The Final Confession of Mabel Stark

Susan Merskey is freelance writer in London, Ontario.

It is 1968, and Mabel Stark is turning 80. She is about to lose her job
at JungleLand, a circus-cum-zoo in northern California. Faced with the
loss of all that is familiar to her, she decides she has only one more
thing she needs to do: confess.

Barely five feet tall and dressed in her trademark skintight white
leather jumpsuit, Mabel made an indelible mark in a man’s world as the
greatest female tiger trainer in history. In the 1910s and 1920s, when
the circus was the most popular form of entertainment in North America,
she was a centrering attraction for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum &
Bailey circus. She was brazen, courageous to the point of
self-destruction, and sexually eccentric. She was obsessed with tigers,
her relationship with them molding her career, her marriages, and her
concept of joy. Seemingly fearless, she survived a dozen severe maulings
and five husbands.

Drawing on known facts about Stark’s life and letters she wrote in
the 1930s, the author paints a vivid picture of life in the circus and
the dangers Mabel faced in her dealings with the tigers. No less
memorable is Hough’s account of her tumultuous love life and
ever-changing moods (although he does acknowledge that his description
of her brush with the mental-health system after her first marriage is
essentially speculation). The net result is a fast-paced and earthy
page-turner of a book that holds the reader’s attention from start to
finish.