In ‘Truevine,’ bizarre story finally told
Beth Macy went to work as a reporter for The Roanoke (Va.) Times in 1989, and it wasn’t long before everyone was pointing her to the best story in town, one that nobody had ever been able to tell.
It was the story of George and Willie Muse, brothers who lived with their sharecropper mother at the turn of the 20th century in a place called Truevine. As children, the brothers had been “discovered” by a bounty hunter who traveled the country looking for unusual circus acts. The Muse boys were albinos born into a black family and became an instant attraction for their striking features — blond locks and blue eyes.
They would go on to earn international celebrity as sideshow acts during years when circuses were preeminent attractions. At times, they’d be billed as Iko and Eko, “wild and uncivilized men from the jungles of Ecuador,” or even as ambassadors from Mars.
What happened to them is fascinating, as is the world they inhabited for so long, during a time when people paid to see other humans billed as “freaks.”
What’s even more compelling is the story of how their mother fought to get them back and to protect them from managers who had exploited them for years.
That is the heart of “Truevine,” Macy’s latest book.
To get the story, Macy had to win the trust of a woman named Nancy Saunders, George and Willie Muse’s great-niece and their caretaker once they retired.
Saunders agreed to cooperate only after her uncles died. She had wanted them left in peace and was afraid, Macy recounts in the book, of the writer being “just another white person stirring up s---.”
Macy, of course, understood the reticence.
Roanoke was — and remains — a segregated city, like many places across America. There, as everywhere, stories about black people had traditionally been told by white writers who struggled to understand their lives or didn’t bother trying.
This book is deeply reported and told with the kind of nuance and grace that define Macy’s storytelling.
I have been a fan for a long time. For years, I worked as a journalist across Virginia and regularly marveled at how artfully a Beth Macy story could unfold. So I was not surprised when her first book, “Factory Man,” quickly won national acclaim in 2014 and got the attention of actor Tom Hanks, whose production company, Playtone, optioned the movie rights. It tells the story of a Virginia furniture maker who fought to keep his manufacturing plant open, despite the forces driving so much work overseas. The story may become a miniseries for HBO.
For “Truevine,” Macy said in an interview, the story demanded that she be “respectful and rigorous,” qualities that she has perfected.
Immersing in the past made her realize why so many racial issues linger in America.
Much of “Truevine” plays out in the Jim Crow era, which was, Macy said, “so much more complicated than separate water fountains and separate bathrooms.”
She tells the story, for instance, of black girls walking to school past a white neighbor who taught her parrot to squawk epithets at them.
“These were real people, not that long ago,” Macy said. “This history needs to be acknowledged.” It’s also just a remarkable story. Of the circus life, which will no doubt seem crazy to a young audience.
Of boys who were stolen — or perhaps not. Won’t give that away.
Of a mother’s incredible courage.
Of men who grew old but never bitter.
Of a proud legacy, one that should be told, and thankfully, by a gifted writer.