, sus-
pended in the dusty air of the riding hall like horses on a carousel.
The next morning, he was on the doorstep. He had slept on a bench
in the park nearby; the weather in September was still warm.
The boy was the first to arrive, emerging sleepily from a door at the
side of the building.
“I am Giacinto,” he told the boy.
“Italian?”
Giacinto nodded.
“Where are you living?” the boy asked.
When Giacinto shrugged and shook his head, the boy mimed sleep-
ing and Giacinto shrugged again. The boy said no more, but when the
old man came, Giacinto saw him talking and pointing. The old man
nodded.
Several of the carvers spoke German and one Italian, but there
wasn’t much time for talking. At lunch they shared their food with him
and the one who spoke Italian explained that the boy slept in a room
 The Carousel Carver 5

above the shop with the other two apprentices and that Giacinto could
sleep there until he found a place. They asked where he came from.
“Trieste,” he said.
Marco came from southern Italy, and he, too, had been a church
carver, specializing in carvings of the Madonna.
“Now,” he said, “I put her on the cantle of the saddle. She is happy
enough there.”
 2

A t first, the workshop was a confusing place. In Trieste, Giacinto

had worked alone in a cramped attic with the church carver, a
taciturn old man. It had been slow, painstaking work: the feathers of
an angel’s wing, the folds of a saint’s robe. In that place of saints and
angels, they had worked in a religious silence. When he had taken
Anna to show her his work, she had entered laughing. The old man
had pursed his lips and turned away. Here, the noise was constant, the
pounding of mallets and the scraping of chisels, the metallic whine of
the motor-driven band saw. Apprentices were kept busy sweeping up
the soft curls of wood that littered the floor. As he gazed at the life-size
drawings of animals tacked to the walls, he wondered if he would ever
find a place in the melee, be able to breathe freely in air filled with the
dust of sanding. For Anna, he knew he must. For the life he had prom-
ised her when they said goodbye.
Now, in September, the windows were open but it was still hot. In
the winter, a wood stove would struggle to heat the big room and they
would work in fingerless gloves. Marco’s wife would knit him a pair.

Although Giacinto spoke some German, Italian was easiest for him so
Marco was told to show him the way things worked.
First of all, the animals were not carved from solid wood. To prevent
checking, thin layers of wood were glued together to form blocks. The
6
 The Carousel Carver 7

master carvers’ drawings were cut out, traced onto the wooden blocks,
and rough cut with the band saw that loomed at the back of the room.
Made of heavy cast iron, it was driven by two revolving wheels like an
infernal version of carousel motion.
Giacinto began by carving legs for the inside row gallopers. The
legs were cut in two pieces, always with the long grain of the wood for
strength. Then he learned to make the body. Called coffin shape, it was
several planks thick on the ends and sides but hollow at the core to save
weight. The wood was basswood, the linden he had carved in Europe,
although the American wood was harder and slightly more difficult to
carve. After a time, he was allowed to carve the heads of the inside row
horses, which were less detailed. Axel showed him how to place the
glass eyes. They were the lifelike eyes used by taxidermists. Once the
eyes were in, the animal came alive, catching you in its gaze.

As he struggled to understand, to learn the English words for tools,

for the different animals, Giacinto found little time to talk to the other
carvers. Their only common language was English, but for most it was
limited, so that there were whole worlds they couldn’t describe to one
other. Their stories were in their work.
Solomon carved lions, open mouthed, with tails that curved over
their backs, more like the tail of a dog. One day, as Giacinto stood mutely
beside one, finished and ready to be painted, Solomon came up to him.
“They are the lions of the Torah,” he said in heavily accented English.
“Do you know the Torah?”
Giacinto shook his head.
Solomon gave a grunt and an impatient shrug. “It is a sacred book,
like your Bible,” was all he said.
8 Perdita Buchan

Solomon had burning eyes and a fierce expression that matched the
horses he carved, fierce horses with wild eyes and open mouths. They
arched their necks straining against the bit. Their saddles sat high on a
bolster cushion over a saddle blanket; the bridles were crossed over the
horses’ foreheads and studded with metal. Hanging from the saddle, as
often as not, was a curved Oriental sword, which he called a “shaksa.” It
was Ilya who finally told Giacinto the story in English.
“The pogroms,” he said. “The Russian Cossacks, they are like the
horsemen of the devil. They came through the shtetl. They killed his
family. He hid from them and escaped. Those are the horses he carves,
the horses of the Cossacks. Those are Cossack saddles and bridles. He
will never forget.”
Ilya and Pyotr, his nephew, were also Russian, but they were not Jew-
ish. They came not from the shtetl but from the ancient city of Yaroslavl,
from a family of icon painters, a skill they had adapted to the painting
of these wooden animals.
Ilya was a big, expansive man who threw his arms wide when he
talked. His nephew, Pyotr, barely out of his teens, was slight, blond,
and silent. Ilya liked to describe Yaroslavl as an island between two
great rivers, the Volga and the Kotorosi. It was, he said, a city filled with
churches, painted “every inch, the walls the ceilings.”
In the painting room, at the back of the building, well away from the
dust of the workroom, Ilya kept an icon on a shelf. Painted in Yaroslavl,
it had been his advertisement for jobs in the new world. In it, Christ
rose from the tomb, dressed not in white but green and rose gold. The
figures around him had robes in other jewel colors: ruby, amethyst,
emerald, sapphire.
“Now I paint the animals,” he shrugged. “Still, they are God’s cre-
ation and Jesus rode a donkey.”
 The Carousel Carver 9

After the animals were glued and sanded to a perfect smoothness,

they were primed with a mixture of oil, turpentine, and white lead—a
job for one of the apprentices. The raw wood drew in the oil and the
lead, which would preserve it. After three or four days, the animals
would be sanded again, any knots or holes puttied. Once the putty
had dried, they were sanded once more then painted with white lead
paint. The paint was so thick that carvers had to carve deeply or their
work would be obliterated. On this surface as smooth and blank as
remembered snow, Ilya and Pyotr worked their magic, mixing the
same jewel colors as those in the icon: ruby, amethyst, sapphire,
emerald.
The horses were every color: black, bay, chestnut, palomino, dap-
pled gray. The saddles sat high, carved on the cantles front and back.
The simplest decorations were tassels, flowers, the faces of cherubs,
ribbons. The petals of the roses, the folds of the ribbons, were shaded
so that they seemed almost real. Sometimes the cantle carvings were
fanciful: a monkey on a zebra, a fish on a bear, butterflies on a deer.
The monkey’s eyes were wicked, the scales on the rainbow trout glim-
mered, the butterfly’s wings were translucent, Zephyr’s gilded curls
glinted. For iridescence and to create depth, a special lacquer mixed
with color was brushed on top of aluminum leaf, then wiped with cot-
ton rags to let the silver shine through.
Marco carved mainly horses, although he also did cherubs and
angels on the chariots and an occasional camel.
“No one wants an ox,” he sighed.
From him, Giacinto learned about the horses. The ones on the out-
side, the standers, were the most ornate and dramatic, although they
didn’t move up and down like the inner ones. The standers were almost
the size of real horses, and real horseshoes were nailed to their feet.
10 Perdita Buchan

There were other tasks beside the carving and painting. The oldest and
most experienced apprentice helped Axel with the band saw. Others
mixed the rabbit-hide glue and heated it on the wood stove. Anton was
the glue master, responsible for the gluing and clamping of the lengths
of basswood. He was a hot-tempered man, not above cursing and cuff-
ing the apprentices if the glue was the wrong temperature or a clamp
askew. A Slovenian from the town of Gorizia, some thirty kilometers
from Trieste, he had been in Trieste only to sail to America. He knew
nothing of Lipica or the white horses, but he hated the gypsies in the
square who he said tried to steal from the passengers as they made
their way to the ships.

Although horses were the most popular, orders came for menagerie
animals as well. Hermann carved the forest creatures, deer, bear, wild
boar, even rabbits. The son of a wheelwright, he had grown up hunting
in the forest surrounding his German village.
“I have shot them all,” he would shout as he drew the outlines of
a deer or a bear. “Shot and skinned them. I know them from the
inside out.”
He jeered at the lions and tigers.
“Noah’s ark,” he would say. “The toys of my children. You should face
a bear on its back legs in the forest or a charging boar. That makes the
heart beat.”
Hermann’s carving was intricate and the bears’ saddles were deco-
rated with leaves and berries or a leaping trout. On the deers’ flower-
strewn saddle blankets, he carved hunting horns and, on the boars, the
heads of hounds.
 The Carousel Carver 11

Exotic animals—tigers, leopards, giraffes—were drawn and carved

by a young man named Friedl. To Giacinto, Friedl was a mystery, seem-
ing at once older and younger than the other carvers, tall and thin with
hair as black as a crow’s wing and eyes almost as dark. In those first
days, he would come by Giacinto’s bench and touch his arm approv-
ingly, smiling a quiet smile.

After a few months, Axel decided to send Giacinto with Friedl to the
Philadelphia Zoo to learn to draw the animals. Marco’s camels and
Solomon’s Torah lions were animals of the imagination. Friedl drew
from life. Engrossed in his work, he never forced Giacinto’s stumbling
English, for which he was grateful.
The zoo was miraculous. Giacinto had never been to a zoo, never
seen such a place. Friedl had grown up in Berlin. As a boy, he had snuck
into the zoo with other boys who wanted to throw rocks at the tigers to
make them roar. Friedl had been horrified that such huge and powerful
creatures should be tormented by feeble humans. After that, he had
returned many times alone to watch and draw them.
Giacinto marveled at the lions, the tigers, the giraffes, the elephants.
The bears, at least, were familiar. Ursari, gypsies who trained bears,
were a common sight on the Piazza in Trieste. Those bears walked
upright, leant on canes, rolled over, danced clumsily to the music of
the handler’s tambourine. Giacinto thought he could draw them better
from memory. He liked drawing the comical ostriches and giraffes, but
it was hard to catch the tense grace of the lions and tigers. They were
not fluid like horses. It made him sad to watch them pace, and, anyway,
Friedl captured them perfectly.
12 Perdita Buchan

Friedl was a city boy, well educated. He had set out to be a sculptor,
learning in the atelier of a respected Berlin artist. Giacinto was awed.
Friedl shrugged.
“I was not good enough,” he said. “Also, I didn’t want to make statues
of people, only animals. Animals don’t pay you.”
His English was better than anyone else’s because he had studied it
at the Realgymnasium. When anything needed to be written in English,
Axel came to him. Anything complex in orders or business letters,
Friedl translated.
The other carvers treated him with a puzzled deference. Perhaps
they didn’t understand why he was among them, someone with edu-
cation, who had possibilities in the Old World.

The room above the shop was a loft with several cots set up. It was
adequate. The three apprentices, boys in their teens, slept heavily after
long days of mixing glue, fetching, carrying and sweeping, followed by
evenings of sharpening tools for the next day.
Giacinto did well. No one asked him to pay for lodging and he was
happy carving. He saved almost every dollar he made for Anna. He
wrote to her every week and waited impatiently for her replies. At first,
they came regularly with news of Trieste and of people they both knew,
full of details of her life, of singing with the choir, of her grandmother
and her nieces and nephews.
He thought often of where they would live together when they were
married—perhaps in one of the nearby brick row houses, the one with
the apple tree in the front yard. The other carvers tolerated him, but
he did not share with them the network of family, the distractions of
domesticity. Each of them saw a different America, while he saw a
 The Carousel Carver 13

blank space, a background for the memories of Anna, Trieste, the karst,
Lipica.

By the following autumn, Giacinto had progressed from inside row

horses to standers. His horses were expressive, at once proud and gen-
tle. Customers liked them and he was no longer sent to the zoo to draw.
One he carved especially for Anna; the angel he carved on the saddle
had her face. At night, with a scrap of wood, he carved a miniature of it
to send to her.
“This,” he wrote, “is to show you what I am doing and so that you
remember me as I remember you.”
“So this is not an angel?” Ilya said of the carving.
“No. A girl I know. In Trieste.”
“A girl! In Trieste, eh, Pyotr?”
He nudged Pyotr in the ribs eliciting a wan smile.
“And where is she now?”
“She is in Trieste.”
“You bring her over?”
“Yes.”
Ilya gave him a long, considering look. He seemed about to say
something, then he shook his head.
“Okay,” he said. “You describe her. I paint.”
He painted the face delicately, the blue eyes and rosy cheeks. He
caught the gold in her brown hair.
 3

S he wrote to thank him for the model, a brief letter. Her letters were
becoming shorter and they came less often. One month, no letters
came at all. When a letter finally arrived, his hands trembled so that he
could hardly open it.
When he read it, it didn’t make sense. He thought perhaps it was
the language, that the Italian words now looked foreign to him, thick
and clotted with all their “s’s” and “l’s”, their drawn-out sibilance. At
last he understood that she wasn’t coming to America, that she had
married someone else—the gypsy fiddler who played for money in
the Piazza. In Trieste, the Grand Piazza was at the edge of the sea; the
wind blew the fiddler’s black curls as he swayed and dipped with the
music.
The day the letter came was a day in February, bitterly cold. The next
day, a Sunday, he had the day off. After mass, he took the streetcar to
the zoo alone. He carried his drawing block, pencils, and lunch in the
canvas bag he always took to work. He went straight to the leopards
and drew them as they paced. He thought he would never hear from
her again.
Perhaps it hadn’t completely surprised him. A lanky, silent country
boy, he had been astounded by the love of a town girl, the sparkling,
mercurial Anna. Now, in a strange country with a strange language, he
retreated into silence again.
At work the next day, the horse he was carving would not come alive
under his numb hands. Only Friedl noticed.
“Come,” he said, “leave it now and help me with my tiger.”
Giacinto put his tools down gladly and followed Friedl to the other
side of the room.

14
 The Carousel Carver 15

“The expression,” Friedl said, “is wrong.”

Giacinto stared at the tiger.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“We will go to the zoo again,” Friedl said.
They never talked about Anna.
Friedl read poetry: Goethe, Schiller. He also played the violin. He
went to concerts. He had come to Philadelphia through a musician
friend. He had wanted to go farther, to go West, to see all the animals of
another continent. But with little money, and a frail constitution from
a childhood bout of tuberculosis, it seemed better to stay where he had
landed.
“In this city, I can find music. But I would love to see the Rocky
Mountains,” he would say wistfully. “When I was ill as a child, they sent
me to the Alps. I was happy there.”
For Friedl, America was a dream, an ideal. To Giacinto, he would
quote Goethe: “America you are better off/Than our ancient continent.”
He believed in the new world. Giacinto was almost ashamed that he
hadn’t seen America in that way, but simply as a chance for a better life.
He and Friedl were drawn together because they were alone. With
married people, there was always a sense of expectation, that you
would want a life like theirs. With Friedl there was no subtext to their
occasional rambles in the rocky hills of the Wissahickon Creek, the
closest they could get to mountains. Sometimes, on a Sunday evening,
Friedl played chamber music with a group and Giacinto would make
up the audience. He loved the violin for the way the wood sang, and the
way the striations of the maple caught the light.
He thought of Friedl less as a friend and more as someone to look
up to, rather as he had felt about Anna, someone to be admired but not
understood.
16 Perdita Buchan

Now, in the workshop, he felt that he and Friedl worked in a place

separate from the boisterous joking and posturing of the others. It was
almost as though, between them, they re-created that attic in Trieste,
only now it was a horse’s mane, a tiger’s ears, not the robes of a saint or
the wings of an angel.

Once Giacinto realized that he was truly alone, he left the space
above the shop and rented a room. The room—two really, with a
bath—was on the top floor of a large old stucco house on a side
street, framed by huge trees and overgrown shrubs. Mrs. Oliphant,
the landlady, was an aging widow and he helped her with the many
failings of age, both her own and those of the house. She talked a lot
and seemed to take his silences for affirmation. She was overjoyed
that he could make a cabinet door or replace a rotted windowsill.
Giacinto liked taking care of this house, a stately house, a house of
character.
Mrs. Oliphant told Giacinto she had a girl who came in the mornings
to clean, do the wash, and prepare meals, but he left so early for the
workshop that he never saw her.
Behind the house was a large yard with apple and cherry trees. Gia-
cinto pruned them so that they bore fruit. Mrs. Oliphant was happy to
have him dig a strip of ground and plant a garden. He grew potatoes
and carrots, beets, lettuce, beans and peas. At one end, he built a per-
gola on which he did his best to coax a sullen grapevine.
When the garden was producing more than they could eat, Giacinto
would leave a basket of vegetables and fruit for Shirlee, the maid he’d
never met. She would leave him a thank-you note in a round, careful
hand.
 The Carousel Carver 17

One day Shirlee left him a note saying she could “put up” the fruits
and vegetables if he picked them for her. So he did. That night, he came
home to neat rows of mason jars filled with the jewel colors of beets
and carrots, peas and beans and cherries.
Mrs. Oliphant seldom came into the garden, but she liked to sit
on the side porch on warm summer evenings and watch him work. It
suited them both.
It did not suit Mrs. Oliphant’s daughter who lived out in the country
and visited once a week. She was horrified that her mother lived along
with a stranger, a foreigner, a young man. She decided that Shirlee
should live in, and one evening when Giacinto came home, there she
was in the kitchen.
Shirlee was young, dark-skinned, with a guarded expression. The
gray cotton uniforms she was required to wear hung on her thin frame.
She cooked southern food like fried chicken and spoon bread. She read
her Bible a lot and was kind to Mrs. Oliphant. She even got up early to
make Giacinto breakfast.
After a while, they began to talk. Shirlee had grown up in Mississippi,
very far to the south, in a place called the Delta. Giacinto looked it up
in his English dictionary. The best definition seemed to be an area of
low land along a river. Giacinto knew that the Mississippi was a very big
river, and that the Delta, as Shirlee described it, was a flat plain planted
mostly with cotton. She said her parents were sharecroppers. Giacinto
had to look that up too.
Shirlee had come north to Philadelphia to live with an aunt to get
some schooling, but the aunt got sick and Shirlee had to take care of
her. After the aunt died, she hadn’t wanted to go back to the Delta, so
she had to keep herself by doing domestic work. Although she had
never changed countries or crossed an ocean, she seemed as much of
an immigrant as he was. When she described the Delta, it sounded like
18 Perdita Buchan

another country—more foreign to Germantown than France or Ger-

many would have been to Trieste.

On most Sundays through spring, summer, and fall Giacinto visited

the local carousels. There were four of them in the parks at the end of
the trolley lines. The closest, Erdenheim, was actually within walking
distance. For the others, he bagged a lunch of Shirlee’s fried chicken
and took the streetcar. These parks had pavilions and gardens, trees,
ponds, and even other rides: miniature railroads, Ferris wheels, roller
coasters. You could boat on the ponds, eat at cafes. They were pleasant
places with many ways to spend time, but Giacinto concentrated on
the carousels.
At three of the parks, Erdenheim, Woodside, and Point Breeze, the
carousels were Philadelphia Carousel Company machines; he could
pick out Friedl’s tigers, Solomon’s horses, Hermann’s deer, Marco’s
camels. But Willow Grove Park was different.
The park was bigger and so was the carousel. It had been built in
New York, carved in the Coney Island style by a carver named Marcus
Illions. Early in his days at the workshop, Solomon had told him to go
there—that Illions was the greatest carver of all. It was a long way on
the streetcar, but the carousel was worth it. The horses were bigger and
wilder than his Lipizzaners. It was clear how well Illions knew them.
They surged forward, every muscle defined. They threw their heads up,
nostrils flared, teeth bared. Their sumptuous manes were painted with
gold leaf. They spurned the earth. They sneered. He thought of them as
horses of the new world, charging forward, fighting the restraint of the
bit. His horses, he saw, were gentler creatures, restrained by years of
careful breeding and training.
 The Carousel Carver 19

At the park, he would sit on a bench and watch the people who came
to ride: old people, young people, children. Young men brought their
sweethearts, trying to impress the giggling girls by catching one of the
brass rings that were fed on a wooden arm above the riders’ heads.
Most were ordinary metal but if you grabbed the brass ring, you got a
free ride. The more daring children, usually boys, would scramble up
on a horse’s saddle, kneeling or standing to grab for it. The carousel
operator would yell at them to sit down, but they were persistent. They
made Giacinto smile. It was hard to be sad around a carousel.

Sometimes, Marco would invite him for a meal, often at the urging of
his wife, Elba, who had come from the old country to join him. They
had five children and Giacinto would sit smiling amid the domestic
circus. He brought the children candy and they clambered over him
unawed by his silence.
Marco and his family lived in an enclave of row houses on a dead-
end street with a coal yard at one end and railroad tracks at the other.
Locally it was known as The Yards. They shared the house with a
brother and his wife and children. “Paesani” from Cosenza and other
southern Italian towns and villages lived in the surrounding houses.
A day there was full of entrances and exits: shouting, tumbling chil-
dren; women red-faced from a hot kitchen bearing platters of food;
goats and chickens out back; and, in the summer, shade from a thriv-
ing grape arbor.
20 Perdita Buchan

Giacinto was introduced to young women—cousins, nieces, and

daughters of friends. Most of them spoke a dialect he couldn’t under-
stand, so they nodded and smiled at one other. When they giggled and
whispered together, he felt awkward. So, to Elba’s chagrin, it never went
further.
Marco tried to persuade him to rent a room in The Yards, but he
liked his solitude too much. Shirlee and Mrs. Oliphant were much less
demanding.
“Poverino,” Elba would say watching him walk away down the street,
alone.
 About the Author

P erdita Buchan was born in England and came to America as a

child. She grew up in Philadelphia and has since lived and worked
in New York, London, and Florence, Italy. After many years in Vermont
and Massachusetts, she now lives in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, which
like almost all Jersey shore towns once had a carousel.
Buchan is the author of two previous novels, including Called Away,
and a work of history, Utopia, New Jersey: Travels in the Nearest Eden,
which was a 2008 NJCH Honor Book. Her short stories and essays have
appeared in the New Yorker, Ladies Home Journal, Fiction Network,
House Beautiful, the New York Times, and the Christian Science Monitor
among other publications.
The author is currently working on a novel set in the New Jersey
Pine Barrens. She can be reached through her webpage at www.
perditabuchan.com.

143
New Historical Fiction From Plexus Publishing!

THE CAROUSEL CARVER

By PERDITA BUCHAN
THE
This evocative historical novel tells the story of Giacinto, who CAROUSEL
emigrates from Italy in 1912 and becomes a carousel carver during
the golden age of the craft in America, and Rosa, the eight-year-old
CARVER
orphan girl thrust into his care.
In 1939, with war looming and few new carousels being built,
Giacinto leaves Philadelphia for the New Jersey shore, where his
wildly popular creations require skilled attention after every summer
season. The arrival of Rosa from Italy turns a solitary and predictable
middle-aged existence on its head. Discovery, adventure, and danger A Novel by

are all met; youthful imagination brings carved stallions to life; and Perdita Buchan

love blossoms in unexpected places.

The Carousel Carver vividly recreates the world of the immigrant carvers—from the inspiration found
in fiery horses, big cats, and children’s laughter to the clatter, sawdust, and politics of Philadelphia’s
bustling multicultural workshops. This is an engaging and insightful tale of tolerance, second chances,
and what it means for those once adrift to call America home.

April 2019 | 143 pp/hardcover | ISBN 978-1-940091-04-4| Regular Price $16.95 | Preorder Price $10.17

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This evocative historical novel tells the story of Giacinto, who emigrates
from Italy in 1912 and becomes a carousel carver during the golden age of the craft
in America, and Rosa, the eight-year-old orphan girl thrust into his care.

In 1939, with war looming and few new carousels being built, Giacinto leaves
Philadelphia for the New Jersey shore, where his wildly popular creations require
skilled attention after every summer season. The arrival of Rosa from Italy turns a
solitary and predictable middle-aged existence on its head. Discovery, adventure,
and danger are all met; youthful imagination brings carved stallions to life; and love
blossoms in unexpected places.

The Carousel Carver vividly recreates the world of the immigrant carvers—from
the inspiration found in fiery horses, big cats, and children’s laughter to the clatter,
sawdust, and politics of Philadelphia’s bustling multicultural workshops. This is an
engaging and insightful tale of tolerance, second chances, and what it means for
those once adrift to call America home.

Perdita Buchan is the author of two previous novels and a work of history,
Utopia, New Jersey: Travels in the Nearest Eden. Her short stories and essays have
appeared in the New Yorker, Ladies Home Journal, Fiction Network, House Beautiful,
the New York Times, and the Christian Science Monitor among other publications.

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Phone: 609.654.6266, Ext. 330
Email: rcolding@plexuspublishing.com