THE CURATORS

The historic and folkloric combine with menacing results in this retelling of a disturbing episode in America’s past.

In 1915, the Felicitous Five—a (fictional) group of teenage Jewish girls living in Atlanta—become obsessed with the (unfortunately nonfictional) case of Leo Frank, a local Jewish businessman convicted of murdering a 13-year-old factory worker, Mary Phagan, two years earlier. Dedicated to preserving every bit of reportage and memorabilia about Frank they can, the girls draw up a set of ground rules for their curatorial endeavors, stressing mutuality and sharing of information. After Frank’s sentence is commuted, he’s kidnapped and lynched by an incensed local mob; the girls then advance their project and construct a golem in Frank’s likeness, eventually coming to wrestle with their expectations for the creature once it becomes (somewhat) sentient. The youngest of the girls, precocious but naïve Ana Wulff, takes the project most to heart and risks alienation from the group (and her personal safety) when her experiences with the golem mutate from mere homage to Leo Frank into a more transcendent exploration of the nature of universal truth, the acquisition of language, and the role of language in the formation of consciousness. Based on extensive research by Nye, the narrative weaves together themes of mysticism from both the Jewish and voodoo traditions as it examines the angst of adolescence, the tyranny of mobs, and bigoted populism. Intermittent passages in the communal voice of four members of the Felicitous Five telegraph Ana’s eventual status vis-à-vis the group. 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.