Reading the Past

A visual preview of the spring season

2012-01-31T18:30:00.005-06:00

Here we are again with another collage of historical novel covers and descriptions. As usual, I'm running slightly behind, which means a summer preview will be posted very soon. In alphabetical order by author, below, are previews for 15 novels set to appear between February and May 2012, chosen out of personal interest. Realistically speaking, I'll only get to a fraction of these in the immediate future, although I don't like to admit it. I want to read them all.

In addition to these, the Historical Novel Society's forthcoming books page lists titles set to be published between now and August. I'll be reviewing yet more spring titles here, later - stay tuned!

Jane Borodale's excellent Book of Fires, about a young woman, pregnancy, and pyrotechny in 1750s London, was the first book I reviewed in 2010. The Knot steps back two centuries and continues its focus on ordinary people from English history. In its story of one man's life, it looks at love, gardening, and the translation of an Herbal in rural Somerset during the Elizabethan era.

I am undoubtedly one of the few people who hasn't read Sarah's Key; I've read quite a bit of fiction about World War II lately, but not that one. (You all can tell me if I'm missing anything.) De Rosnay's third novel in English takes place in 1860s Paris as a woman fights to save her beloved family home from destruction during the city's renovation. St. Martin's, Feb.

There's nothing like the premise of Blue Asylum to make women grateful that they're living in the 21st century. During the Civil War, a Southern plantation owner's wife is put away in a mental hospital for daring to express abolitionist tendencies. The story doesn't end there, of course. HMH, April.

I enjoyed Johnson's The Salt Road (it of the gorgeous UK cover) well enough to want to pick up her third mainstream historical, this one moving from 17th-century Morocco to the more familiar court of England's Charles II. Viking UK and Doubleday Canada, Feb.

A murder mystery set in an 18th-century Shaker community? That seems like such an incongruous notion that despite the title, I doubt there's anything simple about this storyline. Eleanor Kuhns' A Simple Murder, taking place in 1796 Maine, was the winner of Mystery Writers of America's First Crime Novel Competition, and the author is a librarian in upstate New York. Minotaur, May.

I posted the US publishing deal for this title last March (it's forthcoming from Amy Einhorn Books, who also published The Help and Sarah Blake's The Postmistress, among others, so we'll be hearing plenty more about it). I've been looking forward to it since. Americans will have to wait a bit, as this is the UK edition. As you might guess from the spectacular cover, it takes place in Africa: the diamond fields of 1870s South Africa, to be specific. A self-involved young Englishwoman arrives there to marry an ambitious doctor and joins him on his smallpox station on the isolated Karoo plains, where she gets caught up in local drama. Viking UK, March.

The Song of Achilles has been out in the UK since the autumn, and reviews have been outstanding overall. An epic of love, war, and fate in ancient Greece and a retelling of events from Homer's Iliad, it focuses on the growing relationship between Patroclus and Achilles. The legendary warrior from the Trojan War is depicted here as a romantic hero. Ecco, March.

You all may be weary of my singing Jude Morgan's praises by now, but I couldn't resist posting the cover of his soon-to-be-released biographical novel about the Bard. I've read many novels about Shakespeare, but have high hopes that this one will show a new side to his character. Morgan specializes in insightful fictional portraits of famously creative men and women from history, and I expect no less from this volume. Headline, April.

Sophie Perinot's debut novel centers on two royal women you won't have read much about before in fiction: Marguerite of Provence, who married Louis IX of France, and Eleanor of Provence, who married England's Henry III. Sisters, close friends, and occasional rivals, their relationship endures despite the distance that separates them for most of their long lives. For my fellow chunksterers: this one will count too. NAL, March.

This gothic-tinged cover is so different from the pastoral scene that appeared on the ARC that I did a double take. As with his previous novel, Serena (see news on the film version), we're back in the dark, gorgeous landscape of early 20th-century Appalachia. A novel about a mysterious stranger, a woman thought to be a witch, and a secret with dangerous repercussions in WWI-era North Carolina. Ecco, April.

Gothic romantic suspense (with ghosts) set in an England already haunted by war... sounds like my type of book. In the years after World War I, a young woman is charged with helping a ghost-hunter dispel the angry spirit of Maddy Clare, who died by suicide. NAL, March.

A saga about immigration to America in the mid-19th century; not an uncommon subject, but what makes this one different is the author's choice to tell it in the voices of four characters with very different cultural perspectives: a young Irishman, a Spanish society girl, and a man and a woman who are slaves. The American Civil War forms the eventual backdrop to their stories. Doubleday, March.

Here we have a saga of a different sort, one that explores the bonds between mothers and daughters over a century, from the 1830s to the World War II years, in the mountains of rural north Georgia. The ongoing evolution (or not) of race relations involving African Americans and the Cherokee weaves in and out of the tale, along with elements of magical realism. Viking, March.

Turner Publishing has been around for a while, per their website, but they're new to me... and they've been buying up a number of novels from Barbara Wood's backlist, as well as some newer titles. Wood is one of the rare historical novelists who can adapt her skills to numerous settings and eras. This Golden Land is a saga about a female healer who travels from 19th-century England to Melbourne to pursue her calling as a midwife. (Per Amazon, it was previously published with iUniverse.) Turner, May.

And one more by Wood with the same release date (and an awesome cover): The story of a Germanic-Roman woman with second sight during Christianity's early years. Turner, May.

A look at Rosie Thomas's The Kashmir Shawl

2012-01-28T13:28:00.007-06:00

Multi-period novels with parallel stories linked by family connections are among my favorite types of books. While the parts set in an earlier time take me away from everyday concerns via unfamiliar settings and period-appropriate situations, the modern sections bring everything back home again, showing how people are more connected to history than they might have thought.

A transporting story that begins in present-day North Wales and wends through the remote towns of India's Kashmir Valley during World War II, Rosie Thomas's The Kashmir Shawl offers enjoyable armchair escapism. I got it as a Christmas present and decided to read it in between the chunksters I had for review. Partway through I realized that, at 468 pages, it qualified as a chunkster as well.

Mair Ellis never knew her grandmother, Nerys Watkins, who died before she was born. After the death of their beloved father, Mair and her siblings discover a gorgeously patterned shawl hidden in an old chest of drawers. Made of the softest Indian wool, and full of wonderful colors and intricate detail, the shawl also conceals an envelope with a curl of dark brown hair that doesn't match anyone in their family.

This mystery proves an irresistible opportunity for Mair, who never knew much about her grandparents' time in India. Evan Watkins had been sent there as a Presbyterian missionary in the early '40s, and Nerys had willingly followed him there. In the hopes of uncovering their hidden history, Mair travels to the town of Leh, high in northwestern India's Himalayas. Her investigations into her grandmother's past and the shawl's origins eventually lead her to Srinigar, the summer capital of nearby Kashmir.

Mair and Nerys, whose journeys are revealed in alternating timelines, are independent, courageous, and also lonelier than they'd like to admit. Romantic, yet tempered with a good amount of realism, The Kashmir Shawl takes an honest look at many different aspects of love. This may sound trite, but one of the most impressive aspects of the novel is how its unstereotypical characters react to what's expected of them. While I never really warmed to Mair, I especially liked Nerys, who's left to fend for herself while her husband is off doing his godly work (and neither minds their separation as much as they should). She manages to balance her role as a proper clergyman's wife with a streak of unconventionality. Not all of her women friends fare as well.

And as you can imagine, this is one of those epics where geography has a strong and vital presence. Srinigar, home to Dal Lake and its elaborate wooden houseboats, offers both beauty and conflict. In the 1940s, women of the British expatriate community hold social gatherings while their men are off at war, while the calm atmosphere of the modern-day town, as seen from Mair's viewpoint, is occasionally engulfed by Muslim-Hindu violence.

Long-held traditions endure as well. In this age of mass production, it can be hard to fathom the years of effort that the novel's Kashmiri villagers pour into the weaving of a single shawl, but as Mair and Nerys discover, the end result is exquisite.

How the Kashmir shawl came to be in Nerys' possession isn't revealed until the book is nearly over, and it requires the introduction of a good many new characters, but the plot doesn't feel needlessly drawn out. I won't give more away than that, because getting there is an engrossing experience, and all of the strands pull together well at the end.

The Kashmir Shawl was published by HarperCollins UK in 2011 at £12.99 in trade paperback.

And the Scott O'Dell winner is...

2012-01-26T09:00:00.039-06:00

I confess I was paying so much attention to the Newberys and other ALA book awards that the announcement of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction passed me by. This is an annual prize for a meritorious book for children or young adults (see the sponsor's website), and it comes with an award of $5000.

As revealed on January 17th, the winner for 2012 is Jack Gantos' Dead End in Norvelt (FSG, 2011), which — yes — also took home the 2012 Newbery Medal. Read more at School Library Journal.

This morning, I opened up my issue of Shelf Awareness and found a fantastic, very funny interview with Gantos that you can find here (scroll 2/3 down the page). The novel's set during the summer of 1962, in Gantos's home town of Norvelt, Pennsylvania, a federally planned New Deal town named after Eleanor Roosevelt. The Q&A has some great discussion points on the nature of historical fiction, homestead communities, and using real people as characters.

A short quote from Jennifer M. Brown's interview:

JB: When you won the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction last week, we had to pause before realizing--ah yes, the setting is the summer of 1962, and it is historical fiction!

JG: That's, let's see, exactly 50 years ago. I think you can get antique license plates for a 1962 car. Somebody said, "How does it feel to be given an award for a historical novel where you're the main character?" When you put it that way, I'm feeling a little crusty.

Did you realize that if you go by the (somewhat arbitrary) definition that historical novels are set 50+ years in the past, that this now includes the early '60s? When I first started getting interested in the field, I remember talking to some readers my grandmother's age who were taken aback that WWII-era fiction was considered "historical." They lived through that era and remembered it well. Now that date range has moved ahead by a couple of decades.

There are advantages to working in a library with a curriculum materials center. After reading about both awards, I searched in our online catalog to see whether we had a copy of Dead End in Norvelt - and we did! And it was available and on display with other award winners. So I grabbed it.

Award-winning historical novels at ALA Midwinter, 2012

2012-01-24T21:19:00.001-06:00

The American Library Association's 2012 Midwinter conference just wrapped up in Dallas, and a number of literary awards were announced there. Once again (see last year's list), historical fiction made a good showing.

Relevant winners include:

The Newbery Medal and Newbery Honor books, recognizing the best in American children's literature.

- The winner: Jack Gantos' Dead End in Norvelt, an off-the-wall adventure set in small-town America in 1962;
- The Honor books: Thanhha Lai's Inside Out and Back Again, about a Vietnamese refugee family in the American South; and Eugene Yelchin's Breaking Stalin's Nose, middle-grade fiction set in Stalinist Russia.

The 2012 Reading List Awards, which recognize the best books in eight genres.

- For Historical Fiction: Mary Doria Russell's Doc, a reinterpretation of the life of Doc Holliday.
- On the Historical Fiction shortlist: Dominic Smith's Bright and Distant Shores, Amor Towles' Rules of Civility, Sharon Kay Penman's Lionheart, and Beth Powning's The Sea-Captain's Wife. [links to my reviews]
- For Fantasy, Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, a magical tale of lovers in a mysterious late 19th-century circus.
- For Romance, Loretta Chase's Silk is for Seduction, set in 1830s England.

ALA Notable Books, honoring excellent, important fiction for the adult reader. (Understood to be literary fiction; the Reading List looks at genre fiction.)

- Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers, a darkly comic Western; and Michael Ondaatje's The Cat's Table, in which a young boy comes of age aboard ship in the 1950s. These were the only historical novels on the list; see the full slate for other honorees (including nonfiction and poetry).

On a personal note, I was notified of some very exciting news last Friday that was formally announced at ALA on Sunday night. The awards chair phoned me to say I'd been selected as the winner of the 2012 Louis Shores Award from the Reference & User Services Association, which is given for excellence in book reviewing for libraries. This blog was mentioned in the press release (how cool to have a press release of my own!).

Unfortunately I wasn't able to be at the conference in person ‒ I got word just after I'd finished up my afternoon reference desk shift at the library ‒ but there'll be an awards reception at the ALA Annual convention in Anaheim this summer, and I plan on being there. No big speeches here, but I was completely surprised and thrilled, and still am. A huge thanks to the librarian who nominated me and to the members of the award committee.

An interview with Anne Clinard Barnhill, author of At the Mercy of the Queen

2012-01-23T07:00:00.003-06:00

How far does family loyalty extend? If the relative to whom you owed your social position asked you a favor that required you to give up your innocence and a possible chance at love, would you do it?

In Anne Clinard Barnhill's first novel, Lady Margaret (Madge) Shelton, a young lady-in-waiting, is presented with this wrenching dilemma. Although she's in love with Arthur Brandon, a handsome courtier, Madge acquiesces when her cousin and queen, Anne Boleyn, asks her to catch the eye of Henry VIII. If King Henry is determined to take a mistress, Queen Anne thinks, best that it be someone loyal to her.

At the Mercy of the Queen follows Madge's transformation from a quiet and pretty country girl to a young woman who is considerably wiser in the ways of the world. Lady Margaret Shelton is a historical character, one of the three acknowledged mistresses of Henry VIII, and Anne Barnhill's perspective on her originated in an unexpected place: her own family tree. In a genre filled with novels about the scandalous Tudor court, Barnhill's novel stands out for its fresh viewpoint, its sumptuous descriptions of food and fashion, and a portrayal of the Anne Boleyn-Henry VIII relationship that felt especially realistic to this historical fiction reader.

I'd like to thank Anne for her willingness to do this interview and hope you'll enjoy it as well. As one of the more fun parts of her research, she's in the process of having a Tudor gown made. Pictures below!

Madge first makes an appearance as a young, sheltered girl from the country who isn't thrilled to leave her home and become lady-in-waiting to her cousin Anne. How did you sort through the few known facts about Madge's life to come up with her character?

I've been reading about Madge for about 30 years, since I first discovered my connection to her. She is mentioned in most books about Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. I also checked online and in a family history book I have (from my grandmother) which has about a paragraph about her. I found her family was involved in raising sheep for the wool industry and were somewhat prominent in Norfolk. Her father was sheriff and her ancestors built Shelton Hall. I began to imagine what things might have been like for her. As for her birth date, there is none I have been able to find. She was probably not quite as young as I have made her in the book, but she was younger than Anne Boleyn. I think the whole thing began when I started to consider what it would be like to have an affair with your cousin's husband. And, even more interesting, what if your cousin set the whole thing up? Why might she have done that and why might you agree?

In the novel, you portray Anne Boleyn sympathetically; she's ambitious and occasionally bad-tempered, but also gracious, dignified, and of a religious bent. She loves her husband and desperately wants her marriage to succeed. You mention that when you were 15, Anne Boleyn first captured your attention via Norah Lofts' The Concubine. What other sources, fiction or nonfiction, most influenced your portrayal of Queen Anne? Did The Concubine lead you to any other historical fiction discoveries?

I read mostly nonfiction for the first 20 years or so of my secret obsession. Eric Ives' work is wonderful. David Starkey, Alison Weir, Antonia Fraser, Warnicke, Dunn, just lots really. Then, I read all of Jean Plaidy, who I love. Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl helped me out of the closet as I realized lots of people share my Tudor fascination. Online sources have been invaluable, though more for the second book than the first: the Anne Boleyn Files and On the Tudor Trail are great sources. I have not read as much historical fiction as I would like — I've discovered it rather late in my reading life. But I intend to change that and devour as much as I can find!

I especially loved your descriptions of the diversions and delicacies at the Tudor court: the dances, card games, sumptuous feasts, and so forth. Did you personally try out any of these things during the writing process? Which were the most enjoyable to write about?

Oh, I love to write about food and fashion! I'm having a Tudor outfit made and thus far, I have the undergarments and a French hood to match the stomacher. I've selected material for the outer wear and hope to have that completed by the time the next book comes out. So, yes, I've experienced the clothing. As for the food, it's a little rich for my taste, though I may try some recipes this year, especially for drinks such as mulled wine. I will NOT try the dove stuffed into a duck stuffed into a goose stuffed into a peacock! That sounds really awful to me!

Were there any scenes in the novel you found more challenging to write than others?

Well, I had pulled the curtain on most of the sex scenes and my agent wanted me to be more graphic. I loved writing them but they make me nervous when I think of people reading them. Really, I had fun writing the whole book — I started it to entertain myself... I really hadn't thought of trying to get it published. So I was very free to have fun!

Madge's nurse and friend, Cate, describes London as having the "scent of life." How do you get into the mindset for tuning out your current surroundings and writing about the bustle and intrigue of 16th-century London?

I go away so I can have solitude and then I read constantly from nonfiction books about the time and the people. I do have to dive in deep to get there and, once I get in, I really do not want to come out. That's why I go away — I'm not fit company for man nor beast. And I hope by surrounding myself with the books (I actually sleep with them piled across the bed, hoping to learn by osmosis I guess) I will get as real as possible.

You mention in the preface that you've wanted to tell this story for thirty years. How did the idea of your novel change over time? Were there any new tidbits you discovered that took your story in a new direction from the way you initially imagined it?

I have always had the shape of the novel in my mind, pretty much as it is now. Madge turned out to be a little younger than I expected early on. I remember being a young teen and admiring older women, copying their mannerisms, their style — all of this as I was developing my own style. Young girls can almost worship an older woman they admire — I see this in my 9-year-old granddaughter as she encounters teens and young women in their 20's. I thought that would make the whole plot work better — having the relationship between Anne and Madge the primary relationship, thought there is a love interest for Madge, Arthur Brandon. He was a surprise--just turned up on the page cocky as you please. He definitely took the story in a different direction.

Your family connection to the Sheltons intrigues me, as it gives you a unique tie to your subject. Are you a descendant of Madge herself, or of one of her siblings? How did the Shelton Family History you mention as a source aid in your research?

I'm a descendant of Ralph Shelton, Madge's brother. The book is helpful in that it gives little paragraphs about those family members who have interesting stories or roles in history. For example, there are some Sheltons who married the Founding Fathers of the U.S. and that was interesting. Another relative led the Patriots at the Battle of King's Mountain — I just love all that stuff!

How have your experiences in evaluating other authors' work, as a writing tutor and book reviewer, influenced your own fiction writing?

Hmmm. I have slowly come to the idea that I want the writing to be as smooth as possible, so that the 'writer' never gets in the way of the story. I have not mastered that yet, and probably never will, but I want the story to flow, the dream to continue uninterrupted, as John Gardner puts it. It's easy to see mistakes in someone else's work, but incredibly hard to see it in your own. I think I've become a pretty good critic over the years but it's still hard to find my own stories--to get to the heart of the story. So, it definitely helps to look at what other folks are doing--and often, I am inspired by other writers. It's easy to stay in your own head until someone comes along and shakes you up. Then, you say, oh yeah! I could try that. Reading and writing go hand in hand.

At the Mercy of the Queen was published by St. Martin's Griffin in January ($14.99/Can $16.99, trade paperback, 432pp + special reading group guide). This interview forms part of the Virtual Book Tour for At the Mercy of the Queen. For more information, see Anne Clinard Barnhill's website.

Why I'm taking up the Chunkster Challenge

2012-01-19T21:51:00.001-06:00

Did you ever notice that many historical novels are really, really long?

Above at left, we have over 4100 pages' worth of the latest in historical fiction; the shortest one - Madame Tussaud - barely qualifies for the challenge at 455 pages. And on the right we have Oliver, who insisted on being included in the pic. If he knew I'd be including him in a Chunkster Challenge post, he might have reconsidered (he's got a bit of a belly on him).

I seem to have accepted an awful lot of epics for review, so you'll be seeing them featured here over the next few months. Two books in the bunch are being cleverly hidden from view for now, because I've committed to reviewing them for other publications, but their identities will be revealed in time.

So this year, while I'm trying to work off a few extra pounds on the NordicTrack, I'll also be piling on the pages. I'm aiming for Plump Primer level (at least six chunksters) although I expect to surpass it. Let's not forget that the new Ken Follett, The Winter of the World, is set to be published in mid-September and is technically long enough to count as two chunksters (too bad it doesn't work that way).

I guess I'd better get reading.

In which I give a tell-all interview

2012-01-19T19:26:00.000-06:00

Okay, it's not quite that dramatic, but earlier this week, blogger and historical fiction fan Jane Steen asked me some good questions about the story behind my blog, trends in historical fiction, and other fun bookish and bloggish stuff. You can find it at: A Historical Fiction Book Blogger Tells All. Thanks, Jane, for the opportunity!

Guest post from Julie Rose, author of Oleanna: Norway and Sweden in 1905

2012-01-17T08:00:00.001-06:00

Today I'm welcoming Julie K. Rose to the blog to discuss the backdrop to her new historical novel, Oleanna, which takes place during the separation of Norway from Sweden in 1905. Oleanna, published this month, is based on people from her own family history. More details are available at oleannanovel.com. I'll be conducting an interview with Julie in a future post.

When you think of Norway (if you think of it at all), what comes to mind? Stunning scenery? Vikings? A successful socially liberal society? Hot blondes?

I expect the political separation of Norway and Sweden in 1905 wasn't high on your list. It hasn't exactly been a hot-button topic for historians, or for historical fiction authors. In fact, I'll wager most readers didn't realize that Norway and Sweden were ever joined, let alone separated. Here is a brief history of how the Dissolution of 1905 came to be.

Due to the geography of the area (tall mountains, deep fjords, a dearth of arable land, and over 25,000km of coastlines running from 58°N to more than 71°N) it was difficult to create a stable, agriculture-based economy and political structure beyond small kingdoms scattered throughout the country. The Viking Age saw increased wealth and the first attempts at a unified Norway under King Harald Fairhair. Later, the (often violent) promulgation of Christianity under King Olaf Haraldsson (St. Olav) from 1015-1028 allowed him to spread his political influence, unifying most of what we know as modern Norway. Despite a brief period under the dominion of Denmark's King Knut, Norway was ruled by Norwegians, including Harald Hardrada, Olaf's nephew (yes, the same Harald who died at Stamford Bridge in 1066), until 1299.In that year King Haakon V moved the capital to Oslo; upon his death, he had no sons, so the throne of Norway went to his daughter's son, King Magnus Eriksson of Sweden. King Magnus abdicated, and his son Haakon became king—he was married to Margrethe, the daughter of the Danish king, and so their son Olaf became king of Denmark in 1376 and Norway in 1380 as King Olav IV. (Got all that?)

Life continued on in Norway for hundreds of years, as the elite in Denmark ruled over Norway, and the Norwegian nobles couldn't seem to get their act together to make a run at independence. And then a strange thing happened.

In 1814, Denmark-Norway was defeated during the Napoleonic wars, and the king was forced to cede Norway to Sweden in the Treaty of Kiel. In an attempt to retain control, the Viceroy and hereditary prince of Denmark-Norway, Christian Frederik, encouraged the burgeoning independence movement ,and a constitutional convention and declaration of independence was made on May 17, 1814. This day is still celebrated in Norway as Syttende Mai (Seventeen May) or Constitution Day.

Rosemaling decorated with floral paintings
(source: Wikipedia)

Sweden, of course, was having none of it and declared war on Norway. To keep the peace, Prince Christian Frederik relinquished his claims to the throne of Norway in return for a democratic Norwegian constitution. In return, the Norwegian parliament elected the Swedish king as King of Norway.

Suffice to say, the 91-year marriage of Norway and Sweden was not a particularly happy one; Norway tended to be liberal, parliamentary, and affiliated with the United Kingdom, while Sweden tended to be conservative, monarchial, and affiliated with Germany. Norway largely had political independence, but being yoked to rival Sweden was galling.

But one interesting thing did happen during this unhappy union: the reclamation of native folk art by the political movers and shakers. Folk art, like the graceful rosemaling, had never really died. Until well into the 20th century, many villages in Norway were extremely difficult to reach, and folk ways and art continued on as they always had.

As part of the general romantic nationalist movement in Europe during the 19th century, Norwegians rediscovered their art—the most famous examples of which are bunad, the traditional folk dress for each region of the country (which of course had never died out in most of the remote villages); and the folk tale collections of Asbjornson and Moe. Throughout the 19th century, Norwegians actively promoted pride in their country, in their art, in their culture—a useful fuel to fire what came next.

Matters came to a head in the 1890s, when Norway began to insist on its own consular offices abroad rather than common consuls appointed by Sweden. The Swedish government and king rejected this, which set in motion the events that would lead to the dissolution.

Propaganda poster from the summer of 1905:
"We love our country!"
(Line from the national anthem, written in 1814)

A coalition government was formed in 1905 to establish the separate Norwegian corps of consuls; the law was passed by the Storthing, but King Oscar II of Sweden refused to accept it, and the Norwegian coalition government resigned on June 7, 1905, declaring a dissolution of the union.

The Swedish government insisted on a Norwegian referendum to understand the citizen's view; it was held on August 13, and 99.95% of Norwegians voted in favor of dissolution. Though suffrage was not extended to women in national elections until 1913, Norwegian women still collected more than 200,000 signatures in favor of dissolution.

And so, Norwegians finally regained their independence for the first time since the 14th century. Or did they? In November another plebiscite was held in which 79% of Norwegians voted in favor of a monarchy and not a republic. This proved to be a challenge, because the hereditary lines of Norwegian kings were MIA. Who did Norway choose for its king? Oh, the irony: Prince Carl of Denmark. Carl took the name Haakon VII and, alongside his wife Maud of England, was sworn in as king on November 27, 1905. (Fun fact: the current King, Harald V, married commoner Sonja Haraldsen in 1968, the first Norwegian-born queen since Margrete Skulesdotter in 1225.)

So, what did it all mean for the people of Norway, this dissolution of the union? Norway emerged into the 20th century as an economic force to be reckoned with, growing wealthy through North Sea oil; the dissolution also brought Norway fully onto the world stage when it joined the League of Nations in 1920, and it solidified the alignment of Norway with Great Britain (which unfortunately would have terrible consequences for Norway during the world wars). Above all, though, the dissolution of 1905 gave the Norwegian people a renewed sense of pride, a fresh start in a new century. Their country had become an independent entity for the first time in 700 years. They were once again truly free.

Set during the separation of Norway from Sweden in 1905, Oleanna is a richly detailed novel of love and loss inspired by the life of the author's great-great-aunts.

Oleanna and her sister Elisabeth are the last of their family working their farm deep in the western fjordland. A new century has begun, and the world outside is changing, but in the Sunnfjord their world is as small and secluded as the verdant banks of a high mountain lake. With their parents dead and their brothers all gone to America, the sisters have resigned themselves to a simple life tied to the land and to the ghosts of those who have departed.

The arrival of Anders, a cotter living just across the farm's border, unsettles Oleanna's peaceful but isolated existence. Sharing a common bond of loneliness and grief, Anders stirs within her the wildness and wanderlust she has worked so hard to tame. When she is confronted with another crippling loss, Oleanna must decide once and for all how to face her past, claim her future, and find her place in a wide new world.

Julie K. Rose is an author of historical and mainstream fiction with a touch of the fantastic. She lives in the Bay Area and loves reading (especially Patrick O'Brian), watching episodes of Doctor Who, and enjoying the amazing natural beauty of Northern California. Oleanna is her second novel.

Winner of 2011 Langum Prize for American Historical Fiction

2012-01-14T19:00:00.001-06:00

Julie Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic (Knopf) is the winner of the Langum Prize for American Historical Fiction for 2011.

From the press release: "This short, poetic book describes the experience of the Japanese 'picture brides' who were brought over in the very early part of the 20th century to marry Japanese men working in the United States, mostly as farm laborers. The writing is beautiful, and, although the book is sparse, each word carries weight."

Geraldine Brooks' Caleb's Crossing (Viking) was named an Honorable Mention:

"The mid-seventeenth century Massachusetts of Martha’s Vineyard and Cambridge provide the settings for this exquisitely and lushly written novel that explores the clash of cultures between the Puritans and the native Wampanoag inhabitants."

Five novels received a Director's Mention this year, which reflects and recognizes the number of quality submissions the award received from small and regional presses. They are as follows:

John M. Archer, After the Rain: A Novel of War and Coming Home (Ten Roads Publishing): Following the Civil War, a wounded Union officer returns home, plagued by guilt over his comrades' deaths.

James Hoggard, The Mayor’s Daughter (Wings Press): In small-town Texas during the 1920s oil boom, a young woman and her family sit at odds over her choice of husband.

Hugh Nissenson, The Pilgrim (Sourcebooks): A Calvinist arrives in Massachusetts from England in 1622 and is consumed by spiritual conflict.

Sheila Ortiz-Taylor, Homestead (Spinsters Ink): A large lower middle-class family undergoes change in 1920s and 1930s Florida and Georgia.

Shirley Reva Vernick, The Blood Lie (Cinco Puntos Press): In this young adult novel, based on an actual incident in 1920s small-town upstate New York, a young Jewish boy is accused of murdering a young girl, who had become lost but was quite alright, for the use in supposed religious ceremonies.

For more details on these titles as well as the awards submission process, see the Langum Charitable Trust website. Descriptions for these titles are based on the press release.

Book review: Curiosity, by Joan Thomas

2012-01-05T13:25:00.011-06:00

It’s a current trend for historical fiction writers to re-examine neglected historical women and bring them back into the limelight. That said, one could hardly choose a better subject than Mary Anning, a carpenter’s daughter from the village of Lyme Regis in seaside Dorset, whose unearthing of and knowledge about fossils led to some of the greatest paleontological discoveries of her time.

The title of Joan Thomas’s Curiosity refers to the “snakestones” (see the gorgeous cover) and other curios that Mary finds and sells to wealthy visitors who arrive on the coach from Bath, as well as to the quickness of mind Mary displays throughout the novel.

The term "curiosity" could also apply to Mary herself. A woman who “would never truly be appreciated in a drawing room” due to her country ways and quaint accent, she grows from a bright, inquisitive child to an independent spinster who carves her own path in a world where female contributions to science are discounted.

For readers used to tales of courtship, fancy dresses, and elegant repartee in Regency England, Curiosity will present a refreshingly different side to the era. While the Napoleonic Wars rage elsewhere, practical, constant, and confident Mary pursues her passion with determination, despite discouragement from others and a family life plagued by malnutrition and misfortune. Her father dies relatively young, leaving enormous debts, and out of ten children, only she and a brother will survive to adulthood. She sells fossils to earn enough money to live on, but it's often not enough.

Her story is interleaved with that of Henry De la Beche, a man who in his own way is as much an oddity as she. The son of a Jamaica plantation owner, he is expelled from military college following a prank and discovers a scientific bent while examining the bones of birds caught in his chimney.

While staying with his unaffectionate mother and her new husband at Lyme Regis, he encounters Mary and thinks her a most unusual young woman, one of the only people with whom he's free to be himself. Little is known of Mary’s private life; while Henry’s support of Mary’s work is recorded, their gradual romance as described here is an imaginative re-creation of what might have been.

Both are trapped by the restrictions of their day: Henry by an unwelcome engagement to a society-minded girl, and Mary by her poverty and low place in a world that sees her interests as unnatural, and her fossils as possible manifestations of “the devil’s work.” Early 19th-century Britain sits at the cusp of scientific change, an era described in lucid and graceful language; no previous knowledge of paleontology is required.

At this time, with Darwin's Origin of Species some 40 years in the future, the ichthyosaur 12-year-old Mary so carefully excavates from limestone causes a flurry of questions to emerge. Did it perish in the Great Flood? Was coastal Dorset once a sea-bed, long ago? What is the meaning of a “day” in the Bible, if the specimens Mary finds prove to be much older than the accepted time of Creation?

One of Thomas’s greatest strengths is her ability to depict an entire realm of scientific debate and vigor through the seemingly limited viewpoints of Mary and Henry. Although her male peers in distant London take credit for her work, the novel rightly places Mary and Lyme Regis at the center of the activity. From the beautiful descriptions of the region – in which the area’s beaches and cliffs are layered with the remains of ancient creatures – to the characters’ dialogue, reactions, and social values, everything feels on point.

This is an invigorating and quietly compelling book, and while there are no dull or dry moments, some sections seem drawn out to a great degree. The depth of detail adds, though, to an extensive picture of the characters’ lives and times. While Mary’s story is sometimes a sad one, readers should leave it feeling great admiration for her accomplishments, as well as appreciation for how Thomas has fictionalized her life with such care and poignancy.

Curiosity was published in 2011 by Emblem, an imprint of McClelland & Stewart, in trade paperback and is available at $21.00 in Canada and the US and at £14.99 in the UK.

Mercury's Rise giveaway winner

2012-01-04T08:07:00.000-06:00

It was great to see so many entries for the giveaway copy of Ann Parker's Mercury's Rise! Thanks to all who participated.

Following a random number drawing courtesy of Random.org, the signed book will be going to Caroline B.

Congratulations, Caroline, and I'll be dropping you an email to get your mailing address. I hope you'll enjoy reading it as much as I did. Also included is a bookmark giving details on the other three books in the Silver Rush mystery series.

A New England trip - with books, of course

2011-12-31T21:00:00.008-06:00

I've been finding it difficult to get back to blogging after nearly two weeks without posting anything. This end-of-year post contains some history, some books, and a good many pictures. (My husband Mark was the photographer.)

Both our semesters having wrapped up, Mark and I took off for New England on December 22nd for a short trip to visit family and see some literary and historical venues. We made our first photo stop at my favorite used bookstore, the Niantic Book Barn along the Connecticut coastline.

They have three stores, two annexes in downtown Niantic and the main store about a mile west of town. The latter is comprised of a number of barns and outbuildings full of reasonably priced books.

If you're anywhere in the area, make your way to this store, pronto, and bring your wish lists because they have about 500,000 books in stock at any given time. A good deal of the fiction is either outdoors under awnings or in unheated (or unevenly heated) barns, so I wore my winter coat and gloves. Definitely worth it, though.

They must have some locals who trade in recent purchases or review copies regularly, because this is what I ended up with, below. (The top two are actually UK sagas about WWII given to me by my father, but they made it in the picture too, along with my photogenic orange kitty, Oliver. My 4-ft TBR pile(s) at far left.)

Nearly all of these are historical mysteries with the exception of Mackenzie Ford's Gifts of War, which is a romance of sorts set during WWI. Coincidentally I found the newly published sequel to Miss Dimple Disappears, which I reviewed not long ago. Mignon Ballard's Miss Dimple Rallies to the Cause is another WWII cozy mystery set in Georgia.

I finished Philip Gooden's The Salisbury Manuscript on the plane trip home. First in a series, it's a historical mystery set in the cathedral town of Salisbury in the 1870s. A young London-based lawyer, Tom Ansell, is sent to retrieve the unpublished memoir written by a local clergyman's late father and spirit it away for safekeeping. Seems the contents are rather racy and potentially embarrassing.

To Tom's unpleasant surprise, he finds himself a suspect in the canon's murder, and that mystery intertwines with archaeological discoveries from the region and odd goings-on among the townspeople. Although he's somewhat colorless in contrast to the eccentrics he meets, his sarcastic sense of humor is visible to those who read carefully, and his lively girlfriend, a would-be sensation novelist on the lookout for new material, keeps the amusement level high. It's a good choice for those who enjoy mysteries of the traditional British sort, and I do.

After more family visits, it was off to Boston's North Shore, where we stopped in Salem for two nights. This is one of the best examples of a historic New England town common I've seen.

This enormous park sits in the center of the city, and a number of houses and stores face it from all directions. Lots of pastels in alternating hues. I bet you need special permission to paint your house a new color here.

Next we have a statue of Roger Conant, Salem's founder (and my 10th great-grandfather). He stands across from Salem Common, looking dour and Puritan-like in his cloak.

Because of Conant's proximity to the building below, many tourists believe he had something to do with the witch trials, but he died over a decade before that.

Ah, the Salem Witch Museum. It was 40 degrees the day we spent in Salem, which meant we didn't see many tourists on the streets even though the hotel was busy. Later we found out why. They were all at this prime attraction at the same time we were. We should have read the Yelp reviews beforehand, because the presentation we saw was pretty hokey. Mood lighting, life-size dioramas, and an over-the-top (but well-researched) soundtrack dramatize the events of the Salem witch trials. Kids might like it, but we didn't think it was worth $9 apiece.

Next was a historic house I wish we'd taken a tour of - we'd hoped to get to one of the evening lantern tours, but I read the schedule incorrectly, and by the time I figured that out, it was too late. This is the House of the Seven Gables made famous by Nathaniel Hawthorne in his novel of the same name.

By all accounts, it's well worth a visit, so I hope we'll be able to come back here next time we're in the area. I put a copy of the novel in my B&N cart, too.

To all of my readers: Thanks for visiting and commenting - I appreciate your taking the time to stop by here. Hope you have a wonderful New Year, with plenty of good historical reading for 2012!

Book review and giveaway: Mercury's Rise, by Ann Parker

2011-12-19T12:00:00.004-06:00

It takes a strong woman to survive in a late 19th-century mining town, serving up drinks and keeping the peace among the customers of her Western saloon. It takes an even stronger woman to hide her independent nature beneath a façade of feminine delicacy when circumstances demand it. In this fourth entry in the Silver Rush mystery series, Inez Stannert proves she’s up to the challenge.

In the summer of 1880, Inez leaves Leadville and the Silver Queen behind to reunite with her two-year-old son, William, who had been living with her sister, Harmony, out East for the sake of his health. While taking a stagecoach ride to their meeting point at the trendy spa town of Manitou, one of Inez's fellow passengers dies a sudden and messy death after drinking his wife’s prescription tonic.

Mrs. Pace refuses to believe a heart attack killed her husband, but her concerns are downplayed by the Mountain Springs House’s resident doctor and the local marshal. She begs Inez to help her uncover the truth, but in this world of high society elegance, medical quackery, and shady real estate dealings, truth is in even shorter supply than the whiskey Inez craves.

As always, Ann Parker fleshes out her characters and settings beyond the historical mystery subplot. Inez is caught between her desire to help another woman and her complicated family problems. Her long-absent husband, Mark, reappears and worms his way back into her life, to her disgust – and just in time to challenge their divorce. Young William no longer knows her, and while Inez gets reacquainted with her sister and child, Harmony’s husband pursues a risky investment. As for where all of this leaves Inez's relationship with her clergyman lover—well, Inez doesn't know either.

This volume will have longtime readers traveling to a new part of Colorado: the Pikes Peak region, which includes the dramatic red rock formations at the Garden of the Gods. But as Inez discovers, ironically so, Manitou is even more of a man’s world than rough-and-tumble Leadville was. A murderer may still be at large, but in order to win at this dangerous game, Inez must find a man to play her hand for her.

Between the hotel owners, its medical staff, Inez’s busybody aunt, and Inez’s charming gambler of a husband, Mercury’s Rise has a wealth of strong personalities, ones you won't have met in Western fiction before. Parker retains control of her story, however, and doesn’t let them steal the show from Inez. Determined, smart, and brave, she also shows a vulnerable side she won’t let herself acknowledge.

The storyline is complex and well detailed, with many moving parts; the scene occasionally loops back to Inez’s time in Leadville, so read the chapter headings carefully to see where you are. The natural wonders of the mountain backdrop, the foul-tasting mineral waters, and the many people desperately in search of a tuberculosis cure combine to create a setting that's richly described from many angles. It all makes for an excellent novel that’s well worth diving into.

----

Mercury's Rise was published by Poisoned Pen Press in November at $24.95/hardback or $14.95/trade pb ($31.95 or $18.95 in Canada). Thanks to the author, I have a brand new and signed copy available to give away to an interested blog reader. Fill out the form below for your chance to win (open worldwide). Deadline Monday, January 3rd.

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New review of Diana Gabaldon's The Scottish Prisoner

2011-12-18T10:08:00.000-06:00

My review of Diana Gabaldon's The Scottish Prisoner ran in yesterday's Globe and Mail. Here's the link if you'd like to read my take on it. The book's #1 on their hardcover fiction bestseller list, for the second week in a row.

Pope Joan TV miniseries premieres tomorrow

2011-12-17T16:10:00.007-06:00

A heads-up that Pope Joan, the film based upon Donna Woolfolk Cross's bestselling historical novel about a legendary woman from Dark Age Germany, will be broadcast as a two-part TV miniseries on the REELZ channel in the US.

The first showing is on December 18th & 19th at 8-10pm EST; there appears to be a second showing of each episode later on both evenings, starting at 11pm EST. Check with your local TV schedule to confirm!

I'll be watching it for sure. We switched over to satellite TV from cable earlier this year, and we actually get that station.

I've been waiting to see this film for two years. Mark and I were in Germany when it debuted - the photo at left, taken at the Nuremberg train station, was one of many on display throughout the city. However, the film being shown wasn't the original English-language version (added: the one being shown tomorrow and Monday) but one dubbed into German for German audiences. My facility with the language wouldn't have been sufficiently good to follow along, alas.

See more at the REELZ website for the film or the author's home page. If you miss this one, there's an encore presentation on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

Final shortlist announced for 2011 Langum Prize

2011-12-16T19:40:00.001-06:00

Five historical novels published in 2011 have made the shortlist for this year's David J. Langum Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction. They are, in alphabetical order by author:

1) John M. Archer, After the Rain: A Novel of War and Coming Home (Gettysburg, PA: Ten Roads Publishing, 2011), which takes a psychological perspective on the Civil War, as seen from the viewpoint of a Union army line officer.

2) Geraldine Brooks, Caleb’s Crossing (New York: Viking, 2011), set in 1660s Martha's Vineyard and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and centering on the friendship between a minister's daughter and a young man of the Wampanoag tribe. [read my review]

3) Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic (New York: Knopf, 2011), a short literary novel describing the experiences of Japanese "picture brides" sent to marry Japanese men, mostly farm laborers, working in the US in the early 20th century.

4) Pamela Schoenewaldt, When We Were Strangers: A Novel (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), in which a young seamstress leaves her Italian mountain village to make a new life for herself in 1880s America. [read my review]

5) Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany (New York: Random House, 2011), about Clara Driscoll, Louis Comfort Tiffany's chief designer at his New York glass studio in the 1890s.

From the press release: "The winner of the 2011 David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction will be selected from one of these five books. However, still other books will be discussed in the Director’s Mention category. This year the small and often regional presses have issued an unusually large number of high quality books in American historical fiction. Several of these should be discussed and honored, even if only one, After the Rain discussed above, made it onto the formal short list."

For longer descriptions of all five nominees, and for more details on the prize itself, visit the Langum Charitable Trust website. The Trust also welcomes readers' comments on these books on their Facebook page.

A voyage up north with Norma MacMillan's The Maquinna Line

2011-12-14T17:00:00.036-06:00

I'm not sure where I first came across The Maquinna Line. It may have been while browsing Amazon.ca, or I could have spotted it on a website dedicated to Hollywood personalities. Norma MacMillan's family saga has an unusual story behind it. Called the author's "lost novel," the manuscript was pulled out of a closet a few years after her death in 2001. Her husband and friends worked to find it a publisher, and it finally appeared in print last year.

MacMillan, a noted actress in her day, was known for her role as the voice of Casper the Friendly Ghost. Folks from my generation may be more apt to recognize the name of her daughter, Alison Arngrim, famous for playing that nasty wench Nellie Oleson on Little House on the Prairie.

Ms. Arngrim wrote the foreword to her mother's book, describing her enthusiasm for writing, the times she left LA on mysterious research trips to the wilds of Nootka Island, and the subject of the book itself, which she found dark, peculiar, and a little disturbing. There are a few shocking moments, but I didn't find the tone or focus significantly different than other historical sagas I've read.

Fortunately, the novel stands well on its own without the celebrity association. The Maquinna Line is a classic generational saga in the tradition of James Michener and Edward Rutherfurd. It has a good sense of place and history, though its greatest focus is on its characters and how the social strictures of the time pressure them and determine their choices. Their lives turn out differently than they plan, and their trials and misfortunes make for very entertaining reading.

The main narrative begins in 1910 and continues through the end of WWII, and occasional flashbacks bring us back to earlier periods. Vancouver Island during the Edwardian era offers a mix of cultures, all well represented in the tale. An Icelandic entrepreneur opens a fancy hotel on a private island, promotes it as a tourist attraction, and raises his daughter there. An upwardly mobile couple brings an Indian chief's daughter, a descendant of the 18th-century Chief Maquinna, to live with them as their maid; her cold yet exotic beauty proves irresistible to the area's young men. And an adolescent boy commits a moral transgression he doesn't fully understand, one which destroys the peace in his socially conscious family.

Victoria, British Columbia, at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, is the drama's centerpiece, though it also branches out to include a lumber camp and Moachat village up north as well as other outposts. As the novel implies, the description of the city and its people as Victorian suits them in more than one way (they're called "more English than England").

Norma MacMillan clearly had a passion for the place where she grew up, and she transformed it into a novel I kept wanting to come back to. It packs a lot of story into 276 pages.

The Maquinna Line was published by TouchWood Editions in trade paperback at $19.95 - same price in Canada and the US. For non-Canadians, it's available at a discount on both versions of Amazon, should you so choose.

Book review: Chasing the Nightbird, by Krista Russell

2011-12-13T18:00:00.012-06:00

Krista Russell's debut novel is a brisk middle-grade adventure that features an appealingly scrappy hero determined to choose his own path in life.

The Nightbird is the whaling ship where Lucky Valera, an orphan of nearly fourteen, grew up and on which he was looking forward to sailing as a full-fledged crew member. Then the half-brother he never knew existed, Fernando Fortuna, kidnaps him from the New Bedford docks. Since Lucky is under age, Fortuna sets himself up as Lucky's guardian and forces him to toil alongside him at the local mill, claiming Lucky's wages as well as his own.

Amid the brutal pace of the factory, with cotton fibers so thick in the air it's hard to breathe, Lucky befriends a fugitive slave, Daniel. (Given his difficult path to safety, Daniel reveals his personal history to Lucky a little too easily.) Lucky's acquaintance with Emmeline, a Quaker ship captain's daughter, leads to a plan: she'll help him escape on her father's ship if he agrees to help her in the abolitionist movement. This is a challenge he feels he's up to, even though he doesn't trust landlubbers.

Russell achieves a difficult balance, preserving the saltiness of the lingo while keeping the story fairly clean for the intended audience. Lucky's used to being around sailors, and readers will snicker when his mouth gets him into trouble. There is some violence, though it's not out of place for the period or characters.

New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1851 is a racially mixed society, and Lucky's cultural background adds to the story's complexity. A teenager of Cape Verdean heritage, he loves the Island food served by the boardinghouse landlady. Lucky is a free person of color who doesn't see himself as similar to the former African slaves living in the city, but not everyone views things as he does.

The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act has just passed, amid controversy, and posters on the streets warn fugitives to watch out for bounty hunters. When Lucky realizes the trauma that Daniel faces if he's returned back South, his work toward abolition becomes more than lip service, and his moral journey is handled without it feeling like a lesson.

This book should be a hit for young people and librarians across southeastern New England. There don't appear to be any other historical novels about Cape Verdean Americans available, for one. Its appeal is more than regional, though, as it presents an important slice of American history in an exciting and convincing way.

Chasing the Nightbird was published in June by Peachtree in hardcover ($15.95, 200pp).

A look at Leaving Van Gogh, by Carol Wallace

2011-12-10T11:00:00.013-06:00

One of the pleasures of writing this blog is having publishers mail me books they think I might enjoy. Carol Wallace's Leaving Van Gogh was one of these; it arrived unexpectedly in my mailbox at work sometime in May. Unfortunately, with my crazy schedule I didn't manage to get to it until now, but I'm glad I finally did.

Leaving Van Gogh fits into that growing category of literary novels that imagine artists' personalities and the background behind the creation of their masterpieces. Dr. Paul Gachet, the physician caring for Vincent van Gogh at the time of his death, reminisces about his professional relationship with his patient and how it grew into a friendship during the seventy days Vincent spent at Auvers-sur-Oise, a small farming town northwest of Paris, in the summer of 1890.

Even if Van Gogh did hijack a narrative that was meant to focus on Dr. Gachet and the provenance of his art collection, as Wallace said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Gachet is equally well developed as a character. "I cared deeply about medical problems, but what I wanted to talk about was art," he explains at the beginning. Reasonable, humane, sympathetic, and fascinated by the human mind, Gachet is also an amateur painter who had befriended Cézanne and Pissarro and accepted paintings from them in exchange for medical help. It's through Pissarro that Gachet is introduced to art dealer Theo van Gogh, who asks him to oversee the care of his brilliant but mentally troubled brother, Vincent, who was recently released from an asylum in Provence.

Wallace places us into Gachet's shoes as he observes Vincent, the man and the artist. Van Gogh shows up unceremoniously on Gachet's doorstep, unwashed and ragged and overly thin, and proceeds to transform the quiet lives of Gachet and his two young-adult children with his zest for art. We see Vincent's intensity, the full-body technique with which he applies color to canvas, and the uncanny confidence that lets him believe his work will be remembered a century down the road. This is a wonderful novel to read for those who want to feel involved in the actual process of painting.

At the same time, Vincent remains apart from the people closest to him and seems unaware of the effect he has on them. This includes his devoted brother Theo, whose support of Vincent is draining him financially, as well as Gachet's agreeable daughter, Marguerite, who had never thought of herself as pretty until Vincent paints her at the piano.

It makes for a curious mix, and an irresistible project for Gachet, who starts out sure that the peace of the Auvers countryside, with its chestnut trees and vast wheat fields, is just what Vincent needs to cure him of his malady. He's wrong. Not only is artistic technique in transition at the time, from realism to Impressionism, but medicine sits at a turning point that proves frustrating for its practitioners. Not even experts can cure what they call "hysteria," if that's even what ails Vincent during his raving, near-violent episodes. Gachet doesn't know, and the tragedy is that he is no more able to save Vincent or his brother, an obvious syphilitic, than he could his wife, Blanche, who had died of consumption fifteen years earlier.

Through its interpretations of both Gachet and his patient, Leaving Van Gogh is an affecting portrait of courage in the face of helplessness, one well worth reading for insight into the creative process at its highest and lowest points.

This is the author's first historical novel, and she provides a detailed author's note explaining what was fact vs. invention. Although I didn't realize this when I first picked the book up, I've been reading Carol Wallace's work for some time; she is also the co-author (among other things) of The Official Preppy Handbook, which got passed around my middle school in the early '80s, and To Marry an English Lord, a dishy, informative account of American heiresses' marital successes and foibles in the Gilded Age and Edwardian eras.

Carol Wallace's Leaving Van Gogh was published by Spiegel & Grau (Random House) in April at $25.00 / $28.95 in Canada (hardcover, 268pp).

Women at War: A Novel Bibliography, part 2

2011-12-07T09:00:00.010-06:00

Here's the second half of my annotated bibliography of new/forthcoming historical novels featuring the women of World War II. Is anyone doubting now that this is a trend? Here is part 1 if you missed it.

Below are a dozen titles: sagas, literary fiction, mainstream historicals and more. Many of these books contain parallel narratives that show the connections between the 1940s and the present.

Today, of course, is the 70th anniversary of the attack of Pearl Harbor, the event that led to America's entry into World War II. All of these titles have US publishers, and they portray the wartime experiences of women (and men) on both the American home front and overseas in Britain and Europe.

Alison's Orange Prize-shortlisted debut novel focuses on eight-year-old Anna Sands, whose coming-of-age story runs up against the undercurrents of a Yorkshire couple's relationship when she is evacuated from London just before the Blitz. Washington Square, July 2011.

Bradford, a writer of bestselling sagas, stays true to form with a multi-period story about long-hidden family secrets. A modern-day filmmaker discovers a shocking letter that sends her on a quest to Istanbul to discover the truth about her late, beloved grandmother, Gabriele, and the role she played during the war. St. Martin's, April 2012.

The title of Howard's second novel refers not to noir fiction but to the experiences of black immigrants in World War II Paris. From their home in Montmartre during the summer of 1944, native Martiniquaise Marie-Therese Brillard gingerly pursues a new romance while her two adult children get caught up in the joy sweeping the city after the German occupation ends. AmazonEncore, September 2011.

In this novel that moves back and forth between the present and the past, two attorneys in present-day Germany fall in love while preparing the defense of a man accused of war crimes... who claims the key to his exoneration lies in a timepiece last seen decades ago. Doubleday, July 2011.

Lauren O'Farrell, a modern woman who recovers lost works of art looted by the Nazis, meets up with an elderly Manhattanite whose mother was rumored to be a Nazi collaborator, but whose life - as well as her daughter's - was much more complex than that. Review forthcoming. Berkley, October 2011.

In 1980, an American airline pilot returns to France to find the members of the Resistance who rescued him after he was shot down over Occupied France - in particular a teenage girl who wore a blue beret. Mason based her literary novel on her late father-in-law's wartime experiences. Random House, June 2011.

A magazine reporter in modern-day Texas interviews an elderly baker for a Christmas-themed piece and finds herself drawn into the woman's dark, complicated tale of her life in Germany during WWII. Crown, January 2012.

I wrote about McMorris's upcoming WWII novel Bridge of Scarlet Leaves in my previous post. Letters from Home was her debut, based upon her grandparents' letters during the war. Three Chicago-area roommates discover life doesn't turn out as planned, especially when one young woman's correspondence with an American soldier turns romantic. Kensington, March 2011.

Niven's previous novel, Velva Jean Learns to Drive, was one of my favorite books of 2009 - great story, great characters, great narrative voice. This sequel sees Velva Jean leaving the Tennessee mountains and her stifling marriage to follow her dream of singing at the Grand Ole Opry in 1941. Then the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, and the older brother she adores gives her a flying lesson. Plume, September 2011.

You can't quite make this out on the cover, but this traditional British saga is being compared to Downton Abbey and Kate Morton's novels - so I'm there. In 1938, a young upper-class Jewish woman leaves Vienna before war breaks out and becomes a parlor maid on a large Dorset estate, which causes some major adjustments (and leads to unexpected romance). The UK title was The Novel in the Viola. Plume, December 2011.

I didn't have the cover art for this one last time, but it's since been posted on Amazon. Giovanna, a young woman in 1940s Tuscany, comes of age during the war as she falls in love with a Jewish member of Italy's partisan army. The author will be stopping by with a guest post in February. Berkley, Feb. 2012.

Sister Bernard, an elderly nun in contemporary France, is forced to rejoin the wider community when her convent closes - which brings back memories of her passionate wartime affair with a German soldier. Penguin, January 2012.

The Woman at the Well - giveaway winners

2011-12-05T19:17:00.000-06:00

Congratulations to the three winners of Ann Chamberlin's The Woman at the Well:

Jennara
Tinney Heath
Julie K. Rose

I drew the entries on Saturday morning with the help of the random number generator at random.org. I'll be in touch via email and hope you will enjoy the book! Thanks also to Ann for providing a copy for me to read and extra copies for the giveaway as well.

A look at Mignon F. Ballard's Miss Dimple Disappears

2011-12-03T10:59:00.000-06:00

After compiling my first list of recent novels on women in WWII, I was happy to discover this additional one in a pile of newly arrived review copies. I felt compelled to pick it up and read it right then.

Miss Dimple Disappears is a historical mystery set in the small town of Elderberry, Georgia, nearly a year after Pearl Harbor. Nearly all of the town's young men have left to fight overseas, except for Jesse Dean Greeson, whose vision impairment is a liability, and handsome Hugh Brumlow, who held back from enlisting to take care of his overbearing mother and her (invented) medical problems.

The plot centers on the women teachers of the Elderberry Grammar School. Miss Dimple Kilpatrick has been a fixture in the first-grade classroom for 40 years and is beloved by students and teachers alike. Indeed, many of her colleagues are former pupils.

Right before Thanksgiving, the school custodian is discovered dead in an upstairs storage room, victim of an apparent heart attack or stroke. Then Miss Dimple never comes back from her early morning constitutional the following day. The principal and police chief are deflecting queries about both crimes, and even Miss Dimple's brother near Atlanta seems oddly nonchalant about her disappearance.

Fourth grade teacher Charlie Carr and her colleague Annie know something is amiss, though, and Miss Dimple's students are worried. One imaginative young boy reports that he sees German spies at the playground, and insists he saw someone kidnap Miss Dimple from a street corner, but nobody will believe him.

While Charlie works through her feelings for Hugh - she's awfully fond of him but hesitates to call it love - she and Annie do some of their own investigating, as do her mother and Aunt Lou. Miss Dimple, shut up in a dingy basement, makes her own efforts toward her rescue, too. She is a delight. Forced to eat horrid food, and left with nothing to read but bland romance novels, she makes clever requests of her masked captor and leaves clues for people to find her.

Mignon Ballard gently re-creates this not-so-distant time with nostalgia and realism. Women save waste fat from their kitchens to produce glycerin for the war effort, switchboard operator Florence McCrary eavesdrops on private conversations (and everyone knows it), and families hang blue stars in their windows to honor their sons away at war. Nobody wants to see the messenger boy arrive on his black bicycle, for he brings telegrams with the most devastating news possible.

There are a lot of townspeople to keep track of, and the plot can be quite leisurely, but overall this is a nicely-put-together cozy mystery that delivers an ample amount of suspense at just the right time.

Miss Dimple Disappears was published in trade paperback by Minotaur in October at $14.99 (262pp). It's first in a series, and the sequel, Miss Dimple Rallies to the Cause, was published in hardcover last week.

Book review: Caleb's Crossing, by Geraldine Brooks

2011-11-28T22:04:00.001-06:00

My review of Caleb's Crossing was published in Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper on August 6th. For some reason it was never posted online, so I have no link to the original, but this is the version as it appeared in print. (The headline was their choice, and I like it.)

Moving Heathen and Earth in New England

The title of Caleb's Crossing refers to two related happenings: a young Wampanoag man's journey to the Massachusetts mainland from his home on Martha's Vineyard, and his gradual assumption of English ways. His story is filtered through the narration of Bethia Mayfield, a minister's daughter.

The two meet by chance when she is 12. Her friendship with the youth she calls Caleb blossoms as they talk about their daily lives and religious beliefs - all of which Bethia hides from her father and brother.

Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks (March, in 2005) situates her riveting tale of cross-cultural exploration in Puritan America on a few slim facts. In 1665, Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk became the first Native American to graduate from Harvard. His letter to his English benefactors, reproduced on the novel's endpapers, is especially remarkable; it was written in Latin.

"Listening, not speaking, has been my way," writes Bethia, a perceptive and careful chronicler of their lives, an intellectual in a society that believes women are capable of domestic duty and not much else. She also has a shameful secret. She finds Caleb's heathen faith too appealing for her own good. Although she repents, she is Puritan enough to think she's damned, having caused her mother's death with her desire for "forbidden fruit."

When Bethia's father discovers the extent of Caleb's knowledge, he decides to instruct him further in the Gospel and the classics, as any good Calvinist missionary would. Caleb sees a way of improving his people's lot and comes to live with the Mayfields, which leads to a spiritual battle of sorts between Mayfield and Caleb's uncle, the pawaaw (religious leader) of the Wampanoag.

Caleb's and Bethia's paths take them from Martha's Vineyard to Cambridge. Both sets of surroundings are superbly evoked through Bethia's admittedly biased viewpoint. The island is an isolated haven of sun-dappled beaches and swirling mists, a paradise on Earth despite the tenuousness of life there. In contrast, she finds Cambridge an "unlovely town" that reeks of animals and too many people, and whose closely constructed houses don't let her spirit breathe. What is the purpose of progress, she wonders, if you have to leave your true self behind?

Bethia's account has an early American formality, with just enough period syntax to feel authentic (and enough old-fashioned usage of "loose," instead of "lose," to drive a copy editor mad). Terms like "friggling" and "cackhanded" aren't exactly everyday lingo, but the prose falls on the ear in a natural way.

As always, Brooks treads the dividing line between literary and popular fiction with confidence. Her work is strongly plotted, full of twists and surprises: life-changing disappointments, sudden opportunities, unexpected crossroads. The language is as fresh and crisp as the salt-tinged air, and her characters are, for the most part, ripened to their fullest potential. The one exception is Caleb himself. We get to know his personality and mettle, but he is kept at a distance. There are times - fortunately rare - when he reads more as symbol than flesh and blood.

In fact, the novel is much more Bethia's than his. She is one of Brooks's most rounded creations; her character, unlike Caleb's, is completely fictional. Bethia is no feisty anachronism but a woman of her era, and her yearning to achieve more than society grants her is achingly real.

Higher education has changed over time; students aren't expected to converse in Latin, and they can't pay for their tuition with sacks of grain. Still, the intellectual craving expressed by these 17th-century characters comes through clearly to our modern mindsets. This is a brilliantly composed novel full of wit, spiritual contemplation and the deep love of learning. At the same time, Caleb's Crossing makes us feel the full impact of what these people went through to bring their dreams to fruition.

----

Caleb's Crossing was published by Viking in May at $26.95 in the US, or $31.00 in Canada (hardcover, 301pp).

Harem winners

2011-11-19T11:15:00.000-06:00

A quick note to announce that the winners of Colin Falconer's Harem are Sarah Other Librarian and Meg at A Bookish Affair. Congratulations - I'll be in touch with you via email!

An interview with Ann Chamberlin, author of The Woman at the Well - plus giveaway

2011-11-16T19:00:00.001-06:00

I'm so pleased to bring you this interview with internationally bestselling author Ann Chamberlin. Ann's historical novels span a wide range of settings, from ancient Israel to medieval France to the harems of the 16th- and 17th-century Ottoman Empire. Her latest book, The Woman at the Well, is an epic literary work that will introduce most readers to a new and unfamiliar place: 7th-century Arabia during the first years of Islam and the time slightly before.

The novel opens at the house of the turpentine sellers in Tadmor, Syria, in the year 643 AD. A blue-eyed orphan named Rayah studies her Koran while simultaneously feeling the first glimmerings of the power she inherited from her female ancestors, strong women who worshipped the goddess of the evening star, Al-Uzza, and led their tribes through the Arabian desert.

This is also the story of Rayah's mother, Sitt Sameh, who has hidden her true identity for too long; her grandmother, Bint Zura, a young woman who finds a sacred camel; and her great-grandmother, Umm Taghlib, who is cast out of her tribe for being a kahinah, or witch. Many of the era's women bear the names of their male relations, though they also have hidden names of their own. The male viewpoint is introduced via the tale of Khalid ibn al-Walid, the Prophet Muhammad's most famous general, who reveals his past history to a eunuch scribe and searches for a connection to his long-lost daughter, Sitt Sameh.

The Woman at the Well is a deep and involving multi-generational novel about a fascinating land in the midst of religious and cultural transformation. From the Kirkus review: "Chamberlin beautifully captures the depth of Rayah's awakening to her heritage, emotionally and spiritually... impeccable research and haunting, poetic language create a lush tale to be lingered over and savored."

The Woman at the Well was published in July by Epigraph Press at $27.00 in hardcover, $16.95 in trade paperback, or $9.99 as an e-book (378pp). Please read to the end for a giveaway opportunity, too.

You write that you spent thirty years working on The Woman at the Well. Why did you feel this was a story that needed to be told? How did the novel deepen or transform over this time?

Thirty years ago, no one had heard of Salman Rushdie. Kamran Pasha and Sherry Jones had not written their books about the women of early Islam. In fact, no one seemed to have Islam, the religion of close to a quarter of the world's population, on their radar screen. I have a rejection note (a yellow Post-It) I keep pinned above my computer that says, "Dear Ann, Why Islam? Thanks but no thanks." I did not think this ignorance was a good thing. I still don't.

After 9/11, my son got me to take Arabic classes with him at a local Muslim school. This is how I deal with crisis, with ignorance. I educate myself through my stories, and I wanted my question answered, "What were people thinking at the time of the Prophet Muhammad?" Not that I'm suggesting they were simple-minded people or anything. I never think people in the past were stupider than we are. Usually I think the opposite, when I get to know them. It's just that, such world-changing events cannot help but have affected people at that time to their very core. Like events to do with Islam have done in our time.

Recent events have deepened my story. So has the suggestion someone gave me "to tell the women's stories." Hard as it may be to believe, first drafts only had Khalid's version of the tale. I guess I thought there wasn't enough of women in the history even to reconstruct a tale. My astute critiquer was right, especially since that has been the course of my writing, to tell women's stories that are usually ignored. And there's plenty to work with, for a novelist.

If it's true that winners write the history, as Sitt Sameh tells Rayah (with gentle sarcasm, I felt) in the novel, how were you able to look beyond long-held traditions to learn the hidden stories of people from pre-Islamic Arabia?

There's quite a lot of interest in pre-Islamic Arabia among Arab historians, even though many would call it the Time of Ignorance and dismiss it. Like some young Americans would dismiss time before the computer as irrelevant. Victorians Brits who were trying to rule the place also had an interest. Especially since the publication in the 1970's of Patricia Crone and Michael Cook's radical rewriting called Hagarism, there's been a resurgence of interest in the West. Where did Muhammad come from, this time called Ignorance? All these historians were trying to answer that.

I had a very powerful experience during ten days I camped with the Bedouin in the Sinai (also during the 70s). I fell in love with these people and the way they deal with one of the most inhospitable environments on earth. When what we know of pre-Islamic history failed me, I fell back on the anthropology of the Bedouin.

I should also mention that the University of Utah Dr. Aziz Atiya Middle East Library, where I work part time, is one of the most important collections in the world, especially of early Islamic papyrus. I get to rub shoulders with scholars in this field every day, and I am indebted to them.

In the opening scene, Rayah discovers her power when she brings her young cousin back to life. This isn't your first instance of crossing historical fiction with elements of the fantastic. Why was it important for you to start the book this way? What can fantasy bring to historical fiction?

Rayah's arc is a struggle to decide what to do with her own power which goes back to her mothers in a world where the new religion is trying to supplant everything that went before, where Muhammad was the Seal of the Prophets and his successors are trying to pull an ever-increasing empire in by the hearts and minds. This has always been a pivotal question for me having grown up in a Mormon world where the words haunting a young woman's mind were condemned as evil if they countered the words of a living prophet.

To my mind, a historical novelist fails to capture the period if that period believed in magic, jinn, fairies or whatever and this sort of stuff doesn't happen or couldn't happen to her characters. Passages in the Quran concerning jinn would indicate you couldn't be a good Muslim if you didn't believe in these beings of fire. Like the reader of certain passages in the Torah couldn't believe that book if he didn't believe in witches, and that they shouldn't be allowed to live.

Besides, I don't think you can sit around a campfire in a desert night or see a mirage shimmering across the horizon and not believe in powerful spirits.

Much of your fiction writing centers on the Middle East. How did your interest in this place develop?

My Mormon upbringing, again. I found I couldn't deal with our own prophets, patriarchy, polygamy and deserts. I was too close, my fiction "too bitter" as one critique said. Trying to understand my surroundings, I studied Hebrew. My first trip to the Holy Land full of pious zeal ran into those ten days in the Sinai, into Arabic and another far-from-perfect world built on idealism. So one book led to another as I stumbled into one fascinating corner after another on one trip after another.

The Woman at the Well has many memorable characters, both historical and fictional. Khalid ibn al-Walid will be the best known, yet for many Western readers, your novel may be the first introduction to him. How did you address this issue as you developed his character?

The ever-present struggle against the data dump. Clavell's Shogun remains a great example of how to introduce the modern reader to a strange world—drop a very modern, or at least more familiar, character into your strange world. Everything has to be explained to the stranger in a strange land. Without resorting to a time machine as part of the plot, I couldn't do that. Even a 7th-century Roman would have a world too strange and in need of explanation in need of explanation to my reader. Personally, I like the first-person narrative, and I like this bit I stumbled on where Khalid tells his tale to a scribe not of his world. And then the scribe gets to tell it to Rayah and her mother and her mother Sitt Sameh gets to put her own spin on it. So there are multiple chances to sneak in explanations.

The novel has several examples of parents and children who have lost their connections with one another - it's not your usual type of family story. Why did you choose this as one of your themes?

One of my tropes is that Islam—like most new religions (early Christianity, Protestantism, Mormonism) even non-religious movements like Marxism for example—began first as an attempt to pry apart the existing power structure—which meant a strong clan system. If you believe, you have a great excuse, even commandment, to leave your stifling family ties for this new community in the making. Islam went on to depend on government by trained slaves in the Mamluk and Ottoman empires, men ripped from all family. Khalid attempted this, but finds in old age his attempts are futile. He wishes for the family he neglected, and Islam in the form of his cousin Omar ibn al-Khattub the caliph and new/old strictures on women really hasn't escaped. The United States continues to have this tension between wanting a free individual, but then expecting family values unsupported by government to raise children, care for the sick and elderly, etc.

Besides, the novel is the narrative form for the individual alienated from the world, the hero on a quest away from home and family.

The scenario of a man meeting a woman at a well can be found in both the Old and New Testaments. What about this theme resonated with you?

Returning to sources of spiritual enlightenment. Every day. Like a woman has to go for water every day. And wells are few and far between in the desert. Knowledge of where they are and how to approach them is a matter of life and death.

Where did you first come across pre-Islamic poetry, and why has it captured your attention to such a degree?

Poetry still has a big place in Middle Eastern society, from Rumi on. A generally illiterate society that condemns representational art and which is so focused on the Holy Word would naturally resort to this art form. Early Muslim historians themselves took quite an interest in recording this poetry. Once they got over the beginning concerns that poets and poetry detracted from the Quran, they were interested in gleaning these snippets especially when they clarified the language of the Quran or Islam's rise. Any attempt to recreate pre-Islamic Arabia is dependent on these verses, and I found them early in my research. I want to cite several collections I depended on: AJ Arberry's Seven Odes, Charles Lyall's Translations of Ancient Arabic Poetry, and Michael Sells' Desert Tracings.

I've had people shrug and tell me, "Well, something must have been lost in translation," but to me the images evoke the world of the desert so powerfully. And the poet's usual format—we usually have only male poets' verses, although there are some women poets recorded—was to begin by evoking a lost love.

----

And for your chance to win a copy...

I'd like to thank Ann for taking the time to answer my questions in such depth. We have three copies of The Woman at the Well available for giveaway. To enter the contest, please leave a comment on this post (include your email if it's not in your profile or on your blog). This giveaway is open to all blog readers worldwide; deadline Friday, December 2nd.

Séance in Sepia giveaway winner

2011-11-11T19:22:00.000-06:00

... take two. After waiting a week with no response from the initial winner, I've decided to start over and draw another name for the signed copy of Michelle Black's Séance in Sepia. (If you enter contests, you have to give me a way to contact you, especially if you don't read this site regularly. Just sayin'...)

But without further ado, the book will be going to Rachel Wallen! Congratulations - I'll drop you a line to obtain your mailing address, and I hope you'll enjoy reading it.

Guest post from Colin Falconer (with giveaway):The Harem

2011-11-09T22:16:00.001-06:00

Historical fiction writer Colin Falconer is stopping by today with a detailed essay about the historical reality behind the myth of the harem. His novel Harem (which appeared in the US as The Sultan's Harem), a love story between Suleiman the Magnificent and his concubine Russelana, has just been re-released in Kindle format. Please read on... there's an opportunity to win a copy of the e-version at the end of this post.

The Harem

The myth of the Harem has always loomed large in western imagination. Is it really the ultimate male fantasy? Or was reality a little less than sublime behind the Sublime Porte?

The Harem dated back to the time when the Osmanli Turks were just nomads living on the wild plains of Anatolia. The idea was borrowed from the Persians, a convenience for warriors who were away from the tribe for long months at a time.

By the time the Osmanlis gave up the open plains and created their capital at Constantinople - which they renamed Stamboul - the Harem was no longer just a tent full of sex slaves. It had become an institution in itself, a rigid hierarchy with its own protocols and government.

The girls were either captured in war - mainly Christians from the Balkans - or were recruited from within the Empire itself. They were brought to the Harem at a young age and educated in palace protocols. Their only avenue for betterment and family was through the Sultan.

The first step on the ladder was to somehow find a way into his bed - not as easy as it seemed, for many of the Sultans tended to have favourites and did not do the rounds every night picking winners like a beauty pageant. The first step was to become gözde - lucky enough to catch the Sultan's eye and invited to his bed. If they were asked back often enough they became iqbal, a favourite, and would get their own apartment and slaves.

If the girl conceived a male child she then became kadin - and there were only a maximum of four. One of these four slave girls would become the mother of the next Sultan and thus became the Valide Sultan, head of the harem and the most powerful woman in the Ottoman Empire.

The stakes then were high. Yes, there were beautiful and sensuous women in the harem. Yes there were opulent surroundings. But it was no male paradise. This was a snakepit.

The descriptions of the old Stambouli harem paints a grim picture of a twilight world of dark panelled rooms where the sun seldom penentrated. Ancient grime coated the dusty lanterns and baroque mirrors, and sloe-eyed women with rubies in their hair glided like ghosts through the warren of corridors.

What must life have been like for such women, left in this gilded prison, ungratified and forgotten? Is there a chance some women might become bitter or even vengeful?

History says yes.

This outstanding example; during the eighteenth century some British soldiers in India conspired to break into a mughal's harem one night on the misguided belief that there were hordes of women inside who were just panting for a man. It didn't occur to them that these women might not feel warm and fuzzy to the gender that had enslaved and imprisoned them their whole lives.

The Mughal's personal guard spent the next morning picking up pieces of British soldier left lying around the haremlik. The women had torn them apart with their bare hands.

Which leads us to the story of Suleiman the Magnificent and his favourite, Hurrem. On the face of it, it was the perfect love story. He had the most beautiful women in the empire at his disposal - yet he chose just one. The remarkable Hurrem - it means 'Laughing One' - was the first concubine to legally marry an Ottoman Sultan and move into his palace - an astonishing break with tradition. He even retired his entire harem for her! It shows a total devotion and commitment - at least on Suleiman's part.

But what about her? Was the laughing one really laughing on the inside? Perhaps not.

She later conspired to have Suleiman order the death of his best friend and chief adviser Ibrahim, as well his son Mustapha, two of the most talented men in his administration. She then engineered her own son to succeed him; 'Selim the Sot' was an alcoholic and a lecher with few redeeming qualities. Indeed some scholars have even speculated that Suleiman's bloodline was broken. How ironic if the woman to break it had been the woman he devoted his life to!

Suleiman had more power and women than the Prime Minister of Italy. Yet this is what he wrote just before his death in 1566:

"What men call empire is worldwide strife and ceaseless war. In all the world the only joy lies in a hermit's rest."

His story is one of his time for all time. Beware of wanting everything. You just might get it.

Colin Falconer has been published widely in the UK, US and Europe and his books have been translated into seventeen languages. You can find him at his blog at http://www.colin-falconer.blogspot.com or his web page at http://www.colinfalconer.net.

HAREM is available on Amazon US or Amazon UK.

To enter to win one of two Kindle copies of HAREM, please leave a comment on this post - and include your email address if it's not readily available in your profile or on your blog/website. Deadline Friday Nov 18th. This contest is open to all. Good luck!

Women at War: A Novel Bibliography

2011-11-06T09:00:00.004-06:00

I've been trying to pay attention to current trends in historical novels. For a long while, novels about women during World War II were out of fashion in the US, although wartime sagas have flourished overseas for some time. Male espionage thrillers and action-adventure fiction set during the war always found an audience, too, but there were considerably fewer novels about the feminine experience.

Over the last year and more, though, American readers have seen (and will see) a bumper crop of historical fiction on this subject. Many of these books arrived in my mailbox for review, so I've been reading and learning about the war from many different angles.

The trend's benchmark titles - hugely popular bestsellers - include Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows' The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Sarah Blake's The Postmistress, Pam Jenoff's bestselling romantic thrillers, and Irène Némirovsky's Suite Française... can you think of other recent titles that fit?

The novels below all have US publication dates between April 2011 and April 2012. These women are spies, nurses, office clerks, resistance leaders, and average citizens whose courage comes to the forefront when they're caught up in difficult times. The settings range from Czechoslovakia, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain to California, Washington, DC, and the far-flung islands of the South Pacific.

Maria Dueñas, The Time In Between (Atria, Nov 2011). In this international bestselling epic, a Spanish seamstress works undercover for the Allies during Spain's civil war and World War II.

Anna Funder, All That I Am (Harper, Feb 2012). This debut novel brings to life the heroic German women and men who took a stand against the Nazis in the 1930s; based on historical people.

Kate Furnivall, The White Pearl (Berkley, Mar 2012). In 1941 Malaya, a bored plantation owner's wife finds her life upended when the Japanese invade.

Amanda Hodgkinson, 22 Britannia Road (Pamela Dorman, Apr 2011). A Polish father, mother, and son struggle to reunite as a family in England following their devastating wartime experiences.

Sarah Jio, The Bungalow (Plume, Dec 2011). A young woman in the Army Nurse Corps on Bora-Bora in 1942 begins an affair with a mysterious soldier.

Margaret Leroy, The Soldier's Wife (Hyperion, July 2011). Fans of Shaffer/Barrows can return to Guernsey in this tale of a housewife who falls for a soldier in the occupying German army - which leads to some tough decisions.

Susan Elia MacNeal, Mr. Churchill's Secretary (Bantam, April 2012). A debut historical mystery starring Maggie Hope, the newest typist at 10 Downing Street in 1940, who discovers that her position brings her innumerable opportunities as well as the potential for life-threatening danger.

Kristina McMorris, Bridge of Scarlet Leaves (Kensington, Mar 2012). The author follows up her epistolary WWII-era romantic novel, Letters from Home, with the story of a violinist who marries a Japanese man and voluntarily accompanies him when he's forced into an internment camp in 1941.

Alison Pick, Far to Go (Harper Perennial, Apr 2011). This Booker-longlisted novel is a saga about a Jewish Czechoslovakian family who flee their country with their governess after the Nazis invade.

Alyson Richman, The Lost Wife (Berkley, Sept. 2011). Two young lovers in pre-war Prague are separated after the Nazi invasion, and their memories of each other help them survive until they're reunited by chance many decades later.

Sarah R. Shaber, Louise's War (Severn House, Aug. 2011). In this historical mystery, Louise, a young widow who's the newest clerk in the Office of Strategic Services in 1942 Washington, DC, sees an opportunity to help an old friend flee occupied France.

Lynn Sheene, The Last Time I Saw Paris (Berkley, May 2011). A naive New York socialite arrives in Paris during the Occupation and gets drawn into the resistance movement.

Also, the cover art for this one isn't final yet, but Margaret Wurtele's The Golden Hour (Berkley, Feb. 2012) details the coming-of-age of a young Tuscan woman who falls in love with a Jewish member of the partisan army.

Book review: Sarah Kernochan's Jane Was Here

2011-10-31T20:46:00.007-05:00

Novels about reincarnation don't take up a large category. The dual scenarios - past and present - can help these works branch out to a wider readership, though, and historical events can impose on present-day happenings more directly than they can in a straightforward historical novel. That's one reason I like them.

As you can surmise from the cover art, Sarah Kernochan's Jane Was Here takes the form of a supernatural thriller. When a young woman calling herself Jane arrives in the glass factory town of Graynier, Massachusetts, everyone whose life she touches finds their life transformed in some way. Jane has memories of Graynier and says she's lived there before, though it no longer looks quite the way she remembers.

Not everyone is keen on having Jane around, especially when food starts disappearing from people's houses. Brett Sampson is the exception. A summer resident trying to reconnect with his son, he feels unexpectedly protective towards Jane and gives her a place to stay in his rented Victorian home (to his son's dismay). The town floozy and a deceitful handyman get drawn into Jane's web after her sudden appearance in the middle of the road leads to a car accident. The children of an Indian family who owns the local motel get entangled in the mix, too.

Brett starts researching who Jane really is, as well as who she claims to be. There are many subplots, but everything is sharply delineated amid the rising suspense. As Jane slowly regains what seem to be memories of a tragic past life, she unwittingly sets in motion a plan to exact revenge on those who wronged her long ago.

By now you may be wondering about the book's historical aspect. Without giving too much away: Part 2 reveals the intimate letters of an impressionable 19th-century young woman who pursues her avid interest in an odd sect and its charismatic representative. "Gabriel Nation" is fictional, but with so many other peculiar religious revivals sprouting up in 1850s America, it fits right in.

Jane Was Here can be as quirky and eccentric as the people who inhabit its pages. The author has obviously poured a lot of attention into her characters, although she seems to care for them more than they care for each other (they aren't exactly society's most upstanding citizens). Jane's formality and propriety contrasts well with their careless lifestyles, though, and although I wasn't chilled by the creepy storyline, I followed it with great interest. Readers who enjoyed Brunonia Barry's The Lace Reader and M. J. Rose's Reincarnationist series may want to give this one a close look, too.

Jane Was Here was published by Grey Swan Press in June at $24.95 (hb, 296pp).

Giveaway opportunity: Michelle Black's Séance in Sepia

2011-10-25T06:00:00.001-05:00

Thanks to author Michelle Black, I have a new giveaway for readers of the blog. She will be offering a signed hardcover copy of Séance in Sepia, which I reviewed here on Sunday, to a randomly selected blog visitor.

To enter, please leave a comment on this blog post, or on the associated post on this site's Facebook page if you prefer. Deadline is Friday, November 4th. This giveaway is open to all.

Best of luck to all entrants!

Book review: Séance in Sepia, by Michelle Black

2011-10-23T11:00:00.014-05:00

For her sixth historical novel, Michelle Black trades the vast landscapes of the historical and modern West for the social reforms and spiritualist beliefs of mid-19th century Chicago.

When Flynn Keirnan spies a mysterious old photo at an estate sale, she immediately offers to buy it, believing the proceeds will help her dad's struggling used book business. The sepia-toned image of an unconventional dark-haired woman and two men appears to be a “spirit photograph.” Back in the 1870s, séances were all the rage, as were photographers who claimed to be able to capture ghostly images on film.

Flynn lists the photo on eBay and sparks a bidding war. Startled, she does some research and learns about the trio’s association with the scandalous “Free Love Murders.” In 1875 Chicago, up-and-coming architect Alec Ingersoll was accused of killing the two people he loved most: Medora Lamb, his bohemian artist wife, and his best friend, Cameron Langley. All three lived together in the same house, which caused rumors to fly.

As Flynn uncovers their stories, with the help of a cute attorney with a family connection to the murder trial, a second woman over a century earlier is following a similar path. In exchange for an exclusive jailhouse interview with Ingersoll for her radical paper, notorious feminist Victoria Woodhull agrees to conduct a séance to learn the truth about how Medora and Cam died. An outspoken lecturer and advocate for sexual freedom, Victoria finds her investigation has unexpected repercussions for her personal life. “Free love,” as it turns out, isn't so free after all.

The plot unfolds through a collection of scenes which include courtroom transcripts, journal entries, and straightforward narratives from both timelines. While some of them may seem tangentially related at first, all are cleverly drawn together just in time for a suspenseful finale. Along the way, the novel provides fascinating tidbits on episodes from 19th-century social history, from the unorthodox practices of New York’s Oneida Community to early photography techniques.

The best part of the novel, though, is in seeing how the complex relationships between the characters play out on the page. Michelle Black has a gift for crafting realistic dialogue that highlights their personalities. Her close attention to detail, from the opulence of the Palmer House hotel where Victoria takes up residence to the snappy banter of her modern protagonists, makes both settings feel equally real.

Michelle Black's Séance in Sepia was published on October 21st by Five Star at $25.95 (hardcover, 322pp). Visit the author's website as well as her blog on the Victorian West.

Winner of The Countess...

2011-10-20T16:03:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week I drew the winning entry for Rebecca Johns' The Countess... and then forgot to post it on the blog. Oops - pardon my delay. One paperback copy will be going out to lucky commenter #1 - Amy! Congratulations, Amy, and I hope you'll enjoy the read.

A look at The Ballad of Tom Dooley, by Sharyn McCrumb

2011-10-16T17:01:00.013-05:00

Sharyn McCrumb’s series of Ballad novels about the strong-minded residents and the scenic beauty of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains usually make a point of debunking regional stereotypes. In its bleak and honest presentation of the roots of a local legend, The Ballad of Tom Dooley takes the opposite tack, showing many examples of why these stereotypes exist.

At the story’s center are Tom Dula, a scrawny Confederate veteran with a talent for the fiddle and not much else, and Ann Foster Melton, his dark-haired (and married) lover, the most beautiful and most self-absorbed woman in all of Wilkes County. When plain-faced Pauline Foster comes down the mountain in 1866, offering to work for her Cousin Ann as a servant while getting treatment for syphilis, she deliberately spreads around resentment, jealousy, and lies along with her disease. The twisted chain of events eventually leads to the stabbing death of Laura Foster, a drab waif of a girl who’s a distant cousin to both Ann and Pauline.

Living in these isolated mountains, nobody pays much attention to morality. Although Tom and Ann have been drawn to one another since childhood, neither is faithful or sees the need to be. James Melton, Ann’s husband, is too bewitched by her beauty to care about her affair. Left to care for her siblings after her mother's death, Laura sleeps around with many men, Tom included, because there’s nothing much better to do.

Zebulon Vance shares narration duties with Pauline, which provides some relief from her sociopathic viewpoint. In an attempt to bolster his legal career, he takes the case pro bono when Tom and Ann are jailed for Laura’s murder. The Confederate ex-governor of North Carolina, Vance is a former mountain boy himself, though he took a different path in life than his clients. Looking back on events 20 years later, he speaks several times about his opposition to secession, his status as a U.S. Senator, and his reasons for choosing the woman he married; while he may be the only one in the bunch with brains and decency, he comes across as a bit of a snob.

The novel’s sense of history is paramount, and McCrumb deftly evokes the violence that the end of the Civil War failed to suppress in the poverty-ridden Appalachians. However, with her primary narrator, Pauline, “not much moved by the beauty of nature,” the gorgeous depictions of the region normally expected from her work aren’t found to the same degree in this one.

A century of the folk process transformed this story into the classic murder ballad “Tom Dooley,” which was made famous by the Kingston Trio in 1958. That version pinned the crime on Tom, but he isn’t the perpetrator here – and the real killer shouldn’t come as a surprise. Although this is a novel about a crime, it’s not meant to be a mystery.

This scrupulously researched account gives a plausible scenario for how Laura Foster’s murder may have happened – the author’s note is generous and satisfying – and is worth reading for its re-creation of a real historical event. But with no reason to care about these lazy excuses for people, the promised tale of star-crossed romance just isn’t there. Finally, knowing the reality behind the legend, one can’t help but wonder if this sordid tragedy really deserved as much attention as it got. “That is the burden of this story,” Vance himself says in the beginning, and although McCrumb is a talented writer, not even she manages to overcome it.

The Ballad of Tom Dooley was published by St. Martin's Press in September at $24.99 ($28.99 in Canada) in hardcover. The ARC was sent to me as part of LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program.

Giveaway opportunity: Rebecca Johns' The Countess

2011-10-08T14:36:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the Crown Publishing Group, I have the opportunity to offer a giveaway of Rebecca Johns' The Countess, biographical fiction about Erzsébet Báthory. It's newly out in trade paperback from Broadway ($15, 304pp).

The Countess was a surprise hit for me when I read and reviewed it here last November. Erzsébet Báthory was the 16th-century Hungarian noblewoman for whom the term "bloodbath" could have been coined—rumors had it that she killed hundreds of her female servants and bathed in their blood—but Johns' novel is more of a creepy exploration of her psyche than a gory recounting of her supposed exploits. Read it and see how much you believe of her first-person story.

One copy is up for grabs. Please leave a comment on this post to enter; deadline Monday, October 17th, so that you should hopefully have it in time for Halloween. This giveaway is open to US and Canadian residents. Good luck to all!

Book review: Death of Kings, by Bernard Cornwell

2011-10-03T08:00:00.007-05:00

“It was Yule, 898, and someone was trying to kill me.
I would kill them instead.”

Uhtred of Bebbanburg, the Saxon-born, Danish-raised warrior who has reluctantly become a fighter for Alfred of Wessex, is back in this sixth volume of the Saxon Stories. With his usual blend of confidence, physical strength, and gleeful sarcasm at the ready, he recounts a critical period in the making of England – and his involvement therein.

King Alfred is finally dying. The Danes lie in wait, eager to invade and tear apart the Christian realm he worked so hard to build. Uncertainty and suspicion are present from the outset, an effect that nicely mirrors the soon-to-be-fractured state of the kingdom. After foiling a murder attempt at his winter residence up north, Uhtred must return to duty when Alfred asks him to negotiate a treaty with King Eohric of East Anglia. The meeting place seems oddly chosen, and Uhtred smells something fishy.

Uhtred has grown to admire Alfred over time, but he doesn’t feel the same loyalty toward Alfred’s heir, the ætheling Edward. Not only does Edward mistrust him, but Uhtred knows he will have a hard time convincing him that peace-making isn’t the way to create a united Saxon country. Treachery and lies abound, not just from the enemy Danes but also from a rival claimant to the throne. While he faces Alfred’s slow but impending demise as well as numerous threats to his own safety, Uhtred makes up his mind about his ultimate goal – and how he will attain it.

If this were purely an adrenaline-based saga, Death of Kings would be an impressively entertaining read. The strategies are laid out clearly, and the action is brutal and vigorous. Cornwell excels at depicting the “battle-joy” that comes over Uhtred as he prepares to face down a deadly foe. Even pacifists may find themselves caught up in the moment! The historical background is solid and vividly described, with authentic place names giving the setting a realistic feel.

Some of Uhtred’s choices are wickedly clever, and they have his enemies running in frustrated circles. He delights in causing trouble, which makes for hilarious scenes. His taunting of the Danes at Snotengaham is meant solely to enhance his already fearsome reputation. He also has an excellent sense of how to annoy the ubiquitous priests who believe that victory can be won by prayer.

Death of Kings encompasses more than military encounters, however, and we experience a full range of emotions along with Uhtred: the assurance with which he leads his trusted men, the solemnity of his king’s final moments, and the tenderness and pride Uhtred has for Æthelflaed, Alfred’s daughter, whom he loves dearly. And while he always greets the possibility of war with eager anticipation, his encounter with a pagan sorceress in her otherworldly lair makes him shake in his boots. The consummate skill with which Cornwell evokes every aspect of Uhtred’s story and character transforms an already exciting book into a truly outstanding one.

Death of Kings is published in October by HarperCollins UK at £18.99 (hardcover, 335pp). It will appear in the US next January from Harper at $25.99 (and good luck waiting that long).

Guest post from Monika Schröder: Obituaries, Advertisements, and War Bulletins...

2011-09-29T00:00:00.000-05:00

Today's guest post from Monika Schröder speaks to the historical background of her novel My Brother's Shadow, reviewed here on Tuesday. How did her archival research with Berlin newspapers inform her work, and how did she consult these primary sources while living half a world away? As a librarian who likes helping researchers with requests for older material, I found her essay especially enjoyable.

Obituaries, Advertisements, and War Bulletins – How Reading Berlin Newspapers from the Fall of 1918 helped me write My Brother's Shadow, by Monika Schröder

My new novel of historical fiction, My Brother's Shadow (Frances Foster Books/Farrar Straus Giroux, September, 2011), is set in Berlin 1918 during the last months of World War One. The book explores how war and the political transition following WWI affected regular people and children in particular.

From reading secondary sources I had gained basic information about the situation among German civilians, but I needed to find more details of daily life in Berlin. A few excerpts of the Berliner Tageblatt and Morgenpost were available online, but most of those consisted of the front pages announcing important events such as the Kaiser’s abdication or the armistice. I didn’t find any searchable database that would give me access to the original Berlin newspapers of the year 1918.

When I contacted the German Newspaper Archive in Berlin, I learned that the digitization of most of the papers I was interested in had not been completed. The nice lady at the front desk invited me to visit the archive, explained which subway stop to get off and how much it would cost to make copies. I told her that I lived in New Delhi and wouldn’t be able to come personally to the archive until the following summer.

But I needed those papers right away. I must have sounded desperate as she connected me to the director of the archive to whom I explained my predicament. I expected a tart ‘no’; instead he told me that the archive had finished digitizing through the end of 1919 the Vossische Zeitung, an important liberal paper, published in Berlin. That was good news!

But when he asked how I could get to access the Vossische Zeitung from October 1918 to January 1919 he told me that they were not available online yet.

Now so close to my goal I was not ready to give up. “If you have them in digital format,” I said. “Could you burn them onto a CD and send them to me?"

After a pause, he said, “That would be very expensive.”

“How much?” I asked.

I won’t disclose the sum. Let’s just say he was right in his cost estimation, but I ordered them right away and three weeks later I was delighted to receive a package in the mail with the digitized editions of the Vossische Zeitung from October 14, 1918 to January 20, 1919.

I loved reading the newspaper. The official war report was printed daily on the front page, usually under an upbeat headline. But by the middle of October a discerning reader could see that the army leadership slowly began to disclose more and more of the German Army’s dismal situation. The paper also printed obituaries. Every day numerous black framed notices informed the reader of the death of a young Karl or Friedrich who died “in honor of the fatherland” in France, Russia or Belgium.

I also studied the advertisements, which were very interesting and revealing. Due to the British blockade of the German harbors, Germany experienced severe food shortages. By 1918 many raw materials like coffee or cocoa were not available, and the lack of these products forced Germans to be inventive. Many “ersatz” (replacement) products were advertised. For example, I found an ad offering a class for housewives who wanted to learn how to make coffee from chicory and other ingredients. There were also numerous official calls for the collection of raw materials, such as metal, rubber, and cardboard. Others asked children to bring cherry and plum pits for a “Make Oil from Fruit Pits” campaign.

Commercial ads also illustrated the changing role of women in the war economy following the shortage of men. Traditionally considered the “weaker gender,” women now were drafted to work in ammunition factories and conducted streetcars, and delivered milk and mail or moved heavy equipment as the woman in the following advertisement.

I was so fascinated by what I had read that the newspaper became an important part in the story. As an apprentice in a print shop of a Berlin newspaper, Moritz, the main character, reads the headlines of the paper he just helped print and thereby informs the readers of the state of affairs in Germany, October 1918. On the first page of the novel Moritz studies an official war report, knowing that the government is not allowing the truth to come out. He then meets Herr Goldman, a journalist who works for the paper and who takes a liking to Moritz and ultimately helps him to fulfill his dream to become a reporter like himself. When Moritz is sent out to report on an illegal demonstration he sees his mother among the speakers. He witnesses the police disturb the meeting, disperse the crowd and arrest the leaders. What happened to Moritz’s mother? Read My Brother's Shadow to find out.

Book review: My Brother's Shadow, by Monika Schröder

2011-09-27T08:00:00.007-05:00

In her young adult novel My Brother’s Shadow, Monika Schröder creates a starkly realistic vision of Berlin at the end of World War I.

In 1918, sixteen-year-old Moritz Schmidt works as a printer for the Berliner Daily, which is obliged to publish patriotic bulletins from the German Reich even though its people know they’re losing the war. With food rationing in place, a hearty meal is a distant memory. Instead, citizens stand in lines for bread and stretch their supplies by consuming turnip soup and ersatz coffee.

Moritz's home life is difficult. His father was killed at Verdun, his older brother Hans is off fighting at the Western Front, and his frail Oma (grandma) suffers from dementia. At the same time, his mother and sister attend secret meetings of the Social Democrats, who work to bring down the Kaiser and his oppressive regime. This introduces a note of hope into the narrative but causes confusion for Moritz, who doesn’t know who to believe.

Succumbing to peer pressure and missing his brother, Moritz joins Hans’s old gang, a group of bullies and thieves. After they threaten trouble for a new friend of his, a Jewish girl named Rebecca, his conscience begins to awaken. He also starts paying attention to his mentor at the paper, who sees potential in him as a journalist, and who considers his mother a hero for her outspoken stance. Then Hans comes home – crippled, angry, and eager to find a scapegoat for his and Germany’s losses.

Moritz narrates the tale in a non-intrusive present tense. His innocence can make him seem younger than his years, but his honesty and openness draw readers into his gripping story. The pacing is brisk, and tension builds out of the bleak atmosphere.

Not surprisingly given the author’s background (she grew up in Germany), she paints a detailed picture of the local geography and culture. Teenagers may find Moritz’s coming-of-age journey and growing romance with Rebecca the most compelling, but adult readers may discover that Anna Schmidt, the woman he calls Mama, steals the show. She is strong, courageously optimistic, and devoted to her family, but not even she knows how to cure her wounded elder son.

This wise and provocative read doesn’t offer up easy answers, which may be its greatest strength. The sobering ending makes it plain that for these characters and for Germany, the tale is far from over.

My Brother's Shadow was published today by Frances Foster Books/Farrar Straus & Giroux at $16.99 (hardcover, 217pp, with detailed author's note on the historical background). Look for a guest post by Monika Schröder later this week about the research process for her book.

Langum Prize for American Historical Fiction: 1st shortlist announced

2011-09-18T11:32:00.001-05:00

The Langum Charitable Trust, sponsor of the annual Langum Prize for American Historical Fiction, has announced a change in procedure. They have begun a shortlist process; the first shortlist will cover novels published in January-June of the prize year, and a second list will cover novels published in July-December.

For the first half of 2011, the shortlisted titles are:

Geraldine Brooks' Caleb's Crossing, set in 1660s Martha's Vineyard and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and centering on the friendship between a minister's daughter and a young man of the Wampanoag tribe;

Susan Vreeland's Clara and Mr. Tiffany, about Clara Driscoll, Louis Comfort Tiffany's chief designer at his New York glass studio in the 1890s.

For more on both books, 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." Recent past winners include Ann Weisgarber's The Personal History of Rachel DuPree, Edward Rutherfurd's New York, and Kathleen Kent's The Heretic's Daughter.

An Australia & New Zealand historical fiction showcase

2011-09-12T21:00:00.006-05:00

This post is thanks to Marg because in the comments for one of my recent posts, she told me about FishpondWorld, an online Aussie bookstore that ships free internationally. The one thing that's prevented me from buying more historical novels from Australia and New Zealand is the outrageous postage charges, which are often higher than the books' cover price. Getting them via interlibrary loan isn't really practical from the US. So, having just gotten paid for an article I wrote, I clicked onto this new site and went to town.

A couple of these were actually recent purchases from Bookcloseouts, but they fit the subject and I figured I'd add them to the pile.

The books look even more appealing when you see the covers, so here they are below.

This is a huge trade paperback, 550pp long. Belinda Alexandra is an Australian historical novelist who has set her novels all over the world. I'd call them romantic epics. Tuscan Rose centers on a young woman living in Florence, Italy, in the 1930s and '40s, who is compelled to uncover her true identity at a time when Fascism takes hold of her country. HarperCollins Australia, 2010.

An unlikely love story unfolds in the gold rush settlement of Arrowtown in 19th-century New Zealand, as a young Chinese woman named Ming Yuet disguises herself as a miner. Penguin New Zealand, 2008.

This is another gold rush-era romantic story set in Old Ballarat, a mining boomtown near Melbourne. I won't reveal more of the storyline, because this is 3rd in a series after Kitty and Amber, tales of strong women during the early days of Australia and New Zealand. HarperCollins New Zealand, 2010.

I just love this cover design. The tagline says: "A daring heroine tests her wits against secrets, spies, and smugglers on a remote Australian island." Mary Watson was a real person from 1879 Queensland, an adventure-seeking woman who left behind a few brief diary entries hinting at her fate. This literary fiction novel picks up where those fragments leave off. 4th Estate, 2011.

This compact little novel (311pp but dense in terms of weight) tells the historically-based story of the migrations from Nova Scotia to Australia in 1817, and the colony's subsequent settlement in New Zealand in 1854, under the leadership of Norman McLeod. Kidman tells the story from the viewpoint of three generations of women, whose stories date from 1812 to 1953. Vintage New Zealand, 1988.

This is one of the most gorgeous covers I've seen anywhere, and it's on a book I'd been looking to buy for over a year. Fiona McIntosh is best known as a fantasy writer, and this is her first installment of a family saga based on her the history of her ancestors. It begins at the end of the Great War. "From the windswept clifftops of the Cornish coast to the goldmines of southern India, this is a page turning story of high adventure, devastating tragedy and enduring love." Penguin Australia, this edition 2011.

And here is the back cover, which is just as spectacular.

I first read about La Rochelle's Road at Cat's blog Tell Me a Story; she's a NZ blogger who specializes in historical fiction. In 1866, Hester Peterson discovers the journal of a past resident of her family's home - Etienne La Rochelle, who caused a scandal by taking a Maori lover. What she learns sets her on a dangerous path of beauty, darkness, and illicit love. Black Swan (NZ), 2011.

Now which one should I read first?

A look at Elle Newmark's The Sandalwood Tree

2011-09-12T00:00:00.000-05:00

Elle Newmark's The Sandalwood Tree is an engrossing novel set during two pivotal periods in the history of colonial India.

Evie Mitchell arrives in India in 1947 with her historian husband, Martin, and their five-year-old son, Billy. The recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, Martin is eager to document firsthand the last days of the British Raj. Evie hopes that their staying together as a family in this unfamiliar land will repair their strained marriage and teach Billy about respecting other countries' beliefs.

Things don't turn out as she planned. Martin refuses to discuss his wartime experiences with Evie and, with the timeline for India's Partition moved up unexpectedly, worries about their safety. Evie doesn't fit in with the bigoted expatriate community and is left to her own devices. Tired of what she feels is Martin's paranoia, she feels lonely and restless.

Then, concealed within their bungalow in the village of Masoorla, just outside Simla, Evie discovers fragments of personal letters between Felicity and Adele, two Victorian-era friends who lived in her house 90 years before. She gets caught up in their lives and determines to find out what happened to them. Their story, a tale of daring female adventure and several instances of forbidden love, is revealed piece by piece and intertwines neatly with Evie's narrative.

Newmark's vibrant portrait of India details its opulent beauty, its appalling poverty, and the difficult paths to cross-cultural understanding. The tension level rises as the relaxing atmosphere of remote Masoorla braces up against the violent Muslim-Hindu conflicts before Partition in the later timeline, and the tragic aftermath of the Sepoy Mutiny in the earlier one.

This isn't the type of historical novel that glorifies unconventional behavior during a restrictive time. It's more realistic than that. Both Felicity and Adele flout their families' expectations, each choosing personal happiness over society's approval. As she learns more about them, Evie comes to admire them as trailblazers, but they're considered scandalous by their contemporaries.

I read The Sandalwood Tree in just over a day, immersed in the Indian setting and the dilemmas faced by all three women. Sadly, the quote at the very beginning of the novel, Adele's remark that "death steals everything but our stories," could be the author's epitaph. She passed away in June after a two-year illness. Newmark became a successful author late in life, and her journey from aspiring writer to self-published novelist to international bestseller is truly inspiring.

The Sandalwood Tree was published by Atria in April at $25.99 ($29.99 in Canada) and by Black Swan (UK) in August at £7.99.

The Borgia Betrayal contest winner

2011-09-10T09:22:00.000-05:00

I'll be posting more later today or tomorrow, but for now -- I've just drawn the winner of Sara Poole's The Borgia Betrayal, with the help of Random.org. Congrats to Sam from Tiny Library! Looks like this copy will be winging its way over to the UK soon.

In her comment, Sam wrote that she's my newest follower (thanks for reading the site!). After reading her recent review of Elle Newmark's The Sandalwood Tree, I decided to pick it up next. The review copy's been on my pile for a few months, and it looked like a good book to lose myself in after a very busy work week.

Book review: Deborah Lawrenson's The Lantern

2011-09-05T13:58:00.007-05:00

In her modern Gothic mystery, her first novel to be published in America, Deborah Lawrenson plunges readers into the atmosphere of rural Provence, a place both entrancing and chilling.

When Eve, a young freelance translator, meets Dom, an older musician, at a chateau along Lake Geneva, both are at low points in their lives. They unexpectedly fall in love, and together they purchase a huge, crumbling farmhouse, Les Genévriers, nestled in the Luberon Mountains of southern France. Here they delight in the pleasures of the region and in each other, but as the seasons change, shadows appear in their relationship. Dom refuses to speak about his former wife, Rachel, and withdraws more and more into himself. His coldness arouses Eve’s curiosity and alarm and incites her to search for answers.

In alternating chapters that don’t mark the change of narrator (but which aren't confusing for the switch), an elderly woman named Bénédicte Lincel speaks of growing up at Les Genévriers in the 1930s and 40s. Her glorious childhood is marred only by the cruelty of her older brother, Pierre, and her family’s decline into poverty during the postwar years. Both Eve and Bénédicte catch glimpses of what they believe are ghosts on the property, and apprehension builds as the tragedies in their lives are slowly uncovered.

Reflecting the bounty of the land, the language is ripe and sensual (tomatoes are "as ribbed and plump as harem cushions"). The regional specialties, like vin de noix – sweet walnut liqueur – sound mouth-wateringly delicious. Armchair travelers will revel in Lawrenson’s lush descriptions of the lavender harvest, an event in which Bénédicte participates in order to share the experience with her blind sister, Marthe, who grows up to be a renowned parfumeuse. The cycle of life is evoked in full, from birth and growth through death and decay – as it affects local crops, the structure of Les Genévriers, and the affairs of its human inhabitants.

The Lantern is setting-driven before it becomes character-driven, as if to imply that one must get to know the terrain before knowing its people. Everyone is holding something back, and Eve herself acknowledges the uncanny similarities between her life and the plot of Rebecca. To enhance the parallels even more, “Eve” is merely Dom’s nickname for the modern narrator; her real name is never given.

A few scenes take the easy way out during an otherwise complex reading experience. Pierre is a stereotypical bully, and his malicious actions can be predicted from miles away. But apart from this, the author displays smart plotting and a good sense of timing. She gently manipulates readers along a suspenseful path, culminating in an astonishing revelation that Du Maurier couldn’t have imagined.

Those who enjoy Kate Morton’s novels and other Gothic family sagas should enjoy this book as well, although its pacing is more drawn out in the beginning, and its phrasings have more of a literary flair. Darkly evocative, beautifully written, and overflowing with the sights and scents of the Provençal countryside, The Lantern takes a powerful look at the haunting presence of the past.

The Lantern was published by Harper in September at $25.99 (hardcover, 384pp). In the UK, it's available from Orion in either hardcover (£18.99) or paperback (£7.99), with a very similar cover.

Book review and giveaway: Sara Poole's The Borgia Betrayal

2011-08-31T11:00:00.001-05:00

Sara Poole's historical thriller The Borgia Betrayal begins with a poisoning, not an uncommon occurrence during the deadly power games of the Italian Renaissance, but two things set it apart. First, the perpetrator is a woman, Pope Alexander VI's court poisoner Francesca Giordano, and she seems – almost – to have compassion for the poor fellow who dies. Keeping her boss safe is her mission, and she'll do what she has to.

For her newest assignment, Francesca must find a discreet way of killing off Cardinal della Rovere, the Borgia pope's main rival. The story is hastened forward by several subplots that seem, at first, to be distractions from the main event.

While Borgia fights to keep Spain as a firm ally against the unruly French, Spain pressures him to break off his daughter Lucrezia's betrothal to Giovanni Sforza of Milan and to banish the Jews from Rome. He doesn't plan to do either. Rumors are spreading about the impending arrival of the fanatical monk from Florence, Savonarola. Amid the political tumult, Francesca refuses to abandon her personal quest: killing the mad priest, Bernando Morozzi, who masterminded her father's death.

Francesca fancies herself an outcast, an unnatural woman who enjoys her job a little too much and doesn't want the darkness inside her to touch anyone else. Although it's true that most people around the Vatican fear her (for good reason), she has more friends than she thinks. Among them are the handsome glassmaker she won't let herself get close to; her fellow members of the Lux, a secret society of free-thinkers; and her lover Cesare Borgia, the pope's son, whose lusts and dark leanings match her own.

Poole's depiction of Cesare is refreshing and suitably complex. Just seventeen in the year 1493, Cesare is more than just a power-hungry, immoral adolescent. He truly cares for Francesca, and their developing relationship – as well as his with his father – will be worth watching in future books.

Francesca's first-person voice has a sarcastic directness that comes as a nice change in an era where one's feelings are best kept hidden. Despite the many tangled strands of the plot, the narrative speeds along smoothly, and the author displays an intimate familiarity with this dangerous time and place. The Borgia Betrayal is second in a series after Poison. It works well as a standalone, although there are enough intriguing references to events from the first book for newcomers to regret not having read it.

The Borgia Betrayal was published by St. Martin's Griffin in June at $14.99 ($16.99 in Canada) in trade paperback (389pp, plus bonus material including an author interview, historical essay, and timeline).

Interested in winning a copy for yourself? I have one up for grabs. To enter, leave a comment on this post. Deadline Friday, September 9th. This contest is open internationally. Good luck!

Bits and pieces

2011-08-29T21:18:00.002-05:00

Thanks to whoever chose to nominate this site for "best historical fiction blog" in the Book Blogger Appreciation Week annual awards. It's much appreciated, and congrats to my fellow nominees. If anyone's curious, here are the posts I selected for the judging. At least I think they're what I put down. The fall semester started a week ago and I'm lucky I know which way is up.

X is for Xenia, my review of Jane Alison's The Love-Artist.
Daughters of Summer, a visual preview of summer 2011 books that shows a popular title trend...
My review of Carol K. Carr's India Black, which was as fun to write as the book was to read.
The interview I conducted with Sonia Gensler about her spooky ghost story The Revenant.
My compilation of historical fiction picks at BEA 2011. I've read just one of these so far, Stella Tillyard's Tides of War, which was a Booklist review assignment.

In other news, I established a new Facebook page for the blog, so please join me there if you're able: http://www.facebook.com/readingthepastblog

And for some historical novel deals, from Publishers Marketplace's Lunch Deluxe reports:

Linda Holeman's untitled book, pitched as 'Anna Karenina meets Downton Abbey', and set in 1861 Imperialist Russia in the aftermath of the Emancipation of the Serfs, a sweeping tale of how the political turmoil of the country affects one landowner's family, to Anne Collins at Random House Canada, in a very nice deal, in a two-book deal, for publication in spring 2012, by Sarah Heller at the Helen Heller Agency. [and I'd actually gone looking to her website when putting together my Canadian preview to see if she had a new book coming out - ask and ye shall receive]

Stephanie Dray's DAUGHTER OF THE NILE, the final book in the author's trilogy tracing the ambitious and passionate life of Selene -- daughter of Cleopatra, princess of Egypt, Queen of Mauretania, and disciple of Isis, to Cindy Hwang at Berkley, by Jennifer Schober at Spencerhill Associates (NA). [I'll be reading this; here's my review of book one.]

Carlene Bauer's FRANCES & BERNARD, an epistolary novel imagining the friendship, discussions of faith and art, and bittersweet romance between two writers in late 1950s New York, inspired by Flannery O'Connor and Robert Lowell, to Jenna Johnson at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, in a pre-empt, for publication in Fall 2012, by PJ Mark at Janklow & Nesbit (World English).

Author of WILDFLOWER HILL Kimberley Freeman's ISABELLA'S GIFT, spanning centuries about two women connected by a secret hidden in the walls of a family lighthouse, to Sally Kim for Touchstone, for publication in summer 2012, by Airlie Lawson at Hachette Australia.

Christine Wade's THE BOWER WIFE, a retelling of the first American folk tale in which a woman's husband mysteriously vanishes, abandoning her and her children on their farm at the foot of the Catskills, and a dark story begins to circulate in the small frontier community near which the family lives, as the Revolutionary War fast approaches, to Sarah Durand at Atria, by Eleanor Jackson at Markson Thoma (World). [folk tale about the early Revolutionary period? I'm there]

The Darling Strumpet and The September Queen author Gillian Bagwell's MY LADY BESS, based on the life of Bess of Hardwick, 1527-1608, the formidable four-times widowed Tudor dynasty who began life in genteel poverty and ended as the richest and most powerful woman in England after Queen Elizabeth; built Chatsworth House and Hardwick Hall; and is the forebear of numerous noble lines including the current royal family of Britain, to Kate Seaver at Berkley, by Kevan Lyon at Marsal Lyon Literary Agency (NA). [about time for a new fictional retelling of Bess of Hardwick's life!]

A Canadian historical fiction showcase, part 2

2011-08-27T19:00:00.003-05:00

I've been getting a lot of visitors to my first visual preview of Canadian historical fiction so decided to do a followup. Most of these historical novels will be appearing in fall 2011.

In addition, no cover art is available for this one yet, so I haven't listed it below, but I wanted to make a special note of one book I'm highly anticipating. Michael Ennis (author of the fabulous Duchess of Milan) will have a new novel out in late January from McClelland & Stewart. A Most Beautiful Deception is a fact-based historical thriller set in the world of Niccolò Machiavelli and Leonardo da Vinci. Ennis isn't Canadian, but the novel doesn't appear to be published elsewhere.

Happy browsing. Did I miss any important titles? Let me know!

In a series of connected short stories spanning 1901 to 1999, DeGrace takes readers through a century of change in the company of a large cast of characters. The setting moves through the vast Canadian landscape, from early 20th-century Ontario to 1920s Montreal to Depression-era Saskatchewan and beyond. McArthur & Co., Sept.

The story of Molly Norton, the half-native daughter of the governor of Hudson's Bay Company in 18th-century Manitoba, and Samuel Hearne, the explorer she married. A sensitive rendering of a tragic clash of cultures that took place over two centuries ago. The characters are based on historical figures. HarperCollins Canada, March (it's already out, and my copy arrived in yesterday's mail).

The love triangle between novelist Victor Hugo; Hugo's long-suffering wife, Adèle; and Hugo's would-be friend, French journalist and literary critic Charles Sainte-Beuve, set during the reign of Napoleon III. HarperCollins Canada, Sept.; published in the UK in July by Serpent's Tail.

Maureen Jennings' Detective Murdoch mysteries set in late 19th-century Toronto are hugely popular in Canada. Season of Darkness, first in her new series, takes place in rural Shropshire a year into WWII. A detective who expected to be bored by his seemingly dull assignment finds himself investigating the death of a land girl. Read the review from the NY Times. McClelland & Stewart, Aug.

Another of Johnston's literary epics, this time set in late 19th-century Newfoundland, New Jersey, and North Carolina. When his personal circumstances turn sour, a man turns to his wealthy former Princeton classmate, George "Van" Vanderluyden, for help, and gets drawn into his deceitful net. (Van is based on George Washington Vanderbilt II, who constructed Biltmore.) Knopf Canada, Aug.

It's been four years since McKay's debut, The Birth House, her celebrated and bestselling novel about the trials of a determined young midwife in an early 20th-century Nova Scotia fishing village. Expect plenty of demand for The Virgin Cure, which was inspired by her great-great-grandmother's story. Moth grows up in the slums of New York's Bowery district, where she befriends a female physician and become wise to the cruel ways of the adult world. Knopf Canada, Oct; to be pub by HarperCollins US in Feb 2012.

The Forgetful Shore by Newfoundlander Trudy Morgan-Cole reveals the stories of two friends, closer than sisters, who grow up in a small coastal town in the early 20th century. Although they remain in touch after their adult lives diverge, their friendship abruptly changes when a long-held secret emerges. The author has also written novels about biblical women as well as The Violent Friendship of Esther Johnson, about a shadowy woman who was Jonathan Swift's good friend and possibly more. Breakwater, Sept.

Gayla Reid is a multi-award winning Australian-Canadian writer, and her latest work incorporates elements from the history of both countries. It tells the story of an Australian nurse longing for news of her Canadian lover, a volunteer on the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War. While she waits, she reveals her life story to her daughter. Cormorant, Aug.

Polish-Canadian writer Stachniak's third work of fiction is an epic historical novel about Catherine the Great's rise to power in mid-18th century Russia, as seen from the viewpoint of her servant, Varvara. The US publisher is gearing up for promotion already (my copy arrived last week) and I'm sure we'll be seeing much more of it this winter. Let's hope this means Russian settings are on the upswing. Doubleday Canada, Dec; also Bantam US, January, and Doubleday UK, January.

Vanderhaeghe, an author of significance in modern Canadian literature, presents his 3rd epic of the American and Canadian West in the late 19th century. The first two books in this loosely formed trilogy are The Englishman's Boy and The Last Crossing. McClelland & Stewart, Sept., and Atlantic Monthly (US), Jan.

In 1788, Lt. George Cartwright's trading expedition set out to make peaceful contact with the Beothuk, the native inhabitants of Newfoundland, in 1768. Literary historical adventure along the early Canadian frontier. Breakwater, Sept.

A look at Karleen Koen's Before Versailles

2011-08-22T09:00:00.002-05:00

Karleen Koen’s lush and literary fourth novel takes place over the six-month period, March through September 1661, when Louis XIV of France transformed himself into an absolute monarch. Reading it provides complete immersion into the elaborate rituals and gorgeous décor at the French royal court. While the atmosphere at the Château de Fontainebleau may seem light and carefree on the surface, however, cruel power games play out behind the scenes.

France’s greatest administrator, Cardinal Mazarin, has just died, and rival statesmen are moving in to fill the void. With the country’s recent civil wars (the Fronde) never far from his mind, 22-year-old King Louis must decide who pledges their true loyalty and who intrigues against him. The omniscient viewpoint ensures a comprehensive portrait of the place and time. Readers get to see the inner thoughts and motives of all the major players, from the worries and ambitions of the queen mother, Anne of Austria, to the lusty schemes of Catherine, Princess of Monaco, all without losing sight of the larger story.

As Louis solidifies his grip on the reins of power, he begins to understand that some choices simply aren’t open to him. Even a king can’t have everything he wants, especially if one of them is Henriette, his younger brother Philippe’s fun-loving and flirtatious wife. Fortunately, before the court erupts in scandal over their forbidden love affair, his eye turns to someone new.

Louise de la Baume le Blanc is a kind, gentle, and shy maid of honor, and in a court full of hidden agendas, Louis appreciates a woman who won’t play him false. Their connection is deep and passionate, and, as Koen alludes, on his side it will be temporary – but it feels no less poignant for that. Louise also has a curious streak. One day while out riding in the woods, she spies a boy wearing an iron mask, not realizing her quest to discover his secret has the potential to shake the kingdom.

With its richly decadent setting, Before Versailles is a dazzling feast for the visual imagination. The abundance of detail can be too much to take in all at once (you wouldn’t expect to see all of Fontainebleau in a single day, would you?) so prepare for a leisurely read. In addition, the novel is a skilled evocation of one man’s determination to take control of the land he was born to rule.

Before Versailles was published by Crown in late June at $26.00 / $31 in Canada (hardcover, 460pp).

Guest post from Elisabeth Storrs: Snail Mail, Rome and Ursula Le Guin

2011-08-18T08:00:00.001-05:00

I'm so pleased to present this guest post from Elisabeth Storrs, whose excellent historical novel of ancient Etruria, The Wedding Shroud, I reviewed last December. While the paperback version is currently available only in Australia, it's newly out in ebook format worldwide and can be purchased on Amazon, iBookstore and Kobo. Visit her website for links.

Elisabeth's post will be of interest to writers as well as readers. How does a debut novelist approach a well-known author for an endorsement? Please read on!

Snail Mail, Rome and Ursula Le Guin

Old fashioned courtesy can go a long way. And so, too, can snail mail. When I requested Ursula Le Guin to endorse my novel I used both.

Last year my first novel, The Wedding Shroud, was published in Australia (and has now been released as an e-book world wide). The book is set in C5th BCE at a time when Rome was still scrapping for ascendancy over its Latin neighbours. The book compares the intolerant insular Romans with its enemies, the Etruscans, a people whose highly sophisticated civilisation spread throughout Italy and across the Mediterranean into northern Europe. My protagonist is a young Roman girl married to an Etruscan nobleman to seal a truce. Leaving behind a righteous society, she is determined to remain true to Roman virtues while living among the sinful Etruscans. Instead she finds herself tempted by a mystical, hedonistic culture which offers pleasure and independence to women.

As an unknown writer I faced the daunting task of gaining publicity and credibility amid a plethora of new releases in the market place. My publisher suggested I have the book endorsed by a well known author. Sounded like a great idea. Only problem was to find one who would do it!

My immediate thought was to find an historical fiction author whom I admired. There was no lack of these. I also thought it would be best if I could identify someone who was interested in the subject matter of my novel not just in history per se.

Around this time, a friend of mine mentioned that Ursula Le Guin’s Lavinia had been released to rave reviews. I was fascinated by this as I only knew her as the eminent author of amazing fantasy novels. I was also intrigued by the title of her book as I recognised it as the name of the wife of Aeneas, the hero of The Aeneid, an epic written by the Roman poet Vergil.

I read Lavinia and was transported back to a time when Rome was yet to be founded and a war weary Trojan wanderer fell in love with the daughter of Latium’s king. The character of Lavinia is not developed in The Aeneid but Ursula Le Guin created a complex woman whose love for a stranger started a war.

As a school girl I loved translating The Aeneid and it struck me that Ursula Le Guin must have a similar affection. In her Author’s Note I read how she had visited the area in Italy where ancient Latium was situated. Her delight in walking the same land upon which her characters had dwelt was clear. Her enthusiasm resonated with me. I also had dreams of standing in the ruins of Veii, the Etruscan city in which my novel is set.

I looked at Ursula Le Guin’s website and found that she was prepared to write blurbs for books but would only respond to letters i.e. snail mail. With a gentle sense of humour she also specified that overseas correspondents should include an international reply coupon if they expected a response due to the fact she would have to bear the costs of mailing a reply. As she personally answered her own correspondence this could take some time. In her own words ‘Silence means I'm sorry: Art is long, life is short, and I want to get on with my own book.’

On the premise of ‘she can only say no’ or more to the point - reply with silence, I wrote her a letter. In it I explained how much I enjoyed Lavinia because of my fondness for Vergil’s The Aeneid. I also provided a one page synopsis of my novel and explained how I, too, wished to walk upon ancient land in reality as well as in my imagination.

I have a vivid memory of hurrying to my local post office and asking for an international reply coupon before slipping the letter into the big red mailbox and crossing my fingers. To my utter astonishment, she responded only a few weeks later to say that she had always been fascinated by the Etruscans and would like to visit ancient Veii through reading my book. Imagine my excitement when she then agreed to endorse it! I still find it hard to believe she was gracious enough to reply let alone write a blurb.

Only Ursula Le Guin can tell why she was prepared to give her time and endorsement to an unknown Australian writer but in the end I believe that, in this world of Twitter, Facebook and email, the old fashioned courtesy of taking time to write and post a letter with a self addressed envelope and a reply coupon must have helped. It was also fate, too, because not longer after this Australia Post phased out international reply coupons. So maybe the Etruscan gods were smiling upon me. I’m certainly glad they did.

~Elisabeth Storrs

Elisabeth Storrs graduated from the University of Sydney in Arts Law, majoring in English and having studied Classics. She lives with her husband and two sons in Sydney and over the years has worked as a solicitor, corporate lawyer, senior manager and company secretary.

Elisabeth's first novel, The Wedding Shroud, is set in early Rome and Etruria, and was researched and written over a period of ten years. It is now available as an ebook world wide. She is currently writing the sequel which will be released by Pier 9 / Murdoch Books in 2012.

Guest post from Nancy Means Wright: An 18th-century Feminist Takes on an Unfair, Feudal Practice

2011-08-15T06:00:00.001-05:00

Today author Nancy Means Wright is visiting the blog to discuss the historical practice of primogeniture -- in particular as it figured in the lives of her heroine Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary's contemporaries, and their fictional creations. If you read novels with historical British settings, you'll want to understand the concepts of inheritance law explained in this informative post!

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An 18th-century Feminist Takes on an Unfair, Feudal Practice
by Nancy Means Wright

“Property, ” Mary Wollstonecraft wrote in her flaming Vindication of the Rights of Man (1790), “should be fluctuating, which would be the case if it were more equally divided amongst all the children of a family. Else it is an everlasting rampart, in consequence of a barbarous feudal institution that enables the elder son to overpower talents and depress virtue.”

The “feudal institution” Mary decried in her rebuttal to the reactionary Edmund Burke, was the law of primogeniture. In practice since the Norman conquest, a father’s fortune would go directly to the eldest son, and so on down the male line—the objective being to keep estates intact from generation to generation.

“Security of property: Behold in a few words, the definition of English ‘liberty,’” was Mary’s ironic reply to Burke, who not only upheld the practice but had attacked Mary’s mentor, Unitarian Dr. Richard Price who like Mary, was thrilled with the Liberté, Égalité ideals of the French Revolutionaries.

“To this selfish principle (primogeniture),” she declared, “every nobler one is sacrificed!”

The practice was ensured by means of entail, a legal arrangement under which the father had only an allowance and life interest in the estate, which was then entailed to the eldest son. Any sale of the property was prevented by law, resulting in vast estates owned by extravagantly rich families. By the mid-19th century, one quarter of all British land was held by a mere 701 individuals. Primogeniture, they insisted, was the only way to ensure political and economic stability, and so remained on the law books until 1925!

Mary’s grandfather had amassed a small fortune as master silk weaver, but her father squandered it in his attempt to become a gentleman farmer. He failed at every move, and drank away much of the inheritance. Mary’s autocratic brother Ned didn’t inherit enough money to became a man of leisure, like many elder brothers, but he did practice law, and kept for himself the small legacy assigned to his six siblings. So after her mother’s death, elder daughter Mary was left with no money, but all the responsibility for her younger brothers and sisters.

At fourteen, Mary’s brother Henry was apprenticed to an apothecary-surgeon, and then disappeared from record. But Mary outfitted James for a naval career, and sent Charles off to make his fortune in America (with middling success). She helped her sister Eliza escape an abusive husband; yet unable to remarry, Eliza had to earn her way as governess. Governessing was the fate of the youngest sister, Everina, as well, and for a time, of Mary herself—“a most humilating occupation!” Her whole short life, Mary sent the little money she earned from her writing to prop up her siblings, along with her feckless father.

No wonder then, that early on, as Virginia Woolf put it, life for Mary became “one cry for justice!” And justice was sorely needed, according to philosopher Francis Bacon, who wrote that tempted by money and power, elder sons were likely to become “disobedient, negligent and wasteful.”

Like Mary, 18th-century Nelly Weeton valued family ties and responsibilities, even rejecting an offer of marriage to keep house for her elder brother Tom after their father died at sea. But Tom, who as a boy was close to Nelly, married a woman who wanted no part of the sister. He ultimately stole the little legacy their mother left Nelly, and virtually sold her into servitude. A desperate marriage to a tyrant who appropriated her teaching money, and after a separation, denied her entry to their daughter, turned Nelly’s life to abject misery. Mary Wollstonecraft’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont, had a similar loss when her indifferent lover, poet Lord Byron, an only son, refused all visits to their daughter, who at eight years of age died alone in a convent.

Although loving and supportive, Jane Austen’s elder brother Edward took advantage of the system through the practice of surrogate heirship and its device of name changing, aimed at keeping estates whole. Edward was adopted by a distant cousin, Thomas Knight, and gave up the name of Austen for Knight when he inherited. Biographer David Nokes suggested that Jane felt abandoned by her brother, although Jane’s only known comment was: “I must learn to make a better K.”

Yet the poison of primogeniture is paramount in Austen’s novels. In Pride and Prejudice the Bennet estate is entailed to the pompous Mr. Collins, clergyman cousin to Mr. Bennet who had no sons, leaving the silly Mrs. Bennet, who finds the subject of entail “beyond the reach of reason,” to scheme up husbands for her five daughters. Should she fail in the event of her husband’s death, mother and daughters would have no home or income. In Northanger Abbey, Austen portrays elder brother Frederick as corrupt and cruel, while in Mansfield Park elder Tom is everyone’s party boy. Austen questions the validity of primogeniture when she makes younger brother Edmund the good son, although the latter loses the young woman he loves because he isn’t rich enough and is destined to become a boring (to her) clergyman. Happily, in the long run, he discovers he’s better off without her.

The disparity of riches between elder and younger brothers was huge, often creating a wide rift between siblings. In a lecture on Shakespeare’s King Lear, Samuel Coleridge notes “the mournful alienation of brotherly love…in children of the same stock.” 19th century Anthony Trollope’s novels are full of younger sons pursuing heiresses, or simply seeking a comfortable bachelorhood without an expensive wife—whereas the elder son must marry in order to produce an heir—think Henry the Eighth!

But considering the fates of Henry’s wives, it was females who were the true victims. For most females there was little money or opportunity to find a suitable husband; some indigent ladies found a taboo against marrying beneath them and remained spinsters. But the main drawback, as Mary Wollstonecraft makes clear in her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, was failure to receive an equal education. A lack of proper schooling, she allowed, often contributed to a pampered indolence in females, and “a false regard for wealth and status over reason and true moral values.” In her own life, her mother indulged her first born son, neglecting Mary, though it was Mary, not Ned, who lay nights in front of her mother’s bedchamber to waylay the drunken husband.

No doubt Mary was, in part, vindicating the abuses of her own life in her rebuttal to conservative Edmund Burke who considered primogeniture an anchor of social order, but she had known the “demon of property…to encroach on the sacred rights” of legions of unhappy men and women.

“I glow,” she cried, “with indignation!”

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Nancy Means Wright’s latest novel is The Nightmare: a Mystery with Mary Wollstonecraft (Perseverance Press, September, '11). www.nancymeanswright.com

Reviews of obscure books: Silk and Stone, by Dinah Dean

2011-08-12T22:26:00.007-05:00

It's been well over a year since my last entry in the Reviews of Obscure Books series, so I figured it was about time for a new one. This is my copy of Dinah Dean's Silk and Stone, and when you find a book as obscure as this one is, you don't care that one of its past owners slapped an ugly bookplate on the front cover rather than on the flyleaf. Well, actually that's not true, but I'll deal with it.

Among others, Dean has written six mostly unconnected novels that take place in Waltham Abbey in Essex between the 11th and 19th centuries. Silk and Stone, the 2nd in this unofficial series, is set during the civil wars between King Stephen and Empress Matilda in the 1140s. But while the main characters all end up in the East of England, the novel begins on a pilgrimage far to the east and south.

Norman lady Mabilia de Wix, her 17-year-old daughter Elys, and their maid are in Rome, having traveled there in the company of Mabilia's haughty brother, Templar knight Sir Richard de Hastings. Elys's older brother Matthew has a wound in his foot that refuses to heal, and the women have made pilgrimages to holy places all over England and France in the hopes of curing him. All have failed, and they don't understand why. Novelist Diana Norman would have made a slyly irreverent remark about this over-the-top situation, and indeed I expected one, but here, the novel's gentle humor mingles with sadness. Unless Matthew lives, the family's noble line will die out.

If that's not bad enough, Elys hates the thought of going into a convent. Mabilia has plans to retire to the cloister, seeing it as the safest place during these traumatic times of constant war, and wants to see Elys settled there too. Elys's dowry has already been given to the nuns, so she has no hope for a decent marriage. Elys has other plans, though. An accomplished needlewoman, she thinks she has what it takes to be a professional broiderer.

The legendary tomb of King Harold II, which resides in Waltham
and is mentioned in the novel

Aylwin of Winchester, a master mason from a noble Saxon bloodline, sympathizes with Elys's predicament, and they become friends as he, his friend Sir Fulk, and her family wander back to England together. Her quest for independence gains ground in the town of Waltham Abbey; she impresses Father Warmand with her skill, and he hires her to design and sew an elaborate cope, or church vestment.

With her unorthodox choice of career, her refusal to become a nun, her mother's and uncle's disapproval, and Sir Fulk's unwillingness to marry her despite his obvious admiration, Elys has her hands full. Aylwin has feelings for her, but Elys is still blind to his attentions. Matthew's days are numbered, too; only a miracle can cure him. Fortunately, one may be at hand.

This isn't a good book on which to test the 50-page rule. Today's commercial fiction is obliged to grip the reader's attention immediately, but the initial few chapters of this one are slow. Imagine the pacing of a pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, and you'll get an idea of how slow. Things pick up as the plot begins to cohere, happily, and as Elys emerges as the novel's central figure.

Her plight is easy to understand — who would want to be forced into a nunnery? — but she belongs to her time rather than ours. Her romance with Aylwin develops realistically, with the shadow of the Norman Conquest, some seventy years earlier, still lingering in the background. She also doesn't realize how fortunate she is, not until later. Through the depiction of Elys's older sister Judith, who is now called Sister Helen, readers get to see the bitter result of a woman's regret-filled life.

The nave of Waltham Abbey

Dean presents a wonderfully detailed tapestry of the English medieval world, presenting the day-to-day occupations and concerns of nobility, craftspeople, and churchmen, although the weave isn't always as fine as it could be. In some scenes, she spoon-feeds information on England's political history; in others, she drops readers into a pile of medieval terminology and lets them sort out what's what. I liked the latter approach. The word "mystery" is used in the sense of "miracle," and to her credit, Dean explores her characters' religious mindsets without making them seem holier-than-thou. Instead, their faith feels like a natural part of their existence, which it was.

In her author's note, placed at the very beginning, Dean writes that many of her characters once lived, and that much of her plot is historically based rather than fictional. Lady Mabilia, Sir Richard, Matthew, and several of the townspeople are among the real ones, all mentioned in a chronicle written forty years later.

Dinah Dean's Silk and Stone was published by Barrie & Jenkins, London, in hardcover in 1990 (382pp). The RomanceWiki page has a complete bibliography of her work. Should you be interested in a copy of this one, there are a couple of reasonably-priced ones on Amazon UK. For now.

Book review: The Last Time I Saw Paris, by Lynn Sheene

2011-08-09T19:00:00.005-05:00

Lynn Sheene takes risks with her heroine, Claire Harris Stone, by making her a gold-digging Manhattan socialite. In May 1940, with the world on the brink of war, she shamelessly flirts with her husband's German clients to soften them up for business deals. Over the course of her debut novel The Last Time I Saw Paris, Sheene successfully transforms Claire into a woman who's much more selfless and sympathetic, but just as courageous and hard-edged - thanks to the considerable risks Claire takes for herself.

When her husband discovers she's not the blue-blood she claimed to be, Claire flees New York for Paris, the promised City of Light, hoping to connect up with a former lover. Germany has just invaded Poland, but Claire is still taken aback when the Nazis move in to occupy the city. (Her naïveté defies belief at times, especially given her street-smarts in other respects.) She takes refuge with an aristocratic florist, Madame Palain, who employs her under the table. Claire agrees to help the Resistance only because they can provide the fake identity papers she needs.

Madame Palain knows the importance of beauty during hard times and vows to keep her shop open. The floral deliveries Claire makes to Nazi gatherings at swanky hotels gives her the chance to gain intelligence for her contacts, who include an Englishman named Thomas Grey - a friend of her old lover. As she and Grey walk through the Luxembourg Gardens together, exchanging information, their opinions toward one another gradually shift until she comes to care for him and his safety more than she does for herself. Then her cover is blown, for a second time.

The novel offers up a vivid yet stark vision of a cultured European city at one of its darkest hours. Danger is ever-present; people are detained, carted away, and shot for the slimmest of "offenses," and fear and desperation become a tragic part of life. But despite the unease that grips northern France, the indomitable spirit of Paris endures and is described in terms that suit its nature. One park is "a stately woman, her well-bred bones showing through the ravages of the season." The plot grows increasingly suspenseful as the months and years pass under the Occupation, and as Claire is exposed to greater peril.

The ending raises more questions than it answers, but The Last Time I Saw Paris is well worth reading for its page-turning storyline, edgy atmosphere, and progressive insight into the character of a determined woman with a strong instinct for survival.

The Last Time I Saw Paris appeared in May from Berkley at $15/$17.50 in Canada (trade paperback, 354pp).

Book review: Before Ever After, by Samantha Sotto

2011-08-06T22:15:00.000-05:00

Get ready for the unexpected when you pick up this offbeat, incredibly enjoyable novel, which will transport you on a memorable journey through Europe old and new.

American expat Shelley Gallus had put her life on hold after her husband, Max, was killed in a Madrid train bombing three years earlier. When a man who is his spitting image rings her doorbell in London, claiming to be Max’s grandson, Paolo, Shelley refuses to believe this time-bending impossibility. That is, until the similarities between Max and Paolo’s beloved and seemingly ageless "Nonno" become too profound to ignore.

She and Paolo board a plane for the Philippines, where he believes Max has resurfaced. Shelley’s reminiscences about how she and Max first met form the heart of the novel, and although its structure jumps around a lot, the story is easy to follow. Max had been her guide on a laid-back package tour through the back roads of Europe that Shelley joined on impulse.

As the tour group’s VW van rumbles along from the steps of Montmartre to Switzerland’s Emmental Valley, and from the red-roofed skyline of Slovenia's capital to the shadow of Mt. Vesuvius, Max recounts folkloric vignettes from history, each one set further back in time. Each is a perfect little slice of the past featuring ordinary people, their difficult times, and how they fought to save their loved ones.

Back on the plane with Paolo, Shelley realizes that perhaps Max’s stories were more than that. Perhaps they were his way of telling the truth about himself.

Sotto’s deceptively slim debut is as rich and satisfying as one of Max's famous baked egg and cheese breakfasts, minus the calories and cholesterol. Its tone moves from zany to thoughtful to painfully sad and back again, all the while evoking the lengths people travel for love.

Before Ever After was published by Crown in August at $23.00/$25.95 in Canada (hardcover, 294pp). Stop on over to the author's website for back story, her blog, a virtual tour of the places in the book, and pics of the cutest little VW van. This review was first published in August's Historical Novels Review.

An interview with Sonia Gensler, author of The Revenant

2011-08-03T20:20:00.005-05:00

You'll find Sonia Gensler's The Revenant shelved in the Teen Paranormal Romance section at your local bookstore. However, it has far more in common with creepy supernatural mysteries like Patricia Clapp's Jane-Emily and Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger than it does with Twilight and its ilk.

The year is 1896, and 17-year old Willemina Hammond is desperate. To escape a home situation she detests, she boards a train from Tennessee to Indian Territory and steals the identity of one of her former classmates. But Willie's assumed role as an English teacher at the Cherokee Female Seminary in Tahlequah, Oklahoma is nothing like she expects.

Willie struggles to gain authority over her cliquish pupils, who are the same age as she is, and whose upper-class background gives them a sophistication she herself doesn't have. Then Willie learns that her bedroom used to belong to a former student who drowned in the river last year. What's causing the tapping on her window after dark — is it poor Ella's ghost, and if so, what does Ella want to tell her? What ever happened to the boy rumored to be Ella's lover? And can a romance between Willie and Eli Sevenstar, a handsome older student at the male seminary across town, ever work out?

The Cherokee Female Seminary was a real place, an institution of higher learning for wealthy Cherokee girls and lower-class scholarship students. Its building — a three-story, turreted structure that resembles a castle — is now part of the Northeastern State University campus. I loved walking through the rooms of the seminary along with Willie, noting the fully stocked library and gleaming wood tables and chairs. Willie's awkward experiences in front of a classroom ring true, the depiction of late 19th-century Cherokee life is seen from an intriguing new perspective, and the ghost story is eerie and unpredictable. The Revenant is an engrossing read which should appeal equally well to adults and YAs.

I hope you'll enjoy the following interview!

I wasn't familiar with the term "revenant" before picking up your book. What's the difference between a revenant and a regular ghost, if there is such a thing?

I don’t think there really is a difference. Revenant, with its French origins, seemed a more old-fashioned and romantic word to me than ghost, and over the course of the story I was able to give a double meaning to its definition of “one who returns.” I think the term can include creatures such as vampires or zombies, but obviously I didn’t go in that direction for this story!

How do you get into the right mood for writing scary scenes, like the ones in which Willie hears mysterious tapping at her window very late at night?

No one has asked this question before! Actually, it’s sort of the same as when I write romantic scenes. I rarely try to “set the mood” – I don’t have to be scared in order to write a scary scene. At times I try to remember moments when I was scared, but I have to be thinking pretty calmly and objectively in order to write about those moments. When the scene is stubbornly refusing to flow, I might review scary scenes from favorite ghostly novels for inspiration.

Now that I see how mundane my answer is, I’m tempted to light candles and play spooky music next time I have to write a scary scene, just to see how that affects the process!

The former Cherokee Female Seminary, now Seminary Hall,
Northeastern State University

I found your depiction of the Cherokee students and their families fascinating and enlightening, because it's a chapter of their history - and a segment of the population - you don't often read about. What sort of research did you do to ensure that the Cherokee characters were portrayed correctly?

For my research I visited the Oklahoma Historical Society and the Northeastern State University Archives. I also had the benefit of reading Devon Mihesuah’s Cultivating the Rosebuds: The Education of Women at the Cherokee Female Seminary, 1851-1909 as well a collection of oral histories entitled Cherokee Female Seminary Years, edited by Maggie Culver Fry. These books, along with the photographs, school catalogs, architectural plans, etc. obtained through the archives, gave me a pretty clear background on the history of the town, seminaries, and people. Once I had a draft, I arranged for an introduction to Dr. Richard Allen, former English teacher and current policy analyst for the Cherokee Nation. He kindly agreed to read the manuscript for me and offered valuable insights on historical context and characterization.

What sorts of things did you discover while doing on-site exploration of the old seminary building that you wouldn't have known about otherwise?

I think it was during a tour that I learned what parts of the building were off-limits to male seminary students. When invited to the school, boys were allowed access to the first floor, but could only step as far as the first landing on the staircase to the second floor. They were NOT to go to near the girls’ bedrooms. This wasn’t surprising information by any means, but it did get me thinking about certain plot points . . .

I know it may not be fair to ask a teacher to choose a favorite student, but were there any of the girls (or boys) whose backstory or character you enjoyed developing the most?

Fannie and Larkin Bell weren’t necessarily my favorite characters, but I did enjoy fleshing them out as the “mean girl” and her rakish older brother. It was especially fun to imagine their home for the Christmas party scenes – the house was loosely based on Rose Cottage in Park Hill, the home of Chief John Ross. Fannie is a royal pain, but I tried to show her strengths as well as flaws. I like to imagine that her frightening experiences at the seminary tempered her vanity and snobbery.

Author Sonia Gensler

Willie's enthusiasm for Shakespeare's plays comes through clearly to her students at the Cherokee Female Seminary. Back when you were a teacher, did you have any favorite Shakespeare plays to read and act out with your classes?

I required my English II students to act out the assassination scene from Julius Caesar every year. They usually had a great time with that. It was a complicated and often maddening effort to throw costumes and props together and, after much rehearsing, film the scene. The experience certainly made for a great discussion when the students compared their version to the same scene in the 1970 film adaptation of the play, which portrays the assassination very . . . vividly.

Were there any fascinating tidbits you picked up during the writing process that you wanted to use in The Revenant but were unable to?

During the research process I went on one of the Haunted Seminary Hall tours, which are offered every October by Northeastern State University graduate students. At one point the guide took us to the second floor and, after pushing aside a tile from the drop ceiling, showed us what certainly looked like footprints on the original plaster ceiling. It was quite eerie, and no one had an explanation for it. I wish I could have worked that into the story somehow, but the proper way to include it never came to me.

Although Willie's only seventeen, the role she assumes puts her in an unusual position - she's expected to associate with other adults rather than students of her own age. For this and other reasons, I could easily see your book appealing to both YAs and adults. Did you deliberately set out to write a novel for the YA market, or didn't you have an age group in mind?

I did set out to write The Revenant as a YA book, but with the knowledge that YA has considerable crossover appeal to the adult market these days. The teen years are inherently full of drama and conflict, and I feel that most adults still have vivid memories of that time in their lives. I also liked the idea of my protagonist putting on a performance, and in this case, she was pretending to be an adult – a common fantasy for teens.

Thank you, Sonia!

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The Revenant was published in June by Knopf in hardback ($16.99/$18.99 Canadian, 322pp). Visit Sonia's website at www.soniagensler.com for biographical information plus more historical background on the novel.

Book review: The Mermaid Garden, by Santa Montefiore

2011-08-01T20:30:00.010-05:00

Santa Montefiore’s novels combine gorgeously rendered settings, touching romance, and characters facing real world issues such as societal pressures and generational conflicts. Although one of its plotlines is set in the present day (2009) and the other forty years earlier, The Mermaid Garden doesn’t have the hallmarks of a historical novel and shouldn’t be judged as one. Other than an absence of technology, an emphasis on class differences, and the mention of a Bob Dylan song, there isn’t much to indicate a timeframe in the earlier storyline. It’s a strong sense of place rather than time that predominates, along with the impressions that the past never really goes away — and that second chances are there for the taking, for those courageous enough to grab them.

Floriana Farussi is a ten-year-old girl living in poverty in the village of Herba in Tuscany in the summer of 1966. When Dante Bonfanti, the teenage son of a wealthy businessman, catches her spying through the gate of his family’s 15th-century palazzo, he brings her through the main entrance and gives her a tour. With an alcoholic father and an absent mother, Floriana fits in well with the stray animals that populate the grounds, and she charms Dante and his family just as easily. The mermaid garden at La Magdalena becomes her sanctuary. Six years later, Floriana grows into a beautiful young woman, and she and Dante fall in love. Optimistic and innocent, Floriana believes their relationship stands a chance.

In the summer of 2009, Marina Turner runs an Italianate-style hotel in Devon, England, with her beloved husband, Grey. She has poured her heart into restoring it and will do anything to keep it afloat despite being in debt up to her ears. In the hopes of attracting new business, she advertises for an artist-in-residence who will teach her mostly elderly clientele how to paint. Argentine painter Rafa Santoro is the perfect choice; not only is he talented, handsome, and clever, but he seems to be exerting a calming influence on Marina’s grumpy stepdaughter, Clementine – and maybe more than that, too. Rafa is reticent about his past, though, and there’s a hotel burglar on the loose in the area…

Romantic and uplifting without being sappy, the novel lilts smoothly between locales and decades. While the tie between the two plotlines isn’t hard to predict, the twist at the end comes as a surprise. Because it’s classic summer escapism, it can be described as a beach read, but the characters are more complex than you’d expect from that. There’s humor, too, in a subplot involving Clementine’s stuffy boss and the risqué hanky-panky he gets into with his mistress. This is a book to bring outside to read in your own exotic garden, but if you don’t have one, settle back and let Montefiore’s novel conjure up its lush, tranquil atmosphere for you.

The Mermaid Garden was published in June by Touchstone/Simon and Schuster at $24.99 (419pp, hardcover). The British edition, called The House by the Sea, was published by Simon & Schuster UK in July at £12.99.

Winners of Moon in Leo

2011-08-01T19:54:00.000-05:00

A quick note to announce the winners of the Moon in Leo ebook - congratulations to Melissa and Sarah, the other librarian!

I'll be in touch via email with download instructions. Hope you enjoy the read, and thanks to everyone who entered.

An interview with Stewart Binns, author of Conquest

2011-07-26T00:00:00.000-05:00

Today Stewart Binns is visiting the blog to respond to some questions about his new novel Conquest, fast-paced adventure fiction about Hereward of Bourne – or Hereward the Wake, as he's better known. A legendary English hero whose existence is historically documented, Hereward led the resistance to the Normans' conquest of England in the landmark year of 1066. The principal story of Conquest, however, begins thirteen years beforehand. A strong and impetuous young man of eighteen, Hereward is a brilliant fighter who still has much to learn about the ways of the world.

Conquest was the first major novel about Hereward the Wake to appear in quite a while, and there have been several other authors writing about the tumultuous events of 11th-century England just within the last year, too. What attracted you to this time period, and why do you think readers are so interested in it now in particular?

I’ve always been fascinated by 11th century England and 1066 in particular. I think Senlac Ridge was the critical defining moment in English/British history where the outcome determined the kind of country England became and all that led from it: Britishness, Anglo-American (western) culture etc. It was a great battle in every sense: its consequences, its intensity, its protagonists and the fact that the margin between defeat and victory was so close. Hardrada and Stamford Bridge are part of this as well, and I’ve always been intrigued by the mix of Celt, Norse, Norman and Anglo-Saxon at the time and how different England and the modern world would have been if either Harald, or Harold had emerged victorious instead of William.

Hereward is an enigmatic figure with wonderful William Wallace-like hero potential, and I thought he was the perfect character to build both an heroic adventure around and to tell the story of those amazing times.

I think there is growing interest in English history at the moment as the English try to define themselves afresh in a newly-devolved Britain. Now that the Scots, Welsh and Irish are off doing their own thing, ‘Britain’ no longer exists in the way the English defined it, as, effectively, ‘Greater England’. The English tended to define ‘English’ as ‘British’ and that doesn’t work anymore, leaving the English in search of themselves and their past.

The novel is framed around Godwin of Ely's account of his earlier life in England. What made you decide to write the core of the novel in third person rather than first?

I suppose I wanted there to be a circle from The Old Man of the Wildwood and Godwin of Ely and for Hereward to survive into great old age. The Varangian Guard/Byzantium/John the Beautiful were irresistible as well. However, my biggest challenge was how the deal with William would work at the end of the Siege of Ely. Thus, the anonymity clause and the creation of Godwin. There are also factors at play that make book 2 work! (To be published next April).

In working through the material on Hereward's life, how did you decide which elements to take from the myths about him, and which from history?

I only took the bits that seem fairly substantial – the banishment and Ely, the rest is fiction. However, although the book is of course fiction, all the history is spot on in terms of main characters, events and chronology. That is really important to me.

Hereward's wife Torfida (or Torfrida) was a character in Charles Kingsley's 1865 novel about him, but was there any mention of her in other novels, or in history, before he wrote about her? How did you develop her character?

I slightly changed her name (by accident rather than design!) but she is mentioned in the 12th century Gesta. I wanted a strong female character, slightly mysterious and somewhat tragic. It is also mentioned that they had twins.

During his time as a mercenary, Hereward and his company travel throughout many parts of Britain and Europe - Ireland, Scotland, Scandinavia, Sicily, the Alps, France, and elsewhere. Did you get the chance to visit any of these sites yourself?

I have a policy only to write about places I’ve been to and can visualise. I’m lucky, I’ve travelled a lot!

The novel's action scenes certainly feel very realistic! What was your most enjoyable battle scene to write?

I’m told I write battles well. Two reasons I think: My day job is as a documentary-maker, so I suppose I think in pictures. Also, as an ex-soldier, I know how they think.

Most enjoyable battle scene to write - Senlac Ridge of course – one of the most important battles in world history. I really enjoyed trying to explain how it might have happened, especially the astonishing bravery on both sides. I’m also quite fond of Ely. There is no known detail of what happened there, so an author’s paradise!

What do you hope readers get out of reading Hereward's story?

Superficially, a good action/adventure romp through a great period of history and beneath that some thoughts about good and evil, right and wrong, truth and myth; some questions about courage and sacrifice and beneath those a little thesis about the making of England.

Conquest was published in February by Penguin UK at £6.99 (pb, 497pp).

Book review: A Lesson in Secrets, by Jacqueline Winspear

2011-07-22T14:24:00.001-05:00

Jacqueline Winspear’s eighth Maisie Dobbs mystery demonstrates the truth spoken by one of her characters: “One always has riches when one has a book to read.” This is my first outing with Maisie, who by 1932 is a successful private detective in London. Feeling that I ought to get up to speed with this award-winning series, I requested a copy of A Lesson in Secrets to review. Reading novels out of order doesn’t bother me; if an author does her job well, the order shouldn’t matter, plus starting with a later volume gets me interested in reading about the characters’ past histories, too.

Maisie’s outward sophistication belies her humble origins as a domestic servant to the aristocratic Comptons – a family whose son James is now Maisie’s beau. In the years following World War I, the social fabric of Britain has unraveled and re-formed. The political climate is likewise shifting, not necessarily for the better. At the request of the British Secret Service and Scotland Yard, Maisie takes a post as a junior lecturer in philosophy at a small Cambridge college that has been enrolling an unusual number of students from abroad. Her task is to keep her ear to the ground for any activities “not in the interests of the Crown.”

Greville Liddicote, the founder of St. Francis, has pacifist leanings, and his institution’s curriculum is grounded in his principles. A controversial children’s book he wrote during World War I turned many would-be soldiers into “Conchies” – conscientious objectors – and reportedly caused a mutiny on the front lines. (If this event ever occurred, that is. The British government has kept the truth under wraps.) When Liddicote is found murdered in his office, Maisie is asked to stick to her own investigation and let Special Branch do its job, but everything is closely entangled, of course. The more Maisie learns about her fellow instructors and their connections, the closer she comes to unveiling a murderer.

The plot of A Lesson in Secrets is not so much suspenseful as intellectually provocative. Although she is new on the faculty, Maisie’s natural ease with her peers and students gets them talking, and her inquiry is neatly worked into the history of the period. The Nazi party on the rise in Germany is attracting followers throughout Britain and Europe. Few besides Maisie are attuned to the threat it may pose.

For a newcomer to the series like me, Maisie seems a little too perfect at first: she can quickly discern a cause of death, conduct a well-received philosophy lecture with little preparation, and is remarkably aware of her surroundings. For her, success lies not just in what you know, but in who you know. Over time, she has accumulated enough contacts who provide her with the information she seeks – even if it sometimes leads her up the wrong path.

Maisie is too wary of "happily ever after" endings for her romance with James to be smooth sailing, however, and episodes in her personal life still manage to surprise her. The mix makes her an intriguing character, and I'm now curious about her transformation from servant to wartime nurse to PI. Her back story is well developed here, and the secondary characters are equally well crafted. Even her late mentor Maurice Blanche, who had left her enough funds in his will to make her financially independent, lives on the page as a close memory. I look forward to meeting him in person in Winspear’s earlier books.

A Lesson in Secrets was published in April by Harper ($25.99, 323pp, hardcover).

A look at Kathleen Herbert's Moon in Leo, plus a giveaway

2011-07-16T10:00:00.012-05:00

First, a disclosure: a quote of mine, based on my reading of Kathleen Herbert’s Dark Ages trilogy from the mid-'80s, is printed on the back cover and first page of Moon in Leo. Not surprisingly, the words I’d written earlier proved to be true about this book as well:

"I’ve always loved Kathleen Herbert’s work. Written with sensitivity, passion, and an extraordinarily vivid sense of place, her novels reflect the realities of life in a bygone age while still evoking all of its magic."

Moon in Leo takes place on the Furness peninsula in south Cumbria, England, a remote land of sparkling estuaries, rocky woodlands, and wide skies that glow pink and lavender in the setting sun. (See the cover at left.) The novel is saturated with atmosphere to the extent that the setting becomes almost a character in itself. In this beautiful yet perilous place, wayfarers who manage to pull themselves free of Morecambe Bay’s treacherous sands can find sanctuary on Chapel Island – the spot where Moon in Leo begins and ends.

Rosamund Halistan comes from a family of alchemists who have always kept to themselves, which means that she has been more sheltered from the world than other young women of her age. In 1678, her twin brother Stephen returns home from a long stay abroad. Although Rosamund had hoped to become his lifelong partner in the mystical arts, Stephen’s interests no longer lie in that direction; he had fallen in love with the exuberant Italian culture and, more dangerously, the religion of its people. Rosamund finds evidence that someone’s out to kill him, and she’s right.

Even eighteen years after Charles II’s restoration, memories of the Civil War remain at the forefront of everyone’s minds. To help keep the peace in a company of mixed faiths and political allegiances, Rosamund and Stephen agree to attend a house party organized by Sir John Westby, a former Royalist, and his wife, Prudence, a former Parliamentarian. Dark undercurrents of schemes and deception flow through the conversations, and though Rosamund doesn’t catch all of the nuances, she finds herself caught in the thick of the action. When tragedy forces her to confront the layers of corruption in the highest circles of the realm, she determines to preserve what means most to her: her family.

Two suitors vie for her hand, one a fellow seeker of alchemical truths, the other a gentleman of the royal bedchamber. As an heiress, she’s a hot commodity, and whether they have their eye on her person or her fortune (or both) is unclear. Rosamund is a true ingénue trapped in a world swirling with intrigue, and while she struggles to find a foothold, her naïveté means that the reader doesn’t know whom to trust either. Reality versus illusion is one of the novel’s most prominent themes, and over its course, the multifaceted characters are seen from numerous angles.

This lengthy book is set against the backdrop of the Popish Plot, a fictional conspiracy drummed up by Titus Oates in an effort to incite violence against England’s Catholics and prevent them from holding power. The historical background is solid, and the storyline feels intensely romantic, at least until one looks beneath the surface. While declarations of affection abound, amid pet names of “dear” and “darling” and “oh my love,” women in this sparsely populated countryside must rely on male protectors, and few women in this book choose wisely – if they’re permitted to choose at all. Herbert’s lush style can make it feel as if one was reading a classic written many years ago rather than a modern work. As a result, the many songs and bawdy rhymes inserted into the text feel even more authentic to the storyline she creates.

Ghostly visitations, sigils charged with magic, and hermetic spells play such a strong role that I sometimes felt as if I’d stepped into a Dion Fortune novel. Although most of the characters don't believe in such things, these occult happenings definitely feel real to Rosamund, influencing her actions beyond what feels natural. The multiplicity of religious beliefs in this deep, involving read make her world feel genuine, as do the well-crafted depictions of ordinary people – nobles, scholars, courtiers, and gypsies – caught in the tide of history.

Moon in Leo was published by Trifolium Books earlier this year (£11.99, trade pb, 401pp).

Contest info: I'm holding a giveaway for two electronic copies of Moon in Leo; the winners will be given directions by which they can download a copy at no charge from Smashwords. To enter, please leave a comment on this post. Deadline July 29th.

A spotlight on Jude Morgan's next novel

2011-07-14T18:40:00.004-05:00

Longtime blog readers may remember my high praise for Jude Morgan's The Taste of Sorrow, a masterful work about the Brontës. One of the things I enjoy most about his biographical novels is how carefully he matches his approach and his subjects; his books are all excellent, yet each is stylistically different from the others. He writes about artistic types, musicians and writers and such, and his books show deep insight into the creative process.

While glancing at my recent purchase of his subsequent novel, A Little Folly - he's been alternating biographical treatments with more lighthearted Regency fare - it occurred to me that it would be time for something new from him very soon.

So I checked Amazon UK, et voilà. The Secret Life of William Shakespeare will be out from Headline Review on March 1st next year, and here's the plot description, from the publisher:

The greatest writer of them all, brought to glorious life.

How well do you know the man you love? How much do you think you know about Shakespeare? What if they were one and the same? He is an ordinary man: unwilling craftsman, ambitious actor, resentful son, almost good-enough husband. And he is also a genius. The story of how a glove-maker from Warwickshire became the greatest writer of them all is vaguely known to most of us, but it would take an exceptional modern novelist to bring him to life. And now at last Jude Morgan, acclaimed author of Passion and The Taste of Sorrow, has taken Shakespeare's life, and created a masterpiece.

The title is gimmicky, but it's what's inside that matters. Did I preorder it? You bet.

A visual preview of UK historical novels for late summer and autumn

2011-07-10T13:00:00.010-05:00

With historical settings ranging from ancient Greece to Tudor England to 17th-century France to 19th-century India, here are some personal picks of historical novels set to be published in the UK over the next four months.

A.L. Berridge's In the Name of the King is swashbucking adventure set in France during the Thirty Years' War, a most uncommon setting. In 1640, the Chevalier de Roland tangles with a cruel nobleman to save a young woman's honor and finds himself enmeshed in a political conspiracy. 2nd in series after Honour and the Sword. Penguin, August 4th.

The forbidden romance between an Indian prince and an Englishwoman heats up colonial Lucknow, India, even as the couple battles society's prejudices and violence erupts all around them. A debut novel for Sangeeta Bhargava. Allison & Busby, July 25th.

Fiona Buckley's historical mystery heroine, Elizabethan lady-in-waiting Ursula Blanchard, re-emerges in this 9th entry in the series, which focuses on a covert plot to replace the queen with her Scots cousin. Doesn't the lady on the cover look like a 16th-century version of Adele? Creme de la Crime (now a Severn House imprint), Sept 29th.

Dickason has made a literary home for herself in 17th-century England. The little-known story of Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford, a daring noblewoman who becomes a peace-weaver between James I and his daughter, Elizabeth of Bohemia, after Elizabeth and her husband lose their throne. Harper, November 24th.

Ewing is a versatile novelist, having mastered a variety of settings from Victorian and modern London to the colonial world of her native New Zealand. I believe this is her first American outing. Circus of Ghosts takes place in a circus in late 1840s New York and focuses on a mysterious woman adept at the dark art of mesmerism. Sequel to The Mesmerist. Sphere, July 28th.

Historical adventure in 13th-century Asia, as a Knight Templar travels from Palestine to the Mongol city of Xanadu to form an alliance against the Saracens - and encounters a Tartar warrior princess that complicates his plans. Why aren't more of Colin Falconer's novels published in the US? Atlantic, October 1.

A multi-period family saga set in Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1917 and ninety years later. I found Hislop's The Island a smoothly written, satisfying, and uplifting tale about a traumatic historical period, so I expect the same to be true here. Headline Review, October 27.

This one will be a must-purchase based on my experience reading McMahon's fabulous The Crimson Rooms. Season of Light, a love story set in pre-Revolutionary Paris, centers on a young Englishwoman, Asa Ardleigh, who falls in love with a dashing intellectual at the salon of Madame de Genlis. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, November 1.

This debut novel from Madeline Miller, an American classical historian, retells the story of the Trojan War from the viewpoint of Patroclus, good friend and more to the heroic Achilles, bringing to life elements of the tale that Homer only hinted at. Love, battles, and the hidden schemings of the gods. Bloomsbury, September 6th; also Ecco/HarperCollins US, next March.

Among all of the queens of England, Henrietta Maria is one of the few whose story has rarely been told in fiction. Described as an "English Gone with the Wind" by the publisher, Fiona Mountain's Cavalier Queen tells the story of a woman torn between the king who loves her and the man, Henry Jermyn, who wins her favor and supports her through years of exile and danger. Preface, October 25th.

Lucinda Riley's followup to her epic saga Hothouse Flower deals with two families and their tangled history in London and in Ireland during WWI. Penguin, October 13th.

A young woman in modern Wales traces her grandparents' lives in WWII-era Kashmir when she discovers an antique shawl in her father's house, and a lock of hair in an envelope tucked within it. The review at The Bookbag intrigues me. What a colorful and eye-catching cover, though almost too much is going on with it. HarperCollins, July 21st.

In this novel of the gem trade in Tudor-era Europe, Henry VIII is a vigorous man of 36 who has just fallen in love with Anne Boleyn. The main character of Will Whitaker's The King's Diamond, though, is jewel merchant Richard Dansey, whose determination to seize control of the family business leads him into danger. HarperPress, July 21st.

Guest post from Eileen Clymer Schwab: Shining a Light on Dark Times

2011-07-05T08:00:00.002-05:00

I'd like to welcome Eileen Clymer Schwab to the blog today. In the following post, she discusses what inspires her to write about a tumultuous time in history - slavery in pre-Civil War America - and what she learned while researching the Underground Railroad. Thanks, Eileen, for a thought-provoking post, which pinpoints the reasons I enjoy novels set during this period, too (and why I wish there were more of them). If this isn't enough to get readers interested, Shadow of a Quarter Moon has an awesome cover. I'll be writing a review of it here in the coming weeks.

Shining a Light on Dark Times

One of the questions I often hear from readers is, “Do you find it difficult to write novels that are set in such a brutal period of American history?”

Let me confide to you that I am a “happily ever after” kind of gal. So the fact that I’ve written two novels against the backdrop of slavery in the 1800s may seem like a highly unusual choice. After all, what good can be gained by stirring old ghosts? For this reason, there is not a lot of adult fiction written about this period. I suspect this is because it is not a time our nation is proud of or wishes to reminisce over. Instead we hide it from sight like an ugly scar. Readers and writers alike often avoid revisiting these pre-Civil War years because of the horror and shame it stirs in our moral conscience.

As an author, I am inspired by the strength and courage of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances; how friends, family, and inner conviction can change the course of our lives. Endless stories of inspiration, danger, upheaval, and bold beginnings are waiting to be unearthed from the ashes. In keeping the door closed on this period, we miss the chance to celebrate and marvel at the incredible acts of courage and daring deeds that were the genesis of social change in our country. The secret network known as the Underground Railroad is the perfect example of the best of America in the worst of America, and it serves as a vehicle of transformation for the main character in my latest novel.

In Shadow of a Quarter Moon, an unimaginable secret changes the course of Jacy Lane’s life; not once, but twice. First, when it is hidden from her, and then when it is revealed. As the daughter of a plantation owner, Jacy has been raised in privilege until she discovers that she is the offspring of a dalliance between her father and a slave. Amid the shock and complexities of her mixed heritage, Jacy is simply a woman longing for love, happiness, and a sense of wholeness; however the 1800s are not a simple time, and Jacy begins a treacherous journey of denial and self-discovery that is fraught with danger and life-altering choices. She soon discovers that what she chases is as elusive as the secret network she hopes can save them.

Writing a novel against this turbulent backdrop required a great deal of research. Often it was heart-wrenching, and at other times, awe-inspiring. For me, research is a process of discovery – not just of historical facts, but of tendencies, beliefs, and nuances of the time. Through this process I become better acquainted with my characters and the world around them. I wanted to touch and see as much as I could, beginning at the library, as well as visiting places like the Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati and other historic sites found within our National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. So often the surprises discovered in research shift plotlines or shape characters in unexpected ways. For example, while doing some research in North Carolina, I came across Dismal Swamp. As a writer, I could not overlook a name so vivid and descriptive, and I knew it would be mentioned in my story. At the time, I had no idea that the bleak sounding region was so rich and storied in Underground Railroad history, or that it would play such a significant role in my novel.

Shadow of a Quarter Moon and my first novel, Promise Bridge, shine light on both the villainous and heroic activity of that dark time. It was an honor to look back and give voice to a generation deserving of acknowledgment, tribute, and literary life, as with any other period in our history. Remembering and discussing their trials and triumphs can be one way of paying respect to their role in our social evolution. My hope is that the spirit of the Underground Railroad will never be forgotten.

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Visit Eileen Clymer Schwab at her website, blog, on Facebook, and on Twitter. Shadow of a Quarter Moon is published today, July 5th, by NAL at $15.00 (trade paperback, 400pp). (Photo credit: Portrait Innovations)

Book review: Death at Pullman, by Frances McNamara

2011-06-29T21:21:00.002-05:00

Frances McNamara’s follow-up to Death at Hull House sees her enterprising young protagonist, former university student Emily Cabot, involved in tracking down another killer in late 19th-century Chicagoland. Emily is more of an interested observer than a classic amateur detective, which lets the story unfold more realistically than many other mysteries of this type. The plot is based around a historical incident whose authenticity remains intact.

In 1894, employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company, creator of sleeper cars for luxurious passenger travel by rail, have gone on strike. With demand for their products slowing down, wages have been cut, but rents in the company town of Pullman, Illinois, have held steady – forcing the workers into abject poverty. Emily and her mentor from Hull House, Jane Addams, arrive in Pullman to help bring about a solution to the crisis, which Emily thinks won’t take long to achieve. Unfortunately, she’s wrong. Soon after the women arrive, a young worker of Irish descent is found hanged, and a sign at the murder scene accuses him of being a spy for the company.

Tensions heat up. The American Railway Union muscles its way in on the workers’ side, wealthy George Pullman refuses to budge, and travel is brought to a standstill. While her friend Dr. Stephen Chapman takes care of the medical needs of the employees and their families, Emily has her hands full running a food supply station, growing more sympathetic to their plight every day. The model town of Pullman has proved to be anything but.

The combination of labor unrest, rivalries among local families, and past romantic intrigues is a combustible mix, an edgy scenario that is laid out convincingly, just eight years after Chicago’s deadly Haymarket affair. As Emily transforms from idealistic outsider to central player in the escalating conflict, she grows in confidence, proceeding with resoluteness of purpose while remaining aware of the tragic missteps on both sides. By this third book in the series, Emily has come into her own. Death at Pullman is a suspenseful re-creation of a critical moment in American social history, as seen from the viewpoint of a strong-willed, engaging fictional heroine.

Death at Pullman was published by Allium Press of Chicago, a small press focusing on titles of historical Chicago interest, in March at $14.99 (trade pb, 250pp).

Bride Flight giveaway winners

2011-06-22T08:52:00.000-05:00

I feel I should be writing more about the Historical Novel Society conference, which was wonderful - thanks so much to all of the speakers, editors & agents, volunteers, and all of the attendees for participating. I returned late Monday night after a very long flight (and having to repack my bag in the middle of the San Diego airport because it went over the weight limit - too many books!). Since I'm still completely exhausted, and have a deadline for August's Historical Novels Review and some new responsibilities at work to take care of asap, I'm going to post more about the conference at a later time, I hope.

In the meantime, I wanted to announce the three winners of the Bride Flight giveaway contest. Copies of the book as well as sets of movie passes will be going out to: Linda B, Elizabeth D, and Noreen F. I'll be in touch via email with details, and congratulations!

En route to San Diego

2011-06-15T12:22:00.000-05:00

I'm on my way to San Diego (literally - I'm writing this during an unexpectedly long layover at O'Hare) for the 4th North American Historical Novel Society conference. A group of us have been planning this event for the last two years, and I'm really looking forward to it!

The trip started off appropriately, as I got to talking with another traveler while waiting in Champaign - she was reading Sarah Blake's The Postmistress so I mentioned where I was heading... and recommended the author's earlier novel Grange House. She told me she'd look out for it.

I'll try to post some pics here from the conference, and I'll also be tweeting from the event as time permits. For those who'd like to follow along with the conference virtually, look for the #HNS11 hashtag.

Today's plans - after our plane shows up and we finally get out of here - are to get to the hotel, hang around a bit, and commence to stuffing the goody bags!

A Unique Giveaway: Book & Movie Passes for "Bride Flight"

2011-06-09T21:35:00.008-05:00

Hello blog readers -- today I have a unique giveaway to offer you. As you know, I haven't been doing many contests, but this one caught my attention because the book and film appeal to me personally. Literature in translation + historical setting + a story about women on an international journey... who can beat that?

"Bride Flight" is a brand new historical film that's based on Marieke van der Pol's recent novel of the same name. It opens in US cities starting on Friday, June 10th, then expands across the country through July. I'll be looking to see if it comes to Champaign-Urbana.

Music Box Films, a major distributor of non-English language feature films in the United States, is sponsoring a giveaway of three copies of Marieke van der Pol's novel Bride Flight. As a bonus, a pair of movie passes will be provided to the three winners, for a Mon-Thurs screening at a participating theater in their area. (Winners would provide the theater name if this is of interest... see the film's website and click on Screenings at the top to see participating theaters and dates.)

More about the film:

* * * IN THEATERS BEGINNING FRIDAY, JUNE 10TH * * *

“BRIDE FLIGHT”

Only love and regret last forever

“Fascinating, beautifully acted and magnificently photographed.” -- Rex Reed, NY Observer

BRIDE FLIGHT is a lavish romantic drama inspired by the true story of the 1953 KLM flight that won the “Last Great Air Race” from London to Christchurch. The flight was dubbed “Bride Flight” by the international press, because of its special passengers -- young women with wedding dresses in their suitcases, traveling to join their fiancés who had already emigrated to New Zealand.

Leaving behind the gloom and scarcity of post-WWII Europe, shy but sensual farm girl Ada, dogmatic Marjorie, and Jewish fashion designer Esther are filled with hope for a future of love and freedom. Each takes a very different journey in their strange new land, but together with handsome bachelor Frank, their paths continue to cross with chance meetings resulting in adultery, betrayal and near tragedy leading up to a reunion fifty years later.

Honored with Audience Awards at film festivals across the country, BRIDE FLIGHT evokes a time of slim choices and desperate optimism, with sweeping views of the New Zealand countryside, stunning period dresses, and the faint smell of Pinot Noir from the thriving vineyard Frank establishes in New Zealand. (A Music Box Films release.)

http://www.brideflightmovie.com/

http://www.facebook.com/brideflight

Directed by Ben Sombogaart. Stars Waldemar Torenstra, Karina Smulders, Anna Drijver, Elise Schaap, Rutger Hauer, Pleuni Touw.

The original novel was published by Portobello Books (UK) in paperback earlier this year. It was translated from the Dutch by Colleen Higgins. I have a copy in hand for myself and will be reviewing it here sometime soon.

Because this contest is for the film's US release, this offer is limited to US residents only. Deadline is Sunday, June 19th, after which I'll be randomly selecting and contacting the winners. Good luck to all entrants!
(Note: form removed when contest expired)

Guest post from Evan Ostryzniuk: The problem of knighthood in the late Middle Ages

2011-06-07T00:00:00.000-05:00

Debut novelist Evan Ostryzniuk is stopping by today with a terrific guest essay on the changing meaning of knighthood in 14th-century Europe. His book, Of Faith and Fidelity, the first volume in the English Free Company Series, is published on June 9th by Knox Robinson Publishing.

The problem of knighthood in the late Middle Ages: the case of Geoffrey Hotspur

The consensus among historians is that the better part of the 14th century can be considered ‘transitional’ from the high Middle Ages, which was dominated by scholasticism, rigid feudal relations and a gothic sensibility, to the Renaissance, which engendered the birth of Humanism, merchant capitalism and the recovery of Europe’s classical heritage. This raises a problem for the young Geoffrey Hotspur, the main character in my novel Of Faith and Fidelity, because almost since birth he has been training to become a knight in the very conventional sense, and if 14th century society no longer places much value in that station, then he will be lost. The challenges before the squire, then, is whether he can find a place for himself as a traditional knight, assuming that the title worth seeking once he gets a glimpse of the outside world, and how much he will have to adapt his ideal to the shifting social, economic and military landscape of late medieval Europe. However, before the cloistered orphan can make any decisions, he will have to meet head-on those manifestations of a new and emerging culture.

One of the most vivid examples of change Geoffrey faces is the professional mercenary army, which was having a growing importance on the battlefields of Europe. Mercenaries, of course, were nothing new by the 14th century, and even the most majestic kings employed them alongside their levy of knights and titled men-at-arms. What changes, though, is the number and prestige of these soldiers for hire, especially in Italy, where the traditions of knighthood were weak and the institution of kingship close to non-existent. What is even more confusing for the young men brought up on the legend of King Arthur and the rituals of a feudal court is that growing number of titled families were entering professional soldiery as a respectable means of acquiring fame and honor, not to mention cold hard cash. The division between knights and mercenaries was blurring, and this transformed the military ethos of the high middle ages, whereby the right to military service was all about privilege, class distinction and maintaining the social hierarchy. The rise of the condottiere in Italy, peasant pikeman in the Swiss cantons and landsknecht in Germany changed all that.

The most treasured possession of any knight was his sword, and his skill with cold steel in battle or at a tournament helped define his value. For Geoffrey Hotspur, his magnificent sword is at once a weapon, a cross, a source of moral strength, and a part of his identity. However, the invention of firearms in the 14th century expanded the range of weapons available and eventually, certainly by the end of the 16th century, rendered the armored knight and his sword obsolete. The first recorded recipe for gunpowder in Europe appears in the 13th century, but the first practical military application is found only in the early 14th century with the primitive cannon. Gunpowder technology steadily evolved during the next few generations until batteries of cannon became an essential arm of the late medieval army and city alike. For the likes of Geoffrey Hotspur, gunpowder technology was dirty, unchivalric, and inelegant. Cannons were confusing as well. Hurling missiles from a safe distance was an age old tactic and a fully integrated part of the medieval army, but whether as archers or crossbowmen, missile-throwers were always associated with the lower classes, and therefore condescended to by titled soldiers. Those with firearms fell into this category as well, of course, but because of the chemical nature of gunpowder, unlike bows, firearms held a mystical fascination that competed with the knight’s aura of chivalry.

Geoffrey Hotspur wants to be a knight, but by the late 14th century was it worth the effort? Knighthood evolved out the military ethos that evolved in the post-Roman, Barbarian, newly Christianized world and coalesced into an ideal that included a wide range of virtues, including generosity, piety, courtesy, valor, as well as dexterity with arms and fidelity to one’s lord. However, as the centuries wore on and the non-military orders sought to move up the social ladder, they began to reach for titles, debasing them in the process. The nature of service was expanded and redefined. When royal and ducal households were still small, the number of bureaucrats was likewise few and mostly drawn from the clerical orders. By the 14th century, the nature of medieval governance was changing so that governments had to expand. More commoners joined the higher administrations and emerged as a non-fighting titled order. In France, the distinction became known as the ‘nobility of the sword’ versus the ‘nobility of the robe’. Therefore, how could an honest knight, who demonstrated his prowess through the tip of his lance or by the blade of his sword, reconcile with a parchment-pusher who claimed to be his social equal? If sanctioned by the powers-that-be, such a debasement of knighthood created conflict and confusion, resentment and despair, which caused the traditional, conservative aspirants to knighthood to fear for its value.

The main reward for loyal and valiant knightly service in the Middle Ages was wealth in the form of arable land, from which the knight could draw the resources necessary to equip himself, feed his family and supply his retinue. Geoffrey Hotspur is a rootless squire because he has no land. He lives in a city, Avignon, but it affords him no opportunity for career advancement, although it offers enough distractions to get him into trouble. The knight’s encounter with the city was often disorienting and corrupting, as he had no place there. A knight’s fee, however, was the source of his authority, something which the city could not offer in any meaningful way. It was no accident that the great knightly tales of the Middle Ages take place in a pastoral environment, whether open fields, enclosed gardens or darkened forests. Only on the open field of battle could a knight demonstrate his prowess, or in forests fight monsters, or in perfumed garden court his ideal maiden away from prying eyes. The 14th century saw the rise of cities and the merchant class, mainly in Italy but also in select places in northern Europe. As the cities grew, so did their financial and ultimately political power, which allowed citizens to invade the rural idyll of the knight by buying up land, or interfere in power politics. Geoffrey Hotspur must carefully negotiate the temptations of the city as he tries to prove himself worthy of a knighthood.

Finally, one of the greatest challenges to knighthood in the 14th century was the Black Death, or bubonic plague. It was a monster that killed half of Europe at mid-century and would regularly rear its ugly head over the subsequent three centuries. Disease and pestilence was common in the Middle Ages, but the Black Death was particularly destructive not just in terms of the sheer number of people who died form it, but its perfidious influence undermined the authority of the Church, destabilized society, fractured the medieval consensus about the social hierarchy, and interfered with the conduct of war, all of which together supported the institution of knighthood. A good squire cannot be made a knight without battle; a knighthood lost its quasi-sanctified nature without the belief in the Church; popular challenges to the social status quo made it difficult for the knight to keep his place and lands under control; mass mortality of the titled orders caused confusion about service obligations and relations. Geoffrey has to face this fatal threat daily. As a squire, he garners little enough respect from his social betters and underlings, and so if courtesy and deference break down, he might become humiliated and must find ways to gird his confidence in that what he aspires to is right and true.

-------

Author info: Evan Ostryzniuk was born and raised on the prairies of western Canada, where he also attended the University of Saskatchewan. After graduating with a B.A. in History and Modern Languages and an M.A. in Modern History, Evan crossed the ocean to do post-graduate work at the University of Cambridge, concluding five years of research with a doctoral thesis on the Russian Revolution. He eventually found his way to eastern Europe, where he took up positions as a magazine editor, university lecturer and analyst in the financial services sector before finally settling on writing as a career. Evan Ostryzniuk currently resides in Kyiv, Ukraine. Of Faith and Fidelity: Geoffrey Hotspur and the War for St. Peter’s Throne is his first novel.

Of Faith and Fidelity: Geoffrey Hotspur and the War for St. Peter’s Throne is the first book in the English Free Company series set in the late Middle Ages. The English Free Company is led by Geoffrey Hotspur, an orphan-squire and ward of the mighty Duke of Lancaster, whose driving ambition is to become a knight and serve a great lord. Of Faith and Fidelity takes place in 1394, at the height of the schism of the Western Church when the throne of St. Peter was contested by rival claimants in Rome and Avignon. Unable to settle the dispute peacefully, both sides resorted to war, and the key to winning the throne of St. Peter was control of the Patrimony, a band of territory stretching the breadth of Italy that owes fealty to whichever pope who can rule it. Before Henry V won his miraculous victory at Agincourt, before the Borgias had done their infamous deeds, there was Geoffrey Hotspur, a man as tall as Charlemagne and armed with a sword that rivals Excalibur. Thrown off the established path to knighthood, the ambitious and hot-tempered Geoffrey finds himself caught up in the war between the two popes, where he must adapt his beliefs and apply his training as a squire in order to survive.

Book review: Shadows of a Down East Summer, by Lea Wait

2011-05-31T18:05:00.002-05:00

This skillfully drawn multi-period mystery blends present-day crime with scenes from 1890, a year when painter Winslow Homer was living and creating his masterworks along the picturesque Maine coast.

American Studies professor and antique print dealer Maggie Summer hopes to spend her holiday relaxing with her boyfriend Will at his great-aunt Nettie’s house in Waymouth, Maine, but things don’t turn out as planned. While Will dutifully performs home repairs for his relative, Maggie is asked to help a family friend, Carolyn Chase, conduct research on her mother, a noted 20th-century artist. Despite their brief acquaintance, due to her reputation and expertise Maggie ends up as the caretaker for some papers belonging to Carolyn’s family, including a century-old journal.

Maggie becomes drawn into the story of Anna May Pratt, a young woman who posed for several of Winslow Homer’s paintings alongside her best friend, Jessie. In her diary, Anna May expresses delight at the opportunity she and Jessie are offered, despite their initial wariness at being asked to let their hair down (literally) and wear outfits more appropriate to fisherwomen.

So calming is the seaside atmosphere in both the modern and historical scenarios that when a murder occurs, it comes as a shock. The diary contains long-held secrets someone is willing to kill for.

Genealogy buffs will enjoy sorting out the family relationships, and although careful readers will discern part of the puzzle long before Maggie does, it doesn’t make the parallel stories any less involving. The jealous rivalries present in both timelines demonstrate that human nature hasn’t changed much.

Wait includes the colorful characters expected for this small-town setting and a sufficient dose of suspense. She also adds plenty of educational details on the antique trade and many mouthwatering examples of Down East cuisine. Recommended.

Shadows of a Down East Summer was published by Perseverance Press, a small press publisher of mysteries, in April at $14.95 (trade pb, 236pp). I reviewed it for May's Historical Novels Review and thought I'd share my review here as well. The novel is 5th in the Antique Print mystery series, but I didn't feel lost without having read the others.

My BEA book collection, part one

2011-05-29T19:18:00.004-05:00

I'm just back from an invigorating yet overwhelming week in NYC for BEA and the book blogger con. These are the BEA titles that came home in my luggage, either because they were signed copies I didn't want to risk shipping or because I got them at the blogger con on the last day. My husband took the rest of them over to FedEx on the last day of the show.

Most of these were titles I mentioned in my post about historical fiction picks at BEA. There were many other titles on that list I didn't get, either because I didn't see them - like The Lantern - or because the signing lines were amazingly long. My back doesn't tolerate standing for long periods, unfortunately, so my waiting 45+ minutes in line for a signed copy of Alice Hoffman's The Dovekeepers just wasn't in the cards. I looked on jealously as I passed by.

I was pleased to come across a previously unannounced signing of Patricia Falvey's The Linen Queen, though - it's a love story set in Northern Ireland on the brink of WWII. Of the other titles above, Open Wounds is a new YA set in Depression-era Queens, and The Little Women Letters is a mostly contemporary tale about a descendant of Jo March from Little Women who finds letters written by her ancestress. These latter two were giveaways at the blogger con. As with last year, it was great to get the chance to meet so many bloggers, authors, and publishers in person when I was in NY.

Things may be quieter than usual around here, at least in terms of reviews, until after the Historical Novel Society conference in 2.5 weeks. There's a ton that needs doing before then, many loads of laundry included, plus I came home to three freelance assignments with shortish deadlines. One of these is the new Philippa Gregory, so that will be forthcoming in a bit.

Guest post from Mary Tod: Researching Is a Sleeves-Rolled-Up Process

2011-05-25T06:00:00.000-05:00

Today Mary Tod, a historical fiction writer and fellow blogger from Canada, is stopping by with a guest essay on the many different facets to her research involving the First World War. Thanks very much, Mary, and welcome!

Researching is a sleeves-rolled-up process

Six years ago when I began writing historical fiction, I had no idea where the journey would take me. Nor did I have any idea of how much I would enjoy the research involved. I was an expat wife, often called the trailing spouse in the world of international assignments, and I landed in Hong Kong with nothing to do. Having worked for thirty years, this was a problem.

After many frustrating months, I decided to take matters into my own hands and write a book about my grandparents who lived through two world wars and the great depression - surely their experiences would provide the foundation for a novel, I thought. What has emerged from this vague beginning are three novels and ideas for many more. Along the way, I developed a passion for WWI and WWII and a host of research techniques and sources.

Sarah has kindly invited me to tell you a bit about the research that goes into historical fiction. Being a list making gal, I’ve organized my thoughts by topic:

WWW
* I have several favorite WWI websites that I frequent for information on battles, maps, timelines, photos, personalities and the tools of war. Visiting these sites allows me to adhere to reality amidst the liberty of fiction. They also spark ideas to make each story come alive.

Official War Diaries
* The Canadian government has an entire collection of official war diaries recording day to day events of every Canadian battalion. Governments can do some things right! I have spent hours poring through these pdf images looking for inspiration and accurate information. For example, my latest novel involves the heroine tracing her grandfather’s WWI experiences to solve a mystery. I placed this man in the 19th Battalion of the 4th Infantry Brigade, and using the war diaries, I know exactly where he is every day of the war.

Fullbooks
* Much to my delight, I came across this site offering books of historical interest online at no cost. Of great value to me are Edith Wharton’s journals describing WWI France, Mildred Aldrich’s letters written from a small village near the front lines, and Charles Inman Barnard’s description of Paris on the brink of war. From another site I found Ruth Gaines’ vignettes of Picardy in 1918. All have been very helpful as I wrote about living with war in two of my novels.

My growing fiction and non-fiction collection
* Every time I visit my local bookstore or browse for an e-book, I look for new materials. Amongst others, my collection of non-fiction includes Vimy by Pierre Berton and Unlikely Soldiers by Jonathan Vance, the first is a detailed account of that famous WWI battle, the second is the true story of two WWII spies. Both offered deep insight into the war experience.

* My fiction collection includes authors like Anne Perry, Ben Elton, Pat Barker, Anita Shreve, Scott Turow, Joseph Boyden, William Woodruff, Siegfried Sassoon, Frances Itani and others. Wonderful works. My copies are well thumbed and well marked.

Diaries and letters
* To add reality to my characters’ voices, I have perused many personal accounts of war, particularly WWI, and discovered phrases and language patterns of the day. I find it both amazing and heart warming to see so many soldiers honored by their families through websites and blogs containing letters, photos and personal details. British, American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand stories are there for all to see. If you read French or German, you can find even more diaries.

* A particularly interesting book is The Letters of Agar Adamson, a WWI captain who enlisted at the age of 48. Fascinating first hand account.

Google & Google maps
* Ah, Google. An amazing source as every reader and writer knows, a place to find tidbits like the construction of a kite or the names of troop transport ships and to stumble upon serendipity like French marriage rituals or the lions outside New York’s main library.

* Using Google maps I can look at tiny villages like Villers-au-Bois or larger places like Amiens and can then check the surrounding countryside to see the contours of the land, the placement of crossroads, the bends in a river. I can then match war-time photos with present day in order to breathe life into descriptions of a picnic, a country drive, a battlefield or a behind the lines view.

Museums
* To date I’ve visited museums in England, Canada and France. These buildings, whether large or small, house a wealth of photos, posters, dioramas and context to augment my stories. In some cases, they include the sounds of war which are crucial to a writer’s toolbox. While visiting, I’ve taken many pictures and notes.

Personal travel
* Last summer my husband and I traveled to northern France with the express purpose of seeing WWI battle sites and memorials as well as the lands of Picardy and Nord-Pas-de-Calais where so many battles occurred. I filled an entire notebook and came home with over five hundred pictures.

* While sitting in a cafe having dinner one night, my third novel was born. You never know what a glass or two of French wine will inspire!

Movies
* Whenever I have the opportunity to watch a movie set in either war, I do using my ever-present notebook to jot thoughts as the movie unfolds. What I look for most is sounds and visuals.

Fashion
* In addition to photos of the time, I’ve discovered a few fashion websites like www.fashion-era.com or www.victoriana.com or www.costumes.org. Pictures and descriptions from these sites give little snippets to use when setting a scene or introducing a character.

Sounds
* Historical radio broadcasts have also helped. Hearing a speech made by Woodrow Wilson or King Edward VIII, listening to a reporter recount the actual Dieppe landing raids or hearing songs from the past make that world come alive in a visceral manner.

I am fortunate that the world wars are relatively recent and as a consequence easier to research. Nonetheless, I often work for hours in order to write a few sentences. Good thing I enjoy the process!

Bio
Mary Tod writes historical fiction with a focus on WWI and WWII. Her novel, Lies Told in Silence is represented by Anne McDermid & Associates. While The Secret Sits is a companion novel with intersecting characters. A third novel, Blind Regret is nearing completion.

Mary posts frequently on the topics of historical fiction and the business of writing on her blog, One Writer’s Voice.

Guest post from Kate Lord Brown: You Say Boxer Shorts, I Say Underpants

2011-05-22T00:00:00.001-05:00

Kate Lord Brown is stopping by today to discuss some of the fascinating tidbits she uncovered while researching her debut novel. The Beauty Chorus follows three young British women who sign up to be Spitfire pilots at the height of World War Two. I went and bought myself a copy after reading her post -- I'm one of those readers who knows little about women pilots during the war, so am eager to meet her characters and learn more. Welcome, Kate, and thanks for contributing an enlightening article!

I love the research involved with writing historical fiction – in fact, it is so absorbing, so much fun I have to give myself a cut off point or the novels would never get written. The inspiration for ‘The Beauty Chorus’ came from a tiny obituary in a flying magazine for a woman who flew Spitfires during WW2. My gut instinct was – why don’t people know about this? Then: this is a story that has to be told.

I’m married to a pilot, but I knew nothing about aviation during WW2. I didn’t know a Lancaster from a Stirling, or how to fly a Spitfire – but I do now (at least on paper). When I was little, I wanted to be a detective like Nancy Drew, to solve mysteries like Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Researching historical fiction is just as exciting to me now. I taught myself everything I could from the material available to the public – read everything I could, from first person autobiographies and memoirs from the women who had flown with the Air Transport Auxiliary, to biographies of the ‘big’ figures like Amy Johnson. Then the fun really started.

Once I had the ‘scaffolding’ of the story – the major plot and characters outlined, the really deep research began. I poured over archives, handling documents and diaries yellow with age. I talked to surviving veterans who had lived and worked through this time. I read the wartime diaries of housewives to find out all I could about ‘make do and mend’ and ‘digging for victory’. I watched endless black and white films of the era to tune my ear into the dialogue, and listened to the music of the time. I wrote my first draft listening to Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra. I spoke to museums, libraries, chased down every single detail I could get my hands on to bring the story to life, to create a sense of place.

I found out amazing things – each clue, each question led to others. I found out pilots of the American Eagle Squadrons were known among the girls for their racy green socks. There were other sartorial cultural differences - while the American love interest would have worn ‘boxer shorts’, the Imperial War Museum told me normal British men would have worn utility underpants. I learnt that while the female pilots dreaded being stuck out at some bases, they loved getting stranded at the US bases because they could stock up on lipstick and silk stockings. Then there were larger things – I pieced together countless accounts of Amy Johnson’s last flight from biographies and RAF reports, and the account in the novel brings together details I haven’t read anywhere else. There was so much information I didn’t use a lot of it in the story – but I hope as Hemingway once said, you get a feel for the depth of this knowledge in the story – almost reading between the lines what isn’t said.

It was wonderful researching this story, and I hope my enjoyment and enthusiasm comes through. These women were amazing – modest, brave and skilful civilians doing one of the most dangerous jobs in the war, but they are all but forgotten. I hope ‘The Beauty Chorus’ will introduce them to a few new people.

Kate Lord Brown studied Philosophy at Durham University, and Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art. She is currently taking a Masters degree. She worked as an art consultant, curating collections for palaces and embassies in Europe and the Middle East, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She was a finalist in UK ITV’s the People’s Author competition in 2009.

‘The Beauty Chorus’ was published by Corvus, Atlantic on 1 April 2011; available from Amazon UK and Book Depository. Visit Kate's blog, What Kate Did Next, at http://thebeautychorus.blogspot.com.

An updated post

2011-05-20T21:28:00.000-05:00

A quick note to mention that my list of historical fiction picks at BEA has grown considerably in length, following my reading of Library Journal's and Kirkus's excellent previews of the show.

An interview with Rosslyn Elliott, author of Fairer than Morning

2011-05-19T09:00:00.065-05:00

Rosslyn Elliott's debut novel, Fairer than Morning, takes readers back to Ohio and Pennsylvania in the 1820s, a bygone era no less complicated than our own. Ann Miller, daughter of a saddle-maker and circuit-riding minister from the small town of Rushville, Ohio, slowly awakens to the qualities in a person that truly matter. To her surprise, she finds them not in Eli Bowen, a handsome suitor who enjoys reciting poetry, but in saddler's apprentice Will Hanby. Alternating chapters reveal Will's painful situation. Indentured to an abusive master in Pittsburgh when he was too young to know better, he forms a strong bond with Ann and yearns to be free to pursue a life of his choosing.

Fairer than Morning is more than just a romance and coming-of-age story, though. Rosslyn Elliott surveys her early 19th-century American setting with a sensitive eye for historical and artistic detail as well as social injustice. The novel falls into the category of inspirational historical fiction and is an excellent example of its kind. Rather than feeling forced, the characters' faith reflects their time; it takes root in the courageous lives they lead and the situations they find themselves in. Also, I always find it refreshing to read a Christian novel that shows real people and their realistic decisions, even if they go beyond the usual genre limitations. The main characters are based in history, as are their stories, and the graceful writing style suits the place and era.

Had you planned from the beginning to write Fairer than Morning from both Ann's and Will's viewpoints?

Yes, I had planned it that way from the beginning. Both of their spiritual journeys are important, though Will’s is unusually strong for the ‘man’s side’ of a historical romance. When I first wrote the novel, it opened in Will’s viewpoint and Ann’s viewpoint came second. My agent asked me to switch the order, as publishers usually require historical romances to open in the heroine’s viewpoint. At first, I didn’t like the idea, but it worked out well after I figured out which scene to use for Ann’s opening.

Given that the Hanbys and Millers were real people, how much responsibility did you feel to reflect the historical and spiritual truth of their story? During the process of transforming their lives into fiction, did these truths ever conflict with one another?

I was determined to infuse this story with both types of truth. As I explain in the historical afterword, I departed from the historical record in some aspects of the novel, but I believe my choices clarified the spiritual truth of the novel and unified the narrative. I’m particularly pleased with the development of the relationship between Mr. Miller (Ann’s father) and Will Hanby. I think father/son relationships are fascinating, and I believe the fictional parts of this novel reflect the historical story of these two men in a way that historical records support but do not flesh out. Only a few history-lovers know about the strength of this connection between Mr. Miller and Will. You have to be a real researcher of the Hanbys to learn the few details that exist to tell us their story. I’m happy that more people will understand Mr. Miller’s contribution to the story as a result of the publication of Fairer than Morning. (I’ll reserve further comment on fact versus fiction to prevent spoilers, and I should also warn potential readers not to read the afterword before reading the novel, for the same reason!)

Will's relationship with Emmie Flynn, as well as the duel fought between two parties, go beyond what's often found in inspirational historicals. At the same time, these subplots made the storyline and characters more realistic for me. Did you ever feel like you were taking risks, with readers or with publishers, by including these scenes?

My goal during the writing process was to write the best story I was capable of writing, in every way, and that meant not worrying about the typical boundaries of inspirational historicals. I like the way Jodie Foster once described the act of creating art. She said “it’s putting everything you are onto the head of an arrow and shooting it out into the world.” For me, ‘everything I am’ may include a number of virtues, but I’m also messy and flawed, and that’s true for most believers. Too many times, I’ve seen Christians try to assume a perfect façade, even though that doesn’t reflect reality. I don’t think we should do it in life, and I don’t think we should do it in our fictional characters. So I decided to write this novel about real love, real failure, and real courage, and I found a publisher who believed in that kind of story. I have to admit that I was sweating it out when my agent submitted this novel to publishers. I knew this novel was the best I could do, and if no publisher wanted it, that would be the end of my dream to publish this kind of fiction.

What appeals to you about small-town Ohio? Also, what compelled you to set part of your novel in the industrial city of Pittsburgh?

I like the heritage of Ohio because of its pioneer roots. I can still see those roots in many small towns, whereas big cities have choked them out with concrete and steel. I also like the way that Ohio hasn’t been overused as a setting in historical novels, and the same is true for Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is a city with a fascinating history, both bright and dark, and it really adds to the atmosphere of a historical novel. Atmosphere was part of my decision to set part of the novel in Pittsburgh. I needed a strong dramatic contrast between Will Hanby’s world and Ann Miller’s world, plus, I wanted narrative access to some big city features that I couldn’t create in a rural setting.

Fairer than Morning is set during a time when individual craftsmanship mattered. It takes pleasure, for example, in showing us the details Samuel Miller carves into his leather saddles and the calligraphy on hand-addressed dinner invitations. Do you feel modern society has lost some appreciation for these things?

As a whole, yes, I think we have lost it. Last fall, I went to a fashion museum in Tombstone with a friend, and we exclaimed over every handcrafted detail of those nineteenth-century ensembles. The curator loved us. He said he couldn’t believe it when people came into the museum and complained of being bored, but it happened more often than we might think. Fortunately, no matter how our culture changes, there will always be people who love craftsmanship. We may not use horses as our transportation anymore, but I know a saddler who lives close to my house. The fascination of creativity will always draw new people into the old crafts.

How much time did you spend researching your novel on site? How clearly could you see the Rushville of nearly two centuries ago beneath the new?

I was only able to visit Rushville in person late in the writing process, but I was glad to see that the town’s history is well-preserved, though not always marked. The advantage of zero population growth in tiny towns is that no one knocks down buildings to make way for supermarkets. Beautiful old homes are well-preserved by citizens who have lived in them through the years. I saw the Rushville home of a doctor who appears in the second novel (1850s), and I saw the cracked, forgotten gravestone of Samuel Miller himself. (Some of the valiant supporters of Hanby family history repaired that stone this year.)

Ann Miller finds herself transfixed by Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, and the characters' lives and words resonate with her. On your website, you've listed some of your favorite novels, including Dickens' Oliver Twist, two by C.S. Lewis, and William Dean Howell's A Hazard of New Fortunes, which is a book that's new to me. What did you take away from the reading experience of each?

Both Dickens and Howells were compassionate souls, and both were sensitive to the social forces at work around them. Dickens is one of my personal heroes, and I could write a hundred pages on everything I admire about his work. I already wrote a hundred pages on Howells, who was one of the two authors I discussed in my doctoral dissertation in English (completed in 2006). Both authors are valuable reads for me because my Saddler’s Legacy trilogy spans most of the nineteenth century. Dickens is a major influence on Fairer than Morning, and Howells will have his turn in the last novel, which is set in his period, the 1870s. Howells was Mark Twain’s best friend, and one of the best-known writers of his time. I sometimes think his work has gone out of fashion in academic circles because he is too gentle, wise and ethical. His work won’t serve as a platform for the fierce battles that currently rage through university English departments.

The two books from C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy changed my life. After a Catholic childhood, I lost my faith as a teenager and was agnostic for ten years. It was a dark decade for me. The light finally began to dawn again when I read Lewis’s Perelandra. It’s a brilliant, redemptive novel that convinced me of the reality of evil as an active, intelligent force in our world. Once I believed in evil, I had to reconsider the possibility that good might also be the same kind of active, intelligent force. That restarted my spiritual journey, and a couple of years after reading Perelandra, I returned to Christian faith.

Thanks for your excellent questions. It has been a pleasure to go behind the scenes with you and revisit some of the joys of writing Fairer than Morning.

-----

Thank you too, Rosslyn, for agreeing to be interviewed. I thoroughly enjoyed the read, and I look forward to reading your next book as well.

Fairer Than Morning, first in the Saddler's Legacy series inspired by the Hanby family of central Ohio, was published by Thomas Nelson in May at $15.99 (trade pb, 391pp). Visit Rosslyn's website and her blog for biographical information, the history behind her books, insight into the writing process, her observations on historical fiction and other literature, and more.

A look at Marina Fiorato's The Daughter of Siena

2011-05-17T12:00:00.007-05:00

British-Venetian author Marina Fiorato heads to Tuscany for her latest novel of love and suspense in a beautifully evoked Italian setting. As the fierce competition between the contrade (city wards) for victory in the annual Palio horse race takes a treacherous turn, two women of Siena muster up their courage to survive threatening situations.

In July of 1723, Pia Tolomei, a gorgeous, well-educated nineteen-year-old said to be descended from Cleopatra, is betrothed to a cruel man from an opposing contrada. After he is killed in an accident during the Palio, she is forcibly wed to his equally malicious albino brother. Shuttered away at his family’s palazzo, she can’t deny her growing affection for Riccardo, a horseman whose background is far less distinguished than hers.

While Pia makes for a suitable romantic heroine, another noblewoman provides a more intriguing and complex character study. Violante Beatrix of Bavaria, a barren Medici widow who had the misfortune to love her neglectful husband, governs Siena with benevolent dignity, but factions within the city – led by Pia’s nasty father-in-law – aim to depose her. Violante wants to put an end to the rivalries tearing Siena apart. In doing so, she awakens a new capability for political maneuvering. With Riccardo’s help, she investigates the secret plot against the Medici, but their unraveling of the scheme is marked by danger as well as missteps on both their parts (a realistic touch).

The parallel stories of these two daughters of the city, one native and one adopted, provide an intricate examination of women’s power and powerlessness in early 18th-century Italy. The villains are recognizably evil, and the coincidence-heavy denouement strains believability, but Fiorato deserves kudos for bringing to life an underutilized European setting. Most readers won’t be familiar with the royal families involved, which allows the historically-based subplots to unfold unpredictably.

The rich heritage of Siena is shown in all its facets, with scenes moving from formal staterooms and candle-lit cathedrals to dirty stables and macabre dungeons. The apricot silk gown on the cover reveals only part of the tale. Like the Palio itself, The Daughter of Siena is an exciting entertainment steeped in local color and years of cultural traditions.

The Daughter of Siena was published May 12th by St. Martin's Griffin at $14.99/$16.99 Canadian (trade pb, 382pp, includes author Q&A and reading group guide). John Murray will publish it in the UK in September.

New Pauline Gedge review

2011-05-16T09:27:00.001-05:00

My review of Pauline Gedge's The King's Man, the long-awaited final volume in her trilogy of the same name, was published in today's Globe and Mail.

If you enjoy ancient Egyptian settings, The King's Man is a must-read, but you really need to begin with the first volume, The Twice Born, for the storyline in the subsequent books to make sense. Gedge is an internationally bestselling author, and her earlier books had American and British publishers, but the current trilogy was published in English only in Canada. If you're not Canadian, I'd recommend spending the extra money on postage; her books are worth it.

Historical fiction picks at BEA

2011-05-14T18:31:00.004-05:00

(This post was updated on May 20th with many new details courtesy of the Library Journal and Kirkus Reviews BEA preview publications.)

In just over a week, I'll be heading to BEA in New York for four days of networking and book chat, presentations, walking, dining, sightseeing, and shopping. Anyone else going? I'll also be heading to the book blogger con on Friday the 27th, as one of five Sara(h)s on their roster.

It's taken me a while to draw up a list of signings/galley grabbing that may interest historical fiction readers. The online schedule isn't as user-friendly as usual; you have to click around a while to find out what the authors will be signing and what their books are about. So I may have missed some important titles... please let me know in the comments if you spotted something I didn't! It doesn't appear to be a big year for historicals at BEA, but there will be some exciting-sounding books on offer.

Galleys to Grab

Doubleday (booth 4617)
Erin Morgenstern, Night Circus - described by PW as having "19th-century magicians, star-crossed lovers, and a most unusual circus."

Simon & Schuster (booth 3652-53)
Alma Katsu, The Taker - a combo of historical novel and supernatural epic spanning over a century in rural Maine. Are you spotting a trend yet? Historical paranormal is hot. Well, anything paranormal is hot.

Alice Hoffman, The Dovekeepers - novel, based on the true events of Masada, which is being referred to as the author's Beloved.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (booth 3438)
Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery - about conspiracy theories in 19th-century Europe.

HarperCollins (booth 3338-39)
Deborah Lawrenson, The Lantern - a modern gothic set in the south of France, and PW says there will be galleys everywhere. Not historical, but anything remotely Thirteenth Tale/Kate Morton-ish is good enough for me.

Random House (booth 4617)
Charles Frazier, Nightwoods - literary fiction set in 1960s small town North Carolina.

Macmillan (booth 3352)
Yangzom Brauen, Across Many Mountains - an epic of three generations of Tibetan women in the mid-20th century. Per her website, the author is an actress in theatre and film. Giveaway at 9am on Wednesday 5/25.

Stella Tillyard, Tides of War - epic of Regency England, at 9am on Wednesday 5/25

Steve Sem-Sandberg, The Emperor of Lies - novel of the Lodz ghetto, at 10am on Wednesday 5/25

Spiegel & Grau (booth 4420)
Ellen Feldman, Next to Love - multi-generational epic about three young women and the men they're involved with, set during WWII.

Autographing

Tuesday, May 24th, 11-12, table 13
Alma Katsu, The Taker - see description above

Tuesday, 11-11:30, table 26
James R. Benn, A Mortal Terror, latest in his Billy Boyle WWII mystery series

Tuesday, 11:30-noon, table 4
Evan Fallenberg, When We Danced On Water - a famous Jewish choreographer, now aged, meets a younger woman whose presence brings back suppressed memories from his past.

Tuesday, 12-12:30, table 16
Thanhha Lai, Inside Out and Back Again - Vietnam-era YA fiction.

Tuesday, 1-2pm, table 24
Luis Alberto Urrea, Queen of America - sequel to the excellent The Hummingbird's Daughter, which is enough to make me want it. Also a galley giveaway on Wednesday morning at booth 3620 (Hachette).

Tuesday, 2pm, as part of "Feminism in Fiction Today" panel
Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic - Japanese mail-order brides in 1900s San Francisco

Tuesday, 4-5pm, table 5
Ilsa J. Bick, Draw the Dark - WWII comes to small-town Wisconsin.

Wednesday, May 25, 10-10:30, table not given in schedule.
Maria Dahvana Headley, Queen of Kings - a supernatural version of Cleopatra's life.

Wednesday, 10-10:30, table 4
Barbara Reichmuth Geisler, In Vain - a medieval mystery, part of the Averillan Chronicles series.

Wednesday, 10-10:45, booth 4638
Deanna Raybourn, The Dark Enquiry - the latest in her Julia Grey mystery series.

Wednesday, 11:30-noon, table 18
Andi Rosenthal, The Bookseller's Sonnets - historical mystery spanning the Tudor era, Holocaust, and present day.

Wednesday, 12-12:30pm, table 22
Talia Carner, Jerusalem Maiden - a young woman in early 20th-c Jerusalem must choose between her religion and her dream.

Wednesday, 1pm, booth 4420 (Random House)
Esmeralda Santiago, Conquistadora - saga of 19th century Puerto Rico

Wednesday, 2:30pm, booth 3252 (Penguin)
Amor Towles, Rules of Civility - social mores in the 1930s

Wednesday, 3pm, booth 4420 (Random House)
Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus, details above.

Wednesday, 3-3:30pm, table 6
M.L. Malcolm, Heart of Deception - novel of espionage, and a father's love for his daughter, set in 1942.
A note from M.L: As a thank you for all the support I’ve received from readers in the Blogsphere this year, I’d like to treat the first 25 Book Bloggers who come by my signing on Wednesday to a glass of wine at the Book Blogger Convention reception. All they have to do is come by Table 6 at 3:00 on Wednesday, pick up a signed copy of “Heart of Deception,” give me a card with the name of their blog on it, and I’ll give them a ticket for a free libation when they come to the reception on Thursday.

Other Featured Books

These were in the Books@BEA catalog, which means they'll be featured at the show in some way - whether galleys will be available, I'm not sure, but I'll be asking about them (and others too).

Bloomsbury (booth 3358)
Victor Davis Hanson, The End of Sparta - epic of war and freedom in ancient Greece.

Farrar Straus & Giroux (booth 3352)
Amitav Ghosh, River of Smoke - 2nd in historical saga set against the Opium Wars in China and Mauritius in the mid-19th century.
Steve Sam-Sandberg, The Emperor of Lies - an international award-winning novel about the Jewish ghetto of Lodz during WWII, and its authoritarian ruler.

Henry Holt (booth 3352)
Stella Tillyard, Tides of War - novel of the Peninsular War, by a noted historian (Aristocrats).

Hyperion/Voice (booth 3324)
Margaret Leroy, The Soldier's Wife - WWII in Guernsey

Other Press (booth 4421)
John Thompson, The Reservoir - mystery set in Reconstruction-era Virginia.

Peachtree (booth 2955)
Krista Russell, Chasing the Nightbird - YA, historical shipboard adventure

Penguin (booth 3253)
Maile Maloy, The Apothecary - YA, Russian spies in 1952 London

Simon & Schuster (booth 3652-53)
Ursula Hegi, Children and Fire - lead-up to WWII in Germany

Book review: The Watery Part of the World, by Michael Parker

2011-05-11T10:39:00.007-05:00

Sometimes the past is another country. Other times, as in Michael Parker’s inventive recreation of Theodosia Burr Alston and her fictional descendants, the past casts such a large shadow on the present that it’s impossible to escape.

The historical Theodosia, daughter of Vice President Aaron Burr, was lost at sea in 1813 after boarding a ship from South Carolina to New York. (Readers may recognize her as the tragic heroine of Anya Seton’s classic My Theodosia.) The Watery Part of the World picks up the frayed ends of her life story. In this version, she survives a pirate attack by feigning madness and takes shelter with a hermit on the Outer Banks. He’s the only man inclined to help her of his own free will.

On this remote barrier island off North Carolina’s coast, survival is precarious. Theo’s knowledge of Latin and Greek, and her extensive training in the social graces, proves useless in an environment where people rely on scavenging (or “progging,” in the delightful local lingo) for driftwood and other things that wash up on shore. A portrait of her long-ago self, the only item left from her former existence, symbolizes her proud history and the mission – restoring her father’s good name – that she can’t let herself forget.

In alternating sections set in 1970 and earlier, Parker skillfully delves into the inner lives of the island’s last remaining residents: two elderly sisters, Theo’s fifth-generation descendants, and the black man, Woodrow Thornton, who helps them with their household needs. His family has a longstanding tradition of service to theirs, a pattern he resents but follows anyway.

Whaley is stiff and proper, a silly pretension when there’s nobody around to impress. Her moody and passionate sister Maggie envisions herself as Virginia Dare, believing she’ll meet with disaster if she ever leaves her home. While Whaley reads about the curious outside world in newspaper ads, Maggie can’t forget her failed love affair with a younger man thirty years before.

Despite the 150-odd years separating them, the storyline glides smoothly between their time and Theo’s. In both eras, Parker periodically revisits the novel’s most decisive scenes, each time with more shocking impact.

In places, the text has an archaic syntax that reflects the modern trio’s circumstances, living isolated from the mainland for such a long time. Two anthropologists visit them every spring to record their peculiar dialect and the outlandish stories of island lore they choose to tell them – an act they partially put on for the outsiders’ benefit. Caught by fear and habit, Maggie wonders if she’ll ever be able to reveal their real story.

Dependent on one another for reasons they can’t explain, the black man and "his white women sisters" cling to their roles, the same ones held by their forebears, like they would to a lifeline. Parker writes of their complicated dilemmas with grace, care, and not a little empathy. Even with the deftness of the human characterizations, though, the wind-scoured, lonely island has the strongest and most steady presence. One knows it will be around long after everyone has gone.

The Watery Part of the World was published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill on April 26th ($23.95, hardcover, 261pp).

Guest post from M.L. Malcolm: The Real James Bond Wore Lipstick

2011-05-05T07:00:00.003-05:00

I'd like to extend a warm welcome to M.L. Malcolm. She's stopping by Reading the Past today to talk about discovering the female James Bond, one of the many fascinating characters in her latest historical novel, Heart of Deception.

M.L. Malcolm will be speaking and signing books at the upcoming Historical Novel Society conference. Her talk, "Going from an Indie to a Big House," is scheduled for 8:30-9:30am on Saturday, 6/18.

The Real James Bond Wore Lipstick

By M.L. Malcolm

One of the main characters in my latest novel, Heart of Deception, is recruited to work as a spy for the Allies at the very beginning of World War II. This dashing Hungarian’s name is Leo Hoffman, and knowing my characters as well as I do, I knew that Leo (being Leo) was going to develop at some point during the story a romantic interest in a very fascinating woman.

I also knew that this lady was going to be a spy. For one thing, during the war many spies working closely together did fall in love—there have actually been studies about how people are more likely to fall in love when they meet in situations where their adrenalin is pumping—and it’s unlikely that Leo would get close to anyone who wasn’t also a spy; that might interfere with his real goal, which was to earn his American citizenship, get back to the States, and find his daughter.

I wanted Leo to fall for a real historical figure, someone who’d actually been a spy, so I went on a scholarly quest to find his lady love. Call it authorial match-making; I read everything I could find about the women who served in the British spy service, the Special Operations Executive, and the American spy corps, the Office of Strategic Services, looking for the right woman.

That’s when I discovered that Julia Child had worked in the OSS. (This was long before “Julie and Julia.” Historical research takes a lot of time, you know.) After duly considering Julia (née McWilliams) as a possibility, I realized there was one insurmountable problem with the match. That’s right—to use Julia’s own words, “TOO TALL.” And, Julia was essentially a clerical worker, frankly not a sufficiently exciting position for the paramour I had in mind.

After a lot of study, considering and then rejecting many potential candidates, I found myself leaning toward Virginia Hall. The youngest daughter of an American who’d made a fortune in the shipping business, Virginia was rich, well-educated, attractive, adventurous, and quite the world traveler. Unfortunately when she was just twenty-six she accidentally shot herself in the foot while on a hunting trip in Turkey. The wound became infected, and her leg was amputated at the knee; she named her wooden prosthesis “Cuthbert.” (Score points for her sense of humor.) However, the injury meant that Virginia had to abandon her dream of working for the American Foreign Service, which at that time would not hire anyone who was missing a limb. Really.

Luckily Virginia’s career in espionage did not depend upon good marksmanship. She became a spy by being in the wrong place at the right time; she was working in France when Germany invaded, made her way to England, and volunteered to work for the SOE. Her first assignment was in Lyons, France. Her cover? She was hired as a reporter for the New York Post, and in that capacity she succeeded in getting money and assistance to the those French who were trying to resist the Nazis, in addition to getting valuable information back to the U.S. via her coded cables.

She left France (rather hurriedly) in November of 1942 when the Allies invaded North Africa and the Nazis put an end to the “independence” of Vichy France. However she was back by 1944, sending clandestine transmissions, recruiting resistance fighters, and causing such a problem for the Germans that they posted “wanted” posters of her all over France, labeling her “the most dangerous of all Allied spies.”

So Leo’s love interest was going to be Virginia Hall. Until I discovered Christine Granville.

Krystyna Skarbek, more widely known by her British alias, Christine Granville, was the daughter of a Polish count. She and her husband were living in Kenya when Poland was invaded in 1939. They immediately came to London, and soon volunteered to work for the British government. Christine offered to travel to Budapest, and then go from there to Poland to do reconnaissance work. She said she would get there by crossing over the Tatra Mountains. On skis.

Skeptical at first, the SOE eventually agreed. Christine was an excellent skier; accompanied by one former member of the Polish Olympic ski team, she made it over the mountains and began engaging in undercover reconnaissance and recruitment. During the trip to Hungary her male companion began what became a common trend; he fell madly in love with her by the time they made it to Hungary, and threw himself off a bridge when she refused him. He was so distraught he didn’t notice that the river had iced over, and he only broke his leg.

At some point she was brought back for training at Beaulieu, one of only sixty-five female agents to be trained at that Stately-Home-Turned-Spy-Camp, in subjects ranging from how to kill silently, how to use explosives to blow up strategic targets, personal disguise, forgery, and the use of black propaganda.

All of which made her even more lethal than the average femme fatale. Men were quite simply mesmerized by Christine Granville; as one ardent admirer explained, “Even though she was very quiet, there was something about her that put other women in the shade.”

Very interesting…

Then I learned that after the war, Christine Granville had a brief affair with Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond books.

Fleming supposedly told a close friend that Christine "literally shone with all the qualities and splendors of a fictitious character,” and he eventually used her as one; it’s now generally agreed that Christine was Fleming’s inspiration for the first Bond girl, Vesper Lynd. “Vesperale” was Christine’s nickname when she was a child, because (just like Vesper Lynd) she was born during an evening thunderstorm.

Moreover, Fleming’s description of Vesper is similar to that of Christine, both physically (dark hair, wide mouth, little make-up) and in terms of her personality: “She was thoughtful and full of consideration without being slavish and without compromising her arrogant spirit… She would surrender herself avidly, he thought, and greedily enjoy all the intimacies of the bed without ever allowing herself to be possessed.”

Christine’s accomplishments during the war far surpassed those of Fleming, who actually never engaged in front-line espionage. Like Julia Child, his responsibilities lay primarily behind his desk.

Vera Atkins, who was the second-in-command of the SOE section responsible for helping the French resistance, described Christine as “a woman of quite unusual character. She was very brave, very attractive, but a loner and a law unto herself.” Sound like any other famous spy you know?

And like James Bond, fidelity was never her strong suit.

Fleming always maintained that Bond was a “compound of all the secret agents and commando types” he’d encountered during the war. Given all I learned about her, I think Fleming’s composite also included one spy he met after the war. I believe that Christine was more than just the inspiration for the first Bond girl; Fleming also incorporated her abilities and attributes into the actual James Bond character.

So the real James Bond wore lipstick; and that made her the perfect match for Leo Hoffman.

M.L. has won several awards for her fiction, including special recognition in the prestigious Lorian Hemingway International Short Story Competition, and a silver medal from ForeWord Magazine for Best Historical Fiction Book of the Year 2009. A “recovering” attorney and freelance journalist, she has also amassed an impressive hat collection (and yes, she does wear them). Her novel, Heart of Deception, was just released by HarperCollins.

In which I read Rebel Puritan, by Jo Ann Butler

2011-05-03T08:00:00.011-05:00

Being a proud descendant of early New England troublemakers, I was pleased to come across a biographical novel about a woman fitting this description.

Jo Ann Butler's Rebel Puritan tells the story of her ancestor Herodias Long, who lived in 17th-century Rhode Island. I read an excerpt on the author's website and knew I had to read the rest of the book. Plus, "Scarlett O'Hara meets The Scarlet Letter" is one of the most irresistible taglines ever.

As a child in the Devon countryside, Herodias survives a bout of plague that kills her father and brother. Her mother, finding her too difficult to manage, sends her off to London to be a servant to her aunt. At thirteen she marries John Hicks, a man she barely knows, to escape a life of drudgery and flees with him to Massachusetts. She's too young to know better, alas, but feels she has no choice. The fledgling town of Weymouth finds itself divided by rival ministries, and the dispute leads her family to quit the strict Puritan church and move further south to Newport.

Herod is a strong young woman, choosing to befriend nonconformists like Mary Dyer and Anne Hutchinson despite John's disapproval. How she grows into adulthood and raises her children while facing increasing abuse from her controlling husband — as documented in the historical record — forms the crux of an engrossing tale of endurance and triumph. She finds herself obliged to live by society's rules until it becomes clear she no longer can. Her moving story of women's immobility against colonial doctrine rings heartbreakingly true.

Along the way, the author fills us in on what life demanded of the early New England colonists — not just the religion and politics, but also the basics like building a suitable dwelling, growing food, making soap, and the need to rely on one's neighbors. Most colonial-era novels are set during the Salem witch trials or the pre-Revolutionary era, but here we're in newer territory: the 1630s and '40s, the first few decades of settlement, when towns were being carved out of the wilderness.

First in a well-researched series about Herodias's life (which promises to get more scandalous as it continues), Rebel Puritan was self-published, though don't let this dissuade you from checking it out. Professionally written and packaged, it stands up well against any mainstream novel on the market. (One distraction: the characters' thoughts are written in single quotes, almost like dialogue, but I got used to this after a while.) If you enjoy realistic novels about strong women from early America, this is a must-read.

Rebel Puritan was published by Neverest Press in January 2011 at $16.99 (trade pb, 324pp). You can order it, like I did, through the author's website for the cover price plus postage. Visit Christy English's blog for a guest post from the author, who writes about her experience with self-publishing.

A look at Priya Parmar's Exit the Actress

2011-04-30T10:00:00.004-05:00

Like its vivacious heroine, Priya Parmar’s Exit the Actress arrives with none of the trappings normally associated with royal mistresses. The title and cover suggest a career woman most at home at the theatre, a description that suits Ellen Gwyn very well.

Twelve years old in 1662, Ellen grows up with an alcoholic mother in Coal Yard Alley on London’s Drury Lane, and narrowly avoids sinking into prostitution like her older sister, Rose. First an oyster girl and then an orange seller at the Theatre Royal, Ellen’s liveliness and skill in dancing are noted by members of the company, who devote time to nurturing her gifts.

Through their tutelage, Ellen develops from an uncultured girl into a talented actress. Her unfashionable red hair and bubbly outlook give her the common touch that audiences adore, especially when she’s given roles that fit her personality. Her inner circle includes the famous names of the day – John Dryden, the Earl of Rochester, Peg Hughes – and she has liaisons with two suitors. However, no man seems worthy of her until she attracts the notice of Charles II. Like Ellen, he keeps his most private self offstage.

Interspersed with Ellen’s diary entries are short sections that replicate primary sources of the day: personal notes, recipes, broadsheet columns, memoranda, and other announcements. Taken together they form a sweeping portrait of the Restoration era, from the playhouses to the intrigue-filled royal court, and from the Second Anglo-Dutch War through the Great Fire and after. Through Ellen’s eyes, we get her gossipy impressions of Barbara Castlemaine, the king’s grasping longtime mistress, and of his barren Portuguese queen, who she comes to admire rather than pity.

Ellen’s early life couldn’t be more distant from that of Queen Henrietta Maria, writing advice-filled letters to her son and daughter, but her world and the royal family’s world gradually intersect. Parmar lets us observe Ellen’s transformation through her narration, which adjusts as she grows in sophistication and confidence. Her famous wit may seem lacking early on, but it emerges later in the story.

Some of the middle sections move more slowly than the rest, and some of the fonts used in the book are too small or ornate to invite close reading, but all in all it’s a most enjoyable novel. Whether or not you believe the real Nell Gwyn would have been a devoted journal writer, it’s an imaginative re-creation, an engaging portrait of a vibrant young woman and the age in which she lived.

Exit the Actress was published by Touchstone/Simon & Schuster in February at $16.00 ($18.99 in Canada). Trade pb, 446pp.

Daughters of Summer

2011-04-28T08:00:00.004-05:00

Or, a visual preview of the spring/summer season, part one...

This debut romantic novel set in Restoration London, a glorious city about to be invaded by the plague, stars Susannah Leyton, daughter of a Fleet Street apothecary. A surprising marriage proposal rescues her from an unpleasant family situation but causes other problems. Piatkus (UK), August.

Does 1968 count as historical for you? I wasn't around then, so it does for me. This debut novel by a prizewinning short story writer takes place at a New England prep school which, through a clerical mistake, enrolls its first female student - a brilliant black teenager. Knopf, June.

The title of Dennis's 18th-century romantic adventure derives from Alfred Noyes's poem "The Highwayman," and the plot retells the story in epic fashion. The heroine, Elizabeth "Bess" Wyndham, is a writer of Gothic novels who meets a man remarkably like one of her books' characters. First pb release of a novel previously published for the library market. Sourcebooks, August.

This debut novel by a Midwestern academic takes me back to my old stomping grounds of southern New England. In Warwick, Rhode Island, in the summer of 1934, Anne Dodge comes face to face with her Portuguese heritage and the truth about her parents' marriage. Overlook, July.

This lengthy saga is the product of AmazonEncore, a bookseller imprint specializing in identifying highly-rated self-published works and reissuing them for a wider market. It spans four generations of Vietnamese women - a royal concubine and her descendants - throughout the 20th century. A copy arrived in my mail last week. AmazonEncore, April.

Fiorato writes lyrical historical fiction about strong women from Italian history. Her latest takes place (per the title) in Siena in the early 18th century, at the time of the Palio - the city's famous horse race. Can I just say I want this gown for myself (the color is perfect) and the book itself is gorgeous - it's on my pile to review. St. Martin's Griffin, May.

Green's Daughters of War is first in a new trilogy about nurses during WWI; in the Balkans, two young women render aid on the battlefield and discover unexpected romance. Severn House, August.

From the title, you'll have guessed this YA historical novel centers around witches. In 16th-century Somerset, a servant girl at Montacute House is accused of witchcraft following the disappearance of several boys from her village. Hyperion, April.

The story of Abigail Lovell, a young woman in Revolutionary-era Boston, who goes to great lengths (even defying her Loyalist father) to aid the American rebellion. The blurb compares it to Sally Gunning's Bound, which is enough to get me to pay attention. Pegasus, September.

The girl in the green dress is Bertha, orphaned daughter of Emma Bovary, who leaves her grandmother's farm in the French countryside to make a new life for herself in high-society Paris, as the apprentice to fashion designer Charles Frederick Worth. Bantam, August.

Book review: The Bride's House, by Sandra Dallas

2011-04-23T15:24:00.000-05:00

Sandra Dallas is a bestselling novelist whose works, puzzlingly, always seemed to have greater appeal to mainstream readers than to fans of her chosen genre of historical fiction. When I saw her latest novel come up for review on LibraryThing, I figured it was time I picked up one of her books and learned what I’d been missing.

A sweeping novel of family ties, long-held secrets, and the continuing search for love, The Bride’s House tells of three women linked by blood, circumstance, and the large white Victorian house in Georgetown, Colorado, that becomes home for each in turn. Though very different personality-wise, all are plain-spoken, tenacious, and eager to please, and all struggle to find happiness.

For Nealie Bent, a 17-year-old runaway whose striking looks and vibrant personality attract the eye of local miners, the newly built residence symbolizes her desire to rise above her status as a hired girl at a Georgetown boardinghouse in 1880. She has her choice of men, preferring sophisticated engineer Will Spaulding over uncouth yet reliable Charlie Dumas (and who wouldn’t, at seventeen?). Her choice, combined with Will’s subsequent betrayal of her, is the novel’s most predictable aspect.

Pearl, a shy and plain spinster of 30 in the year 1912, is adored by her wealthy father, who relies on her so heavily that he chases away potential suitors. Her decision to pursue a romance with a handsome businessman sets father and daughter against one another and transforms her life – not necessarily for the better.

And for 18-year-old Susan, an heiress growing up in 1950s-era Chicago, the Bride’s House brings back memories of childhood summers in the mountains, a time of intense peer pressure and her growing love for a neighborhood boy with big dreams. Outside politics don't play a strong role except in this section, which is set against the backdrop of the Korean War.

While the characters are recognizable types, and sometimes behave in frustrating ways – the devoted family housekeeper despairs of Pearl’s excessive timidity, too – they still have many surprises in store. The flowing style drew me in, and the emotional shifts in the plot had a way of raising my spirits then filling them with sorrow moments later.

The women’s choices are driven not just by their temperament but also by their social and financial situations and the prevailing mores of the time. “Georgetown doesn’t seem like a place where conventions matter much,” Will tells Nealie early on, but that’s never exactly true. Over the next 70 years, as rough-and-tumble shacks give way to elegant homes, the demand for silver rises and falls, and mining towns become ghost towns and then tourist attractions, attitudes loosen in some ways but not others.

As Dallas reveals in the acknowledgments, the novel’s centerpiece is based on a house that the she and her husband bought as a derelict and restored to its former glory. Her affection for it and for the region as a whole is ever-present; Georgetown, with its distinctive mountain charm, is not just a haven for fortune-seekers but also for dreamers and anyone looking to start anew.

With all three strands woven together, The Bride’s House became a more complex story than I expected from such a straightforward telling. A comfortable novel about women’s lives, it will resonate strongly with female readers, who will take away from it the pervading theme of how we’re all shaped by our circumstances but shouldn’t be defined by them.

The Bride's House will be published by St. Martin's Press on April 26th (this coming Tuesday) in hardcover at $24.99/$28.99 in Canada (352pp).

Book review: The Bonus, by Georgia Lowe

2011-04-15T18:20:00.004-05:00

Georgia Lowe's debut novel The Bonus shines light on a pivotal and regrettably obscure event from the Depression era. In 1932, over 20,000 destitute and desperate WWI veterans banded together to persuade the government to pay their wartime service bonuses early. Calling themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force, they arrived from all over the U.S. to converge on the nation’s capital and sway public opinion in their favor.

Lowe incorporates multiple viewpoints, primarily that of Will Hardy, a reporter assigned to cover the story for the Los Angeles Herald Express, and his girlfriend Bonnie, a statuesque red-headed starlet. Because the LA-based contingent to Washington is led by disabled actor Royal Robertson, Will wonders if their cause is a publicity stunt, but he’s soon persuaded of the rightness of their journey – even though going along with them as a journalist makes him uneasy. A veteran hit with occasional shell-shock, Will doesn't want any reminders of his army days. Bonnie returns to her career after Will leaves, but she misses him terribly, even though she’s confused about his feelings for her. Disillusioned with Hollywood, and eager to help her friend Myrna leave a bad situation, the women set out to find him - and find help along the way.

DC police superintendent Pelham Glassford gets his tale told, too. Based on past experience, he expects President Hoover to be sympathetic to the marchers, but he isn't. As thousands of hungry, determined, and unkempt veterans and their families settle into Washington, a “ragtag army invasion from a forgotten war,” Glassford does what he can to ensure they're given shelter and fed, though the feds aren't on his side. The Senate rejects the Bonus Bill passed by the House, rumors are spread about the veterans’ Communist beliefs (mostly untrue), and Hoover calls in the army – under General MacArthur – to clear out their makeshift campsites. It’s not a pretty scene.

Not just a vivid portrait of the unrest stirring in Washington, The Bonus also invites readers to take a firsthand look at the hopeless conditions throughout Depression-era America. Lowe re-creates the times with a sure hand: the blistering heat as the caravan of dying vehicles passes through Arizona in June, farm families evicted from their land in Dust Bowl Oklahoma, and veterans living in railway boxcars since they have nowhere else to go. The poverty hasn't affected downtown LA nearly as much, although the traffic there is horrendous. Some things never change.

The dialogue is pulpy and casual, peppered with coarse and authentic slang. (Newspapers are “Hoover blankets,” for one, which pretty well shows what people thought of Hoover.) As the plot breezes along, readers get to absorb the plight of female vets and Americans of mixed race through the clever placement of minor characters. A sweet love story, a wrenching social drama, and a vigorous defense of First Amendment rights, The Bonus is especially good at showing the strong bonds that develop between people when their luck is down. These downtrodden citizens epitomize the spirit of America better than their elected government does.

Toward the end, the main plotline sometimes gets buried in the mechanics of the political machine Glassford has to push through. Overall, however, Lowe successfully transforms scenes from faded black and white photographs into living, breathing color. Will and Bonnie are based on her parents, who were Bonus Marchers, and with her entertaining and enlightening novel, she has done justice to their story.

The Bonus was published by Lucky Dime Press in Oct 2010 at $18.95 (pb, 398pp).