Harry Houdini’s magic, career and life were all fascinating. He escaped all kinds of restraints, encasements and situations. Still, there was one thing even the great Houdini could not escape: mortality, which hit him at an early age in 1926. He did, however, say he would try. Houdini reportedly told his wife, Bess, “If there is any way out. I will find it… I will find you and I will make contact with you on the anniversary of my death.” While that never happened, the escape artists’ fascination with spirituality and communication with those in the afterlife from his attempts to contact his deceased mother though to his own passing provide the background for this highly intriguing “what if” historical fiction book, Houdini’s Last Handcuffs, by Charles C. Young and Cheryl L. Young.
The Young siblings drew from their own childhood and family background, providing a real-life scenario for the book. Their father, Morris Young, was a stellar magician in his own right and hugely influenced by Houdini. In this alternative world, the authors take Houdini’s own dabblings into the spiritual realm to a new level, hypothesizing the potential of the performer’s resurrection.

Charles and Cheryl Young brilliantly balance Houdini’s own explorations into spiritualism, skepticism of the realm’s grifters, real artifacts from the escapologist’s performance years and the showman’s mystique while telling a captivating story through their younger selves’ eyes about what started as a mere curiosity which snowballed into a battle between good and evil involving not only powerful forces, but their own childhood friends.

Pick up the book here: Houdini’s Last Handcuffs by Charlie and Cheryl Young – VINE LEAVES PRESS