The Witches of New York

In 1850s New York City, where spiritualism is sweeping the nation and fortune-tellers operate openly on every corner, one man sets out to document the trade. Calling himself only "the Individual," Q. K. Philander Doesticks embarks on a deliberately earnest investigation into the city's witches, palmists, and prophets, paying for their services and recording their prophecies with excruciating fidelity. What he discovers is a thriving industry that preys on the grieving, the desperate, and the merely curious, including some of New York's most respectable citizens. From the dubious Madame Prexster to a rotating cast of clairvoyants with increasingly elaborate schemes, Doesticks plays the perfect straight man, allowing the absurdity and occasional darkness of the fortune-telling trade to speak for itself. Part hoaxes-and-humbug exposé, part love letter to a gullible metropolis, this is American satire at its most charming: earnest in itsmockery, curious about the line between harmless entertainment and predatory deception. Long before muckrakers and tabloids, Doesticks captured a city hungry for magic in a world that was rapidly losing it.