In Joyce Hinnefeld’s compelling novel in stories, The Dime Museum, the lives of a vaudevillian male impersonator, a Vietnam vet turned gardener, an aimless poet, a Czech violinist, and a disaffected feminist scholar—along with ex-pats, nurses, nannies, and heart-worn mothers—intersect in surprising ways. As they seek love and solace, their lives are bound up with the historic preoccupations of modernity, meaning, privilege, and inclusion. In the end, the youngest of them are left to face the daunting and ongoing wake of the twentieth century.
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Selected Praise
Nothing in The Dime Museum is expected, and that is one of its pleasures. I don’t think anyone except Joyce Hinnefeld could have written this book that connects Ezra Pound, the Barnes Museum in Philadelphia, the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, a bookstore in Venice, and a vaudeville male impersonator who got stuck in Wabash, Indiana, in the middle of a snowstorm because she missed the last train.
–How We Spend Our Days, May 15, 2026
How beautifully knit The Dime Museum is—as soon as I finished it, I went right back to the beginning, to see the full span of it and to put together the wonderful complications of the characters. A vibrant, terrific novel.
–Joan Silber
An “expert” novel in stories with “the perfect moment of resolution.”
“The Dime Museum,” a series of linked stories about a wealthy family through the generations, covers a great many themes — privilege, poetry, art, vaudeville — but is always centered on the fine psychological portraits of its characters.
–The Washington Post, August 15, 2025
. . . will stick with you. Because of how beautifully it’s written, of course, but also because of how deeply it makes you feel.
– Allison Renner, MicroLit Almanac
And the references to books that inspire the characters! The ones they struggle to understand (Pound’s Cantos), or recall from childhood (Heidi and The Black Stallion, both of which I loved as a girl), and D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths, (which I brought home from my first trip to the public library).
Joyce Hinnefeld 