During the early 1880's, seven-year-old Ehrich Weiss watched a magician perform and learned his first magic trick. On that same day he decided that he wanted to become a magician. Almost immediately he began to develop skillful acts for putting on mystifying acts.

The Weiss family lived in Appleton, Wisconsin, where Ehrich's father, scholarly Rabbi Weiss, found it difficult to earn a living. All the Weiss children worked at odd jobs to help support the family. When Ehrich was nine years old, he performed for a week as an acrobat in a traveling circus at Appleton.

As a boy, Ehrich developed a special interest in locks and spent many hours taking them apart and studying how they worked. Finally he became an apprentice to a locksmith and studied a picklock, which he used the rest of his career to open locks without keys. This picklock helped to pave the way for his career. 

When Ehrich was twelve years old, he obtained a regular traveling job with a circus, working while he sent money back home to his family. Meanwhile Rabbi Weiss moved to New York, where he would have greater opportunities. Ehrich joined his father, and later with the family moved there.

In New York Ehrich worked as a necktie cutter, and put on magic shows on the side for clubs and other small organizations. He read a book about Robert Houdin, celebrated French magician, and decided to change his last name to Houdini. Then he chose Harry for his first name, because he thought it sounded well with Houdini.

At sixteen, Houdini toured the country as a magician. In 1894, he married Wilhelmina Rahner, who changed her first name to Beatrice and became his stage assistant. For several years the two of them traveled about the country performing magic tricks and feats of dexterity in various places of amusement.

Gradually Houdini began to specialize in feats of miraculous escapes from shackles, handcuffs, ropes, and cells, as in prison. He practiced tenaciously to keep himself physically fit for performing these feats. Finally he became noted as one of the most talented escape artists who ever lived.

This book about Houdini has been written by Kathryn Kilby Borland and Helen Ross Speicher, who have written three other books in the Childhood of Famous Americans Series. The story is particularly fascinating because it portrays the life of a very dramatic figure and because it is concerned with magic.

From the dust jacket