Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies wins again... and again

Within the past few days, Hilary Mantel's Man Booker-winning Bring Up the Bodies, which continues the story of Henry VIII's right-hand man Thomas Cromwell in 16th-century England, has made it to the top of two additional prize committees' lists.

Yesterday it was announced as the winner of the Costa Book of the Year, making it the first book to garner both the Booker and the Costa.  The prize comes with a purse of £30,000 and, per an article in the Bookseller, the judges' decision was unanimous.

And, at the American Library Association's Midwinter conference in Seattle last weekend, Bring Up the Bodies was named to the 2013 Reading List in the historical fiction category.  Per the ALA website: "The Reading List seeks to highlight outstanding genre fiction that merit special attention by general adult readers and the librarians who work with them."  Awards are given in eight categories.

The Reading List committee helpfully provides readalike titles for each of the winners (see link above).  Shortlisted titles in historical fiction were:

Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville (winner of the 2012 Australia General Fiction Book of the Year)
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (winner of the 2012 Orange Prize)
Sutton by J.R.Moehringer
The Cove by Ron Rash (winner of the 2012 Langum Prize)

For fans of Bring Up the Bodies and its predecessor Wolf Hall, there's also the upcoming miniseries to look forward to.

An early look at Rose Tremain's Merivel: A Man of His Time

In this wonderful sequel to Restoration (1990), set 16 years later, Tremain’s lovingly flawed protagonist, Sir Robert Merivel, pens a second riveting memoir. He aspires to leave nothing out, and readers will be the grateful beneficiaries of his witty, observant reflections and self-deprecating honesty.

By 1683, Merivel has ripened into late middle age, but neither his love for his beautiful daughter, Margaret, nor his comfortable existence at Norfolk’s Bidnold Manor relieves his melancholy. Wanting to be “dazzled by Wonders,” he travels to Versailles, hoping to become a court physician, but is let down by its glittering emptiness and his own sartorial foibles. His affair with an unhappily married Swiss noblewoman brings him happiness but comes with unexpected burdens.

Whether facing the illnesses of those closest to him, acting upon his lustful impulses, or pondering his responsibilities to his servants and king, Merivel finds that the compassionate and selfish aspects of his character are inextricably tangled. In a tone moving from contemplative and sad to uproariously funny and back again, Tremain masterfully captures the voice of a man searching for a satisfying and meaningful life as Charles II’s once-glorious reign winds down. It’s an absolute pleasure to spend time in Merivel’s company.

Rose Tremain's Merivel: A Man of His Time will be published by W.W. Norton on April 15th ($26.95, hb, 384pp), so you may have to wait a bit, but you can always get your preorders placed if you're so inclined.  If you're in the UK or Canada, where it appeared from Chatto & Windus last September (£18.99, hb), you can pick it up now.  I read it last month (the above is the starred review I wrote for Booklist's 2/1 issue), and I'm sure it will make my top 10 of 2013.

If you're at ALA Midwinter now, Library Journal's Galley & Signing Guide says that Merivel "will be given away at the booth during the Spotlight on Adult Literature, Saturday, 1/26, from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m."  Norton is at booth 2409.

A second gallery of Downton Abbey readalikes

Since I posted my last visual preview with a focus on historical novels that have been compared to Downton Abbey, I've come across many more. Below are 11 additional titles, mostly forthcoming, plus a couple of recent releases.  These novels will incorporate a similar setting, timeframe, subject, or theme (or maybe all of them).  Note how many have "house" titles!

I have four novels from the previous list on my to-review pile and will be getting to them as I'm able.



A July 2012 novel gets a classy new look (although I loved the original cover too) for its UK release.  Billed as "Downton Abbey meets The English Patient," The Sandcastle Girls follows a young Mount Holyoke grad as she arrives in 1915 Syria to take up nursing duties and runs into evidence of an Armenian genocide. A present-day thread tells the story of her descendant. Simon & Schuster UK, hb last August, pb this March; also hb from Doubleday US (different cover).



The story of a young woman physician living through a whirlwind of social changes as they hit 1920s Seattle, a new setting for a Downtonesque saga.  A debut novel.  Kensington, June 2013.



In this classic British saga, the wealthy Cavendish family of Rutherford Park has a centuries-old legacy of honor and tradition to uphold, but in the year 1913, the heir yearns to break free to live a life of his own, and long-held secrets are about to be revealed. Berkley, July 2013.



In 1917, when little Victoria Bradshaw vanishes from her family's grand country estate at Tyringham park, her older sister Charlotte sees painful secrets from their past brought front and center.  This is the UK release of a novel published last October by Poolbeg, a small Irish press.  "Period glamour and darkness," says the blurb.  Penguin UK, February 2013.



We're heading back to the 18th century with Caroline Sandon's debut novel, set in Burnt Norton in rural Gloucestershire (where the author also lives).  In 1731, Sir William Keyt will stop at nothing to protect his family's social standing, even if it means destroying his surviving son's chance at love and happiness. "A powerful story, beautifully told, of greed and love and betrayal and waste," says Julian Fellowes.  Head of Zeus (UK), June 2013.



In 1891, the aristocratic Fairbairn family of Lochlee Castle in Argyllshire, Scotland, struggles to free themselves from a terrible curse.  The author has written many sagas set around the turn of the 20th century.  Severn House, February 2013.



I came across Cinders and Sapphires via a NetGalley promotion.  This first in the "At Somerton" series for YAs tells of a friendship between a titled young woman, Ada Averley of Somerton, and her new housemaid... and of a larger scandal that threatens to envelop the Averley family.  A nice review from Kirkus, which called it "a thoroughly satisfying romp for Downton Abbey fans."  Hyperion, January 2013.


Deanna Raybourn's upcoming novel is one that we'd discussed in the comments of my last Downton post, and I've already preordered it.  In 1923, following a major scandal, flapper Delilah Drummond is sent away to Fairlight, her stepfather's savannah manor house in Kenya.  Africa is becoming a more prevalent setting for historicals; is this a new trend in itself?  MIRA, May 2013.



In 1904, Ravenscliffe of the title is a neglected Victorian manor in a Yorkshire mining village which becomes the new home of a Russian émigré, her good friend, and their families, but their contentment is not to last.  This is the sequel to Netherwood though it's been written to stand alone. Sphere (UK), September 2012.



Second in the Jane Eyre Chronicles, a series which imagines the well-known former governess as sleuth.  In the 1820s, while their rural home is being renovated, Jane and her husband Edward Rochester relocate to London, where they get caught up in the social scene and Jane investigates the death of a snooty matron.  Berkley, April 2013.



An atmospheric mystery with ghosts set in a seaside village in 1920s England, as Oxford student Jillian Leigh investigates who killed her uncle.  I'll be conducting an interview with the author for Historical Novels Review and am looking forward to reading this one.  NAL, March 2013. 

Winners of Ann Chamberlin's The Sword of God

Thanks to everyone who entered the giveaway for Ann Chamberlin's The Sword of God, following her guest post on January 10th.  I've drawn the winning entries with the help of Random.org and am pleased to announce that the three copies will be going to:

Carol, Beth, and Kim

I'll drop you a line to obtain your mailing addresses.  Hope you'll enjoy the read!

Thanks also to Ann for her generosity in providing three copies for the giveaway.

A look at Theresa Tomlinson's mystery of Anglo-Saxon Whitby, A Swarming of Bees

Theresa Tomlinson's A Swarming of Bees is her first adult novel, a smooth historical mystery set in Anglo-Saxon times.  Her previous books have been geared toward children or YAs.

This was a recent purchase.  I'm not sure where I first came across it... maybe on Goodreads, maybe on a blog.  You don't see too much fiction set in England centuries before the Conquest, unless it's about the Romans or King Arthur (or written by Bernard Cornwell), but novels of early medieval times have always appealed to me.  I wish there more of them.

Fridgyth is an herb-wife at the double monastery at Streonshalh in Northumbria in 664 AD, a year that anyone familiar with the period will recognize.  While Fridgyth tends to her duties outdoors, a large religious debate is in progress inside.  Kings, queens, bishops, and other church leaders from far and wide have gathered to decide on a controversial issue that will have far-reaching impact: whether to follow Roman or Celtic practice in calculating the date for Easter and the style for monks' tonsures. 

The Synod of Whitby, as it would later be known, involved complex and lengthy liturgical arguments, but Tomlinson makes them understandable for the reader.  She provides good examples of each party's concerns and lays the royal families' genealogical relationships out cleanly, too.  

As her quiet community reels at the shock of King Oswy's ruling — he decides in favor of Rome — Abbess Hild confides her despair to her good friend Fridgyth while keeping her guests entertained and well fed.  Two young Irish scholars arrive in the midst of this troubled atmosphere, and at least one of them is other than he seems.  Then a virulent strain of plague hits Streonshalh, which makes it hard for Fridgyth to notice at first that some of the deaths had a more sinister cause.  Once she does, her investigation begins in earnest.

Despite the spread of Christianity, pockets of pagan belief still linger in 7th-century Northumbria, especially amongst the common people. Fridgyth herself is half-pagan, and she has the amusing habit of exclaiming "Blessed Freya!" at unguarded moments.  She also defends her non-Christian friends' wishes to burn their dead and their belongings... she even urges it, saying that fire will kill off the plague.  Even while serving as leader of her religious flock, Hild practices tolerance as well.

Tomlinson gradually weaves Fridgyth's personal history into the storyline.  She's no longer young — like Abbess Hild, she's in her fifties — but her present circumstances call to mind her lost family, and the possible rekindling of a lost love.

Although Fridgyth is a fictional character, much of the novel's historical background can be found in Bede, including the presence of a cowherd named Caedmon with a gift for lyric poetry.  (His imagined verses are included, and they're very good.)  The seaside setting of Streonshalh is easy to picture, from the monks' heather-thatched huts to the area's rocky cliffs and the curious snakestones found beneath them.

In this realistic yet gentle mystery, the harsher aspects of life are treated accurately without being presented in burdensome detail.  The version I read has some typos and misplaced punctuation, and one section of repeated text, but was otherwise well edited. A novel of strong women, warm friendship, and political intrigue set at a turning point in English history, A Swarming of Bees may be written for an adult audience, but YAs should enjoy it too.

A Swarming of Bees was self-published through Acorn Independent Press in December 2012 at £7.99 (pb, 290pp).  American readers can buy it on Kindle at $4.99 (it's worth it).  The latter two pictures are public domain images from Wikipedia.  [Update, 1/18:  Per the author, the book is in a 2nd print run, and the errors have been fixed.]

Book review: The Prisoner of Paradise, by Romesh Gunesekera

With a tone alternately playful, poetic, and serious, Booker nominee Gunesekera provides welcome insight into the culture of Mauritius, a tropical isle off Africa’s coast, at a pivotal time. It’s 1825, some 15 years after Britain wrested control of it from the French. The Rosetta Stone has opened up a world of linguistic discoveries, and William Wilberforce’s abolitionist crusade has borne fruit in his homeland – and spread to its far-flung colonies.

Mauritius is the adopted home for diverse ethnicities: the ruling English, French settlers, plus Ceylonese, Indians, and Africans, including slaves and convicts. Into this combustible atmosphere comes orphaned Lucy Gladwell, who arrives from England to stay with her Aunt Betty, a smart, gracious woman whose open-mindedness vies with tradition, and her Uncle George, a racist official, at their plantation house.

Lucy’s path crosses that of Don Lambodar, the Ceylonese interpreter for an exiled prince, when he delivers a letter to her uncle. An Indian slave wants to establish a “Hindoo” shrine and persuades Don to negotiate on his behalf – a risky move on Don’s part. Idealistic, bookish Lucy attracts, repels, and befuddles Don in turn. Their mutual search for freedom has great potential for a grand romance, but the simmering political tensions keep it in the background until late in the book.

The island’s majestic beauty captures all of the senses, with descriptions of the wide sky and ocean, the sweet scent of ripe pineapples, and the cries of native birds. Its colorful flora is both lushly abundant and mischievously symbolic, with Lucy and Don’s first meaningful conversation taking place in a garden full of plants shaped like male and female body parts. The author’s dialogue is witty and expressive, and the plot addresses colonialism’s realities while commemorating the power of the written word. The book’s clever title is left open-ended, with all of the women restricted by their gender, and everyone on the island subject to its “aristocracy of skin.”

The Prisoner of Paradise is published by Bloomsbury (UK) this February at £8.99 (pb, 400pp).  It also comes as a larger-format paperback, published by Bloomsbury last February at £11.99, which is the copy I bought and read.

Winner of the 2012 Langum Prize in American Historical Fiction

Ron Rash's The Cove (NY: Ecco, 2012) has been announced as the winner of the 2012 Langum Prize in American Historical Fiction.

From the press release: "This powerful and atmospheric novel takes place in the North Carolina mountains during the final year of World War I. The story revolves around a sister and brother, Laurel and Hank, whose family home in an isolated cove is darkened by cliffs, ridges, and local superstitions.

"The Cove is American historical fiction at its best. The writing is lyrical and the novel is rich with symbolism, yet the prose does not overshadow the story. Rash’s use of regional language adds depth to the characters and never strays toward ridicule... With a light touch, Rash balances anti-German sentiment and America’s increasing impatience with the war."

Steve Wiegenstein's Slant of Light (St. Louis, MO: Blank Slate Press, 2012) received an Honorable Mention.

From the press release: "This well-written debut novel describes the travails of a utopian colony in southern Missouri during the late 1850s. At a deeper level it is also a meditation on the decline of order – social order, sexual order, and political order – all clearly delineated but with no causal explanation other than 'homo homini lupus.' Man is a wolf to man, and probably an ample reason ... Congratulations are due to Wiegenstein for this lovely book on a neglected border state and also are due to the new small press that published it."

[Read my review of Slant of Light here.]

The prize shortlist for 2012 comprised the following five historical novels:

The Cove, by Ron Rash (Ecco)
A Good Man, by Guy Vanderhaeghe (Atlantic Monthly)
San Miguel, by T.C. Boyle (Viking)
Slant of Light, by Steve Wiegenstein (Blank Slate)
True Sisters, by Sandra Dallas (St. Martin’s)

For more on the prize see the Langum Charitable Trust. To submit a novel for consideration, view the directions available at the site. The prize is awarded annually to the "best book in American historical fiction that is both excellent fiction and excellent history." Past years' winners include Julie Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic, Ann Weisgarber's The Personal History of Rachel DuPree, Edward Rutherfurd's New York, and Kathleen Kent's The Heretic's Daughter.

Researching the Historical Novel: A Personal Experience of the Slush Pile, a guest post by Ann Chamberlin

Today I'm welcoming internationally bestselling author Ann Chamberlin back to the blog with a powerful guest post about the inspiration for her new novel, The Sword of God, set in 7th-century Arabia and dealing with the early years of Islam.

~

Researching the Historical Novel:
A Personal Experience of the Slush Pile

Ann Chamberlin

My latest book, The Sword of God, is the second volume of a trilogy about early Islam. I'm just sending the third volume, The Sword and the Well, to the editors now, and it should be out later in 2013.

Sarah gave me a great interview for The Woman at the Well, the first volume, some time ago, for which I thank her. I thank her for this chance to blog, too.

In that earlier interview, I told the story of the genesis of this work, about the Bedouin woman I had the fortune to meet in the Sinai desert and how knowing her plunged me into a life of struggling for understanding in the best way I know how—through writing and reading historical fiction.

I'd like to share more details of that formative trip that also went into this series of novels. I was a college student majoring in archaeology in those long-ago days, when I got the chance to excavate at the biblical site of Tel Be'er Sheva in the Negev Desert.

That experience confirmed me in the interest of my life, provided a lot of detail for my novel Snakesleeper (originally titled Tamar) about King David's daughter.

Here's a picture of Tel Be'er Sheva.

The excavation also became a very concrete example for me of winners writing history. I scraped away for three months with my "turiot" — I think the word we used for this tool is the Hebrew. Kibbutzniks used turiots to lay in their irrigation systems. They were like hoes, not the trowels or toothbrushes you may see excavators using on television.

We grunts were moving lots of dirt with our turiots, but not nearly as much as the bulldozer over on the other side of the tel. I sometimes stood and watched him, trying to make what I saw over there agree somehow with the "carefully save everything," "every remain has its story" of my archaeology classwork. The bulldozer was removing the top layers — NB all the Muslim layers: an Ottoman police station, a few Arab graves. He was preparing the surface for the first cuts of our more careful blades.

In the fields below him, Bedouins — men, women and children — kept their heads down over their melon fields. For one moment, the blade of the bulldozer exposed the double bones of a human lower arm. A bracelet of silver, green and blue beads encircled the limb. I had no more time than to think, "That's the grandmother of somebody working down in that field," before the sight vanished under another swath of yellow, bulldozed dirt. The sight vanished from the world, but never from my memory.

I am sorry to say, I didn't stand in front of that bulldozer like twenty-three-year old American Rachel Corrie, whom the Palestinians call a martyr, did in front of hers. But of course, she had the higher purpose of trying to save the homes of living Palestinians from destruction by the Israeli Defense Forces. I kept as silent as the Bedouin woman in her disturbed grave.

And in those far-off, innocent days, I still mostly believed the spin of the more experienced excavators around me. That summer, we at Tel Sheva had a visit from Dame Kathleen Kenyon, the famous excavator of Jerusalem and Jericho with whose books I was already familiar, something of a hero of mine.

I'd stood at attention with the rest, turiots on our shoulders, while afar the bosses showed the grande dame around, leaning on her cane. Some of my fellow diggers, the livelier young Zionist men, had fashioned bow ties for themselves from cardboard, so there they were, in steel-toed desert boots, cut-offs, sabra hats, bare, brown hairy chests (nobody worried about melanoma in those days) — and cardboard bow ties. I wish I had a picture of that! Think scruffy Chippendales in a revue line along a dusty balk with turiots for canes.

All I have is this:

To my total incomprehension, my coworkers were making fun of her.

You can see Dame Kenyon was a stout woman, God rest her, a British battleax. "She'll bring down my carefully honed balk," grumbled the fellow next to me, running a finger around the sweat under his tie.

"Bad methodology," said another, when pressed.

Even shallow judgements made by people who ought to know to dig below any surface paled in comparison to Dame Kenyon's graver sins, in their eyes, of "bad methodology," of having dug below the line where King David crawled up a water tunnel and conquered the ancient "City of David." She revealed Jericho millennia before Joshua fit the battle.

Look again at the picture of our tel, its streets and low walls hermetically sealed for the tourists at the level of Kingdom of Israel occupation. Nothing saved below. Nothing after.

What my turiot whacked through actually tells a very different story.

We found the original of this altar purposely hacked to bits, desecrated and strewn around the site. In trench after trench at the highest point of the tel, we dug down to bedrock searching for traces of an ancient sanctuary. It should be there. It was there, every place else in the Middle East. Guess what? Somebody in the eighth century BC had erased every trace of what was before, sown salt on it in fact. They made sure nobody would revere the site again. I found an arrowhead and burned wooden beams, showing just how the deed was done. We were looking Amos v:5 and VIII:14 in the face: "They that swear by the sin of Samaria and say, Thy god, O Dan, liveth; and the manner of Beersheba liveth; even they shall fall, and never rise up again." The priests of the City of David ordered all other sanctuaries in the land destroyed so they and their God alone could receive all the worship — and all the taxes shipped to them in jugs labeled KDŠ — "holy". I found one of those, too, at a higher level.

This is why there's only a volume one of the Beer Sheva excavation reports. That's why we were even ordered to give up digging the famous well where Abraham made a covenant to own the land — the covenant of the tel's name, something like $24 in beads for Manhattan.

Digging in the well did send a number of our party to the hospital with mysterious infections. That is the reason they gave for stopping the digging there. And our director, Professor Yohanan Aharoni, died shortly thereafter. Of a broken heart, my dramatic mind likes to think. Because he couldn't tell the story his efforts — and mine — had found.

If you'd like to take consolation by thinking this is an isolated incident in the annals of archaeology, think again. "The Making of Israel Based on Lies: The Masada Fraud" is but one article exposing that the great icon of Israeli nationalism, where IDF Special Forces are sworn in in secret rites — Masada, too, is the result of revisionist science.

I know what this is like. I live in Utah, and we have the site of the Mountain Meadows massacre. After the first children's skulls with bullet holes appeared, we shut that excavation down quickly, too.

It's taken me many years to come to an understanding of what I saw on that dig with my own eyes. I could do nothing then but wield my turiot and think under the hot sun. I understand now that scientific publications are often as not fiction. My fiction, I like to think, is truer. And the only way, really, to get the truth of what I saw onto the page. Through my fiction, I give voice to the child's olive eyes I saw looking out through the chainlink of a refugee camp at me and my girlfriends sauntering down to the beach in Gaza. To the Ottoman police station I saw go under the bulldozer — my Sofia series deals with that.

And my most recent work gives voice to my veiled and silent but powerful woman of the Sinai. To those arm bones and their silver and blue and green bracelet buried on the tel of Be'er Sheva. These things are worth the time for me to write about, not to dismiss as merely the slush pile of history.

Ann Chamberlin
author of The Woman at the Well (2011)
and The Sword of God (2012)
annchamberlin.com

~

Ann Chamberlin's The Sword of God was published in 2012 by Epigraph (256pp, $14.95 trade paperback or $24.00 hardcover).  Photographs above are from Wikimedia Commons. 

For the TBR Pile Challenge: Tracy Chevalier, The Lady and the Unicorn

Entry in the 2013 TBR Pile Challenge:  #1 out of 12

Years on TBR: 9

Edition owned: HarperCollins UK, 2003 (hb, 279pp).

Now you'll know why I picked Tracy Chevalier's The Lady and the Unicorn as one of my choices for the TBR Challenge.  It's been sitting on my shelves for over nine years - which is unconscionable!  My copy is a first edition UK hardcover, too, which makes a strong argument in favor of physical books.  It's simply stunning, from the cover painting to the endpapers and back jacket, which reproduce five of the six Lady and the Unicorn tapestries now housed in the Musée de Cluny.  I had the opportunity to view them in the mid-1980s, when I traveled to Paris with my high school French class, and went back to view them during a term abroad in college.

The novel imagines the circumstances surrounding the tapestries' creation, from the original, groundbreaking design for the "cartoons" (the paintings used as their blueprints) through their weaving at a Brussels studio and their return and display in the Grand Salle of the Parisian home of Jean Le Viste, who commissioned them.  The book's focus is as much on the individuals involved in the process and whose lives were affected by them, though. The tapestries were a collaborative effort, and the book's structure reflects and emphasizes this; the viewpoint switches back and forth among seven people.

In Paris in 1490, wealthy nobleman Jean Le Viste, eager to impress his king and enhance his status, wants to commission tapestries depicting the Battle of Nancy.  Upon hearing this, Nicolas des Innocents gets slightly panicked, since he doubts his ability to do his patron's ideas justice. His talent is in painting miniatures of court ladies, not large horses and bloody battle scenes.

Fortunately, he finds a way (following subtle suggestions from the women of the house) of persuading Le Viste toward a more appropriate subject.  And so the concept of the "lady and the unicorn" tapestries goes forward.  Georges de la Chapelle, over in Brussels, is selected as the weaver.  My favorite aspect of the novel was how it brought me into his busy workshop, observing the long, intricate, painstaking process by which the pieces were woven and noting the symbolism that went into each of the six designs.

Nicolas is a cheeky, arrogant young man who enjoys seducing women as much as painting them, but Le Viste's wife, Geneviève de Nanterre, presciently sees his ability to capture women's spiritual nature in his work.  Despite his bad reputation, both Claude Le Viste, her eldest daughter, and Aliénor de la Chapelle, the blind daughter of the family of Flemish weavers, find him irresistible.  Nicolas is trouble, and it's fun to see his antics in action.  Like the unicorn in his designs, he finds himself caught in the ladies' web. Other reviewers have called this novel romantic, but I'd only call it such in the sense of courtly love, with its yearning for the unattainable.

Tracy Chevalier's clear prose doesn't call attention to itself. There's nothing flashy about her writing; rather, it burns with a warm, steady glow that illuminates the era and her characters.  And as with the "millefleurs" carefully selected by Aliénor from her garden to include in the tapestries' backgrounds, this novel is full of important tidbits on topics such as late medieval artisanship, women's restrictive lives, and the intersections between them (women weren't allowed to do any actual weaving, lest their husbands and fathers lose their guild membership).  Although I didn't find the underlying storyline especially unique, these little details make the novel shine. 

Book review: Seven Locks, by Christine Wade

Once there was a classic American folk tale about a good-natured but indolent Dutch farmer who settled in the Catskills just before the Revolutionary War. Irked by his laziness, his shrewish wife drove him from their home. Taking along his loyal dog, he fled high into the mountain wilderness – never to be seen by her again.

You may know his name and the odd, mysterious things that happened to him there, but even if you have, you won’t have heard it all. There are multiple angles to every story, and this one belongs to the ladies. In her debut novel, Christine Wade leans toward the distaff side of this famous tale, revealing the wife’s perspective and shedding light on women’s endurance and achievements in late colonial times.

It begins in 1769, with a Dutch family living in a quiet part of New York’s Hudson River Valley. Although the natural world surrounding them is tranquil, their household is anything but. Already fed up with her husband’s drinking and refusal to do chores, the unnamed young wife must fend for herself after he abandons her. Although she loves her children dearly, she’s occasionally harsh – it’s hard not to wince at some of her actions – and becomes known as a scold amongst the gossiping villagers. She takes charge of their orchard and farm, attempting to teach her son and daughter the value of self-sufficiency. Fever, bad weather, near-starvation, wild beasts’ attacks on their animals… she courageously deals with each challenge as it comes. She has no other choice.

While providing a realistic feel for the incessant toil necessary for survival on the late 18th-century frontier, the earliest sections move slowly, with the action mostly internal. While she raises her children and adjusts to her new circumstances, the wife describes the beauty of the region’s mountains and waterways, which “curve like a colossal serpentine swath through the rolling valley.” This phrasing doesn’t quite feel authentic to a narrator who describes herself as “naïve and unschooled” at this point in time, though.  It’s possible to lose oneself in the gorgeous language while being drawn out of the story.

Once she comes to terms with her solitary future, Seven Locks separates from the original legend and picks up greater speed. The daughter, Judith, has an appetite for learning, which is encouraged by the local schoolmaster, but resents her mother’s constant interference. Judith’s brother, called only “the boy,” grows distant and suspicious, heeding the dark rumors that have dogged his mother since his father left. Then war begins rumbling in the background, hurtling them towards separate futures that even readers who know the original tale will be hard pressed to predict completely.

Education lies at the heart of the novel, and not just that of Judith, who offers her views in sections interspersed with her mother’s. The women share a love for books, and it’s also fascinating to see how information spreads from Boston Common to distant towns and schools and all the way to their isolated stone farmhouse. New York’s Dutch colonists, who were never loyal to the English king anyway, occupy a unique position which the author describes in depth, along with their sayings, Old World history, and domestic traditions. (The title “Seven Locks” comes from a Dutch proverb.)

Frontier life was tough, so its women had to be tougher; this lesson is harder for some to learn than others. Although unevenly paced, Wade’s first novel offers much worth discovering, and you don’t need to know the underlying folk tale to appreciate it. In exploring issues central to her female characters’ lives, she opens a window onto a little-known but rich and memorable segment of early American history.

Seven Locks is published by Atria this month in trade paperback ($15.00/C$17.00, 329pp).  If you're curious about the tale it's based on and don't know it, check it out here, but beware possible spoilers!

2012: Reflections on a year of reading

So here we are on the last day of 2012.  Unlike other bloggers, I won't be posting a Top 10 list for the year; I tried coming up with one, but I was unable to narrow it down past 16 or 17 titles, which all stood out for different reasons, and many of which were previously reviewed on this site.

I've been tracking my books on Goodreads (please follow or friend me there if you'd like!) and had set myself a goal of 85 books for 2012.  Until this recent holiday break, I wasn't sure if I'd make it, but a last-minute reading sprint put me over the top at 89.  With the library closed over most of the last two weeks, I haven't done much aside from read, proofread (the Historical Novels Review's Feb reviews are due soon), eat, sleep, and write.  With some shopping and one very slow day at the reference desk mixed in.  I wrote up four reviews for HNR, mostly of UK titles I'd bought and which the publishers didn't send, and will be reprinting them here after they're published in February.  It's been nice... I don't usually have this much time available at a single stretch.

During the last year, I completed the Chunkster Challenge with many titles to spare - at least a dozen in all. Although I don't plan to sign up again next year (I want to give myself a break!) I thoroughly enjoyed participating and am pretty amazed I managed to get so many 450-plus page books read.

I've also gone back and forth about activating/deactivating the captcha for blog comments.  Personally I think it's a pain, but I turned it off for a time and was getting dozens of spam comments a day.  It was too much, so I added it back (sorry; I hope people will still comment anyway).

Instead of publishing a Top 10 (or Top 17 or whatever) list, I thought I'd mention some novels I read in 2012 and didn't end up reviewing here, but which I'd highly recommend:

Enid Shomer, The Twelve Rooms of the Nile.  I reviewed this for Booklist; it's an exquisitely written intellectual adventure about Florence Nightingale, Gustave Flaubert, and what might have happened had they met while journeying down the Nile separately in 1850.

Amanda Coplin, The Orchardist. Set at the turn of the 20th century on a large orchard in central Washington State, "Coplin’s mesmerizing debut stands out with its depictions of uniquely Western personalities and a stark, gorgeously realized landscape that will settle deeply into readers’ bones" (quoting from my Booklist review).

Selden Edwards' The Lost Prince, which I also covered for Booklist. The entire review isn't online, but it's a very worthy sequel to his excellent, time-bending The Little Book. From my review:  "Moving from America’s Gilded Age through WWI’s aftermath in Europe, Edwards’ delightfully imaginative second novel follows a courageous woman’s singular accomplishments and their far-reaching effects on history."

James Long, The Lives She Left Behind.  If you read and loved Ferney but haven't picked up the sequel yet, what are you waiting for?  It continues the story of Gally, Ferney, and Mike some 16 years later, answering the question posed by the final, devastating line of the first book (the title is apropos).  I won't say more than that, other than I felt badly for Mike, finding himself enmeshed once again in the same painful triangle, but it's a very satisfying read. 

Christopher Tilghman's The Right-Hand Shore. In 1920, a prospective heir to Mason's Retreat, a once-prosperous Maryland estate, learns about his distant relatives, the Masons and Baylys, and their complex relationship with the land and the black families who lived and worked alongside them over the previous 60 years.  Beautiful and elegiac, it addresses the perennial topic of race relations in American history but is not your typical plantation novel.  You don't need to have read Mason's Retreat first (this is a prequel)—I hadn't—but it's on my list now.

What's up for next year?  Well, I've nearly made it through the to-be-reviewed pile, at last, but plan to approach the next year somewhat differently... reviewing more of my own books and making requests from publishers myself.  I also hope to diversify my selections, featuring more books set outside Europe and America, and from non-Western writers.  I have the 12 titles from the TBR Challenge to look forward to, and I'm also debating doing something for Small Press Month in March, maybe focusing on reviews of small press titles.

What books are you looking forward to the most in 2013?  If you need ideas, check out the Historical Novel Society's forthcoming books list, newly updated through next fall (compiled by me and Sarah Cuthbertson).

Thanks for following this blog and reading along with me over the last year!  I wish you the very best for 2013, with lots of good reading ahead.

Book review: May the Road Rise Up to Meet You, by Peter Troy

A stirring chronicle of the historical American quest for freedom, Peter Troy’s May the Road Rise Up to Meet You – taking its name from the Irish blessing – stitches together the experiences of four individuals from dissimilar backgrounds whose paths cross, and whose futures are determined, during the U.S. Civil War.

Part One opens with 12-year-old Ethan McOwen, whose Mam and Aunt Em send him to join his Da and brother Seanny in New York after the death of his older, beloved sister Aislinn in Ireland's County Fermanagh during the famine year of 1847. His traveling alone overseas under harrowing conditions earns him instant sympathy and admiration, and his clear love for books should endear him to readers even more. A decade and more after his arrival, having survived lower Manhattan's rough Five Points neighborhood, he joins his friends as a proud member of the Union’s Irish Brigade and achieves recognition as a war photographer.

Micah learns about life’s unfairness as a young man as well. Sold away from his family and shipped off to Charlottesville, his purported inheritance forgotten, he chafes under a cruel master who works him like a mule, as he says. His carpentry skills gain him local renown but are constantly exploited.

Mary Wilkens, a former runaway slave from North Carolina, is grateful to be bought by a prominent family from Richmond, where she becomes an expert seamstress and companion to their spoiled but sweet daughter. Mary's talent and elegance make her an ornament of the Kittredges’ shop, but, in keeping with the times, she knows when to adapt a field hand’s vernacular when necessary.

Marcella Arroyo joins the picture over 100 pages into the book but makes a strong impression with a suitably grand entrance. A society girl from Madrid whose family is tarnished by scandal, she is a clever card sharp who spends her winnings on the abolitionist movement, and who addresses her innermost thoughts to her late Abuela in a private notebook.

Each protagonist is distinct and, more importantly, has an interesting personality. These are people you’ll want to get to know. Their separate stories, which gradually intertwine, combine the liveliness of traditional Irish storytelling with the forthright authenticity of the slave narrative. What’s more, the text reflects the patterns of each character’s speech. It feels somewhat forced in the earliest pages, when Ethan is still a boy:

For several days in a row now, they put what remained of their hope into the soil, plantin’ the few sprouts they had, touchin’ them with the beads while reciting a rosary and askin’ the Blessed Virgin to protect this year’s crop.

After a time, however, it comes to feel natural and actually becomes more so the more pronounced it is – as is the case in the sections on Micah and Mary, with their African-American Southern dialects.

The plot rumbles along smoothly, the scope is vast – spanning 20 years from beginning to end – and the history feels vivid and clear. What’s particularly impressive, though, is how Peter Troy draws readers into his story through a masterful use of perspective. The viewpoints wrap around you and turn themselves inside out, so that without your knowing exactly how it happened, you find yourself inhabiting each character’s skin: marching with the Grand Army and firing a musket at an enemy Reb, assisting with an amputation as a battlefield nurse, and hiding your true feelings from the Kittredges while planning to run away with the handsome carpenter you love.

As you might expect, the four gradually form two couples. The novel follows them on each step of their poignant journeys toward love; after they’ve finally found some measure of liberty, it takes courage to place their future happiness in the hands of someone else.

Although filled with depictions of oppression and intense hardship and set partly during wartime, the overarching tone is persistently hopeful; the protagonists are good, honest people who are always striving for something more. Their personal stories are spread out against a wide canvas showcasing mid-19th century society and politics. Inspirational fiction in the best sense of the term, this fulfilling saga that celebrates the bonds between diverse people is an excellent choice for fans of classic American stories.

May the Road Rise Up to Meet You was published in trade paperback by Anchor in November 2012 ($15.95/C$18.95, 512pp).  The hardcover is also available (Doubleday, $26.95/C$32.00, 386pp).

Guest post from Susan Sherman: Grandma Was a War Hero

Please help me welcome Susan Sherman to the blog.  Her debut novel, The Little Russian, published in paperback by Counterpoint this month ($15.95, 352pp), is based on her grandmother's life.  She has contributed a wonderful essay about how she uncovered details through personal research and family stories and transformed them into compelling fiction.

A genealogy buff myself, I'm always interested in hearing about novels based on family history, and I'd be putting The Little Russian on the TBR even if I didn't count early 20th-century Ukrainian Jews among my ancestors. Like many others, I know little about what their lives were like in the old country.  As Susan writes below, "We are a nation of immigrants," which is very true.  Novels such as this can help us get a better picture of what they achieved.

I hope you'll enjoy her post.  Visit her website at http://susanshermanauthor.com for more information.

~

Grandma Was a War Hero

by

Susan Sherman

For years I wanted to write my grandmother’s story. It was a natural for a novel: a young Jewish woman and her two children caught in Ukraine at the beginning of World War I, her desperate struggle to stay alive through the Russian Revolution and the civil war that followed, and her eventual escape across Ukraine to Poland. Yes, it was daunting to write about Russia; to become intimate with Ukraine during that period; to know what if felt like to live through those seminal events, especially as a Jew living in the Pale. I thought that if I were ever going to write this story, I’d better get on with it. My father and his one remaining brother were getting on. Time was running out. Since my grandmother didn’t leave a diary or letters or any other record, only they had the story or so I thought.

Like families everywhere, mine has certain traditions that are faithfully followed. They aren’t religious or philosophical in nature, but are small events, designed to bring people together. For example, every spring we meet at my house for a family reunion. Over Jewish comfort food, we get caught up, share photos and argue about politics. About eight years ago, at one of these reunions, I asked for details about grandma’s story. What I got was a barrage of conflicting accounts. Everyone had their own version, and everyone thought their version was the real one. My father believed that my grandmother went to live with distant relatives in Moscow at an early age. They were wealthy industrialists, who raised her as one of their own, educated her and taught her to be a lady. In my uncle’s version, she went to work in one of their factories, never received an education, and ended up barely able to read and write.

I decided to use my father’s version, mainly because I thought it would make a better story, and because it’s the version my grandmother would have chosen. My grandmother, like my protagonist Berta Alshonsky, was concerned with appearances. She would’ve been disappointed if I had portrayed her as an illiterate factory worker in a sugar refinery. According to her, she was educated. She read Goethe, Turgenev and Tolstoy. She could speak French, although I never heard her speak a word of it. The truth was my grandmother was a storyteller herself. She never let the truth get in the way of a good story, which is probably why there are so many versions of her life floating around my family today.

My main concern in writing the novel was telling a good story, not worrying about facts. In that way I guess I’m like my grandmother. I spent the next three years researching life in Russia and Ukraine. Eventually, I got to a place where I felt more at home in 19th century Cherkast then in Los Angeles. It was true that some of the elements of my story came directly from my research, but mostly my reading only served to confirm my grandmother’s story. There actually were thousands of Jewish peddlers on the road during the Russian Civil War. War communism was real. When she feared for her life because she was a peddler, engaged in private enterprise, and could be shot for it--well, all that happened. There were so many details of my grandmother’s life that I thought were exaggerated or invented, so many elements that seemed exotic or unreal, that when I did the research and found out they were true, it was a real awakening.

What I came away with, after all my research, was that my grandmother was an amazing woman. She had to have been in order to survive those times. I only knew her as the carefully coiffed blue hair bobbeh wearing her mink stole even on the hottest days. She was grandma, cooking all day for Passover dinners, dispensing hard candies to her grandchildren and admonishing us we went out without a sweater. I never knew she spent years scrambling for food and medicine, roaming the Ukrainian countryside trading beads for pig bristles and flax, so she could trade them in town for food. Each day she went out on the road despite the various factions who threatened the Jews: the Green Army of the Ukrainian nationalists, the Black Army of the Anarchists and the various hetman and their bands. She protected her children against the White Army and the Reds, while somehow managing to keep them alive despite the hunger, cold, and pogroms. In other words, my bobbeh was a war hero.

Traveling here and there to literary festivals, libraries, bookstores and book groups, I meet people all the time with family histories of their own. From every generation, from all over the globe come stories of men and women struggling to make a better life for succeeding generations. We are a nation of immigrants. We all come from somewhere else…and we all have heroes in our family.

An interview with Alana White, author of The Sign of the Weeping Virgin

Today I'm pleased to bring you an interview with my friend Alana White, whose debut historical mystery The Sign of the Weeping Virgin (Five Star, Dec. 2012) has been meeting with critical acclaim.  Publishers Weekly noted her "sure-handed storytelling and scrupulous research into the period," while Kirkus, in a starred review, wrote that "One hopes that White's clever tale, meticulously researched and pleasingly written, is the first in a series that will bring Florence and its many famous denizens to life."

Set in the dazzling cultural mecca of Florence, Italy, in the late 15th century, it introduces an intriguing protagonist, Guid'Antonio Vespucci, who is charged with solving two mysterious happenings in his city: the kidnapping of a young woman, and the reasons why a painting of the Virgin Mary in his family church has been seen shedding real tears.  It's a troubled time for Guid'Antonio's beloved Florence, with its predominant statesman, Lorenzo de' Medici, at war with Pope Sixtus and its citizens blaming Lorenzo for their excommunication.

Alana will be touring with Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours in February, so follow along with the participating blogs to learn more.  I hope you'll enjoy this interview. 

Guid’Antonio Vespucci played a major role in the political life of Renaissance Florence, but he isn’t as well-known as his explorer nephew, Amerigo, or Florence’s unelected but de facto leader, Lorenzo de’Medici. What convinced you to make him your main character?

Several things. Most importantly, I knew I wanted to write a character-driven story. While Guid'Antonio was an outstanding personality in Renaissance Florence, both as a lawyer and government leader and as Lorenzo de' Medici's ally and friend, he has remained a step back in the shadows, a pace behind the famous painters, philosophers, and poets of late fifteenth-century Florence. Thus, I felt I had space to create a story with him at its heart, filling in the unknown places, and giving him a private life, while drawing upon the facts surrounding his documented power and prestige. I felt I had the freedom to create a good, but haunted, inner man, one whose driving passion is to protect his family and Florence from their enemies at all costs.

I was equally drawn to the fact he was a lawyer. He is not an amateur or armchair detective. He is given court cases and represents clients, but he also investigates matters of a private nature. In Weeping Virgin, accompanied by Amerigo, Guid'Antonio walks down dark alleys where other men won't go.

Guid'Antonio Vespucci, detail from
Ghirlandaio's Calling of the Apostles

It appealed to me, too, that the "real" Guid'Antonio was a complex and good man; people respected and feared him (he was a powerful opponent of Savonarola, for example, and did everything in his power to rid Florence of that fiery preacher). Thanks to a bit of magic that happened when I discovered Ghirlandaio's image of Guid'Antonio painted on the Sistine Chapel wall, he is completely real to me. There he stands: silver-haired, wearing his flowing, crimson cloak. He is so handsome! And he is about forty-four, just the right age for my proper, but passionate, protagonist.

Your passion for the Italian Renaissance, in Florence especially, comes through loud and clear. What draws you to this setting?

Years ago, when I first read of the attempt in 1476 to assassinate Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici in Florence Cathedral during Easter Sunday Mass, I was intrigued. I read all the books I could find on the event. The more I read about the Medici family and their circle of friends, the more my fascination with them grew.

Here were the lives of the rich and famous: Leonardo da Vinci, Toscanelli, and Sandro Botticelli, with Sandro's paintings of breathtakingly beautiful young women and men. They all knew one another, loved and lost one another. Fought one another. They are all forever linked, and many of them are portrayed in the artwork of the day, making them real to us, almost six centuries later. That is what first drew me to this setting: the people, and here I remain, among them and their amazing individual stories.

While reading, I got an excellent sense of the layout of 15th-century Florence – the churches, City Hall, the Vespucci Palace and tradesmen’s workshops on Borg’Ognissanti, the Prato Gate, and even nearby villages. I got the feeling you must have meandered down the city’s streets numerous times yourself. What are your favorite places to visit there?

Ah, there's a lovely question! Guid'Antonio and Amerigo's family church, Ognissanti (All Saints) crowns the top of my list. I feel close to them there; the church is quiet, with relatively few tourists. As in Weeping Virgin, Botticelli's Saint Augustine is on the south wall, opposite Ghirlandaio's Saint Jerome—when these two frescoes are not traveling to art museums around the world. On the same street, Borg'Ognissanti, are the former Vespucci hospital (still a hospital today) and palace (which is not open).

Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Florence

I also like the Medici Chapel in Palazzo Medici Riccardi, where Benozzo Gozzoli's frescoes light the walls. A key scene unfolds there between Guid'Antonio and Lorenzo de' Medici's mother, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, who was in her day a well-known poet. In the Tuscan town of Impruneta, the painting of the Virgin Mary that plays a vital role in the book remains on display. I had a lovely "chat" with the priest there one day, in passionate, if broken, English and Italian! Impruneta is outside Florence; to go there and see the Virgin Mary of S. Maria Impruneta requires transportation—and she (the painting!) is not always on display. I don't want to omit the town of Vinci, Leonardo's birthplace. It is one of the most beautiful places in the world. As Amerigo says to Guid'Antonio: "No wonder Leonardo could paint!"

The Sign of the Weeping Virgin doesn’t begin as a typical historical mystery, since Guid’Antonio is charged with investigating the truth behind a weeping painting and a young woman's abduction rather than solving a murder. It made for a refreshing change. Did you set out to take a nontraditional approach to the genre?

Oh, my, no. After all the research and planning, it just played out that way. As I say, I knew I wanted the story to be character-driven. Really, I just felt my way. Finally, I decided someone had to die! I think I chose the right person. I'm writing the next book in the series now, a prequel. I want to include a glimpse of my victim, very much alive and going about his business. I always enjoy that when it happens in a book. I love thinking, "Aha! I know her/him!"

I enjoyed seeing the ongoing development of the relationship between Guid’Antonio and his wife, Maria del Vigna; they have a deep sensual bond, but their marriage is definitely volatile. How much does history tell us about them, and how much did you have to imagine?

Of all the major-minor characters in the book, Maria is the one I know least about in the real world. I feel fortunate to have her true name, her age, and the names of her parents. This much I discovered in another magical research moment. There is a biography of Guid'Antonio in Spanish, which as a true bibliophile, I own, even though I don't speak that language. In the opening pages, the author mentions Guid'Antonio's first wife, who died in 1469, adding that Guid'Antonio married the sixteen-year-old daughter of Alessandro del Vigna the following year. And there at the bottom of the page in a footnote, the author gives her name: "Maria." What a gem to find buried in those pages. I'm so glad I looked down.

Angelo Poliziano and Giuliano
de' Medici, by Domenico Ghirlandaio

From time to time, you include chapters that depart from Guid’Antonio’s perspective to examine other characters’ viewpoints, and I appreciated getting a broader look at the era this way. Were these scenes part of the novel from the beginning?

No. But eventually I reached the point where I wanted to take people beyond the confines of the walled city of Florence. I like Angelo Poliziano, the poet, and while I did originally include him even more, eventually I omitted those pages to maintain focus on the mystery and Guid'Antonio. Still, I felt the need to "swing out" a bit, and, since Angelo was in something of a self-imposed exile in Mantua and on the outs with Lorenzo at the time, I hoped including Angelo's thoughts about what was happening in his hometown underscored by a bit about his own personal history would expand the narrative, while trying not shoehorn too much material into the tale. I also added that very short piece in Lucrezia Tornabuoni's viewpoint as she mourns her son's death. To me, it helped keep those larger-than-life people real. The truth is—at times I felt sorry for most of them, imagining how they truly must have felt in their particular circumstances.

Let’s talk about one of my favorite aspects – the mouthwatering descriptions of Tuscan food! I especially enjoyed attending the meal Guid’Antonio shared with his kinsmen, from the fried ravioli, herbed meat, and bread in olive oil (yum) to seeing the silver cutlery with Vespucci-themed finials. Was the research for this as much fun as it appeared?

Fried ravioli—who knew? I have a lovely book, The Tuscan Year, by Elizabeth Romer. That is my main resource for seasonal foods and harvests as Guid'Antonio's cook bustles about the fragrant Vespucci Palace kitchen. I adore roast pork stuffed with garlic and rubbed with herbs. And so that was fairly easy to write about! I also rely on Waverly Root's The Food of Italy. Originally in Weeping Virgin, Amerigo was lusting after a Sicilian pastry known as the "Nipples of the Virgin." He must have some of those next time around. (And by the way, they originated in a monastery.)

~

The Sign of the Weeping Virgin is published this month by Five Star in hardcover ($25.95, 384pp).  Visit Alana White's website at www.alanawhite.com.

Winners of the Historical Holiday Blog Hop giveaway

Thank you to everyone who entered my blog hop giveaway this past week.  The response was tremendous.  Although I didn't announce this at the time, I'd told myself that if the contest got more than 100 entries I'd double everyone's chances by giving away two copies rather than one.  Well, I'm happy to say we beat that number.

So copies of Historical Fiction II: A Guide to the Genre will be going out to these blog visitors:

Margaret from Just One More Chapter

and
Jennifer from Losing the Shadow

I'll be in touch to get your addresses.  Congrats, and I hope you'll both enjoy the book!

My master list for the 2013 TBR Pile Challenge

After reading about the TBR Pile Challenge on several different blogs, I knew this was one I had to join. As in previous years, Roof Beam Reader is the sponsor, and there will be many other participating bloggers around to cheer us on.  The rules are simple:  Create a master list of 12 novels that have been sitting on your TBR for at least 12 months, and read and review them over the next year.  I read on average 85 books/year, so this shouldn't be tough, right?  Especially since my TBR isn't really a pile but fills several rooms...

It may be a sad statement that I need a challenge like this to force me to read books that enticed me into buying them years ago, but the call of newly published titles often proves too strong... which means my older historical novels lie ignored for years if not decades.  I had such a fun time participating in Historical Tapestry's Alphabet in Historical Fiction challenge two years ago, since it gave me a good reason to return to authors' backlists.  The TBR Pile Challenge should do the same, and I'm looking forward to it.

Here's my list of 12 titles and 2 alternates, in no real order.  I've also posted it on Goodreads.  I spent way too much time going through my shelves at home and choosing these books.

1.  Rose Tremain, Music and Silence (2000) - royal scandal in 17th-century Denmark.  I've owned this for about a dozen years, and after just finishing her new novel Merivel: A Man of His Time, I'm eager to read more of her work.

2.  Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman (2001) - romantic epic centered on the Siege of Leningrad, 1941.  So many bloggers seem to love this one, and the prequel, Children of Liberty, will be out next spring.

3.  Liz Curtis Higgs, Here Burns My Candle (2010) - love and betrayal in the 18th-century Scottish Lowlands.  Her trilogy beginning with Thorn in My Heart, in which the biblical Jacob-Leah-Rachel triangle is transported to the same setting, is a favorite.  Why haven't I read this one yet?

4.  Rosemary Sutcliff, Rider on a White Horse (1959) - the story of Anne Fairfax and her husband Thomas, during the English Civil War.  Because it's a Sutcliff I haven't read before.

5.  Dorothy Dunnett, Niccolò Rising (1986) - the first book in her House of Niccolò series set in the Low Countries in the 15th century.  I have the entire 8-book set, all shiny 1st edition hardcovers with gorgeous jackets.  I picked up the first one many years ago, read 25 pages, was utterly confused as to what was going on, and put it back down (please don't hate me).  Meanwhile I've gotten older and have developed a taste for literary fiction.  This is a good time to try again.

6.  Diana Norman, Daughter of Lir (1988) - 12th-century Ireland and England.  A long out-of-print title from one of my favorite historical novelists.

7.  Donna Baker, Bid Time Return (1993) - I own many of Donna Baker's books but have yet to read one.  I also didn't know until googling her name just now that this is a pseudonym for Lilian Harry, best known for her WWII British sagas.  This is the first in her two-book Cumbrian Saga, set in and around Furness in the early 20th century.  Her website says that her novels written as Baker are being re-released as e-books.

8.  Elizabeth D'Oyley, The Mired Horse (1951) - the drama surrounding Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, and his relationship with Mary, Queen of Scots.  I had to create a new entry for it in Goodreads because it wasn't in the system... which is a very good reason to review it.  Someone ought to!  This will be one for my Obscure Books series. 

9.  Esmeralda Santiago, Conquistadora (2011) - one of my newer choices, a literary epic set in mid-19th century Puerto Rico.  I got my ARC signed at BEA last year and always meant to read it.

10.  Brian John, On Angel Mountain (2006) - first in a six-book family saga set in late 18th and early 19th-century Wales.  One of my favorite subgenres, and I love Welsh settings.
 
11. Elizabeth Laird, The Betrayal of Maggie Blair (2011) - YA historical about an accused witch in 17th-century Scotland... adventure, religious repression, and so forth.  I don't read much YA but should.

12. Tracy Chevalier, The Lady and the Unicorn (2003) - fictional drama surrounding the creation of the gorgeous Cluny tapestries, which I've had the fortune to see in person on two occasions.

Some old, some new, some classics, and some lesser known.  My alternates are Sena Jeter Naslund's Ahab's Wife and Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.  With luck I'll get to all fourteen within the next year, and maybe some others, too.  Hope you'll follow along with me!

(Edited later to add the novels' publication dates.)

My stop on the Historical Holiday Blog Hop

The holiday season is upon us, and like many other historical fiction bloggers, I'm participating in the 1st annual Historical Holiday Blog Hop sponsored by Passages to the Past. Nearly 40 different bloggers have signed up, and readers have a chance to win prizes at each of our blogs... so hop on by and see all of us!

In addition, Amy at Passages to the Past is hosting a large grand prize drawing over at her site (see the end of this post for what you can win there; limited to US only).

For my giveaway, I'm offering up a copy of my newest book, Historical Fiction II: A Guide the Genre (Libraries Unlimited, 2009).

This is a readers' guide to English-language historical novels for adults published between 2004 and 2008. The books are grouped into subgenres -- mystery, romantic, epics, literary, thrillers, Christian, sagas, traditional historicals, and more -- and then arranged by time period or theme.  Over 2,700 novels are included and described.  I also give detailed introductions to each subgenre, a short history of historical fiction, reading lists by plot pattern or theme, and lists of award winners.

It's 738pp long, weighs nearly 4 lbs, and retails for $70... and comes complete with its own headless cover.  International entrants are welcome, so I hope many will enter (consider it my contribution to the financially strapped US Postal Service).  Fill out the form below for a chance to win.  Deadline:  December 17, 2012.



Plus...

The Grand Prize Giveaways for the Blog Hop are as follows. Amy at Passages to the Past will be creating four big prize packages out of these titles graciously donated by the authors or their publishers.  I've linked to my reviews/interviews when applicable.

Historical Holiday Blog Hop Grand Prizes (US Only)

- $25 Amazon or Barnes & Noble Gift Card
- Prize package(s) of historical novels including:

1. Oleanna by Julie Rose (pb)
2. The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn by Robin Maxwell (pb)
3. Jane: The Woman Who Loved Tarzan by Robin Maxwell (Audio Books)
4. The King's Daughter by Barbara Kyle (pb)
5. The King's Concubine by Anne O'Brien (pb)
6. Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe by Leslie Carroll (pb)
7. The Darling Strumpet by Gillian Bagwell (pb)
8. The September Queen by Gillian Bagwell (pb)
9. The Kingmaking by Helen Hollick (pb) *w/signed bookplate
10. The Forever Queen by Helen Hollick (pb) *w/signed bookplate
11. Sea Witch by Helen Hollick (pb) *w/signed bookplate
12. Claude & Camille by Stephanie Cowell (pb)
13. Marrying Mozart by Stephanie Cowell (pb)
14. The Queen's Vow by Christopher Gortner (pb, UK edition)
15. Into the Path of Gods (Book 1, Macsen's Treasure Series) by Kathleen Cunningham Guler (pb)
16. In the Shadow of Dragons (Book 2, Macsen's Treasure Series) by Kathleen Cunningham Guler (pb)
17. The Anvil Stone (Book 3, Macsen's Treasure Series) by Kathleen Cunningham Guler (hc)
18. A Land Beyond Ravens (Book 4, Macsen's Treasure Series) by Kathleen Cunningham Guler (hc)
19. Pale Rose of England by Sandra Worth (pb)
20. The Rose of York: Love & War by Sandra Worth (pb)
21. A Dance of Manners (A Regency Anthology) by Susan Flanders, Cynthia Breeding, Kristi Ahlers, Gerri Bowen and Erin Hatton (pb)
22. The Book of Lost Fragrances by MJ Rose (hc)
23. The Sumerton Women by D.L. Bogdan (pb)
24. Mistress of the Sun by Sandra Gulland (signed pb)
25. The Master of Verona by David Blixt (hc)
26. Before Versailles by Karleen Koen (pb)
27. Four Sisters, All Queens by Sherry Jones (pb)
28. At the Mercy of the Queen by Anne Barnhill (pb)
29. What You Long For by Anne Barnhill (pb)
30. Cascade by Maryanne O'Hara (signed hc)
31. The Lady's Slipper by Deborah Swift (pb, UK edition)
32. The Plum Tree by Ellen Marie Wiseman (signed pb)
33. The Secret Keeper by Sandra Byrd (pb, with Tower of London Tea Sachets)
34. The Mischief of the Mistletoe (2 copies - 1 pb, 1 hc - both signed)
35. The Sister Queens by Sophie Perinot
36. The Secret History: A Novel of Empress Theodora by Stephanie Thornton (pb w/bookmark)
37. The King's Grace by Anne Easter Smith (pb)
38. Illuminations by Mary Sharratt (hc)
39. Selene of Alexandria by Faith L. Justice (2 copies - 1 pb, 1 eBook)
40. A Thing Done by Tinney Sue Heath (2 copies, pb)
41. Rebel Puritan by Jo Ann Butler (pb)
42. The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasmussen (audio cd's)
43. By Fire, By Water by Mitchell James Kaplan (2 copies, pb)
44. The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan (ARC, courtesy of Penguin Publishing)
45. Above All Things by Tanis Rideout (ARC, courtesy of Penguin Publishing)
46. The Fever Tree by Jennifer McVeigh (ARC, courtesy of Penguin Publishing)
47. Movement of Stars by Amy Brill (ARC, courtesy of Penguin Publishing)
48. Teaspoon of Earth and Sea by Dina Nayeri (ARC, courtesy of Penguin Publishing)
49. The Queen's Daughter by Susan Coventry (hc)
50. The Virgin Queen's Daughter by Ella March Chase (pb)
51. Three Maids for a Crown by Ella March Chase (pb)
52. Mistress of Rome by Kate Quinn (pb)
53. The Forgotten Queen by D.L. Bogdan (ARC)
54. The Sign of the Weeping Virgin by Alana White
55. A Place Beyond Courage by Elizabeth Chadwick (pb)
56. The Crown by Nancy Bilyeau (signed pb)
57. Second Lisa by Veronica Knox

To enter the Grand Prize Drawing, visit Passages to the Past.

Good luck to all entrants!