The magician in
Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician is Henry Walker, although there are doubts as to whether he's a Negro or not. He's Mr. Sebastian's protégé in Jeremiah Musgrove's Chinese Circus, although there's never been anyone Chinese associated with the circus. They perform in the rural South during the 1950s, and Henry appears to have graduated from doing tricks to doing real magic. One night Henry is threatened by three redneck teens and disappears soon after. His friends, Jenny the Ossified Girl, Rudy the Strong Man, and JJ the Barker, try to discover what happened to him. The incredible adventure that had been Henry's life may have even included a meeting with the devil. Author Daniel Wallace returns again with the magical realism found in his bestselling
Big Fish.
Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician has received positive reviews with BookPage saying, "Like the best magic tricks,
Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician is a very clever illusion, and that is the secret of this luminous new novel's superior value as literature and entertainment."
