More historical fiction award news: Langum Prize and National Jewish Book Awards

It seems to be the season for book awards. The honorees for the 2021 Langum Prize in American Historical Fiction were announced earlier this week, and the 2022 winners of the National Jewish Book Awards were named last week. Here are the details relevant for historical fiction readers.

The Langum Prize:

Ridgeline by Michael Punke, which revisits the scene of the Fetterman massacre, a violent clash between white settlers and the Lakota in 1866 Wyoming, is the winner of the 2021 Langum Prize.

The Langum Prize finalist for 2021 is When Stars Rain Down by Angela Jackson-Brown, the coming-of-age story of a young Black woman in Depression-era Georgia.  Read my earlier review of this excellent novel.

National Jewish Book Awards:

Sponsored by the Jewish Book Council, the National Jewish Book awards are presented annually for Jewish literature in a wide variety of categories. Links lead to the reviews or descriptions at the JBC website.

In the Book Club category, the winner is Helene Wecker's The Hidden Palace, a sequel to her historical fantasy novel The Golem and the Jinni, a cross-cultural immigrant story set in early 20th-century NYC.

Finalists in the Book Club category are Weina Dai Randel's The Last Rose of Shanghai (an epic love story of WWII Shanghai that I reviewed earlier) and Yaniv Iczkovits' (trans. Orr Scharf) The Slaughterman's Daughter (about a young woman's disappearance in the Pale of Settlement in the late 19th century).

For Debut Fiction, the winner is Jai Chakrabarti's A Play for the End of the World, which moves from the Warsaw Ghetto to India in the 1970s as it examines the themes of friendship, love, and the purpose of art.

Lori Banov Kaufmann's Rebel Daughter, a young woman's perspective on the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, won the award for Young Adult Literature.

If you've read any, I'd love to hear your thoughts.  Congratulations to all the honorees!