Reading the Past in a Single Document, an essay by Judith Berlowitz, author of Home So Far Away

Historical documents may be inanimate objects, yet they can still speak to us, revealing vital information to novelists writing about their subjects decades later. In the following essay, author Judith Berlowitz (Home So Far Away) explores how she gleaned details about the life of her protagonist, Clara Philipsborn, through a single document from a Spanish archive.

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Reading the Past in a Single Document

Judith Berlowitz

By the time I retired – as a PhD teaching Spanish language and world cultures – I welcomed the opportunity to concentrate on other interests. Search for my ancestral origins had widened, and tools learned in academic research had led to some dizzying discoveries. At the same time, I was noticing that the standard canon of utilizing sources was also widening, shifting, fluid.

Searching the Internet for my Philipsborn relatives, I came upon an article that mentioned Clara Philipsborn, an anti-fascist volunteer translator in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). I completed the Philipsborn project, keeping in mind the compelling need to find Clara. I soon contacted people via Facebook who followed various aspects of the Spanish Civil War and was introduced to the concept of Historical Memory, a movement that arose in reaction to the Pacto del Olvido – the Pact to Forget – imposed on the people of Spain at the death of the dictator Franco in 1975.

Clara, 1910 Wildbad
(credit: Gene Dannen,
originally posted
on his website )

These friends assisted me in locating documents about Clara in Soviet archives, which were conflicting, as were stories from other relatives I was able to reach. There were grave accusations against which she could not defend herself. I had to give her a voice that would break through the Pacto del Olvido. I would write her diary, as an homage to historical memory. The result is my first novel, Home So Far Away, published by She Writes Press, June 2022.

An institution in Spain called the Centro Documental de la Memoria Histórica found and sent me a precious document, Clara’s identity card from the Fifth Regiment of Popular Militias. Each of the static images on the document served as doors that opened to yet more sources, more material for Clara’s story:

• Clara’s typed name – her surname in all caps, is spelled correctly, in contrast to many other documents about her. This fact adds credibility to the source.
• The number at the top shows me that there were 6835 volunteers to the Fifth Regiment who applied ahead of Clara.
• Clara’s photograph reveals her attention to her appearance. The pressed hair, the tweezed eyebrows: a major departure from the wild look shown in photos from her youth. Clara’s hair plays a significant role in my novel as it connects her to her Jewish identity.
• Clara’s address as typed detracts from the credibility. There is no “Dionisio Cortes” Street in Madrid. But a search revealed the correct name, “Donoso Cortés,” and I was able to visit the location at number eight.
• Clara’s marital status is listed as single. Correct.
• But her age? She was born in Kiel in 1890, according to all German records. Other records from Spain show wildly varying dates, definitely material for my novel!
• Clara’s profession is first typed (with carbon paper) as a registered nurse, with the later addition – entered twice – of her title or degree of practicante, practitioner or PA, rare for women of this time and representing more prestige and more advanced duties.
• The space for the organization Clara belonged to is left blank and replaced by the inserted fragment of the colored stamp of the elite Fifth Regiment. This item opened up hours of research on this renowned unit.
• The date of Clara’s enrollment in the Regiment is added: just three days after the uprising against the elected government of the Spanish Republic. Essential proof of Clara’s eagerness to dedicate her skills to defend her new homeland. And the August date marks the beginning of Clara’s duties.
• Clara’s assignment to La Cabrera opened up research on a tiny town in Madrid’s Sierra Norte. The wartime field hospital was created in a monastery taken over by the Loyalists. Contact with the local high school history teacher informed me that the famed Rosario “la Dinamitera” had been treated there, leading to my placing her under Clara’s care during the necessary amputation. And a Facebook friend provided me with a copy of the surgeon’s report, providing me with that important name and with Rosario’s political affiliation.
• Clara’s clear signature completes the card, as if authorizing me to venture through all the doors it has opened.

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About the novel:

A fictional diary set in interwar Germany and Spain allows us to peek into the life of Klara Philipsborn, the only Communist in her merchant-class, German-Jewish family.

Klara’s first visit to Seville in 1925 opens her eyes and her spirit to an era in which Spain’s major religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, shared deep cultural connections. At the same time, she is made aware of the harsh injustices that persist in Spanish society. By 1930, she has landed a position with the medical school in Madrid. Though she feels compelled to hide her Jewish identity in her predominantly Christian new home, she finds that she feels less “different” in Spain than she did in Germany, especially as she learns new ways of expressing her opinions and desires. And when the Spanish Civil War erupts in 1936, Klara (now “Clara”) enlists in the Fifth Regiment, a step that transports her across the geography of the embattled peninsula and ultimately endangers a promising relationship and even Clara’s life itself.

A blending of thoroughly researched history and engrossing fiction, Home So Far Away is an epic tale that will sweep readers away.

About the author:

Author Judith Berlowitz at Clara's Madrid home. 
Photo by Armando Mauleón, 2018, with his permission.

Los Angeles–born author Judith Berlowitz had just retired from her Spanish-teaching position at Oakland’s Mills College when her genealogical research uncovered a Gestapo record mentioning a relative, Clara Philipsborn, who was the only woman anti-fascist volunteer in the Spanish Civil War from the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. The few details of the report led to more research, which led to Home So Far Away. In addition to her career teaching Spanish and world cultures, and a stint as a tour guide, Judith is a card-carrying translator and has published in the field of ethnomusicology (Sephardic balladry) and Jewish identity. She sang for years with the Oakland Symphony Chorus and is now a member of the San Francisco Bach Choir. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, not far from her three daughters and three grandsons.

The Crimson Thread by Kate Forsyth tells a multilayered story of WWII Crete

Partway through reading The Crimson Thread, which takes place on Crete during WWII, I exclaimed to myself, This is a retelling of the Greek myth of Ariadne and the labyrinth! I had read the US publisher’s blurb, which didn’t include this, but the Australian publisher does. Kate Forsyth is known for her creative reworkings of ancient tales (she has a PhD in fairytale studies), so I should have figured this out sooner. Knowing the underlying structure added even more dimension to a story I had already been enjoying.

Among the abundance of WWII novels, I seek out those with underexplored characters or settings, and this one qualifies. The story focuses on the underground resistance on Crete and three young people caught in a love triangle while trying to survive and repel the Nazi invaders.

Alenka Klothakis lives near the Ariadne Villa in the village of Knossos and works as a translator for the curator at the archeological site there. With her mother near-mute after past trauma, and her twelve-year-old half-brother Axel, whose father was German, obsessed with Hitler and sympathetic to the Nazis, Alenka’s home life is tense. She is at heart a rebel (“It infuriated her that Greece was the home of democracy, but she was not allowed to vote”), and when her life becomes entwined with two Australian soldiers, she risks much to save them both.

Teddy Lloyd and Jack Hawke were childhood friends and fellow Classics students at the University of Melbourne before deciding to join up. Otherwise, the men are very different; Teddy is dashing and flirtatious, seeing Alenka as a possible conquest, while Jack is thoughtful though no less courageous, and he has a special affinity for the history and stories of the Greek isles—as does Alenka. Their connection ignites Teddy’s jealousy and leads him to lash out against his supposed “best mate.” Meanwhile, Axel moves from bratty adolescent rebellion to actual collaboration with the enemy.

author Kate Forsyth

The novel spans the entirety of the war, beginning with the German invasion and subsequent occupation to the Allied forces’ retreat over the White Mountains and the evacuation from Crete—which Teddy and Jack are unable to join, for separate reasons. The on-the-ground action feels vividly real, but what sets the novel apart is the cultural history and symbolism woven through the story in the form of music, dance, and colorful embroidery.

Jack has a talent for playing the lyra and finds that the stammer he has when speaking disappears when he sings. And Alenka, an experienced needlewoman, employs her skill in her work with the Resistance, literally and figuratively deciding which threads to spin—and which to snip. She is a wonderfully nuanced character, a young woman torn between caring for her family and saving her homeland, and she hates the idea of being any man’s possession.

Steeped in the alluring history of Crete, both ancient and modern, The Crimson Thread can be appreciated on many levels. It is a worthy addition to the author’s oeuvre and to WWII-era historical fiction.

The Crimson Thread is published in the US by Blackstone; it's also out from Penguin Random House in Australia. I reviewed it from a NetGalley copy as part of the blog tour with Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours.

A look at Addison Armstrong's The War Librarian and the courageous American librarians serving in WWI

If one can measure a novel’s success by the emotions it draws from readers, the sophomore work by Armstrong (The Light of Luna Park, 2021) is very effective indeed. The trials her protagonists undergo, while pursuing their dreams and holding onto their integrity, evoke admiration and passionate fury on their behalf.

In 1918, Emmaline Balakin leaves her sedate Dead Letter Office job to serve in France as a hospital librarian. The injured soldiers at Bazoilles-sur-Meuse are truly grateful for the reading material, though Emmaline is aghast at the treatment of Black servicemen and dismayed by the American government’s censorship regulations.

In 1976, Kathleen Carre, granddaughter of Emmaline’s friend Nellie, breaks gender barriers by enrolling in the U.S. Naval Academy. Between ridiculous uniform requirements (three-inch heels!) and torturous hazing from male classmates, the system seems determined to break her, but she persists.

Romance and long-held secrets provide additional intrigue in this increasingly powerful story. The values of intellectual freedom, antiracist activism, and female friendship are illustrated within their historical contexts, yet these themes couldn’t be timelier.

The War Librarian will be published on August 9th by Putnam in the US. I wrote the review above for Booklist's historical fiction issue (dated May 15th). My editor gave me the opportunity to select books from a list of options, and this was one of them. I chose it not only because the subject interested me, being a librarian myself, but also because the personal story of my library's namesake is relevant to the book's subject.

Mary J. Booth in her
WWI uniform

The library where I work, Booth Library at Eastern Illinois University, was named after Mary Josephine Booth (1876-1965). She was head librarian there for 41 years, from 1904-45, aside from the period (1917-19) when she served overseas during WWI as a volunteer with the American Red Cross and, later, the American Library Association.  During her tenure at Eastern, the library was housed in the main administration building, and she campaigned tirelessly for the campus to construct its own freestanding library. Plans were formulated in 1942, and the new Mary J. Booth Library was finally open for business in 1950, five years after her retirement.  

Over my own time at Booth Library, I've given many tours covering different aspects of the building's history, including Miss Booth's wartime service, but I hadn't realized how rare an accomplishment this was until I read The War Librarian. "Very few female librarians were sent to France before the end of the war," Armstrong writes in her author's note.  In Paris, Miss Booth worked to catalog American books shipped overseas for U.S. soldiers, selecting reading material for men in hospitals and in the trenches. She also cataloged the books at General John Pershing's headquarters at Chaumont.

Needless to say, I'll be purchasing a copy of The War Librarian for my library's recreational reading collection once it's published!

Read more at these external sites:

From NPR: When America's Librarians Went to War.
From the Library History Buff Blog: Women Librarians and ALA's Library War Service in WWI (which has a photo of Miss Booth)
From the Daily Eastern News: Booth's name honors former librarian 

Jessie Burton's The House of Fortune continues The Miniaturist in early 18th-century Amsterdam

Burton’s The Miniaturist (2014) was an international bestseller with a subsequent TV miniseries, and this keenly awaited sequel should more than fulfill expectations. Exhibiting the same finely etched atmosphere of historic Amsterdam, it deepens characterizations by bringing the action forward while illuminating the childhood of the original protagonist, Nella.

In 1705, secrets flourish in the Brandt house on the Herengracht canal. Nella’s mixed-race niece, eighteen-year-old Thea, who knows little about her mother or events before her birth, conducts a furtive romance with an unsuitable man. With money tight, Nella hopes to find Thea a rich husband who will improve their fortunes.

Thea’s father, Otto, has his own ideas, and their competing plans clash dramatically. Meanwhile, the miniaturist from the first book, whose designs are unnervingly perceptive, has returned, with gifts for Thea.

With an artistic eye, Burton explores women’s lives, socioeconomic concerns, and the ways they intersect. This volume has few supernatural elements; rather, the story emphasizes the effect of the miniaturist’s creations. Both heroines grow and change in this smartly written tale about family relationships and recognizing truth.

The House of Fortune was published on July 7 in the UK by Bloomsbury. North American readers will have to wait a little longer; it's published here on August 30th, also by Bloomsbury. 

I wrote this review for Booklist's historical fiction issue, which came out on May 15th.  You might notice a pineapple on the US cover, at the top, and (without providing spoilers), this plays a role in the story.

Hilary Mantel examines her childhood via fiction in Learning to Talk

Two-time Booker winner Mantel explores the haunted landscapes of her childhood in this anthology, first published in Britain in 2003. The six stories, set in 1950s-70s industrial northern England, read like personal essays but sifted through a fictional lens: she calls them “autoscopic” rather than autobiographical.

The narrators closely observe their young lives amidst many adult tensions and secrets, such as marital scandals and class, racial, and religious differences. Children’s playground squabbles become a microcosm of Protestant-Catholic frictions, and two girls’ experience getting lost in a junkyard induces musings on emotional rootedness. Standouts are the title story, about elocution lessons for social mobility, and “The Clean Slate,” which delves into the mutability of historical memory through reflections on a drowned village.

Mantel carves beauty out of bleakness, crafting brilliant metaphors with penetrating human insights. “The country through which they move is older, more intimate than ours,” she writes about children’s innate knowledge of deducing truth about their world. Read this collection alongside her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost (2003), for additional insight into her life and creative process.

Learning to Talk was published in the US by Henry Holt in June and has been receiving a great deal of critical attention for a book nearly two decades old; this marks the first US publication. Can the stories be called historical fiction?  This depends on your definition. Some aspects take place close to 50 years before the time of writing, while other stories are more recent. I wrote this review for Booklist Online (published online on June 30). Mantel wrote a new preface for this latest edition.

The Research for The Valley: Researching a World That Never Was, an essay by A. M. Linden

Thanks to author A. M. Linden for contributing an essay on creating a plausible historical world for her new novel, The Valley, second book in her Druid Chronicles series set in the British Isles in the 8th century. The Valley was published by She Writes Press on June 28th.

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The Research for The Valley:
Researching a World That Never Was

A. M. Linden

Book 2 of The Druid Chronicles expands on the premise that the remnants of a once powerful pagan cult have survived into the last years of the eighth century, a time when the conversion to Christianity is all but complete throughout the rest of the British Isles. While the other four books of the series are set in fictional but historically based Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Llwddawanden, the valley of the book’s title, is entirely hypothetical—a place I conceived of as a lost world where its inhabitants live according to a system of beliefs dating back to the Iron Age. That said, it was always my intention to make this part of my characters’ story at least plausible, and I began my research with a broad review of the relevant academic and popular literature.

Although Druids do not appear in the historical record after the Roman conquest of the Gauls on the European continent, and the Celts in what is now England, they are described by Julius Caesar and others as members of a priestly class of polytheistic Celts that performed functions as bards, oracles, and healers as well as serving as judges and political advisors. Caesar further reported that becoming a Druid required a training period as long as twenty years. With that to go on, I turned to ethnographic studies of societies with comparable social roles and to the works of folklorists who have recorded and studied epics and folktales from around the world—focusing on creation stories, epic poetry, and folktales conveying cultural mores.

By then I knew that one of The Valley’s underlying issues was to be the internal tensions of a persecuted minority struggling to survive and to pass on deeply held beliefs, and I had settled on the three main protagonists—Herrwn, the shrine’s master bard, Ossiam, their oracle, and Olyrrwd, their physician—who shared a collective responsibility as advisors to the shrine’s chief priestess and as judges on its councils.

Herrwn, the novel’s viewpoint character, had his origins in what I’ve learned about bards as the keepers and transmitters of cultural traditions through oral sagas and poetry, Ossiam is more of a mix, part-shaman, part-trickster, while Olyrrwd has his counterparts in non-western healers as well as in pre-nineteenth-century medical practitioners.

From the first, I intended the series’ major conflict to be between my Druid cult’s devotion to the worship of a supreme mother goddess and the paternalistic monotheism of the Christian world outside their secluded sanctuary. There is documentation of goddesses having a significant role in pre-Christian Celtic religions but, to me at least, their function was not as dominant as I had in mind, so again I looked at the larger literature—ranging from speculation about the paleolithic “Venus” figurines found across the Eurasian continent to the views of modern-day Wiccans—blending what I learned into the theology that would govern life in the imaginary valley of Llwddawanden.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Ann Margaret Linden was born in Seattle, Washington, but grew up on the east coast, returning to the Pacific Northwest as a young adult. She has undergraduate degrees in anthropology and in nursing and a master’s degree as a nurse practitioner. After working in a variety of acute care and community health settings, she took a position in a program for children with special health care needs where her responsibilities included writing a variety of program related materials. In a somewhat whimsical decision to write something for fun, she began what was to be a tongue-in-cheek historical murder mystery involving Druids and early medieval Christians. It wasn’t meant to be long or involved, but the characters seemed to acquire lives of their own and their story grew to become The Druid Chronicles. Prior to her retirement, this remained an after-hours endeavor that included taking adult education creative writing courses and researching early British history, and was augmented with travel to England, Scotland, and Wales. Since then, the insistence of those characters on getting themselves into print has prevailed. Currently completing the final draft of the last book, the author lives with her husband and their cat and dog in the northwest corner of Washington state.

For more information, visit the series website.

In the Face of the Sun takes its characters on a wild road trip through Civil Rights-era America

In late May 1968, when Francine “Frankie” Saunders climbs into her Aunt Daisy’s gorgeous new Ford Mustang, her aim is to flee Chicago and her abusive husband. She fears for her safety and that of the unborn child he doesn’t know about. Frankie barely knows Daisy, an irreverent, weed-smoking woman of nearly sixty who’s been estranged from Frankie’s mother for forty years, but she desperately needs Daisy’s help.

On the wild road trip these two Black women take to Los Angeles, across two thousand miles with many bumps and detours, Frankie hopes to learn what caused the argument between Daisy and her mother. Daisy has another motive in mind for the journey’s end: revenge against someone from her past.

These two characters and their world jump off the page in radiant detail: their contrasting personalities, their distinctive looks (Daisy resembles a film star with her cat-eyed sunglasses, gingham dress, and perfect makeup), and their approaches to navigating America just two months after Martin Luther King’s assassination.

A second narrative, set in 1928, follows twenty-year-old Daisy Washington as she works as a chambermaid for L.A.’s Hotel Somerville, a prestigious facility catering to the Black elite. After her mother suffers a mental and physical breakdown, Daisy, a would-be journalist, aims to keep her younger sister, Henrietta, out of trouble while collecting celebrity gossip for a friend’s newspaper column. Both threads of this propulsive story ultimately lead to the same destination: the revelation of the terrible event that divided the Washington sisters.

In her second novel, Bryce shines light on notable people and events from American history, from civil rights activists Drs. Vada and John Somerville and the actor Stepin Fetchit to the painful wounds of Tulsa. The scenes are cinematically vivid, the language fresh and vibrant, the characters complicated and real.

Denny S. Bryce's In the Face of the Sun was published by Kensington in April (I'd reviewed it for the Historical Novels Review from a NetGalley copy). I also recommend her debut, Wild Women and the Blues.

Marguerite Poland's A Sin of Omission evokes the repercussions of colonialism in 19th-century South Africa

A heart-wrenching story elevated through luminous writing, Marguerite Poland’s fictional tribute to a historical Black South African missionary was shortlisted for the 2020 Walter Scott Prize in its original edition.

In 1880, Stephen Malusi Mzamane, deacon at Nodyoba, a remote mission in the hills of the Eastern Cape, prepares for a difficult journey to inform his mother about his older brother’s death. Most of the novel, though, looks back to reveal the circumstances leading him to this point. Found in the Donsa bush while foraging for food at age nine, the boy baptized “Stephen” is educated at the Native College in Grahamstown and later sent to the Missionary College in Canterbury, England, as part of the Anglican church’s plans to “Christianise the native.”

Though Stephen excels with his assignments, Poland depicts, in evocative words ringing with truth, how his progress in the Church and life is agonizingly held back by the bitter, systemic effects of colonialism. As a member of the “heathen” Ngqika people granted the rare privilege of a British education, he must simultaneously confront others’ high and low expectations for his conduct.

Readers can’t help but be moved by the internal conflict Stephen feels and his reactions to the burden of gratitude weighing him down. He also feels torn because his parishioners are from a different nation than he, and his superiors assume this doesn’t matter.

All relationships are depicted with nuance: the two friendships Stephen cherishes across great distance; his challenging bond with brother Mzamo, once a promising scholar himself; and his preoccupation with a mysterious woman from a photograph. Respectful of her subject and his culture, Poland highlights the importance of Xhosa names and the language itself in Stephen’s world.

Remarkable on a sentence level and as a fully realized portrait of an honorable man, this is literary historical fiction of a high order.

A Sin of Omission was first published by Penguin Books South Africa in 2019, and the ebook version (which I had purchased) is available on Amazon (US). It was subsequently published by the British publisher EnvelopeBooks last month.  I reviewed it for the Historical Novels Review in May. In addition to the Walter Scott Prize shortlisting, the novel won the 2021 Sunday Times award for fiction.

This story is not quite biographical fiction. Stephen is based on a real person whose history was known to members of the author's family, prompting her interest and further research into his life.  Read more at the Sunday Times (South Africa) as well as Wanda Wyporska's interview with the author at the Historical Novel Society's website.

Sisters of the Sweetwater Fury evokes early 20th-century Great Lakes women's lives, at sea and on land

With a strong sense of verisimilitude, Bryan takes readers into the raging heart of a historic event best experienced through fiction: the devastating Great Lakes Storm of 1913. As November settles in, during what’s been a low-casualty shipping season thus far, three sisters with deep roots in the region quietly endure the weight of marital and family expectations, not realizing how high the stakes will soon be raised for their very survival.

For the last decade, Sunny Colvin has cooked alongside her husband Herb, ship’s steward, aboard the steel freighter Titus Brown as it plies Lake Huron. When she hears a café is for sale in her home of Port Austin, Michigan, she fears disappointing Herb with her yearning to purchase it and leave shipboard life behind. Sunny’s younger sister Cordelia, a newlywed wanting to know her stoic lake-captain husband Edmund better, joins him on his journey across Lake Superior.

Back in Port Austin, a picturesque town on Michigan’s “Thumb,” oldest sister Agnes Inby, a widow of thirty-six, spends her days painting pottery and caring for her difficult mother, not letting herself dream about anything more, such as her unexpected feelings for the lighthouse-keeper’s sister, Lizzie. Adding to the already palpable tension of suppressed words and desires, the storm erupts at sea.

This is a real hang-onto-your-seat read. The action is nonstop intense as Sunny and Cordelia endure howling winds and freezing temperatures as water seeps in and fills their living spaces while the ships pitch from side to side. Inside at the Port Austin Life-Saving Station, where she grew up, Agnes prays the building will continue to hold. Bryan illustrates the interior lives of early 20th-century Great Lakes women as adeptly as she describes a ship’s layout and the visceral experience of this destructive storm.

Sisters of the Sweetwater Fury was independently published last October; I reviewed it for May's Historical Novels Review. An author I know recommended it to me, and the subject intrigued me because part of my family is from Michigan.  It's definitely worth reading! This is the author's debut novel, and it's also received positive mentions from Publishers Weekly and the Blue Ink Review. I look forward to seeing what she writes next.

Prepare for a TBR explosion with these guides to new and forthcoming historical novels

It's nearly summer in the US, a time when media outlets are recommending novels to read over the warmer months and through the rest of 2022 as well.  Here are links to roundups that center on historical novels.

Library Journal's first historical fiction preview, compiled by Melissa DeWild, includes a whopping 86 upcoming titles, with short blurbs and comments from publishers. They're grouped mostly by category, with considerable focus on the world wars and subgroups thereof, plus others that span a wider range of eras and global settings. If you get paywalled, try registering for a free account with LJ.

Alida Becker's New York Times review roundup with new historical fiction to read this summer includes a good mix of commercial and literary historical fiction.

In Cosmopolitan, check out their choices of best historical fiction for 2022; most of these titles are already out, but not all.

The list at Business Insider mixes classic favorites and past award-winners with brand new selections: 28 in all that, they say, promise to "whisk you away to a different world."

Book Riot's coverage of historical fiction has been particularly strong lately. Last month, writer Kelly Jensen offered a guide to the best historical fiction organized by era, subgenre, age group, and other useful categories.

Historical mysteries are a favorite subgenre of mine. Writing for CrimeReads, novelist Christopher Huang has a piece responding to the question: "How do you decolonize the Golden Age mystery?" He recommends a wealth of new novels that examine the 1920s and '30s from viewpoints other than white and/or European.  I especially liked these comments:

"... diversity is desirable because it represents a larger experience of the world and a fresh take on what we think we know. Especially in the context of historical fiction, an alternate viewpoint gives us a clearer understanding of what the world looked like. And why do we read fiction at all, if not for fresh experiences outside of what we know?"

Back in April, BuzzFeed published a guide to historical romances for Bridgerton fans.

In the Times (London), Antonia Senior has monthly roundups of the best new historical novels out that month (in the UK). Her May column is here, with settings ranging from ancient Greece to the 18th century. You can sign up for a free account to read these columns as they appear.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the Historical Novel Society's guides to forthcoming historical novels, compiled by Fiona Sheppard and Susan Firghil Park.  The guide for adult titles goes through March 2023, and the children's/YA list goes through next January; these are regularly updated.

Geraldine Brooks' multi-period latest novel, Horse, intertwines horse racing and hidden Black history

With exceptional characterizations, Pulitzer winner Brooks (The Secret Chord, 2015) tells an emotionally impactful tale centering on the life and legacy of Lexington, a bay colt who became a racing champion in mid-19th-century America.

Present at the horse’s birth is Jarret, an enslaved groom on Dr. Elisha Warfield’s vast Kentucky farm, and the pair develop an enduring bond. Jarret’s nuanced conversations with traveling equestrian artist Thomas Scott about the horse are mutually enlightening. Through Jarret and his father, a free Black man and expert horse trainer, readers encounter a wide range of injustices experienced by people of their race.

This perennially relevant theme extends into the 21st century via Theo, a Nigerian American art PhD student. His path intersects with Jess, an Australian-born scientist at the Smithsonian, after Theo saves an old equestrian portrait discarded by his neighbor.

Among the most structurally complex of all Brooks’ acclaimed literary historical novels, the narrative adroitly interlaces multiple eras and perspectives, including that of 1950s New York gallery owner Martha Jackson, who appears midway through.

From rural Kentucky to multicultural New Orleans, renditions of setting are pitch-perfect, and the story brings to life the important roles filled by Black horsemen in America’s past. Brooks also showcases the magnificent beauty and competitive spirit of Lexington himself.

Horse is published next Tuesday (June 14) in the US by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House. I submitted this starred review for Booklist, and it was published in the magazine's April 15th issue. 

For those interested in seeing what Lexington looked like, below is a portrait by American painter Edward Troye in 1860, when Lexington was in his tenth year:

This novel is strongly based in history, although the modern-day characters are fictional, and little has come down to us about the real Jarret (meaning Brooks had to invent much about his character). Read more about the novel's historical background in a Q&A at Geraldine Brooks' website.

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson is a Caribbean saga revealing mysteries of family heritage

In 2018, after their mother Eleanor’s death, estranged siblings Byron and Benedetta “Benny” Bennett return to their California home for the memorial and to heed Eleanor’s final requests: that they listen together, in an attorney’s presence, to a recording Eleanor made in her last days, and sit down to share their mother’s traditional rum-soaked black cake when the time is right.

After years of mutual hurt involving them and their late parents, Byron and Benny are wary of one another. They’re also unsure of their own paths forward. Byron, an African American oceanographer and TV personality, has endured a bad breakup, while Benny had distanced herself for serious personal reasons. Eleanor’s account dredges up mysteries from her youth and shakes up everything her children believed about their family.

This scenario may sound contrived, but it’s surprisingly easy to buy into because of how well the characters and their relationships are fleshed out. As Eleanor begins unspooling a tale about a young woman named Covey, a talented swimmer growing up on an unnamed Caribbean island in the ’60s, Byron and Benny are skeptical about its relevance. But the less said about the plot, the better, save that it spans miles and continents across decades and delves into themes of survival, exile, and the deep flavor of one’s heritage.

To call Black Cake innovatively layered is understating things. While the story may seem like it bounces between people and eras without a discernible pattern, soon you’ll realize that this talented debut author has her recipe under perfect control. A few pages here, a full chapter there, all added at just the right time. The revelations keep coming; by the end, every question is answered and then some. Eleanor is a marvel of a protagonist, and just like its subject, Black Cake is a satisfying dish worth sharing with others.

Black Cake was published by Ballantine in February (Michael Joseph is the UK publisher). I reviewed it for a past issue of the Historical Novels Review.  It was a NY Times bestseller and a Read with Jenna book club pick, and Amazon tells me it's in production as a Hulu limited series. Read more at Deadline. I hadn't realized the novel was partly historical until a publicist emailed and offered me a NetGalley widget, and I'm glad she did.

Seventeenth-century events echo in the present in Evie Hawtrey's historical thriller And By Fire

Evie Hawtrey’s dual-period mystery marks the debut of a new pseudonym for Sophie Perinot, who has previously written historicals about female royals (and has contributed to other collaboratively-written novels). Switching genres can pose a creative challenge for writers, though based on my experience reading And By Fire, the author's style is a natural fit for crime fiction.

The novel's modern thread takes the form of a London-based police procedural, and the historical tale (or rather, tales) takes place during the Great Fire of 1666. Somehow, the crimes in both areas are connected… but what could possibly link them across more than 350 years? For one clever perpetrator, the past clearly does not lie quietly.

The settings have a very British feel in all aspects, including the characters’ vocabulary. Nigella Parker, Detective Inspector with the City of London Police in the present, won me over with her no-nonsense attitude and wry wit. She and her counterpart at Scotland Yard, former lover Colm O’Leary, get called in to investigate a case of nuisance arson: a human-shaped wooden figure is found, burned, at the base of the monument to the Great Fire. Nigella’s specialty is arson cases, and her intuition tells her the crimes will escalate, since the “weird ones have a habit of getting weirder,” she says. She’s right. All too soon, Nigella and O’Leary are tracking a murderer who seemingly wants to stick it to Sir Christopher Wren, the legendary English architect.

And in the 17th century, Margaret Dove, lady-in-waiting to Charles II’s Portuguese queen, Catherine of Braganza, is falling in love with a lower-born man, Etienne Belland, His Majesty’s fireworks-maker. Margaret is a woman of science, or would be if her gender didn’t prevent formal study. She struggles to avoid being matched with an unwanted suitor and to overcome the poor prognosis for her health. When a bookseller friend of the couple goes missing amid the conflagration that engulfs London, they need to learn what happened.

Vivid scenes of the Great Fire placed me amid the chaos as flames sweep through the city, people flee with their families and goods, and the King and his brother try in vain to halt the spread. Tension literally and figuratively heats up, since for some, the destruction proves to be an all-too-tempting opportunity. I also appreciated the attention to social class, such as the reaction of Etienne’s family once they realize Margaret is a noblewoman. In the present day, Nigella and O’Leary use all the tools at their disposal, like interviews with witnesses, CCTV footage, and the work of a forensic sketch artist. The two have obvious chemistry, which Nigella – who has moved on to a new lover, James – chooses to ignore for the time being.

Briskly paced and sharply written with multilayered characters, the story left me thinking about the factors that motivate people to commit crimes, and the strategies it takes to solve them in different eras.

And By Fire was published by Crooked Lane in May (I read it from a NetGalley copy).

Fiona Mountain's The Keeper of Songs movingly evokes the folk music heritage of the '60s

Downton Abbey meets Sharyn McCrumb in swinging 1960s Britain.

In 2002, when Silva Brightmore’s father John passes away unexpectedly in his fifties, she gets pulled into solving the mystery posed by his last words for her: “Find Molly.” Silva’s mum had abandoned their family years beforehand, and after finding a record album sleeve with a photo of a beautiful raven-haired folksinger, Molly Marrison, Silva begins wondering if her dad had had a romance with this young woman as well.

Silva works as a housemaid (or more accurately put, conservation assistant) at Chatsworth House, the stately home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire in the Peak District. Beautiful views of this idyllic setting fill the novel’s pages. As she searches for where Molly might be, Silva sorts through her feelings for an old boyfriend from her teenage years, Robbie Nightingale, a traveling song-collector who returns to support her in her grief.

The story wanders back periodically to the watershed year of 1967, a time of experimentation with free love and drugs, when folk music spoke directly to young people’s souls. Fiona Mountain places readers in the moment as Molly casts a spell over her audience with her passionate interpretation of an old ballad involving runaway lovers and a terrible murder. While stirring up nostalgia for this long-ago time, the author adds a good dose of realism, since women in particular were both romanticized and stigmatized for their personal choices in the late ‘60s.

One aspect of the mystery feels predictable (though not to Silva), but working out the “why” is just as interesting as the “what.” The story exhibits the author’s deep affection for Chatsworth and the villages within the picturesque estate setting. With the skill of an eloquent balladeer, she makes you think about how aspects of family and regional history turn into local legends and songs, and what truths can be gleaned from them.

The Keeper of Songs was independently published by SnowGlobe Books in 2021; this was a personal purchase.  There are many angles to delve into for readalikes for this novel.  In addition to the details mentioned above, if you've enjoyed other recent music-infused historical fiction like Taylor Jenkins Reid's Daisy Jones and the Six, Dawnie Walton's The Final Revival of Opal and Nev, or Emma Brodie's Songs in Ursa Major, add this one to your list.  Fiona Mountain has written other historical novels previously, including Isabella; Lady of the Butterflies, about 17th-century scientist Eleanor Glanville; and Cavalier Queen, about Queen Henrietta Maria.

Natalie Jenner's Bloomsbury Girls, set in 1950s London, celebrates bookishness and women's ingenuity

Perfect for historical fiction readers who enjoy literary topics mixed with period-appropriate feminism, Natalie Jenner’s second novel is a charmingly triumphant read. Bloomsbury Girls is more a spin-off than a sequel to her first book, The Jane Austen Society. Knowledge of the first book isn’t necessary (though if you haven’t read it yet, you should!).

Most of the plot takes place within Bloomsbury Books, a century-old establishment located on a cobblestone side street in London’s Bloomsbury district in 1950. Vivien Lowry and Grace Perkins, the shop’s cashier and secretary respectively, are the only female employees. Even though World War II had greatly expanded women’s career horizons, at this shop, “new opportunities for women were still being rationed along with the food.” The general manager, Mr. Herbert Dutton, is famously conservative in his ways and has designed 51 rules for employees to adhere to. Each chapter begins with a different rule, and they’re as amusingly rigid as you’d expect.

author Natalie Jenner

Into this atmosphere comes Evelyn "Evie" Stone, a new Cambridge grad who recently lost a job to a male colleague. Evie is the ultimate introvert, though she has many supporters – in the form of her fellow Jane Austen Society members, men and women who’d come together in the previous book to save their favorite author’s legacy. Evie is about to find new allies in Vivien and Grace. With Mr. Dutton at home recovering from an extended illness, Vivien gets temporarily promoted to Head of Fiction and institutes changes (books by women writers! literary luncheons!) that prove very successful. Newly hired at Bloomsbury Books under unusual circumstances, Evie also has secret motives for being there.

Through her mix of characters, Jenner demonstrates her familiarity with gender, class, and racial differences and the tensions they created. Vivien’s aristocratic fiancé had been killed overseas, and his parents never approved of her. Grace’s two sons are the only high points of her home life, and she’s learned to tamp down her frustrations with her overbearing husband. Though her passion is cataloging books, Evie – to her surprise – develops a rapport with Ash Ramaswamy, an Indian-born entomologist who heads up the science department in Bloomsbury’s basement since he couldn’t find another job in England.

This novel will let you indulge in unabashed bookishness while joyfully seeing the smart plans of the “Bloomsbury girls” come to fruition – with the ready assistance of women from London’s renowned literary circles, including Daphne du Maurier. It takes you back to an era when “old fashioned” often referred to socially acceptable misogyny. However, none of the men, even the annoying fellows, are stereotyped; all have issues to overcome. The story also serves as a good reminder that people should never underestimate the quiet ones.

Bloomsbury Girls is published by St. Martin's Press today; I read it from an Edelweiss e-copy for the author's online book tour.

Author bio:

Natalie Jenner is the author of the instant international bestseller The Jane Austen Society and Bloomsbury Girls. A Goodreads Choice Award runner-up for historical fiction and finalist for best debut novel, The Jane Austen Society was a USA Today and #1 national bestseller and has been sold for translation in twenty countries. Born in England and raised in Canada, Natalie has been a corporate lawyer, career coach and, most recently, an independent bookstore owner in Oakville, Ontario, where she lives with her family and two rescue dogs. Visit her website to learn more.

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The Ladoux Mystery - the spy who framed Mata Hari? A guest post by Alan Bardos

In today's guest post, historical novelist Alan Bardos examines the facts behind the enduring legend of Mata Hari (the photos are his own). His latest novel, Enemies and Allies, third in his Johnny Swift series of historical thrillers, is out now from Sharpe Books (UK).

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The Ladoux Mystery: The Spy Who Framed Mata Hari?

Alan Bardos

Marguerite Zelle MacLeod, better known as Mata Hari, was a sensation in the last years of the Belle Epoque with her wild and exotic dances. However, it was her espionage activities that have ensured her name is a household word, over a hundred years after her execution in 1917 as a spy. The question as to whether she was actually a double agent is still a contentious issue and may never be resolved.

The Folies Bergère, where Mata Hari performed in 1913.

By 1914, Mata Hari’s popularity had begun to decline in Paris; she had to cast her net further afield and rely more on the favour of rich and powerful men to support her lavish lifestyle. It was this that many of her biographers believe she was ultimately judged on.

In August 1914, Mata Hari was performing in Berlin with a string of lovers. When war was declared, the mood against foreigners changed. Desperate to return to France and escape the war fever sweeping through Germany, she broke her contracts and fled. Unable to get to France and forced to leave her money and possessions behind, she returned to her native Holland.

While there she was approached by Carl Cremer, an honorary German consul, who offered her 20,000 francs to spy for Germany. Mata Hari accepted the money, but whether or not she actually considered herself recruited as a spy is questionable. She may actually have taken the money in compensation for everything she left in Germany.

When Mata Hari returned to Paris in 1916, she was recruited to spy for the French by Captain George Ladoux, the head of French Counterintelligence. She planned to pull off an intelligence coup by going to Belgium and seducing the German Governor-General. She would then cultivate him as an intelligence source and sell the information to Ladoux for a million francs.

282 Boulevard St Germain, where Mata Hari was recruited by French intelligence.

However, on her way to Belgium, Mata Hari’s steamer had to pass through British waters, and during a routine customs check she was mistaken for the spy Clara Benedix. She was interviewed in Scotland Yard by ‘Blinker’ Hall, the head of Naval Intelligence, and Sir Basil Thompson, the head of Special Branch. At the end of it, they were convinced that she was not Benedix, but thought she was suspicious. They contacted Ladoux, who informed them that he thought she was a spy and that he was pretending to use her in the hope that she might give herself away as a spy. Hall and Thompson released her but would not allow her to travel on to Belgium, and sent her to Spain. On her own and ignored by Ladoux, Mata Hari used her initiative and seduced Major Arnold Kalle, the German military attaché in Spain. He gave her some low-grade information, which Ladoux did not consider worth a million francs. She was arrested not long after her return to Paris; Ladoux had by this time compiled a dossier of evidence against her.

The former Élysée Palace Hotel, where Mata Hari was arrested.

Kalle had sent telegrams to his superiors in Berlin that incriminated Mata Hari. They were sent in a code known to have been broken by the French, so it is possible that he was deliberately trying to cast doubt on her. These telegrams had been intercepted by French intelligence and were the only real evidence presented at her trial that she was a double agent. French detectives followed Mata Hari when she was in Paris, but found no evidence that she actually gathered information or passed it on to Germany. However, she admitted to taking their money on the understanding that she would.

France was swept with spy mania at the time, rocked by scandals of German plots to buy newspapers in an effort to undermine France's will to fight; unrest was rife and the government needed to regain control. Ladoux was therefore under considerable pressure to catch spies, and there is evidence to suggest he doctored the telegrams to make them more incriminating and ensure her conviction. He certainly believed a ‘woman of the world’ like her to be guilty and her promiscuous lifestyle proved it.

However, Ladoux was also arrested as a spy three days after Mata Hari’s execution. This has given rise to speculation that he framed Mata Hari as a way of deflecting attention from his own espionage activities. Ladoux had been denounced by his former driver, Pierre Lenoir, who had been arrested for buying a French newspaper with German money. When Lenoir was interrogated, he claimed that he had been set up by the Germans and that he was working for Ladoux.

Vincennes. Mata Hari was executed in the grounds of this castle.
Ladoux's and Lenoir’s files are in the archive attached to the complex.

While Lenoir was executed, Ladoux was subject to extensive investigation but was never put on trial, and after his release continued to serve in the French army after the war. It is therefore unlikely that he was a spy. Nonetheless, a cloud has hung over him ever since.

The investigations into Ladoux and Lenoir are still sealed, over a hundred years after the event, while Mata Hari’s file is now open, giving rise to a lot of speculation... but the truth may never be known.  

About Enemies and Allies:

November 1916:  The war of attrition is taking its toll on the Allied powers and cracks are starting to appear.

Captain ‘Blinker’ Hall, Head of Naval Intelligence, must strive to keep the alliance with France alive - and use all his guile to bring the Americans into the war.  Johnny Swift, a reckless former diplomat turned soldier, is convalescing in London, working for Naval Intelligence. Hall knows how to use Swift’s talents for duplicity to their fullest and sends him to Paris to flush out a traitor undermining the French war effort.

Room 40, the Royal Navy’s code breaking unit, deciphers a telegram that presents Hall with a dilemma. Its use could recruit America to their cause - but also give away the secret that the codes have been broken and cost Britain the war. Swift takes up his role in Paris and is soon caught in a web of intrigue involving Mata Hari, the Dreyfus Affair, and the catastrophe of the Nivelle Offensive.

The fate of the conflict rests on a knife edge. The traitor still lurks in the shadows of Paris’s Art Nouveau grandeur, and Swift must locate him before he can betray the Allied cause.

Biography:

Writing historical fiction combines the first great love of Alan Bardos’s life, making up stories, with the second, researching historical events and characters. He currently lives in Oxfordshire with his wife… the other great love of his life.

There is still a great deal of mystery and debate surrounding many of the events of the First World War, which he explores in his historical fiction series through the eyes of Johnny Swift, a disgraced and degenerate diplomat and soldier.

The series starts with the pivotal event of the twentieth century: the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The second book, The Dardanelles Conspiracy, is based on an attempt by Naval Intelligence to bribe Turkey out of the First World War. In the third book Johnny will be employed as a useful idiot to flush out a traitor working to undermine the Allies.

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Review of The Last White Rose: A Novel of Elizabeth of York, by Alison Weir

Following her successful Six Tudor Queens series, Weir moves back one generation with this comprehensive fictional take on Henry VIII’s mother, Elizabeth of York.

The adored eldest daughter of Edward IV during the tumultuous Wars of the Roses, Elizabeth spends part of her childhood in sanctuary with her mother and siblings. The early sections move slowly, with outside events mostly recounted to her.

However, her personality blossoms over time, and Weir provides a realistic feel for the worry Elizabeth’s family experiences as their fortunes shift, especially after Richard III usurps the throne following King Edward’s death and her brothers disappear while in his custody. The story gives a coherent, convincing picture of the treacherous political climate’s many players, showing why Elizabeth plots to marry Henry Tudor.

Weir doesn’t anachronistically superimpose a feminist viewpoint on Elizabeth, who knows her value yet prefers being a supportive wife and mother, but her female characters are overly prone to weeping. Weir’s thorough approach to her subject is impressive, as is the sumptuously recreated atmosphere of late-medieval royal life.

The Last White Rose was published by Ballantine this week.  In the UK, the publisher is Headline Review, where the title is Elizabeth of York: The Last White Rose (the title and subtitle are switched).  I wrote this review for Booklist's May 1st issue.

Some additional comments:

- The novel is 544pp long and about evenly divided between Elizabeth's childhood/adolescence and her marital life. The story gives a realistic sense of the political scene from a child's perspective, but it does mean that Elizabeth isn't an active participant in events until a good ways in. Some readers will appreciate the evenly-paced comprehensiveness; others may feel the beginning sections could have been pruned.

- This novel is first in a projected trilogy of novels: first Elizabeth of York, then Henry VIII (whose wives we've already gotten to meet in Weir's previous series), then Mary Tudor.  Three generations, in other words.

- If you've read Philippa Gregory's The White Princess, also about Elizabeth of York, this story is quite different, especially regarding Elizabeth's feelings toward her uncle, Richard III, and her eventual husband, Henry Tudor (the future Henry VII).  I prefer Weir's version.

Research in the Digital Age is Sometimes Analog, an essay by Connie Hertzberg Mayo

Historical novelist Connie Hertzberg Mayo, the author of The Sharp Edge of Mercy, is here today with an essay about her research methods, which reminds us of the importance of visiting physical archives for relevant source material.

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Research in the Digital Age is Sometimes Analog

Connie Hertzberg Mayo

During the long car ride from Massachusetts to Philadelphia to drop off our oldest at college, I unearthed a tiny notebook that been bouncing around in my purse for years, and I wrote down a writing schedule. I had been putting off the commitment to writing my second novel until our nest became a little emptier, and even though I knew I wouldn’t religiously stick to any schedule, this helped me draw a line between I’m-not-writing and I’m-writing.

But a big part of writing historical fiction isn’t writing at all. Any good historical novel is backed up by a truckload of research. Wise novelists know to be very judicious in deciding what ends up in the book – the right answer is: a small fraction of all you’ve learned – but all of that “unused” research is, in a way, used. It’s as if you drink in all that detail and then let a small amount of it seep through your pores.

So if you need to do extensive research while you happen to have a job and a family, the internet becomes your best friend. I learned this while writing my first book, The Island of Worthy Boys, when I discovered that The Beacon, the monthly newsletter written by the boys at the Boston Farm School, had been digitally scanned by some persistent soul at the UMass archives. Hundreds of issues, each several pages, were available dating from 1890, just a year after the time period of my book. I spent hours reading about the daily lives of the boys I wanted to write about – their job polishing lamp chimneys, their pet parrot and goat, their copious time spent in chapel.

After we arrived home from Philadelphia, I therefore fired up my laptop to start research for The Sharp Edge of Mercy, which is set at the New York Cancer Hospital in 1890. And I found… less than I had expected. Looking back, I can see that my expectations had been built on The Beacon, but the counterpart at this hospital was a series of dry annual reports. They dutifully reported how many beds were filled, even how many of which type of cancers were treated, but where were the details about the daily lives of the nurses? What did the patients eat? What was the building like? Who did the laundry?

I realized I had to go to the physical archives to see if there was anything I could use that had not been hoisted onto the internet. Given that the hospital was in Manhattan and had evolved into Sloan Kettering when it moved from Central Park West to the East Side, I assumed I would be taking a trip to somewhere in New York City. But much to my surprise, I discovered that what I needed was housed at the Rockefeller Archive Center in Sleepy Hollow, NY – the town where I went to high school! I took this weird coincidence as a sign from the universe confirming that this was the book for me to write.

author Connie Mayo
(credit: Sivan Lahav)

At the archives, I found two things that were instrumental in writing the book. The first was a set of blueprints of all the hospital floors. I could see the dining room, the parlor, the wards. I started to walk through the hospital in my mind. And on the bottom floor was a room labeled "Crematorium," which was not something they advertised in the annual reports. I knew immediately that my story would include the crematorium, even though there was no information about how it was used – that would have to come from my imagination (and a whole separate line of research about cremation in 1890).

The other thing I found that was tremendously useful was surgical notes. Captured on microfiche, the typed words on yellowed pages were a window into the state of surgery at the time. Never would I have imagined that whiskey would have been administered with a hypodermic needle when a patient was fading on the operating table, but there it was in black and white (well, black and yellow). Half of surgeries seemed to be about removing infected tissue from a prior surgery. There was certainly awareness that infection was as fierce an enemy as cancer, but not much ability to control it.

All this is not to say that the first book was produced only with digital research and the second with analog. Surfing for pictures of nurses uniforms and caps worn at the turn of the century, for example, was easy enough to do from the comfort of my desk chair. But it’s also true that if you want to find every gem of information, there is still no substitute for showing up in person.

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Connie Hertzberg Mayo grew up in Westchester County, New York, but moved to Massachusetts to get a Literature degree from Tufts University and never ended up leaving. Her first book, The Island of Worthy Boys (She Writes Press, 2015) won the 2016 Gold Medal for Best Regional Fiction in the Independent Publisher Book Awards. Connie’s short story, “Little Breaks”, was published by Calyx Journal in 2017. Her latest novel, The Sharp Edge of Mercy, is published by Heliotrope Books in May 2022. Connie works as a Systems Analyst and empty-nests with her husband and two feuding cats. Visit her website at https://conniemayo.com.

Donna Everhart's The Saints of Swallow Hill, an engrossing tale of the Depression-era South

This novel is a terrific find—an engrossing example of Southern historical fiction that’s full of gritty realism, heart, and hope. Everhart introduces readers to the rarely-encountered setting of the pine forests near Valdosta, Georgia during the Depression, in the company of three people seeking a way out of their troubles.

Del Reese, a traveling farmhand who’s good-looking and knows it, juggles affairs with three married women until one farmer catches him with his wife and takes revenge. Rae Lynn Cobb has been happy with her older husband, Warren, with whom she runs a small North Carolina turpentine farm, until Warren’s clumsiness and stubbornness lead to a terrible accident and a moral dilemma. Both she and Del are drawn separately to the large Swallow Hill turpentine camp down in southern Georgia, where longleaf pines are tapped for their gum.

Their presence arouses curiosity. The woods rider supervising the camp, a cruel fellow named Crow, enforces the color line and disapproves of Del taking on work designated for Black men. Having disguised herself as a young man called Ray, Rae Lynn can’t keep up with the others and has trouble making quota; that and her scrappy attitude get her in hot water. (She makes a puzzling mistake in using the call name “Tar Heel” for her work while wanting to conceal her origins.) Then there’s Cornelia, the local commissary’s abused wife. It’s clear she needs rescuing.

The three characters elicit sympathy with their yearnings for something more; Swallow Hill is a nasty place run by mostly nasty people, though the villains aren’t stereotyped. With the intense summer heat, the rich scent of evergreens, and the hum of cicadas filling the air, the atmosphere rises off the page, and the folksy Southern-accented dialogue invites the reader in.

The Saints of Swallow Hill was published by Kensington in January, and I'd reviewed it for the Historical Novels Review's May issue. Donna Everhart has written many other Southern historical novels which I'm now determined to read.