The Long and Winding Road, an essay by Lorraine Norwood, author of The Solitary Sparrow

Continuing with the Small Press Month focus, I'm pleased to welcome Lorraine Norwood to Reading the Past with an essay about her long journey to publishing her debut novel. What do you do when you've chosen a compelling subject and have developed your fiction writing craft but find it impossible to break into the trend-focused market of traditional publication?  Please read on, and please check out Lorraine's website for more information on her medieval historical fiction series, The Margaret Chronicles.

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The Long and Winding Road

Lorraine Norwood

I published my debut book in 2024 after years of writing. I submitted hundreds of queries, attended conferences, was accepted by an agent, submitted to the Big 5, got turned down, submitted to smaller houses, got accepted by a small publisher but said "no" because the contract was lousy, suffered the death of my biggest fan— my mother, got Covid and cancer, was released by my agent, pivoted to a reputable hybrid publisher—and then got accepted. Hurray! It only took me 38 years.

It was a long and winding road. Hard, with very deep potholes.

Why, you might ask, did you not shove the book in a drawer and forget writing? Well, I’ve had lots of jobs in my life in order to pay the electric bill but the job I do best is writing. And it’s the one that gives me the most joy. I didn’t give up because I couldn’t NOT do it. Even though it didn’t pay the electric bill.

Since the first day my main character jumped into my head, I’ve seen a huge shift in the gatekeepers, a shift that has made it difficult for newbies to break into the traditional world of publishing.

Fourteen years ago I attended the HNS conference (my first) in San Diego and heard a group of editors and agents describe the chaotic changes in the traditional publishing world as the “new Wild Wild West.” I couldn’t be bothered with what the cowboys in New York City were doing. I had a book to get out. I had been working on it for years. All I had to do was get an agent at the conference, submit to the big boys, and voila! it was going to be a hit. Historical fiction readers were going to love it. I would be wined and dined, accompanied on book tours by my marketing agent, and get carpal tunnel syndrome from signing so many books.

Well, why NOT me? I did the work. Sat my butt in the chair. Worked on the craft. Got an agent. I rewrote sections of my manuscript for my agent, changed plotlines for prospective editors, and deleted scenes for editors who wanted the book sanitized. The negative responses went like this:

•  The writing is top-notch, but nobody reads historical fiction anymore.
•  It’s great writing, but it’s not saleable.
•  Loved your characters, but we’re concerned about getting a return on our investment.

I did all the things you’re supposed to do and still NADA. After five years of trying, my agent, bless her heart, apologized and let me go.

That was the lowest, deepest pothole.

Jump to 2023. Traditional publishing was still not home on the range. If anything it was wilder than anybody predicted. Where were the chummy editor/writer consultations? Where were the book tours? Where were the marketing teams? Where were the new authors? Why were the big boys putting out the same people over and over again? And how, in all this chaos, with 2.2 million (and some say 3 million) books published yearly (according to UNESCO), can an author ever hope to climb to the top of the heap?

The truth is, you can’t. To think otherwise is delusional. At least that’s what a book coach and influencer told me during a Zoom call attended by hundreds of writers from across the globe. “You are delusional,” she said to me. Well, maybe she didn’t actually call ME delusional, just my thinking. Same thing. It hurt my feelings. But I realize now she was right. Except, maybe I wasn’t so much delusional as outdated and naive. I was waiting for others to take charge of my destiny, instead of me.

My book is NOT: historical fantasy, speculative historical fiction, historical crime, a retelling of Greek myths or historical romantasy. It’s not anything that the publishing powerful say they want.

author Lorraine Norwood

My book is the story of one girl’s dogged pursuit to be the first female physician in England specializing in the care of women. The book is heavy on common people and light on the nobility. There aren’t any Tudors for another 200 years. The book is bloody, realistic, and gruesome in places. In fact, Goodreads contains this content warning: Abortion, miscarriage, death, misogyny, racial discrimination, gruesome medical procedures, and this review, “While I loved the grittiness of the story, a few scenes were a bit too crude for my reading preferences.”

Well, as the man says, “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.” Like die from childbed fever.

I now had a choice. I could spend more years of my life querying for an agent, querying the major and minor publishers, and waiting . . . and waiting or . . .

I was now 73 years old. I didn’t have time to wait.

I took an intense course on self-publishing. Self-publishing, no longer the red-headed stepchild of the author’s world, has gotten easier and more user friendly. But I decided my time could be spent more wisely by writing while I paid others to produce the book. After a lot of research and consultation with writer friends, I pivoted to hybrid publishing. One year later my book was born and out in the world.

At the recent History Quill 2025 virtual conference, panelists agreed that today traditional and indie publishing must go beyond mere writing and printing a book; multiple formats are increasingly important along with newsletters, blogs, email lists, social branding and authority on a subject.

And you thought all you had to do was write. Well, not anymore.

So, I’ll leave you with a few thoughts about the long and winding road.

There are many paths to publishing today. That’s the good news. You can send your work to agents or to small presses that don’t require an agent. You can send your work to hybrid presses or you can self-publish.

Do you have five years? Do you want to put it out there and get rejected or languish in a slush pile? Or do you want to see it out in the world in a year or possibly less?

For those of us who are "of a certain age," there is no question. We can’t wait. The finished book—that is, the book that has been through beta readers, a developmental editor, a proofreader, a cover artist, and typographer—needs to be born as quickly as possible.

If you really want to do it, don’t wait. You’ll wait yourself into the grave. Morbid? Yes. But true. Sh*t happens. If you wait, it’s going to happen anyway. Don’t wait.

~

Lorraine Norwood is a North Carolina native living in the Blue Ridge Mountains with her 14-year-old yellow Lab who thinks food is more interesting than writing. Lorraine is working on The Margaret Chronicles, an historical fiction series set in 14th century England and France. The first of the series, The Solitary Sparrow, was published in 2024. She is hard at work on the sequel, A Pelican in the Wilderness. 

Lorraine worked as a journalist in print and television for over 20 years before living the dream at the University of York in York, UK, where she earned a master’s degree in medieval archaeology. She has participated in excavations in York and at other sites in England, including a leper hospital. 

She is a member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association and the Historical Novel Society. She is happy that at long last, after two marriages, two children, twelve jobs, three college degrees, and twenty-three moves, she has a room of her own in which to write. 

Our multicultural family history, a guest post by Alix Christie, author of “The Shining Mountains”

I'm very happy to have Alix Christie here on the blog with her essay about the family history behind her latest book, a family saga set in the Rocky Mountain West. Her debut, Gutenberg's Apprentice, was one of my favorite novels of 2014, and her second, The Shining Mountains, was just released in paperback by the High Road Books of the University of New Mexico Press. For additional information, please visit her website.

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Our Multicultural Family History

Alix Christie

From an early age I was fascinated by the stories my Canadian grandmother told of her Scottish forbears in the Pacific Northwest, particularly one 19th century fur trader, Archibald McDonald, who married an alleged “princess” of the Chinook tribe. Decades later I would understand how offensive this fantasy depiction of Native wives of white men could be, and how common it unfortunately was. Yet as a child I was enraptured enough to draw a detailed family tree, showing that Archibald had indeed married Raven, a daughter of Chief Comcomly of the Chinook tribe. There the matter would have rested, if my younger brother, a historian and professor of literature, hadn’t turned up one day a decade ago with a boxful of books. He’d just written a scholarly paper on another distant relative, Duncan McDonald, and was gifting me his research. “For your next novel,” he said.

A quick count of the “Cast of Characters” of the book that eventually resulted adds up to more than fifty names. They include those Scots Highlanders, French missionaries, British bosses, American trappers, Norwegian, German and English immigrants, and Native Americans from five different tribes across the Rocky Mountain West. Though my research began with that one man — Duncan McDonald, son of our Scots great-great-great-uncle Angus and his Nez Perce wife Catherine—the story I discovered reached back several generations and across a vast expanse of the West, from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. It all came together when I flew to Montana to meet my many cousins on the Flathead Reservation, all enrolled tribal members descended from Angus and Catherine.

Angus McDonald, 1860s, at the new international boundary between the U.S. and Canada

Catherine McDonald (Kitalah—Eagle Rising Up, Nez Perce), studio portrait, 1860s Montana

Growing up in California public schools I had not the slightest idea of the deep pre-American history of our land. The story we were taught was one of pilgrims and triumph; the mechanics of “Manifest Destiny” and westward colonial expansion were not so much glossed over as ignored. Meeting for the first time Native Americans with whom I shared some drops of Scottish blood was therefore an extraordinary introduction to their history, both painful and proud. The five years I spent learning about their lives has been one of the richest experiences of my life. The Montana McDonalds welcomed me, offering advice and support; only with their generous help and a long and careful consultation with tribal authorities, was I able to breathe life into their family story as a novel.

The Shining Mountains recounts the life and times of this mixed-race family—half Scots Highlander, half Nez Perce, Mohawk and French—who were prominent in the last years of the fur trade between 1840 and 1860 in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. Angus McDonald was the last Chief Trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company in the vast chunk of territory that would become the northwestern United States. But it wasn’t his prominence that most amazed me. What struck me with even greater force was how incredibly multicultural was the mid-19th century world within which he and his family moved. We Americans have traditionally called our country a “melting pot” but on its western edge it was less melted than bubbling with many diverse peoples, all intermarrying and hunting and farming and trading together, Norwegian and Salish and Scottish and Yakama, French and Russian and yes—American. It was a Babel as well: many Native tribes communicated with one another through sign language, while the traders who bought furs from them used a pidgin they called “Chinook-wawa”.

Two of Angus and Catherine's children, Angus P. and Maggie McDonald,
in full Scottish regalia, 1870s Montana

Angus and Catherine's son Duncan McDonald, with his wife
Louise “Quil-see” Shumtah (Salish),
in Native dress with American flag, 1870s Montana

This novel is about the love between two people of radically different backgrounds, yet sharing, paradoxically, a common culture of hunting and tight-knit family clans: Highlanders, too, were considered “savages” by the English who colonized Scotland. In North America families like theirs were put under incredible stress by the waves of Anglo migration that displaced Native people and forced them onto reservations. Yet against the odds they survived, to maintain their cultures and deep connection to their homelands. The “old Scotsman,” ancestor of many tribal members on the Flathead Reservation, remains a great source of pride. I was deeply moved when his great-grandson, the late Joe McDonald, the founder of Salish Kootenai College, and a great supporter of this project, described the book I wrote about Angus’ and Catherine’s life as “brilliant and invaluable.”

The author with the late Dr. Joe McDonald, Angus & Catherine’s great-grandson,
at the family cemetery at Post Creek, Montana (2016)

When I think now of the history of this country, I think of Joe, and of his cousin Maggie, the head of McDonald Ranch, and the rest of those descendants five and six generations later, every possible blend of indigenous and immigrant. America has always been a multicultural place, a mixing and mingling of different peoples and cultures. It’s a vital thing, today, to keep in mind.

~

The Shining Mountains (High Road Books/University of New Mexico Press) appeared in paperback in early March 2025. Also in e-book, audiobook and hardback wherever books are sold.

Resistant Women: Imagining Voices Inside a Nineteenth-Century Asylum, an essay by Stephanie Carpenter, author of Moral Treatment

Thanks to author Stephanie Carpenter for contributing a post about crafting characters within the setting for her debut novel.  Her essay makes for a good start to both Women's History Month as well as Small Press Month this March (and look for more small press-focused posts in the coming weeks). Moral Treatment was published by Central Michigan University Press on February 25.

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Resistant Women: Imagining Voices Inside a Nineteenth-Century Asylum

By Stephanie Carpenter

My novel Moral Treatment was inspired by the former Northern Michigan Asylum, a psychiatric hospital that operated from 1885-1988 in my hometown of Traverse City. When I was a kid, the hospital’s huge, Victorian buildings were vacant and untended. What little I knew about the place came from relatives who’d worked there—and from my own impressions, formed while roaming the grounds and peeking through dusty windows. I think it was inevitable that I would someday write fiction about this setting.

I didn’t know what stories would suggest themselves when I began researching the hospital’s history, but I quickly became fascinated by the ideologies associated with its crumbling architecture. The moral treatment of the nineteenth century aimed to provide humane care to people experiencing mental illnesses. Its chief therapeutic tools were wholesome food, sanitary surroundings, access to medical care, and exposure to positive influences. Few drugs were in use in this era, and the punitive tools employed by previous generations of doctors were abandoned. But this compassionate approach yielded few "cures," and across the U.S., hospitals like the Northern Michigan Asylum expanded steadily. I wondered about the experiences of doctors and patients inside those walls.

Moral Treatment imagines life in a fictional hospital in 1889, five years after its founding. The novel alternates between the perspectives of the hospital’s medical superintendent—referred to throughout as “the doctor,” to emphasize that his identity is inseparable from his work—and seventeen-year-old Amy Underwood, a newly-admitted patient diagnosed with “pubescent insanity.” Amy’s reckless behaviors led her parents to commit her, and I wanted to depict her experience as both deeply distressing and, in some ways, liberating: at the hospital, she’s exempt from societal expectations for young women. But how could she grow in a space where she’s constantly monitored and diagnosed? Drawing from research, I developed the women characters around Amy as points of resistance to repressive forces both inside and outside the hospital.

One of the most outspoken of these characters is Mrs. Lovelace, a deeply-devout patient known as “the Walking Skeleton of Charlevoix,” who I based on the “fasting girls” of this period. The wife of a minister, Mrs. Lovelace is disgusted by her husband’s superficial piety. She presents herself as an exemplar of true Christianity, sustained on faith alone; her emaciation and fervent preaching challenged her husband, leading to her institutionalization. The doctors see Mrs. Lovelace as a case of religious delusion and anorexia nervosa; she sees them as charlatans, leading witless sheep. Mrs. Lovelace’s righteous defiance impresses Amy deeply.

Another vocal challenger of the hospital’s authority is Bertha Chapman of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Visiting Amy’s ward, Miss Chapman is troubled to learn that not all patients—Amy included—have letter-writing “privileges.” The policy is presented as protective, but Miss Chapman recognizes it as repressive, arguing that the women all deserve voices. Mocked and maligned, temperance reformers fought to raise awareness of the impacts of rampant alcohol abuse, focusing on the suffering of women and children. The WCTU also took progressive stands on a variety of other issues, and it made sense to me that Miss Chapman would advocate for institutionalized women. Amy recognizes Miss Chapman—an unmarried woman, uncowed by the doctors, working for social reforms—as an iconoclast and ally.

author Stephanie Carpenter
(credit: Adam Johnson, brockit inc.)

Amy’s closest friend, Letitia Olsen, is a young, chronic patient who embodies women’s vulnerability and persistence. She’s been abused at other hospitals; her scars, including from a hysterectomy, illustrate gendered biases about mental health. A ward of the state, she’s now attracted the attention of the hospital’s most “modern” doctor, who sees her as a good subject for an experimental surgery. But charismatic Letitia thwarts the doctors’ attempts to quell her, constantly calling their motives into question and seeding doubts among the other women. Letitia always authors her own story, but Amy worries that her friend’s story-telling sometimes veers into self-delusion; Letitia’s unprotected situation pushes Amy to plan for both of their futures.

Finally, I crafted the doctor’s wife, Diana, as a bridge between her husband’s clinical perspective and the patients’ lived experiences. Diana met her husband as his patient at a health resort; though her “nervous complaints” make her seem like a Victorian stereotype, her arc challenges ideas about women’s frailty and docility. Having lived on-site at asylums throughout her marriage, Diana makes meaningful roles for herself: socializing with the patients, planning entertainments, and documenting the hospital through photography. Though her husband still sees her as his patient, Diana is increasingly concerned about his health; at fifty-one to his sixty-five years old, she recognizes that his commitment to the hospital is unsustainable. Her perceptiveness extends to the patients. By sharing her interest in photography, Diana expands Amy’s narrow view of the world.

Moral Treatment doesn’t attempt to tell the stories of actual people who lived, loved, and suffered at the Northern Michigan Asylum or hospitals like it. Those stories aren’t mine to tell. Instead, I hope that my fictional characters, rooted in historical research, help to animate the institutions that still linger around us—and I hope my novel illustrates that power may be complex, but it is never absolute.

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Stephanie Carpenter’s debut novel, Moral Treatment, is the inaugural winner of the Summit Series Prize from Central Michigan University Press. Her collection of stories, Missing Persons, won the 2017 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction. A native of northern Michigan, Stephanie holds degrees from Williams College, Syracuse University, and the University of Missouri. She is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Michigan Tech University. Learn more at stephanie-carpenter.com.

Instagram: @scarpent9
Facebook stephanie.carpenter.author

A Women's History Month gallery: 10 new and upcoming novels about historical women's lives

In celebration of Women's History Month, and the focus on fiction from small and independent publishers on this blog during March, here are 10 recent and upcoming novels about women from history: biographical novels, as they're often called.

Hedy Lamarr, Hollywood screen star and underrated scientist. Sourcebooks, March 2019. [see on Goodreads]

Berthe Morisot, who follows her dreams of becoming an artist in 19th-century Paris. Regal House, March 2019. [see on Goodreads]

Harriet Tubman, the renowned American abolitionist and "conductor" along the Underground Railroad.  Arcade, May 2019. [see on Goodreads]

Sofonisba Anguissola, the accomplished Renaissance-era painter.  Bagwyn Books, January 2019. [see on Goodreads]

Elizabeth Stuart, known as the "Winter Queen" of Bohemia, daughter of James I of England and ancestress to today's British royal family. ECW Press, June 2019. [see on Goodreads]

Makeda, the legendary Queen of Sheba. Blank Slate, April 2019. [see on Goodreads]

Lulu Hurst, late 19th-century vaudevillian and stage magician known as the "Georgia Wonder." Hub City Press, May 2019. [see on Goodreads]

Sarah Jacob, a 12-year-old Welsh girl who supposedly lived without food in the mid-19th century.  Bellevue Literary, May 2019. [see on Goodreads]

Maile, a Hawaiian chief's daughter who marries John Harbottle, Captain Cook's translator, in the late 18th century. Shadow Mountain, April 2019. [see on Goodreads]

Lady Virginia Courtauld, an Italian-born glamorous, rule-breaking, progressive socialite in 1950s Rhodesia. Bloomsbury, August 2019. [see on Goodreads]

Radio Underground by Alison Littman, a suspenseful debut about the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and its aftermath

Based on actual Cold War letters, Littman’s fast-moving debut is infused with a simmering tension reflecting its setting: Budapest, Hungary, on the brink of revolution in 1956, and nine years later, when the secret police patrol the streets and any hints of dissidence are crushed. In the earlier timeline, Eszter Turján, wife of a loyal communist and mother of a teenage daughter, operates an underground newspaper, Realitás, and sneaks out at night to work with other freedom fighters.

“These kids, too young to know failure, didn’t understand their passion was no match for a government trained in killing hope,” she states plainly, and truthfully, about the student demonstrators demanding freedom. Even so, she’s determined to fan the flames of revolution to give the students a fighting chance, undertaking a drastic act involving Radio Free Europe that will shift history’s path.

In alternating segments set in 1965, Dora Turján reads people’s mail as a censor for the communist government. Eszter had neglected her daughter in favor of her political activities, and even after Eszter was carted away and imprisoned, Dora remains resentful. Littman succeeds in depicting the uneasy nuances of their mother-daughter relationship even though they rarely appear in the same scene. By intercepting odd letters in broken English from “Mike,” who writes to a DJ for Radio Free Europe and describes events from his life, Dora reads about the young man’s quest to escape Hungary. Through him, Dora obtains knowledge that leads back to her mother’s fate and forces her into a profound decision.

Some language feels too American (Eszter is often referred to as Dora’s “mom”), but the oppressive atmosphere is deftly handled through many affecting scenes, including one with a group of young people secretly gathered around a small radio and listening to Western music, dancing together, and feeling temporarily fearless.

Radio Underground was published by Last Syllable Books in November 2018, and I reviewed it (from an Edelweiss copy) for February's Historical Novels Review.

This is also the initial post this month in acknowledgment of the contributions of small and independent presses to a vibrant literary marketplace. Small Press Month had used to be a national celebration taking place in March, with official recognition and funding support. That, unfortunately, is no more, but we'll still be having a mini-celebration here on this blog. As in past years, I'll be dedicating some posts during March to historical fiction from small presses (these will be intermixed with some previously arranged posts on books from larger publishers).  Hope you'll enjoy following along.

Small Press Month: Wrap-Up and Contest Winners

We've moved on to April (if not quite spring yet, here in the Midwest), so it's time to wrap up last month's focus on small press historical fiction.

Thanks to everyone for reading along and commenting, and I'd like to extend a special appreciation to the ten guest authors who took the time to contribute essays about their novels and research.  It was a busy month, but a fun one for me.

Thanks also to all of the readers who left comments as part of my 8th anniversary giveaway; it was great to hear your thoughts, and I'll do my best to continue with the features you enjoy the most.

And now for some contest winners:

Copies of Brian Walter Budzynski's The Remark will be going out to:

Gabriele G.
Cheryl O.
Susan C.

And a small press novel of her choice (anything mentioned in a post in March) will be going to:

Erin H.

I'll be in touch this morning to get your mailing addresses.  Congratulations, and hope you enjoy the books!

Back in February, I said I'd provide a Mr. Linky for other bloggers to link up their reviews of small press historical fiction, and since I neglected to do so earlier, you're welcome to include them in the form below. Links should lead directly to your review post and not to your blog's main page.

There's no time restriction for these links; if you've reviewed a historical novel from a small press at any point on your sites, it's fine to include them. This will give other readers the largest selection possible of small press reviews to browse. If nothing else, I'm including my own four March reviews here!

History as seen by peasants and pagans, a guest essay by Kim Rendfeld

For the final post in this year's Small Press Month focus, Kim Rendfeld (who was interviewed here in September 2012) talks about the different perspectives offered by her two historical novels, both set in 8th-century Francia. 

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History as Seen by Peasants and Pagans

By Kim Rendfeld

What would it be like if everything you believed literally went up in smoke? And what would it be like if one minute you were a freewoman and the next sold into slavery?

Those two questions arose in my mind during my research for my debut novel, The Cross and the Dragon (2012, Fireship Press), a tale of love amid the wars and blood feuds of Charlemagne’s reign. As I looked into the history of this era, two things caught my attention:

• In 772, Frankish King Charles destroyed the Irminsul, a pillar holy to the pagan Saxon peoples. The location and what the pillar was made of – or even if there was only one – are uncertain. Charles’s act was reminiscent of deeds by Saints Boniface and Willibrord. 

Charlemagne's destruction of the Irminsul, Hermann Wislicenus (ca 1880).
Source: Wikimedia Commons

• Slavery was alive and well in this era. War captives often ended up in servitude.

I had to let this information rest in the back of my mind while I wrote a novel from the perspective of Frankish Christian aristocrats who had their own difficulties to contend with. Novels by their very nature immerse readers in the world of the characters. For the story to feel real, readers must see events through people with their own virtues and flaws, beliefs and biases.

But that also means excluding other points of view. This causes a bit of tension for me. During my nearly two decades in journalism, I valued fairness and telling all sides of the story, especially from people not in power.

The pagan Continental Saxons fit the definition of underdog. They are history’s loser. After more than 30 years of war off and on and brutality on both sides, Charlemagne’s Franks subjugated them. In addition, the Church did everything it could to obliterate the religion, which it considered devil worship, and the Continental Saxons did not have a written language as we know it.

Even on the Frankish side, literacy was limited. The annals, letters, and other documents concern themselves mainly with the affairs of royalty and saints. Pagans are depicted as brutes, war captives are treated like war booty, and peasants are rarely mentioned at all.

That urge for fairness is one reason an imaginary Saxon peasant family sold into slavery insisted I tell their story as I was trying to figure out my second novel. Originally secondary characters, they hijacked my plot.

The result: The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar (forthcoming 2014, Fireship Press), which depicts many of the same historical events as my debut but from the views of a pagan mother and her two children. My heroine, Leova, must grapple with why the gods let the Irminsul burn and how to protect her children when she’s lost everything – her husband, her home, her faith, even her freedom.

Here, historical fiction fills a gap. It might be the only way to see early medieval history through the eyes of pagans and peasants.

~

A former journalist and current copy editor for a university marketing and communications office, Kim Rendfeld has a lifelong fascination with fairy tales and legends, which set her on her quest to write The Cross and the Dragon and its companion, The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar.

For more about Kim, visit kimrendfeld.com or her blog, Outtakes of a Historical Novelist. If you’d like to receive an e-mail from Kim when The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar is available, contact her at kim [at] kimrendfeld [dot] com.

Small press spotlight: new & upcoming historical novels from international publishers

And, for my final gallery of small press titles, here are a dozen new and forthcoming titles from small presses based outside the United States.  Putting this list together was both fun and challenging, since I aimed to include a variety of countries, publisher-wise, as well as historical settings.  And for American readers, many of these titles won't be as hard to obtain as you'd think: most have US distribution either in print or on Kindle.



An epic, multicultural love story set in the Middle East in 1914, a new direction from a prolific Welsh novelist best known for her sagas.  Accent Press (UK), August 2013.



A new time-slip novel about a star-crossed 18th-century romance linked to the present day through a portrait, written by the recent winner of the Romantic Novelists' Association RoNA award in the historical category.  Choc Lit (UK), February 2014.



Biographical fiction about Sofonisba Anguissola, renowned Italian portrait painter at the court of Spain's Philip II.  Inanna Publications (Canada), November 2013.



More lively social drama set in the countryside of Regency England; this is a sequel of sorts to The Death of Lyndon Wilder, which I reviewed last year.  Corsair (UK), May 2014.



A fictional biography of an Australian woman ("musician, octagenarian, junkie") who becomes a modernist theremin player as her performing career takes her from 1920s Perth to locations around the world.  Fremantle Press (Australia), 2013.



First in a series of historical thrillers set in Singapore in 1892 which follows a police detective as he tries to solve a visiting American's murder in Chinatown.  Monsoon Books (Singapore), October 2013.



This YA novel set in the WWI years features a teenaged orphan with precognitive abilities who, after her parents' deaths on the Titanic, is sent to India, a land rife with unrest and conspiracies.  Thistledown Press (Canada), March 2014.



Downton Abbey meets The Fugitive in post-WWI Western Australia: "An English heiress has just given birth and unleashed hell. Weakened and grieving, she realises her life is in danger, and flees into the desert with her Aboriginal maid. One of them is running from a murderer; the other is accused of murder."  Sounds like a wild ride.  Allen & Unwin (Australia), March 2014.


A historical novel set in 17th-century Hartford!  For some reason, historicals set in my home state of Connecticut are exceedingly rare.  Anne Yale Hopkins (a historical character) marries and hopes to settle happily into her new life only to have it turn out other than she envisioned.  Inanna Publications (Canada), November 2013.


The plight of Queen Charlotte and her daughters, beset from all sides when her husband, England's King George III, goes mad.  There are so few biographical novels about the Georgian kings and queens (aside from Jean Plaidy's, of course) that I'm eagerly awaiting this one; I'll be reviewing it later this year.  (Edited to add:  A previous version of this novel was titled God Save the King.)  Myrmidon Books (UK), June 2014.


The stories of a Welsh couple, trapped in war-torn Hong Kong in the 1940s as the Japanese overtake the city, intertwine with those of their Chinese servant and their young daughter.  Seren (Wales/UK), July 2013.


This literary work depicts the harmony between Muslims, Jews, and Christians that existed in old Cairo before the Arab-Israeli Wars, as seen through the eyes of a boy with a mixed religious background.  American University in Cairo Press (Egypt), September 2014.

Feminist women of 4000 years ago: the naditu women, an essay by Shirley Graetz

Today's guest post comes from Shirley Graetz, author of She Wrote On Clay (Hadley Rille, 2013).  Here she describes her academic research into the naditu women of ancient Mesopotamia, and how their stories refused to let her go...

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Feminist Women of Four Thousand Years Ago:
The Naditu Women

Shirley Graetz 

People tend to think of nuns as women from the Middle Ages who devoted their lives to the church, living in abstinence, mostly modest and impoverished lives.

This may have been true of medieval times, but as it turns out, a kind of monastic class of women existed long before Christianity was born, and they were anything but poor. We learn about them from the thousands of documents inscribed in cuneiform script on clay tablets, written in the ancient language of Akkadian.

During the second millennium BCE, in the land of Mesopotamia (Ancient Iraq), lived a group of women, the naditu women, who were consecrated to the god Shamash (the god of justice) and to his consort, Aja.

These women entered the secluded gagu, a walled compound within the city, at marrying age (around 17 or 18 years old). They lived in the gagu in their own house or room, which their family bought them. Most of these women came from wealthy families who supplied the young naditu with a generous "dowry" or inheritance, which included real estate, fields, orchards and sometimes even servants.

Once in the gagu, the father or brothers of the naditu would see to it that she would receive her share of the family property in the form of oil, clothing, barley and food rations. From letters we learn that as long as the father was alive, there were no problems; however, once the fathers died, the responsibility passed on to the brothers. Surprisingly (or not), the brothers did not always fulfill their responsibilities towards their sister. Thus in many letters naditu complained about negligence, and starvation. From documents we know that some naditu even took their brothers to court.

But, on the other side, many of these women were engaged in business transactions, selling or buying property, leasing out fields or orchards for a profit, becoming successful businesswomen in a usually male dominated field.

So after reading hundreds of documents about the naditu women, I was more than fascinated. I was captured by their story.

However, in all the texts, the women's feelings were not discussed, and it got me wondering. Were they happy in the gagu? Did they want to be there? Did they even have a say in the matter? Were they, perhaps, miserable? These questions kept me up until one day, I sat down and started to write a story about a girl called Iltani. All Iltani ever wanted was to become a scribe (a profession dominated by men). Her best way to achieve that goal was to join the naditu women. However once in the gagu, she had to undergo a long and hard path until she succeeded in becoming a scribe.

author Shirley Graetz

The words of the story kept gushing out of me, and I was amazed by the outcome. I hadn't planned any of this, as I was in the midst of my PhD in Assyriology.

But the idea for the book was born. However, reading only documents about the naditu was not enough. I started to do general research about that period: how people lived, how they ate, in what they believed.

I looked at archeological artifacts from that period to get a sense of their lives. I learned about the architecture of that time and drew up a map of the various places I used in the book: Iltani's house, the Shamash Temple, the gagu.

Slowly, very slowly, not only the plot was coming alive, but also Sippar of 4000 years ago. It took me another eight months after I completed my PhD to finish writing the novel and send it to the publisher, Hadley Rille Books. Before publishing the book, I gave the manuscript to some a fellow Assyriologist who was kind enough to comment and give me great suggestions.

I found writing the story very stimulating and enhancing. It connected me to the time period in a different way than my academic research. Both researches supplemented each other very nicely.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Best,
Shirley Graetz

~ 

Shirley Graetz was born in Düsseldorf, Germany. In her early twenties she went to Israel to study and stayed for good. In 2013 she received her Ph.D. in Ancient Near Eastern studies from the Ben Gurion University of the Negev. She teaches about the history of Ancient Israel and the Ancient Near East and is a licensed tour guide. She is married and is a mother of three young children.

Writing books combines both things she loves very much: researching history and telling stories.

She Wrote on Clay was published by Hadley Rille Books in October 2013 as part of their Archaeology Series ($12.00 trade pb / $3.99 ebook, 200pp).  For more information, see the book's page on Amazon and Goodreads.

In which I read Unmentionables, by Laurie Loewenstein

Living here in small-town Illinois, I knew I had to read Laurie Loewenstein's Unmentionables when I first came across the book description. It's set in the fictional hamlet of Emporia, one of many small towns founded by hardy pioneers which were springing up across the state during the 19th century. When the novel opens in 1917, war is being fought in Europe, and social changes are sweeping through the nation's heartland. While some citizens of Emporia are ready to meet them head on, others are happy to keep things as they are, thank you very much.

Loewenstein has the scenery and temperament of the rural Midwest down perfectly: the dairy farms, the storefronts lining each side of Main Street, the minutiae reported in the local newspapers, and the strong sense of community within a small place where everyone knows each other's background and business. In addition, she brings forth the sense of insularity, the wariness about outsiders, the long-entrenched bigotry which has no place in the modern age but refuses to go away.

When noted lecturer Marian Elliot Adams drives her dusty Packard into Emporia as part of the traveling Chautauqua assembly, she intends to educate and startle her audience with her keynote speech about how women's corsets are holding them back socially and economically. After she sprains her ankle stepping off the stage and is forced to recuperate in Emporia for a week, both she and many of its citizens are horrified. She doesn't for a minute think this nondescript, backward town has anything to teach her. However, narrow-mindedness runs both ways.

The plot begins with Marian but spreads out to encompass the individual, unique stories of the townspeople whose lives she touches. Widowed newspaper editor Deuce Garland needs some of Marian's courage; his gut tells him he needs to expose a local wrong, but he fears backlash. His stepdaughter Helen, an admirer of Marian's, wants to move to Chicago but is held back by her domineering grandfather, the paper's owner.

Emmett Shang, Marian's black driver, opens her eyes to the racism underlying the supposedly close-knit town. And Tula Lake, Deuce's next-door neighbor, who has been waiting for him to ask her out – her story is among the most gratifying. She may seem to be a secondary character, so it's a joyful surprise to see her blossom into the star of her own late-in-life romance.

In the second part, the focus shifts to Picardy, where Marian volunteers with a relief unit delivering supplies to villagers whose lives and homes were upended by the war. Here she continues her personal journey of self-discovery, developing close friendships with other women who don't know or care about her background. There are casualties both at home and abroad, and several especially poignant losses. Although novels about the Great War have become as common as Illinois cornfields these days, Loewenstein presents a new slant on the wartime experience.

This warmhearted, involving work, situated gracefully in its era, depicts a wide range of social concerns as people's minds are opened to new, previously hidden possibilities. What I appreciated most about Unmentionables is its determination to look deeply into issues and push beyond what readers and its characters expect. It offers a lot to think about, since many of the issues addressed are pertinent today. The title is perfect. I can see the book working very well as a discussion choice, both here in the Midwest and elsewhere.

Unmentionables was published by Akashic/Kaylie Jones Books in January ($15.95, trade pb, 320pp).  Thanks to the author for giving me a review copy.  You can also check out her earlier guest post about Circuit Chautauqua on this site.

My 8th anniversary small press giveaway

Eight years ago today, this blog first came into being.  It started out as a rather chatty site, with random personal observations about historical fiction, notices of publishing deals, a few book reviews here and there, and the occasional cat photo.

Since then, I've been concentrating even more on reviews, as well as guest posts and upcoming title previews, but the overall focus hasn't changed.  It's still All Historical Fiction, All the Time.  Thanks to all of my readers for hanging around this corner of the online historical fiction universe!

Since I'm celebrating my 8th anniversary in the middle of Small Press Month, I thought I'd offer a giveaway similar to last year.  Up for grabs is your choice of any novel mentioned in a post here during March 2014.

The month isn't yet over, so no need to name your prize now... I'll draw the winner(s) a week from now and ask them for the name of the book they'd like to win.  I'll give away one book for every 50 entries received.  (One entry per person, please.)

Fill out the form below for a chance to win. Deadline March 31, 2014; open internationally.  If you have any thoughts for future features on the blog, too, I'd love to hear them.

Good luck!

Honoring the Nameless: An essay by Laurel Corona, author of The Mapmaker's Daughter

I've been celebrating small press titles here on Reading the Past, but March is even better known as Women's History Month.  Laurel Corona's historical novels incorporate a variety of settings: ancient Greece, Enlightenment-era Europe, 18th-century Venice, and now, with her new release The Mapmaker's Daughter, 1490s Spain during the expulsion of the Jews.  All of them tell the stories of important but little-known women.  In the following essay, Laurel explores this theme, revealing how her writing and research permit her – and us – to rediscover them and their contributions.

~

Honoring the Nameless

Laurel Corona

“Where do you get your ideas?” This is one of the questions historical novelists are most frequently asked. It always makes me smile because getting ideas is the easy part. Whenever I hear an amazing true story about someone in the past, my first thought is always whether there might be a novel in it. Still, to give up nearly everything but writing for a year or more of my life, I have to be more than intrigued. I have to be compelled. If I’m not burning to tell a story, it’s hard to see why you might burn to read it.

I know, to quote Diane Ackerman, that I am “coming down with a book” when I start working up a case of righteous indignation about a woman or women whose story greatly deserves to be honored, but has been completely forgotten. In The Four Seasons it’s the female orchestra and choir who were central to Vivaldi’s development as a composer. In Penelope's Daughter, it’s all the women who had fallen out of the story before Homer wrote it down. In Finding Emilie, it’s the brilliant Enlightenment mathematician and physicist Emilie du Châtelet, who usually receives no more than casual mention, if that, for having been Voltaire’s lover.

I knew from the time I became a historical novelist that I wanted to write about the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Usually when I start with an idea this general, I flounder around for a while trying to find the characters and the story. In this case, it became apparent that several men in one of Iberia’s most prominent Jewish families were at the center of events in this terrible time, but I couldn’t find any colorful Jewish women around whom to build a plot, and since for me the central character(s) must be female, I couldn’t find my way into the story.

Early in my research I read a biography of Isaac Abravanel, one of these men, and a comment therein provided the passion that got me going on The Mapmaker's Daughter (Sourcebooks, March 2014). It said that Isaac had once remarked that he could not have hoped to accomplish all he had as a writer, philosopher, and leader of the Jewish community, if he hadn’t had such a strong and capable wife.

He never mentioned her name.

Oh, and the biography goes on to name his sons and provide information about each. It adds that he might have had a daughter, but it isn’t known for certain. With a loud ringing in my brain, I set out to give names and lives to the women of the Abravanel family.

I am not making them up. They are real people, but even so, they must be entirely reinvented. For all my novels, I begin to fill in the gaps by reading biographies of as many real-life characters in the book as possible. For The Mapmaker's Daughter, this included Henry the Navigator, Isaac Abravanel, Torquemada, and Isabella. I pored into every cranny of Dolores Sloan’s The Sephardic Jews of Spain and Portugal, and spot read the relevant portions of many histories. I even found a book of men’s and women’s fashions from this era, and discovered that there were hundreds of names for slight variations not just of major items like dresses or jackets, but the details of sleeves, cuffs, collars, and bodices.

I was lucky with this book, because I found treasure in some unlikely places. For the National Jewish Book Award-winning cookbook A Drizzle of Honey, David Gitlitz and Linda Davidson combed the archives of the Inquisition to find references to food preparations used to convict actual women of “Judaizing.” It’s a wonderful mix of history, recipes, and honoring of women who held to their faith during horrific times, and my characters partake of several meals from these recipes. I have too, by the way!

I also hit gold with a book about folk medicine as still practiced among Sephardic women of Romania and the Middle East. This was the closest I could get to knowledge of the practices at the time of my book, but since these incantations and potions are viewed as a timeless part of Sephardic history, I used them extensively to give a feel for the state of medicine at the time, and the superstitions that governed so much of medieval life.

A true story of the expulsion of the Jews, or any other piece of history, cannot be truthfully and accurately told without including the women, and in the absence of facts we have to substitute the twin powers of research and imagination. Women have never just been standing by, and we need to stop allowing history to be told that way.

I listen to the whispered voices of the forgotten women of the past, and words pour through my fingers onto the screen. Somewhere over my shoulder comes a disembodied sigh of relief that someone is finally listening. Historical fiction is in some cases the only way women have to reclaim our past, and I am thrilled to be part of that.

~

ABOUT THE BOOK

A sweeping novel of 15th-century Spain explores the forgotten women of the Spanish Inquisition

In 1492, Amalia Riba sits in an empty room, waiting for soldiers to take her away. A converso forced to hide her religion from the outside world, She is the last in a long line of Jewish mapmakers, whose services to the court were so valuable that their religion had been tolerated by Muslims and Christians alike.

But times have changed. When King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella conquer Granada, the last holdout of Muslim rule in Spain, they issue an order expelling all Jews who refused to convert to Christianity. As Amalia looks back on her eventful life, we witness history in the making—the bustling court of Henry the Navigator, great discoveries in science and art, the fall of Muslim Granada, the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. And we watch as Amalia decides whether to relinquish what’s left of her true self, or risk her life preserving it.

Exploring an under-published period in history, The Mapmaker’s Daughter is a sweeping saga of faith, family and identity that shows how the past shapes our map of life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Laurel Corona is the author of three historical novels, including Finding Emilie (Gallery Books, 2011), which won the 2012 Theodore S. Geisel Award for Book of the Year, San Diego Book Awards. She has taught at San Diego State University, the University of California at San Diego, and San Diego City College, where she is a professor of English and Humanities.

Corona is a member of the Brandeis National Committee, the National Council of Jewish Women, and Hadassah. She has written over a dozen nonfiction Young Adult books for school library programs, primarily on Jewish topics. She lives in San Diego. Website: www.laurelcorona.com

The Early Hawaiian Islands in Blackwell's Paradise, a guest post by V.E. Ulett

Today, for my 900th post on the blog, we're traveling across the Pacific to the Hawaiian Islands of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.  V.E. Ulett, author of the seafaring adventure novel Blackwell's Paradise, newly out from Old Salt Press, is our guide to the islands' colorful political and cultural history.

~

The Early Hawaiian Islands in Blackwell's Paradise

V.E. Ulett

Royal Navy Captain James Blackwell’s experiences in the Hawaiian Islands in Blackwell’s Paradise are an amalgamation from various 19th-century Pacific island cultures and societies. In this post I’d like to share a few details concerning the actual Hawaiian Islands of the late 18th and early 19th centuries: an island paradise or a place of danger, warfare, and cannibalism?

Kamehameha (c. 1758 - 1819) had conquered all of the Hawaiian islands except Kauai by 1795, and is recognized as the most noteworthy of the Hawaiian monarchs. He is reputed to have been a giant of a man, nearly seven feet tall, full of martial ability. Kamehameha came to manhood during a time of constant warfare between tribes of the Hawaiian Islands. By 1778, when Cook arrived with the ships Resolution and Discovery, Kamehameha was a seasoned warrior, said to have exuded power and violence. He observed and appreciated guns, iron tools, and weapons when European and American ships began to frequent the islands as a place of refreshment in the Canton and Northwest trade routes. Later, when supreme ruler of the Sandwich Islands, Kamehameha would insist on receiving arms and ammunition, tools, and naval stores and expertise in trade with other nations.

Tammeamea, roi des iles Sandwich par Louis Choris, 1816

Pacific island tribes of Kamehameha’s era practiced a fierce and brutal hand-to-hand warfare. In the last battle before dominating the entire island chain, Kamehameha put down a rebellion on his home island of Hawaii, afterwards sacrificing the rebel chief at a heiau in Piiho-nua, Hilo. Human sacrifice formed part of ancient tradition, demanded by Hawaiian gods and their priests. The victims were captured enemies, slaves, or violators of kapu. The kapu system kept the Hawaiian gods constantly before the country people, the kama’āina, and by extension as the descendants of the gods, the ruling class of ali’i. This was a system of governance that touched every aspect of Hawaiian life, including agriculture and fishing, land management and husbandry, trade and social interactions.

Cannibalism appears to have been a ceremonial practice for the Hawaiians, associated with veneration for the dead, and the traditional preserving of the bones of chiefs. Portions of Captain Cook’s body were delivered to Lieutenant James King after his death at Kealakekua in 1779. This gesture was likely honorably meant, other portions having been allotted to important chiefs and priests. Kamehameha was rumored to have claimed Cook’s hair, the possession of which would have increased his own mana, or power and prestige.

Following the conquest period, Kamehameha was held to be a good and great chief, who restored order and prosperity to the land. He encouraged agriculture, putting a great seven mile swath of land in his home district of Kona under cultivation himself, which was to his advantage in trade and the provisioning of foreign ships. The kapu system, that helped Kamehameha maintain order and the continuance of chiefly rights and privileges, was abandoned after the great king’s death in 1819.

Queen Ka’ahumanu with her servant on rug, lithograph by Jean-Pierre Norblin
de la Gourdaine after painting by Louis Choris, the artist
aboard the Russian ship Rurick, which visited Hawai'i in 1816

In 1804, when Captain Blackwell’s Pacific island adventures take place, Kamehameha was at the height of his power — the ali’i nui ai moku, the high chief who eats the islands (land districts). The king of Hawaii, Maui, and Oahu, Kamehameha at that period was amassing a force of invasion in Honolulu against Kauai. Kauai was a tough island to invade, a 75-mile channel of rough sea separating it from neighboring Oahu. Kamehameha’s favorite wife, Ka’ahumanu (c. 1768 - 1832), is nevertheless said to have successfully fled Kamehameha’s ill-treatment, alone in a canoe across this difficult channel, and reached Kauai.

Captain Blackwell negotiations that same treacherous channel, and the disparate civilizations and cultures of Europe and Oceania. He discovers similarities between the two maritime nations; England as embodied in the Royal Navy and the Hawaiian nation in the hierarchy of the ali’i and the kapu system; each with strict prohibitions, violent retaliations, and a strong sense of honor and duty. Captain Blackwell and Mercedes venture into a fictional version of Kamehameha’s magnificent and complex Hawaiian kingdom in Blackwell’s Paradise.

~

About V.E. Ulett's Blackwell's Paradise:  The repercussions of a court martial and the ill-will of powerful men at the Admiralty pursue Royal Navy captain James Blackwell into the Pacific, where danger lurks around every coral reef. Even if Captain Blackwell and Mercedes survive the venture into the world of early 19th-century exploration, can they emerge unchanged with their love intact? Blackwell’s Paradise takes Captain Blackwell and Mercedes to the far side of the world, on a new personal, and cultural adventure.

A longtime resident of California, V.E. Ulett is an avid reader as well as writer of historical fiction.

Proud to be an Old Salt Press author, V.E. is also a member of the National Books Critics Circle and an active member and reviewer for the Historical Novel Society.

Smoky Eyes and Ruby Lips: Cosmetics in the World’s First Civilizations, an essay by Shauna Roberts

Historical novelist Shauna Roberts, an expert on daily life in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, is here today with an intriguing and informative essay on early cosmetics—showing, with many examples, that the pursuit of beauty and good health has been a constant over many millennia.  Her novel Like Mayflies in a Stream is published by Hadley Rille Books as part of its Archaeology Series, a set of historical novels of ancient times which are grounded in archaeological research.  Welcome, Shauna!

~

Smoky Eyes and Ruby Lips:

Cosmetics in the World’s First Civilizations

By Shauna Roberts

If you were to meet a woman from one of the earliest civilizations on the street today, it wouldn’t be her makeup that gave her away. Archaeologists have discovered that women of ancient times wore eyeliner, eyeshadow, lip color, and cheek color and used potions to soften their skin, both to look beautiful and for good health.

Eye makeup. In ancient Sumer (now southern Iraq) and ancient Egypt, everyone—men, women, children, babies—wore kohl eyeliner. Kohl dates back to at least 3500 B.C.E., and the formula has remained much the same for 5500 years. Kohl is composed of finely ground-up galena (lead sulfide), sometimes with additives such as finely powdered herbs, pearls, gemstones, charred organic materials (such as frankincense, a tree resin), or other lead compounds.

The Sumerians and Egyptians wore kohl for two reasons: They believed kohl protected their eyes from disease and themselves from the evil eye. Today, fear of the evil eye is founded in the belief that some people have the power to harm others just by looking at them.

Canopic lid jar showing Tutankamun with
heavily kohled eyes and reddened lips

In prehistoric Sumer, though, the evil eye was at first an actual eye disease—conjunctivitis (“pink eye”). Conjunctivitis is an inflammation of the cover of the eyeball and can be caused by bacteria, viruses, or even an irritation. Only later did the evil eye become the subject of superstition.

Ancient people believed that kohl protected the eyes in a second way, by reducing the harsh glare common in the deserts of Sumer and Egypt. Today, baseball and football players sometimes wear a greasy dark substance called “eye black” under their eyes, believing it will reduce glare.

Kohl became a beauty aid, serving triple duty as eyeliner, mascara, and dark eyeshadow. The Sumerians and Egyptians made green eyeshadow as well by grinding up malachite or another copper oxide and mixing the powder with water or a sticky gum, which was then applied with a stick. Among the Egyptians, men and women of all socioeconomic levels wore a heavy coating of color around the eyes.

Ancient Egyptian makeup containers and applicators

Judging from archaeological remains, the Sumerians used many colors of cosmetics—white, black, yellow, red, and blue. Archaeologists have found many shells with pigments still in them. Among the riches in the tomb of Pu-abi, Queen of Ur, were “shells” made of gold and a cosmetics container made of ivory inlaid with lapis lazuli, a semiprecious stone.

Lip and cheek color. “Ruby lips” were not a metaphor in ancient Sumer. Five thousand years ago, wealthy Sumerian women started using crushed semiprecious stones to color their lips. The lip color found in Queen Pu-abi’s tomb was composed of red rocks ground to a powder mixed with poisonous white lead to make it spreadable.

Dried, ground henna leaves

Henna (the processed, powdered leaves of the shrub Lawsonia inermis) was also used to stain the lips.

In the Indus Valley (today’s western India), women painted their lips red. Archaeologists do not yet know what the paint was made of.

Naturally reddish materials such as iron oxide (rust) and red and orange clays were probably used in many places in the ancient world to color lips and sometimes cheeks. Today, some cosmetic companies still use iron oxide and clay in some of their products.

Bust of Nefertiti, showing her with heavily
kohled eyes and slightly reddened lips

In ancient Egypt, women (and sometimes men) colored their lips in a variety of ways. As in Sumer, some used henna.

A lip color used in Egypt contained iodine and bromine mannite, both extracted from seaweed. Iodine is a component of the hospital antiseptic Betadine, whose staining, brownish-red color may give us an idea of what Egyptian lips looked like. Both iodine and bromine mannite can be poisonous when taken by mouth. Some women who used this mixture on their lips likely died...and possibly so did some of the men who kissed them.

Other Egyptians used a crimson or scarlet dye that was extracted from pregnant female scale insects (such as insects from the genus Kermes) by crushing them. Only the wealthy could afford this extract: Tens of thousands of insects had to be crushed to produce a pound of extract. If you find the use of crushed insects for beautification unsettling, read the ingredients on your lipsticks and any processed pink, purple, or red foods in your pantry. “Carmine” and “cochineal extract” are made from crushed New World scale insects called cochineal (Dactylopius coccus).

Modern woman's hand,
stained with henna

Other cosmetics, briefly. In Egypt, henna was used to temporarily color hair and to stain fingernails. Surprisingly, henna seems not to have been used as body art in ancient Mesopotamia or Egypt. Only in the late Bronze Age do archaeologists find evidence for women painting designs on their palms and soles with henna; the custom was widespread around the Mediterranean. Much later, about 700 C.E., body decoration with henna spread to India, where it remains tremendously popular today.

Because both Sumer and Egypt were deserts, people needed to use oils and balms to protect their lips and skin from drying out. Honey softened dry skin. Egyptians made concoctions containing beeswax; goose fat and other animal fats; and vegetable oils such as castor oil and olive oil. The Sumerians likely used flaxseed oil early on; later in Mesopotamia, people began growing sesame and extracting the oil from the seeds.

The cosmetics discussed so far are not so different from what we’re used to. Some of them are still in use today. However, one Egyptian custom would turn heads if practiced today: the perfumed head cone. The Egyptians made cleanliness and smelling good a high priority. They bathed daily, and perfumes were big business. Ancient paintings show guests, musicians, and servants wearing white cones of perfumed wax or grease on top of their heads at parties. Archaeologists believe these cones slowly melted over the course of the party and dripped down the face and body. The wearer ended up with a glowing face and perfumed skin as well as, presumably, a wig and clothes that needed thorough cleaning the next day. Thank goodness that custom has gone out of practice.

~

Shauna Roberts has a Ph.D. in anthropology and has taught classes on ancient Mesopotamia at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of California at Riverside. Her historical novel Like Mayflies in a Stream (Hadley Rille, 2010) takes place in ancient Sumer in the time of Gilgamesh, and her historical romance Claimed by the Enemy, forthcoming in April, is set in ancient Sumer and Susa in the time of Sargon the Great. She is currently working on another historical novel set in ancient Mesopotamia. Her website and blog can be found at http://www.ShaunaRoberts.com.