Christian fiction

The Weight of Air

by Kimberly Duffy

384 pages · First published 2023

In 1911, Mabel MacGinnis is celebrated as one of Europe’s strongest women and has spent her life performing in the circus beside her father. His sudden death leaves her without the identity and security she built around him, and the discovery that her long-absent mother Isabella is alive sends Mabel to America with acrobat Jake Cunningham. Isabella is a famous aerialist whose age, injuries, and old fears are beginning to threaten the career she has made her refuge. Kimberly Duffy’s historical novel brings mother and daughter into the same circus world to examine physical strength, abandonment, reconciliation, and the harder question of where human worth comes from when performance can no longer sustain it.