Saint Mazie by Jami Attenberg

There’s a saying that one good book leads to another.  Well, we’re heading back to New York City.  To Coney Island, the Bowery, Little Italy, Chinatown….

Mazie Phillips Gordon was a real person, dubbed Saint Mazie by the homeless men she helped over a 30+ year period in the dirty streets of the Bowery.  Her life was chronicled in an article in New Yorker, which now appears in Up in the Old Hotel, a collection of articles by Joseph Mitchell.  I bought Up in the Old Hotel at the Scholastic Book Fair a few weeks ago, but haven’t read it yet.  I HAD NO IDEA I would read Saint Mazie and realize her “real” story was sitting on my ottoman awaiting me.  Thank you Amazon for telling me read Saint Mazie after my review of Church of Marvels.   Seriously, weird coincidences!

Saint Mazie follows a researcher, perhaps a graduate student or new reporter, as she tries to piece together the story of Mazie, who ran the ticket booth at the Venice theater in the Bowery.  There are excerpts from her actual diary, fabricated excerpts from a fictional diary, and “interviews” with fictional representatives of her past.  Mazie’s story begins in Boston, the middle child of a drunk abuser and his mentally ill wife.  Older sister Rosie, having run off to New York, arrives in the middle of the night to rescue her much younger sisters, Mazie and Jeanie.

Rosie and her husband Louis Gordon adopt the two girls, being childless themselves.  Mazie has a wild streak, and to keep her in check, Louis gives her a job taking tickets at his theater in the Bowery.  The family moves to Coney Island, where Jeanie’s love of dance and acrobatics is fostered.  Mazie’s story takes us through World War I, Prohibition, and the Great Depression.  Mazie becomes somewhat famous as the tough girl running the theater and, later, as the saintly woman giving money and food to the poor men of the street.  Jeanie takes off performing, Louis becomes increasingly involved with shady dealings, and Rosie slips into madness.  Mazie falls in love with a Naval officer, her old neighbor, and a Nun, among others.     

Mazie died in 1964, a woman still very much ahead of her time.  I look forward to reading the article that made her famous outside of the Bowery next.

There are some brief sexual scenes.

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