Dazzle and deception in Prohibition-era Detroit: A Fortune of Sand (plus other recent reads)

One expects some level of eccentricity from the ultra-wealthy, yet Marjorie Lennox’s family sits in a class by itself. In 1927, at their mansion in the Detroit suburbs, they rest secure in their fortune made from automotive windshields, but their luxurious life doesn’t bring contentment.

Charlotte (Chet), preoccupied by death, secretly pens newspaper obituaries under their brother Graham’s name, while sister Cecile, a bitter woman with potential gangster ties, remains their father’s favorite. At twenty, their half-sister, Marjorie, a whimsical dreamer and aspiring designer, is the recipient of Chet and Graham’s caring protection and her stern father’s everlasting shame.

Pub. by Ballantine Books (May 26, 2026)

To escape his ire, Marjorie jumps at the chance to covertly enroll in an artist’s residency in Detroit, especially since the debonair, elusive Charles Bonafante is the sponsor. She craves the structure and space to pursue her craft. These she gets, and she befriends two other women (both as charmingly peculiar as Marjorie). However, the residency has strict rules about self-isolation and locked doors. Marjorie also glimpses a disturbing message scratched into her bathroom mirror.

The storyline of this original mystery, bestselling YA novelist Sepetys’ adult debut, is utterly wild in the best way. With its outsize personalities, heaps of arch dialogue, and Gatsbyesque atmosphere oozing out its pores, it could easily lead to sensory overload, but the overall effect dazzles rather than overwhelms.

Marjorie makes a vivid first impression: brought to the police station for indecent exposure (she draped herself in leaves to amuse a tree-loving friend), she also can’t cook for herself; someone fun to observe, though perhaps not relatable. That proves incorrect as she works within and without her residency’s confines to discover what’s going on.

A hugely entertaining novel about the glamour and darkness of Prohibition-era Detroit, led by a heroine who comes into her own with impressive style.

A Fortune of Sand was published in the US and Canada by Ballantine on May 26th, and I reviewed it initially for the Historical Novel Society. Although I’m aware of Sepetys’ award-winning historical novels for YAs, and have purchased many for the library, this was the first of hers I’d read. Going by the plotlines of her books for younger readers, and the Goodreads reviews of this one by fans of her earlier work, A Fortune of Sand is pretty different in content and style. The book concludes with a wonderful author’s note detailing Sepetys’ knowledge of Detroit, her birthplace, and the elements of the story that were drawn from history.

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Among other happenings:

Thanks to Booklist’s Susan Maguire for interviewing me for the May issue of Corner Shelf, the magazine’s bimonthly e-newsletter on readers’ advisory. She asked some great questions about the changes in the blogging world over the last 20 years, trends in historical fiction, advice for librarians interested in establishing a review platform, some favorite blogging moments, and more.

My life over the past week has been rest and recovery since I had surgery on Friday the 22nd and am still pretty wiped. My directives include no exertion and no bending, which means no looking down to read print books, but I can read straight on via my iPad and watch TV (the newest episode of The Other Bennet Sister awaits). These novels have been keeping me entertained:

Anna Belfrage, Queen of Shadows (Timelight Press, 2026)—I love reading about historical royalty, and if it’s a story I don’t know well, so much the better. Queen of Shadows whisked me back to 14th-century Castile in its evocation of the longtime affair between King Alfonso XI and his beloved mistress Leonor de Guzmán, who adored him and gave him many children; and how this relationship caused turmoil for his much-ignored wife, Maria of Portugal, and his country’s foreign policy. It’s a powerful rendition of the competing forces of political responsibilities and personal desires, playing out at a national level. Each of the three has unique vulnerabilities and ambitions, which give the novel and its characters significant depth, and each exercises their will in different ways. Added to the mix are two invented characters, part-Moorish Alma Ponce de León, a midwife’s daughter, and the upper-class Rodrigo de Altamar, whose viewpoints add valuable perspectives on the country’s class distinctions and diverse cultures. It’s an epic, compelling, but far from cozy read, reflecting the real history behind it.

Katherine Webb, The Promise of Wonder (Lake Union, 2026)—An Amazon First Reads option that’s also a family saga by an author whose previous work I’ve enjoyed? I grabbed it. The setting is late 19th-century Dorset. As the story opens, Theodora Hallewell, a fifteen-year-old dreamer, has arranged for a secret midnight meeting that, she hopes, will finally convince university-bound Toby Meriwether, a young man of lower social station, to see her in a new light. A tragic event derails the lives of everyone there. The novel’s title is a bit misleading since this is a dark and melancholy tale about lost opportunities and regrettable decisions which seem impossible to escape. It’s all pretty heavy, emotionally speaking, but I found it involving nonetheless. This is the first in a trilogy.

I also breezed through Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear (Knopf, 2026), which I’d been curious about after learning the initial premise: a “traditional homemaker” Instagram celebrity with a not-so-perfect actual family life on an Idaho ranch wakes up, to her horror, in the 19th century and has to cope without modern conveniences.  Then I read multiple (spoiler-free) critiques of the novel’s historical and religious aspects and got even more intrigued.  While “enjoy” may not be the right word to describe my reaction to the book (the main character, Natalie, is an awful person, deliberately so), it was an addictive story with many surprising plot turns. Yesteryear is over the top, wacky, and very effective in its biting commentary on tradwife influencer culture.  Now that I’ve finished the book, I understand the critiques, which have merit, but also appreciate and understand the writer’s choices – and that’s all I’ll say there.

Maybe these weren't the calmest reads, lol, but they were excellent distractions during my time off.

The glamorous Gabor sisters and their survival stories: Run, Darling, by Karen Essex

Through their novels, authors can unearth obscure figures from the past and draw the public eye toward their interesting lives. They can also reveal the little-known backstories of the wildly famous and wildly rich.

In Run, Darling, Karen Essex illustrates the complicated family and romantic histories of the Gabors and the astonishing trials they endured before arriving in America and becoming fixtures of mid-20th-century gossip columns. They could be called the original Kardashians, but this obscures the core of strength behind the glamorous front.

Pub. by Kleopatra Books (2025)

Having grown up in the 1970s and 1980s, I remember this about the Gabor sisters:

* Eva and Zsa Zsa – unforgettable names – had charming Hungarian accents, wore their blonde hair in fabulous updos, draped themselves in jewels, and dropped “dah-link” into most conversations

* Their multiple marriages were notorious, even for Hollywood

* They were regulars on TV talk shows and periodic guests of Captain Stubing on his luxurious Love Boat voyages

What I didn’t know before reading this novel:

* There were three sisters! The oldest, Magda, known as the responsible one, married a minor Polish count – the first of multiple husbands. Within the story, they call themselves the “unholy trinity."

* Their mother, Jolie, a jeweler and classic “momager,” had as colorful a personality and almost as chaotic a love life as her daughters did. What a character – it’s impossible not to admire her chutzpah, but she can’t have been easy to live with.

* They belonged to a Jewish family that converted to Catholicism, which didn’t stop the Nazis from targeting them. Despite increasing evidence to the contrary, like Hungary’s passage of anti-Jewish legislation, Jolie continues to believe the family’s wealth and prominence will protect them.

* They arrived in the United States separately in the late 1930s and ‘40s. Their journeys to get there – and desperate attempts to rescue family members in Europe (some eager to escape, others refusing to leave) – make for a nail-biting plotline.

Essex relates their individual, intertwined adventures in this enticingly dishy and sympathetic account, allowing their personalities to shine. Eva, the first to emigrate, lands in Los Angeles eager to star in films though runs up against overbearing sexism and struggles to become successful. Zsa Zsa marries an older Turkish diplomat for security and to evade maternal pressure to become a celebrity in Vienna; her status as a high-profile political wife puts her into dangerous company. In England, Magda undertakes heroic actions and falls in love with intriguing men while hoping her parents in Budapest will see sense and get out.

The Gabor women’s stories positively drip with drama, scandalous antics, and guest appearances from Hollywood luminaries and other famous names. They make impulsive decisions with the best intentions (“Perhaps jumping without a net is just what Gabor women do,” Zsa Zsa muses), which is sometimes necessary to survive. Some of the male characters breeze by on the page without leaving a deep impression, but there are, admittedly, quite a lot of them … and as we know from history, there’ll be more where they came from. The text could use a closer proofread, too, to catch typos and name inconsistencies.

But who can resist a group of almost larger-than-life sisters who keep “emergency diamonds from Mama” they can use in a pinch to save their lives when needed? This novel about a trio of determined, one-of-a-kind women certainly instilled in me a newfound respect for how they survived, using their own talents to do so.

A conversation with Terri Lewis about her new historical novella, When They Came Home

Based on her grandparents, Edith and Milton Fieth, Terri Lewis’s When They Came Home is a moving portrait of a Midwestern couple's marriage in the aftermath of WWI. The story spans decades in its evocation of their lives in the first half of the 20th century. It intertwines multiple tales of survival and endurance: the psychological wounds that Milton suffers while fighting in France during WWI and their long-lasting aftereffects; Edith’s strength as she heroically raises their daughters essentially alone amid diminishing finances; and their steadfast devotion to one another over the course of many trying years. Winner of the 2025 Novella Prize from Miami University Press, the story is rich in character and atmospheric detail. My thanks to Terri for responding to my questions for this piece.

Pub. by Miami University Press, May 2026

What new facets did you uncover about your main characters, Edith and Milton, as you began writing about them and transforming their lives into fiction?

I knew Edith and Milton simply as grandparents. She baked cookies, gave hugs freely, kept a drawer full of comic books for our visits, and told stories of her childhood on a farm. My quiet grandfather had a sweet tooth, drank a lot of coffee, and took me downtown in Denver to see the Christmas lights, or “downtown” to the post office and the drugstore for a soda in tiny Enterprise, Kansas, where they lived.

My perceptions of them changed when Mother gave me a candy box stuffed with documents, letters, black-and-white photos, and a single postcard attesting to their early lives. Lives completely unknown to me. My timid grandfather a WWI soldier in the French trenches? My quiet grandmother suing the government? Both strangers. I wrote and read and pondered until I could reconcile the split images, creating Milton and Edith on the page, new, but bolstered by the Milton and Edith I knew.

Were there any family records or mementos that you drew on to shape the story?

The documents in the candy box were germane in giving structure to the story. I had dates, locations, dollar amounts, plus two handwritten clarifications of events, one from Edith and one from Milton. For day-to-day information, I interviewed my mother and aunt and heard stories about the chicken farm and the remote country store. My interest and questions seemed to drive objects from cubby holes and drawers. It was amazing to hold them, to think about what they meant to my grandparents and then to write them into the novel.

Sample objects that appear: A silk souvenir handkerchief brought back from France by Milton for a sweetheart (not Edith). A whole chapter was built around a reed-rimmed tray with a note on the back: Milton made it while in hospital. Another chapter’s underlying emotion emerged from a sorrowful birthday photo. The most astonishing object was “the fork the stopped the bullet.”

When Mother told me about it, I laughed. Unbelievable! Then I was handed a leather sheath with a bullet hole and inside, the mangled fork marked MF for Milton Fieth. Tactile, amazing, but still unbelievable. I mentioned it briefly, not wanting readers to question the story.

Pictures of these artifacts and others are available on my website, terrilewis1.com.

Many of the characters’ dynamics are colored by secrets and silences, which is very reflective of the era: the painful parts of their lives that people feel they shouldn’t share. Milton is discouraged from talking about his wartime trauma, especially with his wife. And Edith conceals her own feelings to protect her children and to hide her shame at her family’s circumstances. Did this reticence affect your research or writing in any way?

I hadn’t considered that, but now I would agree for several reasons.

First, the story had been kept a secret, with good intentions: the grandchildren might be frightened of Milton if they knew his past. Silence became a way for the adults to achieve an untraumatized family. Once the grandkids were grown, the secret could do little harm.

Second, the ghosts of Milton’s dead friends appeared as a way to express his feelings, his horror, which he had been trained to push down.

Third, the documents themselves were reticent, official and bureaucratic, hiding dire events under formal language: A pension denied. AWOL declared. The effect on Milton and Edith’s lives completely ignored.

And finally, I believe that reticence became the voice of the novel, circumspect and quiet, even in devastation. Grounded in what I, as a child, felt in my grandmother. And how I thought the family would like the story told. Simply, with love.

I felt immersed in Midwestern small-town and farm life while reading. There’s so much detail that feels nostalgic yet also timeless (corn pudding, meatloaf, peach pie… all common dishes at a Midwestern country table even now). Did you have the chance to travel back to the area during the research or writing process?

Yes, I was lucky. My job at the EPA in Washington, DC sent me to two weeks training in Kansas City, meaning a free weekend.

On Saturday I drove to the Kansas Historical Society in Topeka, registered as a researcher, and spent the afternoon reading and looking through pictures, making snapshots of those that were germane, soaking up an earlier way of life. It was there I first saw the steam thresher belching smoke that came to play an important part in the story.

Milton and Edith

On Sunday I drove to Enterprise to a service in my grandmother’s beloved church. The minister asked if there were any guests and I introduced myself and mentioned Edith. Afterward, several people came to me with memories, including one older gentleman who had mowed her lawn.

Into this research, I folded my visits when I was a kid. Sitting on front porches while adults drank iced tea. Names of my grandmother’s friends, names which had appeared on pictures and documents at the Historical Society. The pickled peaches (which morphed somehow into watermelon), the little record player, the house with its cackling sink, tornadoes, and the old-fashioned washer on the back porch.

I wanted to write close to the story, to be inside what the characters saw and felt. Research and imagination were helpful, but my personal knowledge was invaluable.

When They Came Home spans decades yet feels just the right length for its content. What drew you to the novella format, and aside from the time involved (if that was the case), how did the process differ from writing a full-length novel?

This made me laugh. I had planned to write a dual time-line novel of the grandparents’ story and a grown granddaughter looking back. My aim was to show the heroism of those who live through trauma and who avoid transmitting it to the next generation. The granddaughter wasn’t to be me, so I sent her to California, gave her many siblings, added a death, a will, and struggled. The modern story never came to life; I think I was too close.

Then I saw the post about the Miami University Press Novella Award, and decided to submit the grandparents’ section. I pulled it free, worked right up to the deadline, wrote a hail-Mary ending, and sent it off. No chance to win. Then months later, acceptance! With a caveat: fix the ending. I was overjoyed. Not often do you get a chance to make things right!

That's great how things worked out!

Both of your published books have been historical fiction, though set centuries apart. Do you have an affinity for this genre, or was it more that the genre fit the tales you wanted to tell?

I’ve always been a lover of history, not the wars or kings or popes, but the lives of ordinary people. Medieval history particularly pulled me in after a wonderful college class, but I read widely. In both books it was a matter of a subject popping out, something I couldn’t let go (a normal writer’s experience I think). Also, I’m a fan of resurrecting women’s voices. Isabelle, the main character in my debut novel and King John’s second wife, was a queen of England and I’d never heard mentioned in any history class. Or consider, when a soldier breaks down, focus tends to be on him (or her); the heroism of wives like Edith is largely ignored.

Oddly, I seem to be moving forward in time in my novels: 1200 to 1918 to 1972 for my third book, Bodies in Arabesque, coming in March 2027. And it seems I’m staying the course; my fourth book will be almost contemporary.

I was fascinated to read about your previous career as a ballet dancer – both forms of expressive art, but a very different type of performance and audience. How did you transition from one focus to another?

I always intended to both write and dance. Since the body can only dance for a few years, I put off the writing until I retired. But then I discovered despite producing reams of letters, poetry, and some stories while I was dancing—exhaustion from rehearsals and performance make sitting a favorite activity—I had no idea of how to write for publication. To support myself, I took a career swerve into IT and began studying. Workshops, crit groups, conferences.

I had two advantages from my dancing career. I could block out peripheral movement and sound and work anywhere, and I knew how to take and use correction. What I didn’t now was how to make a plot. I wrote my first novel in bed at night. When I finished, astonishment that I’d done it and fear I couldn’t replicate the feat, led me to try another. Then I lucked into a workshop at Bethesda Writers Center where Barbara Esstman wrote on my submission that I had the skill to write a publishable novel, but “something had to happen.” That sentence saw me through a long slog. There’s a saying: it takes ten years to master any art form; as a former dancer and now a writer, I can attest to that.

~

Author bio:

Terri Lewis’s new novel is When They Came Home, a lyrical telling of hardship and love and winner of the Miami University Press Novella Award. Her debut was Behold the Bird in Flight, a Novel of an Abducted Queen, was named a favorite of 2025 by the Washington Independent Review of Books. She lives in Denver.

Socials:

Website: https://terrilewis1.com | Contains images of artifacts that inspired the book
Author Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TerriLewisAuthor
Personal Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/terri.lewis1
Substack: terrilewis1.substack.com “Words that Dance”
Instagram: @terri.lewis1 | www.instagram.com/terri.lewis1

A historical fiction bestseller that lives up to the buzz: Tayari Jones's Kin

“The road Vernice is walking is paved different from yours,” Annie’s grandmother tells her towards the beginning of Jones’s remarkable novel. “It ain’t fair, but that’s the way life takes us.”

Annie and Vernice (Niecy) grow up as “cradle friends” in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, their bond closer than sisters. Both lost their mothers young, Niecy to murder and Annie to abandonment, and the relatives who take in the girls can’t make up for the emotional loss. Niecy’s Aunt Irene raises her as a young lady, saving coins to send her to Spelman College in Atlanta.

Annie’s path to escaping Honeysuckle is more sudden and chaotic, but escape she does, in an old Packard with her intended boyfriend and two others, heading to Memphis where she’s heard her mama lives. Her path to the big city and in life is far from smooth, but neither is Niecy’s, who navigates the challenges of color and class, and her nascent sexuality, with the friendship of other female students.

Niecy and Annie switch off narrating, their distinct voices full of personality and casual wit, but progressively diverging in tone and vocabulary as their lives stretch further apart. The historical atmosphere is first-rate, with unobtrusive details on growing up Black and female in the 1950s Jim Crow South and all that entails: segregated movie theaters, rooming houses “vouched for by the Green Book,” and the compromises that social elevation demands.

There are so many extraordinary characters that it feels like the novel could shift focus to any one of them and tell an equally fascinating story. Jones’s ability to unfold a tale is just marvelous—there’s always something going on, but the plot never feels unrealistic. A fierce, occasionally wrenching novel about the meaning of family: those rare beings who see you as you truly are.

Tayari Jones’s Kin was published by Knopf in February. In the UK, the publisher is Oneworld, and it appeared from Viking in Canada. I reviewed it initially for the Historical Novel Society. It’s been a New York Times bestseller and an Oprah’s Book Club pick and has had rave reviews in numerous publications. One can’t say this novel is flying under the radar. The attention and acclaim are well-deserved. It’s already appeared on one “best books of the year so far” list, and will undoubtedly land on others in the coming months.

The first few times I heard about this book, I didn’t realize it was a historical novel. The publisher’s blurb doesn’t list the era, although it didn’t quite sound contemporary either. I think it was a NetGalley widget sent to me that clued me in to the timeframe. In a Q&A on her publisher’s website with Tia Guerrier, Jones explains how she came to write it:

I have to give you a little backstory. This was not the novel I was contracted to write. I was supposed to write a novel about gentrification in modern Atlanta. I tried, but it just wasn’t happening. My students would say, “The book was not booking.”

So I went old school. Pencil and paper. And I met Annie and Vernice, and I saw they were living in the ’50s. And I thought, no, I don’t contain a historical novel. That’s not what I do. But I had to follow it. It became clear to me that this is what I was being called to write.

Who else has read it? I enjoyed it so much I may read it again sometime down the road.

Interview with historical novelist Elisabeth Storrs about her latest book, Fables & Lies

With her new novel, Elisabeth Storrs moves from her familiar ground of long-ago Rome and Etruria, setting for her Tales of Ancient Rome trilogy, to WWII Germany—and her enthusiasm for the archaeology of the ancient world is carried forward here. Fables & Lies (The Book Guild, Apr. 28, 2026) centers on a woman from an ordinary German family, Freyja Bremer, who takes part in efforts to save invaluable museum artifacts housed in Berlin: a plotline based on a true story. Even more gripping is the deep dive into Freyja’s viewpoint as she gradually penetrates the fog of propaganda instilled into Germans for years by the cruel Nazi regime and awakens to a new and courageous purpose, one that involves considerable risk.

Emotionally involving and morally complex, Fables & Lies doesn’t hold back on its realistic view of the period, including Freyja’s family members’ individual stances toward the Nazis. It also demonstrates how deeply the regime infiltrated the archaeological field in an attempt to distort the historical record toward their racial ideology. I haven’t read another WWII novel like it. My thanks to Elisabeth for answering my questions in such depth!

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What inspired you to write about the ancient artifacts known as Priam’s Treasure, specifically during the WWII years?

I am a great lover of the ancient world. In my reading, I came across the story of the archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, who not only proved Troy existed but also discovered a fabulous cache of gold there known as Priam’s Treasure.

Sophia Schliemann, wife of Heinrich Schliemann, wearing “Helen’s jewels”

During WW2, the treasure was kept in the Pre and Early History Museum situated next door to Gestapo Headquarters and SS House in Berlin. I was intrigued with the journey of this priceless trove which was smuggled out of Turkey then “bequeathed” to the German people by Schliemann. Now it is held by the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Its ownership remains hotly debated by all three countries.

When researching the Trojan gold, I discovered the little-known story of German museum curators who protected their nation’s (and the world’s) treasures from constant aerial bombardment. As such, I wanted to tell their tale, which contrasts with the Nazis plundering both private and public collections across Europe.

Priam’s Treasure, in the Pushkin Museum

There are many WWII novels out there, yet I haven’t read a story like this one, one that spans from the beginning of WWII to the fall of Berlin, seen from the viewpoint of a German woman. Can you reveal more about your writing process: how you worked to create this intimately detailed storyline across the length of the war?

The book is very much about the experience of ‘ordinary’ Berliners rather than battles and acts of great heroism. Instead, I show courage can be found in the smallest acts of defiance. My protagonist, Freyja Bremer, is a museum assistant who works for Direktor Wilhelm Unverzagt. However, Unverzagt is also a Nazi and an archeologist for Himmler’s SS Ahnenerbe Ancestral Heritage Research Institute. As such, the novel has two major plotlines: the mission of the German museum curators; and the work of the SS Ahnenerbe to promulgate the “Aryan Myth” and conduct racial studies to justify conquest, dispossession and murder.

Sustaining a narrative spanning nearly six years was difficult but necessary if I was to convincingly combine the two plots. The spine of the novel follows Freyja’s love affair with Darien Lessing, an archaeologist who shows her the rot beneath the Regime’s lies as they strive to protect the museum’s collections. Intertwined is Freyja’s forced marriage to Kaspar Voigt, one of the Ahnenerbe’s racial studies scholars, and her quest to discover what her husband’s research entails.

To structure the novel, I identified various highpoints in the history of the safekeeping work and the Ahnenerbe’s activities to act as anchors in the narrative. I then placed these against major events in Berlin such as the RAF’s saturation bombing, American daylight raids, and the Soviet advance on the city and its collapse. The broader events of the war stay in the background with news of key invasions filtering through via rumors or Goebbels' propaganda.

When we first meet Freyja, she’s 21, working in Berlin’s Pre and Early History Museum in 1939, and she’s been inculcated in Nazi propaganda, including the pseudoscience related to Aryan race myths. It’s clear, though, that she has her own mind, and her conversations with Darien have her questioning so many things she’s been taught. How do you strike a balance between creating a sympathetic character and giving her a realistic perspective for a young woman living in this place and time?

Good question! It was a huge challenge to write the book from the perspective of a “child of the Reich” who goes on a journey to enlightenment. Hitler understood the importance of indoctrinating children. The education system was immediately attacked in 1933 with only Nazi teachers employed. The curriculum was limited, with physical fitness a priority. Girls were destined to be wives and mothers, boys to be soldiers. Between the age of 10-18, boys and girls were also required to attend programs run by the Hitler Youth or the League of German Maidens. Nazis worked hard to alienate children from parents who may have harbored anti-fascist sentiment, actively encouraging them to inform on them.

There was a seductive element to teaching children they were superior due to the “Aryan Myth” which asserted they were part of the “Master Race” who were “bearers of culture” compared to “sub-humans” who “destroyed culture,” i.e., Romani, Slavs, People of Colour and, most particularly, Jews.

Knowing this, I could not ignore Freyja’s indoctrination as many novels do when depicting “good” German protagonists. However, there are ameliorating factors in Freyja’s life that allows her to listen to the heretical views of an outsider like Darien Lessing. At 21, she represents a cohort that was exposed to liberal education before falling under the domination of Nazi dogma in their impressionable teens. Freyja also has the benefit of living with her father who acts as a moral compass due to his Christian beliefs. She shows integrity in remaining silent about her father’s resistance activities, and subsequently allows herself to be trapped in marriage to an SS scholar in order to protect him. In doing so, I hopefully show early on Freyja is innately caring and unwilling to betray those whom she loves.

Nevertheless, to reveal the operations of the SS Ahnenerbe, I was faced with the ethical dilemma of first marrying the brainwashed Freyja to the ethnologist, Kaspar Voigt, who sees her as the ideal Aryan wife. I saw it as the only credible plot device to reveal his despicable actions. It was disturbing to write the earlier scenes where Freyja is enthralled by Kaspar, who is a famous explorer when they first meet. I knew I was spouting dangerous rhetoric but, in doing so, I also reveal how persuasive esoteric Nazi beliefs were to those cocooned within its realm. As Primo Levi said: ‘When understanding is impossible, knowing is necessary.’

When I first encountered him in the novel, I hadn’t realized Wilhelm Unverzagt, director of the museum where Freyja works, was a historical figure. He certainly left a divided and controversial legacy, as is initially hinted when he advises Darien to move his academic focus to “a Germanic perspective of prehistory” for better career opportunities. You’ve brought considerable complexity to his portrayal. How did you develop your interpretation of him?

I struggled greatly in understanding the true nature of Wilhelm Unverzagt. Was he a true believer or simply a pragmatic opportunist who was prepared to make a deal with the devil? He certainly showed physical courage when protecting his beloved museum. I read many German journal articles about his life to glean insight into his character. And I was lucky enough to gain access to his day journals from 1944-46, together with some personal correspondence and a detailed account written by his wife post war.

Unverzagt was an example of one of the many classical historians “Römlinge” who made a Faustian Bargain to advance their careers by switching their focus to German prehistory. Wounded in WWI, he was clearly embittered by Germany ceding Polish territory. In the early 1930s, he was persecuted by an academic rival who leveled accusations that Unverzagt was part Jewish resulting in the loss of his professorship. In response, he sought the protection of the SS Ahnenerbe and the patronage of both Himmler and Göring.

Unverzagt was in no way involved in the more heinous activities of the Ahnenerbe’s racial studies program. However, despite his considerable international reputation, he was prepared to twist history to serve power by propagating the theory the first Indo-Europeans i.e. “Indo-Aryans” originated in Scandinavia and spread civilization throughout Europe. This underpinned Nazi propaganda the Master Race was entitled to reclaim “ancestral lands” lost through the Treaty of Versailles. In the end, I concluded he was a charismatic, amoral chameleon who managed to succeed under whichever regime he lived. He died lauded for his work reconstituting the Pre and Early History Museum in East Berlin, which included exhibits looted and then returned by Russia – but, alas, not Priam’s Treasure.

I hadn’t been familiar beforehand with the astonishing history of Berlin’s Jewish Hospital, and the heroism of both halves of interfaith couples during the war. How did you decide to include these details within the novel?

The Jewish Hospital certainly was a hidden gem which I chanced upon in researching the history of Berlin’s Jews. There was a brief mention in one text about Jewish doctors working there who were married to Gentile “Aryan” women thereby giving them “privileged” status which provided a limited degree of protection. The hospital became the only place that provided medical treatment to Jews, perversely healing them before sending them to the camps. Ultimately, it became the last transit camp in Berlin and then a refuge in the final Soviet assault. Finding reference to the hospital was a moment of serendipity as it provided the inspiration for a sub-plot exploring the persecution of “mixed race” couples. The hospital doctors faced terrible ethical choices under threat of deportation. And the pressure placed on their Gentile wives to divorce them thereby condemning their husbands to certain death was sustained and cruel. To tell their stories I created the characters of Darien’s sister, Parisa, who is married to Dr Leon Epstein. Freyja’s encounter with the couple opens her eyes to the true plight of the Jews and leads her to resistance.

What were some useful or especially interesting discoveries you made during your research in Germany?

“Walking the ground” upon which an historical novel is set is invaluable. I retained an expert guide who escorted me on an extensive personalised walking tour of Berlin over two days. This included the eerie experience of donning a hardhat and head torch to enter the pitch-black interior of the ruins of the Humboldthain Flak Tower, the only remaining example of three such “Flakturm” built during the war. These fortresses boasted three-meter-thick concrete walls and housed thousands of people during air raids. They also had huge cannons on their rooves to bring down enemy aircraft. The exhibits from various museums were stored in the tower erected near the Zoo. The tour (run by a speleology society) certainly gave me a taste of what it would have been like to shelter in one of these goliaths as Freyja did during the Soviet siege.

author Elisabeth Storrs

As you shared in your author’s note, the manuscript that became Fables & Lies had a very long gestation period. What kept you going, and what continued leading you back to it?

Ask my husband and he’ll tell you I am very persistent! I love escaping into both research and my imagination. The genesis for Fables & Lies was a contemporary novel I finished in 1994 after becoming fascinated with Schliemann’s life. At that time mystery shrouded the disappearance of Priam’s Treasure after the Soviets insisted it was lost in transit in the chaotic aftermath of the war. Various theories were postulated as to its whereabouts or destruction – including my rather improbable plot of locating it in suburban Sydney. Imagine my dismay (and delight) when I read in the newspaper the Russians admitted they’d hidden the treasure for nearly 50 years. My mystery became redundant and the manuscript was relegated to the bottom drawer.

Over the next ten or so years, I became obsessed with the Etruscans, which led to writing the three books in the A Tale of Ancient Rome trilogy. When those novels were finished, I was drawn yet again to Priam’s Treasure. How had it come to be in the Pushkin Museum? Why had the Russians lied about possessing it? I dusted off the manuscript to rewrite it as an historical novel covering the true story of the Trojan gold during WW2.

Researching a novel 30 years ago was a vastly different experience than now. Previously, I’d been limited to books in my local library. Now I had access via the internet to numerous German sources. Historians included the Axis viewpoint rather than presenting the war purely from the Western Allies’ perspective. I planned a simple plot featuring two female protagonists – a German woman (Freyja) striving to protect the treasure, and a Soviet Trophy Brigade Major whose mission was to steal it. However, when I learned about the SS Ahnenerbe, I was drawn to tell a more complex story exploring Himmler’s Master Plan. But I’m currently writing The Pinocchio Door which will finally reveal the Soviet side of the tale!

~

Elisabeth Storrs has a great love for history and myths. She is the award-winning author of A Tale of Ancient Rome trilogy which was endorsed by Ursula Le Guin, Kate Quinn and Ben Kane. Now her obsession lies with Trojan treasure and twisted Germanic prehistory in her new release, Fables & Lies: A World War II Novel. Elisabeth is also the founder of the Historical Novel Society Australasia and the $155,000 ARA Historical Novel Prize. She lives in Sydney with her husband in a house surrounded by jacarandas.

Connect with Elisabeth through her website or Triclinium blog. You can find her on Facebook, Instagram, Goodreads, Amazon, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Bookbub. Subscribe to her newsletter for monthly inspirational interviews.

Bits and pieces of historical fiction news

Writing frequent pieces about books, brief reviews included, involves a lot of multitasking. At any given time, I’m typically reading one novel for review, finalizing the content for another before turning it in by the deadline, and serving as the editor for others’ reviews. Within the last few weeks, in addition to finishing up three reviews myself, I’ve been developing questions and working on intros for two upcoming author Q&As.

On top of that, I completed my service as a 2nd round judge for the Historical Novel Society’s 2026 First Chapters competition, which covered scoring and providing constructive feedback for fifteen entries, and wrapped up editorial work on the May issue of Historical Novels Review (plus my full-time librarian job). It has been an interesting but dizzying experience, shifting among multiple assignments within a short period of time. I have two more reviews to do by the end of April, so I’m not quite done yet with this reading marathon.

In other news:

My starred review of Maggie O’Farrell’s Land (Knopf, June) is out in Booklist’s April issue. I enjoyed her Hamnet and loved The Marriage Portrait, yet Land is even better. Opening on an isolated peninsula in western Ireland in 1865, and focusing on one family’s endurance of the tragic legacy of the Great Hunger and their deeply engrained, quasi-mystical relationship with their homeland, it feels like the novel she was born to write, and one only she could have written. One of her main characters is based on an ancestor who created maps for Britain’s Ordnance Survey in Ireland.

 

The Walter Scott Prize shortlist for 2026 has been announced, with five historical novels in contention for the £25,000 prize:

The Pretender by Jo Harkin (Bloomsbury, UK/Knopf, US) - a pretender to the English throne during the Wars of the Roses
The Matchbox Girl by Alice Jolly (Bloomsbury UK/US) - a nonspeaking young woman with autism in 1930s Vienna
Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet (Polygon, UK; Biblioasis, Can/US) - the aftermath of murders in remote 19th-century Scotland
Once the Deed Is Done by Rachel Seiffert (Virago, UK; no US edition) - secrets pervade a refugee camp in 1945 northern Germany
Seascraper by Benjamin Wood (Viking, UK; Scribner, US) - an unusual guest arrives in coastal northern England in the early ‘60s

All five are written by British authors, and the winner will be announced on June 12. This is a prestigious and well-funded prize. I haven’t read any of the five yet. In the past, I’ve had mixed luck with reading the winners and finalists; some I found superb (Hilary Mantel), while others felt too self-consciously literary for me.

I read Colin Mustful’s (publisher, History Through Fiction) Substack about the cost of running a historical fiction conference with interest. The first HTF conference, which was promoted as a small, intimate event, recently took place in Beverly, Massachusetts, and virtually. As the volunteer who handled finances and registration for the first four Historical Novel Society North American conferences (2005-11), I recognize many of the sentiments expressed in the post: a lot of hope that “if you build it, they will come!” plus a big initial learning curve, significant coordination and planning, and a diverse set of expenses. I’ve read many positive reports from attendees.

The New York Times has a feature article on Titanic fiction (gift link) by novelist Donna Jones Alward, whose latest, Ship of Dreams, fits the category. I remember a mini-trend of Titanic novels appearing in 2012, alongside the 100th anniversary of the ship’s sinking, and the subject continues to grab readers’ attention. Among the ones on her list, I’ve read The Titanic Survivors’ Book Club, about a quirky mélange of individuals in pre-WWI Paris who have the distinction and good luck to have missed boarding the fatal voyage, and can recommend it.

And also from the NYT, an interview with Nelio Biedermann (gift link), whose debut novel Lázár (Summit/S&S, 2026) is a saga about an aristocratic Hungarian family. The author is a 22-year-old Swiss undergraduate student, and I hope to read the book in due course.

A woman's adventures in Gold Rush California: Mary Smathers' Unfamiliar Territory

Reinvention is the name of the game in Smathers’ fabulous epic of Gold Rush California, which sees her heroine, Juanita Castro de la Cruz, forced to reboot her life repeatedly while her forebears’ homeland changes before her eyes.

It’s 1850, and Juanita, proud daughter of a family of Californios (Hispanic settlers), flees the Monterey rancho previously owned by generations of Castros. Deciding she can no longer act as manager for her former lover, the yanqui who bought her late parents’ holdings, she heads on horseback toward her married sister’s home. Juanita’s goal: locate her teenage son, Joaquin, who she’d sent away before his resemblance to his Irish father became obvious to his father’s wife.

Her sister and brother-in-law are troubled. With the recent US invasion of California, they need to prove ownership of their land. They think she’s crazy for seeking Joaquin in the goldfields, so after translating some legal documents, Juanita steals her sister’s old dresses and silverware to sell and travels through a multicultural land whose future feels unsettled. “We were no longer Mexico, nor Spain,” she cogently explains later, “and that, in itself, was a terrifying mystery.”

Juanita’s inner strength seems designed for adventure, something this impeccably paced novel offers in plenty. From driving a mule train into the muddy chaos of mining towns to running a Sonoma boardinghouse, through mishaps and terrible danger, Juanita picks herself up again and again while accumulating a motley assortment of friends, including a would-be high-society San Francisco madam.

Every time Juanita visits the city, the changes are dramatic. Will she find Joaquin? Will she ever pay her sister back? While Juanita sometimes gets derailed, she never forgets her objectives. Full of color and incident, this on-the-ground view of early California through a brave woman’s eyes is a thoroughly entertaining trip.

Unfamiliar Territory was published in 2025 by the author’s own imprint, mks publishing, and I reviewed it initially for the Historical Novel Society. While it’s described as a sequel to In This Land of Plenty (2020), it reads fine on its own. I haven’t yet read the first book, which is a multigenerational novel opening in 2018 and focusing on a modern woman learning about her ancestry, after which a saga about California’s history unfolds. I plan on getting myself a copy. Juanita is listed on the family tree of that novel’s opening pages. The author, Mary Smathers, is a California native and bilingual writer who has also written children’s picture books in English and Spanish. I enjoyed reading her profile in Canvas Rebel, speaking about her background, perspectives on writing about historic California, and approach to writing and publishing. She also has a launch interview with the Historical Novel Society that posted today.

For readers in search of other recent novels about the courageous, independent women who populated the landscapes of the American and Canadian West, I recommend scanning through the website of Women Writing the West, which also offers an annual WILLA Literary Award in the historical fiction category. Indie-published and small press novels are well represented here, as they are in the winners and finalists of the Spur Awards from Western Writers of America.