Judith Lindbergh's Akmaral evokes the uncommon life of a woman warrior from ancient times

Imagine a time, far distant from living memory, when nomadic clans roamed the vast grasslands of central Asia. They derive strength from the animals they rely upon for nourishment and transport, from their devout religious beliefs, and from the tight unity of their clans, in which their training as warriors in defense of their people is deeply engrained from birth. Then imagine that many of these warriors are women, fighting with their clan alongside the men.

This is the world of Judith Lindbergh’s Akmaral, a saga both lyrical and fierce that evokes the spirit of its heroine, a woman of the Sauromatae in the 5th century BCE, who unspools her story as her own life draws to a close. “I do not like battle,” she says. “Only know that a show of strength is required to keep the peace.” The Sauromatae were documented by Herodotus, and may have given rise to the legends of the Amazons.

By the time of her impending death, Akmaral has united many wandering clans into a large confederacy which claimed her as its leader, although she never sought power for herself. Her narrative, rooted in conflict and betrayal, effectively establishes its theme of the struggle for balance amid opposing forces. These tensions play out at different levels: the wars between the Sauromatae and the Scythians and their allies, who conduct raids against peaceful camps; the encroachment of the patriarchy on matriarchal culture; and individuals’ internal battles on whether to conform or rebel. Yet the story also exudes amazing beauty, as shown through its poetic writing and images of the verdant steppes through the seasons.

Akmaral, orphaned as a child, grows up believing, as an exiled older priestess told her parents, that she is destined for greatness. Like all young women, she learns the techniques of fighting on horseback, attracting the enmity and desire of Erzhan, a male warrior. Her aul (clan) takes three enemy captives following a brutal raid, and Akmaral feels drawn to one of them – a silent, fair-haired prisoner called Timor. Her decision to take him as a lover spurs dramatic changes within their society.

These were ruthless times, and Lindbergh shows how the Sauromatian culture makes the continuity of life dependent on violence. This is poignantly personified through the story of Marjan, Akmaral’s friend, a young woman desperately in love who isn’t allowed to take a lover and bear a child until she kills another man. The descriptive passages and insightful characterizations make this a novel to read slowly rather than rush through. And although Akmaral tells a story of war, it’s not a typical one, since it’s layered with the insights of a influential woman with tender vulnerabilities and self-doubts – qualities that ultimately make her story and life all the more heroic.

Akmaral will be published by Regal House on May 7th; thanks to the author's publicist for providing me with a copy.

Megan Campisi's The Widow Spy imagines a female battle of wills in Civil War-era Washington, DC

Beginning on August 23, 1861, a consequential Civil War battle is being fought inside a well-appointed home in Washington, DC. On one side are former mill girl Kate Warne, Secret Service head Allan Pinkerton’s first female detective, and her fellow agents. On the other is socialite Rose Greenhow, a crafty widow credited with siphoning intelligence that won the Battle of Manassas for the Confederacy.

As Rose sits under house arrest with her youngest daughter, Kate must quickly locate her cipher key before the rebels discover Rose has been compromised. Their mental showdown feels increasingly taut as Kate attempts to soften the widow and exploit her weaknesses while concealing her own secrets, such as her Irish origins and forbidden attraction to her Black colleague.

The characters are richly layered and the mid-nineteenth-century atmosphere completely tangible. Campisi (Sin Eater, 2020) makes an exciting return to historical fiction with a new tale of moral quandaries and the hidden talents of women as Kate revisits episodes from her traumatic past and ponders what type of person she wants to become.

The Widow Spy was published by Atria/Simon & Schuster on April 9th; I wrote this review for Booklist's April 15th issue. 

Above: Rose O'Neal Greenhow with her youngest daughter and namesake, "Little" Rose, at the Old Capitol Prison, Washington, D.C., 1862 (public domain).

Kate Warne, also, is a historical figure, with little definitively known about her earlier life before she joined the Pinkertons. She also stars as the central character in Greer Macallister's historical novel Girl in Disguise (2017).  

Unlike Megan Campisi's first novel, The Widow Spy is mainstream historical fiction, not alternate history. Read also my review of Sin Eater and interview with the author about her debut, from 2020.

An edgy, unsettling take on vanished women in Erin Kate Ryan's Quantum Girl Theory

“A missing girl rewrites an entire story the moment she disappears.”

A novel that’s been sitting in my NetGalley queue for too long, Erin Kate Ryan’s Quantum Girl Theory is speculative historical fiction with a vital message. “On December 1, 1946,” as the prologue outlines, “Paula Jean Welden put on a bright red parka, left her dorm, and...” vanished, leaving America to speculate on what happened to the pretty, blonde Bennington College sophomore. Did she have a terrible home life she wanted to flee? Did she leave the country and establish a new identity? Did she meet a violently abusive boyfriend? Was she kidnapped by a stranger and violently murdered?  There are multiple possibilities.

But this real-life case remains unsolved.

The main plotline occurs in Elizabethtown, North Carolina, in 1961. Disembarking after a bus trip, Mary Garrett has followed the trail of a poster offering a $7000 reward for information on the whereabouts of another missing girl named Polly Starking. Mary’s motives aren’t altruistic; she’s somewhat of an opportunistic scavenger, going from town to town offering help in finding lost women using her claimed clairvoyant abilities, collecting and living off the payments even when the women aren’t found alive. She has saved some girls, but not nearly enough of them.

The twist here is that Mary had been a missing person herself, the girl once known as Paula Jean. Mary’s unpredictable flashes of second sight began five years earlier and cause her tremendous anguish, since they grant her glimpses of people’s fearful lives and final moments.

Ryan excels at illustrating the unsettling atmosphere of this small town in the Jim Crow South in the early '60s: the Starking household, with its “cheerful yellow Formica table” and vague air of oppressive patriarchy; the pushy town sheriff and his lurking presence; and stories about two Black girls gone missing which Mary learns about, in unorthodox fashion, from Martha, the Black maid at the cheap motel where Mary stays. As Mary insinuates herself into the Starking family, she sees hints about Polly (who shares her own former nickname, “Paul”) and theorizes a connection between her and the other two girls, whose disappearances nobody cares about, aside from their families.

The author’s writing echoes with honesty about society’s lack of attention to troubled women, aside from the lurid fascination at their disappearance, and how race affects these perceptions. That and the North Carolina storyline, with its pervasive sense of dread, are the strongest parts of the book. However, Ryan intersperses these episodes with long chapters exploring alternate continuations of Paula Jean Welden’s story. Some people and motifs recur in these tales and in Mary’s: a bright red parka, a memorable wristwatch, another young woman Mary once knew. While author's purpose in showing these multiple timelines is understandable, the result is confusing and causes the momentum to slow. The ambiguous ending doesn’t help.

The novel’s Goodreads reviews aren’t stellar, with an overall rating of 2.91. I wouldn’t disagree, but for me that number works best as an average: four stars or more for the principal story, two or less for the “alternate history” spinouts. If the idea of this novel intrigues you, you may want to stick to the main plotline and skim or skip the rest.

Quantum Girl Theory was published by Random House in March 2022.

The Titanic Survivors Book Club offers a character-rich meditation on love, loss, and second chances

After you’ve narrowly avoided death in a notoriously tragic shipwreck, how do you approach your remaining days? For the memorable personalities in Schaffert’s (The Perfume Thief, 2021) exquisite novel, their chance survival encourages them to pursue their desires, but what if these yearnings conflict or remain unrequited?

Having opened a Parisian bookshop after his secret library of controversial volumes got him replaced as the Titanic’s librarian, or so he believes, Yorick convenes a book club for fellow eccentrics who also missed boarding the fatal voyage. While Yorick falls for Haze, an impoverished photographer, Haze grows romantically obsessed with part-Japanese candy heiress Zinnia.

Relations among this trio of beloved friends become complicated after Yorick reluctantly begins a Cyrano de Bergerac-style correspondence to Zinnia under Haze’s name. Then the Great War disrupts everyone’s lives.

Schaffert writes stylish, intelligent fiction that casts new light on familiar settings, and his appreciation for lush details feels so very Parisian. This isn’t a standard cozy novel about book clubs but rather an elegantly moody take on love, literature, and the indelible connections they create.

The Titanic Survivors Book Club (what a terrific concept!) was published by Doubleday on April 2. I wrote this review for the March 1st issue of Booklist.  If you've read Schaffert's novels before, you'll know they're focused on language, lush descriptions, and mood, and populated by interesting, offbeat characters. This is the third novel I've read of his, including The Swan Gondola and The Perfume Thief.

A gallery of fifteen intriguing historical novels out in spring 2024

It's been too long since I've done a showcase featuring books for the current season, which will be a terrific one for historical fiction. Here are fifteen (I had trouble cutting down the number!) recent and upcoming novels incorporating a variety of settings; I chose them partly because they feature locales, topics, and/or characters that stood out as original.

Central Asia, 2500 BCE: the narrative of a woman of the Sauromatae who grew into her people's leader, and whose life was defined by the struggle between matriarchal and patriarchal culture. Regal House, May 2024.

Small-town 18th century Massachusetts: the growing romantic bond between two married men, a minister and a physician, and how the controversy affects them and their families. Riverhead, March 2024.

1825 Scandinavia: a gothic novel of coming of age, folklore, family legacy, and witchcraft involving a local pastor’s two daughter on a remote northern island. Grove, May 2024.

Early 20th-century El Paso, Texas: the unlikely marriage between immigrants from Mexico and China who fight for their place in an unwelcoming land. Flowersong Press, May 2024.

19th-century Louisville, Kentucky: a religious home for unmarried mothers centers a tale about women’s desire for agency over their own lives. Vintage, March 2024.

1715 Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and at sea: a star-crossed love story and pirate adventure set in the decades following the Salem Witch Trials, based on historical people. Kensington, April 2024.

1950s Bombay, India: twin sisters, both with different artistic talents, strike out on different paths in a world that doesn’t respect women’s choices for their own lives. University of Nebraska Press, March 2024.

The 17th-century Caribbean: the story of how a Haitian-French woman rose to become an infamous pirate captain, based on a legend. Atria, April 2024.

1720s Paris and Louisiana: a group of young Frenchwomen travel from La Salpêtrière hospital in Paris to help populate the French colony in the New World. Harper, March 2024.

19th-century Europe and America: The story of Jewish-born women’s rights advocate Ernestine Rose, based on the author’s original research. Onslow Press, March 2024.

Late 18th-century Virginia: scandal follows a wealthy young woman rumored to have given birth to her sister’s husband’s child. Lume, May 2024.

WWI-era British Columbia: a young woman of Japanese heritage gets caught up in conflicts between the area’s white and Japanese loggers in the beautiful Queen Charlotte Islands. Caitlin Press, March 2024.

1850s Santa Fe: a nurse who journeys to New Mexico Territory finds adventure, magnificent beauty, and secrets amidst the region’s close-knit residents. Ballantine, April 2024.

1830s Nova Scotia: this Gothic, queer retelling of the “Selkie Wife” folktale involves a country midwife and the mysterious neighbor she’s drawn to. Dell, April 2024.

1940s Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and elsewhere: two childhood friends’ lives diverge and reunite over a period of decades. Tin House, April 2024.

After the Massacre, a guest post by Lora Chilton, author of 1666: A Novel

Thanks to author Lora Chilton for the guest post on writing a novel about her ancestral heritage, which focuses on an important yet little-known aspect of American history.

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After the Massacre

by Lora Chilton

I learned about my Indigenous heritage in my late forties when my father revealed his Patawomeck ancestry to my siblings and me. He had been cautioned since early childhood to never tell anyone he was an “Indian” due to the threat of being kicked out of school and other penalties that had been codified when the Virginia government passed the Racial Integrity Act of 1924. He was born in 1935, a time when the “paper genocide” effectively erased the Indigenous tribes in Virginia.

My father’s pride in finally sharing his heritage opened up a whole new understanding of his life and our family. As I embraced this newfound piece of my identity, I read every article, every book, every document I could find about the Patawomeck, my ancestors who had lived along the Potomac Creek in Virginia since before the 16th century. In 2007 my curiosity was piqued even further when Chief Two Eagles Green spoke at our family reunion and shared the oral tradition stories about the survival of the tribe after the men were massacred and the women sold into slavery in the summer of 1666.

Colonial documents record the chilling words that called for the decimation of the Patawomeck tribe to “prosecute them with war to their utter destruction.... and dispose of the women and goods.” Tribal oral tradition tells that the women were sold into slavery and shipped to Barbados to work on sugar cane plantations. Tradition maintains that two or three women were able to escape and miraculously return to Virginia, thus ensuring the survival of the tribe to this very day.

While their names had been lost to time, I began to feel their story needed to be told, to honor their bravery and that of the tribe.

There are early writings from explorers in the 1600s who first encountered the Patawomeck and other Virginia tribes, noting their observations about food, hunting, dress and some of the language. Very little information about the lives of the Indigenous women was written, but there were mentions here and there about the culture and daily routines. As I imagined what their lives might have looked like, I also felt the lost language and traditional names should be used, in an effort to reclaim what had been erased. When the pandemic struck, the Patawomeck began offering language classes via zoom, providing an opportunity for tribal members to study and learn the words of our ancestors. I embraced the moment and took the children’s classes, along with my granddaughters.

Told in first person, 1666: A Novel tells the story of Ah’SaWei (Golden Fawn) and NePa’WeXo (Shining Moon), as they recall their peaceful life before the massacre, even as the tension from the English invaders they call TasSanTasSas, which means "Strangers," is building. After the massacre and the voyage on the slave ship, their experiences diverge when they arrive in Barbados and are sold to different plantations.

Barbados in the 1660s was a decadent mixing bowl of people from all over the world: those seeking refuge from persecution, others looking for opportunities to create wealth generated by the production of sugar or those folks who were enslaved and forced to labor in the sugar fields. A British colony since 1627, “Little England,” as the island was called, had a thriving Jewish community and a sizable Quaker contingent, in addition to African, North and South American slaves and other European settlers.

author Lora Chilton

When a brief window opened during the COVID pandemic, I went to Barbados to continue researching what the lives of my Patawomeck ancestors might have entailed as slaves on this foreign island. The Barbados of today is an independent nation, with an economy built primarily on tourism. There are several plantations open for tours and remnants of the ubiquitous windmills that powered the sugar production by grinding the cane into juice that was then boiled and refined. The Nidhe Israel Synagogue and Museum was a treasure trove of information about the island in the 1660s. During excavation in 2008, the original mikvah, built between 1650 and 1654, was discovered. As I stepped into the cold water of that ancient sacred bath, as I walked down Quaker Street, now called Tudor Street, where so many of the Friends did business, as I stood in “Amen Alley” behind the Cathedral of Saint Michael where the slaves had to stand outside the building to worship; I imagined how these new sights, sounds and smells impacted the lives of Ah’SaWei and NePa’WeXo. How did they process these unusual religious practices? Did they like the food? Did they have friends? I wanted to find their words, using their voices, to express the wonder and horror of all they were experiencing but also to express the deep longing to escape not just slavery but the island and to return home.

The story of the Patawomeck survival was known within the tribe for generations but mostly unknown to the rest of the world. I felt obligated to write and share the story of these women, to celebrate their bravery and fortitude that in part made the existence of the Patawomeck tribe a reality in 2024.

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Author Lora Chilton is a member of the Patawomeck Indian Tribe of Virginia. She has worked as a registered nurse, a small business owner, an elected official, a non-profit executive and a writer. 1666: A Novel is her second work of historical fiction and is published April 2, 2024 by Sibylline Press, a publishing house dedicated to publishing the brilliant work of women over 50. The novel is available wherever books are sold. To purchase the book online, visit www.bookshop.org or www.amazon.com.