Cloudmaker by Malcolm Brooks, a coming-of-age novel about the frontier of flight in '30s Montana

Brooks (Painted Horses, 2014) evokes rural Montana’s magnificent beauty in his coming-of-age novel set during aviation’s Golden Age, an era marked by technical ingenuity and the allure of wide-open skies. 

In the small town of Big Coulee in 1937, fourteen-year-old Houston “Huck” Finn yearns to build and fly an airplane and has the chops to achieve it. With his Pop’s support and the help of a new machinist, “Yak” McKee, Huck works diligently while hiding the project from his overprotective, religious mother. 

His sophisticated eighteen-year-old cousin, Annelise, a pilot-in-training banished from California to preserve her reputation after a romantic liaison, arrives expecting dreary exile but instead finds her excitement rekindled by Huck’s enterprise. Danger and mystery enhance the plot when gangsters seek to reclaim an expensive watch Huck had pulled off a dead man found in a local creek. 

The cast and their interactions are wonderful, and digressions into their personal stories deepen the characterizations and historical backdrop. An entrancing tale about the challenges of pursuing one’s dreams and of American frontiers, old and new.

Cloudmaker was published this month by Grove.  I'd read the novel earlier this winter and wrote this draft for Booklist (the review ran in the 2/15/21 issue).

A historical fiction microtrend: World War II and fashion

When a historical period becomes fashionable, microtrends develop. Such is the case with novels set in and around the Second World War, focusing on seamstresses, designers, and other fashion trendsetters. These nine novels, mixing recent releases with older selections, dramatize women's creative ingenuity during challenging times.

If you search for "dressmaker" on Goodreads, you'll find mostly historical fiction. Two of these are Kristy Cambron's new release The Paris Dressmaker, focusing on women who used fashion as a tool for Resistance work during the Nazi occupation, and Mary Chamberlain's The Dressmaker's War (UK title The Dressmaker of Dachau), about a naïve young British dressmaker taken prisoner and forced to work for the Nazis. María Dueñas' debut novel, The Time in Between, recounts the journey of a Spanish seamstress in Morocco during the Spanish Civil War and back in Europe during the lead-up to WWII. I've had this one on my TBR for way too long.

The full life of designer and businesswoman Coco Chanel is envisioned in C. W. Gortner's Mademoiselle Chanel, while Pamela Binnings Ewen's The Queen of Paris centers on the controversies surrounding Chanel's WWII-era life in Paris. Sofia Grant's The Dress in the Window, set just after the war in America, focuses on the relationship between two designer sisters.

Georgia Kauffman's The Dressmaker of Paris sweeps from Italy to Switzerland, Paris, Rio, and New York as its heroine reveals her unusual story.  As you can guess from the covers, the remaining two novels also evoke the City of Light: Natasha Lester's The Paris Seamstress is a dual-time novel set in WWII-era Paris and contemporary times. The Dressmaker's Gift by Fiona Valpy, another multi-time saga, follows three intrepid seamstresses, the secrets they keep, and how these mysteries reverberate two generations later.

An Unofficial Marriage by Joie Davidow portrays an operatic, real-life love triangle from 19th-century Europe

Author and opera singer Davidow crafts her own dramatic production around a real-life love triangle that played out across mid-nineteenth-century Europe. 

Its principal figures are mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot-Garcia, who lacks beauty but possesses an angelic voice; Ivan Turgenev, pampered Russian aristocrat and future literary star, who adores her immediately while watching her perform in 1843 St. Petersburg; and her older husband, Louis, who worships her too much to deny her heart’s desire, at least most of the time. 

Louis befriends the affable Ivan, and the Viardots become Ivan’s adopted family. Despite Pauline’s growing attachment to Ivan, though, she won’t leave Louis. Underlying the story’s emotional surges is the moving reality that there’s no real antagonist, only three passionate individuals caught in an impossible situation marked by self-sacrifice and periods of unfulfilled longing. 

Readers will be swept along with the trio, and Davidow writes beautifully about the artistic vision and technical demands involved in singing opera. The varied settings feel exquisitely vibrant, from chic, restful Baden-Baden, in Germany’s Black Forest, to politically fraught Paris during France’s Second Republic.

Joie Davidow's An Unofficial Marriage is published on March 16th by Arcade; I reviewed it initially for Booklist's February 1 issue. I've pasted in the book trailer below, which includes portraits of the cast and images of the novel's locales, accompanied by piano and the author's soaring soprano voice.

W. S. Winslow visits small-town Maine across the 20th century in The Northern Reach

There’s a large genealogical chart at the beginning of W. S. Winslow’s debut novel, a collection of integrated stories set in and around the small coastal town of Wellbridge, Maine, across the twentieth century and beyond. The timeline for this saga is as original as the many individuals populating it. The tales move forward and back in time, sometimes zipping along the chart on the diagonal as they center on separate families – the Lawsons, Moody, Baineses, and Martins – linked by blood, marriage, and illicit relationships.

The Northern Reach recounts how the unforgiving environment molds its characters, who have mixed or antagonistic reactions to their hometown. The austerity of the locale suffuses many lives, and happiness can be as fleeting as the summer temperatures. Perhaps it’s not surprising that the hero of one story ends up as the villain in a tale set a generation later.

The most sympathetic characters are those who consider themselves outsiders – those who escape from Wellbridge or want to. Among them are Liliane, a Frenchwoman who in 1958 meets fisherman Mason Baines, a handsome sailor in the merchant marines, marries him, and raises two children. Her foreign ways are denigrated by her narrow-minded mother-in-law, Edith. Edith appears as an elderly woman in the opening story, her mind fading as she stares out to sea following her husband’s and favorite son’s deaths in a boating accident.

Winslow incorporates dark humor in the tale of Victoria Moody, who returns to Wellbridge after ten years’ absence to attend her father’s funeral. Relieved to have left her fiancé back in Portland, away from the “horror show” of her embarrassing family, she finds it impossible to leave the past behind. Another insightful story shows a woman’s ghost coming face to face with her children’s true feelings, learning details they never spoke in her presence during her lifetime.

In the earliest accounts, especially, the bleakness can be overwhelming, but the descriptions create memorable images nonetheless: “Above the reach low clouds sleepwalk across the February sky. Today they are fibrous, striated, like flesh being slowly torn from bone.” Other observations about troubled lives pique the imagination with their realness. Admirers of character-centered historical fiction will find much to like in these introspective stories.

The Northern Reach is published by Flatiron this month; thanks to the publisher for the e-copy.

An interview with the London Monster, a guest post by Donna Scott

Today Donna Scott, author of The London Monster (Atlantic Publishing, 2020) presents a guest post as written by her lead character, Sophie Carlisle, a journalist in late 18th-century London. Disguised as a man, she seeks to tell stories about the darker, seedier side of the city at a time when a disturbing figure nicknamed the London Monster has been attacking women on the streets. These incidents (and the London Monster himself) are taken from history.  

~

An Interview with the London Monster

By Sophie Carlisle c1790

I was granted an interview with the elusive London Monster on several conditions:
--We would speak in a small room set up with an opaque screen between us.
--I had to enter our little room first—prior to his arrival—and leave only after his departure.
--I had to keep my back to the screen at all times, for he guarded his identity as if it were a precious stone.
-- I was not permitted to ask any personal questions which might lead to his capture.

Sophie: Thank you for agreeing to speak with me today.
My pleasure, I assure you.

Sophie: What have you done to earn the moniker ‘The London Monster’?
I don’t particularly care for that title. I am most certainly not a monster. I simply adore women. The curve of their breasts above their low necklines, their slender waists, their promising lips. I find it all quite provocative. I am pulled toward them like the tides to the moon. I might approach a woman and offer a kind word or two and then a proposition. The circumstances—whether the object of my affection sways her hips when she walks or strides forward with impatience and arrogance—will determine how I choose my words. The lady who entertains me first with the rhythmic swish of her skirts as I follow behind her, will always get the kinder introduction. Perhaps a compliment before I express my true wishes. But it is the haughty jilt who will take the brunt of it. I might whisper a vulgarity in her delicate pink ear, comment on my growing arousal or the bounce of her breasts. What brings me the most pleasure is that first gasp, the initial moment of shock which registers in her raised brow and parted lips, a sure sign I have offended. After that, it is not exactly pleasure I feel, but anger that burns my chest—a building rage. Every desire I’ve ever had spills freely from my tongue and coats her like the soot on a hearth’s bricks. She might fight to get away—most of them do—but I am stronger, faster. And it is only then that I draw my blade. I presume that is what has earned me the name.

Sophie: The papers have described you as a miscreant, wretch, and villain. Do you agree with their assessments?
You would do better to stay away from the papers, especially the Morning Chronicle and the Oracle. Both are shameful in their descriptions of me. Actually, the World is the most accurate and purports the women as the real monsters. Their histrionics have placed all men in danger, for any man could be accused of being me with one wrong look or harmless suggestion.

author Donna Scott

Sophie: How many women have you attacked? Some reports are as high as 56.
Is that so? I daresay that number is a bit high. You forget that there are imitators, charlatans, if you will, who desire my notoriety and, therefore, inflict harm upon some women in order to get it. They even work in groups or pairs, as I understand it. That is most certainly not my style. I only approach the fairest, so if a lady should return home with a scratch and torn skirts, she instantly gains in popularity and acquires the prestige of being one of my beauties. And you forget the fact some women claim being attacked simply for the celebrity it brings them. It is also a clever way of getting their husbands to pay for a new bolt of cloth to replace the ripped garments. So, you may attribute perhaps 45 or so attacks to me. I am not one to count that sort of thing.

Sophie: Are you ever afraid of getting caught?
At times, when I sit alone and wait for darkness to fall, my mind wanders into those dark places. I’ll enjoy a brandy or perhaps port and, in the quiet, that irrational fear may enter my thoughts. Will I be recognized or caught? But when I think of the wonderful possibilities of the night ahead, those thoughts flit away like a bird called by the chirp of a paramour. The truth is that I have tipped my hat to the police—Bow Street Runners—on many occasions as they search the dark for ‘the monster’. They are quite noticeable, wearing bright red waistcoats and carrying truncheons emblazoned with authoritative bronze crests, and therefore easy to avoid, if necessary. I do admit, I find the closeness of danger exhilarating.

Even as we speak, I know I am being hunted. And I know by whom. But those who pursue me are looking for a thin vulgar-looking man, or a short narrow-faced man with regular features, or a big-nosed man with curly hair. I have been said to wear all black clothing or a brown greatcoat or a blue silk coat. I wear a cocked hat with or without a cockade, my hair worn loose down my back or in a queue. Essentially, I look like everyone or no one at all. So, you ask if I think I might be caught... Never.

 

Both renderings represent the Monster attacking women in the streets of London.

About The London Monster by Donna Scott:

In 1788, exactly one hundred years before Jack the Ripper terrorizes the people of London, a sexual miscreant known as the London Monster roams the streets in search of his next victim… 

Thomas Hayes, having lost his mother in a vicious street assault, becomes an underground pugilist on a mission to rid the streets of violent criminals. But his vigilante actions lead to him being mistaken for the most terrifying criminal of all. 

Assistance arrives in the form of Sophie Carlisle, a young journalist with dreams of covering a big story, though she is forced to masquerade as a man to do it. Trapped in an engagement to a man she doesn’t love, Sophie yearns to break free to tell stories that matter about London’s darker side—gaming, prostitution, violence—and realizes Tom could be the one to help. Together, they come up with a plan. 

Straddling the line between his need for vengeance and the need to hide his true identity as a politician’s son becomes increasingly difficult as Tom is pressured to win more fights. The more he wins, the more notoriety he receives, and the greater the chance his identity may be exposed—a revelation that could jeopardize his father’s political aspirations and destroy his family’s reputation.

Sophie is also in danger as hysteria spreads and the attacks increase in severity and frequency. No one knows who to trust, and no one is safe—Tom included, yet he refuses to end the hunt. Little does he realize, the monster is also hunting him.

About the Author:

Donna Scott is an award-winning author of 17th and 18th century historical fiction. Before embarking on a writing career, she spent her time in the world of academia. She earned her BA in English from the University of Miami and her MS and EdD (ABD) from Florida International University. She has two sons and lives in sunny South Florida with her husband. Her first novel, Shame the Devil, received the first place Chaucer Award for historical fiction and a Best Book designation from Chanticleer International Book Reviews. Her newest novel, The London Monster, was released in November 2020. To learn about new releases and special offers, please sign up for Donna’s newsletter.

Zorrie by Laird Hunt observes a woman's 20th-century life in the rural Midwest

Deliberately echoing the form of Gustave Flaubert’s novella, “A Simple Heart,” Hunt celebrates the majesty and depth in a life that may superficially seem undistinguished. Zorrie Underwood is a farmer in central Indiana, and as she and readers survey her 70-or-so years, her joys and sorrows are deeply observed and felt. 

Raised by a cranky aunt, Zorrie is left homeless at 21, in 1930, and travels though the countryside doing odd jobs for food. Following a stint painting clock faces at the Radium Dial Company in Ottawa, Illinois, she settles in her home state and marries a kindly couple’s farmer son, enduring setbacks and grief while adhering to daily routines. 

With compassion and realism, Hunt recounts Zorrie’s story straightforwardly, with setting-appropriate dialogue and an eye for sensory details: the glint of fireflies, the clay soil’s rich scent, the “mineral-sweet taste of warm blackberries picked off the vines.” Zorrie’s relationship with her neighbor Noah Summers, the eccentric protagonist of Hunt’s Indiana, Indiana (2003), is presented with expressive subtlety. A beautifully written ode to the rural Midwest.

Zorrie was published by Bloomsbury this month, and I'd reviewed it from an Edelweiss e-copy for the Nov. 1st issue of Booklist.  I was impressed by how well Hunt encapsulated a full life within a novella of fewer than 200 pages.  Living in the rural Midwest myself (Illinois rather than Indiana), I recognized the landscapes of the story.  You can find more background on the Radium Dial Company and the young female dial-painters employed there in Kate Moore's bestselling The Radium Girls.

Interview with David Blixt about his discovery of Nellie Bly's long-lost novels

It's not every day that a novelist makes a significant historical discovery. During the research process for his next book about undercover reporter Elizabeth Cochrane (pen name Nellie Bly), David Blixt uncovered the text of eleven full-length novels she had written over 125 years ago, but which had been presumed lost. The Lost Novels of Nellie Bly will be published in book form on March 16th, with new introductions by David and other details that put her work into context. I enjoyed chatting with him recently about this fascinating find.  Please read on.

Could you provide some background to Nellie Bly’s fiction-writing career? For example, why did she switch from reporting to writing fiction, and what was the New York Family Story Paper?

From Bly’s letters, we know that becoming a novelist was a long-held ambition. She often referred to other authors who started off as journalists as examples she wished to emulate. And by 1889 she was famous enough to get her paper, The New York World, to publish her first novel in serialized form through the summer. The Mystery Of Central Park was then released in the fall in book form, just before she left on her race around the world.

What we know now, due to this discovery, is that even as her first novel was hitting the stands she was finishing her second. Eva the Adventuress is clearly based on the scandal that gripped New York in the fall of 1889, the trial of Eva Hamilton, wife of Alexander Hamilton’s great-grandson. (For those interested in the scandal itself, here’s a run-down). Bly interviewed Eva Hamilton in prison, and then had only three weeks to knock out what ended up being her longest novel, more than double the length of The Mystery Of Central Park.

It had to have been finished before she left on her race, because the first chapters appeared in print in late December, in the pages of the New York Family Story Paper. This was a weekly eight-page fiction anthology from her book publisher, Norman Munro. It was aimed at women (he had a detective paper aimed at young boys as well), and filled with adventures and romances replete with melodrama and cliffhangers.

What I wonder—because I don’t know—is if Munro started publishing the story without a contract with Bly. She might have sent it to him before she left, but there’s no evidence of a contract. Yet I can see him wanting to capitalize on the huge publicity her race around the world—her name was everywhere! The first chapters appear with the phrase “By Nellie Bly, who is now attempting to make the circuit of the world in seventy-five days.”

What we do know is that when she got back, he offered her an enormous contract—$40,000 over three years. When you consider that she made at most $5,000 a year at the World, that’s a veritable fortune.

I think the switch from reporting happened for several reasons. First, the money was excellent. Second, her longing to be recognized as an author. Third, she felt she was not given proper thanks for boosting the World’s circulation higher than ever before. Joseph Pulitzer never even offered her thanks.

Possibly the most important reason, I think she was burned out. Three years of “stunt” reporting had taken a toll. By the summer of 1888 she was beginning to speak of headaches (which coincided with her first death threats). By the fall of ’89 she was telling of visiting seven doctors to try and help her past what I imagine were stress migraines. And through 1890 and into ’91 she speaks of severe, crippling depression. I think the novels were her way through. Noticeably, when she returned to reporting in ’93, she refused to do any more undercover or risky stunts. She would only ever risk her life again when she reported on World War One, over twenty years later.

As a librarian, I love hearing about discoveries made through research into primary sources. How did you stumble upon the existence of these novels?

Writing a follow-up to What Girls Are Good For, I was looking for a very small detail—how much Bly was paid for her first (non-fiction) book, Ten Days In A Madhouse. I tried looking for any contracts mentioning Munro, just to get a ballpark figure. Coming up empty, I dug deeper into Munro, and noticed in a list of books and newspapers he had published something called The London Story Paper.

Now, I knew about Bly writing for his New York Family Story Paper. Thanks to her letters, we’ve long known of two novels she wrote, Eva The Adventuress and New York By Night (which is probably her best fiction work). But only one issue has survived, containing three chapters of Eva. The rest, I knew, were lost to time.

So when I saw the London Story Paper on the list, I thought, “No, it couldn’t be. Munro didn’t make a knock-off of his own paper in London, did he?”

Turns out, he did. I plugged the name into a search engine, and found that the complete archives for the London Story Paper were available at newspaperarchives.com. I bought a subscription and ran a search for Nellie Bly, and hit the jackpot. Not two novels. Eleven novels. More than anyone had ever imagined she had written.

Unfortunately, nearly a third of the pages were illegible. Worse, the microfilm only existed in three locations—London, Sydney, and Toronto. So in the space between Christmas and New Year’s, 2019, I drove to the University of Toronto to get close-up scans of the faded pages. Once I was certain I had everything, I started the work of sorting and transcribing.

Your website mentions that the new versions of the novels come “complete with the articles that inspired the stories.” How did you match up the New York World articles and her stories – did she write about what her inspirations were, or did you have to do original research on your own to figure this out?

Well, her first novel was clearly based on her 1888 exposé of a serial procurer of girls in Central Park. And the Eva Hamilton story was clearly ripped from the headlines of 1889. So I knew from the start that she had drawn on her reporting to inspire her fiction.

With that in mind, I began collecting all her articles (to my amazement no one has ever done that before). With those at hand, I could easily see which articles were used for inspiration in the novels. Most often they’re fodder for a dramatic scene—a visit to the “veiled prophetess,” working in a paper-box factory, a story on women becoming doctors. Blackwell’s Island crops up several times, and in one novel she even names a cruel, murderous nurse after a real one from her stay there.

When I finished, I found myself with all of Bly’s articles for the World, so I’m also releasing them in four volumes. She wrote many, many more articles than most people realize. Most fascinating are her interviews, most often with women. We get our very best interview with Susan B. Anthony thanks to Bly. The first two volumes of Nellie Bly’s World are out now, and I’ll finish up the other two later this year.

Among the novels, are there any that you felt were especially illuminating or told a particularly compelling story?

As I mentioned earlier, I think her third novel, New York By Night, is her best. It’s a fun detective story with a genuine twist. It’s the only one where I would have liked to see the lead characters return. After that there’s much that’s interesting, but she strikes upon a formula that she adheres to pretty strictly. 

In terms of pure wildness, In Love With A Stranger takes the cake. It’s one madcap episode after another. Often her heroines are kinda passive, but not in that one! She’s stalking the millionaire she fell in love with at first sight, and is determined to win his love by any means, disguising herself as a ghost, a medium, a reporter, a boy, an opium addict, a card-sharp, and a marble statue. As I say, it’s wild.

As windows into Bly’s mind, there are two particular repeating trends worth noting. First, the idea of being orphaned. Before she took the nom de plume Nellie Bly, she first wrote under the name Lonely Orphan Girl. Her father died when she was six, and even though her mother lived on, Bly very much sympathized with orphans. She spent the last years of her life trying to find homes for orphans in New York.

The second repeating theme is suicide by drowning. In nearly every novel a despairing young woman throws herself into a river to end her sorrows. Water and drowning come up incredibly frequently, enough to make one wonder if she was grappling with that idea herself.

As an author who’s been writing fiction about Nellie Bly, what discoveries did you make about her as a writer, or as a person, from reading these long-lost works of hers?

On the humorous side, she never met a word she could not turn into an adverb. And she had a gift for names. Ruby Sharp. Dimple Darlington. Merribelle Harleigh. Amor Escandon. Christmas Cherry. I love her names.

On the serious side, I do wonder about her romantic entanglements. So often love, in her novels, is overpowering, leaving both men and women helpless. Again and again her characters justify the worst behavior for “love.” And yet very rarely does what she describe resemble actual affection. Clearly this is something I’m grappling with as I work on my next novel about her.

But that’s a joy, having a unique insight into Bly’s life. Being the only person in the world who has read all of Bly’s work, if only for a short time, is a gift that a writer can only dream of. I am very lucky to have found them—probably as close as I’ll ever come to finding a lost Shakespeare play. And I’m anxious for people to read these and discover a hidden side to one of the most amazing women in American history.

~

For more details on David Blixt and his work, please visit www.davidblixt.com.  

24 new and forthcoming historical novels in honor of Black History Month

Looking for some intriguing historical reads to add to your TBR piles?  February is Black History Month, and while many of these books are forthcoming later this spring, summer, or fall, the gallery below should give you reading ideas throughout the rest of the year.  With settings spanning the previous few centuries, these novels center Black voices, present vibrant characters, and reveal many stories previously untold in historical fiction. They're from a mix of established authors and talented newcomers. Links for each novel go to its Goodreads page. Some of these titles have been featured on the blog before but are worth mentioning again.

Nekesa Afia's Dead Dead Girls (Berkley, June) opens a new mystery series set in 1920s Harlem, while WWII fiction fans will want to glom onto Kaia Alderson's Sisters in Arms (William Morrow, Aug.) focuses on members of the "Six Triple Eight," the all-Black battalion of the Women's Army Corps and their notable service overseas. Denny S. Bryce's Wild Women and the Blues (Kensington, March) is an exciting multi-period story set in Jazz Age Chicago and contemporary times, featuring a talented dancer. Artist, novelist, and poet Barbara Chase-Riboud is perhaps best known for her historical novel Sally Hemings, from 1979; her latest, The Great Mrs. Elias (Amistad, Aug.), is the first novel about Hannah Elias, a wealthy Black woman from early 20th-century America. Stacy D. Flood's The Salt Fields (Lanternfish, Mar.), a novella, follows a man on his train journey from South Carolina to a new life up north, and The Conductors (Mariner, Mar.), Nicole Glover's historical fantasy debut, introduces Hetty Rhodes, a former conductor on the Underground Railroad, in her crime-solving career in Philadelphia after the Civil War.

Kaitlyn Greenidge's Libertie (Algonquin, Mar.), set during Reconstruction, takes as inspiration one of the first Black women physicians in America. Set during the same timeframe in Georgia, The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris (Little, Brown, July), another debut, centers on two brothers, hoping to earn enough money to head north to find their mother, who are hired to work on a white farmer's land. The Civil Rights movement is the focus of Suzette D. Harrison's The Girl at the Back of the Bus (Bookouture, Feb.), which alternates between 1955 Montgomery, Alabama, and the present. An infant girl's kidnapping in 1930s Harlem prompts an investigation in Karla FC Holloway's historical mystery Gone Missing in Harlem (TriQuarterly, Apr.)  Ladee Hubbard's The Rib King (Amistad, Jan.), set in the early 20th century, incorporates a tale of how racist iconography is used to sell food products, rib sauce in this case, and how this exploitation played out among those affected.  When Stars Rain Down by Angela Jackson-Brown (Thomas Nelson, Apr.) takes us to small-town, Depression-era Georgia with the story of a young Black woman coming of age during a time when the KKK is wreaking havoc in her community.

The debut novel from acclaimed poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois (Harper, May) investigates one family's journey in Georgia across two centuries. From the queen of African American romance, Beverly Jenkins' latest, Wild Rain (Avon, Mar.) is the love story between a female rancher in 19th-century Wyoming and a man slated to interview her for a Black newspaper. Sadeqa Johnson's Yellow Wife (Simon & Schuster, Jan.), set in the mid-19th century, recounts the tale of a young woman hoping to be granted her freedom but who finds herself returned to slavery and working in a notorious Virginia jail (based on a true story). Robert Jones, Jr.'s The Prophets (Putnam, Feb.) is getting a lot of buzz for its lyrical portrait of the love between two enslaved men on a Mississippi cotton plantation. Situated in the same Southern locale as her Mama Ruby series, Mary Monroe's Mrs. Wiggins (Kensington, Mar.) takes place in Depression-era Alabama and follows a determined woman who engineers a supposedly perfect life until secrets start unraveling. Bethany C. Morrow's So Many Beginnings (Feiwel & Friends, Sept.), called "a Little Women remix" in the subtitle, tells the story of four Black sisters — you can guess their names — growing into young women in the Freedmen's Colony of Roanoke Island during the US Civil War. 

Latest in Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins historical crime series, Blood Grove (Mulholland, Feb.) takes place in Vietnam-era southern California, circa 1969. In The Personal Librarian (Berkley, June), bestselling novelists Victoria Christopher Murray and Marie Benedict team up to reveal the life of Belle da Costa Greene, librarian for J.P. Morgan in early 20th-century NYC, who passed as white to move up in her career field. Vanessa Riley has two historicals out this year: first Island Queen (William Morrow, July), unveiling the story of Dorothy "Doll" Kirwan Thomas, born into slavery, who became an entrepreneur, major Caribbean landowner, and royal mistress. An Earl, the Girl, and a Toddler (Kensington, Apr.) continues her Rogues and Remarkable Woman multicultural Regency romance series. Dawnie Walton debuts with The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (37 Ink, Mar.), described as an oral history of an early '70s rock band featuring a proto-Afro punk female artist and white English folksinger. And Harlem Shuffle (Doubleday, Sept.), by two-time Pulitzer winner Colson Whitehead, focuses on a family man in '60s Harlem who gets pulled into crooked activity and finds himself living a double life.

Which books are on your personal wishlists?  Please leave recommendations for these and any others in the comments.

Rhapsody by Mitchell James Kaplan, a sweeping portrait of the Jazz Age

Writing about music – transmuting one artistic medium into another – can be a challenge for novelists. Not only must they convey the sounds and rhythms for the reader, but also the elegant physicality of the performance as well as the powerful feelings that the sounds draw forth. When done well, the result is a full-bodied, sensory experience.

Mitchell James Kaplan accomplishes all this in his third work of historical fiction, Rhapsody, which depicts the decade-long affair between musical luminaries Katharine “Kay” Swift and George Gershwin.

Dubious about popular music and its latest promotional darling, Katharine attends the “Experiment in Modern Music” concert at New York’s Aeolian Hall in February 1924. She finds herself unexpectedly enraptured by Gershwin and his Rhapsody in Blue:

His fingers tapped the keys repeatedly; scurried up and down, passing each other; meshed together; flew apart to opposite corners of the keyboard … At the heart of the soaring, lyrical passage two-thirds of the way through, Katharine forgot about the funny parts, the exuberant parts, the piano-against-orchestra quipping and cajoling parts. The sadness and beauty of it enveloped her.

The story follows Katharine, a classically trained pianist, through America’s Jazz Age, from her early house concerts with a trio of friends through her emergence as a composer of national stature. Though little-known today, she was the first woman to write the complete score to a hit musical, and Rhapsody brings her accomplishments back into the spotlight. Her marriage to banker James Warburg is presented without stereotype. Their union is one of mutual affection rather than a grand passion; James frequently dallies with other women on his many trips abroad, and he tolerates her growing relationship with Gershwin, to a point.

author Mitchell James Kaplan

More than a traditional work of biographical fiction, Rhapsody devotes ample time to describing the political and sociocultural milieu that shaped the lead characters. It explains, within the fictional context, why Gershwin’s creative mashup of varied musical styles felt so attractive and groundbreaking. Cultural icons of the ‘20s and ‘30s, among them Fats Waller, Josephine Baker, Dorothy Parker, and Fred and Adele Astaire weave realistically into the narrative. 

Gershwin and Kay (his nickname for her, which she adopts) discuss people’s shifting cultural attitudes following the Great War, anchoring readers in the prevailing ideas of the era, and there’s much here that’s relevant for today, too. Details on the controversy surrounding the writing and staging of the opera Porgy and Bess show that issues of representation and cultural appropriation are hardly new.

A thoughtful portrait of its characters and their time, Rhapsody will carry readers along with verve and feeling.

Mitchell James Kaplan's Rhapsody will be published in March by Gallery/Simon & Schuster; thanks to the publisher for access via Edelweiss.  

As part of the blog tour with Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours, there's a tour-wide giveaway of two paperback copies of Rhapsody (US only).  Please use the following form to enter.  Open through March 12th to readers 18 years of age and older.  Good luck!

Rhapsody Tour

The Brontë sisters investigate a creepy mystery in Bella Ellis's The Diabolical Bones

This second in the Brontë Sisters Mysteries is for readers eager to be drenched in all things gothic. Bella Ellis (pseudonym for Rowan Coleman) has carefully adhered to the known demeanors of the sisters and their brother Branwell while adding a crime subplot. 

It’s December 1845, and frigid winds are whipping around the snow-covered Yorkshire moors. The mood is anxious within Haworth Parsonage: Charlotte, Emily, and Anne have sent their poems to a publisher and nervously await a response, while Branwell longs for letters from his former mistress Mrs. Robinson and drowns his sorrows at the pub.

What they need is a distraction. It arrives when their housekeeper, Tabby Aykroyd, reveals that a body has been found at Top Withens Hall, an ancient structure sitting atop the moorland, and that Clifton Bradshaw, the hall’s owner, refuses to inter the bones until spring. 

 The ruins of Top Withens Hall near Haworth, West Yorkshire
(public domain photo by Dave Dunford)

When the siblings trudge there to convince Bradshaw to allow a Christian burial in the parsonage cemetery, they encounter a household haunted by ghosts from thirteen years earlier, when Bradshaw’s wife died. The bones found within his chimney are a child’s, and the sisters want to find out whodunit. Bradshaw, a man rumored to have sold his soul to the devil, is a likely suspect.

Many classic Gothic elements – ghosts, a forbidding house, family secrets, and obsessive love – swirl together in a complex brew, and the supernaturally tinged atmosphere is drawn from the Brontë oeuvre, particularly Wuthering Heights and Emily Brontë’s evocative poetry. The overall effect is creepy without being outright frightening. 

Befittingly, Emily is an irresistible character, with her love for the moors and amusing penchant for bluntness. Ellis also works in issues of the day such as women’s independence and anti-Irish prejudice. The novel should satisfy anyone seeking to traverse the landscapes where these famous sisters lived and took inspiration.

Plaque at Top Withens Hall (public domain photo by Dave Dunford)

Bella Ellis's The Diabolical Bones will be published next week by Berkley in the US. I reviewed it for last November's Historical Novels Review, before it was announced that publication would be postponed until this winter (this has been happening a lot, due to shifting publishing schedules during the pandemic). In the UK, the publisher is Hodder & Stoughton.  The first in the series, The Vanished Bride, came out in September 2019.

Irena's War by James D. Shipman, his new novel about Polish WWII heroine Irena Sendler

Propulsive and intense, Irena’s War provides a front-row seat to the transformation of a Polish social worker into one of World War II’s most admirable heroines, with her efforts in rescuing over 2000 Jewish children from the Holocaust. 

In September 1939, the Germans overtake Warsaw, but Irena Sendler isn’t deterred in her work of distributing food to the city’s starving poor. She takes risks early on, temporarily alienating her Jewish friends when the Germans ask her to continue her work on a larger scale. “She was going to beat them, but in order to do so, she had to be in the game,” she reasons.

As restrictions tighten on Warsaw’s Jews, who are forbidden social services, Irena fudges paperwork to feed them; after hundreds of thousands are forced into a walled ghetto, she feels pressured to give up but finds ways of reaching them, at great danger to herself. Irena grows especially touched by the plight of the children and, with support of the resistance organization Żegota, she organizes a system of moving them out of the ghetto, into Aryan Warsaw, and into safe spaces.

The novel dexterously conveys Irena’s compassion, toughness, and the effect her uncompromising stubbornness had on her loved ones. It’s impossible for her to save everyone, but this knowledge doesn’t make individual failures any less heartbreaking. Periodic dips into the viewpoint of Gestapo officer Klaus Rein (a fictional character) show firsthand what Irena is up against. It’s chilling to witness how he mentally separates his life as a devoted family man with his horrific actions.

The plot lacks background on Irena’s difficult relationship with her mother and her growing romance with a Jewish friend, Adam; we experience their interactions in-the-moment without knowing the full history. Nonetheless, the story is riveting throughout and will leave readers marveling at the real-life Irena’s courage and accomplishments.

Irena's War was published by Kensington last December.  I reviewed it for the Historical Novels Review. The subject matter makes for hard reading at times, but Irena Sendler's story is very much worth knowing. She was recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" by the State of Israel for her work in saving Jewish children; she died in 2008 at age 98.  There's currently a Kindle deal running ($1.99) on Amazon.com, if you're interested in getting your own copy.

Historical fiction award winners at the 2021 ALA RUSA Book and Media Awards

This afternoon, I attended the first virtual ceremony for the Reference & User Services Association (RUSA) Book and Media Awards, an hour-long event that celebrated fiction and nonfiction in a number of categories.  Being on a book award committee is hard work, and I always enjoy seeing the winners that were chosen. Tomorrow I plan to place a bunch of orders for titles my library doesn't already own.

Three of the winners on this year's Reading List were historical fiction.  Depicted above:

The Historical Fiction category winner: Conjure Women by Afia Atakora, about the life of a healer tending to the formerly enslaved on a Southern plantation after the Civil War.

On the Historical Fiction shortlist:  Code Name Hélène by Ariel Lawhon (about WWII heroine Nancy Wake); The Cold Millions by Jess Walter (early 20th-century Spokane); The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue (the 1918 flu pandemic); and The Land Beyond the Sea by Sharon Kay Penman (the 12th-century Kingdom of Jerusalem).

The Mystery category winner: Fortune Favors the Dead by Stephen Spotswood, about a female private-detective team in 1940s NYC.

On the Mystery shortlist: The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton (mystery set on a 17th-century merchant ship) and Karen Odden's A Trace of Deceit (a Victorian mystery).

The Romance category winner: The Duke Who Didn't by Courtney Milan, a historical romance of 19th-century Britain featuring two characters of Chinese heritage.

The 2021 ALA Notable Books List also included some historical novels, including Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half (race and identity starting in 1950s Louisiana), James McBride's Deacon King Kong (dark humor in 1969 Brooklyn), Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet (focusing on Shakespeare's wife and children), and Paul Yoon's Run Me to Earth (war in 1960s Laos).

And the culmination of the award ceremony was the presentation of the 2021 Carnegie Medal winners. The award for excellence in fiction went to James McBride for Deacon King Kong.  

Congrats to all!

Interview with author Andromeda Romano-Lax about Annie and the Wolves

A dozen years ago, I posted an interview with Andromeda Romano-Lax about her debut novel, The Spanish Bow.  We recently reconnected, and I jumped at the chance to pose her some questions about her newest novel, Annie and the Wolves, which is out today. 

Annie and the Wolves follows the intertwining stories of Annie Oakley, the famous American sharpshooter, and Ruth McClintock, a contemporary historian struggling to prove her hypothesis that choices Annie made later in life were motivated by childhood abuse. After Ruth is sent some writings purporting to be Annie's personal journal, it sets her on a path to learning the truth not only about Annie's past but also about unsolved mysteries and odd phenomena from Ruth's own personal life. 

This isn't your standard dual-time novel about historical research and discoveries, but a multi-stranded thriller about the dawn of psychotherapy, the path to overcoming trauma, women's empowerment, and the tantalizing possibilities of time-travel. It left me thinking about uncanny real-life coincidences and how history itself is formed. Hope this intrigues you, and hope you'll enjoy this interview with Andromeda about her amazing genre-defying book.

The novel delves into Annie Oakley’s impoverished, difficult youth and her middle years, from the time of her train accident going forward. How did you get interested in these less well-known aspects of her life?

Discovering that Annie was essentially held captive for two years as a child by a farm couple called “The Wolves” was my starting point for the novel—along with the fact that, simultaneously, I was mulling over issues of abuse in my own family. (My sisters were abused by my father, who died around the same time I stumbled on the historical footnote that led me to Annie’s story.) There’s no question that I sublimated my concern for my sisters—and even my survivor’s guilt, as the youngest, least-affected child—into the work of finding a way to tell Annie’s story, which is ultimately an uplifting one.

From those first intertwining inspirations, I went on to learn more about the head-on train collision Annie Oakley survived in 1901, and about her legal battle with William Randolph Hearst, who libeled her in print. That middle-aged period isn’t unknown but documentation is spotty, which leaves the novelist plenty of room for invention.

I should make clear that the historical record was just a jumping-off point. From a few basic facts—childhood abuse, mid-life problems and injury—I built up a fictional premise: that Annie Oakley was disturbed by a yearning for revenge against her abusers, and that she sought a type of counseling, talk therapy, that happened to be developing in Vienna during that same era. Especially given that Annie Oakley was comfortable traveling to Europe, including Vienna (where she was much admired), I found that coincidence intriguing and used it to create a plot that is rooted in possibility but completely fanciful in its dramatized form.

The dynamic between Ruth, a researcher in her early 30s, and the tech-savvy high-school student, Reece, was an especially enjoyable part of the book. It’s like they become partners in solving multiple mysteries that other people are determined to ignore. What inspired them and their unusual relationship?

I’m glad you like Reece! I didn’t want Ruth to go it alone, and as I invented him, I came to realize—as I think Ruth does—that he could be a stand-in for the relationship she never managed to have with her troubled younger sister, Kennidy. With Reece, Ruth learns to communicate more openly, to ask for help, to risk being uncomfortable, and to care. This is a book that fully spans one-hundred and fifty years, and I wanted Reece to be our touchpoint for today: a smart, extroverted, probably non-binary (I don’t spell it out) teenager with his own artistic interests and problems. One early reader questioned how mature he is, but I’m a mom of twenty-somethings and they and their friends were just as assertive, quirky and smart as Reece when they were his age.

 author Andromeda Romano-Lax

The novel imagines that Annie Oakley sought help from a psychoanalyst, and re-creates evidence of their communications. How did you go about creating these writings?

It’s funny how once you create a fictional world it can seem inevitable and real—at least to the author, and hopefully to some readers! At one point while researching and pondering how Annie Oakley would have dealt with her trauma (especially given that she was a celebrity and couldn’t risk letting the world see her as weak), I was also reading about Anna O., the famous analysand who was treated by Josef Breuer and written about in a book by Breuer and Freud. (Readers often confuse the two men.) I thought, “A.O. and A.O.—that’s weird.” My brain got that same “everything-is-connected” feeling that frequently overwhelms Ruth.

The fact that the Annie of my novel is saddled with memories of childhood abuse in the same era that psychoanalysis (with an emphasis on recall of childhood traumatic events) was being developed seemed too interesting a coincidence to pass up. If she was going to talk to someone about it, why not the Viennese doctor who first wrote about talk therapy? From there, I knew they’d have to communicate only once in person and thereafter by letter, because Annie would need to be back in America to deal with the ongoing Hearst trials—which were, again, a biographical reality. Then it was left to me to invent those letters, as well as the original mystery journal that opens the book.

The concept of time-travel is always fun to explore, since it lets us ponder what would happen if the past could be physically reached and changed. I enjoy the speculative aspects of these novels as they relate to history, and how authors depict how it all works. What attracted you to the concept? Do you think it’s important in fiction for time-travel to have rules?

Yes, time travel absolutely must have rules. (And what a challenge they can be to invent and explain!) I never expected to write a time travel novel—and in fact avoided any speculative or fantasy element in early drafts. But when it comes to exploring not only history, but trauma, time travel becomes both a logical mechanism and a larger metaphor. When I was doing my initial research on time travel, I kept stumbling across psychological research papers that use the term mental “time travel” simply to mean reconstructing personal events in the past. Well, we all do that. People with PTSD do it even more intensely. As for changing the past, that’s the question, isn’t it? If one could, should one? And if one can’t or shouldn’t, what does that say about our orientation to the past and future at the expense of the present? I think time travel plots will remain timeless—no pun intended—because they fulfill our desire to imagine changing the past while also allowing us to ponder ancient questions of destiny and free will.

Annie Oakley in the 1880s

The story is amazingly creative and multifaceted, with so many different subplots – I read along with great interest in seeing how they would all come together. What skills or tools as a writer did you draw on to keep track of everything going on?

I wish I had a better answer for you. I keep some thinking and planning notes in a journal, but I mostly discover as I write and do ongoing research, then revise to make things clearer or when a new lightbulb goes on, over my head. (For example: “Of course that’s who the antiques seller is! Why didn’t I know that from the beginning?”)

What lessons can modern readers take away from Annie’s life story?

The fictional Annie of my novel and the real Annie Oakley—the biographical one, who is so much more impressive than the “Annie Get Your Gun” character from musicals and movies—has so much to teach us. The real Annie rescued herself, saved her family from poverty and ruin thanks to her small-game-hunting abilities, crafted a unique role as a world-famous sharpshooter and performer, made a good living, protected her brand, confronted her enemies (like Hearst, in court), and thrived with the support of a husband who supported her career. Having survived her own childhood and her especially dark years with the Wolves, she committed to helping others, which included training women in self defense and financially supporting girls and orphans. My novel supposes—and I’d like to believe it’s true—that helping other girls and women was what gave Annie the strength to endure the trials of her later years and achieve a sense of peace.

~

Annie and the Wolves was published by Soho Press; thanks to the publisher for granting me access via NetGalley.  For more information, please visit the author's website at https://www.romanolax.com.

The Blind Light by Stuart Evers, a British family saga of the nuclear age

Doom Town is the catchy yet grim nickname for a real site in Cumbria, England, used for simulating the aftermath of a nuclear strike. In Evers’ spacious and unusual saga, Drummond “Drum” Moore and Jim Carter run training rescue missions there in 1959 for their National Service, an experience that shakes them deeply and casts a shadow on their families henceforth. 

Evers excels at depicting the men’s strong, identity-shaping bond, which doesn’t quite surmount their class differences. Following their military commitments, Drum works at a Ford factory in suburban London and raises two children with wife Gwen, a former barmaid, while the arrogant, posh Carter weds and lives in rural Cheshire. Years later, Carter persuades Drum to take over his neighbor’s farm, thus keeping Drum’s loved ones secluded and safe, but in doing so, Drum loses sight of other family problems. 

The novel spans six decades, and the later generation’s stories aren’t as interesting, but the moody setting, rich in details reflecting social change in Britain, well suits this tale of lives eclipsed by fear.

Blind Light was published by WW Norton in October (I reviewed it for Booklist's 9/1 issue; reprinted with permission).  Some other notes:

I've seen reviews that call "Doom Town" a fictional location, but it was a real site, located at Millom Airfield in Cumbria. You can see a 1-minute video showing training missions there, as part of the British Pathé collections (the clip dates from 1955).  As the video mentions, and as the novel depicts, many men did a stint there at the end of their National Service, "learning all there is to know about rescue methods in the atomic age."

In remembrance of historical novelist Sharon Kay Penman

The historical fiction community is in mourning following the loss of one of the great authors in our genre, Sharon Kay Penman, on Friday. I'd written up a short post for my Instagram at that time and thought I'd expand upon my reflections here. The outpourings of sorrow and memorials I've been seeing on social media since her passing have been enormous; she was a good friend and supporter of numerous historical novelists and a longtime cherished author of many more readers.

Sharon Kay Penman has been a favorite author of mine ever since I read The Sunne in Splendour, her masterwork about Richard III, when I was in middle school. It came out in 1992, and it was one of the first "adult" historical novels I'd read, along with Anya Seton's Katherine.  I also remember carrying the heavy hardcover of When Christ and His Saints Slept along with me on the plane to the campus interview for my first library job, since I was in the middle of reading and didn't want to leave the story behind.  Most recently, I had the privilege of reviewing her latest, The Land Beyond the Sea, focusing on the 12th-century Kingdom of Jerusalem, for Booklist.

Ten of her novels are deeply researched epics (massive tomes, which you can see from the book pile above) that brought the prominent personalities from the Middle Ages, especially England's ruling Plantagenet family and their close relatives, to amazing life. If I had to pick a favorite, it would be Here Be Dragons, about the marriage between King John's illegitimate daughter, Joanna, and Llewelyn "the Great" of Wales in the 13th century. Like Maria Comnena in The Land Beyond the Sea, Joanna was a fascinating protagonist whose story hadn't previously been told in fiction, and who I was glad to get to know. Sharon introduced her readers to the vivid landscapes and castles of medieval England and Wales and the complex relationships among the family members who ruled there.

Sharon also wrote four mysteries featuring sleuth Justin de Quincy in Eleanor of Aquitaine's time, starting with The Queen's Man. These are shorter novels, but also assiduously researched.  Reading the detailed author's notes at the end of her novels are a pleasure in themselves.  The one for The Land Beyond the Sea runs for eight pages.

Although I didn't really know her personally, I enjoyed hearing from her on Facebook (she was friends there with many of her readers) and via her blog, where she interviewed other novelists and spoke about her research.  I was glad for the opportunity to exchange emails with and meet Sharon when the Historical Novel Society conference committee invited her to be a guest of honor for our 2009 conference in Schaumburg, Illinois – and she returned to take part in later conferences. She leaves a wonderful legacy of stories for readers to discover and return to.

The Gates of Athens by Conn Iggulden recounts ten pivotal years in ancient Greek history

This rousing series opener brings ten pivotal years in ancient Greek history to energetic life. Spanning from the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE to the Spartans’ valiant stand at the Battle of Thermopylae, the story moves nimbly among the perspectives of Athenian leaders, primarily the politician and general Xanthippus, plus their allies and Persian foes. 

A celebrated historical adventure writer, Iggulden (The Falcon of Sparta, 2019) illustrates both large-scale military maneuvers and minute details, from close-up views of bronze-armored Greek soldiers in formation to fearsome scenes of the immense Persian fleet, bent on destroying Athens. 

The intervening decade between major battles in the ongoing Greco-Persian Wars holds equal fascination as Athens is shaken by infighting that divides its statesmen. These inner political workings are vividly personified via courageous, intelligent, well-rounded characters. 

Iggulden has impressive command of period terminology and largely follows the historical record, filling in gaps with well-thought-out reasoning. This is also an inspiring read about the value of democracy, whose birthplace was classical Athens, and how people fought hard and long to preserve it for posterity.

The Gates of Athens was published in the US on January 5 by Pegasus, and I reviewed it for Booklist's Dec. 15th issue (reprinted with permission).  

Other notes: This book was a revelation. Historical military adventure isn't normally my thing, but this novel is much more than that. It focuses on character development and theme as much as technical details and who-does-what-to-whom. Readers seeking nonstop action may be disappointed by the middle sections that delve into Athenian politics and how its policies were implemented, such as the process by which men could be forced into exile.  Reading it as a PDF on my iPad turned out to be a great advantage, too, since for any unfamiliar terminology I encountered, I could highlight a term, and I had my choice of the Kindle's internal dictionary or Wikipedia for a definition. There was no glossary in my ARC. My appetite is whetted for book two.

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes, a women's retelling of the Trojan War

“Sing, Muse,” commands a poet, invoking inspiration for his Trojan War verse, but Calliope, goddess of epic poetry, has her own purpose in mind. She offers a tale not of men’s glory but the experiences of all the women. Except maybe Helen, who annoys her. 

Haynes tells a witty, unapologetically feminist story of women’s suffering, courage, and endurance, which demands that we reconsider our concept of heroism. Following a ten-year siege, Creusa, a young wife, wakes to see her city aflame, while other women of Troy wait along the shoreline to be parceled out as slaves to the Greek victors. 

Showing Haynes’ comedic touch, Penelope writes letters to her husband, Odysseus, growing exasperated as she learns the reasons for his delayed voyage home to Ithaca. Some characters are familiar, others less so, including Oenone, Paris’s abandoned wife. Cassandra’s account is especially wrenching. 

The telling is nonlinear, but the varied stories flow naturally together, ensuring readers won’t be lost. Grounded in the classics, this freshly modern version of an ancient tale is perfect for our times.

A Thousand Ships will be published on January 26th by Harper in the US.  In the UK, the novel has been out for a while (2019) and was shortlisted for the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction. I submitted this review for the December issue of Booklist. I'd read A Thousand Ships last October and began noticing the number of new and upcoming publications retelling ancient Greek myths from the women's viewpoint, spurred on by the success of Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls and Madeline Miller's Circe. Look for a post about this soon! Haynes is also the author of The Children of Jocasta, fiction based on the stories of Sophocles' Oedipus and Antigone. 

Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms by Anita Heiss sees the WWII home front from the Indigenous Australian perspective

On August 5, 1944, hundreds of Japanese POWs in a compound on the outskirts of Cowra, a small town in central New South Wales, Australia, organized a mass breakout, driven by the shame brought on their families due to their captivity. With her historical novel using this pivotal event as a starting point, Anita Heiss imagines a gentle romance between an escaped Japanese soldier, Hiroshi, and Mary Williams, eldest daughter of an Aboriginal family that grants him refuge. 

Dr. Heiss, a member of the Wiradjuri nation, makes a unique contribution to WWII literature by depicting the Indigenous Australian perspective on the home front. She warmly depicts the interactions among the Williams family members, their friends, and neighbors, as well as the growing rapport between seventeen-year-old Mary and Hiroshi, who must spend long, lonely days concealed in an air raid shelter, his only respite being Mary’s visits with the meager rations she’s able to give him. 

I found aspects of the love story somewhat far-fetched, but the couple’s ongoing dialogue enables the author to relate the characteristics of their substantially different cultures. Above ground, the story highlights the strength of the Williams parents, Banjo and Joan, who raise their family with dignity on Erambie Mission, knowing that white authorities won’t hesitate to take their children away if they’re found slacking on household cleanliness. 

They take huge risks in sheltering Hiroshi but – not without some disagreement among them – choose to act out of human kindness, and with the knowledge that they and the Japanese are both fighting against the Australian government at the time. Forbidden to own their hereditary lands, Aboriginal people have their lives strictly controlled and aren’t able to vote – the people at Erambie have less freedom than even the Italian POWs working on farms nearby. The writing flows easily throughout this sensitively drawn story.

I read this from a personal copy. Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms was published by Simon & Schuster Australia in 2016.  The novel may not be easy for non-Australians to find these days, but it's worth seeking out for its storyline, history, and viewpoint.

The Last Garden in England by Julia Kelly, a multi-period novel centered on an Edwardian garden

A country house in rural Warwickshire is the scene for Kelly’s touching, immersive read, which has definite appeal for aficionados of Downton Abbey and Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows’ The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2008). Over a century, five distinctive women are connected through a historic Edwardian garden, each struggling in different ways between family and societal expectations and achieving their hearts’ desires. 

In 1907, Venetia Smith arrives to design an elaborate new garden for Highbury House’s wealthy residents. Decades later, the British home front comes alive through the tales of Highbury’s widowed young owner, her restless cook, and a neighboring land girl as the estate is requisitioned during wartime. Lastly, a contemporary designer uncovers mysteries while aiming to replicate Venetia Smith’s original plans.

Subplots involving love, loss, and hope for new beginnings gracefully intertwine, and readers will be enraptured by the garden theme, from the labor and artistic expression involved in their craftsmanship to the therapeutic power of nature’s beauty. Like gardens themselves, these pages invite lingering and thoughtful reflection.

The Last Garden in England is published by Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster on January 12th.  I read it back in August last year and reviewed it for the 10/15/20 issue of Booklist from an Edelweiss e-copy. Isn't the cover beautiful?