D is for Damask

I'm getting my "D" entry for Historical Tapestry's alphabet challenge in at the tail end of the posting period. The past two weeks at work have been crazy! Even though it seems I was just in Tudor England with my review of S. J. Parris's Heresy, I'm coming back to it with Philippa Carr's The Miracle at St. Bruno's -- not because of the time period it covers, really, but because it's the first book in one of my favorite historical fiction series.

The Daughters of England books, nineteen in all, trace the history of one fictional English family down through the female line, from the year 1522 to the World War II years. They are both historical gothic novels and family sagas; each book centers on a woman whose family gets caught up in the tumultuous historical events of her time. Most take place in England specifically, though some of the later books cross the Channel to France.

These books saw me through high school and college and after. The cover at left is taken from my 1978 Popular Library paperback, which I got used from a local paperback exchange. Apparently I wrote my name in books back then. After I took it off my bookshelf last week to summarize it and write this post, I opened the cover and saw my signature on the first page in a childish hand, dated 3-12-84.

Damask Farland, born in 1523, is the long-awaited child of a prosperous London lawyer whose lands adjoin those of St. Bruno's Abbey. Damask is raised in a loving household, cherished by her parents and her saucy but devoted nurse, Keziah. A year before her birth, the abbey next door had experienced a miracle: a newborn boy had been found in its Christmas crib on Christmas Day. Taken in and raised by the monks, the child named Bruno grows up fully cognizant of his special status. And as news about the miracle at St. Bruno's travels far and wide, the formerly declining abbey attracts numerous pilgrims, gifts, and bequests which make it one of the wealthiest in the south of England.

This is a time of political and religious turmoil, however, and the changing fortunes of Damask and her family closely intertwine with Henry VIII's break with Rome and the dissolution of the monasteries. She and her cousin Kate become rivals for Bruno, who has turned into a haughty but charismatic young man. When the mystery at the heart of the abbey's miracle eventually comes to light, it has an immediate effect not just on Bruno himself but on everyone surrounding him.

The Miracle at St. Bruno's is an involving tale recommended to anyone who likes reading about the impact of major historical events on average citizens, and those who appreciate a nice balance of domestic atmosphere and accurately rendered historical intrigue. The Philippa Carr books never seemed to have as many readers as those of the author's Jean Plaidy or Victoria Holt novels; the cover of this one shows this clearly! Unlike the others, they haven't been reprinted since their original publication. They don't contain the sweeping gothic romance of the Holt books or the close-up glimpses of royalty as most of the Plaidy novels do. I think this is my favorite of all of her series, though, because of their emphasis on common people's experiences, particularly women's lives, and how they and their country are transformed over a period of five centuries. The Jean Plaidy Page has detailed summaries of each of the books (the uninitiated should be on guard for spoilers, though) as well as a family tree. The last book she wrote under the Carr name, Daughters of England, is actually unrelated to the rest of the series.

About the reusable cover art gallery...

Hi. Just a brief note to all the new visitors (welcome!) who arrived at Reading the Past courtesy of my reusable cover art gallery, which is hosted at another domain. Due to the extraordinary amount of traffic the site's been receiving today (which is affecting server performance), the web hosting provider there has broken the gallery up into several different pages, which still show only a fraction of the covers I had originally posted. We hope to have the complete site, with its full range of images, back up and available shortly for everyone's viewing pleasure. Apologies for the inconvenience!

Update: All fixed and moved over to a new domain. Thanks for your patience, and thanks to the Very Short List for featuring the site today!

A look at Maryse Condé, Victoire: My Mother's Mother

When I was in undergrad, one of my favorite courses in my major dealt with Francophone literature. It was taught by the department chair, a Frenchwoman born in Algeria. The class opened up a new world of reading for me, to see how different peoples around the globe transformed the same written language to fit the patterns and perspectives of their culture, and how they created a unique literature using the tongue of their land's former colonizers.

Our class read widely, but of course it was impossible to cover everything. Although I'd known about the work of Maryse Condé before now, particularly her novel of the Salem witch trials (I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem), I approached her latest novel as a brand new reader. I discovered mention of Victoire: My Mother's Mother while browsing through Atria's spring catalog a while back and ordered it via Amazon last week, as soon as it went on sale.

As Condé writes in her first sentence, she never knew her maternal grandmother, who died long before she was born. In an attempt to uncover the essence of her life and personality, the author conducted extensive research, visiting relevant sites and interviewing those who remembered her. Victoire is an unusual sort of book for those used to a more standard form of historical novel. It tells the story of the title character from birth through death, and alongside this tale, Condé's own research journey unfolds. These first-person digressions meld nicely into the fictional framework, enhancing the overall experience and revealing its importance to both the teller and the reader.

Victoire Elodie Quidal is born in the 1870s on the island of Marie-Galante, part of the archipelago of Guadeloupe in the West Indies. Her fourteen-year-old mother dies in childbirth; her father, an unknown white man, could have been a soldier and maybe never knew of her existence. Victoire's life is complicated by her poverty, illiteracy, and a skin tone of "Australian whiteness" in an extremely color-conscious land that finds uneducated "mulattos" a perplexing embarrassment.

To the author, one of the most puzzling parts of Victoire's life was her decision to leave her mother's family and go into service, working as a cook for a family of white Creoles. Blending known family history, discovered facts, and imaginative insight into Victoire's actions and choices, Condé pieces together the biography of a proud, enigmatic woman torn between many different obligations. She concludes that Victoire found an outlet for her creative spirit through her delicious culinary creations (the menus she prepares are mouth-watering!), just as her granddaughter does through her writing.

I haven't read the French version, though can easily see how translating such a book would be a challenging exercise. Condé's style is very readable and direct, yet poetic in places, and spiced throughout with words and songs from the Creole patois her heroine spoke. (Victoire's inability to speak French was another source of embarrassment to her daughter, a highly educated black militant who married one of Guadeloupe's Grands Nègres -- a member of the rising black bourgeoisie.) Communicating all the nuances of a multilingual culture into English adds another layer of complexity, but the result felt very natural to my ear. I phrase it this way because you can easily imagine the novel read aloud, a fascinating story told by a fluent storyteller. And although this is a very personal family story, the approach is honest and unsentimental, not hesitating to affix blame and responsibility in Condé's search for the truth.

One of the reasons I enjoy historical fiction is its ability to situate me in a distant time and place. Even though late 19th/early 20th-century Guadeloupe isn't as geographically distant as some other places commonly encountered in novels, its history and culture will be unfamiliar to many. The book is deceptively slim, rich in content and emotion for its barely 200 pages.

Well, I sat down to write a short piece about the novel and see many paragraphs have passed, as usual, so I'll stop here! I highly recommend it, though, for any readers interested in Caribbean culture, mother-daughter relationships, or simply something different than the usual offerings in the genre.

Victoire: My Mother's Mother was published by Atria International (an imprint of Simon & Schuster) in January at $19.99/$27.00 Canadian. You can get it on Amazon for $13ish, the same price as a trade paperback. The expert translation is by the author's longtime English translator and husband, Richard Philcox.

Bits and pieces

Thanks to the chocolate cake I had last night at 8pm, I'm up bright and early this Sunday morning, though am anything but awake. (Sugar doesn't keep me up, but I guess it had more caffeine than I thought.) As I type this, the kittens are attacking a bowl of fake fruit and playing hockey with the apples and raspberries on the kitchen linoleum. It's kind of loud.

The winner of the 2009 Langum Prize for American Historical Fiction is Edward Rutherfurd's New York: The Novel, out from Doubleday in November 2009. The prize is presented annually to "the best book in American historical fiction that is both excellent fiction and excellent history." Details and submission guidelines for the 2010 award are available at the website for the Langum Charitable Trust, as are justifications for the 2009 award. Recent past winners include Kathleen Kent's The Heretic's Daughter and Kurt Andersen's Heyday.

Director's Mentions for 2009 went to Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman for In the Lion’s Den: A Novel of the Civil War (iUniverse) and Jamie Ford's On the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (Ballantine).

This week I signed up for the first Book Blogger Convention, to be held in NYC on Friday, May 28th. It promises to be lots of fun, not to mention educational, and I'm looking forward to meeting many of my fellow book bloggers there. I'll be heading to BEA as well.

Lauren Willig is co-teaching a course on reading the historical romance novel at Yale, as part of their College Seminar Program.

Britain's Daily Mail spotlights three historical novels.

Beth Powning's The Sea Captain's Wife, a woman's seafaring adventure story set in 1860s New Brunswick, is reviewed by the Telegraph-Journal and the National Post. It's published by Knopf Canada.

In reviewing Elizabeth Kostova's The Swan Thieves for the Globe & Mail, Kate Taylor gives direction on mixing the contemporary and historical.

Bernard Cornwell's latest Saxon saga, The Burning Land, gets full treatment in the Wall Street Journal, which calls him "the most prolific and successful historical novelist in the world today."

The Chicago Sun-Times interviews Melanie Benjamin about Alice I Have Been.

Thanks to Google Alerts, I learned that my first historical fiction guide has been written up by the Ann Arbor District Library, which calls it a "primo reference." I'm so pleased to hear that it's being used. I went to library school at the U of M and spent countless hours at this library -- researching job leads, combing the stacks for good books, and haunting their excellent book sale room.

Some recent publishing deals below. I highly recommend a subscription to Publishers Marketplace to anyone wanting a feel for which agents are selling which types of books to which publishers. I'm posting just a fraction of the historical novel deals included there.

Michelle Diener's ILLUMINATIONS, in which an artist arrives at the court of Henry VIII, not realizing she possesses a deadly secret; together with Henry's most lethal courtier, she races to foil the murderous plot against the throne, and BRILLIANCE, in which John and Susanna seek to recover the Mirror of Naples, part of the French crown jewels, to Micki Nuding at Gallery, for publication in 2011, by Marlene Stringer at the Stringer Literary Agency (World). [Gallery is a new Simon & Schuster imprint, debuting with its first list in 2010.]

Diana Gabaldon's OUTLANDER VIII, the eighth volume in the bestselling family saga, to Nita Taublib at Delacorte Press, in a major deal, for publication in Fall 2013, by Russell Galen at Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency (US). ["major deal" = high six figures]

THE GOLDEN MEAN author Annabel Lyon's THE SWEET GIRL, the story of Aristotle's daughter Pythias' fierce resistance to his attempt at the end of his life to arrange her marriage before he died, to Anne Collins of Random House Canada, for publication in 2013, by Denise Bukowski of The Bukowski Agency. [The Golden Mean, a fictional narrative about Aristotle, won Canada's Writer's Trust award this year. US rights for Mean went to Knopf, pub date to be announced.]

TEARS OF PEARL and upcoming DANGEROUS TO KNOW author Tasha Alexander's next two novels, featuring Lady Emily Hargreaves and her husband Colin, whose adventures take them to glamorous and exotic locales in the service of Queen Victoria's government, to Andrew Martin and Charles Spicer at Minotaur, by Anne Hawkins at John Hawkins & Associates (world).

Somerset Maugham Prize, the Betty Trask Award, the Geoffrey Faber Prize winner Justin Hill's THE CONQUEST series, a breathtaking evocation of feudal England, to Richard Beswick at Abacus, in a very nice deal, in a two-book deal, for publication in 2011 and 2012, by Charlie Viney at The Viney Agency. [The Maugham Prize was won for Passing Under Heaven, set during the last years of the Tang Dynasty. Details at the author's site]

A visual preview of the spring season, part three

We're already into the spring season, but I see from the poll results (left-hand sidebar) that forthcoming book previews are what you'd like to see the most. These 15 historical novels will be published between now and the end of May, and since I'm posting the info so late, you'll only have to wait a few months, at most, before you can get your hands on them.


If any author can bring the historical Western back into fashion, Dan Simmons can. I've yet to read any of his historicals, but I was an avid SF reader way back when. His Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion (it's impossible to read the first without the second) are amazing, and Song of Kali is both powerful and chilling. Black Hills, his newest epic, interweaves the stories of Sioux warrior Paha Sapa and General Custer with a thread of the supernatural. And what an awesome cover. Reagan Arthur/Little Brown US, February; Quercus UK, April.



A re-interpretation of the life of the notorious Catherine de Medici, Queen of France, told in her own intimate voice. I have an ARC in hand and plan to get to it as soon as possible; I'll be posting an interview with the author (my good friend Christopher Gortner of Historical Boys) around the publication date. Ballantine, May 25; also Hodder & Stoughton, May 27.



In Scotland in 1692, just after the horrific Massacre at Glencoe, a woman named Corrag is condemned for her involvement and accused of witchcraft and murder. As she lives out her final days in prison, an Irish Jacobite comes to interview her, resulting in the blossoming of a surprising friendship. Fourth Estate, March.


A war-torn romantic epic set in Japan of 1868, following the defeat of the last Shogun. It takes place in the Yoshiwara, the famous pleasure quarter of Tokyo. I haven't yet read her earlier novel The Last Concubine though it's sitting on the bookshelf next to me; can anyone report back on it? Bantam UK, April.



Mary Sharratt always lyrically brings to life the hidden stories and underlying strengths of historical women. Her latest novel delves into the truth about the notorious Pendle witches, centering on a family of cunning women accused of witchcraft in early 17th-century Lancashire. I read an ARC over the holiday break, and it was excellent. I'll be conducting an interview with Mary later this spring. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, April.



In a departure from her Lady Julia Grey series of whimsical and adventurous Victorian mysteries, Raybourn follows her new heroine, young Scottish novelist Theodora Lestrange, to faraway Transylvania in 1858 (cue creepy music). An ARC is reportedly on the way. MIRA, March.


The story of Mahelt, strong-willed eldest daughter of William Marshal, caught in a heartbreaking battle when King John sets out to subdue her father-in-law's family. Check out the front and back covers on the author's website; I like the dark, dramatic look as well as the font used (I'm a sucker for historical fonts). Sphere, May.


So many great-sounding historical novels are coming out next month, and my TBR can't keep up with them all. (I really should be reading instead of blogging. And I really should be reading instead of watching The Bachelor as I type this.) After seeing the description of this one, and seeing the starred review in PW, I nonetheless asked my Historical Novels Review co-editor Ellen if she could request a copy for review for me. I'll have to fit it into my schedule somewhere. It's a religious-themed historical mystery set in Prague's Jewish ghetto in 1592. Morrow, Jan. 26.


I visited the Alcott family home, Orchard House, several times while growing up and remember it well, and of course, I was a fan of Little Women. It's not surprising that so many readers want to know more about its creator. The recent biography and documentary have both spurred greater interest in the life of this enigmatic woman, and in her debut novel, Chicago writer McNees imagines a New Hampshire summer that changes the life and outlook of 22-year-old Louisa. Putnam/Amy Einhorn, April.


There are two novels here which I noted back when their publishing deal was arranged; this is one of them. As Publishers Marketplace noted (in a lengthier excerpt) in March 2009: Set in the mid-19th century, My Name is Mary Sutter follows a remarkable young midwife from Albany, New York whose hope of becoming a surgeon far exceeds what her family, physicians, and medical schools of her time are willing to accept, prompting her to travel to Washington, DC to work in the Civil War hospitals. Viking, May.



A debut historical mystery set in late 18th-century Ireland, featuring rebellious English governess Mary Wollstonecraft as protagonist. I hadn't been familiar with Wollstonecraft's time in Ireland before reading this novel's premise and am looking forward to reading more. Nancy Means Wright will be guest blogging in mid-March about her heroine. Perseverance Press, April.



India-born novelist Sundaresan's fourth epic, next in a series following The Feast of Roses, will bring to light the story of two Mughal princesses, Jahanara and Roshanara, fighting for power and respect in 17th-century India's royal court. If you've read John Shors's Beneath a Marble Sky, you'll probably want to read this new take on Jahanara's story as well. Atria, March.



Many of us have been reading about The Stolen Crown's journey from idea to manuscript to publication via Susan's blog. A novel of the Wars of the Roses, it will follow how Katherine Woodville's life transforms after her older sister, Elizabeth, secretly marries Edward IV of England. I don't expect to see any spell-casting (or much of Melusine) in this one. Sourcebooks, March.


Tiger Hills made a splash in the publishing world when it reportedly received the largest advance Penguin India ever paid for a debut novel (seven figures), so expectations are high. It's being described as a cross between an Indian Thorn Birds and Gone With the Wind, a multi-generational epic set on an Indian coffee plantation between 1878 and World War II. Mandanna, born in India, is an equity professional based in New York. Grand Central purchased US rights for publication in 2011, and the UK edition will be out this April 29th from Weidenfeld & Nicolson.


When I posted about this deal in April '08, I mentioned it would be on my TBR as soon as it appeared. I didn't have to wait that long, though. I was pleased to be offered a manuscript copy last fall and enjoyed it immensely. Watermark centers on a mute young woman's journey to discover her literary voice, pulling readers into a corner of the Middle Ages not often seen: 14th-century Narbonne, a city where fear and suspicion mingle with memories of southern France's troubadour past. Avon A, April.

Review of Heresy, by S. J. Parris

This review is going up pre-publication, thanks to an ARC received from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. Got it in the mail on Friday, read it over the weekend, wrote the review this morning. This is unusually speedy since I have a pile of additional February books yet to review - watch this space for more!

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The year is 1583, and tensions are simmering within Elizabeth's glorious realm. While the queen claims not to want a window into people's souls, her spymaster, Francis Walsingham, furtively roots out Catholic conspirators who might seek to put Mary Queen of Scots on the throne. Such is the setting for this engaging and aptly-titled historical thriller, and Giordano Bruno proves an inspired choice for protagonist. An excommunicate former monk forced to flee the Inquisition in Italy for his heretical beliefs in heliocentrism – the earth orbiting the sun, rather than the other way around – he is the ultimate outsider, a man who works toward religious tolerance and scientific breakthroughs in a world that gives mere lip service to both.

As the novel gets underway, Bruno is accompanying his good friend, Sir Philip Sidney, and a visiting Polish dignitary on the royal court's visitation to Oxford. He has three separate missions, each more veiled than the other: participate in a debate on Copernican theory with Doctor John Underhill, rector at Oxford's Lincoln College; investigate Catholic conspiracies on Walsingham's behalf; and follow the trail of a forbidden Hermetic text with dangerous repercussions for Christianity. As if the latter two don't involve enough personal risk, Bruno gets unexpectedly swept into a murder investigation when one of the university fellows is found brutally killed. It soon becomes clear that the motive is something other than academic rivalry turned deadly. Signs hint at the dead man's connection to matters much more secretive. When the killer strikes again, Doctor Underhill grows increasingly worried about bad publicity and possible loss of funding; these concern him much more than his beautiful, troubled daughter. Bruno agrees to look into the murders officially on his behalf. As he proceeds, he comes to understand the many different meanings and levels of heresy.

Parris (pseudonym for British journalist Stephanie Merritt) does a splendid job illustrating the strong undercurrents of religious strife in late 16th-century England, a land still reeling from the multiple changes in official religion over the previous half-century. Bruno speaks modern English like a native – no twisy-twasery here – and approaches his investigations with determination, Italian self-confidence, and old-fashioned common sense. His sharp, occasionally cheeky narration brightens the otherwise somber atmosphere (not every historical novel begins in a privy!). As the scenes switch between the College's ornate stone buildings and the dimly lit tap-rooms of Oxford proper, Parris gives a detailed and panoramic look at a 16th-century university city and an unusual form of town-gown relations. Her complex, tightly constructed plotline provides ample suspense and multiple surprises, and the wrenching finale suits the uneasy tenor of the times.

With its convincingly dark Tudor setting and themes of political conspiracies and religious repression, there are obvious comparisons to be made to C.J. Sansom's Shardlake novels, set during Henry VIII's reign. Fans of the latter should appreciate Parris's debut. Bruno's perspective allows for an intriguing look at religion and science in the Elizabethan era, though unlike Shardlake, his manner is hardly curmudgeonly. Part of the way the solution unravels is a bit too simplistic, though that’s a very minor issue. For those who know their history (or wish to google it), familiarity with Bruno's eventual fate adds additional meaning and pathos to the tone of this thoroughly entertaining novel.

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S.J. Parris's Heresy will be published on February 23, 2010 by Doubleday at $25.95 (hardcover, 355pp). It will also appear from HarperCollins UK on 4th March at £12.99.

Late notice: Alison McLeay, 1949-1998

Back in 2006, as part of a meme that was going through the HF blogosphere, I posted short reviews of five of my favorite historical novels. Only I cheated and listed six just so I could include two novels by Alison McLeay: Passage Home (UK title The Wayward Tide) and Sea Change (Sweet Exile). She wrote five historical novels in all; the last one, The Summer House, was published in 1997. I always wondered why she hadn't written any others. Every so often I'd check WorldCat and search through Amazon and Google, but I never found anything more about her or her books.

Then this weekend I was going through my blog statistics and saw that someone had come across my blog while searching for McLeay's obituary. Not a good sign. After doing some investigating via Google and then in my library's LexisNexis database, I was able to confirm that she had, in fact, died... back in March 1998, the same month that the paperback of her final novel was scheduled to be published. Per her obituary in The Scotsman, she was only 48 and left behind her husband and a 12-year-old son.

To quote a brief excerpt:

It was not until the publication of her first novel, The Wayward Tide, in 1990, that McLeay became a formidable player in the literary market for historical romance ... The book became an instant best-seller, and was labelled "the most stunning fiction debut in years" by Publishers Weekly in America, where the first print run reached an astonishing 100,000 copies. The Wayward Tide was published in ten different languages. The sea, travel and the lure of distant lands played a central role in her tales of love and life.

Despite the journalist's words, her novels aren't romances by the usual definition, so if you expect a standard romance plotline -- like one PaperbackSwap reviewer did -- you may be quite surprised by all of the twists and turns it takes.

It's sad that her life was cut so tragically short. By the time I first discovered and devoured all five of her novels, she had already passed away. Has anyone else read her work? If not, and if you enjoy reading detailed romantic epics that sweep you away to another place and time, consider giving them a try. All are out of print but available used on Amazon and PaperbackSwap.

An updated blog

Inspired by all of the book bloggers who are updating their sites for Bloggiesta, I decided I'd finally get with the program and update my blog to layout format. I'm still working on it, but the process was a lot easier than I thought.

As a result, there are some new features in the left-hand toolbar, including a followers list and a new poll. Please fill it out and let me know what you think! You can choose multiple answers.

It was -2 degrees F when I woke up this morning. It's a good day to stay inside and read. Yesterday I finished Stefanie Pintoff's In the Shadow of Gotham, an excellent debut mystery set in New York City and environs in 1905, as criminology was rising in importance as an academic discipline. My current read is S.J. Parris's Heresy, which I got from a LibraryThing Early Reviewers giveaway. Most of the ARCs I've accumulated over the past few months are for February books, so you can expect to see reviews of Heresy as well as several others posted here soon.

In which I make up for not being an English major

This wasn't an official New Year's resolution, but I recently made the decision to incorporate more classical literature into my reading repertoire. I've felt for a while that I ought to make up for not having read so many classic novels in school, like so many others have done. I've been so occupied with review assignments over the past decade, also, that I haven't had time to read too much else.

I didn't particularly enjoy most of the novels I read during high school. All Quiet on the Western Front, for example, grossed me out and put me off war novels for years. I remember liking Scarlet Letter and To Kill a Mockingbird, but the fact that they were short probably had something to do with it. (Short stories held my interest the most.) I was an excellent student but didn't have a good appreciation for literature then. The read-three-chapters-and-answer-these-questions format didn't suit me. Also, I didn't take a single English lit course in college since my schedule didn't allow much time for electives. I left with a degree in French, but it meant that my education in my native language's classic novels was sorely neglected.

For some odd reason -- maybe because its quiet, rural setting appealed to me during the hectic holiday season -- I recently got the urge to read a Thomas Hardy novel. On our route back home, I picked up The Return of the Native at Half Price Books, began reading it on New Year's Day, and finished it tonight. It won't be my last. I found the story beautifully written and well-characterized; serious and tragic, yet romantic and gently humorous in places; and wordy and descriptive without being dense. It was also a brilliant portrait of social mores in rural Victorian England. (The characters have servants, but they're nearly invisible.) Thanks to PaperbackSwap, I have copies of Jude the Obscure and Tess of the D'Urbervilles on their way to me, as well as some other classics I haven't yet read but always meant to (The Moonstone, The House of Mirth). I'm avoiding detailed plot summaries, although I can guess the ending of some of them.

Right from the beginning (I'm getting back to the usual subject for this blog), it struck me as amusing how the novel's style broke so many of the rules to which historical novelists today are told to adhere. Namely:

- We begin not with an attention-grabbing moment, but with a four-page description of the bucolic wildness of Egdon Heath.

- Hardy sometimes tells rather than shows.

- He interrupts the storyline with lengthy historical digressions that explain concepts relating to the land and its inhabitants. Some might call them infodumps. I call them informative.

- It more than dwells on descriptive minutiae; it positively revels in them. If you ever wanted to know what it's like to cut furze for a living, or learn what furze is for that matter, this is a great place to start.

- There's some fairly obvious foreshadowing.

- There are many instances of passive voice, as well as some footnotes. I especially enjoyed the one where he apologized for changing the ending to suit public tastes.

Times change, and literature changes with them; we all know this, and that's not my point. However, despite all of the aforementioned issues (many of which are hallmarks of the Victorian novel, after all), the writing never bogs down. And despite the wordy, leisurely style, I never found it repetitive, and all of the asides, interruptions, and classical references served to enhance the plotline and characterizations. It worked for me, and I'd gladly read another like it.

A look at Jane Borodale's The Book of Fires

I turned the final page of this excellent debut novel just after midnight last night. How appropriate to start off the New Year with historical fiction about fireworks!

Set in 1752-53, The Book of Fires recounts the coming of age of Agnes Trussel, a seventeen-year-old peasant girl from a village at the foot of the Sussex Downs. Following an attack by a would-be suitor that leaves her pregnant, she makes up her mind to flee. Marriage to him would be stifling and unpleasant, and she can't risk bringing shame upon her family when food is already short and they risk eviction if they land they live on is enclosed. After stumbling upon the dead body of an elderly neighbor, Agnes snatches the jar of gold coins at her feet and slips away on the morning carrier to London.

More innocent than not, despite her condition, Agnes doesn't realize how fortunate she is to lose the address given to her by an elegantly dressed woman on her journey. Instead, she is unexpectedly hired by John Blacklock, a brooding widower who's a master of pyrotechny. As his assistant, Agnes learns the process of building many types of artificial fireworks. She also comes to understand the scientific principles behind them and, more importantly, the value her new profession holds for its customers and creators.

With her innate curiosity and enthusiasm, Blacklock finds in Agnes a kindred spirit. When they discuss the possibility of developing fireworks in brilliant color, their joint excitement is palpable. However, her pregnancy can't be hidden forever. As the months pass, the tension heightens, and the household's maidservants eye her with increasing suspicion. Agnes lives in fear of the day she's found out; she also worries about her fate if her initial thievery is discovered.

Borodale evokes a distant world where petty crimes received harsh punishments and the fortunes of women depended on what they were granted by chance or by men. The descriptive language, full of rich 18th-century vocabulary, involves all of the senses. It's possible to smell the pungent scent of gunpowder, feel the slimy sensation of rubbing salt into cold ham, and hear the tolling of the bell as it announces each hanging at Tyburn. Agnes is a strong character, yet her country-bred naivete makes her appealingly vulnerable. Her growing relationship with Blacklock, rewarding yet perplexing to them both, is portrayed with realism and sensitivity. And as with any dazzling fireworks display, the book ends in a truly spectacular finale. It's a novel about the love of learning, the transformative power of fire, and the discovery of unexpected wonders.

Jane Borodale's The Book of Fires was published in May 2009 by HarperPress UK at £12.99; it will appear from Pamela Dorman/Viking US on January 21st at $26.95 ($33.50 Canadian).

Last post of 2009!

We'll return to our regular historical fiction coverage shortly, but these guys wanted their moment in the spotlight.

In the meanwhile, if you're curious about my top 5 picks for 2009, you can find them at The Readers' Advisor Online. We plan to spend tonight going out for Thai, relaxing by the fire, and watching Memoirs of a Geisha from Netflix.

From our house to yours (and from our cats old and new), here's hoping 2010 brings you plenty of great reading!

Abby, new kitten #1, aka "little gray"


Callie, the heat-seeker, in one of the few moments she's not on my husband's lap


Max and Tortie, the original brother and sister, in their favorite spot. Poor Max is still recovering from knee surgery.


"Mad" Mary, former stray, mother of the two little ones. Great expression of boredom/disgust. The neighbors named her.

Meanie, resident porch cat, who has that name for a reason

Oliver, new kitten #2, aka "little yellow"

C is for Catherine

This is my third entry for the Alphabet in Historical Fiction Challenge sponsored by Historical Tapestry. My general theme for this challenge is "backlist books you haven't read, but should!"

Catherine Cookson's own life has fascinated readers nearly as much as her novels do. She grew up in poverty in Jarrow, an industrial mining town in the North-East of England, the illegitimate child of an alcoholic mother. In fact, because illegitimacy was so frowned upon in her overwhelmingly Catholic neighborhood in Tyneside, Cookson's grandmother raised her, and until she was a teenager she believed her mother, Kate Fawcett, was her older sister. Through determination, hard work, and education, she overcame her deprived background to become one of the most prolific and successful British novelists of the 20th century. By popular demand, Cookson wrote her autobiography, Our Kate, in 1969, and like her other works it became a bestseller.

In many ways, Cookson's journey fits the pattern of one of the regional sagas she is so famous for. Janet MacLeod Trotter, a saga writer from Newcastle, has successfully taken up the challenge to turn Cookson's own story into a biographical novel. It's an absorbing, smoothly written work that will leave you with admiration of how Catherine overcame a life of intense hardship to achieve her dreams.

Return to Jarrow begins in 1923, as 17-year-old Catherine "Kitty" McMullan despairs at her mother Kate's plan to marry an alcoholic sailor simply out of desire for respectability. Over the next decade and more, as she struggles to better herself, Kitty survives a number of demeaning jobs, taunts from other girls about her shameful birth, romances with the wrong men, her mother's incessant drinking, and a horrible rare blood disease, though never gives up hope that one day she'll leave the streets of Jarrow behind. Through her aunt, she discovers the identity of her birth father and takes pride in knowing he was a wealthy aristocrat. Readers of Cookson's autobiography will be familiar with this material, though Trotter also includes details that were deliberately left out, such as how the jealousy of a dangerously overprotective Irishwoman, a former close friend of hers, nearly prevented her marriage with schoolteacher Tom Cookson. And in true saga fashion, the novel ends on an optimistic note.

Return to Jarrow is third in a trilogy. The first two volumes, The Jarrow Lass and A Child of Jarrow, cover the lives of Cookson's grandmother and mother. Each can stand alone, and all are well worth reading for their eye-opening look at real working-class women's struggles in industrial England in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I've read several of Trotter's regional sagas and thorougly enjoyed them all. Her stories are compelling and heartwarming page turners, and despite the harrowing circumstances she depicts, she doesn't overdramatize. The settings feel wholly authentic, and her characters are vivid and real, with speech patterns that reflect their origins. This is a must-read for Cookson fans as well as anyone interested a well-told and compulsively readable story.

Return to Jarrow was published in 2004 by Headline at £6.99 (502pp, paperback, 0-7553-0849-2).

Review: The Night's Dark Shade, by Elena Maria Vidal

In her third work of fiction, both a richly detailed historical novel and a dark morality tale, Elena Maria Vidal takes readers deep into the heart of the 13th-century French Pyrenees – a war-torn land whose verdant mountains conceal adherents of the mysterious Cathar religion.

The year is 1227. After her father and brother are killed fighting alongside the French king against the Cathars, seventeen-year-old heiress Raphaëlle de Miramande realizes she needs a male protector. As appropriate for a woman in her position, she arranges for her betrothal to the son of her uncle, the Baron de Marcadeau. With her small party and an accompanying group of pilgrims, she makes her way from her home in Auvergne to her uncle’s chateau, taking a treacherous mountain route overrun by dispossessed Cathar noblemen turned brigands. Upon arrival, she receives a peculiar welcome, and discrepancies in the family’s behavior put her on guard. Curiously, she finds no outward trappings of Catholicism, the family doesn’t celebrate mass, and her uncle’s wife, Lady Esclarmonde, declares Raphaëlle’s brightly colored clothing too ornate to be proper.

Raphaëlle soon comes to realize that the castle is full of Cathar sympathizers, and that Esclarmonde is a Cathar Perfecta, a member of their spiritual elite. An ascetic and vegetarian who believes too many children are born in the world, Esclarmonde tells Raphaëlle to expect a celibate marriage. Seeking escape from her betrothal to a heretic, Raphaëlle writes in desperation to Sir Jacques d’Orly, an officer of the king’s seneschal who later seeks to marry Raphaëlle himself. However, Raphaëlle’s uncle and cousin refuse to give up her dowry. Raphaëlle also finds her heart torn between her loyalty to Jacques and her overwhelming love for Martin, the flirtatious Knight Hospitaller and troubadour who had brought her safely to her uncle’s chateau. Jacques offers her stability, but Martin presents a romantic image that’s difficult for her to resist.

Denounced as a heresy by the Roman church, which saw it as a major threat, Catharism was a dualistic sect believing in the purity of the spirit and the sinfulness of the material world. Raphaëlle’s travels back and forth through the Pyrenees showcase the interplay of light and shadow against the beauty of the mountains, a symbol of the theological troubles raging in the land. These lyrically written passages, a highlight of the book, will likely inspire thoughts of travel to southern France. Raphaëlle, a fervent Catholic, can’t understand how the Cathars would disdain these beautiful sights because of their earthly origins, but even she is initially taken in by the sincerity of their beliefs and their surface similarity to her own.

As Vidal notes in her introduction, in medieval times people's faith ran strong; religion wasn’t a subject of indifference. This is something that many novels about the period downplay or omit. The Night’s Dark Shade, told as it is from a devout young Catholic’s viewpoint, depicts the Cathar faith as Catholics of the time would have seen it. Several Cathar characters cross the line into madness; Esclarmonde in particular embodies everything malevolent that was believed about them. Other members of Raphaëlle’s circle make sudden emotional about-faces toward the end. More nuanced characterizations in these cases would have strengthened the storyline, but Raphaëlle’s struggles for clarity with her own faith and love life are realistically depicted and heartfelt.

Julianne Douglas has also posted a review at Writing the Renaissance.

The Night’s Dark Shade was published in November 2009 by Mayapple Press ($22.50, trade paperback, 978-0-557-15924-6). Elena Maria Vidal blogs at http://teaattrianon.blogspot.com/.

Weekend books and cats

Things have been a little quiet around here as reviews for Feb's Historical Novels Review begin to arrive. Plus I've been occupied with these little critters:




They and their mama showed up on our front doorstep on Thursday at lunchtime, when it was 20 degrees out and windy. They were shivering. I brought them all inside and put them in our spare room along with a litter box, food, and water, and they're still there. We decided we'll keep them. On the same day, a friend rescued a longhaired orange kitty and took him in, which makes four kitties saved from the cold last week. We're turning into crazy cat people, all right.

I'll have some more reviews to post soon, though this past weekend I deliberately took a break from the immediate TBR pile. We recently started a subscription to Netflix, and Memoirs of a Geisha came up as a DVD I might enjoy watching. I put it in my queue but figured I ought to read the book first. Especially considering I'd bought it from Book of the Month Club when it came out (1997) but had yet to read it. (Other books in my collection have gone unread for longer than that. I try not to think about it too much.)

I won't be doing a formal writeup here, the book's too well known for that, but I did enjoy it a lot. However, I can't say I was swept away by it. It painted a very detailed picture of life as a geisha in Kyoto's entertainment district both before and after WWII. Sayuri's first-person narrative was involving and convincing, with an appropriate amount of emotional reserve. I would have liked more detail on her life as a witty, accomplished entertainer/artist as opposed to her mizuage (sexual initiation signifying her transformation from apprentice to full-fledged geisha). I had read Liza Dalby's Geisha in my intro to cultural anthropology class in undergrad and was fascinated by her depiction of the geisha world, which few Westerners get to glimpse; Golden's novel held the same fascination for me.

The second book I finished this weekend was a surprise. Sometimes I receive books for HNR that are outside the magazine's parameters, so I can't send them out to reviewers. Usually these are contemporary novels about the past rather than full-fledged historicals. On Friday afternoon, I opened up a mailing from Random House and found a copy of Michael Thomas Ford's Jane Bites Back, which has the cover tagline "It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen is still alive today... as a vampire." Oh, yes. It was one of them. I'd read last year about the four-way auction for this book, which Ballantine won, and tucked that information away in the part of my brain I reserve for publishing trivia. I don't normally read vampire novels. Blood doesn't excite me. I'm not really a Janeite, either. But for some reason, I picked this novel off the coffee table while lazing around on the couch on Sunday morning and got hooked. Before I knew it, it was 4pm and the 300-page book was finished.

The main character, Jane "Fairfax" nee Austen, is a bookstore owner after my own heart. After the 200-odd years since her supposed death, the Austen industry has exploded. Not surprisingly, Jane is fed up with authors motivated not by the love of her work but by the desire to make a fast buck. After succeeding in a last-ditch attempt to find a publisher for her manuscript, written just before she was "turned," she simultaneously contends with a jealous Bronte scholar, a new boyfriend who may not understand her secret, the unpleasant return of an undead former suitor, and keeping her true identity hidden in the face of newfound fame. Her carefully concealed sharp fangs really aren't the point (pun intended), though she does need to feed now and then. Instead, it's a very funny spoof of the trend-hungry publishing industry, Austenmania, and vampire novels, and it doesn't make the mistake of taking itself too seriously. On the other hand, the author clearly knows his way around early 19th-century literature. The result is a vampire novel that even doubters of the concept could be caught dead reading. The official pub date is December 29th.

B is for Boundless

I thoroughly enjoyed this paranormal time-slip novel when I read it last year, though it doesn't seem to have gotten much attention from the historical fiction community. When it came time to post about a book corresponding to the letter "B" for Historical Tapestry's Alphabet in Historical Fiction challenge, I knew this was going to be my pick.

Graduate student Liza Donovan has been experiencing unsettling dreams of 19th-century Nantucket, so she jumps at the chance to spend summer break there with her roommate and best friend, Jane. Jane's aunt Kitty happens to live in one of the island's most prominent and famous homes. The stories Kitty recounts about ship’s captain Obadiah Young, who owned her house back in the 1840s, startle Liza, because she recognizes him as the man from her visions ... which are becoming progressively more intrusive, and also more erotic.

In the course of her search, Liza grows close to Adam Gallagher, a gorgeous curator at the Nantucket Whaling Museum. Together they learn more about Obadiah’s relationship with his beautiful, frail socialite wife, Lucy, and her mysterious death. Long-ago rumor holds that Obadiah murdered Lucy, pushing her down a flight of stairs before heading out to sea on what was to be his final voyage.

Liza's uncanny ability to identify scenes and whaling paraphernalia dating from the early 19th century puzzles everyone, Liza included, until she comes to accept that her visions must relate to a past life. Kitty's godson, Lucian, is skeptical of anything remotely New Agey, but Liza feels strangely attracted to him even despite his doubts and snarky remarks. The most confusing thing of all is the content of the dreams themselves. In them, Liza seems to be viewing the past through the alternating viewpoints of both Obadiah and Lucy. If Liza is truly experiencing dreams from an earlier lifetime, who was she back then?

When I read novels with parallel timelines, the present-day scenarios often prove to be annoying distractions from the more interesting historical segments. This isn't the case here. The modern-day characters are so open and genuine that they're impossible not to like. Their snappy dialogue and the many contemporary references contrast well with the serious tone of the earlier setting: a 19th-century Quaker whaling village, a place where social proprieties matter and death at sea is a tragic fact of life. When the two timelines overlap in Liza's dreams, it has a haunting effect, and the intensity increases as the novel approaches its conclusion.

There are some explicit sex scenes you'd never have found in a Mary Stewart or Anya Seton novel of this type, but they're integral for character development, and the storyline as a whole is engrossing. This was one of my most entertaining reads of 2008. Plus, it has an awesome cover.

The Boundless Deep was published in 2008 by Forge at $14.95 (432pp, paperback, 978-0-7653-1972-2).

Review of The Heartbreaker, by Elisabeth McNeill

If you prefer your heroes romanticized and untarnished, you may not want to read this novel. Elisabeth McNeill's The Heartbreaker takes an unflinching look at Prince Charles Edward Stuart -- Bonnie Prince Charlie -- and the woman who saved him from the English, Flora Macdonald, following how their lives diverged after the Battle of Culloden.

Both of their lives were dramatically changed after she spirited him away to the Isle of Skye, him disguised as her Irish serving maid, after the Jacobite army's devastating defeat in 1746. McNeill's story picks up five years later. Flora, who aided her prince on her stepfather's orders, was never really a fervent supporter; she helped him evade the English redcoats because he was in desperate straits. She gains many admirers, and her status attracts a handsome, well-placed husband, but not everyone wants to associate with a Jacobite heroine. Her happy marriage brings her contentment and many children, though money troubles force their family to abandon Scotland for the Carolinas -- right before the American Revolution begins.

Charles, formerly the charismatic figurehead for the Jacobite cause, traipses across Europe in a drunken, spendthrift haze, uncaring that many Highlanders gave their lives for him. A self-absorbed wastrel who ignores his ailing father and beats his devoted mistress, Clementine Walkinshaw, he grows more pathetic every year. The Pope doesn't take him seriously, and not even his faithful followers believe he could successfully invade Britain, though Charles persists in his delusion. It's a harsh portrait, and McNeill spares him not an ounce of sympathy. (While this interpretation is based on fact, the negativity does go over the top in places.)

Disowned by her family for her loose behavior, Clementine raises her illegitimate daughter Charlotte alone, refusing to condemn her former lover but aware of his many faults. Her good sense and circumspectness impress Charles's father and brother, who agree to fund their upkeep.

Rather than write a lengthy epic, McNeill opts for a streamlined fictional history that emphasizes action, fact, and character. She covers nearly forty-five years of history in less than 200 pages, so don't expect lavish detail, but it touches on the major events in Charles's and Flora's later lives. The ending chapters move briskly, reading almost like nonfiction with conversations added in.

The novel paints insightful portraits not only of Charles and Flora but also of Clementine, Charlotte, Charles's brother Henry (a Roman Catholic Cardinal) and Charles's late-in-life spouse, Louise of Stolberg. In this version Henry is a homosexual with a longtime lover in the church, which may or may not be true, but otherwise sticks closely to common interpretations. Clementine did leave Charles because she feared for her life, and left a note saying so. The novel also follows the latest revelations on the Stuarts' genealogy, mentioning Charlotte's son and two daughters -- a closely held secret -- and the latter's marriages with Polish noblemen.*

McNeill has a gift for personalizing tragic moments in Scots history, while looking beyond the myths and examining their long-term effects. While hers is a lively, gripping tale, it's also one of sorrow and deep regret. The women's resilience through troubled times is admirable, and it contrasts with the dissolute tragedy of the man they once looked up to. Here Charles Edward Stuart is a heartbreaker indeed, a man who symbolized Scots nationalism but who failed his supporters in more ways than one.

The Heartbreaker: A Novel of Bonnie Prince Charlie is officially published in January 2010 by Severn House at $27.95/£18.99 (185pp, hardbound, 978-0-7278-6837-4). The US release date is March 2010. I preordered it from Book Depository and received it in early November, and it seems to be available now.

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* For an eye-opening account of Charles Edward Stuart's Polish descendants (which has been judged as meticulously researched and likely accurate), read Peter Pininski's The Stuarts' Last Secret (Tuckwell, 2001). The author was interviewed by Burke's Peerage and Gentry, which will give you the basics of his claim; I requested the book via ILL several years ago and found it absolutely fascinating.

Guest post: "Reconstructing the American Revolution," by J.M. Hochstetler

Today inspirational historical fiction author J. M. (Joan) Hochstetler is stopping by Reading the Past to discuss her interest in American colonial and Revolutionary War history and how it relates to her fiction. Welcome, Joan!

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History has been a major interest of mine since I was in high school. Coming from an Amish/Mennonite background, I was steeped in it from the beginning. Faith, family, church, and community are very important to the Amish and Mennonites, and the Hochstetler family has an especially interesting history that’s well known in the community and is regularly recounted. So that had a powerful impact on my life and interests.

In college I learned to love doing research and especially learning about the lives of people from different periods. For me, the dry facts of history have always represented the stories of real people just like me. Now as a writer, I have the privilege of bringing the past to life for others. I’ve had readers tell me that they hated studying history in school, but that in reading my novels, suddenly this period, these events, and the lives of the people of the time opened up to them and became real. That’s what keeps me writing.

I’m particularly attracted to the American colonial and Revolutionary periods because it’s the seminal story of our nation’s founding. I’ve grown very concerned that our citizens today know so little about the founding of our nation. My fear is that if we don’t learn our own history and the values that have been handed down to us, we’ll lose the precious heritage of liberty our Founders sacrificed so much to gain. I hope and pray that the blood they spilled has not been sacrificed in vain.

In the American Patriot Series my goal is to write a comprehensive fiction series on the American Revolution. I’m not aware of any others that portray all aspects of it, including the experience of colonists, African Americans, Native Americans, and women. This period is chock full of fascinating people who lived in a lively and diverse culture in many ways similar to our own. They were involved in thrilling, scary, intriguing, and crucial events that shaped our nation, events that sound surprisingly familiar because we see many similar things happening all around us today.

I construct these stories by simply dropping my fictional characters right in the middle of the critical events of our nation’s founding, where they interact with the real historical people who were involved in them. That gives me the opportunity to include many of the recorded words and actions of the real historical figures as well as details from history such as storms and other natural phenomena that affected the outcomes of battles. What results is a narrative that is as dynamic and thrilling as the real events because it’s based solidly on fact.

I believe passionately that history matters. God calls us to remember all the ways he has blessed us in the past. When we look back, we can see his hand of guidance through trials and gather hope, confidence, trust, and faith that God will continue to guide and bless us as we follow his leading. History teaches us that we are part of the stream of life, part of the legacy of faith that runs through our own families and our nation from their beginnings, part of something bigger than ourselves. It enriches our lives, gives them meaning and purpose, and equips us to be responsible citizens, parents, teachers, and disciples. I hope the American Patriot Series will provide a measure of insight and encouragement toward that end.

J. M. Hochstetler writes stories that always involve some element of the past and of finding home. Born in central Indiana, the daughter of Mennonite farmers, she graduated from Indiana University with a degree in Germanic languages. She was an editor with Abingdon Press for twelve years and has published four novels. Daughter of Liberty (2004), Native Son (2005), and Wind of the Spirit (March 2009), the first three books of the critically acclaimed American Patriot Series, are set during the American Revolution. One Holy Night, a retelling of the Christmas story set in modern times, is the 2009 Christian Small Publishers Fiction Book of the Year and a finalist for the 2009 American Christian Fiction Writers Long Contemporary Book of the Year.

Hochstetler is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers, Advanced Writers and Speakers Association, Christian Authors Network, Middle Tennessee Christian Writers, Nashville Christian Writers Association, and Historical Novel Society. She and her husband live near Nashville, Tennessee.

You can find Joan online at www.jmhochstetler.com or at this book’s blog http://americanpatriotseries.blogspot.com.

Book review: Death at Hull House by Frances McNamara

It's November in downtown Chicago. The local political machine is in full swing; corrupt elected officials sit in the pockets of powerful businessmen. Following a major economic recession, unemployment runs rampant. Immigrants in the workforce, fearful of losing the positions they have, struggle with illiteracy, constant poverty, and appalling living conditions. Then a deadly epidemic sweeps through the city, overwhelming health care workers and hitting young people especially hard.

Some things, it seems, never change.

The year is 1893. Miss Emily Cabot, a native Bostonian, has been kicked out of her sociology graduate program at the University of Chicago -- not for academic reasons, but because of a social disgrace. The Dean of Women gives Emily a chance to redeem herself by securing a position for her at Hull House, the settlement founded by Jane Addams in the heart of the city's West Side. Devastated by the loss of her fellowship, Emily is grateful for the opportunity, though she's skeptical about Hull House's practical, hands-on approach to solving the immigrant community's problems.

As Emily quickly gets absorbed into the day-to-day tasks of the settlement, her eyes are opened to a different world. Along with Florence Kelley, Chief Inspector of Factories for the state, she visits manufacturing establishments to ensure they're following a new law that limits female workers to eight-hour days. They meet resistance from all avenues, including from the workers themselves. Then, on Christmas morning, while nearly everyone is at church, a man representing the interests of a sweatshop owner is found bludgeoned to death in the Hull House parlor. Because Mr. Hanrahan had connections to their late father, Emily's brother Alden thinks he was killed to prevent him from revealing his knowledge about Judge Cabot's own murder back in Boston.

Emily and Alden pursue separate investigations, as do the local police, and their differing conclusions complicate matters and draw innocent bystanders into the fray. The Hull House residents, while widely respected in Chicago society, risk losing their good reputation if one of their own is accused of murder. Meanwhile, attendance at their classes and clubs for European immigrants has dwindled due to the smallpox epidemic. Emily finds herself assisting in situations she never learned about in school, like convincing nervous mothers about the safety of vaccinations and laying out disease-ridden bodies for burial.

This fast-paced, enjoyable historical mystery does an excellent job plunging readers into the hubbub of activities at Hull House and the chaos resulting from the spread of smallpox. There's a lot going on at once, but the many plot threads are laid out cleanly. The dialogue is slightly formal, and the secondary characters from Alden to Emily's doctor friend to Jane Addams herself are generally well-rendered. Although Emily's personality comes through strongly on page one, her friends and associates often outshine her; it would have been nice to get to know her a little better. There are some copyediting errors, but they become less noticeable as the story continues.

This is second in a series (after Death at the Fair), and with many references to earlier events, the books may be best read in order. Not all the subplots end happily, which reflects the reality of this place and time. Readers should come away from Death at Hull House with newfound respect for the women social reformers of the late 19th century, and the difficulties they faced creating a bridge between the two halves of Chicago society.

Death at Hull House is published on December 1st by Allium Press of Chicago at $14.99 (pb, 261pp, 978-0-9840676-0-2).

Book review: Murder on the Cliffs, by Joanna Challis

When I was a teenager, Gothic novels formed a good part of my pleasure reading. They were the perfect escape, and I devoured them by the boxful. In a typical storyline, an attractive but naive young woman encounters danger and romance when she takes a position at a crumbling old castle or haunted mansion in the English countryside. She fights her attraction to the titled master of the house, a guarded, solitary man whose first wife died under mysterious circumstances. I can picture the covers easily: the heroine fleeing in her flimsy nightgown at midnight, her long hair whipping in the wind, a lone candle flickering in the dark mansion behind her...

Although the genre has declined in popularity since, regrettably so, I'm still very fond of Gothics. So when I got word about Joanna Challis's new historical mystery, I knew I had to read it. What longtime fan could resist this cover?

Murder on the Cliffs pays tribute to the genre and one of its modern masters, Daphne du Maurier. At the same time, it puts a twist on many familiar tropes. For example, Challis's resourceful heroine is more than a match, socially and intellectually, for the Hartleys of Padthaway, so she arrives on the scene in a position of power. As the daughter of famed British actor Sir Gerald du Maurier, her name, unlike that of Rebecca's narrator, is not only known but renowned. Because she is who she is, we know she'll survive and thrive. Not everyone is so fortunate, though. It's beautiful Victoria Bastion, former kitchen maid at Padthaway and its master's would-be bride, who is found dead. How did she die, and who killed her?

Twenty-one-year-old Daphne, a devotee of all things historical, comes to remote Cornwall in 1928 seeking adventure and escape from the marriage market. She looks forward to spending her days researching records from Charlemagne's time at a nearby abbey. On one stormy and windswept night, she discovers the body of a beautiful young woman, clad in a nightgown, lying in a deserted cove, and a teenage girl in hysterics beside her. The girl introduces herself as Lianne and tells Daphne that the dead woman was her brother's fiancee.

Lianne brings Daphne back to her home, an grand Elizabethan-era mansion, to break the news to her family. Here Daphne's real adventure begins. Lianne's mother, Lady Hartley, was less than thrilled at seeing her son, Lord David, marry a social inferior with a racy reputation. But even though she had clear motive for wanting Victoria gone, the investigation proceeds slowly. Sir Edward, the local magistrate, seems to buy into the notion of "aristocratic privilege" and delivers a verdict of accidental death. Evidence turns up implying otherwise.

The Hartley household is as eccentric as any Gothic fan could hope for, and secrets from the past hang over all of Padthaway's residents. The mansion comes complete with a grim, overprotective housekeeper, and Lord David's brooding nature, enhanced by his recent bereavement, appeals to Daphne's romantic side. Daphne's privileged background and friendship with Lianne help her get closer to the Hartleys and discover the secrets they're hiding. She also finds inspiration for the novel she hopes to write ...

After the dramatic opening scene, Murder on the Cliffs settles in as a quietly atmospheric mystery that builds in intensity again toward the end. Several obvious questions remain unaddressed for a good long while, but eventually the answers come fast and furious. Upper-class Daphne's haplessness at housework is amusing, and her relationships with other village residents draw out other aspects of her personality. She has a close, teasing relationship with her father, which is glimpsed through correspondence, and relates well to people from all walks of life. The slowly changing social fabric in a small Cornish village in the post-WWI years is especially well presented.

Readers will have different tolerance levels for historical characters as sleuths, since these novels require extra suspension of disbelief. The real Daphne was enchanted by the region's rich heritage and wild, romantic atmosphere, and her fictional counterpart feels similarly. The openness of her fictional voice takes away somewhat from her undoubtedly complex, enigmatic personality. I wondered whether a third-person viewpoint might have conveyed this better, and there were times I wished the protagonist wasn't meant to be a historical figure. The youthful freshness of her narration is appealing, though, and the prose style clear and direct. Perhaps other facets of her character will come through in later books.

Whether or not you buy the idea of Du Maurier as detective, this is good escapist fare with an excellent sense of place and history -- and with plot elements that both adhere to and defy the conventions of the traditional Gothic.

Murder on the Cliffs was published this November by Minotaur at $24.99, hb, 291pp, 978-0-312-36714-5.

A is for Alchemist

This is my first entry in Historical Tapestry's "The Alphabet in Historical Fiction" challenge. Over the next year, I'll be traveling through the alphabet, looking at 26 historical novels that fit the letter of the week. I plan to focus on backlist titles that are worth a second look.

I remember when Eileen Kernaghan's The Alchemist's Daughter arrived in the mail. I hadn't intended to keep it to review myself, but I'd grabbed the package from the mailbox on my way out the door and, having nothing else of value to read in a doctor's waiting room, opened it up to the first page. Of course, I quickly got caught up in the story. The author's Bronze Age high fantasy series, the Grey Isles trilogy, had been favorites of mine in high school, so this shouldn't have come as a surprise.

In any case, here's my review (first published in the Historical Novels Review in Feb '05).

Sidonie Quince, a teenager in 1587 England, lives with her father, alchemist Simon Quince, in Charing Cross. She has inherited from her late mother the ability to scry into the future, but considers her gifts a curse, for she foresees only disaster for her country. When Sidonie’s father receives an invitation from Lord Burleigh to attend upon Her Majesty at Hampton Court, Sidonie accompanies him, and dares to tell Queen Elizabeth the truth about the forthcoming Armada. But to prepare for war, England needs money, and Simon’s foolish promise to turn base metal into gold leads only to trouble.

While he travels to London for supplies, Sidonie and her friendly neighbor, apothecary’s son Kit Aubrey, head to Glastonbury Abbey to find a mysterious red powder that may be their only hope. Their adventure leads them into the company of Dr. Dee, Lady Mary Herbert, William Shakespeare, and other Elizabethan notables – plus more danger than they ever expected.

I was enchanted by this lighthearted historical fantasy. The scenes describing Simon Quince’s failed experiments (which give off foul odors that cause his servants to flee) are hilarious, and the author’s precise language and brilliant depictions of the Elizabethan world are a pleasure to experience. Young adults will delight in the romance and magical setting, and adults will appreciate this wonderfully written novel as well.

The Alchemist's Daughter was published by Thistledown Press in 2004 in trade paperback ($13.95/C$15.95, 187pp, 189345797). For more details, see the author's website.