Coming of the Fairies

In 1917, two young cousins in a small English village photographed what appeared to be tiny winged beings dancing in their garden. The images would captivate the world, and convince one of the most brilliant minds of the era that magic was real. Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes and the century's most formidable rationalist, became the photographs' most vocal champion. He'd lost his son, his brother, and his father within years of each other, and spiritualism offered what science could not: proof that love endures beyond death. When the fairy photographs arrived, they arrived as answer to a man desperate to believe. "Coming of the Fairies" presents Doyle's earnest, impassioned argument for their authenticity, a remarkable document that reads less like evidence than like prayer. The photographs were later exposed as paper cutouts held aloft with hatpins; the women confessed decades later. But the book remains a haunting window into grief, belief, and the peculiar blindness that love makes possible.