Strolling through Salzburg

It's a warm and lazy Sunday afternoon here in Illinois, so after spending the morning reading Elissa Elliott's Eve: A Novel of the First Woman (for coverage in NoveList; I'll do my writeup tomorrow), I thought I'd get back to posting my travelogue. Here I am, above, sitting in the outdoor café at Fortress Hohensalzburg, overlooking the city of Salzburg with the Tyrolean Alps as a backdrop, on October 22nd. We hadn't made any plans to visit here, but with the help of the local tourist office and a little random luck, we managed to see a number of sites of great visual and historical interest.

For example, after walking a block from our hotel in the old city and passing through the Mozartplatz Square, we came upon the Salzburger Dom, a magnificent cathedral and a masterpiece of Baroque architecture. Interior view at left. There was a sign out front advertising a special event at the Dom that very evening, Licht Nacht (light night), so we took a stroll over after dinner to see what it was all about.

If you've never heard choral music sung in a cathedral as grand as this, it's quite an experience. The interior was lit up with colored lights that changed and faded in and out in accompaniment with the singers and organist. The cathedral pews were filled with a combination of locals and tourists (mostly the former); we had to stand in the back until seats opened up along the side. Mark took a video with his digital camera that came out surprisingly well. (Adobe Flash required to view.)


The gates at the entrance to the Dom provide more information about its history. You may need to enlarge the photo to see them clearly, but atop them are three dates which memorialize the three separate consecrations of the Dom: 774, 1628, and 1959. The original structure, consecrated to St. Virgil and St. Rupert in 774 AD, was destroyed by fire in the 12th century and rebuilt. Another fire ravaged the cathedral at the end of the 16th century, and it was reconstructed during the Thirty Years' War. The most recent consecration took place in 1959, after the cathedral dome was destroyed by Allied bombers during WWII and rebuilt yet again. (Most of the rest of the structure remained intact.)

Earlier that day, we had crossed a bridge over the Salzach River and wandered around more of the city's narrow streets. Lots of shops. Just to the side of St. Sebastian's Church (Sebastianskirche), another Baroque structure, is a cemetery with some very famous residents. It was only by chance that we stopped to walk around there, but I recognized several names right away. A few yards from the entrance, you'll find the plot for Leopold Mozart, the composer's father, as well as that for Constanze (Constantia), widow of Mozart, who settled in Salzburg with her second husband, Georg Nissen. Historical fiction readers may recognize her as a lead character from both Stephanie Cowell's Marrying Mozart and Juliet Waldron's Mozart's Wife. (I had to get historical novels in here somewhere!)

This last photo is the sight we saw while walking back toward the city center from the other side of the Salzach: the Dom towers behind the buildings at right, while the 11th-century fortress, at the very top, overlooks everything.

Book review: Sunflowers, by Sheramy Bundrick

In her debut novel, Sheramy Bundrick casts a sympathetic light on troubled painter Vincent van Gogh, imagining a romantic relationship between him and Rachel, the young prostitute from Arles mentioned in one of the more dramatic and tragic episodes of his life.

When they first meet in a public garden on the fringes of the city in summer 1888, both are seeking a place of refuge and repose. They find it in one another. Vincent has just moved from Paris to Arles to take artistic inspiration from the local people and beautiful scenery and to establish an artists’ colony in southern France. In escaping to the countryside, Rachel wants to forget, temporarily, her unfortunate life as a fille de maison on the Rue du Bout d’Arles. Both have painful romantic pasts and are short of funds: Vincent depends on the largesse of his art dealer brother, Theo, for his subsistence, while Rachel, forced out of her home after an indiscretion, means to earn enough francs to get her name removed from the city’s register of prostitutes.

Although Vincent starts out as her client, he always treats her with respect, bringing her flowers and ensuring she enjoys their time together as much as he does. Their growing romance becomes a source of comfort to them both, and in willingly cooking and cleaning the yellow house where he lives, Rachel adds a touch of domesticity and normality to their lives. In his exuberant paintings of sunflowers, she catches a glimpse of his passionate soul. Although she is threatened by Vincent’s reluctance to mention her to his family, Rachel remains devoted to her lover. Their love remains constant, despite the censure of her house’s proprietress and the crises of madness he experiences – which become ever more frequent and severe.

Bundrick presents Vincent van Gogh as a gentle man possessed of enormous artistic creativity yet tormented by inner demons, a victim of a medical condition – possibly manic depression – that no one, neither Rachel nor himself, is able to fight. With its imagery of the ruins of Roman Gaul and the dingy cafés lining the city’s streets in the late 19th century, Sunflowers has a strong sense of place and time and serves as an enticement to visit southern France. Like the paintings themselves, the narrative is suffused with brilliant swirls of color, as seen in the warm gold of the wheat fields and the deep blue of the sky over Arles. Vincent himself, with his red hair and beard and famed yellow straw hat, becomes part of the overall portrait. The plot moves in accord with the rhythms of Provençal life, from the unrushed time of the wheat harvest to the mistrals that blow fiercely through the city. It’s a richly satisfying reading experience.

A sidenote: I took Sunflowers with me on my recent European vacation, and it kept me happily occupied on a long overnight flight. I began writing up my review on our first night in Munich. To my surprise, I saw a note on the back of the book that the cover painting could be found in Munich’s Neue Pinakothek, which specializes in 18th and 19th-century European art. And so we made plans to visit the museum (and painting) in person the following day.

Sunflowers was published this October by Avon A at $14.99 (401pp, pb, 978-0-06-176527-8).

Guest post from Sheramy Bundrick: Van Gogh, Reader of Novels

Sheramy Bundrick, author of Sunflowers (Avon A, October) and proprietor of the blog Van Gogh's Chair, is stopping by today as part of her blog tour. I'll be posting a review of her debut historical novel tomorrow. Visit her website at http://www.sheramybundrick.com/. Welcome, Sheramy!

Van Gogh, Reader of Novels
By Sheramy Bundrick

Most people know Vincent van Gogh as a prolific artist — over eight hundred paintings in ten years’ time — and perhaps as a prolific letter writer. But he was an equally prolific reader, with an “irresistible passion for books” (as he put it) and a particular love for novels. Vincent read Dutch, French, and English fluently, and the authors’ names sprinkled through his correspondence form a who’s-who of nineteenth-century literature. In the letters, he offers recommendations and critique of books to his brother Theo, his sister Wilhelmina, and other family members and friends. We learn which books he thought consoling (Dickens’ Christmas stories and Shakespeare’s plays were a comfort in the asylum) and which inspiring (John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress). He praises French Naturalists like Émile Zola and Gustave Flaubert for their views on modern life; Dickens, George Eliot, and Harriet Beecher Stowe for their sense of social reform. He even read Jane Eyre and Shirley, novels of Charlotte Brontë then known under her pseudonym, Currer Bell.

For van Gogh, novels represented modernity. In many of his portraits and still-life paintings, he tucked a yellow-covered paperback novel or two to serve as symbols of contemporary thought. In Still Life with Bible and French Novel (1885), a well-worn copy of Zola’s La Joie de vivre sounds a note of rebellion against the massive Bible that had belonged to Vincent’s recently deceased father. The lovely Still Life with Almond Branch and Book (1888), a birthday gift for his sister Wilhelmina, sets a plump paperback against a flowering almond branch, both likely intended as emblems of new life and modern thinking. Van Gogh always wanted to paint a bookshop lit up at night, but never managed it; the closest he came was the pictured oil sketch, La Liseuse des romans (The Novel Reader) of autumn 1888, showing a very modern girl reading a very modern novel before a bookseller’s shelves.

It is worth highlighting Vincent’s attitude towards women and books. Not only did he admire (and condone) female authors like Stowe and Eliot, he also felt ladies should read whatever they pleased, a way of thinking not shared by most men of the day. Even his brother Theo preferred to shelter their sisters from controversial Naturalist novels — “forbidden fruit,” Theo called such books — while Vincent eagerly suggested Wilhelmina read this or that to expand her horizons. To “satisfy the need we all feel of being told the truth,” as he said. For van Gogh, novels as much as any other books could reveal truth, teach us things about ourselves and the world in which we live through the guise of a fictional story.

Sometimes I wonder how van Gogh would feel to be the subject of novels himself nowadays: Irving Stone’s Lust for Life, Adam Braver’s Crows Over the Wheatfield, Alyson Richman’s The Last Van Gogh, my own Sunflowers, to name a few. Would he be embarrassed at the attention? Secretly pleased? For my own part, I tried to write a book I thought he would like, with the sort of heroine he might admire. And I hope he’d be satisfied.

Books I can't read

Oder, so viele Bücher, die ich nicht lesen kann.

This is the scene that greeted me upon entrance to a typical German bookstore. Historical novels everywhere. Some had separate sections labeled "Historiche Romane" (and when's the last time you saw that in an English-language store?) while others had piles and piles of them front and center. This photo comes from a mall store in Nürnberg's old city.

I had always heard that historical fiction was alive and well in Germany, and I now have firsthand proof of it. My two years of college German from 20 years ago were nowhere near sufficient for me to read any of them cover to cover, but I got the gist of the setting and characters from the titles and back cover blurbs.

There was a good selection of novels translated from English and other European languages. Can you spot Judith Merkle Riley's The Water-Devil, Jane Harris's The Observations, and C.J. Sansom's Revelation in the pile, not to mention several by Bernard Cornwell? The majority were, of course, written in German. Next to none will ever be translated into English, and they cover many subjects and settings that simply aren't covered in English-language fiction. There is no market here, apparently, which is very frustrating. So if you want to read a novel set in medieval Würzburg or 17th-century Bavaria, you'd better know how to read German or you're out of luck. And believe me, I'm tempted.

You'll gather that the headless woman trend is doing just as well there as it is here, and most of the novels do seem to have female protagonists; however, in my admittedly limited sampling, the emphasis on royalty isn't nearly as strong.

I know this blog has some German-speaking readers, and I'd love to hear their opinions! I can think of several historical novels written in English that appeared in German long before they were published in the US or UK (or elsewhere)... such as the Riley novel above and Donna Gillespie's Lady of the Light, sequel to The Light Bearer.

So, book shopping wasn't a major component of this trip, unlike my last visit to the UK (when I brought home a suitcase full). But I did do a lot of browsing.

What was I saying about some English-language content appearing first in German translation? Pope Joan, the film based on Donna Woolfolk Cross's bestselling novel of the same title, premiered October 22nd in Germany. You couldn't walk down the streets of of any major city without running into posters. The one at left comes from the Nürnberg Hauptbahnhof (main train station). The novel Die Päpstin was prominently displayed in every bookshop window we saw -- and in multiple sizes and covers.

I knew that the movie had been filmed in English, but the film that was being shown appeared to be in German, so we asked the desk clerk at our Nürnberg hotel and he confirmed it. After some googling around, I discovered that rather than subtitle Hollywood films for German-speaking audiences, the producers dub them into German using voice actors. There's a large foreign film cinema in Nürnberg called the Roxy, and the clerk advised checking there, but they weren't showing it in English -- because the English-language version, the original, hadn't been released yet (edited to say: or so I'd thought -- see comments for an update from a German reader). We could have gone to see the German version but decided to wait until it's available in the States. I hope it will be soon.

European sojourn, part one

It's been a long time since I've posted anything... but I have a good reason. Mark and I just returned from a 10-day vacation to Germany and Austria, a trip we'd been planning to take for quite a while. We had a wonderful time, and here's a recap of some of the sights we saw along the way -- with historical interludes, of course. Click on the images to see larger versions with greater detail.

We got back this past Wednesday evening, and I'm still dealing with jet lag... here I am posting at 8pm on Friday, and I can barely stay awake, but I'm determined to get something posted here, finally!

After arriving in Munich on Sunday the 17th, we spent the next day exploring the city. To the left is Nymphenburg Palace, which I'd never heard of previously, but Mark had visited it when he'd lived in Germany back in the 1980s. Following an extended tour of the palace and grounds (it was interesting to see that their lawns were suffering the same rodent problems as ours does), I found it easier to establish its context relative to other historical information I already knew.

Nymphenburg was commissioned by Ferdinand Maria, Elector of Bavaria, for his consort, Henriette Adelaide of Savoy, after she'd given birth to their heir, Max Emanuel. Henriette Adelaide was a granddaughter of Henri IV of France and his queen, Marie de Medici, through their daughter Christine; Henriette Adelaide in turn was the mother of Maria Anna of Bavaria, who married Le Grand Dauphin, eldest son of Louis XIV. If you've read enough French-set historical fiction, you may recognize some of these names. It's one great big European extended ruling family.

Ludwig I of Bavaria resided at Nymphenburg in the mid-19th century. To the right are six selections from his Schönheitengalerie, or Gallery of Beauties, a collection of 36 portraits of gorgeous women mostly from the nobility and middle classes; it was considered a great honor to be selected to pose for the gallery. The portraits cover the walls of a large room, and sexist as this may seem, I have to admit that the king had a good eye for these things; these women (as memorialized by Joseph Stieler, court painter) truly were beautiful. Another surprise: I immediately recognized two of the women as ones I'd read about in historical novels: Lady Jane Ellenborough (perhaps better known under her birth name of Lady Jane Digby) and Lola Montez. Both were mistresses of the king, while the other 34 were simply other women who possessed the qualities he was looking for. His long-suffering wife wasn't selected for the gallery, though Ludwig honored his daughter Princess Alexandra, his daughter-in-law, Marie of Prussia, and his first cousin Sophie of Bavaria (mother of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria) by including them in the gallery.

Okay, back to our travels. What would a visit to Bavaria be without a trip to Schloss Neuschwanstein, the fairy tale castle constructed as a mountain getaway for King Ludwig II of Bavaria. Even in late October, the grounds were buzzing with tourists from a variety of countries. They gave English-language tours, so after hoofing it up the mountain for about a mile (because of the snow at the top, the buses weren't running) we all clustered in the castle courtyard until our tour number was called, after which point we lined up like cattle within the gates until the tour guide arrived. Neuschwanstein is apparently suffering due to the large influx of tourists it receives each year and regularly undergoes restoration work; you can see the scaffolding on the far right side of the photo where work is being done. The opposite side of the castle is also completely covered in scaffolding, something we only discovered after making yet another steep climb up to Marienbrücke (Mary's Bridge) after the tour ended.

The photo at right, above, displays the 17th-century Chapel of St. Coloman against the backdrop of the Bavarian Alps just outside Schwangau, the town just before the climb up to Neuschwanstein begins. We had great weather that day, although it was rather chilly out; both of us were wearing winter coats and gloves. Right down the road from Neuschwanstein, another 15 minute drive, was the town of Oberammergau, where residents stage their famous passion play every ten years. If you want to catch the next performance, make your travel plans for May through October 2010.

That night we returned to Munich and then headed out with our rental car to elsewhere in Bavaria the following day. Our next stop was Ramsau, a picturesque village with a population of less than 2000 people. The only reason we knew about it, and decided to visit there, was because of an online webcam showing the exact same scene of a church and bridge over a river as you see on the left. Even though it looks like the two of us were photoshopped in after the fact, this is an actual picture (Mark brought along a tripod, along with a digital camera on a timer). We saw the webcam, right where it was supposed to be, and if you want to see what's happening in Ramsau right at this very minute, here's a link to it.

Salzburg, Austria, was our next stop. Because we hadn't made any hotel arrangements for the next two nights, and it was within a reasonable drive, we made a side trip of it. We credit Helga, the name we gave to the voice on the GPS system built into our rental car, for getting us to Salzburg and through all the one-way streets of the city. What an insane drive, but it wasn't exactly designed for cars. We stopped in at the visitors' center and reserved a room at a hotel within the old city at a very reasonable price. It pays to travel in the off-season. Photo of twilight in Salzburg on October 21, at right; this was my 40th birthday, and what a great place to spend the rest of the day.

The following morning, after croissants and coffee in the hotel's breakfast room, we explored the old city's cobblestone streets. I was amazed at the church at left, since it looked like it had been built directly into the mountain. Its name is St. Blasius Kirche (church). As one of my fellow reference librarians told me after I got back home, you get to hear about saints you'd never known about before when traveling to this part of Europe. St. Blasius is the patron saint of throat ailments, and his church, a rather unprepossessing structure compared to others in Salzburg, was built in 1330.


One final photo for this blog entry: after taking the funicular railway up to the Hohensalzburg Fortress (Festung Hohensalzburg), which sits atop a hill overlooking the city, we took some photos of the scene below; you could see for miles. The fortress, which essentially housed a small city in itself, dates from the 11th century. Can you imagine living here and looking out to see views like this every morning?

More to come -- and there'll be more about historical fiction in the next post, promise!

A visual preview of the spring season, part two

I'm going to attempt to finish this blog post even though I'm in a hotel room in Peoria, on a little bitty keyboard, after wrapping up a day attending the Illinois Library Association conference. Here are ten more forthcoming historical novels to watch for.



A reimagining of the character of Alcestis, the devoted wife who descended to the underworld in her husband's place; there's more to her story than Greek mythology lets on. The ARC just went out on a list to Historical Novels Review reviewers, and this was the most popular pick. Soho, February.



It's been a little while since we've seen anything new from Morgan Llywelyn, chronicler of Irish history from ancient times through the end of the 20th century. Her Irish Century series, beginning with 1916, is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the struggle for Irish independence. Her latest takes on the story of Brendan the Navigator, an early Irish saint who flourished in the 5th and 6th centuries AD. Forge, February.


A historical thriller based on the real-life massacre of Chinese gold miners in Hells Canyon, Idaho Territory, in 1887, a crime ignored by local media -- probably due to the ethnicity of the victims -- and which remains unsolved over a century later. (I notice a nonfiction book on the matter, R. Gregory Nokes's Massacred for Gold, was published by Oregon State Univ Press on October 1st.) "Dana Hand" is the pseudonym for two historians who collaborated on this, their first novel. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, February.


In the last preview, we saw one forthcoming historical novel set in colonial Louisiana; here's another. As you can guess, this is a novel-length interpretation of Longfellow's classic poem "Evangeline," in which the title character journeys from Acadia (Nova Scotia) to New Orleans in the mid-18th century in search of her lost fiancé. I'm not sure if this is the final cover, but it's the one in the print catalog. Overlook, March.


Elisabeth McNeill writes about fascinating topics from (mostly) Scottish history that other historical novelists, for some unknown reason, have neglected. Fantastic Fiction has a nice bibliography, with covers. Her earliest novels were British sagas, but her more recent works have used major historical events as backdrops. The Heartbreaker is a novel of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the woman who helped him escape, Flora MacDonald, and sees what happens to each in their later lives. Severn House, January.

Continuing the 16th-century trend, here's a historical thriller set on the Oxford campus during Elizabethan times, with Italian monk Giordano Bruno as an undercover detective spying for the Queen. Per the Euro Crime blog, Heresy is first in a trilogy written by British journalist and literary critic Stephanie Merritt under a pseudonym. It's aimed at fans of C.J. Sansom. Doubleday (US) and HarperCollins (UK), March.

Does anyone else remember the author's first novel, Grange House, an elegant gothic novel set in 19th-century Maine? (My review, nine years old now, is here, and if you go for novels about creepy haunted houses and family secrets, you'll likely enjoy it too.) The Postmistress is a novel of two women during World War II, a postmistress on Cape Cod and a radio broadcaster in London, and the long-held secrets that erupt when their lives intersect. Putnam, February.



Mitchell's Chateau of Echoes took me on a journey to a 15th-century chateau in Brittany, as seen in both medieval and modern times. Her next novel is set amidst the upper classes in the late 19th century, as a young debutante discovers the fickle nature of high society. Bethany House, April.

If you wouldn't normally choose western or early 20th century locales but enjoy novels about women's lives at earlier points in history, give one of Dallas's novels a try. Whiter than Snow takes place in 1920 in the small mountain town of Swandyke, Colorado, following a deadly avalanche. April, St. Martin's.

Inspired by a controversial court case found in records from 1899 California, Moran's debut novel dramatizes the unintentional bigamy of Henry Oades, having married his second wife after believing his first wife and their children had been killed back in New Zealand. The author's website has more details on the storyline and background. Ballantine, February; UK rights went to HarperCollins.

Book review: J. Louis Yampolsky, A Boardwalk Story

Welcome to Atlantic City circa 1939, the recreation capital of the Jersey Shore, a wondrous place lined with amusement arcades, elegant hotels, and antique shops. Here men and women stroll along the boardwalk in their best leisure suits and fancy dresses, pitchmen hawk products to eager tourists, and permanent residents move to basement apartments to make room for the summer crowd. In this tenth year of the Great Depression, money’s tight and war looms on the horizon. But as the days get longer, fifteen-year-old Jack Laurel is preoccupied with his new job at Krilow’s Kitchen Gadgets, his neighbor Rhoda’s sexy figure, and avoiding the wrath of neighborhood bullies.

With his best friend away, Jack falls into the company of a motley group of adults. Charming pitchman Benny James amazes him with his ability to attract gorgeous girls, and Morris, a watercolor artist with a secret life as a mechanical man, introduces him to the joys of literature. Then things really get thrown for a loop when a loner with a talent for commodities trading enters the picture. With the help of a fortuneteller who doesn't believe in her own abilities, they stumble into an unlikely business partnership which proves astoundingly successful and attracts the notice of a powerful Italian crime boss. Jack’s love life also picks up speed, but growing up brings complications along with new discoveries, and soon he starts to feel like he’s leading two separate lives.

This fast-paced coming-of-age tale stands apart from the pack. Jack, writing today, recounts his story while looking back on his youth. His narration, clear and snappy and forthright, switches smoothly between an adolescent’s exuberance and an older, more seasoned man’s experience. He peppers the story with details on clothing, geography, housing, prices, and salaries, but he personalizes everything so well that they never feel like dry facts. The author teases by having some of the characters veer close to caricature, but their unpredictable personalities prevent them from crossing the line.

Between Jack’s adventures and the eccentric characters he meets, the novel definitely has its zany side — it's lots of fun to read — yet the tone is tempered by a sobering realism. It’s nostalgic without being schmaltzy. In 1939, many men over forty are World War I vets who served in the trenches. Their perspective (and that of the older Jack) serves as a reminder of the world war they survived and the next one soon to come.

Though written for adults, A Boardwalk Story tells it like it was for teenagers living in the late Depression years. The author’s personal story is equally as remarkable. A retired accountant and financial manager with no previous fiction writing experience, he wrote the manuscript over a summer, inspired by his granddaughter’s questions for a school history project. If you’d like to journey back to Atlantic City of yesteryear, you can’t ask for a more entertaining or knowledgeable guide.

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A Boardwalk Story is published this October by Plexus Publishing at $24.95, hb, 471pp, 978-0-937548-72-1.