In The Manikin, Scott leaves behind the exquisitely rendered vision of Egon Schiele's turn-of-the-century Vienna that distinguished her much-praised novel Arrogance and turns with equally prismatic powers to the eerie rural confines outside of Rochester, New York, early in our own century. The "Manikin" is not a mannequin but a mansion, the estate of the late Henry Craxton Sr., the "Henry Ford of Natural History," founder of Craxton's Scientific Establishment, whose specialty, taxidermy, made him rich - as the world's largest supplier of fossils, dinosaur bones, and stuffed animals. The Manikin is full of the Founder's handicrafts - gibbons and bats, owls and peacocks, quetzals and crocodiles - and it is here that young Peg Griswood arrives with her mother, the new housekeeper, in 1917, and where she will spend her formative years amid the staring, silent creatures and among a staff of eccentric servants and groundskeepers. Read Less