Historical novels are acclaimed via a number of recent literary awards

Over the past few weeks, many literary prize announcements have come to my attention via industry news sources or social media.  And historical novels have been among the winners!  Some of these awards are ones I haven't posted about before, and each has a different, frequently specialized focus.  If the scope for these awards interests you, you may find it worthwhile to visit their websites to research past winners, too. 

First, the highest-profile award among them: the Booker Prize, for the best overall English-language novel published in the UK and Ireland. Out of the six works of fiction on the shortlist, three are historical fiction, with settings ranging from a WWI-era battlefield (Anne Michaels' Held) to the southern US just before the Civil War (Percival Everett's James) to the Netherlands in the 1960s (The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden). The winner will be announced on Nov. 12.

The longlists for the Gold Crown and Debut Crown awards from the Historical Writers' Association were announced on September 18th. The awards recognize "the best historical writing, fiction and non-fiction, published in the UK and its ability to engage, illuminate, entertain and inform legions of readers."

The HWA looks back at least 35 years in the past for its definition of what constitutes historical fiction.  I wasn't able to find the longlists on their site, but the following images were shared on social media. To be honest, I'm often more interested in seeing longlists and shortlists than the ultimate winner, because it means more books!  And I know, from being on prize committees, how challenging it can be to reach consensus among judges and choose just one.



Since the cover images are on the small side, titles and authors (plus settings) are as follows:

The Glutton, A. K. Blakemore - 18th-century France
The Fox Wife, Yangsze Choo - 1908 Manchuria
Clear, Carys Davies - 1840s Scotland
You Dreamed of Empires, Alvaro Enrigue - 16th-century Mexico
Disobedient, Elizabeth Fremantle - 17th-century Rome
Loot, Tania James - 18th-century India and Europe
The Book of Days, Francesca Kay - Tudor England
Quint, Robert Lautner - WWII-era; prequel to Jaws
Cast a Cold Eye, Robbie Morrison - 1933 Glasgow
A Woman of Pleasure, Kiyoko Murata - early 20th-century Japan
Cahokia Jazz, Francis Spufford - alternate America in 1922
Absolutely and Forever, Rose Tremain - 1950s-60s Britain

The Gold Crown is for previously published authors, while the Debut Crown is, naturally, for first novels.

Again, the details:

The Other Side of Mrs. Wood, Lucy Barker - Victorian London

The Golden Gate, Amy Chua - WWII-era California
Leeward, Katie Daysh - early 19th-century naval warfare
Colours of Siena, Judith May Evans - 14th-century Tuscany

The Maiden, Kate Foster - 17th-century Edinburgh
The Painter's Daughters, Emily Howes - 18th-century England
All Us Sinners, Katy Massey - 1977 Leeds

Our Hideous Progeny, C. E. McGill - 1850s England
The Witching Tide, Margaret Meyer - 17th-century East Anglia
The Beholders, Hester Musson - Victorian London
The Revels, Stacey Thomas - 17th-century England
The Tumbling Girl, Bridget Walsh - Victorian London

Next are the American Book Awards from the Beyond Columbus Foundation, for "outstanding literary achievement across the entire spectrum of America's diverse literary community." Among the 18 honorees announced on September 5, both nonfiction and fiction, are two historical novels: Debra Magpie Earling's The Lost Journals of Sacajewea and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's Independence.

The latest fiction winner of the New England Book Award (announced Sept. 12) is a novel I've reviewed here previously, North Woods by Daniel Mason. Submissions must be either about New England, set in New England, or written by an author residing in New England. 

Lastly, if you hadn't been aware there was a prize for adventure fiction... let me introduce you to the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, named after the well-known adventure novelist who passed away in 2021.  And if you aren't sure what this genre encompasses (perhaps more than you'd think), their website will tell you.  This is an international prize for English-language fiction, and this year's winner is Francesca de Tores' Saltblood, set during the Golden Age of Piracy. Read more in an interview with the author.

The sponsor of the prize is the Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation.

If you've come across any other relevant award notices, please leave a comment, or just reply if you're reading this through email.

The View from Behind the Camera: My Family and Old Hollywood, an essay by Ginny Kubitz Moyer

Longtime readers of this blog will know I'm drawn to historical novels inspired by family history, and along these lines, Ginny Kubitz Moyer has a really interesting story to tell.  Please read on!  Moyer's novel A Golden Life is out from She Writes Press today.

~

The View from Behind the Camera: My Family and
Old Hollywood

By Ginny Kubitz Moyer

Ask a roomful of authors where they get their story ideas, and you’ll likely hear some surprising answers. In my case, the inspiration for the Hollywood setting of my novel A Golden Life came from two unexpected sources: my younger son and my great-grandfather.

In late 2018, when my son Luke was in fourth grade, he was assigned a report highlighting an aspect of California history. He chose the history of Hollywood, so we headed to the library to do research. There, we found that the movie industry was not a popular subject for middle grade authors; children’s books on the topic were as scarce as SoCal rain in July. I told Luke I’d find some adult sources to use, and we’d go over them together.

To be honest, I embraced the task, because I’ve always loved old Hollywood. In high school, I decorated my bedroom with a poster of Casablanca and black and white photos of 1940s movie icons. I loved actors from the Golden Age of movies more than actors my own age; there was something about their class, elegance, and talent that captivated me.

On an even deeper level, I’ve always felt a personal identification with old Hollywood because of my family history. My great-grandfather, William S. Adams, was a cinematographer in the silent movie era. His career began in his native Brooklyn, but in the mid-1920s, when the movie industry started shifting from the East Coast to California, William followed it west. He later sent for his wife and two young daughters (the elder, Ruth, was my grandmother) to join him. The family put down roots in Southern California, where my great-grandmother herself later found work in the movie industry as a film cutter for Warner Brothers.

The Adams family, on location in southern California, approx. 1926.
Left to right: Ruth (my grandmother); William S. Adams;
Ruth Lillian Owen Adams; Jessamyn Adams.

William’s films were mostly adventure stories, including several “flying ace” movies with exciting aerial stunts. Some of the equipment he used can be seen in a photograph from the February 1927 issue of The Motion Picture Director of Hollywood, which features William and two fellow cinematographers posing proudly with their cameras. Overall, from 1913 to 1930 William worked on at least 34 films for directors such as Ralph Ince and James Stuart Blackton (William’s half-brother and the founder of Vitagraph Studios). One of these films apparently featured a very special bit player: my grandmother, who as an infant was pressed into service when the director needed a baby for a particular scene. Like many actors of the era, alas, her starring turn has been lost to time.

One hundred years later, it’s astonishing to me that my great-grandfather’s cinematography took him quite literally around the world, including to China and Fiji. He always brought back souvenirs, usually dolls, for my grandmother. Tragically, William’s travels led to his early death; he contracted malarial fever while on location in Borneo, and he died in Hollywood in December 1930. My grandmother, only eleven at the time, kept the dolls he gave her for the rest of her life. The history they represented was always a source of fascination to me.

During that winter of 2018-2019, as I helped Luke with his research (and told him his great-great-grandfather’s story), I gained a new feel for those heady early days of Hollywood. I gained a stronger sense of the historical arc of the motion picture industry. And the more I read, the more I wanted to explore old Hollywood, and the experiences of those who lived and worked there.

Simply put: I wanted to write a novel about it.

As a writer, I often have vague ideas for characters before any other details take shape. Prior to Luke’s project, I’d been captivated by the idea of a secretary and her boss on a road trip. I didn’t know much about either character, or why they were traveling together—but with the Hollywood history so fresh in my mind, it occurred to me that my protagonist could be a secretary in a movie studio, and her boss could be a producer. That idea had energy behind it. I was excited to explore it further.

William S. Adams, far right, with Conrad Luperti and J. Marvin Spoor.
(Wikimedia Commons)

So after Luke’s report was finished, I kept on researching. I decided to set my story in 1938, the Golden Age of Hollywood, and my deep dive into the period was utterly absorbing. I read about the powerful studio system of the time, which helped me design my fictional VistaGlen Studios from producer Lawrence Merrill’s corner office down to the backlots. I perused old movie magazines, getting a feel for the breathless publicity campaigns that propelled new actors to stardom (and which inspired the rise of my fictional ingenue Belinda Vail). And watching movies from the late 1930s immersed me in the fashion, slang, and manners of the time, a delightful kind of research that helped me bring my secretary protagonist, Frances Healey, to life.

I wish — how I wish— I could have sat down with my great-grandfather and heard his stories of the movie industry. It pains me that those experiences are not recorded for posterity. But although A Golden Life is pure fiction, I’ve tried my best to make it an accurate portrait of this unique slice of American history. I hope it faithfully captures the flavor of 1938 Hollywood, a place that was equal parts glamour and grind for secretaries and stars alike.

~

Ginny Kubitz Moyer is a California native with a love of local history. Her novel A Golden Life, which earned a starred Kirkus review, moves from 1938 Hollywood to the Napa Valley. Her novel The Seeing Garden, which won Silver in the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Historical Fiction, brings to life the vanished world of the San Francisco Bay Area's great estates. An avid weekend gardener, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, two sons, and one rescue dog. Learn more at ginnymoyer.org.

Instagram: @moyerginny
Facebook: Ginny Kubitz Moyer, Author

Marianne K. Miller's cinematic novel evokes a young Hemingway's pivotal time in Toronto

In her leanly written debut, Miller dramatizes the pivotal months Ernest Hemingway spent in Canada as a reporter for the Toronto Star, imagining how he develops an affinity and quiet admiration for an infamous bank robber, Norman “Red” Ryan, who’s on the lam after a daring prison break from the Kingston Pen.

In 1923, Hemingway and his wife, Hadley, relocate from Paris to Toronto to await the birth of their first child, a move that encompasses multiple regrets on his part. Feeling trapped into impending fatherhood and in a career with a controlling boss who doesn’t allow him a byline, he gets frustratingly bogged down with routine assignments and nonstop travel when he’d much rather be investigating Red’s more exciting trail and developing his own fiction-writing craft.

For his part, Red, reveling in his liberty, makes his way from the piney woods near Toronto to various points across the northern United States, holding up banks and accumulating enough wealth to fund an increasingly lavish lifestyle. The leader of his band of outlaws, Red aims to keep their goal focused while his most loyal sidekick, Arthur “Sully” Sullivan, gets distracted by pretty ladies.

Miller’s writing effectively combines the flawed heroes and unsentimental settings of hard-boiled crime fiction with an economical style that creates bold, memorable images of both men and their parallel journeys. Hemingway follows Red’s exploits from afar, researching the background to his case with a librarian’s invaluable help while growing confident in his pursuit of creative freedom whenever his path and Red’s unexpectedly cross.

With slangy dialogue and vivid scenes of the raucous 1920s that pop from the page, We Were the Bullfighters makes for a stirring portrait of a young man’s incessant hunger to fulfill his artistic vision.

Marianne K. Miller's We Were the Bullfighters was published by Dundurn Press, itself based in Toronto, this past May.  I reviewed it from NetGalley for August's Historical Novels Review. Before reading the novel's synopsis, I hadn't been aware of Hemingway's time in Canada, and the circumstances are so intriguing it's not surprising an author decided to make a novel out of it.  Miller is a Hemingway scholar to boot. Her novel should appeal to readers who enjoy hard-boiled crime, those who read literary fiction, and anyone interested in this significant period of a major American writer's life.  

A cornucopia of historical fiction reads for fall 2024, all set before the 19th century

For those seeking to spend the next few months immersed in earlier corners of the past, here are fourteen new and upcoming reads, from publishers large and small.

Alice Kyteler, a businesswoman in 13th-century Ireland with an eye-opening marital history, attracts attention of the wrong sort and is eventually accused of witchcraft. But this novel is primarily a portrait of her earlier life as an ambitious woman in a patriarchal world. Viking, Aug. 2024.

The author of Tsarina and The Tsarina's Daughter returns with the story of Gytha Godwinson, daughter of England's Harold II, whose life takes dramatic turns after her family's loss during the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Independently published, Nov. 2024. 

Berman adds to the popular theme of art-focused historical fiction with a biographical novel about Angelica Kauffman, Neoclassical artist in 18th-century Italy and London. She Writes, Oct. 2024.

Costanza Piccolomini, a young wife in 1630s Rome, becomes entranced with celebrity sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, which leads to undesired fame and a terrible act.  Renegade Books, Aug. 2024.

Jeanette of Kent, English royal cousin, enters into a clandestine marriage with the knight she loves during the Hundred Years' War, but political and family pressures conspire against them. Sphere, Sept. 2024.

The orphaned Anna Maria della Pietà, the most gifted pupil of Antonio Vivaldi, stops at nothing to achieve her career goals in 18th-century Venice. Simon & Schuster US/Bloomsbury UK, Sept. 2024.

   

A gifted young healer strives to balance her competing desires after the Black Death lands in Avignon, in 14th-century Provence. Dutton, Oct 2024.

In this dual-period narrative, the author's debut, a modern college student discovers the long-lost history of a rhino named Clara who traveled Europe with her keeper in the 18th century, attracting fascinated crowds as well as danger. History Through Fiction, Oct. 2024.

Ordinary Devotion is also a multi-period novel. The story of a twelve-year-old girl walled up with an anchoress in an English abbey intertwines with a modern academic researcher, revealing themes of  faith, freedom, and women's agency over their own bodies. Monkfish, Nov. 2024.

The third in Justice's Theodosian Women series follows a young woman called Athenais, a pagan of Greek heritage, who in an unexpected twist of circumstances comes to marry Theodosius II, emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire. I enjoyed the author's Dawn Empress and look forward to this one. Raggedy Moon, Aug. 2024.

The final days of Christopher Marlowe are depicted as a thriller, as the celebrated Elizabethan-era playwright, an ex-spy with many secrets and enemies, runs up against blackmail and sinister individuals seeking to eliminate him. Pegasus, Oct. 2024.

Like Eleanore of Avignon above, Rasche's debut is set during the time of the Black Death, but in Florence, Italy, as a young woman with uncanny healing talents is called to help the populace. Park Row, Oct. 2024.

Author Tracey writes her second historical novel about one of her ancestors from colonial Massachusetts. Silence Marsh, a woman in mourning who's forced into silence for blasphemy in her Puritan community, is then asked to testify in a witchcraft trial. Sibylline, Oct. 2024.

A skilled seamstress in 16th-century Bologna who dreams of being a tailor, a trade forbidden to women, runs into numerous roadblocks. The author won the Jenny Brown Associates Debut Writers Over 50 Award in 2023. I would love to read the shortlisted entries too!  Allison & Busby, Nov. 2024.

Galina Vromen's Hill of Secrets shows the human story within Los Alamos, New Mexico, during WWII

What happens when varied people, all with their own personal troubles, converge in an unfamiliar location for a hidden purpose, especially when the government imposes a frustrating code of silence? In Vromen’s twisty, infectiously readable debut, secrets are simmering within Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 1943, and the Manhattan Project’s development is just one of them.

An art restorer with a chemistry background, Christine Sharp is a trailing spouse who feels sidelined and neglected after relocating to support her PhD scientist husband. Seeking distraction, she befriends 16-year-old ingenue Gertie Koppel, the daughter of German Jewish refugees.

While Gertie’s physicist father, Kurt, loyally serves America in Los Alamos’ Tech Area, his wife Sarah, a movingly three-dimensional character, ruminates on difficult memories.

With young love, a clandestine affair, intense guilt, and suppressed yearnings circulating in this high-pressure environment, the storyline is highly dramatic, and some aspects are far-fetched. Still, the novel offers more than soap opera fare for Oppenheimer fans. By the sobering conclusion, readers will be left pondering the characters’ ethical dilemmas, which defy easy answers.

Hill of Secrets will be published by Amazon Publishing's Lake Union in October. Amazon Prime members can grab it for free on Kindle during September as one of the month's First Reads picks. I wrote this review for Booklist's June 1 issue.

Daphne du Maurier's The Glass-Blowers showcases new facets of the French Revolution

Daphne du Maurier’s The Glass-Blowers is one of her lesser-known historical novels. Having greatly enjoyed Rebecca, Mary Anne, The House on the Strand, and My Cousin Rachel years ago, somehow The Glass-Blowers fell off my radar until I found it again this week: a vintage 1963 paperback with an unassuming cover that represents its subject well.

Set in the Sarthe département of northwestern France, the story follows one family – the author’s paternal ancestors – through the turbulence of the French Revolution and after. Du Maurier acknowledges the help of numerous researchers, and the information must have been fascinating to uncover. So much fiction about this era takes place in Paris that it’s refreshing to envision it from a new viewpoint.

The Bussons are master glass-blowers, a talented, proud, and self-contained community, so much so that when outsider Magdelaine Labbé, a bailiff’s daughter, comes to marry glassmaker Mathurin Busson, she feels like a stranger in a strange land. But Magdelaine is strong and wise, insisting on a place for herself in the firm and raising a large family of five surviving children – each of whose actions during the French Revolution naturally reflect different facets and reactions to ongoing events.

The way Du Maurier frames her novel grabbed me immediately. Aged 80 in 1844, Sophie (Busson) Duval, daughter of Magdelaine, writes a long letter to tell her long-lost nephew the truth about his father, Robert, who was Sophie’s eldest brother. Robert Busson – who later called himself “Busson du Maurier” after the supposed château (really a farmhouse) where he was born – was a carefree dandy who fled France for England during the Revolution to avoid creditors. Robert’s English-born children grew up thinking he had aristocratic origins, and Sophie wants to set the record straight.

As others on Goodreads have pointed out, Du Maurier’s choice of Sophie as narrator has flaws. All her siblings have more striking personalities, and Sophie feels more like a convenient vehicle through which their stories unfold. She speaks fondly of her beloved brother Robert, though we see more of his fecklessness than his supposed charm as he aims high, gambles, and loses again and again. Growing up in a rented château, Robert adores the trappings of wealth and soon latches onto the coattails of the Duc d’Orléans, later Philippe-Égalité. The Glass-Blowers is most powerful when we see firsthand how rumblings from the capital spread throughout the country and catch fire, but weaker when historical facts are presented as reportage: the classic adage of “show, don’t tell.”

cover of Little, Brown
ebook edition (2013)

I especially relished Sophie’s reflections on the seismic changes that ripped society apart: “My brothers, my husband, even Edmé, my little sister, belonged to this moment, had waited for it, even, welcoming change as something they could themselves shape and possess, just as they moulded glass to a new form. What they had been taught as children did not matter any more… Why, then, did I lag behind?” While Sophie supports greater equality, she hates the suffering and unbridled violence perpetrated as if they’re the end goals – including by her own family members.

The story also gets dense in places. While not the masterpiece that some of her other novels have become, The Glass-Blowers remains a valuable read for Du Maurier fans and anyone wanting to see a near-century of French history through a new lens.