“When Franny Stands Up,” Eden Robins’ debut novel

Supernaturual comediennes of WWII.

Of all the alternate history premises in fiction, the McGuffin of Eden Robins’s debut, “When Franny Stands Up,” is one of the most unlikely and — it turns out — rich. Robins’ novel opens on Franny, a teenage Jewish girl from the Chicago suburbs who’s snuck out on Christmas Eve to hear the notorious comedian Boopsie Baxter do standup.

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It’s an all-female audience. After all, WWII is in full swing, and all the young men are Over There, including Leon, the older brother Franny adores. But there’s another reason that Boopsie can pack the house with women: she’s got a Showstopper.

This is the alternate history part. In Robins’ world, the advent of World War II and the rise of woman comedians (filling in the vacuum left by the departure of all the men) reveals the existence of Showstoppers: involuntary psychic reactions that woman comedians can induce in female audience members when they’re really cooking.

Some Showstoppers are relatively mild — like the uncanny sensation that you have just caught your bus. Boopsie Baxter’s is a little more intense: she induces involuntary, powerful orgasms in the women who hear her sets. So yeah, she’s got a packed house.

The magazines where Franny learned about Boopsie are squeamish about this, speaking in ellipses and euphemisms of Boopsie’s Showstopper, and Frannie (young, naive) doesn’t understand what’s happening when Boopsie works her magic. Panicked and ashamed, she runs out of the room and flees home — just in time to learn that her brother Leon is missing in Belgium, lost in battle and presumed dead.

That’s the setup. When we return to the action seven years later, Leon is home — shell-shocked and traumatized — and the world is roaring into the post-war new normal. Franny gets roped into sneaking out to a show at the Blue Moon, Chicago’s last all-female showcase for comedians and their Showstoppers.

And that’s where the action really takes off. Franny, it turns out, is funny. She’s also pretty messed up. And soon enough, she’s involved with the gangster’s wife who runs the Blue Moon, and the…