Unlike his contemporary fiction, Dean Koontz writes this story from a historical viewpoint. The story’s timeframe begins in 1930 and continues through most of the 1930s decade and into the early days of World War II.
Synopsis of this Novel
Alida is born with an oddity and her family rejects her, selling her, as a very small child, to the owner of a traveling carnival. There she is put on display in the sideshow of the “Museum of the Strange”. Her only recourse to ignoring people staring at her all day was to lose herself in books.
After years with the carnival, the owner, Forest Farnam, sells out and moves his best ‘oddity’, Alida, to the speakeasies circuit.
Adida has resigned herself to this lonely life of being exploited as she doesn’t know there could be more to life for her. Then she is rescued by two compassionate strangers, Franklin and Loretta Fairchild.
The Fairchild’s are movie makers who do well for themselves due to people needing movies as an escape in this Depression-era time. They see Alida as a gifted and extremely well-read girl in need of a loving touch and a family. Alida finds the love and family she has always dreamed about, but never thought she would find, with this loving couple and their three very precocious and imaginative children.
Despite everyone in the family being very generous and accepting, Alida knows she is still a very different kind of girl. She begins having dreams that are unsettling to say the least, and often feel threatening. She fears these vivid dreams are also warnings and she feels that it is the Fairchilds who may need rescuing.
Alida will do anything to keep her newfound family safe. How she goes about this gives us an ending that is definitely Koontz!
Synopsis
This is an historical novel that will give you a look at life in 1930s America from a different perspective. It also gives you a story about an unusual girl who discovers her mysterious purpose in life surrounding family, sacrifice and love.
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*Book Review of “The Friend of the Family” was written by Dean Koontz
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