Historical Novels Review | Issue 107 (February 2024) by The Historical Novel Society

H I S T O R IC A L

NOV EL S REVIEW

ISSUE 107

REGENCY ROMANCE Ensuring Appeal for a New Generation | More on page 8

February 2024

F E AT U R ED I N T H IS ISSU E ... Re-embodying the Past A Trio of Biofictions Prompts Questions Page 10

Crete Expectations Eleanor Kuhns on Her New Series Page 12

Genealogical Tall Tales Elizabeth Gonzalez James' Old West Epic Page 12

A True Crime Springboard Eleni Kyriacou's Crime-based Fiction Page 14

Gilded Age Murder Mariah Fredericks' The Wharton Plot Page 15

Historical Fiction Market News Page 1

New Voices Page 4

History & Film Page 6

A publication of the Historical Novel Society | www.historicalnovelsociety.org

H I S T O R IC A L

NOV EL S REVIEW ISSN 1471-7492

P U BLISH E R

Douglas Kemp <douglaskemp62@gmail.com> Publisher Coverage: Allison & Busby; Canelo; Penguin Random House UK; Quercus

Ann Lazim <annlazim@googlemail.com> Publisher Coverage: All UK children’s historicals

R E V I E WS E DI T O R S , U SA Kate Braithwaite

Richard Lee

<kate.braithwaite@gmail.com> Publisher Coverage: Poisoned Pen Press; Skyhorse; Sourcebooks; and Soho

Marine Cottage, The Strand, Starcross, Devon EX6 8NY UK <richard@historicalnovelsociety.org>

Peggy Kurkowski

EDI TOR I AL BOA R D Managing Editor: Bethany Latham Houston Cole Library, Jacksonville State University 700 Pelham Road North, Jacksonville, AL 36265-1602 USA <blatham@jsu.edu>

Book Review Editor: Sarah Johnson Booth Library, Eastern Illinois University, 600 Lincoln Avenue, Charleston, IL 61920 USA <sljohnson2@eiu.edu> Publisher Coverage: Bethany House; Five Star; HarperCollins; IPG; Penguin Random House (all imprints); Severn House; Australian presses; university presses; and US children's/YA publishers

Features Editor: Lucinda Byatt 13 Park Road, Edinburgh, EH6 4LE UK <textline13@gmail.com>

New Voices Column Editor: Myfanwy Cook 47 Old Exeter Road, Tavistock, Devon PL19 OJE UK <myfanwyc@btinternet.com>

R EV I EWS EDI TOR S, U K Ben Bergonzi <bergonziben@gmail.com> Publisher Coverage: Birlinn/Polygon; Duckworth Overlook; Faber & Faber; Granta; HarperCollins UK; Little Brown; Orenda; Orion; Pan Macmillan; Simon & Schuster UK

Alan Fisk <alan.fisk@alanfisk.com> Publisher Coverage: Aardvark Bureau; Black and White; Bonnier Zaffre; Crooked Cat; Freight; Gallic; Honno; Karnac; Legend; Pushkin; Oldcastle; Quartet; Sandstone; Saraband; Seren; Serpent’s Tail

Edward James <busywords_ed@yahoo.com> Publisher Coverage: Arcadia; Atlantic Books; Bloomsbury; Canongate; Head of Zeus; Glagoslav; Hodder Headline (inc. Coronet, Hodder & Stoughton, NEL, Sceptre); John Murray; Pen & Sword; Robert Hale; Alma; The History Press

<pegkurkowski@gmail.com> Publisher Coverage: Bloomsbury; Macmillan (all imprints); Grove/ Atlantic; and Simon & Schuster (all imprints)

Janice Ottersberg <jkottersberg@gmail.com> Publisher Coverage: Amazon Publishing; Europa; Guernica; Hachette; Kensington; Pegasus; and W.W. Norton

Misty Urban <misty@historicalnovelsociety.org.> Publisher Coverage: North American small presses

R E V I E WS E DI T O R , I N DI E J. Lynn Else <jlynn@historicalnovelsociety.org> Publisher Coverage: all self- and subsidy-published novels

EDITORIAL POLICY & COPYRIGHT Reviews, articles, and letters may be edited for reasons of space, clarity, and grammatical correctness. We will endeavour to reflect the authors’ intent as closely as possible, and will contact the authors for approval of any major change. We welcome ideas for articles, but have specific requirements to consider. Before submitting material, please contact the editor to discuss whether the proposed article is appropriate for Historical Novels Review. In all cases, the copyright remains with the authors of the articles. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the authors concerned.

M E M B E R S H I P DE TA I L S THE HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY was formed in 1997 to help promote historical fiction. We are an open society — if you want to get involved, get in touch. MEMBERSHIP in the Historical Novel Society entitles members to all the year’s publications: four issues of Historical Novels Review, as well as exclusive membership benefits through the Society website. Back issues of Society magazines are also available. For current rates, please see: https://historicalnovelsociety.org/members/join/

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EDI TOR I AL U P DAT ES

ISSU E 107 F EBRUA RY 2024

Welcome to Bonnie DeMoss as the co-editor for indie reviews; Bonnie will be working alongside longtime reviews editor J. Lynn Else.

COLU M NS 1

Historical Fiction Market News Sarah Johnson

New Voices Emma R. Alban, Avery Cunningham, Sarah Marsh & Joel H. Morris | Myfanwy Cook History & Film Animated Historical Documentaries | Alexander Smith

F E AT U R ES & I N T E RV I EWS 8

Regency Romance Ensuring the Genre’s Appeal for New Generations of Readers

Flowers of Evil (WayBack Press, July 2023) by N. L. Holmes, first in the new Hani’s Daughter series, is a cozy mystery set in ancient Egypt.

Crete Expectations Eleanor Kuhns on Her New Series Genealogical Tall Tales Elizabeth Gonzalez James' Old West Family Epic A True Crime Springboard Eleni Kyriacou Uses a True Crime as a Springboard to Fiction by Marilyn Pemberton

Gilded Age Murder Mariah Fredericks Discusses The Wharton Plot by Sarah Johnson

R EV I EWS 16

We appreciate knowing about our members’ new books! If you’ve written a historical novel or nonfiction work published (or to be published) in November 2023 or after, send the following details to me at sljohnson2@eiu.edu or @readingthepast by April 7 to be featured here: author, title, publisher, release date, and a blurb of one sentence or less. Space is limited, so concise blurbs are appreciated. Details will appear in the May 2024 issue of HNR. Submissions may be edited.

Re-embodying the Past A Trio of Biofictions Prompts Some Questions

by Jean Huets

N E W BO OK S BY H NS M E M BE R S

by Raymond H. Thompson

by Douglas Kemp

The position of US children’s and YA reviews editor is currently vacant, so if you’d have interest in overseeing book reviews of historical fiction for young people, please get in touch. This is a volunteer role for a US-based individual, requiring a couple of hours/ week, on average, and slightly more around the quarterly magazine deadlines.

Growing up in Queen Victoria’s rules, loving under the shadow of the law: read more in Jane Stubbs’ His Wife’s Sister (Independently published, June 6, 2023).

by Lucinda Byatt

HISTORICAL FICTION MARKET NEWS

Book Reviews Editors’ choice and more

As Good as a Fire by Sharon O. Lightholder (Albedo Press, Aug. 6, 2023) exposes the American presence in Tsingtao, China when Peg Ryan joins her Marine fighter pilot husband in 1947, lives a complex life in the city with her daughter, befriends others, and discovers the city’s layered complexity; but as Mao’s troops pose a threat, she wonders if her decision to move to China has saved or destroyed her family. Shining Threads by Joy Bounds (The Book Guild, Aug. 30, 2023) is based on the remarkable life of composer and suffragette Ethel Smyth, who lived at a time when women were not expected to have ambitious dreams. N. L. Holmes’s The Moon That Fell from Heaven (Red Adept Publishing, Sept. 2023) tells a tale of political intrigue and romance in Bronze Age Ugarit. Growing up in Havana in the 1750s, José Albañez is drawn into his uncle’s Caribbean smuggling network and must decide where his duty lies, in Fearful Breakers by Janice Sebring (Antimacassar Books, Sept. 27, 2023). Scott Douglas Prill’s Where the Corn Grows Tallest (Independently published, Sept. 29, 2023) is a murder mystery based in rural Iowa during primarily the fall of 1970, and inspired by a true event.

A publication of the Historical Novel Society | www.historicalnovelsociety.org

Offspring of the most notorious love affair in the Middle Ages, Astralabe has been ignored by historians and misrepresented by fiction writers; Brenda M. Cook’s biography Astralabe: The Life and Times of the Son of Heloise and Abelard (Palgrave Macmillan, Oct. 2, 2023) relates the story of the real man making his way through the upheavals of 12th-century Brittany and Burgundy. Jakob, a simple farmer, is determined to gain justice for his daughter, against the odds, in The Matchstick Boy by Rowena Kinread (Goldcrest Books, Oct. 10, 2023).

In Jason Zeitler’s debut novel The Half-Caste (Polyphony Press, Dec. 2023), two friends, who first meet in London, fight against the evils of fascism and imperialism in 1930s England and Ceylon.

At What Cost, Silence? by Karen Lynne Klink (She Writes Press, Oct. 17, 2023), set in East Texas just prior to the American Civil War, is about understanding the costs of silence—when something dire or abusive happens to a person and they feel they can’t speak up.

Will Somers, Henry VIII’s court jester, is back in the second outing of the King’s Fool Mysteries, The Twilight Queen by Jeri Westerson (Severn House, Jan. 2), when a dead man is discovered in Queen Anne Boleyn’s private quarters and it’s up to Will to solve the crime and keep the queen safe from conspiracies designed to bring her down.

Fire on the Frontier by Kenneth Kunkel (Valeria Press, Oct. 17, 2023) is a novel of revenge and redemption where a Roman soldier vows vengeance against the barbarians who killed his parents when he was infant; his journey will lead to the Teutoburg Forest where three legions will clash with the tribes of Germania.

In Louis Mie and the Trial of Hautefaye by L.M. Twist (Books and Hooves Publishing, LLC), in the turbulent aftermath of Napoleon III’s fall, lawyer Louis Mie grapples with the conflicting forces of justice, love, and personal ambition as he defends a murderer in a highstakes political trial that threatens to shatter his life and marriage.

Deb Stratas’ The War Twins of London (Readmore Press, Oct. 26, 2023) throws identical twins Tillie and Maggie Kingston into dangerous war work, as the Blitz rains bombs all around them: can true love prevail when the skies are darkened by war?

The true story of the mixed race, bisexual mystic who became a bishop’s murderous obsession explodes the wiki-fable of Hypatia of Alexandria in Hypatia: In Her Own Words by Lukman Clark (Six Sticks Productions, Jan. 18).

While visiting Hastings, historian Maggie Winegarden discovers the diaries of Elizabeth Siddal, Dante Rossetti’s wife, and his sister Christina Rossetti, and wonders what secrets they hold, as told in The Rossetti Diaries, the second historical novel by Kathleen Williams Renk (Bedazzled Ink, Nov. 2., 2023).

The Queen of War is Book 6 in The Norsewomen Series by Johanna Wittenberg (Shellback Studio, Jan. 31).

The Bottle Conjuror: Book One – Stefan, co-authored by John Kachuba and Jack Gagliardo (Beck and Branch Publishers, Nov. 2023), is an 18th-century historical fantasy set in London. Medical correspondent Alice Simmons turns defeat into the scoop of her career after an assault ends her journalistic ambitions and forces her work as a nurse at an American Red Cross hospital during 1918, in An American Nurse in Paris - Novels of the Great War, the debut novel of John F. Andrews (Amazon KDP, Nov. 7, 2023). Alistair Tosh’s new Roman historical novel Warrior (Independently published, Nov. 10, 2023), set in AD 150, is third in the Edge of Empire Series. Comfort’s Rebellion by E. Jax Willoughby (QsynQ Publishing, Nov. 12, 2023) portrays the early life of America’s first genderfluid preacher, the Public Universal Friend, as they struggle to save New Englanders from the wages of sin before the impending End Times, unless accusations of blasphemy crush their mission. At the end of WW2, a wanna-be teen actress stuck on a small farm in Tennessee is assaulted by an escaped Nazi POW from a nearby camp, forcing her to choose between Motherhood or Hollywood; read more in The Farm by Randy O’Brien (Addison & Highsmith, Nov. 21, 2023). In Remnants (Nov. 28, 2023), sequel to Pete Sheild’s debut, Bad Medicine, protagonist Jimmy Marino is struggling in his relationship with his girlfriend, Sarah, in 1977, and remnants of his past—including the life-threatening pursuit of the Thomas Jefferson Peace Medal with his grandfather and the disappearance of two crooked lawmen— ignite a spiritual journey.

Amsterdam Ascendant: A Novel of Rebellion, Faith, and Daring Enterprise that Launch a Golden Age by Judith W. Richards (Aries Books, Nov. 30, 2023) is a gripping action-adventure story set in the turbulent latter 1500s and is Book One of the Van der Voort Family Saga.

COLUMNS | Issue 107, February 2024

In Locked in Silence by Natalie Zellat Dyen (Black Rose Writing, Feb. 1), it’s 1848 when a young woman accused of murdering her baby is sentenced to four years of solitary confinement in Philadelphia’s notorious Eastern State Penitentiary, where the unremitting silence and isolation take a toll on her sanity and leave her struggling after her release to reassemble the fragments of her broken life. In Edward McSweegan’s The Fever Hut (Fireship Press, Feb. 21), epidemic yellow fever threatens national ambitions and individual lives as Duncan Cleary, a young army doctor, works with Walter Reed to find a cure—and fame—during the last days of the 19th century. The Loose Thread by Liz Harris (Heywood Press, Feb. 27), first in a trilogy of standalone novels about the Hammond sisters, takes place in 1938, as Rose Hammond married and moved to Jersey; in the middle of June, 1940, the British Government cut the Channel Islands loose from its protection, and at the end of June, the Germans moved in and occupied Jersey for 5 years. In Eric Foster’s Becoming St. Patrick - His Mission (Matador, Feb. 28), sequel to His Slavery, Patrick defies the pagan Druids and builds Christian churches, incurring deadly retaliation culminating in an epic, bloody battle; this page-turning story sees Patrick elevated to patron saint of Ireland. Susan Higginbotham’s The Queen of the Platform (Onslow Press, Mar. 12) tells the story of the indomitable nineteenth-century feminist Ernestine Rose, whose fearless advocacy helped bring about the rights women enjoy today. One lie changes a family’s path for generations—and finally brings them back to an Ireland changed beyond recognition in The Keeper of Secrets by Maria McDonald (Bloodhound Books UK, Mar. 26). 1584: an unsuspecting girl is plucked from an orphanage on the orders

of the Medici family with the promise of a dowry and a husband; only when it is too late is she told how she must earn them, in The Maiden of Florence by Katherine Mezzacappa (Fairlight Books, Apr. 18).

N E W P U BL I SH I NG DE A LS Sources include authors and publishers, Publishers Weekly, Publishers Marketplace, The Bookseller, and more. Email me at sljohnson2@eiu. edu or tweet @readingthepast to have your publishing deal included. You may also submit news via the Contact Us form on the HNS website. Peggy Joque Williams’s debut historical novel, Courting the Sun, set in 17th century France, centers on a young woman surprised by an invitation to the court of King Louis XIV to serve as maiden of honor to his mistress, but who goes not knowing of her mother’s secret past with the King. It was acquired by Black Rose Writing for a May 2024 release. Precipice, the new novel from Robert Harris, about the scandalous love affair between aristocratic socialite Venetia Stanley and Prime Minister H. H. Asquith in the summer of 1914, and how the secrets contained in their correspondence became a matter of national security, sold to Cornerstone (UK/Commonwealth rights) for publication this August. Carolyn Williams at Doubleday acquired, via Bridget Smith at JABberwocky Literary Agency, Our Rotten Hearts by Allison Epstein (Let the Dead Bury the Dead), which retells Oliver Twist from the viewpoint of Dickens’ antagonist Jacob Fagin, a reimagining described as “reclaiming the morally complicated character from the anti-Semitic stereotype.” Modern Girls author Jennifer S. Brown’s new novel The Whisper Sister of Baxter Street, a Jazz Age-set novel following a Jewish immigrant as she assumes control of a speakeasy on NYC’s Lower East Side after her father goes to jail, and the challenges she faces, sold to Lake Union’s Alicia Clancy via Stephanie Abou at Massie & McQuilkin. The Man in the Stone Cottage by Stephanie Cowell (most recently the author of The Boy in the Rain), a novel of the Brontë sisters set in Yorkshire in 1846, following Charlotte’s early writing journey and Emily’s secret romance with a shepherd living in a stone cottage on the moor, sold to Jaynie Royal at Regal House for fall 2025 publication. Shana Drehs at Sourcebooks Landmark acquired Diana R. Chambers’ The Secret Life of Julia Child, focusing on the well-known chef’s remarkable WWII service in the OSS, where she worked under General “Wild Bill” Donovan, via Pamela Malpas at Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency for fall/winter 2024 publication. Booker finalist and Women’s Prize for Fiction winner Ruth Ozeki’s To Live, For Now, described as set during the Taishō era in early 20th-century Japan, against a backdrop of the feminist and activist movement of the time, sold to Ibrahim Ahmad at Viking via Molly Friedrich and Lucy Carson at Friedrich Agency; Canadian rights went to Deborah Sun de la Cruz at Penguin Canada, UK rights to Jenny Fry at Canongate, and ANZ rights to Michael Heyward at Text, via Caspian Dennis at Abner Stein, on behalf of The Friedrich Agency. Set during the last years of the Golden Age of the Netherlands, and inspired by the author’s heritage and local folklore, Petal White and Water Dark by Hester Fox, pitched as a gender-flipped Little Mermaid, sold to Sara Rodgers at Graydon House, in a two-book deal, by Jane Dystel at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.

Three new historical novels by Elizabeth Chadwick set in 14thcentury England, a duology about young royal Joan of Kent, called Jeanette, cousin to Edward III; and a novel on royal mistress Katherine Swynford, sold to Sphere (world English rights) via agent Isobel Dixon at Blake Friedmann. The first book about Jeanette, The Royal Rebel, focusing on this remarkable medieval woman’s younger years, is slated for September 2024 publication. The Last of Earth by Deepa Anappara, her second novel, following three travelers (one Indian and two British) as they prepare to enter the restrictive kingdom of Tibet in the 19th century, each having their own secret motivation, sold to Juliet Mabey at Oneworld (UK), Caitlin McKenna at Random House (N. America), and Manasi Subramaniam at Penguin India, by Matthew Turner and Peter Straus at Rogers, Coleridge & White. Joseph Cassara (House of Impossible Beauties)’s new novel Wood, about noted painter Grant Wood, best known for American Gothic, spanning the late 19th century through the Depression, sold to Helen Atsma at Ecco via Ellen Levine at Trident Media Group. Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction winner Lucy Caldwell’s These Days, exploring two sisters’ private lives as they endure the brutality of the Blitz in Belfast along with their family, sold to Caolinn Douglas at SJP Lit, for publication in spring 2025, by Krys Kujawinska at Faber & Faber. The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear, her 18th and final historical mystery featuring Maisie Dobbs, sold to Bronwen Hruska at Soho Press, the series’ original publisher, with Juliet Grames editing, by Amy Rennert at her own agency; publication will be this June. Pitched as “Arya Stark meets Sarah Dunant’s In the Company of the Courtesan,” Alyssa Palombo’s The Assassin of Venice, a suspenseful historical novel set in the 16th century, sold to Toni Kirkpatrick at Crooked Lane via Sam Farkas at Jill Grinberg Literary Management; publication is this June.

OTHER NEW AND FORT HCOM I NG T I T LE S For forthcoming novels through late 2024, please see our guides, compiled by Fiona Sheppard: https://historicalnovelsociety.org/guides/forthcoming-historicalnovels/

COM PI LED BY SA R A H JOH NSON Sarah Johnson is Book Review Editor of HNR, a librarian, readers’ advisor, and author of reference books. She reviews for Booklist and CHOICE and blogs about historical novels at readingthepast.com. Her latest book is Historical Fiction II: A Guide to the Genre.

A publication of the Historical Novel Society | www.historicalnovelsociety.org

NEW VOICES Colourful characters and intriguing historical insights set against periods of social, economic and political transition are intertwined in the debut novels of Emma R. Alban, Avery Cunningham, Sarah Marsh, and Joel H. Morris.

events, and read journals and newspapers created by the Deaf community at the time. For me, the story is about the challenges of being deaf in a hearing world, but also the ways in which we find meaningful connection and community.” The challenges facing the characters in Emma R. Alban’s Don’t Want You Like A Best Friend (Avon, 2024) are strikingly different to those facing Ellen, Marsh’s central character.

Sarah Marsh

Emma R. Alban

Avery Cunningham

Joel Morris

“There’s a reason the London Marriage Market has long captured the imagination of Romance authors,” says Alban. “A woman’s whole future (and often that of her family) could ride on securing the proper match, and a man’s social status was likewise tied to his ability to secure the best bride. For authors, the marriage mart is full of inherent conflict. It presents myriad storytelling opportunities for banter, misunderstandings, covert meetings, and high-strung feelings.”

A Sign of Her Own (Park Row/Tinder Press, 2024) “tells the story of a young deaf woman and the Deaf community’s role in the invention of the telephone,” relates its author, Sarah Marsh. “I was inspired to write it partly by my own experience. I grew up using hearing aids and lipreading to communicate, and only started learning British Sign Language as an adult. I began reading about Deaf history because I wanted to place my experience in a larger context. Why had deaf people so often had so little access to sign language? I was amazed to learn that the person behind one of technology’s biggest breakthroughs in communication, Alexander Graham Bell, had played a considerable role. As an educator, Bell’s work focused on speech training, and he strongly discouraged the use of sign language.” She continues: “I became fascinated by Bell’s students. His work with them paved his way to the invention of the telephone, and yet there was relatively little information about them in the historical records (with exception of Mabel Hubbard, who became his wife). What had their experience been as they were measured by Bell’s yardstick of perfect speech? As I wondered about them, the voice of my protagonist began to take shape. Ellen Lark came to me as a character who would tell a story about Bell that was mostly hidden in history.” The Deaf community in the 19th century became a subject of special interest for Marsh. “As Bell focused on forging connections with the telephone, I wanted Ellen to make connections of her own. It was a joy to step into the past with her as I researched Deaf spaces and

COLUMNS | Issue 107, February 2024

What excited Alban most about writing Don’t Want You Like a Best Friend, she explains, “was the idea of taking that familiar, high-stakes setting, and giving it a twist. In Beth and Gwen’s story, I realized I had found an entirely different lens into the Marriage Market. I could play with all the familiar tropes, but could also write a story about two queer young women finding themselves amid all the pomp and circumstance, without sacrificing any of what we come to the genre to read. Queer people have always been here, and many of them went through the marriage market. It excited me immensely to get to tell a queer season story; to show that queer people have found love and happiness across time.” Guiding her “sapphic debutantes through promenading, Ascot races, regattas, the opera, and the many teas of the season gave me so much room to play with the social mores, class issues, sexual politics, and gender norms of the time,” she continues. “Researching each season’s event and picking the ones that would provide the best setting for Beth and Gwen’s (often ill-fated) attempts at parenttrapping was a delight. What was it really like to stand cheek-tojowl in 1850s fashion? How would you go about conducting your marriage search (or avoiding it) in all that fabric? Hoop skirts were incredibly freeing for women in the late 1850s, but they were also an adjustment, and it was true fun to use that transition as one of the pillars of the book. In fact, adjusting to the hoopskirt helped me zero in on Beth’s character arc, as she goes from unsteady to confident in both her life and in her fashion.” Avery Cunningham’s The Mayor of Maxwell Street (Hyperion Avenue, 2024) drew a lot of her inspiration from the early “2020s media,” she relates. “At the time, Black characters were being incorporated into settings that traditionally did not represent us. And while I appreciated the representation, I was hungry for a story that made us the primary narrative. Books like The Original Black Elite by Elizabeth Dowling Taylor and Our Kind of People by Lawrence Otis Graham awakened me to the luxurious truth of Black wealth from as far back as the 1700s, but they also showed me how little this vibrant aspect of American history is honored or explored.” The secondary inspirations for Cunningham’s debut novel were “the infamous 1920s and the novel that embodies the era, The Great Gatsby,” she says. “It is a fascinating tale of wealth, intrigue, and the American Dream, and a narrative I thought primed for the Black experience.”

From there, she continues, she “set out to write a novel about the world of the original Black upper class awash in the bright lights of the ´20s. And while that is still the core of what The Mayor of Maxwell Street strives to be, it is now so much more than a Gatsby retelling.”

(and others’) mythologizing. In writing All Our Yesterdays, I sought to separate fact from fiction, stripping away the poetic renderings of the characters and enlivening them with their history before weaving them back into the context of the play.”

As a result, “The Mayor of Maxwell Street became a story of the Great Migration, classism within the Black community, the corruption of the ´20s, the diversity of Chicago, and the moral sacrifices we are forced to make when challenging this country’s status quo, especially during times when that status quo is changing.”

Somehow Morris wanted to “restore a version of Lady Macbeth’s story to her, to give her a voice and question whether we might sympathize with her, see her hard-won position through her eyes,” he says. “As with so many women of the time, there was little record to go on. I imagined what she might have struggled with as a woman— albeit a powerful one—still under the control of men, married off for political purposes. I was also intrigued by the Macbeths’ marriage, their love for one another, evident in Shakespeare’s play. In giving Lady Macbeth agency, I also wanted to address those aspects of the play that make her so compelling, turn them from villainy into humanity: she briefly mentions motherhood, and that became an important focus for her character. But she is very intelligent, and ultimately her guilt drives her to despair. In other words, she is very human, and if I can give her any story, maybe it is just that.”

Cunningham discovered that “the ´20s were boozy, flashy, and provocative, but they were also pivotal. Through writers such as Isabel Wilkerson, I learned just how transitional this time was for the Black elite. These families and communities were exposing their own prejudices to other Black Americans that relocated during the Great Migration while trying to hold on to the wealth and status that shielded them from the worst of this country’s oppression. The wall that separated some from others was starting to wear away, and that contention gives a true and necessary grime to much of the gild in The Mayor of Maxwell Street.” All Our Yesterdays (Putnam, 2024) by debut novelist Joel H. Morris explores an intriguing question: “How many historical figures are subjected to a complete reversal, where modern opinion of them is almost the exact opposite of recorded fact? Shakespeare’s Macbeth has almost singlehandedly reshaped what most of us know of the history of the titular Scottish king.” Joel H. Morris has a PhD in comparative literature. He was a recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and has been “reading and teaching this play for over a decade now,” he states. “From the start, I was intrigued by the fact that it is itself a work of historical fiction, completely reimagining the figures of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and weaving an intriguing murder plot where Lady Macbeth—as ambitious wife—takes much of the blame. Of course, the actual Lady Macbeth had nothing to do with King Duncan’s death. The ‘real’ Macbeth defeated his cousin Duncan in battle, then went on to rule Scotland for an astonishing seventeen years. Such was the security of his kingdom that he could travel to Rome with little worry of usurpers taking advantage of his absence.” Morris explains that if Lady Macbeth “is one of Shakespeare’s most famous villains, I wanted to explore how Lady Macbeth’s historical person—the granddaughter of a fallen king who marries one of the most powerful men in Scotland—was obscured by Shakespeare’s

Each of the debut novelists featured in this column has managed to show their readers a different element of change in the periods of history they have written about. In part they have achieved this through the medium of the characters they have created in order to engage and entertain their readers.

W R I T T EN BY M Y FA N W Y COOK Myfanwy Cook is an Associate University Fellow. She designs and facilitates writing workshops and is an avid reader of historical crime fiction. Please do contact (myfanwyc@btinternet.com) if you uncover any debut novelists you would like to see featured.

A publication of the Historical Novel Society | www.historicalnovelsociety.org

HISTORY & FILM Beyond Realism: Why Animated Historical Documentaries Matter

Above: Many of the interviews featured in Waltz with Bashir were shot in live action, which was later animated using a combination of digital painting and Flash animation. This led to a common misconception that rotoscoping was used in numerous scenes in order to achieve the film’s unique realist aesthetic.

I remember the exact moment that I began to take animated documentaries seriously. I was a first year Master’s student at Oxford University with a head full of theory, very little practical experience, and an absolute certainty that I knew exactly what documentary filmmaking was all about. I was, of course, quite wrong. On an idle morning in October 2008, I decided to go to a screening of Ari Folman’s pseudo-biographical documentary, Waltz with Bashir, and never saw animation the same way again. The film, which explores the themes of memory and post-war trauma, uses a combination of flash, traditional, and 3D animation, moving from a grounded realism in its present-day interviews to a more surreal quality when the interviewees discuss their memories and experiences as Israeli soldiers in the 1982 Lebanese Civil War. In the final scene, the animation suddenly fades away, dissolving into live action archival footage of the aftermath of the Sabra and Shatila massacre. For many critics, this signifies the protagonist’s willingness to confront his repressed memories, coming to terms with the reality of his actions in the military. Sitting in the theatre, however, overwhelmed by the film’s aesthetically beautiful and often gut-wrenching artwork, I couldn’t help but read something else into the sudden transition from animation to live action footage. The flexibility of the conventions of animation allowed the filmmaker to explore his relationship to the past and his psychological trauma in a way that felt more compelling and, frankly, more tangible than real-world archival footage ever could. To adapt Robert Peaslee to my purposes, I realized that the film was more than a meditation on memory and trauma.¹ It was also a critique of photographic realism and the role of animation in documentary filmmaking itself. In generic terms, documentaries strive to represent real-world events with a high level of fidelity, which is typically achieved through realism;

COLUMNS | Issue 107, February 2024

while animation, for much of its history in Western filmmaking, has been used to create and explore fictional worlds, which led to a pervasive cultural sentiment that animation is not well-suited to nonfiction. Waltz with Bashir is one of a handful of animated documentary films made between 2007 and 2009 that upended this sentiment for critics and theorists, helping to establish animation as a powerful tool in telling non-fictional stories.² Following the recent success of animated films like Tower (2016) and Flee (2021), which received multiple Academy Award nominations including Best Documentary and Best Animated Feature, I don’t think that it’s an overstatement to say that animation is gaining mainstream acceptance as a way of representing the ‘real’. These days, with my university years long behind me, I am the writer and co-producer of an animated historical documentary series of my own, called The Animated History of Tibet (more on that below). Working as a historian on the series and collaborating closely with animators, I often find myself returning to Waltz with Bashir and the sentiment that I first felt in 2008: Relative to live action footage, in some cases, animation is simply more evocative in the way that it represents the real world. And, as animated documentaries continue to grow in popularity, I can’t help but wonder why. Why is animation such an effective tool in representing our history and in teaching us about the past? Well, for one thing, as any fan of anime will tell you, one of the great strengths of animation is that it allows us to depict things that can’t be filmed using practical effects. A director can create anything that they can imagine (within the limitations of their budget, of course). Whether it’s the iconic nuclear infernos of Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira (1988) or the claustrophobic surrealism of Jason Loftus’ magnificent Eternal Spring (2022), animation excels at representing objects that are difficult, if not impossible, to film. As an artform, this provides a number of advantages, one of which is that animation is an ideal medium for depicting rare historical settings, which are often prohibitively expensive for live action productions to faithfully reproduce. Most of us, after all, don’t have Netflix money. Speaking from my own experience, this is also a quality that makes animated documentary an ideal medium for telling the histories of socially marginalized groups that would otherwise be difficult to film. The history of Tibet, as it so happens, is an excellent example. For over seventy years, Tibet has been occupied by the People’s Republic of China, which rigorously polices access to ethnic Tibetan regions and has gone to great lengths to penalize Western production companies that make films critical of Chinese state historical narratives. If you’re interested in how they do this and the way that it affects the US market, go ahead and google: “Disney’s groveling apology to China for distributing Martin Scorsese’s Kundun”. You won’t be disappointed. The geographical and practical political inaccessibility of Tibet, combined with the fact that a significant part of the Tibetan population lives in exile, spread across India, North America, and Europe, means that live action films that take place in Tibet and feature Tibetan-speaking actors are few and far between. I should note that there is a small and tremendously talented community of Tibetan filmmakers, which includes the late, great Pema Tseden (1969-2023); however, with a handful of exceptions, period pieces and good faith historical documentaries set in Tibet are exceptionally rare.

Left: Flee (2021) intersplices its subtle, realist visual key with highly abstract 2D charcoal animated sequences, which resonated powerfully with me on a first viewing – in no small part because of their stark contrast with the rest of the film. Right: Throughout The Animated History of Tibet we’ve opted for a realist aesthetic that draws inspiration, in part, from the landmark US series Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008).

Enter ANIMATION, screen right. Using traditional animation as a medium, we can sidestep these problems entirely. Having built a small brain trust composed of cultural consultants and fellow historians, we’re able to collaborate with an animation team to represent the complex material culture of Tibet and the Tibetan landscape across more than one-thousand years of history. Our only real obstacles in that regard are issues of style and the ever-present albatross of staying on budget. The value of animation to documentary and history, however, goes far beyond cost cutting measures and the flexibility of its visual aesthetics. Animation can also provide anonymity, protecting a protagonist’s identity while still allowing the audience to fully visualize and empathize with their character. This can be of profound importance to refugees and political dissidents who would otherwise risk reprisals for their participation. This is the case, for instance, in Jonas Rasmussen’s Flee (2021). Amin Nawabi, the main character, is a pseudonym, concealing the identity of the film’s protagonist as he relates his experiences as a refugee, fleeing his home country of Afghanistan to finally settle in Denmark. The film focuses on Amin’s personal journey and his recollections of the past. And, much like Waltz with Bashir, uses a mixture of grounded realism to depict the present day and a variety of abstract, almost surreal animation styles in representing his past experiences to the audience. This blending of styles (executed seamlessly in Flee) is another profound strength of animation as a storytelling medium, which is often overlooked in the theoretical literature on documentary filmmaking. Where traditional documentaries might rely on archival footage, black and white segments, or creative camerawork and editing to communicate a break in tone to establish emotional resonance, animation allows for an enormous degree of creative latitude in how human emotion and memory are represented visually. The ability of animated documentaries to retain their historical credibility while changing visual styles is well established and, looking at a crosssection of feature films released in the past decade, appears to be part of the genre’s emerging visual lexicon. While I may, admittedly, wax a bit poetic about the versatility of animation in teaching history, by way of conclusion, I should also mention that there are significant shortcomings with the medium, as well. For some documentary directors – and independent creators making historical videos on platforms like YouTube – animation often serves an entirely pragmatic rather than stylistic end. And as

animation continues to emerge as a legitimate means of depicting factual events, online communities are increasingly overwhelmed with animated content, much of which is low-effort and reflects a poor understanding of history. That’s not to mention the potential propagandist uses of animated history, of which there are many, or the effects of generative AI on the way that animated documentaries are both understood and viewed by audiences conditioned by market-driven content. Despite all of these issues, however, I remain highly optimistic about the future of animation in both science communication and historical documentary filmmaking. Even on YouTube, there is still enormous latitude to move the medium forward, passing through the current glut of algorithmically driven content towards a new generation of visually compelling, critical, and accurate historical media.

R E F E R ENC ES 1. Peaslee, Robert Moses. 2011. “It’s Fine as Long as You Draw, But Don’t Film”: Waltz with Bashir and the Postmodern Functions of Animated Documentary” in Visual Communication Quarterly 18.4, pp.223-235. 2. Ryan 2004, Persepolis (2007), Chicago 10 (2007), and Slaves (2008), in particular, come to mind.

W R I T T EN BY ALE X A N DE R K . SM I T H Dr. Smith holds a PhD in the anthropology of Tibet and the Himalayas from the University of Paris, France, and an MA in Tibetan studies from Oxford University. In association with Tibet House US, he is the co-producer of The Animated History of Tibet.

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REGENCY ROMANCE Ensuring the Genre’s Appeal for New Generations of Readers

Largely by winning sympathy for the protagonists in their struggle against formidable odds, which is, of course, the traditional strategy in any story, but romances in particular. The easiest part is to portray the oppressive patriarchal system in negative terms. There is, after all, much to criticize, ranging from thoughtless indifference and unkindness towards the less fortunate, to abuse of dependents. In an age of harsh punishment, wives and children could be beaten; servants sexually molested and dismissed if they complained; families left destitute by the improvidence of wastrel males more concerned with self-gratification than their responsibilities; and a grossly unfair double standard blatantly favoured the more powerful. Nor have these problems been resolved in modern times. With such few rights, the vulnerability of women does evoke the reader’s sympathy, but to win more than pity at her sorry plight, the heroine must display admirable qualities, not easy at a time when women were taught to be submissive. Among the most credible are courage and fortitude in the face of adversity and the willingness to make personal sacrifices for others. Like Charlotte Lucas in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, many of the heroines feel it their responsibility to marry an unlikeable man to avoid becoming a burden on their family. Some even take up the more ambitious challenge to marry well in order to provide security for vulnerable younger siblings. Thus in Mary Balogh’s The Temporary Wife (1997), it is only for the sake of her family, which is in dire financial straits, that Charity Duncan agrees to accept payment to marry a man she knows nothing about. Even so, her conscience troubles her to the point that she eventually walks away, unwilling to be paid in return for practicing deception upon his family whom she has grown to care deeply about. As the author observes, her heroines “must all, however, have a basic dignity and integrity. They must be intelligent and ultimately sensible and sensitive to others.”²

As with so much in life, there lies, at the heart of Regency Romance, a profound irony: the tension between the traditional pattern of romance and the realities of marriage during the nineteenth century. Scholars have remarked upon “the extent to which contemporary culture is as obsessed with this particular ‘Ur’-narrative as ever: the story of how two lovers meet, become estranged, and are then reunited under the aegis of an ‘unconquerable love’ has lost none of its appeal.”¹ Unlike earlier works in the Romance mode, such as Medieval Romance, however, Regencies are placed in a much more realistic setting, and in Regency Britain a patriarchal/misogynist culture assigned total power to the senior male in the family. Since this imbalance of power encouraged abuse, the marriage which concluded the Ur-romance could no longer be relied upon to produce the anticipated happily-ever-after. Yet as sales have demonstrated, readers have been fascinated by Regency Romance since Georgette Heyer first created and popularized the genre in the 1920s. How have authors managed to ensure the genre’s appeal for a later age with different cultural values?

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Kindness to others, including servants and those in distressed circumstances, wins our respect, and many a Regency heroine engages in charitable works among crippled veterans of the Napoleonic Wars, indigent women, and orphans. Women’s traditional role as care-givers for children is also valued in modern Regencies, whether they be the heroine’s own younger siblings or the hero’s troubled wards. Charity Duncan excels at both, and she is typical of the many Balogh heroines who win admiration for their handling of children. “They must be capable of love, which always negates selfishness,” the author says. In challenging circumstances, a sense of humour always helps, not only to underline the heroine’s fortitude, but to point out the double standards that make her life difficult. And to attract an eligible suitor, as Elizabeth Bennet discovers when Mr. Darcy unexpectedly proposes. Suzanne Allain is just one of the many authors who include “sparkling wit” among the desirable qualities in her heroines. She also enjoys writing about “friendships between women,” and in her latest novel, The Ladies Rewrite the Rules (Berkley, 2024), a group band together in order to challenge the conventions of the marriage mart. Loyal sisters and wise (and often amusingly caustic) grandmothers and great aunts are another frequent source of support.

READERS have been fascinated by Regency Romance since Georgette Heyer first created and popularized the genre in the 1920s. The problem was that, despite their privileges, upper-class women were severely limited in their options outside of marriage. Their brothers might seek a career in the military or the church, whereas without the uncertain support of wealthier relatives, a position as governess, teacher, or companion was all they might aspire to. In the snobbish, class-conscious society of the era, this meant loss of status, another concern that persists today. The conventional education offered young ladies, moreover, left them woefully unequipped to earn a living in other ways, and only a lucky few could count on the support and encouragement of enlightened parents. Some Regency heroines do determinedly struggle to pursue careers in fields closed to them, notably medicine, science, and writing. A few even pick up skills as thieves and adventurers, investigators and spies, and there are documented instances of such figures in history, though (like dukes) not as many as figure in the pages of modern Regencies. Creating a sympathetic hero, however, presents a much bigger challenge. The more flagrant abuses can be located in an autocratic or neglectful father figure, or an irresponsible brother who gambles away his family’s inheritance, or perhaps even his vindictive wife; but too often the lifestyle of the young male aristocrat was frivolous, if not actually debauched. As a result, authors have to work hard to make their hero acceptable: impatient fathers or outraged aunts may force a rake to find a wife and settle down, or risk losing his allowance and inheritance; military service fighting the French on the continent or at sea can teach a greater sense of responsibility; some may even grow bored with an idle life of gambling, carousing, and sexual indulgence. To win our respect, however, the hero does need to learn important lessons, to recognize and regret his past misconduct, and to change his ways. The hero of The Ladies Rewrite the Rules is mortified once he realizes the distress he has caused by publishing a list of wealthy widows. Fortunately for him, as Allain explains, “Forgiveness is a big theme in my novels, as well as not being overly judgmental. In many of my books, similar to what Austen did in P&P, a character who the reader may start out viewing as the antagonist or villain of the piece is revealed by the end to be a lot more nuanced and have reasons for their behavior.” For her part Balogh notes, “I have created heroes of all kinds, though they basically divide themselves into one of the two groupings of alpha and beta. I love both types. The assertive, often rakish alphas can be fun to deal with. I generally feel more tenderness toward the betas, who are quieter, more obviously sensitive. But with both types I look for a hard-to-describe quality of strength and integrity. The alpha must not be inflexible and unfeeling. The beta must not be a pushover. Both types must be willing to grow and change within the bounds of believability. Both must ultimately understand and accept that in their love relationships, especially with their heroines, there must be equality and trust and a deep friendship.”

within the marriage relationship, despite what the law dictates. This can be assured through pre-nuptial agreements, though it helps to have powerful friends and family to ensure they are adhered to. Nor does it hurt (so to speak) if some of these protectors have superior fighting and dueling skills. In the final analysis, however, it is trust that is the decisive factor, which is why the process through which the lovers are reunited is often so challenging. The hero’s repentance must be genuine and involve actual suffering if he is to prove himself worthy of his lady, just as the heroine too must regret her own misjudgements and offer forgiveness to the truly penitent. Thus at the conclusion of The Temporary Wife the hero, now Duke of Withingsby, tracks down Charity and pleads with her to return and take her place as his duchess: “I need you, my love… I need you so much that I panic when I think that perhaps I will not be able to persuade you to come back with me to Enfield. I need you so much that I cannot quite contemplate the rest of my life if it must be lived without you.”³ And since the hero is too ashamed of his past behaviour to declare his love to the heroine, it is she, fittingly enough, who proposes to him at the conclusion of The Ladies Rewrite the Rules. Love and forgiveness? Is it any wonder that readers are drawn to Regency Romance when it shows the path to a kinder, better world? It offers a welcome reminder of hope, especially when the days darken around us.

R E F E R ENC ES 1. Lynne Pearce, “Popular Romance and its Readers,” A Companion to Romance from Classical to Contemporary, ed. Corinne Saunders (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), p. 521. 2. Quotations from Mary Balogh and Suzanne Allain are taken from interviews conducted by email in November and December 2023, respectively. 3. (New York: Dell, 2012), p. 244.

W R I T T EN BY R AY MON D H . T HOM PSON Raymond H. Thompson is a professor emeritus of English with a particular interest in Arthurian tradition. He enjoys romances, particularly those by Jane Austen.

And this, of course, is the crucial part. The hero must not only offer his love, but be willing to share power

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RE-EMBODYING THE PAST A Trio of Biofictions Prompts Some Questions

the protagonist of the novel must be an actual historical figure – I am grateful to Louisa Treger, Jessica Mills and Elizabeth Fremantle for agreeing to answer my questions. By re-embodying real people, biofiction allows authors to fictionalise their innermost and generally unrecorded emotions. Louisa Treger sets out the parameters clearly: “The lives of the women I write about provide me with a framework of facts on which to hang my story, so I know there’s something interesting to say. At the same time, the fictional form gives me licence to gain access to my characters’ emotional lives, and this is what interests me as a writer. I can imagine myself into their private thoughts and invent conversations and details which draw out themes I find interesting. The outline of the plot is already there; within that framework, I am able to create my own image of real people.” Treger’s previous protagonists include Dorothy Richardson, “Ginie” Courtauld and Nellie Bly, so I ask: what led her to these real-life women? “I seem to stumble on them by chance! But the more novels I write, the more it becomes apparent that a pattern is emerging. I am drawn to writing about strong women who refused to conform and struggled to find their place in the world; women who were ground breakers and pioneers.” Jessica Mills also chose a pioneer as the subject of her novel reimagining the life of the famous scientist, Rosalind Franklin. Mills sees Rosalind (Legend Press, 2024) as “an allegory for women’s experiences in the modern workplace. It was the centenary of Rosalind’s birth in 2020, and I wanted people to ask how much has really changed for women since the 1950s.” This is another facet of biofiction: a life reimagined in the past poses questions for the present.

Where are the overlaps between history, biography and biofiction? The late Natalie Zemon Davis wrote with regard to the film The Return of Martin Guerre (1982/83): “What I offer you here is in part my invention, but held tightly in check by the voices of the past”.¹ Yet her reconstruction of the life of this sixteenth-century French peasant led to accusations of “an excess of invention”.² Similarly, the differences between biographers and novelists were noted by Dame Hermione Lee, founder of the Oxford Centre for Life Writing: “Biographers (if they have any decency)”, she wrote, “don’t freely paraphrase their subject’s writings, or quote from their letters without footnotes. But novelists are allowed to make free.”³ That liberty provides the makings of a good story, a point also emphasised by another historian, Lisa Jardine: “Sometimes it takes something other than perfect fidelity to sharpen our senses […]Thank goodness for the creative imagination of fiction writers, who can reconnect us with the historical feelings, as well as the facts.”4 With its own constraints, and a history that some trace back to classical and medieval models of famous lives (fictionalised by definition), the popularity of biofiction shows no sign of fading. From a wide range of authors whose work would have fit the bill –

FEATURES | Issue 107, February 2024

Disobedient (Michael Joseph/Pegasus, 2023) by Elizabeth Fremantle is widely praised for its insightful and forceful re-imagining of Artemisia Gentileschi, now reputed one of the most talented artists of her generation in Italy. Unlike with other biofictions, Fremantle narrows the focus of the book to the time of the notorious rape and subsequent trial. “The primary source for her life in the years 1611 and 1612, which is the entire scope of my novel, are the court transcripts from the trial of Agostino Tassi,” she writes. “These offer an abundance of detail, and the different testimonies on both sides of the case offer greatly divergent points of view of the circumstances of that formative year. The variations in these testimonies in some ways describes the difficulty of arriving at a definitive ‘truth’ about that year of her life but were fertile ground to me, as a writer of fiction, to bring into being the Artemisia of my novel.” I ask about the raft of new research on Gentileschi, the recent discovery of other paintings by her, not to mention major exhibitions. “In the case of Artemisia Gentileschi,” Fremantle replies, “the recent focus on her life and work can only be seen as something to celebrate as it sheds light on a woman who, I believe, should be as much a household name as Caravaggio.” Fremantle adds: “Her work and the boldness of her subject choices were for me the most immediate and vivid sources of inspiration into the woman she was. Though theories about when, where and for whom these works were painted can change and restoration can reveal details previously overlooked, their faces are immutable. The letters between Artemisia and her lover, Francesco Maringhi, which emerged in 2011, were greatly important to me in respect of her biography as a mature, successful

SOMETIMES IT TAKES something other than perfect fidelity to sharpen our senses ... Thank goodness for the creative imagination of fiction writers. woman. As examples of her own unique voice, they were most revealing and helpful for building her character as the seventeenyear-old she is in Disobedient.” Fremantle’s “Author’s Note” reveals how she, too, is a survivor of violent rape, a fact that gives the retelling of this episode in Artemisia’s life a particularly sharp edge. She notes how “Gentileschi has become, in some ways, a figure onto whom people project ideas about feminism, female rage and survivor-hood, meaning that each fictional Artemisia holds a different significance. Mine is very personal, in that I identify with her as a survivor of violent rape, so I chose to interpret her story through that lens. In some ways it is my own story told through her. This is what fiction allows us to do, but I am always mindful of the fact that I am writing about a real, flesh and blood person and take very seriously the responsibilities inherent in that.” Writing in the first person might seem the obvious choice for authors of biofiction. Mills tells me how she wrote her first draft “from the perspective of an omniscient narrator, seeking to retell the DNA story from Rosalind Franklin’s perspective, a woman’s voice. However, I have always loved first-person novels with strong female characters and voices, such as Anna Burns’ Milkman.” But the voice felt too distant, so she “sought to rectify that by switching to the first-person narrative voice. I immediately preferred it, as it allowed me to delve deeper into who she was as a person, although it had challenges, not least being a harder pitch as it blurred the boundary further between fiction and non-fiction.” Treger used different narrators in The Dragon Lady (2019), and a third person narrator in Madwoman (2022), and when asked about the boundary between her voice as the writer and her subject’s voice and inner thoughts, she says: “I try to dissolve that boundary, and to inhabit the subject’s voice and thoughts as fully as I can. This happens by immersing myself in research until the character comes alive in my imagination, and then I run with it.” Fremantle stresses how she spends “a good deal of time feeling my way into a novel and tend to write long experimental passages in different modes to find my way in. Usually, a particular voice will emerge as the right one. In the case of Disobedient, I chose to tell the story through three distinct perspectives, each one in a close thirdperson. I see this as an intermediate narrative space between the limiting and particular first-person and a fully omniscient narrator, a mode I find somewhat impersonal for my style of writing. In this case the close third-person, a kind of view over the shoulder of a character, allowed me scope to move between experiencing some events through the eyes of the character and yet be able to pan out to a wider perspective for certain scenes. Each of the narrators, Artemisia, Orazio and Zita, were holding secrets from the others, so this facilitated the way I could deliver information to the reader and create dramatic irony.” This method of trial and error has its downsides, Fremantle continues: “I imagine my work in a cinematic way, moving between the general and the specific, and the close third person enables me to best achieve this. This is why I return to it so often, though I did once write an entire novel in first-person, only to rewrite it in third. I don’t recommend this. Happily, I learnt from that experience to nail down the perspective and tense that best serves the story before launching in.”

Mills expresses the hope “that readers will connect with and be inspired by Rosalind Franklin’s life and work, particularly her sparkling mind and lifelong passion for science, as well as her dedication to the subject. I hope they will also appreciate the injustices she faced and be challenged to ask what can and needs to change. By making her successes visible, it shows what women can do, and in acknowledging women’s value in the workplace and giving credit where it is deserved, perhaps it will make the path easier for the next generation of women who are excited and passionate about what their careers might hold.” Treger’s forthcoming novel is also biofiction, “about another strong woman who refused to live by the rules: Dora Maar, Picasso’s lover and muse. Most people know her as his ‘Weeping Woman,’ as though tears were the only interesting thing about her, but she was a gifted artist and photographer in her own right. And so, I decided to draw her out of his long dark shadow. It’s called The Paris Muse and will be published on 4th July 2024.” Returning to the question of boundaries, I ask Treger whether history, biography and biofiction remain completely distinct? “I see them as complementary”, she replies. “In other words, engaging imaginatively with the past creates an interlacing of fact and fiction; a space in which the feelings behind the ideas are brought to life.” Biofiction looks set to remain a rewarding genre in this respect.

R E F E R ENC ES 1. Natalie Zemon-Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), viii-ix, 5. 2. Robert Finlay, “The Refashioning of Martin Guerre”, American Historical Review, vol. 93 (1988), p. 570. 3. Hermione Lee reviews Colm Toibin’s The Master, The Guardian, 2004. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/mar/20/ featuresreviews.guardianreview17 4. My thanks to Louisa Treger for citing Lisa Jardine’s “A Point of View”, September 2014. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ magazine-29060077

W R I T T EN BY LUC I N DA BYAT T Lucinda Byatt is Features Editor of HNR, as well as a historian and translator. https://textline.wordpress. com/

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CRETE EXPECTATIONS BY DOUGLAS KEMP

Eleanor Kuhns on Her New Series Eleanor Kuhns is a successful and popular writer of historical fiction. With her first book published in 2012, the Will Rees series are historical mysteries set in the late eighteenth century United States, eleven volumes hitherto. Eleanor made a radical change of direction with her new sequence of historical novels, set in the long-distant past of Bronze Age Crete around 1450 BC: In the Shadow of the Bull (Severn House, 2023) will soon be followed by On the Horns of Death (April 2024). We asked Eleanor about the attractions of writing about an era set so long ago, about which most that can be known about life in Crete has already been uncovered and analysed. “When I wrote the Will Rees series, I wanted to write about the early United States. But Ancient Crete has always been a fascination of mine, and since I was looking for something new and different, this long-time interest seemed the way to go. I could say I’ve been researching Bronze Age Crete my entire life. Excavations in Crete continue. Some of the results confirm what has long been believed. The recent find of the warrior’s burial in an olive grove emphasized how much influence Crete had on the later Greek civilization. But other excavations prompt new theories. For example, when I visited Knossos a few years ago, the guide told me the Mycenaeans (mainland Greeks from that time) believed Knossos was built on a labyrinth because of the structure of the buildings. The rooms run into one another, frequently without benefit of halls. More recent excavations, however, have revealed mosaic labyrinths, and now one theory posits that labyrinths were important and probably involved religious rituals. So maybe the labyrinths mentioned in the myths were actual mazes, not the interconnected rooms. Perhaps, when Linear A is deciphered, we’ll know more.” A continual issue of contention in the genre of historical fiction is the degree to which writers are prepared to deviate from the known or accepted historical record and to fabricate events in order to drive the narrative. We asked Eleanor what her perspective was on this subject. “As a lifelong librarian, I aim for as much accuracy as possible. Since we still don’t know everything, though, and there are no newspapers, I use plausible deductions based on what we do know. One of the areas of disagreement among scholars is whether girls were bull dancers, as Martis is, or not. The Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur suggests they were. Plus, the very famous fresco showing a bull-dancing scene shows both white painted and red painted people. Since the Egyptians painted females white and males red, I opted to believe both young men and women engaged in this activity.” Writers and readers of the genre acknowledge that language and communication are an intriguing element in writing historical fiction. As we do not know how the Cretans spoke, Eleanor debated what sort of compromises she makes to enable her to produce dialogue she is content with. “I struggled with this [issue] when I was writing my Will Rees mysteries since people spoke more formally during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries than they do now. I chose to use some slang and have my characters speak more formally than we do, but without the extreme formality and verbosity of time. I doubt most modern readers would sit still for a 950,000 word Clarissa now. 12

FEATURES | Issue 107, February 2024

Moreover, I’ve attended Shakespeare plays with college educated people who cannot follow the language. So, when I began writing my Ancient Crete series, I chose to use a more casual style and keep the formality for the poetry and the prayers. All writers of fiction that publish series are faced with the question of the degree to which books evolve in an ad hoc way from volume to volume, or whether there is a requirement for a preconceived structure from the first book. For Eleanor and her two series, she says that “I usually have a trajectory in mind that involves the evolution of the main character. With the Will Rees series, I had in mind five or six books. Of course, I went quite a bit past that. With the Bronze Age Crete, I have four books in mind.” As enthusiasts of historical fiction it is always interesting to find out which writers in the discipline have subsequently inspired successful published authors. With reference to the Crete series, Eleanor tells us that “As a teen, I read all of Rosemary Sutcliff’s works. More recently, I read both books (The Bull from the Sea and The King Must Die) by Mary Renault, and I attribute her with restarting my interest in the ancient past. I love both Lindsey Davis’s series set in Ancient Rome. And I really enjoyed Circe by Madeline Miller “Both Renault and Miller, though, took the Greek myths as the seed and wrote from them. I wanted to do something different. After all, the myths were written in a sense by the victors – the mainland Greeks who conquered Crete. I wanted to go behind the myths and see what a different truth might have been. For example, I previously mentioned the Theseus myth. While I’m sure there were wars and probably tribute, I also suspect that bull dancing was a long-established activity in Crete. A Minotaur, in my opinion, was probably a man in a mask. We know the bull was revered and that masks were used in the theatre. Another difference between what we know of Ancient Crete and what is depicted in the myths from Hellenic Greece relates to the status of women. The seals, statuary and frescoes in Crete indicate their importance. Most of the resources I used describe a Supreme Goddess, with a male consort, that was worshipped along with other Gods and Goddesses such as Dionysus, Poseidon, and Hera. Many of the Cretan Gods were adopted into the Hellenic pantheon, quite a few virtually unchanged. Most of Goddesses, however, were reduced to the wives and consorts of the Gods.” As readers, writers and enthusiasts for historical fiction, we all appreciate and admire well-written and excellently researched fiction set in the past, especially subject areas that are a little more recherché from the more common time periods. Douglas Kemp is one of the UK team of review editors for the Historical Novels Review.

GENEALOGICAL TALL TALES BY JEAN HUETS A Family Epic Set in the Old West As so often happens when family lore is spun, The Bullet Swallower (Simon & Schuster, 2024), by Elizabeth Gonzalez James, merges facts and myth. The protagonist, Antonio Sonoro, is based on the author’s great-grandfather, whom the author describes as “a

bandido around the Texas–Mexico border sometime in the late 1800s.” In Gonzalez James’ hands, family legend morphs into much more than genealogical tall tales set in the Old West. A phantasmic fate-dealing character becomes entangled with multiple generations of the Sonoro family; a curse hangs over its male lineage; Antonio’s and his ancestors’ greed and cruelty reap retribution on a near-biblical scale. In hopes of restoring the lost wealth of the Sonoro family, Antonio leaves his impoverished home in Mexico to rob a treasure-laden train in Texas, his younger brother tagging along. But things take a catastrophic turn, and the attempted robbery becomes a deadly pursuit of revenge with the Texas Rangers. Flash forward to 1964: Antonio’s Mexican grandson Jaime Sonoro is a beloved character actor and singer, a decent guy with a comfortable home and a loving family. A book that arrives unbidden to his home reveals not only the full extent of Antonio’s misdeeds, but the crimes of generations before, whose consequences may well fall on Jaime himself, and his children, and their children. While Jaime plays a crucial role in the saga, Antonio takes the main stage, and given his milieu, that story falls into the modern Western genre, with its tropes of horses, guns, grit, whorehouses, bandits, and merciless law enforcement. Gonzalez James drew from documented history, as well as fictional representations of the period, in creating the setting. “I am a huge Larry McMurtry fan, being from Texas,” she says. “And so Lonesome Dove was a major influence on me. The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu by Tom Lin is a fantastic Western shoot-’em-up of betrayal and revenge, and similarly to The Bullet Swallower, centers a point of view that’s often left out of the American West: a Chinese immigrant.” By presenting her antihero as a Mexican disenfranchised in part by border politics, Gonzalez James hopes her book “maybe complicates the picture readers might have about the border, Mexico, Texas, and history.” Film also dressed Gonzalez James’ setting. “I love movies,” she says, “and when I write, the story takes shape in my head in a visual way. I watched a ton of Westerns while I was writing this novel, and so some of the tropes probably came from there, as well.” One of the more notorious Old West tropes, violence, is interwoven in the plot and in the characters themselves. “Violence is, sadly, a fact of life for a lot of people, and so if I’m going to write about them I have to incorporate that reality into their story. The character of Casoose [a Texas Ranger], for instance, is based on an actual person who was notoriously brutal, so I had to describe exactly what he would do to people during an interrogation. Antonio is himself a violent person and comes from a long line of violent people.”

Gritty as The Bullet Swallower is, though, Gonzalez James shows another side of human nature. “I truly don’t know why people put so much creativity into finding ways to hurt each other,” she says, “but there it is. And that’s not to say I don’t believe in the inherent goodness of people, because I do, very deeply. I hope I have left readers with a feeling that despite how much violence and evil there is in the world, there’s always hope for grace and transcendence.” Unlike in many stories of film and fiction, the women in The Bullet Swallower do not supply the men with the means to redeem themselves from the fates that bedevil them. In fact, with one exception, women play no protagonistic roles at all. “It’s sometimes difficult for modern readers to understand how little agency, education, and options women had for most of history. I read a book written in the 1940s about a woman who was in a miserable marriage, and in discussing it with my mother, I said, ‘I don’t get it. Couldn’t she just leave him?’ And my mother told me no, she couldn’t and she wouldn’t. It’s hard for those of us who’ve grown up with so much privilege to understand this sometimes. If you don’t want to write an alternative history you often have to box women in or leave them out. But even within these constraints women have always found ingenious ways to thrive and survive. It just takes a little more work of the imagination to figure out how. The lack of women protagonists in The Bullet Swallower demonstrates the author’s sometimes reluctant respect for adhering to the shape of the tale she was telling. “In earlier drafts of the book I did have many more female characters,” says Gonzalez James, “but sadly they had to be cut to better focus the story. It’s Antonio’s story, and he lives in a man’s world.” It’s a problem with historical fiction: “fitting” characters palatable to modern readers into a period with different social values, especially when it comes to people who during much of history did not leave us first-hand accounts of their lives and, by some lights, had little agency in their lives, hence little potential as protagonists. Readers’ cultures must also be taken into account. In the late nineteenth century, Gonzalez James’ book would have been rejected by most American readers, what with its sympathies slanted away from the legendary Texas Rangers and toward an impoverished Mexican bandit. The grace that The Bullet Swallower bestows—to say how would be a spoiler—is not only for “descendants of people who did despicable things,” as exemplified by Antonio’s grandson Jaime. “We always have the chance, every day, to be better,” says Gonzalez James. “To choose differently, and to be points of light in a dark world.” The choices Antonio and Jaime make are often mistakes, and certainly not always for the greater good. But their long, hard, and

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twisted path toward the light is what makes The Bullet Swallower a historical novel that resonates for today’s readers. Jean Huets is the author of With Walt Whitman, Himself, acclaimed as “a book of marvels”; The Cosmic Tarot book, based on the visionary art of Norbert Loesche; and The Bones You Have Cast Down, a novel inspired by the true history of the Popess tarot card. She co-founded Circling Rivers, which publishes literary nonfiction and poetry. Visit JeanHuets.com.

A TRUE CRIME SPRINGBOARD

BY MARILYN PEMBERTON

Eleni Kyriacou Uses a True Crime as a Springboard to Fiction Fact: December 1954, Holloway Prison: Styllou Christofi, a Cypriot grandmother, is hanged for the murder of her German daughter-in-law, Hella. Fiction: December 1954, Holloway Prison: Zina Pavlou, a Cypriot grandmother, is hanged for the murder of her German daughter-in-law, Hedy. Eleni Kyriacou first heard about Styllou Christofi in 2017 when she was at an exhibition and read an extract from the executioner Albert Pierrepoint’s memoir. Although most people have heard of Ruth Ellis, who was hanged in London in July 1955, only a few months after Christofi, very few people have heard of Christofi because, suggests Albert Pierrepoint, she was “middle-aged, unattractive and foreign”. Eleni was intrigued by the story, not only because she herself is Cypriot but also because she “discovered that the accused spoke no English and read and wrote no Greek.” Eleni’s interest was piqued, and she passionately believed that this is a story that “needs to be told! The real case is forgotten,” she says, “and I wanted to change that. The two women at the heart of the actual case – the accused and the victim – have been lost to history.” Eleni decided, however, not to “attempt a factual account – there are too many gaps in the story, and the sense of responsibility in making sure it was correct would be too much. With a fictional account, I could change names and simply use the true crime as a springboard for my imagination.” The result is The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou (Aries, 2023).

affect I wanted to achieve.” Eleni gave herself permission to change the story as much as she wanted because “some of the original detail has been lost, and some is redacted and not available to the public; these are also good reasons not to follow the factual story rigorously.” Eleni has changed all the characters’ names and says they bear no resemblance to the real people. “There is much we don’t know about the true story – like what really happened to the accused in her early life. All of that is imagined, as are the scenes set in a fictional village in Cyprus.” As Eleni says, the story is not a “factual, journalistic account,” and so she did not need permission from any living relatives, but she has informed Styllou’s grandson and will be sending him a copy of the book. All communication between Christofi and everyone else involved in the case was “conducted through her translators. What a responsibility – and what power, too.” Eleni researched what life would have been like for a translator at the time and what the job entailed, and found that “It was far less regimented than it is now, and anyone who spoke another language could earn a few shillings translating for the police. Sometimes these translators were petty criminals themselves.” One of the biggest deviations from the known facts is that Eleni includes a single female translator, Eva, who supports Zina from the start of her ordeal to the very end, rather than the “three male interpreters, who chopped and changed throughout her case.” Although Eva is 100% fiction, her predicament as an immigrant here is “informed by what I know, and my own experience of being the child of immigrants – having one foot in each world, dealing with much of life’s admin for parents, be it phoning the council to discuss better housing, to visiting the doctor’s office to translate.” As a result of her research, Eleni believes that Styllou Christofi “suffered a great miscarriage of justice: the doctors at Holloway prison said she was insane, and yet she was still tried before a jury,” found guilty, and paid the ultimate price. Eleni does not suggest that Styllou was innocent, but in telling her story through the character of Zina, she explores the possible reasons as to why a middle-aged, Cypriot grandmother murders her daughter-in-law in such a horrific manner. Eleni maintains that “everyone has a backstory, that however ‘evil’ or ‘monstrous’ someone appears, we cannot possibly know everything that has happened to them to get them to this point. That doesn’t excuse criminal behaviour, but I do believe that often there’s something that has tipped that person over the edge, rather than it simply being that they’re pure ‘evil’. I wanted readers to struggle with who they were rooting for in this book. Life’s not cut and dried; novels should reflect that.”

Despite the decision not to keep just to the facts of the story, Eleni wanted to get the details of the crime, the arrest and the court proceedings as accurate as possible. As she explains, “It’s such a remarkable and dramatic story, I saw no reason to change these basic elements (although of course I’ve fictionalised them). It was important to me to reflect life in prison accurately, too. I did a lot of research and drew on diaries from women who were in Holloway Prison, watched films, read letters that the accused had translated for her in and out of prison, and looked at newspaper reports and police statements. These were all from a variety of archives and libraries.”

According to the thesaurus, the word “unspeakable” means “monstrous”, which is true of the crime itself, but it also means “beyond words,” “incommunicable” and “inexpressible,” which describes Christofi’s inability to speak for herself, to explain her reasons, her justification, her defence. Although fictionalising a true crime that happened seventy years ago, Eleni believes that The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou will resonate with today’s readers because its themes of “immigration, female friendship, racism, misogyny, justice, mental health and family love and betrayal are all at the heart of this story,” which are as relevant today as they were all those years ago.

Eleni admits that writing in the past tense is her preferred style, but in this book she brings a sense of reality to the fiction by writing the court scenes in the present tense. Eleni explains that she did this “to make them more immediate and dramatic, and give the reader a sense of being close to the action, living through every moment with Zina and Eva. Time slows down with present tense, and that’s the

Marilyn Pemberton has a passion for fairy tales that subvert and challenge social mores. Victorian fairy-tale writer Mary De Morgan was the subject first of a biography, then a fictionalised life in The Jewel Garden. Her historical trilogy, Grandmother’s Footsteps, will be complemented by a fourth book, A Bearer of Tales, due to be published later in 2024.

FEATURES | Issue 107, February 2024

HER VOICE is familiar because I love her work. But it was important to me to not reduce her to a "witty, wealthy writer lady with small dog."

GILDED AGE MURDER BY SARAH JOHNSON Mariah Fredericks Discusses The Wharton Plot In Mariah Fredericks’ The Wharton Plot (Minotaur, 2024), set in 1911 New York City, Edith Wharton delves into the circumstances behind the murder of a fellow writer, David Graham Phillips. The two were not friends. In fact, their first and only meeting, as imagined by Fredericks, demonstrates their mutual un-admiration as Edith’s deliciously satirical wit is activated by Phillips’ pompous attitude and disdain for her books and her gender. After Phillips is shot outside the Princeton Club, his sister Carolyn claims he was killed to prevent the publication of his latest fiction manuscript, Susan Lenox, which he’d declared was explosively revealing. Although Edith had found Phillips “deeply unpleasant,” she grows concerned about his death, and also curious. As she tells her old friend Walter Berry, “Secrets and stories… what writer would not seek that out?” “I’m a huge Wharton fan,” Fredericks says, describing how she conceptualized the story. “I write a mystery series set in 1910s New York, so I’m familiar with the significant murders of that era. The Phillips case isn’t as famous as the Stanford White shooting, but it was considered quite tabloid-worthy at the time. “I read an essay where H. L. Mencken proclaimed Phillips as America’s greatest living writer, dismissing both Edith Wharton and Henry James for the title because they were too effete and insufficiently ‘American.’ Phillips himself railed against plutocracy, especially wealthy women who loved culture, and—gasp—rode in motorcars. So, in my mind the two writers were already at odds. But his novels have themes in common with Wharton’s: the transactional nature of marriage, the lives of women in changing times. When I discovered that Wharton was in New York at a crucial point in her own life within a few months of his murder, I decided it was worth stretching the truth a little to get them in conversation.” Edith Wharton is a dazzlingly complex figure, and in The Wharton Plot, she faces a major turning point. A member of the privileged class she depicts so adeptly, Edith is forty-nine, disenchanted with her marriage and Manhattan society, and emotionally entangled (it’s complicated) with another man. The experience of re-creating her viewpoint was “daunting,” Fredericks relates. “I was on a tight deadline when I proposed this book; if I had had more time to think about it, I wouldn’t have dared. ‘Write like Edith Wharton. Sure, no problem!’ Her voice is familiar because I love her work. But it was important to me to not reduce her to a ‘witty, wealthy writer lady with small dog.’ But when I started looking at where she was in her life and career, I found that her experience reflected several things I was thinking about, primarily: what are the hopes and dreams of mid-life?” she says. “I found the elements of her personal crisis—age, fear of irrelevance, dislike of change and desire for change—so moving and resonant.”

Despite being famous in his time for his novels and muckraking journalism, David Graham Phillips and his fate are footnotes today; for maximum suspense, readers may want to avoid googling him in advance. Wharton, of course, has garnered lasting renown. For Fredericks, the difference is easily explained. “Well, Wharton is a genius and Phillips isn’t,” she states. “In Susan Lenox, which has been compared to The House of Mirth, he breaks from the action to discourse at length about society as if he were writing an op ed. I can see how his books felt very now at the time they were written, but he writes with a view of how people ought to behave, and it gets tiresome fast. But Wharton isn’t so concerned with what should be, so she sees what is with much greater clarity. As a person, she might have strong opinions, but she doesn’t judge her characters… She really shows you the value of emotional curiosity in storytelling.” Regarding accuracy in fiction, “as a reader of historicals, I prefer when a novelist works with the known facts as much as possible,” says Fredericks. “For The Lindbergh Nanny (Minotaur, 2022), I stayed close to the history … but the murder of David Graham Phillips isn’t much known or debated in our time, so I felt like I could fictionalize a little. Once you have Edith Wharton as your detective, the reader is on notice that we’re no longer in the realm of strict truth. But as far as the personal and career details of her life, I tried to be accurate, with one exception,” she says, one relating to Wharton’s Pekingese, named Choumai. For Fredericks, who says she loved writing her Gilded Age mysteries about ladies’ maid Jane Prescott, standalone historicals allow her to go deeper into a subject. “You’re not so much exploring a time and place as you are saying something specific about a particular event or individual,” she continues, explaining how the process stretched her skills in an invaluable way. She also notes that “simply from a commercial standpoint, there’s an advantage in a non-fiction hook. Readers who may not know Jane Prescott—or care—will know about the Lindbergh kidnapping or Edith Wharton.” A highlight in The Wharton Plot is Edith’s tart commentary on the publishing industry, both wittily phrased and relatable. “How little the battles between writers and publishers have changed! Almost all of Wharton’s complaints in the novel, such as ‘Words fail to express how completely I don’t like it,’ are authentic,” says Fredericks. “She criticized the ellipses, wrote Scribner’s, asking, ‘Gentlemen, am I not to receive any copies of my book?’ and insisted that friends hadn’t been able to find her latest anywhere. Like most writers, when a book didn’t sell, she felt it was because the house didn’t support it. But she clearly had great affection for the editors she worked with. One thing that’s different—a royalty rate of 20%. That has certainly changed.” Fredericks’ descriptions of daily life amid the New York upper crust are especially vivid. Commenting on the setting, “I’m sure that much of the wealthy elite of that time was as dim and mean-spirited as the wealthy elite of today,” she says. “But they had wonderful chroniclers, such as Wharton, Ward McAllister, and countless anonymous reporters that as a group, they continue to fascinate. It’s an era that has all the elements of a good story. The gaudy spending and deranged social battles give you the comedy. The strict societal rules give you the cruelty and dramatic tension. And the obscene wealth gives you the beautiful settings.” Sarah Johnson is the book review editor for the Historical Novels Review.

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REVIEWS C L A SSIC A L

ON LI N E E XC LUSI V ES

TREASON OF SPARTA

Due to an ever-increasing number of books for review and space constraints within HNR, some selected fiction reviews and all nonfiction reviews are now published as online exclusives. To view these reviews and much more, please visit www.historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews

A NC I E N T EGY P T NEFERURA Malayna Evans, Sourcebooks Landmark, 2024, $16.99, pb, 368pp, 9781728278728 / £8.99, pb, 384pp, 9781464220593

Anyone with a passing interest in Egyptian history will be familiar with the 18th Dynasty’s female pharaoh, Hatshepsut. Upon the death of her husband (also her half-brother), Thutmose II, she became co-regent with her young stepson, Thutmose III. But she soon seized power in her own right, had herself portrayed as male in much of her iconography, and, with the help of royal steward and architect Senenmut, completed some of the most impressive building projects of the ancient world. Yet this is not the story of Hatshepsut – she’s only a player in this tale focused on her daughter, Neferura. Teenaged Neferura is in an impossible position: stuck between a virago of a mother who values her only as a political pawn and her vicious half-brother Thutmose, who wants the power Hatshepsut has usurped and is willing to tear the country apart to get it. With the help of loyal maid Iset, handsome palace guard Kamet, and a mysterious wisewoman, Neferura must navigate increasingly dangerous political and personal waters to keep herself alive and the country from chaos. This novel will strike a familiar chord for fans of Tudor and other royal fiction – it’s essentially a tale of court intrigue and women’s empowerment, explored in various forms. This exploration can occasionally feel a bit heavyhanded (e.g., Neferura’s discussions with one of her priestesses on bodily autonomy and use of sexuality as power play) but is generally refreshing in that Neferura is never shoehorned into cliched “girl boss” mode. Thutmose’s characterization shows more depth than might be expected, and he and Hatshepsut vie equally for villain status. Though this is billed as adult fiction, the plotting (especially the romantic subplot), themes, and general feel of the book would make it a solid choice for young adult girls. Bethany Latham

Christian Cameron, £22.00/$26.99/C$34.99, 9781409198215

Orion, hb,

2023, 400pp,

Treason of Sparta is the continuing story of Arimnestos of Plataea. This is listed as Book 7 and the final volume of The Long War series; however, the author states at the end of his epilogue that this is, in fact, Book 1 of the Broken Empire Series. As this is the continuing story of Arimnestos, it is difficult to understand why it is split into two separate series. Taking place between 479 and 478 BCE, Treason of Sparta covers events in Athens, Ionia, Cyprus and Byzantium. It is, in essence, Arimnestos’ account of Spartan army leader and regent, Pausanias, after his great victory in the Battle of Plataea, to his fall from grace amid accusations of conspiring with the Persian Ruler, Xerxes. This is an extremely wellresearched novel which, as the author himself says, ‘covers dangerous ground, trying to tell the story of fractured alliances and devious politics.’ In general, he does this reasonably well. His writing style is for Arimnestos to tell the story, so everything takes place in the first person; difficult when many major events are happening away from the narrator. This makes for some cumbersome narrative. Expressions like ‘bear with me a moment’, ‘I mention this because…’ or ‘remember that…’ make the story at times repetitive and somewhat condescending to the reader. There is also a lot of info dumping, and speech does not flow naturally, with too many interruptions. The narrator feels more like a 21st-century student of Ancient Greece, rather than a hardened Spartan seafaring warrior. At one point the author, through his storyteller, says ‘Well, that was long-winded. Let’s just leave it here’ – which seems an appropriate point to end this review. Aidan K. Morrissey

MEDEA Eilish Quin, Atria, 2024, $27.00/ C$36.99/£18.99, hb, 304pp, 9781668020760

Quin’s Medea joins the current renaissance of retellings that recast the stories of maligned or ignored women from Greek mythology. Redeeming Medea, who killed her children when her husband Jason wanted to remarry, is perhaps the hardest challenge. Quin’s novel portrays Medea’s difficult childhood as the daughter of a Naiad, who ultimately preferred the sea over her children, and the cruel King Aeetes, who only wanted a son. Aeetes commands various magics. For a time, he teaches them to Medea, and she

REVIEWS | Issue 107, February 2024

continues training herself. When Jason comes seeking the golden fleece, she has impressive powers. Equally influential on Medea’s development is a prophecy her immortal mother tells her. In response, Medea conducts endless magical experiments. From this set of circumstances, Quin develops a version of Medea’s story that aims at winning the reader’s sympathy for Medea and remaking the notorious witch into someone likeable and emotionally compelling. Quin retains the traditional events and persons of the myth, while fitting in new elements to transform the reader’s perception of Medea’s motives and heart. The childhood chapters are satisfying and draw the reader to Medea. In later chapters, some readers may have a harder time sympathizing with Medea’s actions and her justifications for them. Quin occasionally brushes aside some significant emotional hurdles, character shifts, and plot complexities. Additionally, there are a few anachronistic slip-ups scattered through, such as “waiting seven minutes” and “rocking manically.” The regular use of the word “hummed” instead of the standard “said” as a dialogue indicator distracts from the tale rather than adds. However, overall, the exploration and reworking of this most reviled woman’s inner world are compelling and well worth reading. Quin earns respect for her rich portrait of Medea. Highly recommended. Judith Starkston

1ST C E N T U RY THE REBEL’S NIECE Shimon Avish, MarbleStone Press, 2023, $12.95, pb, 307pp, 9798985430431

Living with her husband, Jacob, and their two daughters in Galilee in 67 CE, Sarah cherishes her peaceful life—one that she deserves, having been saved from a massacre fifteen years before by her uncle Yochanan. But her world is upended once again when a Roman force arrives, demanding unconditional surrender of the town. Led by Yochanan, the family and their neighbors flee to Jerusalem. There, Yochanan becomes convinced that he has been chosen by God to lead a rebel force against the Romans— but Sarah has misgivings. Told by Sarah, Jacob, and Yochanan, this is a compelling tale, and one that has sadly become quite timely. I did find the prose clunky at times--it was jarring, for instance, to hear a character use the very American, very Western term “ghost town.” Still, I came to care what happened to the characters, especially Sarah and Jacob, whose mutual affection and repartee relieved some of the grimness of the story. In the same vein, I appreciated Avish’s inclusion of Sarah, as he explains in his author’s note, to show “history as it happens to the nondecision makers.” He does a good job of it. Susan Higginbotham

THE TEMPLE OF FORTUNA Elodie Harper, Apollo, 2023, £16.99, hb, 374pp, 9781838933616 / Union Square, 2023, $17.99/ C$23.99, pb, 352pp, 9781454946649

Plinia Amara has risen in the world from her humble beginnings as a prostitute in the Wolf Den (brothel) in Pompeii. Now a pampered courtesan, she makes her play in the power politics – and the cat-fighting – in the ancient Roman world. She knows all the courtesans serving Rome’s top men. With frenemy Saturia, the sadistic Domitian’s courtesan, she attends the funeral of Emperor Vespasian. Set to marry her patron, Demetrius, Amara is determined to safeguard the secrets of her past and protect her daughter Rufina’s future. But this is 79 CE. Mount Vesuvius is about to enter the story in a big way. This book, the third in the Wolf Den Trilogy, piques our interest by weaving a narrative around famous names: Berenice, Domitian, Pliny. The fictional characters lower down the social order – servants, courtesans, slaves – are named from real Pompeiian graffiti, to complete the slice of life. The characterisation reveals not only an intimacy with Roman society but also a deep understanding of human nature and the games we play. It is a tale told from the point of view of the women making their way in a man’s world, not the high-born married women, but mistresses, gladiatrices, slaves and whores. The plot is not complicated. It is mostly ‘a day in the life of’ these women, and that day is August 25, 79 CE. As the refugees struggle to survive, it becomes clear that the same rules of society apply in disasters: survival for the rich, misery for the poor. And yet destruction of the old life leads to the birth of a new one for Amara. The style is smooth, the picture of Roman society vivid, sophisticated and nuanced. Susie Helme

UP FROM DUST Heather Kaufman, Bethany House, 2024, $17.99, pb, 352pp, 9781540903563

Martha of Bethany is a young woman who remembers the bitter truths of life. She was only a girl when her mother passed away, a memory that continues to haunt her. In her youth, she played an essential part in raising her two younger siblings—Lazarus and Mary. Her life begins to change when she crosses paths with Jesus of Nazareth, a rabbi who can miraculously heal others. When her friend’s husband is ill, she meets the rabbi, and her life begins to transform in a positive way. Up from Dust, the first instalment in the Women of the Way series, is a heartfelt story of faith. It surrounds the life of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, whose story is featured in the gospels of Luke and John. While it is about all three siblings, the novel focuses primarily on Martha and her experiences with Jesus of Nazareth. Through Heather Kaufman’s gorgeous and masterful writing, the world

of first-century Judea comes to life. The characters are so vulnerable and human, Martha especially. It was fantastic to read a story through the eyes of Martha, a character who is often known for her sense of duty in the Bible, and to understand the narrative behind her life. To say that I fell in love with Martha is an understatement. This was Kaufman’s debut novel, and I look forward to what she writes in the future! Elizabeth K. Corbett

RUN TO THE WESTERN SHORE Tim Pears, Swift Press, 2023, £12.99, hb, 185pp, 9781800752979

Tim Pears is no stranger to historical fiction, but in his latest novel he departs from his usual subject of the 20th century to examine the landscape and people of Britain in AD 72, as the Roman Empire begins to assert its dominance. Olwen is the daughter of a Celtic tribal chief, given in marriage to a powerful Roman as part of a peace treaty. Determined to be the mistress of her own fate, she flees, taking the slave Quintus, an interpreter, with her. They travel across the land fleeing the Roman army. Olwen teaches Quintus about the animals, the forests, and the weather as they make their way west. Quintus tells her his own story of his merchant father and how he came to be enslaved. She tells the stories of her ancestors; the legends we know as the Mabinogion. This is a beautifully crafted story which captures the changing seasons and the blossoming relationship between two doomed yet hopeful young lovers as they meet druids and farmers, hunters, and a shaman. Tim Pears’ short but intense novel opens a window onto a vivid and wild period of history and onto a people intimately connected with the natural world. I would have happily read another one hundred pages of Quintus and Olwen’s adventure. If you are a fan of nature writing or early British history, this book is an essential. Lisa Redmond

2N D C E N T U RY CARACALLA S.J.A. Turney, Canelo, 2023, £18.99, hb, 336pp, 9781800329348

It’s 189 AD when little Marcus, firstborn son of distinguished Roman commander Lucius Septimius Severus, has his first glimpse of his father’s true ambition: nothing less than the purple! Even at four, and preoccupied with his newborn brother Geta, Marcus knows how deathly such aspirations can be in Commodus’s Rome. But he also knows his father’s shrewdness and strength – so he’s not overly surprised to soon find himself the son of the new emperor. Intelligent, sharp and cool-headed, Marcus thrives on being groomed for power, learning

to judge men, and following his father on military campaigns. But if he’d hoped to find a friend and companion in Geta, that hope is dashed by the little boy’s jealousy, fuelled by the manoeuvres of Severus’s power-hungry friend Plautianus. Will young Caracalla – nicknamed after the “barbaric” cloak he’s so fond of wearing – grow to be an emperor among all the danger and the intrigue? Will the two brothers learn to trust each other? Well, we know the answers, but Turney makes it interesting by reinterpreting the historical sources into an unexpected, rather different tale. That this tale, told by an older Caracalla, at times reads like non-fiction, with a few dialogues here and there, is the only (though not exactly minor) fault I found in an otherwise interesting book. Also fascinating is the extended historical note: while not always agreeing with Turney’s reading of the sources, I loved to see how he worked with them. Chiara Prezzavento

3R D C E N T U RY OF LOVE AND TREASON Jamie Ogle, Tyndale House, 2024, $16.99, pb, 372pp, 9781496479679

Rome, 270 CE, the reign of Emperor Claudius II. The Roman Empire is beset with threats from Germanic tribes as well as other peoples around the vast territories under its control. There are also threats to Claudius’s power in Rome itself. He needs a constant supply of fresh troops to offset battlefield losses and the reluctance of Roman men to enlist. As part of his recruitment policies, Claudius outlaws marriage. He believes that single men are better soldiers, as they will not be thinking of their families instead of concentrating on fighting. And he would not have to pay widows’ pensions and benefits for wounded soldiers. This is an unpopular edict. People have heard of a notary named Valentine who will perform clandestine marriages despite the danger to him personally. Increased numbers of people come to Valentine requesting a marriage ceremony. Valentine is also the leader of an underground Christian church. Roman officials deem Christianity a threat to the security of the Empire. The Roman authorities imprison Valentine for his activities. He meets Iris, the blind daughter of a Roman jailer, who believes this new Christian faith may help her regain her sight. She converts to Christianity, and she and Valentine hope they may have a future together. But fate has another tragic outcome for the couple. Ogle provides an illuminating peek at the lives of ordinary Romans. It is far from the MGM depictions, instead showing them in their everyday activities, including love stories and amusing tavern scenes. The author creates a fully dimensional St. Valentine, as well as feasible supporting characters and settings. Don’t look for a Hallmark rendition of Valentine’s life, but focus on a well-plotted

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story of politics and love set against the drama of the early Church. Anne Leighton

THE LOYAL CENTURION Jacquie Rogers, Sharpe Books, 2023, £7.99, pb, 250pp, 9798860539693

AD 224, and Quintus Valerius, Imperial Investigator, travels to Eboracum (York), administrative base of the most northern outpost of the Roman Empire. At an overnight stop in Lagentium (now Castleford, Yorkshire), a girl is discovered dead, presumed murdered. On his travels around the province, Quintus and his right-hand man Tiro pass through busy markets, garrisons of disciplined soldiers, and noisy, smelly industrial areas. Everywhere, there are crowds of people – so many that I struggled to remember them all. However, characters important to Quintus soon resolve. In the tradition of detective stories, more bodies are discovered, and Quintus begins investigating. Quintus, however, is not Miss Marple. He is a Roman soldier, he suspects a wider conspiracy, and his own life is threatened. Who, of all the people he has met, can he trust? As the northern winter bites, Quintus and Tiro must go beyond the Wall, alone into the land of the mysterious – and terrifying – Picts. This is a competently written murder mystery/thriller, keeping the reader alert with multiple jeopardies, characters, and motivations. I’m not an expert on Romans, but I live near York and recognised some of the museum exhibits and archaeological discoveries that form the historical setting. This setting is deftly described: enough to evoke the period, but no long history lessons to dull the action. After all the thrills, I thought the end a little drawn out, but all was explained. For those of us interested in the history, there’s an author’s note on sources, and a glossary. I’d have liked a map, too, but there’s a list matching Roman and modern place names. Recommended for readers who enjoy action, adventure and mystery as they timetravel into the Roman Empire. Helen Johnson

8T H C E N T U RY KING OF THE NORTH Angus Donald, Canelo, 2023, £9.99, pb, 368pp, 9781804362334

In 777 AD in the northern part of Svealand (part of modern-day Sweden), shield-maiden Torfinna Hildarsdottir takes her oath as captain to the troops of her lord, Jarl Starki of Norrland. Tor’s half-brother, the famous berserker Bjarki Bloodhand, isn’t overly happy to see his beloved sister tied for life into a subordinate position, especially because King Harald is old, and succession politics are already vicious – but, after much wandering and adventuring, Tor is ready for a more stable life as the Jarl’s captain. Until the king dies, and his power-hungry successor, Sigurd Hring, makes a bid for the ancient title of King of the 18

North, disregarding the traditional allegiance to the King of the Danes. This means war, of course – against King Siegfried of DaneMark, and against Bjarki, whom Siegfried just made his vassal as King of Vastergotland. How will the siblings do, finding themselves on opposing sides, both sworn into a complex web of allegiance, friendship, love, and ambition? Fourth in a series, King of the North is a vigorous, adventurous tale, full of well-drawn characters, and the author does a great job of recreating the cold setting and rather brutal culture, with its complexities of social ties and religion. He also takes, as is explained in the historical note, some considerable liberties with the (admittedly sketchy) sources – and perhaps the shield-maiden heroine is one of them – but it’s all done in good and wellinformed fun. A very engaging read. Chiara Prezzavento

9T H C E N T U RY THE HEATHEN HORDE Steven A. McKay, Canelo, 2023, £10.99, pb, 400pp, 9781804365489

The novel opens in AD 868, some years after the murder of Ragnar Lodbrok, when his sons come to England to take revenge for their father’s death. They are followed by the sly Guthrum and the brutal Bagsecg. At first the novel felt somewhat tame, given that it is about marauding Viking warriors, but I very quickly became absorbed in McKay’s fascination with Alfred, the man. Young and inexperienced as he was when he became king, this first in a planned trilogy doesn’t touch on Alfred’s ideas to unite the kingdoms. Here, he is happy to kill the intruders, or pay them to go and raid someone else’s kingdom and leave Wessex alone. Guthrum in particular causes a litany of problems. McKay’s first foray into fiction based on historical characters is an absorbing read. Rather than concentrate on the brutality of the raiders and the battles, we get a personal look at Alfred’s character, his piety, his belief that God was punishing him for youthful sins, his marriage, and his illness, which would have indicated weakness and caused dissention amongst his thanes. Many people know a few things about Alfred (later to be called ‘the Great’), but there is much of interest to be learned here, and as the author mentions, some of the events are more momentous than fiction could ever be! I could manage without the prologue, as it does nothing to advance a good story, which this is. The translation of place names would be preferable at the front of the book; a character list would be helpful with the abundance of ‘Ae’ names – Aethelred, Aethelflaed, Aethelwulf, et. al.; and a map would be welcome. So onward into the marshes to burn some cakes, and hope that Steven McKay finishes his next book soon. Fiona Alison

11T H C E N T U RY

REVIEWS | Issue 107, February 2024

THE FATE OF A KING K. M. Ashman, Canelo, 2023, £9.99, pb, 304pp, 9781800323681

January 1066, Rouen, Normandy, and Earl Tostig Godwinson, exiled from England, seeks vengeance. His mission is to depose his brother, the recently crowned King Harold of England, and become king himself. It’s a period of particular interest to me, as I believe we are still paying for the consequences of 1066. Therefore, I wanted to like this book. Sadly, I was disappointed. I do not like to hurt an author’s feelings: I know how hard the job is. But in this case, the script I had was riddled with errors. Some errors were serious, such as mixing up names. The ruler of Flanders was persistently referred to as “Godwin”. (The ruler of Flanders was Baldwin. Godwin was the name of Tostig and Harold’s father, who died in 1052.) There appeared to be geographical confusion between the 11th-century earldom of Northumbria, and the present-day county of Northumberland. Northumbria stretched from the Humber estuary to the Scottish border, with its administrative centre at York. Character motives were corny, and word usage broke the ‘spell’ of immersion in 11thcentury England. English armies contained lancers, despite most historians thinking that the English fought on foot at this time. The Archbishop of York was found in “York Abbey” – it’s a Minster. Harold was “dealt a hand”, even though playing cards were not yet invented. This cobbling together of phrases that seem familiar, but weren’t quite right, is frustrating. It’s a shame, because at the core of this book is the tale of a deadly rivalry between two brothers that fatally weakened a country, and enabled a chancer to become William the Conqueror. Helen Johnson

ALL OUR YESTERDAYS Joel H. Morris, Putnam, 2024, $28.00/ C$37.00/£21.99, hb, 368pp, 9780593715383

All Our Yesterdays reimagines Lady Macbeth’s life up until the events begin in Shakespeare’s play. Only referred to as the Lady, she tells us her story in alternating chapters with the Son’s story told in third person. The Lady grew up motherless and free to roam her father’s castle and lands. Lonely and ignored, she had a mercurial father, her loving Grandam, and her cousin Macduff. There is much to be feared in her world – witches, ghosts, spells, omens, portents. During a forest wandering, she meets an old black-cloaked woman holding “a knot in her hand to untie.” The Lady interprets this as a witch meaning to undo her, and her words a prophecy. This event forever haunts her. Soon she is married off to the cruel Mormaer of Moray and gives birth to his son. It is this child of her heart that she must protect from the witch’s prophecy. When Macbeth arrives at the mormaer’s castle, the Lady learns her husband and his men are dead. Macbeth has exacted revenge on his father’s murderer and has arrived to reclaim the castle stolen from his father. But Macbeth falls in love

with the Lady, and they marry. He is a loving husband and fully embraces the Lady’s son as his own. This is a wonderfully atmospheric novel. Morris drops the reader into a fully realized 11th-century world with all the sights and sounds. Carefully chosen words and small details shape this fearful and foreboding world. Through the Lady’s story, we learn about her life shaped by men and the motivations that propelled her into the evil that took over her life. Lady Macbeth’s anger grows in her knowledge that this is not a world for women. This is a rich study of one of the most vilified literary characters. Janice Ottersberg

WOLVES AROUND THE THRONE S.J.A. Turney, Canelo, 2023, £9.99, pb, 385pp, 9781804364345

This is the fourth in Simon Turney’s Wolves of Odin Viking series but could easily be read as a standalone. In it we briefly encounter the young William of Normandy, newly come to his dukedom, broadening its appeal to people who are interested in the ex-Viking Normans and the man who invaded England as well as in the exploits of the Wolves. This rollicking good story – Turney is an excellent storyteller – also has my favourite ingredient of a book which has taken me back in time: a historical note explaining what was real, and where the author bent the known history a bit; not a lot, in this case! The Wolves have been tasked with safely delivering an unwilling noblewoman to her Norman kinsman in time for her wedding. The shifting and bloody politics of the time are excitingly portrayed; there is a sufficiency of blood and gore, and Jarl Halfdan has some tricky political manoeuvring to do. It doesn’t help that the bride-to-be has no intention of helping… Halfdan is relieved when William the Bastard turns up, just as the seer Gunnhild had foretold, and helping the young underdog proves the right thing to do. (I would like to know very much more about Gunnhild; I hope she gets a book to herself at some point!) The joy of the story for me, though, was Ulfr’s tales of the sea and his crafting of a longship, the Sea Dragon, just in time to get the band, plus Archbishop Aelfric, away from the siege of William’s stronghold at Falaise. I am following the reconstruction of the Sutton Hoo longship, from several hundred years earlier, with interest; I often go and watch the craftsmen at work, and it was thrilling to read

about Ulfr’s construction path from timber to launch. Turney promises at least two more in this series, and I for one will be waiting impatiently for them. Nicky Moxey

12T H C E N T U RY THE LIONHEART’S BRIDE Austin Hernon, Sapere, 2023, $9.99/ C$11.99/£8.99, pb, 225pp, 9780854950959

This 12th-century historical adventure follows Princess Berengaria on her quest to catch up with and marry Richard I, King of England, as he journeys to fight in the Third Crusade. When Eleanor of Aquitaine discovers her husband, King Henry II, has bedded their son’s betrothed, she secretly travels to the Kingdom of Navarre to negotiate an agreement for Berengaria to marry Richard. Berengaria accompanies Eleanor on a trek through France, across the Alps, and into Italy to find the lionheart crusader. They continue their odyssey to Sicily, where Richard’s sister, Joan, joins them. Storms, battles, and enemies threaten to stand in their way of finding the elusive bridegroom. The ending has an unexpected twist when the couple finally connect with each other. Author Austin Hernon has captured key historical moments of Richard warring and conquering other kingdoms on his way to the Holy Land. The book realistically depicts the difficulty of traveling by horseback on land and sailing by ships during the Middle Ages. The plot is fast paced, with each chapter introducing new characters and places such as the island of Cyprus and the towering walls of Carcassonne. The narrative is told from the first-person point of view of Berengaria. She comes across as a dispassionate observer, providing little insight into herself and other major historical figures who impact the political turmoil during the Crusades. Without her emotional resonance, it is difficult to engage with the plights of Berengaria and other characters. The Lionheart’s Bride will appeal to those who enjoy reading about lesser-known medieval historical figures. Linnea Tanner

OUTLAWED Margaret McNellis, Silver Arrow Books, 2023, $16.99, pb, 294pp, 9781737257950

Since killing the Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Alys is on a quest to obtain a pardon from King Richard. However, he’s being held hostage by the Holy Roman Emperor. Accompanied by fellow outlaw, Graham, and Barnaby the horse, the trio must travel through London under the nose of Prince John—the man who ordered Alys’s capture—on their journey to where King Richard is held captive. However, her quest is twofold. Alys must also save the king from captivity and return him to England in order to end Prince John’s tyranny. I enjoyed Alys’s growth in confidence and leadership. However, the majority of her

growth didn’t happen until near the book’s end. For the first half, Alys is often angry at those around her for reasons that feel unnecessary. For example, being angry at a man whose proposal she rejected as he falls in love with another woman (even though Alys has no desire to marry) feels out of character. Alys also becomes frustrated by those who want to be with family over going into battle; meanwhile, she takes time to visit her family before engaging foes. This makes Alys harder to empathize with. The pacing is slower than it was in Book 1, The Red Fletch, but the meticulously crafted setting, which readers get to explore and feel immersed within, will captivate. Both novels highlight the author’s strong research and talent at crafting historical adventure tales. This is an enjoyable series, and I look forward to what’s next for these characters. J. Lynn Else

13T H C E N T U RY ROSE GIRL Holly Lynn Payne, Skywriter Books, 2023, $19.99, pb, 350pp, 9780982279762

In 1256, a woman gives birth in a monastery deep in the Rila mountains. Ivan, a young friar, is the only witness. Roses do not grow in the area, so Ivan is puzzled when their aroma pervades the air after the child’s birth. The mother gifts him a small bag of rose hips taken from the rosa damascene, and before leaving, instructs him to name the girl Damascena and to plant the rosehip seeds and replant cuttings from the adult plants. Payne takes us on a journey with Damascena through her child and teen years, as she is visited by the mystic, Shams, in the spirit-shape of an old man. Shams teaches her how to grow and propagate the roses, performing an otherworldly dance to ensure they thrive. Damascena’s tale is a long and winding one. Taken for dead after a fire, she falls under the care of Rumi, who heals her lifethreatening burns. Rumi welcomes the rose girl as his last companion before he departs this life, enabling him to reconcile himself with the long-ago loss of Shams, and to begin writing again. Rose Girl reads like a fairytale, with supernatural themes, but grounded in the unsolved disappearance of Shams of Tabriz, muse of the prolific 13th-century poet and mystic, Jalal al-din Mevlana Rumi, named Rumi in the novel. Payne has extrapolated from a legendary mystery of a girl who, surrounded by an army of Mongol soldiers, continued to

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pray with a fervency which deeply affected the young Rumi for the rest of his life. This is a beautifully told story about the power of faith; the Sufi journey to God through prayer; and the ancient ritualistic sema dance, infused into Damascena’s search for her mother. Fiona Alison

FESTIVAL OF THE OPPRESSED Alastair Wallace, Ocean Reeve Publishing, 2023, $20.99, pb, 554pp, 9781922644282

Flanders in the 13th century sees Jehanne la Flèche and Guillem d’Avignon, two musicians, seeking patronage. With enforced curfews making paying jobs at taverns risky, they find themselves at the mercy of a particularly stingy merchant who prefers to only employ Guillem, cursing any woman performing in public as demeaning and sinful. But their patron also causes some workers to ignore the jongleurs. As unrest begins to boil, Jehanne and Guillem are asked to “sing out” in defense of merchants, using sarcastic songs aimed at specific people or events. However, Jehanne and Guillem will have to confront their own personal battles as the tension heats up. There are some editing issues, including duplicate sentences in a paragraph and missing punctuation, but these errors are few. Wallace has pulled together a well-balanced clutch of perspectives from a time period of strife for laborers and women. The title harkens to the Germaine Greer quote, “Revolution is the festival of the oppressed,” and the book takes us into taverns as talk about standing up for fair wages and hours are born anew in ideas and plans. This book is over 500 pages long, and, unfortunately, the length is felt. The research is well-detailed and includes all aspects of life, but after multiple chapters of non-impactful and highly detailed moments, the plot drags. For the first 50% of the book, our main characters are outside of the brewing conflict, more often listening to stories about the frustration and unrest. The first and second half of the book feel like two different novels as the jongleurs become more and more separated in their journeys. While there are many nuanced setting details that will delight readers interested in this time period, sadly the plot gets lost along the way. J. Lynn Else

WAR CRY Ian Ross, Hodder & Stoughton, 2023, £22.00, hb, 387pp, 9781399708883

The title refers to the second Barons’ War (1264-67). Fifty years earlier, rebel nobles had curbed royal power with the Magna Carta. Now their descendants, led by the charismatic Earl of Leicester, Simon de Montfort, are attempting more sweeping reforms. After capturing King Henry III in the previous book (Battle Song), De Montfort is now effectively ruling in his name, but opposition is growing. De Montfort is credited with the establishment of Parliament, meaning these 20

are major events in our modern cultural and political development. He talked a lot about freedom and rights, even if he reserved those ideals for noblemen like himself. Unfortunately, none of this is explored. Our protagonist, Adam de Norton, is a minor knight tied to the rebel cause by economic and political reality, not conviction. This may be realistic, but it does not make him a very endearing hero. There are a lot of battles and graphic violence, and a romance with his liege’s daughter which goes nowhere. There’s a more involved affair with an old flame, now married. In fact, the cuckolded husband is the most interesting character in the novel. It’s all well done, but the problem is Adam doesn’t influence proceedings, which makes it hard to root for him, particularly as he ends up on the losing side. Martin Bourne

A PAST UNEARTHED Jin Yong (trans. Gigi Chang), MacLehose Press, 2023, £14.99, pb, 426pp, 9781529417500

This novel is a continuation of the wuxia (martial arts) series by the bestselling Chinese author, Jin Yong. The series follows the adventures of the Condor Heroes, a group of skilled martial artists, and A Past Unearthed is the fifth book. It is set in 13th-century China when the land is menaced by invading Mongolian forces. It is ten years since the heroes Guo Jing and Lotus Huang married and settled on Peach Blossom Island with Lotus’s father, the master martial artist Apothecary Huang. Apothecary Huang has left the island, and his daughter and Guo Jing have gone to look for him. On their travels, they encounter the orphaned Penance, son of Guo Jing’s sworn brother, who Guo Jing adopts. However, Penance distrusts Guo Jing. His disaffection deepens when Guo Jing places him in a monastery to learn martial arts, where he is not well-treated. As with the previous books, Jin Yong weaves together the stories of multiple characters (the character notes are useful) in a complex saga of revenge, intrigue, love, treachery and honour. The book also sets up new threads to be unraveled in later volumes. Although it introduces a new generation of martial artists, it continues the stories of earlier characters and refers to previous events, and I recommend reading them in order. Besides, why deprive yourself of the pleasure of discovering these exciting stories with their dazzling fight scenes, astonishing plot twists, and captivating characters? Arguably, the book is more fantasy than history: there are few references to real events or historical personages, and the fighters’ skills border on the supernatural. But however you categorize it, A Past Unearthed is an action-packed instalment in a thrilling epic. Lucienne Boyce

14T H C E N T U RY

REVIEWS | Issue 107, February 2024

THE STRONGEST HEART Regan Walker, Regan Walker Publishing, 2023, $13.99, pb, 316pp, 9781735438146

The Strongest Heart, Book 3 in the Clan Donald Saga, opens in 1386 when Donald of Islay succeeds his late father as Lord of the Isles. The island kingdom lying off the west coast of Scotland—including Skye, Mull and Iona— had maintained its independence throughout centuries of turmoil. Donald is determined to keep his titles, people and land secure despite threats issued from Robert Stewart, Duke of Albany, who is all too eager to rule the entire country. In a move that is both honorable and strategic, Lord Donald marries Mariota Leslie, heiress to the Earldom of Ross. Donald’s father had betrothed him, as a young boy, to the heiress. What’s more, her lands could prove an effective buffer against military incursions. Happily enough, love and devotion quickly get factored into the equation, even as the Stewart threat looms ever closer. When diplomacy fails, Donald musters an army to stake his rightful claim in a decisive battle of clashing sword and spear that secures his place in the annals of history as the Hero of Harlaw. This is a story of Walker’s own family heritage, transported into the world of historical fiction to celebrate the Clan Donald. The author’s historical notes complement her fictional rendering of events, with the main characters painted in a sympathetic light that seems in keeping with the scant existing written record of dates and places. Oxford-educated Donald is judicious, honorable and, when need be, a fierce warrior. Mariota is a loyal, intelligent helpmate who bears several children, thus securing the future of Islay. The portrayal of Donald’s gentle, considerate courtship of her is particularly touching in an era when women were little more than pawns in a political game of land and power. For readers who have a love for the wildly rugged Hebrides, the romantic Highlands and Scottish medieval history, this novel is sure to please. Deborah Cay Wilding

15T H C E N T U RY TOKEN OF BETRAYAL C. V. Lee, RnR Publishing, 2022, $14.99, pb, 352pp, 9798987031919

Jersey seems like a haven from the turmoil of war until an insider permits the French to seize the island fortress one night in 1461. Sir Philippe de Carteret sends word to the newly crowned English king, but he is too busy dealing with internal and external disputes to lend assistance, and Warwick, Lord of the Channel Islands, ignores all missives. To protect family and tenants, de Carteret pays homage to his new overlord while biding his time. Not everyone is willing to wait. While the French terrorize the islanders, another seigneur and a minister plot to drive away the French. It takes only the claims of a stranger to light their fuse. Neither child nor adult, de Carteret’s nine-year-old son, also Philippe, finds life exceedingly frustrating. He forms an

attachment to his new tutor, who came to Jersey after the House of York dethroned the House of Lancaster. When pirates attack one night, Philippe saves his tutor’s life but doesn’t fully comprehend her sufferings. Nor does he understand a fortuneteller’s prediction or his surreptitious visit to the French dungeons; both become haunting memories. This first book in the Roses & Rebels series is a fictional rendering of France’s medieval invasion of the Channel Island and the resultant events, as well as a coming-of-age tale seen from the perspectives of father and son over nine years. Occasional word choices pull readers from the story, and one incident in an inn seems a bit contrived. Overall, Token of Betrayal is an interesting read depicting the Wars of the Roses from an unusual angle. The themes of growing up, loyalty, and the effects of war on regular people have relevance to readers today. Cindy Vallar

THE RED CITADEL

free will so that she could marry the man she loves and start a family with him. The novel makes explicit the thoughts, worries, doubts, and feelings of guilt and terror on the parts of both those who stay and those who leave. Humanizing the situation are instances of daily aggravations and annoyances, along with moments of grace and celebration. Fascinating descriptive details further illuminate daily life in this period. Readers will be swept up in this well-paced and well-plotted novel filled with believably human characters. Confronting such a sea of conflicting and swirling emotions in this story forces us to consider what decisions we might make in the face of similar circumstances. Equally unnerving is the realization that this human drama keeps playing out again and again in history and in modern times. This is a gripping novel of a turbulent time that will stay with readers long after the last page is read. Highly recommended. Karen Bordonaro

Michael Lynes, Romaunce Books, 2023, £15.99/$20.00, pb, 358pp, 9781739185749

In The Red Citadel, third in the author’s Isaac Alvarez Mysteries, Michael Lynes continues the story of Isaac Alvarez and his family, again setting his story in Spain at the time of the Spanish Inquisition, beginning in 1499. The locations of the novel are, as usual with this writer, vividly and fluently drawn, as are all the other details of the lives of his major and even minor characters, who are consistently well developed, their stories proving logical and cleverly woven into the structure of the whole. Some, like Isabel, Isaac’s daughter, now eighteen, “still unmarried and a governess,” become more dominant and central to the plot as the complexities of the storylines emerge. Although a strategic part of the series, The Red Citadel works as well as a “standalone” novel as it does as part of an ongoing project, so fans of Michael Lynes can probably expect more news of the Alvarez family in yet more well-constructed and enjoyable reads. Julia Stoneham

SOUTH OF SEPHARAD Eric Z. Weintraub, History Through Fiction, 2024, $18.95/£15.99, pb, 334pp, 9798987319130

The banishment of Jews from Spain by its Catholic monarchs following their conquest of Granada is given voice in this novel. By 1492, Spain (Sepharad in Hebrew) had been a Jewish haven under Muslim rulers for centuries. This novel tells the story of a Jewish physician and his equally strong-minded family members who must now make terrible decisions regarding their immediate survival and their potential futures. Rather than a simple stay-or-go decision, each choice is fraught with layers of peril. Further complicating these choices is the situation of his eldest daughter, who has already converted to Catholicism of her own

TOMORROW WE WILL KNOW Sandra Worth, Walter Books, 2023, $12.24, pb, 373pp, 9798986607788

In 1444 CE, Zoe, the vivacious elevenyear-old redhaired daughter of a Greek duke, is already smitten by Prince Constantine, who will later become the Emperor of the Christian Greek Roman Empire with its capital at Constantinople. Fast-forward to 1453, and Constantine, now ruler, stands on the defensive walls of the city under siege by a vastly larger invading army led by an ambitious Eastern sultan. For purely political reasons, Zoe and Constantine must keep their marriage a secret, yet she remains his one solace. The Christian and Muslim royals share some things in common, including interfamilial rivalries and feuds among various factions of their own coreligionists. The Sultan Mehmet has his infant brother strangled to prevent any future challenges, while Constantine has problems with his own family, not to mention the need to reconcile the differences between the Eastern and Western Christian churches. When a Hungarian Christian inventor of humble origin finally receives a hurried audience with Constantine to discuss his concept for a revolutionary new cannon, he is dismissed as being mad. As the siege progresses, a noble visitor from the West arrives with help and impresses both Emperor and his secret Empress immensely. But is this too little, too late? Meanwhile, the Hungarian and his idea for an all-powerful bombard have been received with favor by Mehmet and the Turks, who immediately recognize merit over title. Initially concerned this monumental historical event might be trivialized into some simple and common love story, I was delighted to be wrong. The author presents us with a memorable romance but also illuminates

the reader on the geopolitical aspects of the time and, surprisingly, the tactical, technical, and operational details of medieval siege warfare. An outstanding historical novel which the reader will long remember. Strongly recommended. Thomas J. Howley

16T H C E N T U RY THE TWILIGHT QUEEN Jeri Westerson, Severn House, 2024, $31.99/£21.99, hb, 224pp, 9781448310906

In the Tudor court of King Henry VIII, secrets can be dangerous, even for the king’s favorite court jester, Will Somers, who finds himself drawn into a mystery that plunges Anne Bullen (Boleyn) into a world of serious peril. It’s 1536, and Queen Anne’s marriage to Henry is in big trouble—the king’s eye is wandering, she’s failed to deliver a male heir, her enemies are powerful—and if that isn’t bad enough, she discovers the dead body of a complete stranger in her chamber. Because Will solved a murder several years back and is particularly devoted to little Princess Elizabeth, Anne enlists him to dispose of the body and uncover the real killer. That is, if they all expect to escape without losing their heads, since it turns out that Will has a few secrets of his own. Fans of the first book in The King’s Fool mystery series will be absolutely delighted by this entertaining take on the complicated life of jester detective, Will, as he moves through the Tudor court unseen, yet listening in and making fun of everyone. He’s married to his true love, Marion, but often winds up in bed with courtier Nicholas Pachett, and while the three of them sort out the boundaries of their relationship, they also begin piecing together evidence in a murderous royal frame-up. When clues first lead one way then another, suspects are questioned and ruled out. Or are they? With an artful mix of historical details and fiction, author Westerson engages readers in a mystery of twists and turns, riddles, bawdy humor, and clandestine trysts, featuring a richly developed main character whose observations on court life had me laughing out loud by page three. A thoroughly enjoyable read with a final surprise. Deborah Cay Wilding

17T H C E N T U RY WHEN LIGHT BREAKS THROUGH Brenda Murphy, Bricktop Hill Books, 2023, $29.99, hb, 294pp, 9780997366990

This is the story of Ann Putnam, one of a group of girls who claimed to be bewitched in or around Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. As the story begins, Ann is a young girl who helps her mother take care of their home and family. However, she then gets swept up in a

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conspiracy led by a group of her friends which leads to the death of many women (and men) who are maliciously accused of being witches. As Ann’s life progresses, she looks back with regret on her actions. This is also the story of Reverend Joseph Green and his attempts at reuniting Salem, gaining redemption for Ann and others, and restoring the spirit of the town. He eventually begins looking into what really happened in Salem. This novel is both captivating and horrifying, as it tells how a group of girls were able to manipulate whole communities into a rage that resulted in destitution and death for innocent people. The author does a great job of expressing Ann’s bewilderment as a child’s prank turns into real adult legal proceedings with very serious consequences. Ann’s helplessness and inability to stop what she had started are also expertly conveyed. When Joseph Green comes into the story, several years have passed, and he is tasked with trying to mend the breach between the families of those who had been killed and the families of the accusers. His efforts to uncover the truth of what happened are fascinating. Many have heard of the Witch Trials, but this unique novel also walks the reader through the aftermath and the many years of healing required to get past this event. Anyone who is interested in the history of the Salem witch trials and especially what happened afterwards will enjoy this fictionalized retelling. Bonnie DeMoss

THE PHOENIX BRIDE Natasha Siegel, Dell, 2024, $18.00/£12.99, pb, 336pp, 9780593597873

Cecilia Thorowgood and her adored husband travel to London in 1665 to visit her sister Margaret and husband Lord Eden. But their London merriment turns tragic as soon as the couple return home. Her precious Will, husband of less than a year, is now dead of the plague. Back in the city she hates for what it has taken from her, she is living in her sister’s townhouse. Drowning in grief, Cecilia is wasting away. A desperate Margaret sends for numerous doctors to help. Trying to avoid the latest new doctor, Cecilia observes Dr. Mendes from her hiding place. She is fascinated by this foreign-looking man. David Mendes is a Jew who fled the Inquisition in Portugal to make a new life with his father, but in London he remains an outsider. In chapters alternating between Cecilia and David, their friendship unwisely grows into love. But Lord Eden wants Cecilia married off to Sir Samuel Grey. David has enjoyed intimacies with other men, but an impulsive and starry-eyed Cecilia has upturned his life. He is tormented and torn by his desire for her while remaining devoted to his Jewish faith. Siegel writes of the struggle of Jews forced from their countries to start new lives. As David helps Cecilia out of her despondency, her life blooms. Now Margaret is no longer in control, and this creates great conflict between the sisters. My favorite character is Samuel. Flamboyant, flashy, and feminine, he doesn’t want to marry 22

Cecilia any more than she desires to marry him. It is his kindness and friendship to Cecilia that helps her navigate her world of no options. Siegel has created terrific characters to love and hate. Set with the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London as a backdrop, this is a delightful read infused with serious issues of Jewish displacement. Janice Ottersberg

18T H C E N T U RY ANYTHING BUT YES Joie Davidow, Monkfish, 2023, $16.99/ C$25.95/£14.99, pb, 233pp, 9781958972083

This beautifully written novel is based on the true story of Anna del Monte, a young Jewish woman in Rome in 1749, who was abducted at gunpoint and imprisoned in a convent in an attempt to forcibly convert her to Catholicism. Starved and deprived of sleep, she is visited by various nuns, priests, and theologians, many of them converts from Judaism, who lecture and interrogate her. If she answers “yes” to any of their questions, it will be taken to mean that she accepts baptism. This means that she could never have contact with any other Jew, including her own family, again. Anna courageously resists the Church’s attempts to convert her, wondering at the same time who denounced her, and if she will ever return to her family. Anna’s family and the governors of the ghetto try hard to secure her release, but will they succeed? Davidow based the book on a diary that was lost for over 200 years. This was a tragic time for the Jewish people of Rome. Already confined to the ghetto for centuries, they were not allowed to practice most professions, and Pope Benedict XIV decided to convert as many Jews as possible, starting with children and young unmarried women, who were the most vulnerable members of the community. A man who converted to Catholicism could offer a woman he wanted to marry to the Church, no matter how the woman felt about it. Davidow does a wonderful job of telling the story of a courageous woman who stays true to her religion despite everything. I loved the details of life in the ghetto, including the food and the celebrations of the Jewish holidays. The novel particularly resonates with me. Having visited the Jewish ghetto in Rome, I could visualize the locations. Highly recommended. Vicki Kondelik

TYRANNY’S BLOODY STANDARD J. D. Davies, Canelo, 2023, £12.99, pb, 304pp, 9781804360910

It’s 1794, and Philippe Kermorvant, Vicomte de Saint-Victor, the son of an aristocratic English mother and a French nobleman, has command of a French naval ship. The French Revolution is at its height; indeed, this is the year Robespierre goes to the guillotine, and to be both the son of an aristocrat and halfEnglish is perilous. However, Philippe never

REVIEWS | Issue 107, February 2024

swerves in his commitment to the new Republic of France. And this is where the book is at its most fascinating, certainly for this reader. The language used, ‘Citizen Captain’, references to the destruction of ‘wanton idolatry’ in churches, and the isolation of France (for Republicans are not loved anywhere in Europe) as all the country’s neighbours recoil in horror and fear at the grim end of its royals – this all forms an illuminating backdrop to the story and is subtly dealt with. Philippe is involved in a series of skirmishes at sea and ends up in the great harbour at Valletta moored next to a ship of Naples – yet another enemy to France. But Malta, despite being the home of the Knights of St John, is neutral, and the two ships end up putting to sea to fight ‘a duel’. This is a clever touch, and the descriptions of the battle and life at sea, generally, are evocative and given with convincing detail. This is the second in a series, and there are story threads from the first which will likely continue to the third. Having not read the first, I struggled sometimes to engage with the characters and their motivations, and especially as to why Philippe was not immediately turning all his efforts to avenging the death of his wife and son. Nevertheless, this is an enjoyable and, at times insightful, read covering the impact of the French Revolution on Europe from a rare perspective. V. E. H. Masters

THIS THING OF DARKNESS Nicola Edwards, Aderyn Press, 2023, £8.99, pb, 280pp, 9781916398689

1771, Gimmerton, Yorkshire, England. Abe Earnshaw relates how he makes his weary way from Liverpool to his home, Wuthering Heights, accompanied by a dark, ragamuffin boy of seven years of age, whom Earnshaw obviously loves and refers to as his son. Seven years later, Robert Feather, the innkeeper of The Black Bull Inn in Gimmerton, describes how this same boy, Heathcliff, turns up at the inn on a stormy night in a fearsome mood. Feather is frightened of this angry, violent boy and agrees to give him his best colt, a travel coat, and all his ready money just to get rid of him. Heathcliff’s life during the next three years is told chronologically from the point of view of different people he associates with, using letters, and diaries as well as first-person narration. Edwards brilliantly captures the personality and voice of each character, but we only hear Heathcliff’s own voice in the last chapter. He describes his return to Wuthering Heights, his meeting with the drunken Hindley, and his discovery that Cathy has married Edgar Linton and now lives at Thrushcross Grange. He is determined to see Cathy and discover whether she still loves him as she promised to do. The book finishes before we know the answer, and we must revert to the original to find out what happens next. Although telling the story through different characters’ eyes works very well and is beautifully done, I would have liked to hear

more from Heathcliff himself. We discover how sadistic, cruel, vindictive and pitiless he is to everyone he meets, but to find out why, I think you would have to read Wuthering Heights to get a better understanding of the emotional damage he suffered. Having said that, you can read This Thing of Darkness without reading Brontë’s novel. Marilyn Pemberton

THE SEAMSTRESS OF ACADIE Laura Frantz, Revell, 2024, $18.99, pb, 416pp, 9780800740689

In 1754, Sylvie Galant comes from an upright French family on the coast of Acadia, which is proclaiming neutrality in the expected war between England and France. Sylvie shares her French father with her beloved half-brother, Bleu, whose mother was Mi’kmaq. Despite their neutral stance, the Acadians are most fearful of the British army, which is rumored to be approaching on board a fleet of warships. Bleu has been a covert member of the French Acadian resistance who has been successfully operating alongside the local Mi’kmaq tribes. Bleu’s enemy counterpart is Major William Blackburn, an American colonist and British Army Rangers officer. Blackburn is now having doubts about supporting the British, which are reinforced when he meets Sylvie while scouting in Acadie. The Acadians are put aboard ships to be sent away, and many are lost at sea amidst hideous conditions. Sylvie loses family members and washes up in the Virginia colony. Aided by a few Americans and shunned by many others, she improbably links up with Blackburn, who has resigned his commission, and both reunite with Bleu after a series of dangerous adventures. Full of conflict, intrigue, suffering, romance and ultimate inspiration, the novel superbly brings renewed light upon the ethnic cleansing of the Acadians. Sharing their misery with Black slaves, indentured servants, and some Native Americans, the Acadians display resilience throughout. The diverse characters are vibrant, and the times and venues are portrayed with accuracy and lustrous color. Never morbid nor overly sentimental, strong and memorable lead character Sylvie will capture the reader’s empathy and admiration. Very much recommended. Thomas J. Howley

THE PAINTER’S DAUGHTERS Emily Howes, Phoenix, 2024, £20.00, hb, 384pp, 9781399610780 / Simon & Schuster, 2024, $27.99, hb, 352pp, 9781668021385

This biographical novel focuses on Margaret and Molly, the daughters of artist Thomas Gainsborough, taking them through their lives from childhood. The narrator, in a vivid first-person present-tense voice, is Margaret known as Peggy, the younger of the two but increasingly called upon to be the protector of her sister, as Molly’s grip on sanity becomes

increasingly tenuous. I first encountered these sisters in Anthony Quinn’s fine 2022 novel Molly and the Captain. Gainsborough did indeed affectionately call Peggy by the nickname of ‘Captain.’ His portraits of them can still be seen in London’s National Gallery. The book opens with lyrical descriptions of the process of preparing canvases and the mixing of paints, which then widens to bring us into the heart of the little Gainsborough family – Thomas, bright, witty, by turns a warm father and a selfish husband; his wife, also Margaret, relentlessly practical and sensible, not only running the household but keeping the business accounts. The family moves to the fashionable surroundings of Bath, where later the girls enter the marriage market with disastrous results. The family background of the artist’s wife is, we are told early on, kept secret from the girls. Another narrative, a third-person account of a tavern girl in Harwich named Meg, gradually unravels this mystery. Whilst Peggy and Molly’s material conditions improve, Meg embarks on a gripping mission that leaves her hungry and homeless in London. Poignant, funny, psychologically acute, and finely narrated, this book is generally solid in its period, but I have a few quibbles. For instance, Gainsborough is shown to be keeping his paint in labelled metal tubes – but these were not available before 1840. Still, this is a very deeply felt story of sisterly love – and of the sacrifices made by carers in every era – which deserves to succeed. Highly recommended. Ben Bergonzi

PELICAN GIRLS Julia Malye, Harper, 2024, $30.00/C$37.00, hb, 368pp, 9780063299757 / Headline Review, 2024, £14.99, pb, 368pp, 9781472298218

Pelican Girls tells a vivid and potent story of women first discarded by society then sent as brides to shore up the floundering colony of La Louisiane in America. These courageous women survived unbelievable hardship to create new lives in the

New World. La Salpêtrière, founded by Louis XIV in 17th-century Paris, was a large compound housing women and girls in severely inhumane conditions – a prison for criminals, a reformatory for the mentally ill and undesirables, and an orphanage of forsaken children. Overcrowding at La Salpêtrière prompted sending some prison inmates to a New France colony in America. In 1720, Governor Bienville of La Louisiane no longer wanted criminals sent to the New World, but

reformed and repentant fertile women and young orphans as brides. Primarily, we follow three women over the next 14 years from the long voyage on La Baleine to La Louisiane, to their expected marriages, and building their new lives in an inhospitable land – Geneviève, imprisoned for performing abortions; Pétronille, confined by her rich family as an “unsatisfying woman”; Charlotte, abandoned as an infant, now thirteen years old. Two other women enrich the narrative: Etiennette, Charlotte’s friend from the orphanage, and Utu’wv Ecoko’nesel, an indigenous Natchez young woman. Be it the whims of nature, the cruelties of men, or their own internal conflicts, the strong bonds these women forge help them endure and survive. Romantic love between two of the women gives a poignancy to the story. There is a certain rhythm to Malye’s stylized writing that takes getting used to, and vague plot details will eventually come into focus, so read on. This is a stand-out novel for its historical details surrounding African slavery, the native Natchez people, the conflicts between the French and natives, the growth of New Orleans, the visuals of the Louisiana swamplands in a virgin land, and especially these formidable women. Janice Ottersberg

FREEDOM’S GHOST Eliot Pattison, Counterpoint, 2023, $29.00/£27.99, hb, 400pp, 9781640093201

This seventh in Eliot Pattison’s series of mysteries of the American Revolution seizes a small portion of time in the lead-up to the war: from late February of 1770 through what would become known as the Boston Massacre in March, with a short amount of the aftermath. Choosing such a small morsel of time allows Pattison to push more deeply into the shifting loyalties of that period. Duncan McCallum, a medically trained and unwilling Scottish expatriate who’s found parallels to his situation among both Native Americans and enslaved persons earlier in the series, is known among his friends as one who can “read” the factors in a death. So when murders of British soldiers multiply around him, there’s abundant need for his skills. Unless, of course, his enemies choose to tag him as a murderer. Duncan has caught the urge for independence for the colonies, but like his ally John Hancock, he’s pushing to hold off hostilities—the colonies are not yet united, and as Benjamin Franklin tells him, “What the patriots need is time.” Instead, the British officers around him, to whom he struggles to be useful, keep taking actions that press the trigger points of revolution. Thus, ironically, Duncan’s role of interpreting the murders becomes one of using small misstatements to hold back attacks by others, especially General Gage, whom Samuel Adams bitterly labels a “master of ghosts.” Dense narrative is leavened by wellwritten dialogue and thoughtful insights, and persistent readers can find fresh understanding of this crucial time period, including why the

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war’s match will set it ablaze in Boston, rather than New York. In addition, Duncan’s continued personal growth and tender frontier-based romance enrich the book’s pleasures. Beth Kanell

STAR OF THE SEA Katharine Tiernan, Sacristy Press, 2023, £14.99, pb, 320pp, 9781789592887

Katharine Tiernan tells the story of her ancestors, the Cresswells of Cresswell Hall in the north-east of England, from 1745 to 1807. The family saga branches into the fortunes of other families—the Easterbys and the Addisons—but the main thread we follow is that of Elizabeth Cresswell. When we meet them, the Cresswells have dangerous links to resurgent Jacobites supporting the Catholic pretender to the English throne. Elizabeth’s father acts to prevent the family estate being confiscated and then sinks the family fortune into a poorly managed new build, following the fashion for domestic modernisation. Meanwhile, John Addison, shipmaster, is rising fast to become a shipowner in the expanding possibilities of maritime trade, troop transport and privateering, with high risk but potential vast profits made possible by the French wars. His profits will be used to further his social ambition to become a gentleman, to be able to buy property which will make him part of the new mercantile aristocracy. He thinks it may be time to look about him for a wife. Tiernan drops us lightly into a world recognisable from Jane Austen, a world of male companionship, the contracted partnerships of men and women, and the social and economic strategies needed to prosper. We are in a women’s world of domestic stability and risk, and we see how the young must make the transition into the married state or find economic protection in bequests. The first half of the novel is rather disconnected with multiple viewpoint shifts as we are introduced to the range of characters, but the pace improves midway, and we are treated to an Austenesque romance. This is an immersive and convincing act of 18th-century storytelling. Kiernan skilfully fictionalises the lives of her ancestors and breathes life back into her family archives. Louise Tree

STA F F P U BL IC AT ION LIFE BEYOND THE BALLROOM: VISCOUNT OVERBOARD BY MISTY URBAN Award-winning author, Misty Urban, has had her fill of ‘historical romances with rich, beautiful people gossiping at expensive parties.’ Instead, in Viscount Overboard (Oliver Heber, 2023), Urban leans into her scholarly background in medieval romance – the world 24

of ‘odd and disfigured characters: lepers, hermits, wild men of the woods’ – to introduce the reader to a found family living at St. Sefins, an abandoned priory near Newport, Wales. It’s 1799, and Gwen, a healer, offers sanctuary for the hurt and abandoned, including impoverished widows, disabled children, and Dovey, a formerly enslaved woman. When the new Viscount Penrydd, owner of St. Sefins, decides to sell, everything is suddenly at risk, but an accident brings opportunity. Penrydd washes up on the shores of the Severn with no memory of who he is. But Gwen’s decision to keep him in the dark while she wins him to her cause may cost her dearly. Romance beckons for Gwen and Penrydd, but obstacles – Gwen’s haunting past, the class disparity between them, Penrydd’s battle scars – make a happy outcome uncertain. Secondary characters also keep the pages turning. Gwen’s friend, Dovey, for example, ‘sprang to life, fully formed,’ a character with ‘strength and resilience’ who ‘can be shrewd where Gwen would cave.’ Her future is tied to Gwen’s, adding to the rising tensions. Urban’s love of Wales shines throughout as she combines historical knowledge seamlessly into her characters’ daily lives. Women in Welsh history feature, including Jemima Fawr, who repelled an invasion on British soil, and Marged ferch Ifan, described by Urban as ‘a legend in her own right’. And then there is St. Gwladys, to whom Gwen prays. ‘Gwladys gets all the tropes,’ Urban explains: ‘abducted princess, wise queen, fertile mother, then patroness of her own religious house. She became Gwen’s hero, and mine.’ Readers ready to ditch the ballroom will enjoy the ‘wild beauty’ of Newport’s coastline, most notably when it plays its own part in the drama, through the devastating Severn Bore, a tidal surge. Viscount Overboard deftly supports Urban’s argument that historical romance has much more to offer when a writer explores ‘what might be happening in the shadows or the fringes of the fashionable world’ and ‘what happens to the people who don’t fit in’. Romance, adventure, history, and an intriguingly different cast of characters: find them all here. Kate Braithwaite

THE WATER CHILD Mathew West, Harper North, 2023, £14.99, hb, 308pp, 9780008541927

In a Portuguese port in the 1750s, nineteenyear-old Cecilia is waiting for her husband, a newly commissioned captain, to return with his ship from a mercantile expedition to the West Indies. Cecilia feels strangely, relentlessly, drawn to the ocean and walks a great deal, often down to the port where the sailing ships are arriving and leaving. Sometimes she thinks she sees her husband, but his ship is now very late returning, and there is never any news of him. She lives alone, with few English friends and no contact with her family back in England. The only other person in the house is her Portuguese maid, Rosalie.

REVIEWS | Issue 107, February 2024

Cecilia has something of a sixth sense and begins to experience what she understands are impossible things, both at the port and in her home and ultimately, within her own body. Cecilia’s visions and voices do build tension and add some much-needed interest midway through this story, as Part One in particular is slowed by descriptive passages which can be evocative, but within which the sea imagery becomes overworked. The gothic elements here enliven but are causally disconnected within the story structure, as things seem to happen for no reason. This leads to untied threads and far too many questions unanswered. I would have liked stronger handling of the technique of the unreliable narrator. This would have made the final resolution more convincing. Oddly, the central idea of the Water Child is despatched well before the end and then dismissed altogether. This feels like a short story stretched beyond its natural limits, but while there are issues with the plot, the characters are nicely drawn. Louise Tree

19T H C E N T U RY DON’T WANT YOU LIKE A BEST FRIEND Emma R. Alban, Avon, 2024, $18.99/C$23.99, pb, 384pp, 9780063312005

London, 1857. Beth has one season to acquire a wealthy husband, or she and her beloved mother will be homeless. Gwen is in her fourth season with no husband in sight yet; as the daughter of a wealthy earl, she doesn’t need to marry. Shy Beth and brash Gwen meet at a ball and immediately hit it off – and come up with a cunning plan: they’ll pair up Beth’s mother and Gwen’s father, and then all four of them can live happily ever after. Unfortunately, their parents apparently can’t stand each other… while Gwen and Beth are all too fond of each other. The season is rapidly drawing to a close when a handsome yet dull viscount shows up with his eyes on Beth… who only has eyes for Gwen…. This is one fun novel. The characters are charming, and their motivations are solidly based in the Victorian time period. Oh, there are a few wobbles in the Victoriana – for instance, the color magenta wasn’t invented until 1859 – but the historical detail is for the most part handled deftly. A delightful novel, full of zest and verve, and I look forward to Alban’s next book. India Edghill

THE LADIES REWRITE THE RULES Suzanne Allain, Berkley, 2024, $16.99, pb, 272pp, 9780593549643

Allain adds warmth and the power of female friendships to the appeal of Jane Austen’s courtships for a charming Regency romance. Lovely young widow Diana Boyle is outraged to learn she’s on a published registry of wealthy and marriageable ladies. She confronts the

author, affably handsome Maxwell Dean, who protests that he only meant to steer impoverished young sons like himself toward appropriate marriage partners. Diana warns the others, and the Ladies of the Registry, as they begin calling themselves, decide to break the rules and exercise power within their courtships. As Diana enjoys a growing friendship with Lady Regina and a new social life full of balls, outings, and Mr. Dean, she develops a new confidence and hopes for a future—which does not include her husband’s annoying nephew, Lucius. There’s enough wit in Allain’s comedy to keep the romance from being pure froth, and details about places like the legendary Vauxhall help the action feel rooted. The romance is adorable, poking fun at the conventions of the period as well as the genre. In all, The Ladies Rewrite the Rules is a delectable escape, crisp and sweet as an ice from Gunter’s. Misty Urban

THE RUNAWAY DAUGHTER Libby Ashworth, Canelo, 2023, £9.99, pb, 308pp, 9781800326590

The third book in the Lancashire Girls series, this is a standalone story set in 1818 which keeps its reader engaged as we follow the plight of the Knowles family. The head of the household, Jimmy, was convicted and deported to Australia following his arrest at a rally some six years earlier. For Jimmy’s wife and three children back home, it has been the parish that has been reluctantly supporting his family. Now that the eldest daughter Lydia is considered old enough at 14 to be apprenticed to a mill owner, she is indentured to work for bed and board. Her mother Betty is distraught at the prospect of losing contact with her daughter when she has hopes of her husband returning soon when his sentence has been served. However, nothing can be done to prevent the inevitable so Lydia is sent to Caton, where she is bullied endlessly by the girl whose bed she must share. An altercation one Sunday sees Lydia lose her temper, pushing her tormentor into the raging swell of the river. Horrified that the bully has likely drowned, Lydia runs away, determined to make her way back home to her family. Meanwhile, her mother and siblings have finally secured passage to join Jimmy and settle in Australia. With an extra ticket for Lydia left with her next-door neighbour and some money to give to Lydia to catch up, Betty and her other two children set out on their arduous journey with a heavy heart. You’ll be rushed along towards the next part of this story through the Knowles family’s various challenges, all the while rooting for a positive outcome. Cathy Kemp

ALWAYS REMEMBER Mary Balogh, Berkley, 2024, $28.00/C$39.00, hb, 368pp, 9780593638385

Always Remember is the third book in the Ravenswood series and set during the Regency era. A childhood illness left Lady Jennifer unable to walk, and despite her determination to always be cheerful and grateful, she longs for more in her life. Her status as the sister of a duke gives her a secure position in society but does not bring many true suitors her way, at least not those who see her as a whole person. That is, until she attends a house party with her brother and his wife and meets a man who sees the longing behind her cheerful demeanor. Ben, the beloved but illegitimate brother of the Earl of Stratton, has brought his daughter Joy to his childhood home for the summer festival. While at home, he takes notice of Lady Jennifer and can’t help but wonder if her life need be so constrained. He devises a number of ways to give her more freedom, but in doing so he cannot help but feel a growing attachment. A woman such as Lady Jennifer deserves more in the eyes of society than an illegitimate husband and his motherless child. Will love be enough to overcome the barriers of society? Jennifer and Ben are emotionally resonant characters that carry the story through too much repetition of character thought and dialogue. Furthermore, the detailed descriptions of numerous side characters distract rather than add to the main plot, making for an uneven reading experience. Although I enjoyed the book, it was not nearly as satisfying as Balogh’s early novels. Shauna McIntyre

A WOMAN OF COURAGE Rita Bradshaw, Pan Macmillan, 2023, £7.99/$11.99, pb, 475pp, 9781035000326

Sunderland, 1890: fifteen-year-old Josie Gray, daughter of a work-shy father, supplements the family income by singing in a pub, where she attracts the attention of Adam McGuigan, youngest son of a family of successful criminals. Adam, who bears more than a passing resemblance to The Godfather’s Michael Corleone, will stop at nothing (including murder) to get what he wants, and what he wants is Josie. This novel, while appearing initially to be firmly in the tradition of Catherine Cookson, begins rather than ends with a marriage. Adam regards Josie as not much more than a biddable child-bride in the tradition of Dora Spenlow from Charles Dickens’ David Coppperfield, but she turns out to have rather more mettle. Josie doesn’t just defy convention when she flees Sunderland for New York, her baby in tow; she is in fear for her life. She flies in the face of convention again when faced with the limited choices open to a lone mother in the melting pot of the metropolis, realising that her voice offers her the best chance, and turns out also to be a capable businesswoman. There is great

historical detail, especially around the sort of days out available to families in fin-de-siècle New York. But the McGuigans have not finished with her yet, and more than a decade later there is a knock at her door. Josie is to learn in the hardest way possible that blood will out. A Woman of Courage is carefully plotted with an exciting finale. A rags-to-riches saga, yes, but with substance. Katherine Mezzacappa

THE BONE HUNTERS Joanne Burn, Sphere, 2024, £20.00, hb, 339pp, 9781408726518

Lyme Regis, 1824. Ada Winters, 24, lives with mum Edith in a cottage ‘upon the beach’, so close to the sea that high tides almost reach her doorstep, so close that she knows the currents, rocks and sands intimately. From the landslip of nearby cliffs she teases fossils, indulging her obsession. All her life she has lived and learned paleontology, so much so that she applies for membership of the Geological Society but, being female, is rejected. Meanwhile, in London, physician and keen amateur geologist, Dr. Moyle, prepares for a fossilhunting holiday on the Dorset coast. Their meeting initiates a to-and-fro camaraderie of shared interest which goes on to involve rivalry, trust and betrayal. Ada’s fractious relationship with her mum contrasts that of her late father’s cleverly drip-fed background story, while her growing ostracisation amongst an eclectic, well-observed support cast adds intriguing depths, made all the more vibrant in the present-tense narrative. This remarkable story is written with such an open lyrical simplicity your mind cannot help but be immersed in a vivid image-stream, akin to watching an epic work by an Oscarwinning cinematographer. In particular the shorelines, seascapes and weather are excellently described, bringing these, and Ada’s bond with them, to glorious life. This is a grand tale of fortitude and determination, superstition, mystery and wonder. Completely enthralling. Simon Rickman

THE REDEMPTION OF MATTIE SILKS Kimberly Burns, Thomas Bard Publishing, 2023, $15.99, pb, 328pp, 9781736816912

A tale of rowdy Denver in the 1890s, this novel is rooted in historical figures and events. The notorious madam Mattie Silks runs her

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parlor house as a successful business. She treats her girls—also called painted ladies and many more appellations—with respect and kindness. Determined to control Mattie as he does the Denver underworld and shady politicians, Jefferson “Soapy” Smith is a dangerous adversary. Mattie’s love for her younger, gambling husband Cortez Thompson could be seen as her weakness, but he can be helpful in a time when women couldn’t own property or sign legal documents. Most of the novel focuses on Mattie in Denver: details of the prostitution business on Market Street, Soapy’s violence, and the characters and conflicts surrounding Mattie between 1892 and 1896. Then gold is discovered in the Yukon, and the drama intensifies. When Mattie and her girls head north, they discover Soapy Smith, driven out of Denver, has surfaced in Skagway, where he runs the town as he did Denver. He becomes a worse threat than ever to Mattie. Kimberly Burns effectively creates Denver’s lawless atmosphere and Mattie Silks’ drive and wit. As a woman making her way in the man’s world of the Wild West, she’s an engaging protagonist. However, at times the research shows through heavily, for example: minute details about prostitutes and the prostitution business, not all directly related to Mattie and her girls. At times the book bogs down in these details and the episodic nature of the plot. After the discovery of gold in Alaska, the pace and drama pick up. Readers drawn to the history of this era will enjoy Burns’s descriptions and Mattie’s “redemption.” Jinny Webber

ELIZA MACE Sarah Burton and Jem Poster, Duckworth, 2024, £16.99, hb, 304pp, 9780715655122

In the first book of a Victorian mystery series, set in the 1870s, the 16-year-old Eliza Mace is in a fix. Her warring parents do not support her, and her kindly uncle, James, does not have the influence to intervene. Eliza is also growing up fast, which is bringing her unwanted and unwelcome attention. On top of that, the family is in severe financial straits and their manor house, on the Welsh borders, is crumbling. Then her unpleasant and at times violent father disappears. Eliza teams up with a new Welsh police constable, Dafydd Pritchard. It won’t be easy to find out who murdered her father, as he has made many enemies. But she is determined to search for the truth – even as the world she has known collapses around her. Eliza Mace is set in hill country, and is well described, with the main character (and her new sidekick) being well drawn. For fans of Victorian detective series, this is highly recommended, but it may contain a tad too much backstory for some readers, with the first third of the novel effectively setting the scene not only for this book, but for the series. However, this reader felt it was well-plotted and that it gave a real sense of how young women of Eliza’s class were trapped within restrictive systems that left them unable to develop. Eliza is made of strong stuff, and the 26

ending shows that she has the character to pursue her independence. The novel gives a real sense of class- and sex-based restrictions, whereas the young Eliza speaks for a new generation of women who foreshadow the rise of the Suffragettes thirty years later. This is a classy origin story for a series that will no doubt be entertaining, but also carry a political edge. Katharine Quarmby

PALACE OF SHADOWS Ray Celestin, Mantle, 2023, £16.99, hb, 340pp, 9781035019076

Celestin’s transition, from his award-winning City Blues Quartet into the world of the dark gothic novel, shows his masterful storytelling prowess. Palace of Shadows, about a house and its inhabitants, elevates many of the traditional gothic tropes. The story begins as unsuccessful artist Samuel Etherstone accepts an offer from the wealthy Mrs Chesterfield to work on the house she is building on the remote Yorkshire coast. Ghosts of the past, madness, grief, witchcraft and war all ensue, but sit comfortably together and never feel forced for the sake of the plot. Not only is this novel a page-turner in the traditional sense, but a masterclass in subtext and metaphor. The careful reader will also be rewarded with several references to other works. The novel reads like the finest Wilkie Collins or Arthur Conan Doyle, with the addition of modern horror elements. At the heart of the book stands a wonderful house which has endless loops and stairs that go nowhere, thus calling to mind the artwork of MC Escher. Comparisons to the Women’s Prize-winning novel Piranesi (Susanna Clarke) are justified. The narrative structure is told from an entirely male perspective, despite some complex and wonderfully drawn female characters. This makes sense when we consider that the novel makes much of war and the foolish men that mechanise it. The middle structure of the novel becomes an endless loop as we revisit the house in varying time periods times to reflect the experiences of its key inhabitants. Whilst a clever device, reflecting the structure of the house, this does considerably slow the pacing. However, this is forgiven as the book rushes to its vivid climax containing rich scenes that the reader will remember long after finishing. This is the perfect book to read by the fireside on a winter’s evening. Don’t miss it. Katharine Riordan

THE WATCHMAN’S WIDOW Joanne Clague, Canelo, 2023, £8.99, pb, 304pp, 9781800329522

Sheffield 1873. Capturing the essence of aspects of daily life when writing historical fiction is key to bringing some realism to the storyline an author has chosen to pursue. In this tale, Clague takes some inspiration for her main themes from the issues surrounding safety in the workplace for women and children, alongside the growing interest in the suffrage

REVIEWS | Issue 107, February 2024

movement that was emerging throughout lateVictorian England. Choosing Rosie Butterfield as her main character, a widow in her mid-twenties whose husband was killed seven years previously, while she was heavily pregnant with twin boys, we get an insight into the difficulties she faced and the limitations that existed for her to house, feed and clothe her three children while working under the constant threat of being laid off from poorly paid factory work. Befriended by Annie, the wife of a newspaper printer, Rosie enters the realms of political activism, which could further jeopardise her job prospects. When the factory manager approaches Rosie and some of her colleagues to tell them they are being let go, Rosie is angry. Demanding the address of the company owner, she sets off to confront him, but the meeting ends far from how she anticipated as she is engaged to give bed and board to a young Irish girl, Oonagh, who needs dental treatment in Sheffield. The mystery surrounding this teenager’s ill health emerges over time, referencing a condition which Charles Dickens first highlighted in the 1850s. This is a well-researched story of the period, covering in accessible language the issues of the time within the background of some worthy characters; it is an enjoyable read. Cathy Kemp

THE GENERAL AND JULIA Jon Clinch, Atria, 2023, $26.99/C$35.99, hb, 256pp, 9781668009789

In the author’s note, Clinch asserts: “We understand the hearts and minds of our loved ones not by the use of some analytical recording device but by genuine moments of attention, imagination, and sympathy.” This novel accomplishes exactly that understanding of Ulysses S. Grant. The plot follows Grant as he writes his memoirs despite the fact that he is painfully dying of metastasized throat cancer; he does so in hopes that the memoirs will provide his financially reduced family with some security. Grant recounts the story of his life from the time he first met Julia Dent when he was a young lieutenant, the harrowing years of the Civil War, his two-term presidency, financial ruin at the hands of an unscrupulous financier in New York City, and finally his last days with his beloved wife and children at home. Clinch paints a fully realized, complicated picture of Grant against the backdrop of his times, including his belief in the human and civil rights of Black Americans and his chagrin at the political developments in the

postwar South. Clinch’s dialogue is evocative and crisp. Even minor characters—such as Grant’s irascible father-in-law—come alive. The general’s friendship with Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) receives special, imaginative treatment. This is historical writing at its best. Joanne Vickers

CHASING THE HORIZON Mary Connealy, Bethany House, 2024, $16.99, pb, 304pp, 9780764242656

Mary Connealy’s Oregon Trail adventures, in this new series debut, focus on women’s experience of white settlers crossing the American West, where the ability to manage a horse is as essential as the skills for rapidly making a sustaining meal. Trauma survivors may find the details of abuse in Beth Rutledge’s family disturbing, as Beth’s mother’s experience being confined in a brutal asylum is frightening, shocking, and readily connected to the malicious and implacable man who’s pursuing the women across the wild lands. Money and menace fuel a terrible enemy, who’ll even enlist Pinkerton agents to recover his “property” in the persons of these women. But there are other men, compassionate ones, like Dakota, who’s making decisions for the wagon train that Beth has joined. She sees him clearly despite her previous experiences: “Beth saw the struggle on Dakota’s face. The war he waged within himself. His compassion for Maeve. His concern for Fiona… Dakota’s shoulders looked like they were used to bearing heavy burdens.” Her own concern will focus more deeply on Jake Holt, the wagon train’s scout, and on the slow and powerful attraction and respect growing between them. Strengthened by prayer and faith, the traumatized women in Chasing the Horizon lose many of their nightmares during the efforts of crossing the country. For Connealy, veering away from her earlier humorous action Westerns into this debut of her new series, A Western Light, brings out her ability to blend historical detail with sustained emotion and romance, in a journey from abuse to trust and strength. “I’d listen if you ever wanted to talk,” Jake offers gently. The book’s suspense hangs on whether and when Beth can let her troubles be shared. Beth Kanell

ARRESTING BEAUTY Heather Cooper, Beachy Books, 2023, £10.99, pb, 258pp, 9781913894153

Putney Heath, 1858: Julia Margaret Cameron finds the ten-year-old Mary Ryan begging, and takes her in as a maid, later using her as a photographic model. Mary however states: ‘I was not a blank sheet of glass; nor was I a clean page, waiting to be written upon. I was already there. It is just that she could not see me.’ Mary’s vividly drawn unconventional mistress comes across as inadvertently rather than deliberately kind; the reader

empathises with the exasperation some of those dragooned into sitting for her feel. Yet Julia encourages Mary to read; Mary herself learns that to survive in this new setting she must modulate her Irish accent. Her longing for her mother, who walked away from Julia’s magnanimity, is heartbreakingly described, yet each time her mother reappears, the gulf between their two lives widens. The arcadian setting of Julia’s home, Dimbola, on the Isle of Wight, is so compellingly described that the reader would want to visit. Here Julia’s august friends, appealing children, tradesmen and servants are transformed into figures from mythology or literature by the aid of drapery and homemade props, to become the images for which Cameron was both admired and derided; the physical process of Victorian photography is so vividly got across that it can be touched and smelled. Tennyson is the nearest neighbour; he doesn’t so much flout convention as appear not to notice its existence. Dodgson, Lear, Darwin, Rossetti and the Carlyles appear; there is an appealingly acerbic cameo of Jane Welsh Carlyle. But poor Mary learns that she forms part of this world only on sufferance – until she meets Henry Cotton. Cooper writes lyrical prose, and her research is impeccable. The sitters in Cameron’s photographs move and speak. Katherine Mezzacappa

THE ADVERSARY Michael Crummey, Doubleday, 2024, $29.00, hb, 336pp, 9780385550321 / Knopf Canada, 2023, C$35.00, hb, 336pp, 9780385685443

In the early 19th century in the remote coastal town of Mockbeggar in the Dominion of Newfoundland, a wedding is to take place between Abe Strapp, the scoundrel son of a wealthy merchant, and the young daughter of a rival English trader. Strapp aims to expand his business, thereby dominating the area. However, an objection from the Widow Caines—Abe’s sister—scuttles the wedding. Caines, herself a businesswoman, is fiercely competing with Abe for the region’s scarce fisheries and other resources. The sibling rivalry sets up campaigns between them involving feuding, violence, and ploys that affect the locals, who take sides. The lives of innocents are adversely impacted. Additionally, the community is overwhelmed by natural elements (storms, floods, and pandemics) and external forces (pillaging privateers). All the vengeance, turmoil, and battles set the stage for an intense ending. Michael Crummey begins this engaging novel with an evocative first line: “There was a killing sickness on the shore that winter and the only services at the church were funerals.” This opening strikingly indicates what will follow. Destruction, pain, suffering, and death abound in the novel. In his acknowledgements, Crummey mentions, “Plenty of looting and pilfering went into the writing of this book,” along with his list of references. Besides historical accounts from the period,

Crummey has aptly used The Dictionary of Newfoundland English to inject slang into the dialogue and realism to the narrative. As noted in the publisher’s blurb, the novel is indeed “uncompromising” in detailing the various groups’ pain and suffering caused by rivalries, ambition, and greed. Crummey has skillfully illustrated these universal themes in his depictions of his strong adversaries, which continue to play out over the years. The novel provides a good perspective on the forces that shaped Canada’s Maritimes region. Highly recommended. Waheed Rabbani

KISS OF FROST AND FLAME Ken Czech, Fireship Press, 2023, $24.99/ C$32.50, pb, 345pp, 9781611794113

The Cossack invasion of Siberia in 1851 is the militaristic and cross-cultural backdrop for this fascinating novel. It is a land inhabited and traversed by many different groups of people for many different reasons. Native tribes like the Samoyeds were nomadic reindeer herders, Tatars were Muslim inhabitants under the leadership of a khan, and the Cossacks were sent in by the Russian tsar Ivan the Terrible to first trade with and then subjugate the indigenous groups. This novel narrates the events of the earliest Cossack incursions through the eyes of a Samoyed woman and a Russian man. The Samoyed woman, Umey, whose name means “kiss” in her native language, is herself the offspring of a Samoyed father and a Russian mother. Her appearance is not fully Samoyed because of her distinctive blue eyes that make her a “half breed” and outcast, but also a potential inspiration in a time of crisis. Her counterpart, Alexey, is an honorable Russian man snatched from a scaffold for his valuable prior army experience. He is sent to Siberia with the Cossacks, where his and Umey’s paths cross throughout various lifethreatening encounters. Characters seemingly larger than life by their endurance of hardships inhabit these pages. Cycles of unending danger provide readers with an extremely fast-paced storyline. The northern landscape is experienced viscerally through physical descriptions of sights, sounds, and smells. Native appeals to Mother Earth and Russian words for tribute by fur, for example, that are embedded in the dialogue, further heighten the dramatic sense of place and time. This novel will resonate strongly with readers interested in early Russian history. Karen Bordonaro

CLEAR Carys Davies, Granta, 2024, £12.99, hb, 160pp, 9781803510408 / Scribner, 2024, $24.00/ C$29.99, hb, 208pp, 9781668030660

It is 1843, and John Ferguson, an impoverished minister of the newly established Free Church of Scotland, is forced to take any

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work he can find. He is sent to a remote Scottish island to evict its last remaining tenant so that the land can be used for grazing sheep. His mission is hampered by an accident soon after his arrival and by the fact that he has no common language with Ivar, the hermit-like tenant. Yet the two men start to form a bond, prompted by a shared awareness of the natural environment. Meanwhile on the mainland, John’s wife Mary, starved of news about her husband, and worried about the morality of his mission, decides to take matters into her own hands. On the surface Clear is a story about the cruelty of the Highland Clearances. This was a time when Scottish landowners forgot about their clan loyalties and sought to maximise profits by evicting small tenant farmers, many of whose families had worked the same land for generations. But this short novel is about so much more. It is a lyrical exploration of the landscape, of loneliness, and of human relationships. Some of the indirect observation comes from Mary, who notes that ‘it was in the nature of Churches to be constantly splintering, and dividing, and disagreeing about things, and starting again’. Through the interactions of the characters, we see that this applies equally to individual lives and to wider society. A perfectly crafted novel. Karen Warren

THE UNSTOPPABLE ELIZA HAYCRAFT Diana Dempsey, Bramerton Press, $32.99, hb, 514pp, 9780990696483

2023,

Eliza Haycraft escapes an abusive husband in Missouri’s river country with only the clothes on her back. She travels to New Orleans and then to St. Louis, where she must survive on her wits and good looks. Eliza turns to the oldest profession and ultimately becomes a powerful, land-owning madam in antebellum St. Louis. Eliza, an actual historical figure, was illiterate, leaving neither a diary nor letters, giving author Dempsey a lot of room to imagine her rise to notoriety beyond the bare facts of newspaper accounts and entries at the Recorder of Deeds. Historical research brings alive St. Louis’ Great Fire of 1849, immigrantdriven tensions, mainly German and Irish, and the city’s divisive struggles with the institution of slavery. Eliza’s first-person account portrays her as savvy and courageous, and confident in her decisions, like when she elects to stay after her first night in the “bawdy house” rather than to struggle and battle starvation: “For I feel the same as ever and I will do the same 28

things again when called upon and there it is.” Female characters are central to Eliza’s story, some rivals and some in her inner circle, and they are well-drawn. As she rises in the bawdy trade, Eliza’s character is painted with good business sense—her father gave her a ‘head for numbers’—and philanthropic sensibilities. While this is a lengthy read, the writing moves the story along at a nice clip with welldeveloped scene after scene, and presents Eliza’s poignant reflections on various contemporary topics, like the horrors of slavery and her inner conflict about remaining neutral on the question for the sake of business appearances. A very enjoyable historical novel rooted in a rags-to-riches tale from a relatively unknown corner of St. Louis history. Brodie Curtis

THE DOVE UPON HER BRANCH DM Denton, All Things That Matter, 2023, $19.99, pb, 300pp, 9798988335306

The Rossettis were a truly remarkable family. As Anglo-Italians they stood out among the English Victorians with whom they lived. Arriving from their native land as political exiles, they were literary and artistic, and associated with avant-garde and Romantic rebel figures such as Byron and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of painters. They were obsessed with love, death, and religion, and they sometimes buried their poetry with their deceased wives and allowed live wombats on their dinner tables. Still famous today are the rambunctious poet-painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his sister Christina (1830-1894), whose poetry and prose has been rediscovered and praised since the rise of feminist criticism in the 1970s, and who is the subject of Denton’s new biographical novel. Christina’s life was much more staid than her brother’s. A staunch Anglo-Catholic, she never married, and the bulk of her work is devotional. Denton’s novel carries her from childhood to early old age, weaving snippets of her poetry into the prose text, but generally without the verse divisions, as though it were Christina’s thoughts—which of course it is. The novel is diligently researched (perhaps based on Christina’s many letters) but poorly proofread (Shelley is repeatedly misspelled “Shelly”). It moves a bit like a long letter, occasionally meandering and full of quotidian details. The lurid events of the Rossetti saga—tragic lovers, suicides, religious crises, wombats—are so thoroughly cushioned by formal sentences and accounts of train trips that they lose some of their inherent drama. What is accentuated is Christina’s sad, morbid, death-centered mentality. “Melancholy helps me find my joy,” she said, and her best work melds the two, as do the best moments of Denton’s novel.

REVIEWS | Issue 107, February 2024

Susan Lowell

MARY AND THE BIRTH OF FRANKENSTEIN (US) / MARY: OR, THE BIRTH OF FRANKENSTEIN (UK) Anne Eekhout (trans. Laura Watkinson), HarperVia, 2023, $30.00, hb, 303pp, 9780063256743 / Pushkin, 2023, £18.99, hb, 384pp, 9781782278979

This impressionistic novel tracks the influences that led Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein. It takes place in two timelines: Cologny, Switzerland, in 1816, where Mary Shelley famously writes her novel at age nineteen, and Dundee, Scotland in 1812, where she stays with the family of a radical philosopher and befriends his daughter Isabella. In both settings, her companions challenge each other to tell stories, which leads her to do what writers do: make connections, find meaning, dream, and imagine. In Dundee, Mary engages in a complicated relationship with Isabella, who invites Mary into her private world of superstition and monsters. In Cologny, Mary; her baby William; Mary’s partner and William’s father, Percy Shelley; Mary’s stepsister Claire; the poet Lord Byron; and the doctor and writer John Polidori spend a stormy summer writing, talking, and drinking laudanum. Mary is preoccupied with her lover Percy, who is flirting, or maybe more, with her stepsister, and she is haunted by the memory of her baby daughter’s death. It is here that she begins to write her novel, which allows her to purge the feelings of grief and rage that have been building for years. It is a complicated task to portray a dreamy writer’s mental life, but Anne Eekhout succeeds. This is not a novel packed with action; rather, the drama comes from Mary’s unusual imagination and what she makes of what happens. Eekhout’s writing, as translated by Laura Watkinson, conveys the somber, gloomy mood Mary often carries, and convincingly sets up the conditions that lead to the creation of Frankenstein. Elizabeth Crachiolo

CATHERINE’S MERCY Nicole Evelina, Chalice Press, 2023, $17.99, pb, 280pp, 9780827207509

Dublin, Ireland, 1822. Catherine McAuley inherits a great fortune from her employer, which he hopes she’ll use for good works. She uses the money to found an organization to care for and educate the city’s many poor women and children. Meanwhile, in the house of cruel Lord Montague, two maids, worldweary Grace and innocent Margaret, suffer the unwanted amorous attentions of their employer. After Margaret attacks Montague in defense of her virtue, she seeks Catherine’s aid. Soon after, Grace is fired without a character reference, eventually leading her to the workhouse and then prostitution. This extraordinarily well-researched, strongly faith-oriented book is based on the real founder of the Catholic Sisters of Mercy, Catherine McAuley, who is considered

Venerable by the Catholic Church. The characters are a mixture of historical figures and invented ones. Catherine herself is wellwritten, with faults devised by the author to humanize her and allow the audience to relate, something that works quite well. Her strength and refusal to bend to the wills of the men around her, ranging from her brother to the parish priest, cause conflict within the story while also keeping the reader invested in her undeniably compelling tale. Although she eventually caves to demands to turn her lay organization into a formal group of religious sisters, she manages to do so largely on her own terms. All of the point of view characters are women, which adds to the femalecentered nature of the narrative. Although Grace’s subplot briefly falls to the wayside in part three, it is resolved quite dramatically and satisfyingly in the final chapters. Lee Lanzillotta

WHEN THE JESSAMINE GROWS Donna Everhart, Kensington, 2024, $17.95/ C$24.95, pb, 379pp, 9781496740700

While most people know our nation was divided during the Civil War, very little has been written about Southerners who fervently desired to stay neutral. This is the story of one family, the McBrides, who are small-time farmers in rural Nash County, North Carolina, and how the mother, Joetta McBride, staunchly refuses to take sides in the war. When her fifteen-year-old son, Henry, runs off to become a Confederate soldier, Joetta begs her husband, Ennis, to go after Henry and bring him home. Left alone to work the farm, she only has her cantankerous elderly father-in-law and her eleven-year-old son Robert for company. When her Confederate father-in-law spreads the word in town that Joetta allowed a Union soldier to draw a drink of water from her well, Joetta quickly becomes fodder for gossip. Then, when she refuses to wear a Confederate cockade, the gossip against her spirals and becomes dangerous. As the months pass, food becomes scarce, and their crops are destroyed. Joetta is faced with the decision of sticking by her moral beliefs or caving to her neighbors in order to save the farm. Superbly crafted characters move the plot forward quickly, enticing the reader to turn each page to follow the action. The author expertly incorporates her historical research to reflect the mood of the time with gripping detail. Definitely recommended. Linda Harris Sittig

WELL DRESSED LIES Carrie Hayes, HTPH Press, 2023, $15.99, pb, 299pp, 9798218962784

Vicky and Tennie are as engaging a pair of scoundrels as you are likely to encounter in literature. They don’t mean to be, but sometimes there are no other choices. It’s 1877,

and Victoria Woodhull and her sister Tennessee Claflin have come to London because William Vanderbilt, the son of Tennessee’s deceased lover Cornelius Vanderbilt, has paid them to do so to get them out of New York. It’s a chance for a new start, away from the scandal and notoriety that already surround them in the States, from Victoria’s run for President to the sisters’ revelation of the adulterous affairs of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, and their subsequent jailing on obscenity charges. Throw in the ghost of Paschal Beverly Randolph, American founder of the Rosicrucians, New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennet, the Prince and Princess of Wales, the actress Lillie Langtry, and Henry James, who may or may not have used Vicky as his model for Mrs. Headway in The Siege of London, along with a fictitious and promiscuous duchess, and you have a cast of brilliant, erratic Victorians whose doings will convince you that the Victorians were a lot more fun than we think. First-person narration alternates between Vicky, Tennie, and Henry James, a not completely passive observer. Vicky and Tennie try to be good, they really do, but the temptation to make some money doing spiritualist readings, their former association with the Free Love movement, inconvenient ex-lovers, and Tennie’s actual psychic abilities, make it hard. And when they both fall in love, all hell breaks loose. Well Dressed Lies is an excellent stand-alone novel but continues the sisters’ adventures from the earlier novel The Naked Truth. Amanda Cockrell

THE BULLET SWALLOWER Elizabeth Gonzalez James, Simon & Schuster, 2024, $26.99/C$35.99, hb, 272pp, 9781668009321 / Hodder & Stoughton, 2024, £20.00, hb, 272pp, 9781399709064

A woman’s red shawl blows off her grave and into a tree, where it turns into a red bird. A cruel and greedy landowner is born with sharp flecks of real gold in his eyes. Shot in the mouth, a bandit survives with a horrible scar and the nickname El Tragabalas, or the Bullet Swallower. We’re in magic realism land. We’re also in a Western mostly set in the realistically described Tex-Mex borderlands about 1900, except…the mouth of Hell lies in Texas. We’re hugely enjoying Elizabeth Gonzalez James’s fabulous new novel, named for the bandit, which paints an unforgettable picture of a place and characters very far from most readers’ experience, either literary or literal. As in most magic realism (now considered rather old-fashioned in Latin America but still going strong in El Norte), many of the unbelievable occurrences come straight from “real” life. “Everything in this book is true,” notes the author mischievously, “except the stuff I made up.” Her great-grandfather, she tells us, was indeed a bandido called the Bullet Swallower, later the hero of a Mexican movie. Now Gonzalez James has spun her family legend into a fantastic, gory, rollicking,

roistering, shoot-em-up that’s also concerned with the nature of evil, whether it is inherited and whether later generations are bound to atone for or repeat the sins of their ancestors. Gonzalez James writes a lively English laced with Spanish and a few collectible vocabulary words like “ouroboros” (a circular symbol of destruction and rebirth) and “fellowes” (the outer rim of a wheel), both of which perfectly express her darker themes. Compared to García Márquez she’s realistic; compared to Cormac McCarthy, she’s delightfully humorous. In fact, she’s quite unique—and quite wonderful. Susan Lowell

ISLAND WITCH Amanda Jayatissa, Berkley, 2024, $28.00/ C$37.99/£25.00, hb, 400pp, 9780593549261

Amara is a demon priest’s daughter in a remote village in 19th-century Sri Lanka. The times are changing. With colonisation, a new religion has taken hold, and Amara’s family, adherents to the native religion (a mix of Buddhism, Hinduism, and animism), have become pariahs in their own land. Amara must grapple with multiple challenges. At school, she is picked on by bullies because of her religion. Her parents are subjected to abuse by the villagers. Amara faces prejudice because of her skin colour. Her mother had broken with her rich family to marry for love but remains dependent on the family. Amara is in love with Raam, but she faces pressures to go for an “arranged” marriage. Tension mounts with a series of vicious attacks on men of the village. Amara’s father is suspected of being behind them. Amara is haunted by dreams that are prescient of the ghastly attacks. The gutsy young Amara fights back against the machinations that threaten to smother her very being. The denouement, when she gets to the root of evil, is horrifying and calls for extreme measures. This is a dark work. Rape and abuse are part of the story; few characters have a good side. While this heightens tension, some readers may have preferred more nuance in characterisation. Amara displays a rather strange lack of knowledge of the facts of life at one point. The editorial choice of leaving lines of dialogue in Romanised Sinhala in addition to English seemed odd to this reviewer. For fans of historical and gothic fiction who do not mind these small bumps, this remains an unusual treat – a rare work set in Sri Lanka, well-researched, and written with a deep understanding of place and time. A.K. Kulshreshth

FANATIC HEART Thomas Keneally, Faber, 2023, £20.00, hb, 453pp, 9780571387953 / Penguin Random House AU, 2022, AS32.99, pb, 464pp, 9780143777816

Thomas Keneally is one of Australia’s most revered writers, and he has tackled many weighty subjects in his work, from Joan of Arc to the Holocaust. He has often been inspired

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by his own family background of the Irish in Australia. With Fanatic Heart he examines one of the heroes of 19th-century Ireland: John Mitchel, a lawyer, journalist and a believer in Irish independence. Mitchel’s story is told with compassion and mindfulness. Using the voice of both Mitchel and his wife Jenny, Keneally brings to life the harsh reality of life for the Catholic poor in Ireland, whom Mitchel represented as a young idealistic lawyer. Growing frustrated with a system weighted against half the population, Mitchel turns to writing for The Nation, but his writing soon gets him into trouble with the law. Under the treason felony act of 1848, Mitchel is sentenced to fourteen years’ transportation, first in Barbados and then in Tasmania; known at that time as Van Diemen’s Land. Mitchel finds like-minded companions and a kind of peace there, and even brings out his wife and family to settle there, before growing restless and eventually travelling to the United States. The author does not shy away from pointing out Mitchel’s character flaws, especially his racism. Keneally has a talent for bringing the past to life and for bringing historical characters into vivid focus. His passion for history is evident, and the novel is compellingly told. At times, however, I felt overwhelmed by information and too many characters. Overall, though, Fanatic Heart is an intriguing and worthwhile read. Lisa Redmond

AT WHAT COST, SILENCE? Karen Lynne Klink, She Writes Press, 2023, $17.95, pb, 335pp, 9781647426033

Antebellum Texas. Adrien Villere is the son of a prominent tobacco-growing family in West Texas. He is a quiet boy who spends most of his time with his best friend, Isaac, a family slave. He has always felt different from other boys. The loss of his beloved mother and hardship with the family’s tobacco plantation drives him to find comfort and support with Jacob Hart, the older son of a neighboring planter family. The Villere and Hart families may be neighbors, but that is the only similarity. Mr. Hart is a drunken bully who beats his wife and children. Paien Villere is a devoted family man who is known for his kindness. Jacob and Adrien have a falling-out, and the relationship between them and the two families becomes increasingly tense. The situation is complicated when Adrien falls in love with Jacob’s younger sister, Lily. Secrets threaten to change the dynamic between the families. All of this happens against a backdrop of threatened secession and war. This is the first volume in an upcoming trilogy. It accurately portrays the tensions and passion of pre-Civil War Texas as well as the forbidden relationship between Adrien and Jacob. Any fan of Southern literature or Civil War history will find this an important addition to their library. It also has the potential to be an important part of the canon of LGBTQ+ literature. Anne Leighton

THE ROAD FROM BELHAVEN Margot Livesey, Knopf, 2024, $29.00/ C$39.00/£24.00, hb, 272pp, 9780593537046

Written with a graceful simplicity, The Road from Belhaven will enfold you unexpectedly quickly into the life of its heroine, Lizzie Craig, a character whose emotions are so vivid that it’s impossible not to feel for her through all her growing pains, yearnings, and mistakes. Orphaned as a baby, Lizzie is raised by her grandparents on their property, Belhaven Farm, in Fife, Scotland, in the late 19th century. The rhythms of rural life, beautifully summoned, instill a sense of wonder as Lizzie takes pride in gathering eggs and caring for their animals through the seasons, aware that the future responsibility for the land will lie with her. Excited to learn she has an older sister, Kate, who comes to join the family, Lizzie is slow to realize how this will affect her future. Lizzie also keeps to herself that she gets occasional flashes – “pictures,” as she calls them – of future events, which often drive her to rash decisions even though she doesn’t have the power to prevent what happens. When Lizzie turns sixteen, a tailor’s apprentice from Glasgow, Louis Hunter, comes to help her family in the fields. Their growing relationship has her following him to the city, where she soon finds herself in the shameful situation of all too many love-struck unmarried women. In this sense, Livesey’s novel offers a timeless story that’s made distinctive through well-wrought details: the harvest ceilidhs; the crowded bustle of Glasgow, which has Lizzie agog; the “white harled farmhouse” where her grandmother, Flora, dispenses wisdom she suspects won’t be heeded. But it’s not predictable, overall, thanks to the delicate characterizations. Although many people – herself included – cause Lizzie undue heartache and regret, there are no true villains, other than society itself and how it curtails women’s choices. This is a beautiful book about the sharp-cornered path to maturity. Sarah Johnson

THE WILDERNESS WAY Anne Madden, One More Chapter, 2023, £9.99, pb, 480pp, 9780008535315

In Donegal, Ireland, forty-four Derryveagh families were cruelly evicted from their ancestral homes in 1861 by their landlord, John Adair. Madden tells the story of the Conaghan family. Declan became the head of his family a decade earlier when, at the age of ten, he found his father’s body in the ditch by the road – a victim of the Great Famine. With the help of his uncle Liam in America, Declan was able to scrape together his annual rent and provide a meager existence for his mother, sister, and brother Michael. Adair’s relationship with his tenants was contentious. Their impoverished homes were a blight on his stunning views of Lough Veagh, and their livestock would wander onto his grounds. Their presence hindered his vision of building a Balmoral-like castle. The murder of his land steward increased tensions.

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Convinced his tenants had knowledge of the murderer and because of their silence, he moved to evict them all, leaving them at the side of the road, destined for the workhouse or to emigrate. The dreaded workhouse is the family’s only option until Declan receives a letter from his uncle Liam. There will be war between the States, and the wages he could earn appear to be the answer for the Conaghan family. Declan and Michael leave for America to join the Union army. Declan is motivated by revenge to someday return to Ireland and murder Adair. This is a propulsive read. The real-life Adair is accurately portrayed in Madden’s telling of a heartbreaking time in Irish history. The cruelty and selfishness when he sent in his ‘crowbar brigade’ to flatten all the homes on his land are unprecedented. Glenveagh castle, built on the deserted land, stands today as a reminder of Adair’s cruelty, resulting in the displacement, deaths, and dispersal of these vulnerable Irish tenants. Janice Ottersberg

A SIGN OF HER OWN Sarah Marsh, Headline, 2024, £18.99, hb, 423pp, 9781035401611 / Park Row, 2024, $30.00/$37.00, hb, 384pp, 9780778310785

London, England, during the reign of Queen Victoria, and Alexander Graham Bell visits his former pupil, Ellen Lark. Ellen watches him talk as he stands beside a jar of preserved peaches in the parlour. Politely, she makes him a gift of them. But there’s a mistake: he is not asking for peaches, he is asking for speeches. The mistake arises because Ellen is deaf and is lipreading. Bell wants Ellen to speak and demonstrate ‘Visible Speech’. Bell teaches Visible Speech to show deaf people how to shape a word for the hearing world and how to read the mouth shapes of hearing people’s speech. Thus, he believes, deaf people will no longer need to be separated from the hearing world. But there’s a problem: homophones. Homophones look the same on the lips, but have different meanings. Peaches, speeches. Bell’s passion for aiding deaf people to communicate involves him in scientific studies of the properties of sound. He invents a machine that transmits human speech along electric wires. But Bell has enemies. Enemies who want information from Ellen. Who should she trust? The story bounces backwards and forwards between Ellen’s childhood in Massachusetts and adult life in London, with patent challenges and romance creating plenty of page-turning tensions. But the real story is about a deaf girl’s struggle to live in a hearing world. As a child, Ellen and her sister developed hand signals, ‘home-sign’. At her special school Ellen must learn to lip read and speak words she could never hear. Should she persevere in trying to read silent and confusing lips, or join a hidden ‘underworld’ of deaf people with a rich culture of signing? The author is herself deaf, and the book

gives a revealing insight into what this is like in a world which communicates so much by sound. Helen Johnson

MURDER BY LAMPLIGHT Patrice McDonough, Kensington, 2024, $27.00/ C$37.00/£25.00, hb, 336pp, 9781496746368

In November 1866, Dr. Julia Lewis is called to examine a corpse in the last unfinished section of London’s new sewer project. The man was killed by a knife to the heart, his body mutilated sexually after, a popped balloon stuffed in his waistcoat pocket. The victim, a clergyman, was known as the Saint of Spitalfields. Days later, investigators find a popped balloon in the pocket of a banker who’d been bludgeoned to death two years before, proving the truth of the first of a series of letters written to Chief Inspector Richard Tennant in purple ink: You hanged the wrong man. The letters continue as other bodies turn up – a pair of transvestites, the director of East London Waterworks, a nurse, a workhouse warden – and each contains a line from the children’s tune “Pop Goes the Weasel.” Lamplight is McDonough’s debut novel and the first of a series. It is a stellar mystery, balancing the step-by-step collection of evidence and clues with the ruminations of the observant letter writer and leading, at least for this reader, to the gasp-inducing yet wholly believable identification of the perpetrator. The book also details everyday life and ever-present disease among the tenements, describing the work of the Inspector of Nuisances, who leads teams to evict tenants and disinfect premises after a typhoid victim is found; the reluctance of city officials to admit cholera is spread via water, and the devastating consequences; and Julia’s own work alongside her grandfather and fellow doctor in their clinic. Characters are engaging and multi-layered: Julia and Tennant are challenged by incidents in their past, and Constable Paddy O’Malley adds a bit of poetry to his spot-on observations. Brilliant. K. M. Sandrick

CLAIRMONT Lesley McDowell, Wildfire, 2024, £18.99, hb, 390pp, 9781035400256 / Wildfire, 2024, $28.00/C$35.00, hb, 400pp, 9781035400249

This novel ranges over 30 years and across Europe but again and again returns to a seminal year and place for the chief characters involved: Geneva in 1816. Here the poet Shelley, his wife Mary, and her stepsister,

Claire Clairmont, spent time, often with Lord Byron and other like-minded associates. This unconventional group of thinkers and writers was strongly influenced by Mary’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, her philosopher father, William Godwin, and the Romantic movement. They read, wrote and discussed their ideas with relentless commitment, and over rainy summer evenings in 1816 they entertained each other by telling ghost stories. From this emerged Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, published two years later. Living out their belief in Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman – her response to Tom Paine’s Rights of Man – created a world where the expectations of respectable society were shunned and free love embraced. These women will be ‘a new genus’, Wollstonecraft had declared. The challenge does not provide constant happiness for any of them. A recurring theme throughout the book is the acute and lifelong pain, for Shelley as well as the women at the loss of young children, not only through illness but also to custody arrangements resulting from their liaisons. Lesley McDowell has centred her account of their lives round the least known and least appreciated person in the group: Claire Clairmont. For her there was no fame except by association with Byron and Shelley and her sister, the acclaimed author. She dutifully transcribes parts of Childe Harold for Byron but believes herself to be overlooked by all and appallingly treated by him in particular. She was the last survivor of that extended literary group, and McDowell has successfully re-imagined the fascinating and complicated personal lives of a famous set of authors and their literary world. Imogen Varney

THE ROMANOV BRIDES Clare McHugh, William Morrow, 2024, $18.99/ C$23.99/£10.99, pb, 384pp, 9780063250932

Decades before the Bolshevik Revolution and the Romanov dynasty’s terrible end, the future Tsarina Alexandra and her older sister, Grand Duchess Elizabeth, were princesses of the small German state of Hesse and by Rhine. Leading us very capably through these young women’s lives, McHugh shows how their marriages into Russia’s imperial family were by no means predestined. Ella and Alix, as they’re called, tragically lose their mother to diphtheria but grow up alongside their siblings and an extended family that includes the rulers of Britain, Prussia, and Russia. (McHugh travels through this potentially confusing mass of royal relationships with aplomb.) As a teenager, Ella, an elegant beauty, captivates Tsar Alexander’s brother, the Grand Duke Serge, and wonders if hidden emotional depths lie behind his seriousness. Her protectively imperious grandmother, Queen Victoria, begs her not to marry into a “country where no one of rank is safe” – and she’s right, as we know – but Ella comes to believe she’ll

fulfill a higher purpose as Serge’s wife. As Ella navigates her marriage’s unexpected confines, Alix, painfully shy, remembers the bond she formed with Serge’s nephew, the tsarevich Nicky, when she visited Russia for Ella’s wedding. However, multiple barriers keep them apart. The story remains within the characters’ inner circles, with an occasional nod to outside politics (“They believe they are owed everything and their people are owed nothing,” says Ella’s uncle Leo about the Romanovs’ autocratic rule). The intimate focus ensures a sympathetic view while emphasizing how sheltered the women are. In this beautifully spun chronicle of love, family, and faith, McHugh carefully illustrates her protagonists’ religious views. One might wonder if a novel about both couples’ early histories (it ends in 1894) would offer enough plot to keep the pages turning, but it definitely does. The Romanov Brides will be enlightening for royalty buffs. Sarah Johnson

HELD Anne Michaels, Knopf, 2024, $27.00, hb, 240pp, 9780593536865 / McClelland & Stewart, 2023, C$32.00, hb, 240pp, 9780771005459 / Bloomsbury, 2023, £16.99, hb, 240pp, 9781526659118

The publisher’s blurb calls Held a “breathtaking and ineffable” novel, and it is. There is a dreamlike quality to this multidecade, multi-generational story of war and love and memory. Beginning with John lying waiting to die on a bleak battlefield in France, we move back and forth between decades and places and characters, all connected in ways both direct and chance-met. John, still alive but not whole, returns home to his business as a photographer and finds that his subjects’ dead kin sometimes appear in their portraits, manifesting uninvited in the developing pan. Other characters are marked by multiple wars, through their struggles to save lives that are as often as not taken immediately afterward by another bomb. We get glimpses of these characters’ inner turmoil and their deepest desires, and yet somehow never get to know them. The reader looking for a straightforward historical narrative will not find it, and yet this meditation on the power of memory and love and the places where they intersect is a powerful one that may well stay with you. Amanda Cockrell

THE AMERICAN QUEEN Vanessa Miller, Thomas Nelson, 2024, $18.99/ C$23.99/£10.99, pb, 368pp, 9780840708878

1865: Enslaved twenty-four-year-old Louella yearns for freedom. The selling of her mother which wrenched her family apart, the horrific lynching of her father, and the welts and scars she bears on her own back and within her psyche cannot extinguish her vision of a “Happy Land” where people can live freely with dignity and respect. At the Civil War’s

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end, Louella and her husband leave the plantation and lead a band of newly freed people out of Mississippi to find a place where Louella’s dream of the “Happy Land” can bear fruit. After months of migration, they finally find refuge in lands on the border of North and South Carolina, and for at least forty years the Kingdom of the Happy Land flourishes. The American Queen recounts the true story of that journey and that kingdom, where people worked together to make sure everyone was provided for and lived in dignity and cooperation. We experience, through the novel, the countless difficulties the four hundred citizens of that land faced and overcame in order to achieve their dream. The book is also the story of Louella’s own personal journey, a woman who transcends the bitterness of her enslaved origins to become a loving leader of her people, a true American Queen. This novel shines a bright light on a littleknown moment in American history, one that deserves to be far more widely seen and honored. An inspiring story of resilience, determination, hope, and the human spirit, this story cries out to be remembered and restored to history. This fascinating novel will go far towards accomplishing that goal. It’s an uplifting read, one that is sorely needed these days. Highly recommended. Susan McDuffie

A MESSAGE FROM CARNEGIE David Milofsky, Independently published, 2023, $19.50, pb, 308pp, 9798988115403

Tim Cullen lives a slacker’s life in 1890s New York. He spends his days halfheartedly attending law school, and his nights drinking and whoring in the Bowery. Tim’s life changes when he receives a note from family friend Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie wants Tim to become his secretary and help him build a personal library. Tim isn’t sure he’s qualified, but the pay is great, and he’s not currently doing anything better with his life, so he takes the job. The portrait of Carnegie is nicely done. As Tim gets to know his employer, we meet a man who is very conflicted. He wants to be liked and wants to do good in the world. But he didn’t become as rich as he is without also being tough and ruthless. And why is Carnegie so interested in Tim? Why has he always been so generous with Tim’s poor seamstress mother? The contract with workers has expired at Carnegie’s Homestead steel works near Pittsburgh, and workers threaten to strike. Yet, Carnegie chooses this moment to go on an extended vacation in Scotland, leaving Tim 32

and his partner, Henry Clay Frick, to handle the problem. While Carnegie is away, Tim will deal with a blackmailer and attempt to discover the truth about Carnegie and his mother. He will also find himself in the middle of the famous Battle of Homestead when the striking workers trade gunfire with Pinkerton scabs. The book is well plotted, although it moves a little slowly and takes its time wrapping up. I’d also like to have seen Tim have a little more agency. Women throw themselves at him. People offer him fabulous jobs that he never applied for. Other people offer him information that he didn’t seek. He’d have been more interesting if he were more Horatio Alger and less slacker. Kathryn Bashaar

THE ARSENIC EATER’S WIFE Tonya Mitchell, Bloodhound, 2024, $2.99, ebook, 198pp, B0CRL9TPP9 / £1.99, ebook, 198pp, B0CQ92MXNY

From the outside looking in, Constance Sullivan has everything a Victorian woman could want – beauty, wealth, a loving husband, a glittering social circle in Liverpool, and adorable children. But under the surface, all is rot and decay. With infidelity on both sides, Constance’s marriage with her much older husband, William, is volatile and souldestroying. Her mother’s money is all that keeps them afloat, household servants spy and scheme, and Constance’s trust is terribly misplaced. In addition to everything else, William is a hypochondriac who suffers increasing bouts of ill health due to his penchant for regularly taking a powder of arsenic and strychnine as “medicine.” Though this is common knowledge, when he dies, Constance is astounded to find herself arrested for his murder, with the witnesses ranged against her those she’d thought her closest friends. Mitchell has based her tale on the real-life case of Florence Maybrick, who suffered a heinous miscarriage of justice at the hands of the British legal system. Jumping back and forth in time to portray the disintegration of Constance’s marriage, the circumstances of the “crime,” and the outcome of the trial and its aftermath, the novel maintains a gripping pace. The reader is far more astute at reading the people in Constance’s life than is Constance herself, resulting in a sense of helpless dread as she speeds towards her fate. Characterization is strong, dialogue well-written, and there is an element of melodrama added at the end to offer a more satisfying conclusion than that the real-life Maybrick was afforded. An absorbing read, especially for fans of Victorian gothic. Bethany Latham

THE BLACK FEATHERS Rebecca Netley, Michael Joseph, 2023, £18.99, hb, 344pp, 9780241534014

Yorkshire in the cold, snowy winter of 1852. Annie Stonehouse, not long married to Edward, arrives at his ancestral home, Guardbridge, for the first time with their new baby boy. This is a rambling, partly neglected

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old pile of a house set in the bleak moors. There are secrets and esoteric mysteries in the house and amongst its inhabitants: Edward’s unmarried sister Iris claims to possess psychic abilities. The sensation of something uncanny is accentuated by the constant ethereal memory of Edward’s previous wife and son, both of whom died, and who, as a society portraitist, he painted many times. Their pictures are balefully located around the house. Annie has her own deeply unpleasant secrets which are gradually revealed to the reader as the story progresses. The tension in the plot tightens as the various inhabitants in the isolated house reconcile their secrets, both with a psychological and supernatural reckoning. Yes, there is more than a bit of Wuthering Heights and The Turn of the Screw about this novel – the wild windy moor, ghostly presences, and ethereal children in the draughty old house. There are surprises and plot twists that presented this reader with some unexpected revelations, and the story is entertaining and a pleasure to read. The historical context and content are light but come across as accurate, and there are no creaky solecisms. Indeed, it avoids the impression that this is just a standard novel plonked down in the middle of the 19th century. Well worth reading, especially in front of a roaring fire with the winds howling around outside and rain lashing down on the windows and roof. Douglas Kemp

A WILD AND HEAVENLY PLACE Robin Oliveira, Putnam, 2024, $28.00/£25.00, hb, 403pp, 9780593543856

“Remember! Washington Territory.” These words echo throughout Robin Oliveira’s new wide-ranging, romantic historical novel. They link a pair of star-crossed lovers all the way from Glasgow to Seattle, and they also beautifully sum up the story itself. It’s a Romeo and Juliet story set between 1878 and 1882, first in grim industrial Glasgow and then in raw, raucous, but breathtakingly lovely Washington Territory. In Glasgow, teenagers Hailey MacIntyre and Samuel Fiddes fall in love at first sight, but many obstacles come between them: social class, education, disapproving parents, distance, and finally, and most dangerously, a hateful rival. But true love cannot, and will not, be denied. Another linking theme is coal. Sooty, flammable, valuable—its traces blacken both Hailey’s elite part of Glasgow and the wretched tenement where Samuel lives. Coal mines and coal-powered steam engines often figure in the plot. Coal is money and coal is also death. Inspired by her plea to him, “Remember! Washington Territory,” where she is going, Samuel follows Hailey to a very well-researched and well-evoked Wild Western Washington Territory, muddy and primitive, but a haven for immigrants and a rich source of coal. Plot twists enliven the text. There are several lifesaving rescues. The MacIntyres

lose their money, while Samuel rises in the world, becoming a shipbuilder. The passages describing ships and shipbuilding are some of the best in the book, along with vivid descriptions of western Washington’s climate and coastal scenery, where the author makes her home. The reader will remember Washington Territory too. The phrase “a wild and heavenly place” also carries special meaning. It stands, as Oliveira tells us, for the ecstasy one feels when home and love coincide, an emotional state which Hailey and Samuel finally achieve. Susan Lowell

THE RUNAWAY HEIRESS Emma Orchard, Allison & Busby, 2023, £8.99, pb, 416pp, 9780749029845

This is a fast-paced Regency novel that encompasses both danger and desire. Cassandra, the protagonist, flees her uncle’s home under duress and falls under the protection of Lord Irlam and his family. The author successfully manages to create historical accuracy alongside tension and drama, revealing the vibrant personalities of each character along the way. It is interesting to see how a woman’s world rested entirely on her marriage status. We follow Cassie’s journey from London to Brighton, and the themes of honour and reputation are explored, both very different notions in a woman’s and also a man’s world. For the woman, dishonour if a passionate moment was not sealed with marriage, and for the man, the obligation to marry or a duel to set things right in society’s eyes. It is within these values that the world of 1815 operates, setting characters such as Cassie, Irlam, and Georgiana on predefined fates. However, the author finds moments to break tradition in clever ways. The concept of marriage is one of the main themes, which defines character choices and decisions throughout. Tensions run high as Orchard’s characters’ resolutions are tested, making it clear that it is only in the darkest of times that people’s true selves are revealed. Clare Lehovsky

THE DIAMOND OF LONDON Andrea Penrose, Kensington, 2024, $17.95/ C$24.95/£16.99, pb, 368pp, 9781496744203

Though Lady Hester Stanhope led a uniquely adventurous life, Penrose focuses this fictional biography on the years 17991810, when Hester makes a splash in London as a debutante and then secretary, hostess, and right hand for her uncle, William Pitt the Younger, during his hard-pressed years as prime minister. Standing out from her influential, well-connected family, and escaping her controlling father, Hester rubs elbows with powerful men and women, including the Duchess of Devonshire and

Caroline Herschel, who inspires Hetty to make the most of her own talents. It’s a difficult task to map a dramatic structure onto a real life, and early chapters, like young Hetty, feel a bit unmoored as Beau Brummell tutors her on how to be roughish yet sophisticated. The theme of society’s restrictions on women is pealed often but begins to ring hollow as Hetty makes no real sacrifices for propriety’s sake, nor is she punished for her passions. Penrose’s research is solid, and the book touches on several political discords of the day, but tension flags as Hetty has no driving ambition of her own. Instead, suspense centers on her love affairs, first with her cousin, Camelford, then the charming and feckless Granville Leveson-Gower, whose casual jilting leads a desperate Hetty to attempt suicide. At last, she finds a deeper adult love with Lieutenant-General John Moore, a noble and virtuous hero who won this reader’s heart along with Hetty’s, but Napoleon’s increasing belligerence draws Moore to Portugal and another heartbreak for our heroine. Despite the loose sense of structure, the novel deftly frames the political currents of early 19th-century Britain from the perspective of a well-placed woman. Readers will enjoy the texture of detail and historical events providing a rich setting to a life that is, by any measure, fascinating and memorable. Misty Urban

MAUDE HORTON’S GLORIOUS REVENGE Lizzie Pook, Picador, 2024, £16.99, hb, 336pp, 9781529072891 / Simon & Schuster, 2024, $27.99, hb, 336pp, 9781982180546

After their parents died, Maude and Constance Horton were raised by their grandfather and grew up helping in his apothecary shop in London. Maude’s knowledge of potions and poisons is going to come in handy later in the story. Maude breaks out of her expected role as a meek Victorian young lady to discover what happened to her runaway sister. Constance ran away to an Arctic expedition disguised as a boy. Maude has to navigate rebuffs and plots at the Admiralty. She ventures into a pub full of surgeons making raucous public experiments with ether. Running parallel to Maude’s adventures in London, we (along with Maude) are reading Constance’s diary, where we vividly experience life on board ship in the frozen Arctic wastes as the crew searches for lost explorers. Maude finds herself on the trail of the sinister Edison Stowe. Edison is renting a room from a taxidermist and is being pursued for his gambling debts by a brutal moneylender. He tries to rescue his dire financial situation by running lantern shows about the Arctic and organising ‘package tours’ to public hangings for a group of prurient, well-heeled ‘tourists’. Maude conceals her identity and joins the grisly tours in her quest to discover what happened to her sister. Edison’s fictional

excursions are based on real Victorian murder mania, where huge crowds of people relished the spectacles of public hangings (especially the hangings of women), revelled in the art of the renowned hangman William Calcraft, and flocked to Madame Tussaud’s waxworks Chamber of Horrors. Tussaud, according to Punch, turned the abomination of blood ‘to the pleasantness of profit’. Pook has fabulously conjured the period with a plot that twists and turns through melodrama and the macabre. Highly recommended. Tracey Warr

THE SORROWFUL GIRL Keenan Powell, Three Hooligans Press, 2023, $9.99, pb, 271pp, 9798987149553

In 1895, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, a tramp finds a beautiful young woman dead in the woods. Liam Barrett, a policeman from the nearby town of Adams, determines that the victim’s head was bashed in with a rock and identifies her as Deirdre Monaghan, a scullery maid working for a man who owns an estate and large cotton mill in the area. The mill owner enlists Barrett to find the murderer. The tramp who found the body becomes the chief suspect. Barrett remains unconvinced of the tramp’s guilt and begins to suspect others, including Deirdre Monaghan’s hapless beau, the arrogant mill owner, and his spoiled son and powerful manager. In the meantime, tensions brew in the region. Workers at the mill fear that the owner will reduce wages and the owner fears, or claims to fear, violence from those workers. Against this backdrop, town officials plan a ceremony around the opening of a new library, funded by the mill owner. As the governor travels to Adams to participate in the ceremony, conflicts lead to violence. Keenan Powell writes well, with suitable vocabulary, increasing tension, and several plot twists. She skillfully alternates points of view between two policemen—the protagonist Liam Barrett, from Adams, and his counterpart, George Washington Stanley, from Pittsfield. Readers may feel that Barrett is occasionally too virtuous, and Stanley too villainous, but for the most part the novel is engaging. Powell brings the central story to a convincing and surprising conclusion, while leaving a few threads that she may take up if she continues Barrett’s story in future books. Marlie Wasserman

FLIGHT OF THE WILD SWAN Melissa Pritchard, Bellevue Literary Press, 2024, $18.99/C$28.95, pb, 416pp, 9781954276222

This powerful biographical novel of Florence Nightingale starts with Florence, an upper-class child in Victorian England, being called by her governess “a little monster.” She wonders if, in fact, she is a monster. The first half of the novel relates the difficulties Florence has as a child and young

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woman, being very different from other young women and unwilling to conceal that. From her first experience of a hare, injured in a trap and dying in her arms, she is absorbed by the idea of helping the sick and injured and comforting the dying. This is considered most unsuitable; she spends the first thirty years of her life fighting that prejudice. Finally, after training in Europe, Florence is able to start reforming hospitals in London. She moves on from that to her best-known work in the military hospitals during the Crimean War. She returns from there with the love and respect of all the military men and indeed the entire community, but with her health broken. This is a fascinating novel, unusual in its brief but extremely telling chapters. Florence struggles for decades against the ideas and prejudices of her time, starting with her sister and progressing to the petty bureaucrats she had to battle to provide food and bedding for ‘her boys’ in war. With sharp, uncompromising clarity, we are shown how, helped by a small number of staunch supporters, Florence fights to bring the basics of comfort and humanity to the filth and disorganization of the military hospitals. The author spares us no anguishing detail of an uncaring society ignoring the suffering in squalid circumstances not only of thousands of soldiers, but also the poor in British cities of the time. This is a significant tribute to the strength of the woman who changed that. Valerie Adolph

A LADY TO TREASURE Marianne Ratcliffe, Bellows Press, 2023, £9.99, pb, 9781739710163

All the familiar tropes of a Regency romance are here, except that the young couple whose love story is beset by misunderstandings and misfortune are Miss Louisa Silverton and the Honourable Miss Sarah Davenport. In the summer of 1812, Louisa, an American businessman’s daughter, travels to England at her father’s behest to stay with relatives in order to secure a wealthy husband who will bring much-needed investment to the family firm. A wealthy husband would also solve many of Sarah Davenport’s problems. Her beloved family estate is mired in debt, her father is ineffectual, her stepmother extravagant, and her stepbrother an unpleasant young man with a gambling habit. From Sarah and Louisa’s first meeting – with Sarah, seated in the branches of an apple tree, wearing boots and breeches – there is a spark between the two women. Sarah, who already guesses that she loves women, challenges Louisa’s openly voiced determination to catch a wealthy husband, but Louisa is set on doing what she sees as her duty to her father and is wary of any emotional attachment. Occasionally, the use of ‘Austenesque’ language and construction feels a little awkward, and it is disconcerting to read that someone’s ‘eyes flew to the ceiling and then to the window’. The use of various ‘handwriting’ style fonts in the letters exchanged by 34

characters may look more authentic but could prove problematic to readers with eyesight problems. I particularly enjoyed the portrayal of Sarah, whose has a touch of the historical Anne Lister (aka Gentleman Jack) about her, but whose pride and plain speaking are almost her undoing. Among the supporting cast, the galumphing young sportsman, Henry Mulcaster, made me smile. There is, overall, much to enjoy in the travails of Louisa and Sarah as they journey towards their happy ending. Mary Fisk

A GRAVE ROBBERY Deanna Raybourn, Berkley, 2024, $28.00/ C$37.99/£25.00, hb, 336pp, 9780593545959

In the ninth Veronica Speedwell Mystery, set in 1889 London, our crime-solving scientists, Veronica and Stoker, come across a most curious artifact that turns out to be more than it seems at first glance. The “anatomical Venus,” or anatomically-accurate wax model, that their benefactor’s exuberant daughter has recently acquired in the hope of making her own version of Madame Tussaud’s “sleeping beauty” turns out to be, well, not wax after all but a human woman preserved through means which impress even the experienced taxidermist Stoker. This unsettling discovery kicks off a quest to discover the identity and story of this poor girl. Given the eerily preserved state of her body, murder seems to be on the table. Eventually, with the help of their old friends from the traveling circus, Metropolitan police officer Mornaday, and gutsy journalist J. J., Veronica and Stoker get to the bottom of this weird enigma. The tale culminates in a gripping and suitably, ahem, explosive climax. At times the marvelously macabre story almost dips into the realm of science fiction, however subtly. The more speculative elements are the kind of details you’d expect to find in an old gothic novel or Arthur Conan Doyle yarn. The style also evokes these works without being overly garrulous. Rich with references to the historical events of the period, which provides a strong and vibrant sense of the steampunkesque setting, the book’s prose is electric and engaging. The relationship between our adventurous leads is passionate and plausible, yet undeniably romantic. I particularly enjoyed their flirty, adorable banter. Slightly squeamish readers will be happy to hear that the sauciest stuff all happens offscreen, winked at wittily but never portrayed in graphic detail. Lee Lanzillotta

MURDER IN DRURY LANE Vanessa Riley, Kensington, 2023, $27.00/ C$37.00, hb, 336pp, 9781496738677

1806: Lady Abigail Worthing, a baroness and woman of color, spends many pleasant evenings at the theatre, eager to find refuge for a few hours from the ghost of her absent husband and from her problematic relationship with her

REVIEWS | Issue 107, February 2024

estranged father and sister. On this particular evening in June, she also seeks a diversion from the scene of vandalized destruction that she discovered at her home. Her evening of escape is ruined when an aspiring playwright, Anthony Danielson, is found murdered in a backstage area of the theatre. With her physician neighbor, Commander Henderson, Abigail visits the crime scene and becomes caught up in the investigation, in part to procure justice for Danielson’s wife, also a woman of color, but also to distract herself from nightmarish visions of violence that plague her, from her own attacked home, and from her worries over the upcoming vote on proposed abolition bills in Parliament. But one murder often can lead to another, while passage of the bill hangs by a thread. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting Lady Worthing, a resourceful and intelligent sleuth, and entering her world in this second book in Riley’s mystery series. Abigail is a fully developed and multi-faceted character whose struggles for equality and purchase give the reader a diverse view of Regency society. The author’s intensive research gives excellent authenticity to the tale, and the book moves at a brisk pace. Some intriguing sparks fly between Abigail and Henderson, while she waits for news of her absent husband, and her complicated family relationships will prove relatable to many readers. A delight for fans of Regencies, historical mysteries, and smart and spunky heroines who truly reflect their times. Recommended. Susan McDuffie

WILD AND DISTANT SEAS Tara Karr Roberts, W. W. Norton, 2024, $27.99/£16.99, hb, 304pp, 9781324064886

Nantucket. Moby-Dick. Four generations of women who blossom via an inner force that’s part insight, part magic; the rediscovery of a father by a daughter whose mother died years earlier, in a journey that led to a distant continent across fierce seas. Take all of this and meticulous historical detail of 19th-century New England, add courageous mothers who ask more than simple romance in their lives, and you have the marvelous resilient core of Wild and Distant Seas. Springing from a passage in Melville’s Moby-Dick that describes a woman running a seafarers’ inn on the island of Nantucket, this novel opens with Evangeline Hussey and her ability to “see” what has happened to people around her. Widowed yet unable to reveal

her beloved husband’s death, for fear she’ll lose her livelihood and home, Mrs. Hussey manages with the help of other driven women. When she loses her heart to a young sailor named Ishmael, whose companion is the mysterious Queequeg, her vision tells her she’s in fresh danger. But she lacks clarity: “If I did not know what was coming, how could I stop it? Would this be the time I shattered? Would the price of relief again be blood and water and wailing?” Grounded in the small passionate details of the great Melville novel, yet seeking meaning in a very different way, the women that Roberts follows, one generation after another, develop strength from their own independence and their need, despite this, to be loved with integrity and passion. Far more readable than Melville’s work for a modern reader, this luscious novel may open a longing to re-explore the tale of the whale and the men who pursued it. Beth Kanell

THE FRAUD Zadie Smith, Hamish Hamilton, 2023, £20.00, hb, 464pp, 9780241336991 / Penguin Press, 2023, $29.00, hb, 464pp, 9780525558965

It is pleasant to have a historical novel written primarily about a historical novelist. Zadie Smith has made her first foray into historical fiction by writing a fascinating story about the wordy 19th-century novelist William Harrison Ainsworth at its core. Ainsworth was a renowned writer of long and detailed fictionalized accounts of British historical events. He was by no means an objective historian, and the current-day reader will remark on his often-wooden prose and a style which very often descends into the preposterous. In 1868, aged 63, Ainsworth has somewhat ludicrously just married a young maid, Sarah (24), who bore him a son. Ainsworth was a widower, and the story is mostly narrated from the perspective of Eliza Touchet, herself a widow in her late 60s, and who acts as housekeeper and general factotum to Ainsworth. She is a relative of Ainsworth’s and recalls the distant years when she knew him as a young, ambitious and engaging literary man. The structure of the story is a little unusual, in that the second half of the book changes direction and moves over to the cause célèbre of the day – the Tichborne inheritance – and Zadie Smith then burrows back into the past to narrate the brutal history of one of the witnesses at the hearing, a Jamaican. This seems rather abrupt and stops the fluidity of the account, as well as being more of a clunky read. But the author is able to point out some telling comparisons with previous human behaviour and the issues and scandals that we seem to be afflicted with in contemporary society. It is narrated with wry humour and intelligence and is a delight to read. The chapters are very short, mostly no more than

a page in brief fragments, which does at time make the reading seem a little staccato. Douglas Kemp

UNDER GROUND E. S. Thomson, Constable, 2023, £21.99/$28.99, hb, 370pp, 9781472131539

‘All around us there was vice and debauchery, misery and sorrow,’ opines our hero Jem Flockhart, describing London in 1854. Thomson convincingly conveys the literal and metaphoric darkness of the period. We journey with surgeon-apothecary Flockhart and his assistant Will Quartermain through fog-filled streets, rat-infested sewers, and disease-ridden slums as they endeavour to save an innocent man from the gallows. We meet a cast of remarkably unpleasant – even grotesque – people. Thomson has a knack for creating atmosphere and memorable characters. But I did hanker for some light and shade, to ease my way through the darkness. The title encapsulates the central concern of the novel: things that remain hidden. Flockhart’s gender, for example. Born female, her father dressed Jem as a man from birth. Cholera is the invisible disease that stalks the city. The lower classes in the slums of Prior’s Rent are unseen by their upper-class landlords in Blackwater Hall. And there isn’t enough space here to unravel the host of secrets that the hideously gothic Mortmain family keep. It’s an ambitious novel that tackles a plethora of issues with contemporary resonance: gender identity, sexuality, water pollution, epidemics, and avaricious landlords. It’s wellresearched, thought-provoking, and carefully handled. But the ideas obscure the story. After a fast-paced start, Jem and Will are deflected from their mission of saving a condemned man. The jeopardy, so well established in the opening chapters, becomes secondary to the sewer sub-plot and the investigation into the Mortmain family. The plotting is not strong enough to bind the multi-faceted elements into a satisfying whole. I admired Under Ground more than I enjoyed it. But if you like pitch black, rip-roaring adventures set in Victorian London, it may well appeal to you. Michael Lynes

ABOVE THE SALT Katherine Vaz, Flatiron, 2023, $29.99/C$39.99, hb, 432pp, 9781250873811

Beginning in the early 1840s, Above the Salt is a monumental epic of love and heartache drawn against a backdrop of religious persecution, racial bias, immigration, and the American Civil War. John Alves and Maria Catarina Freitas have grown up on the island of Madeira, on opposite sides of the religious divide, loving one another since childhood. John’s mother is imprisoned with her young son, and barely escapes martyrdom, and his spiritual adoration of her heavily influences the course of events. Fleeing Madeira with their families at different times, John and Maria, now Mary, find themselves in Illinois,

in a community of Portuguese refugees grateful for their small chance to pursue the American dream. John teaches deaf children and embarks on the invention of a sound machine; Mary, a talented embroideress, grows miracle-berry plants (Synsepalum dulcificum) for Edward Moore, a wealthy man whose efforts to grow a thornless rose are hampered by his infatuation with Mary. The ensuing years are marked by the ebb and flow of Mary’s affection for Edward, whilst her boundless passion for John remains unabated. John’s postponement of a marital commitment to Mary, prior to leaving to fight for the Union, overshadows the rest of his life. Vaz’s complex, character-rich narrative does not lend itself easily to being picked up and put down, but rather cries out to be digested in large chunks. It bursts with poignant, deftly targeted metaphor and literary symbolism (the miracle-berry; Edward’s thorny rose), whilst an underlying mystery drives the story forward. The narrative can both sweep you away and bring you up short, all within a turn of the page. Extensive author notes show the prodigious research and commitment which brought this story to fruition—one that is, by turns, brilliant, heart-breaking, frustrating and insightful, rolled into one immersive read. Fiona Alison

TO WOO AND TO WED Martha Waters, Atria, 2024, $17.99/C$24.99, pb, 336pp, 9781668007921

Sophie and her sister Alexandra are both young widows, but when the latter seems hesitant to remarry, Sophie suspects it is because she is reluctant to leave her sister on her own. To reassure her, Sophie decides to enter into a false engagement with West, the Marquess of Weston. The trouble is that they were once very much in love, and they soon discover that their feelings have not really changed. This is the familiar Regency trope of the false engagement which becomes the real thing, and here the focus is upon the irony of their situation. On the one hand, they are struggling unsuccessfully to resist their powerful mutual attraction; on the other, they are trying to convince their family that they do intend to marry, and this requires them to display loving behavior—which of course intensifies their discomfort. This concludes the Regency Vows series, and with the appearance of so many characters from the earlier books, they can be difficult to keep track of. Amidst so many misunderstandings the plot drifts towards farce as it progresses, but readers looking for a story of second chances laced with numerous steamy encounters and embarrassing situations will not be disappointed. Ray Thompson

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THE SECRET OF THE LADY’S MAID Darcie Wilde, Kensington, 2024, C$37.00, hb, 416pp, 9781496738035

$27.00/

In London in 1820, political and personal intrigue bring together police investigator Adam Harkness and the indefatigable Rosalind Thorne, who help the rich solve tricky problems. Both are enmeshed in a case that hits close to home: Rosalind’s live-in maid Amelia has encountered a lover from her past, Cate Levitton, who appears to have run away from her troubled family home and who, they find, has probably been poisoned with arsenic. Her poisoning may or may not be connected to a radical plot to assassinate the Privy Council. This is an intricately plotted, multi-layered mystery. The author keeps the tone light and the pace moving while juggling multiple plots, both romantic and political. Rosalind Thorne, an independent woman who struggles with the idea of marriage—even to someone she loves— and who has stitched together a household of misfits, is an appealing heroine who is both of her time and sympathetic for modern readers. Although this is the latest in a series about Rosalind Thorne, readers do not need to be familiar with the backstory from previous novels to understand and appreciate the plot and its undertones. Elizabeth Crachiolo

OURS Phillip B. Williams, Viking, 2024, $32.00/ C$42.00, hb, 592pp, 9780593654828 / Granta, 2024, £18.99, hb, 592pp, 9781803510774

Aba, a previously enslaved man, has traveled Arkansas with a woman called Saint as she systematically massacred plantation owners and overseers to free slaves and guide them to a place of safety called “Ours,” near St. Louis, where they can live freely: a place hidden from the white population that no one uninvited can find, even when it appears on a map. But what of the aftermath of being beaten, starved, raped and whipped? Saint’s conjure stones offer protection from outsiders, but can they safeguard the Ouhmey, who live in Ours, from the horrors of their past? The Ouhmey trust Saint’s supernatural powers, but when an unexpected death occurs and she does nothing to prevent it, a chain of unstoppable events is set in motion. Saint’s motives are called into question as the Ouhmey begin to fear and avoid her. Williams’ ambitious novel is a powerful blend of realism and mysticism, unfolding over forty years, with supernatural elements weaving seamlessly through history before, during and after the Civil War. At once complex, poetic, visceral and melancholy, the novel muses on the nature of freedom and the lasting impact of slavery. What does true freedom look like in light of the necessity for Saint’s protection? Ours is a measured read, demanding patience and, reaching the end, I couldn’t help feeling I wanted to start again to truly make sense of all the connections. Although sometimes overwhelmed by my scant 36

knowledge of African mythology, hoodoo, root work, and ancestral spirits, I was deep inside this story. Saint is not the lone protagonist, as Williams’ many extraordinary characters leap from these pages, with their oddities and charm and bizarreness, focusing readers’ attention on the importance of acceptance of human uniqueness. Ours is a triumph, rich with revelations bubbling to the surface long after the last page turns. Fiona Alison

THE MEIJI GUILLOTINE MURDERS Futaro Yamada (trans. Bryan Karetnyk), Pushkin Vertigo, 2023, £9.99/$16.95, pb, 380pp, 9781782278887

The Meiji Guillotine Murders is a historical mystery set in 1869 Japan, where a civil war fought to stem the influence of Western culture has just ended. Japan is still in a state of turmoil as it struggles to redefine its cultural identity in the face of new ideas sweeping in from the West. The novel reflects this in a series of mysterious murders that expose the corruption of the government and are found to be connected by the investigating officers, chief inspectors Kazuki and Kawaji. The detectives investigate each murder, but don’t solve the mysteries themselves. Instead, the murderer is unmasked in scenes that are part séance and part Agatha Christie-like. As in any good mystery there is plenty of smoke and mirrors. This builds up to a big finale, and the curtain is pulled back to reveal the person pulling the strings. The novel gives interesting insight into Japanese history and culture and does a good job of explaining the historical context of the story. However, there are a lot of cultural references specifically about clothing, so some notes would have been useful, for those of us not overly familiar with traditional Japanese fashion. The author also frequently breaks ‘the fourth wall’ to give asides, outside the scope of the narrative, which, while informative, disrupt the flow of the story. These are minor criticisms which I only mention because it is easy to get distracted and miss something important in the subtleties of the narration. This is a witty and clever mystery, with a very surprising twist at the end. Alan Bardos

20T H C E N T U RY LADY CODEBREAKER K. D. Alden, Forever, 2024, $19.99/ C$25.99/£15.99, pb, 432pp, 9781538723661

Alden’s new novel inhabits the world of significant U.S. military and political events in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, including the derailing of Nazi spy networks in South America, during WWII. In 1917, Grace Smith is swept into a whirlwind romance with Colonel Robert Feldman and his cryptanalytical world. The two head up a unit at Riverbank, decoding hundreds of messages with a majority-female

REVIEWS | Issue 107, February 2024

team of experts. The couple’s successful collaboration ends when Robert, one of America’s most brilliant cryptanalysts, is sent to SIGINT headquarters, where his highly classified work takes him into a very dark world. Grace’s subsequent fight to prove herself equally worthy is thwarted by male condescension time and time again. Eventually hired by Coast Guard Intelligence during Prohibition, she wages war on smugglers, bootleggers, racketeers, and mobsters, who are costing the government millions in unpaid tax revenues. Lady Codebreaker is a cracking good read. The novel’s main theme involves endless hours of tedious puzzle solving and analytical work, the details of which are about as exciting as watching grass grow. Recognising this, Alden knew her novel had to become more than tracking Grace as she untangles endless lines of gibberish. With admirable success, she opens up a remarkable decades-long love story, tied into a military/naval spy thriller. Grace’s struggle to prove her underestimated brilliance in a man’s world, and her wish to serve her country, juggled with her deep love for a man broken by his 40 years of government service, make for a poignant and stirring, sometimes heart-pounding read. The prologue, set in 1958, presents a nuanced picture of Grace’s daily struggle to pull her husband from the ‘dark abyss of extreme melancholia’ and suicidal ideation, his fragile mind irrevocably fractured after Pearl Harbor. Alden handles it all with tenderness, compassion and truth, and I was deeply immersed throughout. Fiona Alison

THE GODDESS OF SHIPWRECKED SAILORS Skye Alexander, Level Best Books, 2023, $16.95, pb, 256pp, 9781685124342

In this third installment of the author’s Lizzie Crane series, the heroine and her band are hired to play for a wealthy shipping magnate and his friends over the holidays in Prohibitionera Salem, Massachusetts. Lizzie’s curiosity leads her to an unwelcoming distant cousin, then to a 19th-century shipwreck which has ties to both her cousin and her employer, and also to a man’s death, which may or may not be related. Chapters begin with quotes from an eclectic group—Ben Franklin, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nietzsche, Duke Ellington and others—with just the right touch of foreshadowing. Lizzie is a likeable heroine, and her character is drawn with depth, particularly with respect to her musicianship and relations with her

bandmates. The plot unfolds with many suspenseful scenes and is well-researched as Lizzie encounters aspects of Salem’s history, like the House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne, its Customs House, and the smuggling tunnels. Dialogue is tinged with a pleasing amount of period slang. Prohibition-era music and glamor come alive in Gatsbyesque celebrations where pretty and inquisitive but lowborn Lizzie, whose behavior might be considered a bit outrageous by the standards of the 1920s, takes her place among socialites. Can Lizzie connect long-lost treasures, a shipwreck from two generations earlier, and a murder, and also possibly find love? An enjoyable historical mystery for fans of the flapper era. Brodie Curtis

THE SLEEPING BEAUTIES Lucy Ashe, Magpie, 2024, £16.99, hb, 305pp, 9780861548248

Now the war’s over, Rosamund Caradon can take the evacuated children in her care back to their London homes. She’s accompanied on the train by adored daughter Jasmine (eight), in whom a fellow traveller shows an unsettling interest. This apparently chance meeting of the doting mother and young Sadler’s Wells ballerina Briar Woods invites us to dine at a sumptuously detailed feast of a backstory, from which we’re thoroughly sated by a worry-web of suspense and secrets set against a backdrop of all things balletic – its history, celebrities, theatres, artistes, clothing and movements – crafted with the most beautiful deftness, à la Flaubert’s mot juste. A drip-feed of intrigue-bombshells, nonchalantly dropped throughout the narrative, make this kidnap mystery a wonderfully compelling, truly competent thriller. The journey to London is but one upon which this story takes you. There’s the geographical tour comprising England, France and Holland, plus that of human emotions, portrayed through deep friendships, intimacy, love, honesty and betrayal. There are life journeys from adoption and childhood dreams to adult realities, accomplished character studies all. Further, we journey through time; plot seeds sown in the First World War burgeon amongst World War Two’s ubiquitous menace and the post-war deprivations of coupon-reliant Britain. But primarily, this is all about the mother-daughter journey. Rarely have I been so keen to uncover the truth. Simply excellent. Simon Rickman

THE WARSAW SISTERS Amanda Barratt, Revell, 2023, $17.99, pb, 384pp, 9780800741716

Prolific, award-winning author Barratt has penned a powerful narrative anchored in the adventures of twin sisters Antonina and Helena. Their world uprooted by the German invasion of Poland, and specifically the brutal occupation of Warsaw, the girls struggle on a daily basis to simply survive. Written in an intimate parallel literary style, each protagonist tells her story in a chronological manner. Barratt describes the vicissitudes of an increasingly difficult life, graphically illustrating betrayals and deportations along with the odd episode of humanity within a stark landscape. Evoked via often divergent and intense descriptions, the sisters wander very separate paths, navigating circumstances that they neither imagined nor are equipped to endure. Basic supplies are scarce, and the general civilian population suffers physically and emotionally under the severe yoke of occupation. Destruction abounds as the war turns against the conqueror and daily existence becomes even more problematic. Matters come to a climax in the late summer and early fall of 1944 with the infamous Warsaw Uprising. Silent existence and acceptance are no longer options, and the sisters must overcome their own inertia and contemplate dangerous paths: one a single mother and the other a resistance agent. As the estranged twins are drawn into a deepening conflagration, fundamental concerns center their actions: who can be trusted, who might be a foe, and who might betray others in order to survive? Jon G. Bradley

THE DIVORCÉES Rowan Beaird, Flatiron, 2024, $28.99, hb, 300pp, 9781250896582

Set in Nevada in the 1950s, this is a novel about a group of women staying in one of the “ranches” for the six weeks they must wait for their divorce to be finalized. Lois Saunders from Chicago finds the Golden Yarrow ranch comfortable but uninspiring until the arrival of Greer. She says the surname she is using, Lang, is her married name, but this may not be the truth. Lois finds something both glamorous and mysterious about Greer. Inevitably Lois falls in love with Greer, who guides her through indulging in petty thefts from a casino towards the dangers but rewards of a much larger theft. However, the novel is much more than the growing tension felt by Lois about immediate possibilities. It covers her growth from a rather simpleminded young matron to an independent woman making her own decisions in a new and exciting city. This novel covers that period in U.S. history when women started finding their individual personality rather than being merely an extension of a father or husband. The anxiousness of the women at the ranch about

the reactions of their soon-to-be ex-husbands, combined with Lois’s interior monologues, reinforce the sense of unease about the drastic step they are taking towards freedom. To be divorced seemed glamorous at the time—it was the realm of film stars—but this novel illustrates the vulnerability of women who have chosen to step away from the masculine support they have always, however reluctantly, depended upon. While the characterization and action in the novel leave something to be desired, the attitudes of the time and the disturbing sense of uncertainty are revealed clearly and in depth. Valerie Adolph

THE LOST DAUGHTER OF VENICE Charlotte Betts, Piatkus, 2023, £14.99, pb, 322pp, 9780349432724

Venice 1919. When Phoebe Wyndham responds to an urgent telegram from Contessa di Sebastiano, the aunt who took her and her sister in after their parents died, only to turn her out seven years later, the Phoebe who returns to Venice is no longer the forlorn seventeen-year-old who was made to pay dearly for an indiscretion. The widow of an architect who fell at the Somme, she is a well-known professional photographer who has made a new life for herself. Arriving at the Contessa’s home, the Palazzo degli Angeli, Phoebe is told that her aunt has just died, and that she is her sole heiress, a fact greatly resented by her widowed sister Eveline, who still lives in Venice. But worse is to come. Eveline’s revelation of a past deception makes Phoebe determined to find out what really happened seventeen years ago. Her search for the truth is complicated by the attentions of two very different men: Cosimo, her aunt’s lawyer, and Dante, owner of the hotel next door, who each have their own plans for the Palazzo. As her world convulses around her, Phoebe must decide whom she can trust. Dare she follow her heart? Thanks to the first-person narrative, the reader is quickly drawn into Phoebe’s world, experiencing her inner turmoil and despair as she stumbles from one dead end to another. Imminent success is followed by more heartbreak, leading up to a thrilling climax. Catherine Kullmann

THE WOMAN WITH NO NAME Audrey Blake, Sourcebooks, 2024, $16.99/ C$25.99/£12.99, pb, 384pp, 9781728270821

This novel is based on the real life of Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent Yvonne Rudellat. Born and raised in France, Yvonne moved to London, married a Brit, and had a daughter. But by age 45, her marriage had ended, her child lived with the father, and their London family home had been destroyed by German bomb raids. The SOE recruited her, and in 1942 she became the first SOE-trained female operative in France. There she hand-

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delivered coded messages to local resistance operatives, rendezvoused with parachute night landings of supplies and more spies, and sabotaged German equipment and trains. The story is told mostly from Yvonne’s firstperson point of view. This makes it easy to feel her feistiness and intensity, the rigors of her training, then her search for disruptive missions while still hiding herself and the locals who help her. An invented character, Nazi military intelligence service officer Max, brutally tries to thwart all resistance in southern France. He begins to scope out this elusive female resistance leader. The novel ends with the actual last days of Yvonne’s life. Blake’s action scenes are well done. Except for too-easy telephone usage, the details of the land, people, clothes, and vehicles all ring true, especially Yvonne trying to prove herself in a man’s world. The other mostly real-life French resisters are also unique characters. The sometimes clever and sometimes foolish sabotage attempts are based on Yvonne’s actual history. Some readers may be put off by too much introspection and dialogue; however, overall, this is an interesting treatment of a little-known aspect of WWII. G. J. Berger

BONFIRE NIGHT Anna Bliss, John Scognamiglio, 2023, $17.95, pb, 368pp, 9781496747341

“Ambition” is the first word of Anna Bliss’s tightly structured and beautifully written novel opening in London in October 1936. Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts are storming the Jewish section of Whitechapel, and their antisemitic fascism makes clear that Hitler’s German campaign has violent advocates across the Channel. Kate Grifferty is the ambitious protagonist, a young photojournalist covering the hostilities. Snapping shots while standing on the top of a car, she encounters David Rabatkin, an equally ambitious medical student there to look out for his brother Simon, the charismatic Communist leader defying the Blackshirts. Kate and David feel a powerful mutual attraction—and an impossible one. She’s an independently minded Irish Catholic; he’s enmeshed in his family. Neither a girl news photographer nor an impoverished Jewish would-be doctor has an easy path, so they must be dedicated. Nor has either planned for love, but a passionate connection overwhelms them despite all. The story carries us through WWII, as London is bombed and Kate and David’s strong personalities, and familial and professional situations, challenge them and each other. 38

Between the dangers of war and the demands of their lives, their relationship becomes increasingly difficult. Anna Bliss depicts their passion and their conflicts with a perceptive eye in this moving, complicated story. Bonfire Night’s distinctive angle on WWII impacts the unique Juliet and Romeo scenario, compelling and surprising readers from the beginning to the epilogue, set in 1945. Bliss’s author’s note is helpful, and she includes a readers’ guide. Highly recommended. Jinny Webber

THE RED-HOT BLUES CHANTEUSE Ana Brazil, Independently published, 2023, $11.99, pb, 442pp, 9798862126655

In 1919, vaudeville singer Viola Vermillion arrives in San Francisco with her lover/pianist/ songwriter Stu Wiley. Vaudeville has brought joy and frivolity to a society plagued by painful memories of WWI and the deadly influenza epidemic that followed it. Performers are lauded, even in the relatively shabby Pantages Theater where Viola and Stu land. Both are talented and hope to make it in the big time, as do many of their fellow performers. But early on, Stu is shot to death. Romance turns to mystery, and not simply of who killed Stu and why. Who was he? Viola discovers how little she knows of Stu’s past, and the same is true for many of her fellow performers, whose backgrounds can be murky. The younger men are veterans of WWI, meaning, among other things, they’re good shots. The backstage life at the Pantages reveals both camaraderie and rivalry. One of the vaudevillians likely killed Stuart… unless someone from the outside carried a grudge. Occasionally the point of view shifts to Jimmy Harrigan, Viola’s new pianist. She gives Jimmy the job because he’s so expert, but she has her doubts about him. Then comes a second suspicious death. Viola is also on a collision course with the munitions tycoon Thaddeus Rutherfurd, whose ambitions couldn’t be more different from those of vaudeville performers. Jimmy’s friend Erwin’s observation, “Clearly Viola was at the center of some ferocious storm,” applies to the book as a whole. This storm is rife with lies, disguised identities, secrets, flirtations, and at times manic intensity. The Red-Hot Blues Chanteuse is a delightful, fast-moving story with constant surprises that gives an inside view of vaudeville, partway between a circus and a cabaret. The mystery of these murders is solved, but the ending is open-ended: this is the first of a trilogy. Jinny Webber

EDITH HOLLER Edward Carey, Riverhead, 2023, $28.00, hb, 400pp, 9780593188903 / Gallic, 2024, £16.99, hb, 400pp, 9781913547783

This fascinating, dreamlike novel is hard to categorize. Set in 1901 Norwich, England, this penny-dreadful-inspired tale of

REVIEWS | Issue 107, February 2024

haunted theaters, murderous stepmothers, cannibalism, ghosts, and disguises takes place almost entirely inside the mind of a precocious pre-teen girl. Edith Holler has lived her entire life within the confines of the venerable Holler Theatre, kept there by her superstitious theatrical family because of a mad aunt’s curse. Believing she could never leave the building without causing its immediate destruction, the sickly child turns to books for a window into the outside world, becoming an expert on the history of her beloved Norwich as well as the folklore that suggests its main export, the sweet, blood-red Beetle Spread, contains missing children as its main ingredient. When she decides to write a play about the wicked history of Beetle Spread (and the family that owns its factory), all hell literally begins to break loose. This summary doesn’t do justice to the hallucinatory, madcap nature of Carey’s prose and the power of Edith’s point of view. Her resourcefulness and courage force us to take her version of the sinister forces threatening her beloved home at face value. The meticulously researched narrative includes the author’s illustrations of the outlandish theater folk, which are actually made mostly unnecessary by the vividness of Carey’s descriptions. Because Edith’s imagination is so mesmerizing, it’s hard to be certain whether this novel is historical fantasy or whether we are as taken in by Edith’s fantasies as the other characters are. Either way, the book is full of surprises and often-hilarious observations about the many layers of history even the most ordinary of towns can perch upon. Kristen McDermott

THE STORM WE MADE Vanessa Chan, Simon & Schuster/Marysue Rucci, 2024, $27.00, hb, 352pp, 9781668015148 / Hodder & Stoughton, 2024, £16.99, hb, 352pp, 9781399712576

M a l a y a , 1935. Cecily’s husband is a minor civil servant who admires the British he kowtows to, but Cecily despises them. When the chance comes to act as a spy for the Japanese, she does so, with her goal an Asia for Asians. She cannot fathom that the Japanese will be a crueler occupier than the British. Malaya, 1945. On his fifteenth birthday, Cecily’s only son is abducted and taken to a brutal Japanese labor camp. After having to hide, day after day, in a cellar to avoid lecherous Japanese soldiers, Cecily’s younger daughter runs away; the family cannot find any trace of her. Having given up her dream of university, Cecily’s older daughter works at a

teashop, her small income and tireless care for her dwindling family the only things holding them together. Still, her father’s health fails and her mother grapples with insanity. Chan’s story of the Japanese occupation of Malaysia and its effect on a single family is extraordinary. Her characters are realistic with guilt, dreams and fears, motivations, loyalties, and failings. Her development of time and place is superb: the staggering heat and humidity, the rain, the mosquitoes, the smell of mint pomade, the disappointment of rice thickened with tapioca to make it go farther, the stick and stink of an unwashed kitchen floor. The fear and grief, the anger and despair of this family are tangible. The disasters possible at the dawn of each day keep the reader on edge. History says that soon the Japanese will be forced out of Malaysia, but which members of this family will survive? Chan shows that the casualties of war are not always the soldiers. Highly recommended. Elizabeth Caulfield Felt

THE FOX WIFE Yangsze Choo, Henry Holt, 2024, $27.99/ C$36.00, hb, 400pp, 9781250266019 / Quercus, 2024, £20.00, hb, 400pp, 9781529429756

Manchuria, 1908: Bao, a detective of stellar reputation, is called in to find the identity of an unknown woman found frozen to death on a doorstep. Bao has a gift for detecting lies as they hum in the air around him. His search takes him to the private estate of Wang, a wealthy merchant, from whose estate a young woman has escaped. Wang covets her beauty and demands her return. Bao tracks the woman to Dalian, where a bout of food poisoning forces him to seek out a Chinese medicine shop. Snow is a grieving young wife on a revenge mission, searching for a photographer responsible for the death of her daughter. In Dalian, Snow (now Ah San) becomes servant and companion to the older fourth wife of a Chinese medicine merchant whose grandson, Bohai, is threatened by a family curse in which firstborn boys always die young. Ah San travels with her mistress to Japan, where Bohai is studying, but tragedy befalls the group on the return journey. When Bao is called in to investigate, he crosses paths with Ah San and her mistress, fulfilling a lifelong yearning he doesn’t expect. Choo’s tale is of ancient superstition, based on Chinese fable and myth, as she weaves separate narratives seamlessly into one, through Bao’s and Ah San’s journeys towards enlightenment. She gives us a tantalizing glimpse into Chinese culture: belief that wicked women are foxes, reviled as tricksters. Meanwhile, the charismatic handsome males are feared and revered and do as they please. Choo’s ability to blur lines between folklore and historical reality is masterly. Her characters are as tangible as if they were standing in front of you. It wasn’t difficult to fall for their seductive charm and

wiliness in this spellbinding novel, which had me enchanted from beginning to end. Fiona Alison

WHERE THEY LIE Claire Coughlan, Simon & Schuster, 2024, £16.99, hb, 304pp, 9781398521704 / Harper Perennial, 2024, $18.99/C$23.99, pb, 304pp, 9780063344600

Dublin, 1968: in the news room of a city newspaper on a slow night near Christmas, the conversation amongst reporters turns to a convicted murderess who died in an asylum, and her possible link to the still-unexplained disappearance of an actress twenty years earlier. Then a skeleton turns up, identifiable by an engraved wedding ring. But when Nicoletta Sarto, the only woman on the reporting team, investigates, she finds that the dead woman’s spider web of connections enmesh even her own family. Then another body is found, this time of an infant, and the respectable façade of a prominent Dublin business family starts to crumble. This novel is also a portrait of an Ireland long before the Celtic Tiger years, where divorce is not an option; where abortion is proscribed but is nevertheless achieved, often with horrific consequences; where a finding of insanity is a convenient way of keeping secrets – an Ireland, too, where the respected obstetrician Éamon de Valera Jnr passed illegitimate babies to childless couples with impunity. ‘Where They Lie’ could not be bettered as a title; it refers not just to the garden of the well-heeled family where the corpses are found, but also the number of people, including those closest to Nicoletta herself, who have told untruths or turned a blind eye for years. Coughlan’s debut novel is admirably crafted, full of minutely-observed details that put it firmly in its historical era, and has a satisfyingly Grand Guignol ending. Katherine Mezzacappa

THE MAYOR OF MAXWELL STREET Avery Cunningham, Hyperion Avenue, 2024, $27.99/C$36.99, hb, 520pp, 9781368093002

Upon the death of her older brother, Nelly Sawyer becomes heir to her family’s Kentucky horse breeding estate and the premier debutante of elite Black society. But Nelly is not interested in the constraints and trappings of wealth and prestige. For some time, she has been submitting articles about ordinary Black people living on the South Side of Chicago

to the Chicago Defender under a pseudonym. Now she wants her own byline, and to get it, her assignment is to profile the shadowy Mayor of Maxwell Street, the man who’s been coordinating the work of local vice and bootlegging bosses across race lines. The Mayor of Maxwell Street is Cunningham’s first novel. It leads readers from cotillions and polo fields to the smoky basement of the jazz and gaming tables of the Lantern Club on Maxwell Street in 1920s Chicago. The overarching plot is tense with action and danger, and the love story between Nelly and the mysterious Jay Shorey is complicated by their present lives and their past. Characters are complex and must make difficult decisions, sometimes endangering the lives of others. And then there are the descriptive insights: “observing these two palatial people stripping each other down to the studs.” While some scenes resolve a little too conveniently, given the times and the circumstances, little detracts from the overall effect of this tour de force and the question it probes: When the pursuit of freedom carries heavy costs, is it worth the price? K. M. Sandrick

FIREWEED Richard Vaughan Davies, Inkspot Publishing, 2023, £8.99, pb, 233pp, 9781739630546

It is 1947, and Adam, a British military lawyer, is posted to the German city of Hamburg to prosecute Nazi war criminals. It is a depressing and soul-destroying job. As the true horrors of the death camps are revealed, Adam finds himself prosecuting low-ranking officials, typists and clerks while hundreds of high-ranking Nazis are escaping justice by fleeing to Argentina. During the Second World War, much of Hamburg was destroyed by Allied bombing. Adam’s walk to work takes him past the perimeter of the ‘Dead City’, the old city centre, now almost totally obliterated. The author’s descriptions are vivid and memorable: Amidst the ruins lie tens of thousands of decomposing bodies, and the air is thick with ‘flies as fat as a man’s thumb’. Equally visceral are the flashbacks to Adam’s wartime experiences, including landing on the Normandy beaches in June 1944. Adam is a well-rounded and fascinating character. His friends in Hamburg are mainly Germans: the landlady where he lodges, who describes the firestorms after the bombings; Ernst Mann, an elderly, Austrian-born doctor who lives in the attic, and who knew Hitler as a teenager; and Rose, an aristocratic beauty whose family perished during the war. Now destitute, she makes her living in a brothel. Fireweed is full of unexpected twists and turns—part adventure, part love story, part study of man’s inhumanity to man, and part homage to mankind’s enduring resilience. The novel takes its name from a weed Rose spies growing from a crack in a ruined wall. She sees it as a miraculous sign of rebirth, the city slowly

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coming alive again after so much suffering and death. Recommended. Penny Ingham

IWO, 26 CHARLIE P. T. Deutermann, St. Martin’s, 2023, $29.00/ C$39.00, hb, 288pp, 9781250284990

It’s February 1945, and the savage battle for the Japanese island of Iwo Jima is about to transform into a hellscape for tens of thousands of U.S. Marines. And no other World War II novelist can tell it better than P.T. Deutermann. Aboard the U.S.S. Nevada just offshore of Iwo Jima, U.S. Navy gunnery liaison officer Lieutenant Lee Bishop receives coordinates from land-based “spotters” to target Japanese positions with the ship’s big guns. As the Marines land on Iwo’s beaches, they little realize the Japanese forces have tunneled deep into the island and are prepared to fight to the death. The Marines suffer horrific casualties that also include more than two dozen highlyskilled spotters who know how to “talk”—the term for the arcane knowledge trained officers possess to call in effective fire missions. Bishop volunteers to assist the Marines on the island and thus begins his Iwo Jima nightmare, one that only Deutermann can imagine in such realistic, gruesome detail. Bishop is assisted by three Marines known as Goon, Twitch, and Monster. Together, this unlikely foursome delves deep behind enemy lines with only rifles, knives, and the all-important battery-operated radio to call fire down upon the Japanese. Using the call sign “Iwo, 2-6 Charlie,” Bishop and company run a gauntlet of obstacles above and below ground to provide the coordinates needed for maximum damage. This is perhaps Deutermann’s most graphic war novel yet, in a long list of impressively authentic stories of the war’s most iconic Pacific battles. The ways men can die—and do—are not for the fainthearted reader. Iwo, 26 Charlie is high-octane adventure with indelible characters who stay with you. Deutermann reminds readers of the bloodsoaked sacrifice of U.S. forces on Iwo Jima while also telling one whopper of a war story. Peggy Kurkowski

BECOMING MADAM SECRETARY Stephanie Dray, Berkley, 2024, $29.00/ C$39.00/£25.99, hb, 528pp, 9780593437056

Frances Perkins, a woman with a remarkable life and career, became the first female Secretary of Labor in 1933 when appointed by 40

President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. Among countless important accomplishments, she was the woman behind many of President Roosevelt’s successes in bringing America out of the Great Depression. In this biographical novel, Stephanie Dray pieces together Frances’ personal and public life beginning in 1911 just after earning a master’s degree in economics and sociology. Her life is devoted to issues faced by women, children, the poor, and elderly. She witnesses the terrible deaths of young women escaping the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, which plants the seed for her life’s work. As governor of New York, Roosevelt appoints Frances to serve in his cabinet – another of many firsts – and she continues working by his side through his presidency. She works tirelessly to ease the plight of many while juggling the demands of a family and many tragedies in her personal life. Her goal to implement a social security plan is her driving force when she sees hard-working people thrust into extreme poverty brought by the Depression through no fault of their own. Yet the press hounds her for her no-nonsense, direct approach and vilifies her when she had no time for frivolities and the niceties to endear her. This novel is full of politics and political maneuverings and may not appeal to some readers for that reason, but the historical details and the famous people who cross paths with Perkins are fascinating. Dray includes Perkins’s family life and friendships, which adds another level of interest. Best of all are the straightforward writing and the linear timeline, which make this a pleasurable reading experience. The accomplishments of this remarkable woman, with her strength, determination, and drive, leave the reader with admiration and awe. Janice Ottersberg

THE ADORED ONE Susanne Dunlap, Atmosphere Press, 2023, $26.99, hb, 280pp, 9781639888344

The life and career of Lillian Lorraine, starlet of the early Ziegfeld Follies, followed the spectacular arc of so many starlets. A beauty, she rose to fame young, partly through an affair with her producer, only to find herself drinking too much and relying on the wrong men. Susanne Dunlap’s The Adored One follows Lillian from 1906, when she arrives in New York as a teenager seeking fame, to 1912 and the end of her relationship with Florenz Ziegfeld. Ziegfeld, forty-six years old to her fifteen at the start of their affair, comes to control all aspects of Lillian’s life. He not only promotes her career, he holds all of her money and decides where she lives and what she wears. His “adoration” and his control, presented as love and care, isolate her from her few friends and provoke her to self-destructive rebellion. Her nights fueled with alcohol and dancing and sex, she damages her career and becomes a tabloid favorite. I could have wished for more detail of the

REVIEWS | Issue 107, February 2024

Broadway life of the 1910s, such as we get on Lillian’s first visit backstage: “Wax, sawdust, sweat, mold, and something the paint and upholstery gives off–those are the smells that hit you when you walk onto a stage in an empty theater… We’d entered through the stage door, passing dark dressing rooms… I peered in one where a light was still on and saw a half-naked actress engulfed in the arms of a man wearing work clothes.” It is, however, the actress’s engulfing, reckless vulnerability that is Dunlap’s real subject, more than the stage on which she performs. And to her credit, Dunlap’s Lillian is never dazzled by her own fame and is no victim. She stumbles, and fails, and rises to try again. Melissa Bloom Bissonette

THE WITCH’S DAUGHTER Imogen Edwards-Jones, Aria, 2023, £20.00, hb, 402pp, 9781838933289

This follow-up to Edwards-Jones’ The Witches of St Petersburg continues the story of Grand Duchess Militza Nikolayevna and her sister Grand Duchess Anastasia. Known as the “Black Princesses,” the sisters came from Montenegro, married into Russian aristocracy, and befriended the Tsarina using witchcraft to help her conceive a longed-for male heir. The second instalment focuses on Militza’s daughter, Nadezhda, who tries to deny the powerful magic in her blood. But as society collapses around her and her family, in the wake of the revolution of 1917, they must escape, and Nadezhda must use everything she has to keep them all safe and ensure that the book in which their family’s magical secrets are stored does not fall into the wrong hands. The novel covers the final days of Rasputin, the First World War and the devastating loss of life in the Russian ranks, the Revolution, and the chaos that ensued. With an expansive cast of characters and impeccable research, Edwards-Jones brings this violent and vicious period to life. Based on real people and events, the novel offers a fascinating window into a historical era that continues to draw speculation and wonder. Nadezhda and her family pass from lives of opulence and splendour to the misery of war, food shortages, endless winter, and angry mobs on every corner. A must read for fans of Ellen Alpsten and Louisa Morgan. Lisa Redmond

THE LONDON BOOKSHOP AFFAIR Louise Fein, William Morrow, 2024, $19.99/£9.99, pb, 401pp, 9780063304840

This Cold War thriller is mainly set in 1962 but also has clear roots in WW2. The principal character is Celia Duchesne, who works at an antiquarian bookshop in The Strand, central London, managed by a strangely vague American woman who seems to have plenty of money and several odd male visitors. One of these is a handsome American, and we see from his point of view, as well as Celia’s, the

development of their romance. Although his true role in life is something only he knows, ultimately she still gets the better of him. An alternate narrative focuses on Jeannie, a girl in London in 1942 also involved with an American. Her harsh experiences lead her to becoming an SOE agent under a female minder whose character seems accurately modelled on the enigmatic real-life spy mistress Vera Atkins. Many other characters have reallife originals. The busy plot takes in CND protests at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the callous way babies were taken from unmarried mothers, an immensely poignant scene in a concentration camp, and many more evocative incidents. The book is an ingenious recreation of its twin periods, and the research is generally thorough. There are a few small points to correct: for instance, it was impossible at that time to see the outside of the circular building that forms the British Museum Reading Room, due to other buildings surrounding it. In the first half of the book the author’s keenness not to disclose any of her characters’ many levels of deception can slightly confuse. However, this is without doubt a wellwritten and psychologically acute book – I enjoyed Celia’s observations of the differences between the English and Americans, and her wry comments about the male attitude toward women. Enthusiastically recommended. Ben Bergonzi

THE WHARTON PLOT Mariah Fredericks, Minotaur, 2024, $28.00, hb, 304pp, 9781250827425

New York City, 1911: Edith Wharton, famed Gilded Age novelist, is at a crossroads in her life. She has doubts about her writing talent, her marriage to Teddy Wharton, friends in her circle of wealthy and accomplished people, and the ways that modern America is evolving. She becomes involved in the murder investigation of a controversial fellow novelist and decides to track down the culprit. Fredericks develops the murder plot with a deft hand. Several plausible villains with suspicious motives appear, and Mrs. Wharton pursues them even when she begins to receive anonymous threatening notes. Fredericks builds suspense with careful details, but when the killer is identified in the very last pages of the novel, one wonders how the protagonist did not see it coming. But what is of perhaps greater interest, the novel pursues and unravels the novelist’s complicated persona. Wharton was a great friend of Henry James, the acclaimed “Father of the Psychological Novel.” Wharton was often compared with James, and Fredericks herself does the Master justice in her careful, absorbing analysis of Edith Wharton. (“Henry,” by the way, is a character in the novel and lives several stories above the Whartons in the Belmont Hotel.) The descriptions of Manhattan’s changing physical environment, the evolution of the American political and social milieu and, most importantly, the complicated psychological

drama of an American female icon make this novel worth burning the midnight oil for. Joanne Vickers

THE PORCELAIN MAKER Sarah Freethy, Simon & Schuster, 2023, £16.99, hb, 371pp, 9781398511798 / St. Martin’s, 2023, $29.00/C$39.00, hb, 384pp, 9781250289346

1993. Clara Vogel, German-born but British-bred, is searching for the identity of her father. She knows the clue lies in the elaborate porcelain figurines her late mother kept, even though they seem at odds with her otherwise simple tastes and are stamped with the SS insignia. 1925. When Jewish architect Max Ehrlich meets avant-garde artist Bettina Vogel, they are both students at the Bauhaus in Weimar. They are both passionate about breaking taboos in art, but as years pass and their relationship develops, fascism exerts an increasingly strong stranglehold over Germany and what is acceptable in art. Escape seems their only option, but just because the Nazi regime regards them as undesirables doesn’t mean that they will be allowed to leave… This debut novel focuses on aspects of German history I hadn’t come across before in any of the novels I’ve read (and reviewed): the use of art and particularly porcelain as a means of propaganda to reconnect the German people with a mythical past, and the use of slave labour, even of Jewish artists and artisans, to create the objects with which the populace was expected to display its patriotism. The characters are fairly well developed, but perhaps because of the author’s screenwriting background, I sometimes felt as if I was being held slightly at arm’s length from them, as if Freethy was expecting actors to bring them fully to life. That said, the research seems sound, and the atmosphere in 1930s and 40s Germany is well evoked. A promising start; I’d be intrigued to see how Freethy’s writing career develops. Jasmina Svenne

ADAM UNREHEARSED Don Futterman, Wicked Son, 2023, $28.99, hb, 308pp, 9781637589014

In the way of all enduring fiction, Adam Unrehearsed uses vibrant specificity of time and place to wrench readers into a new world that feels emotionally familiar. Anyone who has passed through adolescence will recognize the push/pull of family, intense and fickle friendships, and the desperate need to belong and succeed without knowing how. It’s 1971 in Queens, New York. Adam is a smart, too-sensitive Jewish boy, an avid Yankee fan, bewildered when his best friends shun him, discovering theater, sure he’ll monumentally embarrass himself at his coming bar mitzvah, in love with a girl he’s much too shy to contact— the whole messy, bewildering tangle of teenage years. Larger social forces loom over Adam. High school and street gangs threaten him

every day. Racial tensions pit Black, white and Jewish communities against each other despite their common needs. He must secretly leave a neighborhood he loves. His best friends turn against him, but the new boy from India gets him. His synagogue’s vandalized and the older brother becomes a Zionist militant, to the dismay of a father who believes against all evidence that people of good will can talk out their grievances. Futterman is masterful in portraying the vastly separate worlds within each family, as when Adam laments: “Adults can’t understand true thoughts that make no sense. They want to solve feelings as if they’re problems, overeager to erase them. I won’t be like that when I grow up.” Funny, wise, heartbreaking and hearthealing, Futterman’s novel reaches across time, ethnicity and faith traditions to bore into the universalities of youth. Non-Jewish readers may have a small critique, that a glossary would be helpful, but all the fundamentals of a classic coming-of-age tale shine through in Adam Unrehearsed. Pamela Schoenewaldt

DIVA Daisy Goodwin, St. Martin’s, 2024, $29.00/ C$39.00, hb, 336pp, 9781250279934 / Aria, 2024, £20.00, hb, 336pp, 9781035906703

The drama that surrounded Maria Callas, onstage and in her personal life, is brought to life fully and sensitively in this complex novel. Focusing on her relationship with music and with Aristotle Onassis, it portrays the emotional heights and depths of an exceptional woman who lived fully and with rich expression. Covering principally the period 1956 to 1968, the author shows how the overweight Mary Anne Kalogeropoulou developed her world-famous voice, slim figure, and talent for projecting the soul of the great operatic soprano characters. Maria Callas’s portrayal of the tragic Druidic priestess Norma took all her strength and was renowned across the northern hemisphere. But it was her affair with ultra-rich shipowner Onassis that captured the imagination of the world. He introduced her to the world’s rich and famous, to private yachts and planes, and to sexual passions that taught her the exultation of highs and devastation of lows. These enhanced the emotional content of her performances and contributed to the almost mystical reverence in which she was held by concertgoers in the world’s great opera houses. The author deftly captures all the glamour of Callas’s life—friendships with royalty, clothing by Dior, performances on the world’s greatest

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stages—together with her fears, uncertainties, grief, and heartbreaks. While the focus is on her tumultuous affair with Onassis, the novel also encompasses the girl whose mother always found her second best, who endured a loveless marriage, and who worried that her voice might fail her. The lifestyle of the wealthy and the adoration of the musical world are set in contrast to Maria’s inner turmoil and her strength as she struggles to overcome betrayal. The author presents it all with clarity, empathy, and insight, and combines high drama with meticulous detail. Valerie Adolph

THE SMOKE IN OUR EYES James Grady, Pegasus Crime, 2024, $26.95/ C$35.95/£20.00, hb, 384pp, 9781639365999

Here is a great new addition to a classic American genre: the smalltown story. James Grady, whose distinguished career began with Six Days of the Condor and includes many crime and mystery novel awards, has written a wonderfully funny, tender, psychologically acute study of a fictional town called Vernon, Montana (pop. 4000), set in 1959. In Vernon, Grady finds crime and suspense, as well as mystery. Besides a wealth of everyday details from 1959, he also adds historical and political references that resonate in 2024. But mainly this is the story of appealing young Lucas Ross, age ten, as he passes through adventures and misadventures toward maturity. Appropriately, he starts wearing glasses, and the “kindly toad” of an optician tells him that if he sees Main Street clearly, he’s “seen it all.” Indeed, Vernon is a microcosm: villains and heroes, including Lucas; victims and tormentors; a whore and a nun; a Beauty and a Beast. (Grady has a Dickensian flair for creating freaky characters.) In this novel, bitter tragedy (teenage car wreck) is balanced by comedy (Lucas’s epic battle with the Toilet Monster). Love, hate, birth and death: smalltown life contains it all. Young Lucas observes wickedness and inhumanity as well as kindness and tolerance, all the while learning morality from his admirable father and teachers. Between Easter and September, he babysits, overhears adult chicanery, drinks many Cokes, witnesses an illicit love affair, and, in a particularly entertaining episode, goes out for football. Grady has some stylistic quirks. He likes to scramble up the English language (ignitions are “keyed” and “she’d scissor-chopped her midnight hair”) and to write short sentences 42

without subjects. No matter. Follow along. Get used to it. Laugh. Cry. Admire. A+ Susan Lowell

DEATH ON THE LUSITANIA R. L. Graham, Macmillan, 2024, £16.99/$28.99, hb, 381pp, 9781035021918

In 1915, the luxurious ocean liner RMS Lusitania sets sail from New York to Europe, where war is raging. A passenger is discovered shot dead in a locked cabin, the key still inside. It’s assumed that the man killed himself. But where’s the gun? Enter sleuth Patrick Gallagher, a civil servant, who is escorting a British diplomat back to England. Gallagher doesn’t believe it’s suicide and launches an investigation, fearing a murderer is on board and could strike again. The Lusitania was launched by Cunard in 1906 as the world’s largest passenger ship. In 1908 it won the Blue Riband for the fastest Atlantic crossing. But today we know the ship for the tragedy of its final voyage when it was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the southern coast of Ireland. More than a thousand passengers and crew were killed. This historical novel cleverly reimagines the Lusitania’s last journey as the setting for a murder mystery, in the style of an Agatha Christie crime novel. As readers who know what fate has in store for the ship, we are immediately invested in the action. Not only does Gallagher have a baffling mystery to unravel, but will he survive the impending disaster? Death on the Lusitania is an immersive, gripping book, a classic locked room mystery made even more compelling by the real-life story of the ocean liner’s demise and the political intrigues of the time. The author, R. L. Graham, is a husband-and-wife team whose historical interests include the years leading up to the First World War. While the book was being written, Marilyn Livingstone, one half of R. L. Graham, was diagnosed with cancer and died in September 2023. This novel is a fitting tribute to her memory. Margery Hookings

RESTLESS DOLLY MAUNDER Kate Grenville, Canongate, 2023, £16.99/$26.00, hb, 239pp, 9781805302483

Restless Dolly Maunder, set in Australia spanning the late 19th century until the 1950s, is part history, biography, story and memoire fused into a novel that engagingly tells the story of Kate Grenville’s wise, shrewd and delightful ‘mostly’ grandmother. Dolly has an edge to her. She was cheated of the opportunity to have a high school education, as girls born in rural Australia were not expected to follow careers but to marry. Dolly’s route to independence would be a hard-fought battle. Yet, when she is coerced by her parents into marriage with Bert, a man she does not love, she compromises and thrives

REVIEWS | Issue 107, February 2024

to give her own daughter the opportunities she missed. She also is the driving force behind the couple’s business enterprises but cannot have her name on title deeds. Often her own situation and world events, such as the Depression, are against her, but Dolly, a resilient woman, fights back. Her struggle is a story repeated by many women in rural Australia at this time. As Kate Grenville writes, ‘Those rats had eaten through half an inch of wood. You had to admire them. Like her, they weren’t going to give up, not if they thought there was something better on the other side.’ Dolly thrives for her children and succeeds. The story is filled with adventure, risk-taking, highs and lows and, above all, a strong emotional pulse. I loved this excellent novel. Its heroine is extraordinary whilst living a challenging ordinary life. It is moving and beautiful and has rightly been highly praised by The Guardian, Financial Times, the Daily Mail, and Good Housekeeping. This is historical fiction at its very best. This reviewer adds her voice to these reviewers’ accolades. Carol McGrath

THE GREAT DECEIVER Elly Griffiths, Quercus, 2023, £22.00, hb, 344pp, 9781529409901

It’s 1966, and famous magician Max Mephisto is in Kensington, innocently engaged in the domestic pursuit of visiting his daughter and newborn granddaughter in hospital. But the stakes change almost immediately when, as Max is just about to hail a taxi, he is accosted by a man called Ted Baker, better known in years gone by as the Great Deceiver. Ted’s assistant, Cherry, has been found dead in Brighton, and he is terrified he’s going to be accused of her murder. Piquing Max’s interest, Ted enlists Max’s help, knowing the latter is friendly with the head of Brighton police. Max is initially very wary but is soon caught up in the mystery, joining forces with his old friend, Superintendent Edgar Stephens, who is investigating the case. This historical whodunnit, a must for fans of period atmosphere and cosy crime, takes numerous twists and turns as it follows the hunt for a suspected serial killer through various viewpoints, including the police on the murderer’s trail and female private detective duo Emma Holmes (who is married to the police chief) and Sam Collins. Throw in a diverse case of characters, the greasepaint and thrilling setting of an end-of-the pier show, and then the denouement in a deserted London theatre, you have the makings of a very compelling story. The Great Deceiver is part of Griffiths’ The Brighton Mysteries series. She writes with great affection and authority about her hometown and about the world of light entertainment. This should not come as a surprise – the series was inspired by her grandfather, Dennis Lawes, who was a popular variety performer. She has acknowledged that the peripatetic nature of

actors makes them ideal sleuths – or villains – especially when the action is set in the past. Margery Hookings

THE WOMEN Kristin Hannah, St. Martin’s, 2024, $30.00/ C$40.00, hb, 480pp, 9781250178633 / Macmillan, 2024, £16.99, hb, 480pp, 9781035005673

Much-loved author Kristin Hannah brings all the skills that have won her millions of readers—compelling characters, emotional entanglements, family turbulence, and pageturning action scenes—to the page in The Women. The story opens in mid-1960s California with naïve twenty-year old Frankie McGrath impulsively deciding to join the U.S. Army in Vietnam as a nurse. Not surprisingly, the reality of the conflict hits her hard, but with the help of her fellow nurses, Frankie rises to the occasion. A traditionalist at heart, she initially refuses to jump into casual relationships, but her wartime experience changes her in ways she would never have imagined. And the consequences of her decision to go to Vietnam will reverberate in the years after she returns home to America. The novel spans the decades from 1966 to 1982, and Hannah doesn’t shy away from the darkness of the Vietnam conflict, the political and social fallout, or the devastating long-term damage suffered by veterans. Her subject matter is challenging—including the harsh realities of war, addiction, and depression—but Hannah’s easy style keeps the pages turning, and the reader is always in Frankie’s corner, hoping for a happy ending. The men in The Women often disappoint, however—Frankie’s father is ashamed of her service, and male soldiers and doctors are all too ready to forget their faithful wives back home—but the women are there for each other. The friendship between Frankie and fellow nurses Barb and Ethel forms the beating heart of this novel: a fitting testament to the often-overlooked women who have, and continue, to serve. Kate Braithwaite

MY FAIR LORD Elisabeth Hobbes, One More Chapter, 2024, £9.99, pb, 384pp, 9780008637224

Liverpool, early 20th century. Florence Wakechild, daughter of a wealthy American industrialist, is here to snaffle an English aristocrat. But it is not her plan: it is her father’s. He has made a fortune in dollars but lacks social capital. He wants the prestige of a daughter married to an earl or viscount. But Florence doesn’t want to be married. She wants to campaign for women’s rights, not be treated like livestock, breeding heirs. So she hatches a plan to pass an ordinary man off as an earl, and prove to her father that a title is worthless. In the street, she chances across Ned Blake, picks him to be her ‘ordinary man’, and begins instructing him in etiquette. Mr

Blake, of course, proves not to be an ‘ordinary’ man. Bit by bit, his past – and true identity – is revealed. Based on a re-working of the classic film My Fair Lady, this story is as entertaining and frothy as the champagne the characters drink at the balls they attend. Despite all Florence’s assertions, misunderstandings and arguments, the outcome was clear at the start. This is a story for those who enjoy easyreading rom-coms. Helen Johnson

SISTERS OF FORTUNE Anna Lee Huber, Kensington, 2024, $17.95/ C$24.95/£16.99, pb, 320pp, 9781496742698

Sisters of Fortune is set against the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912 and centres on a real-life family from Winnipeg, Canada. Flora, Alice, and Mabel Fortune are returning home with their parents and brother Charlie after a lengthy Grand Tour. Flora struggles to reconcile herself to her imminent marriage to a fiancé she doesn’t love. She is increasingly charmed by Chess, a famous tennis player, who is immediately smitten with her poise and intelligence. Alice, likewise engaged, adores her fiancé, but is reluctant to exchange the excitement of travel for the restrictions of domesticity and motherhood. Mabel openly befriends educated women to introduce to her father, calculated to convince him a woman can attend university and train in a profession without ruining her chances of marriage. Taking on such a well-documented subject to produce a fresh, new story requires some courage, and Huber’s success is evident. Her chosen protagonists are from the recorded list of survivors of Lifeboat #10. She incorporates historical fact, but Flora’s shipboard romance is fabricated to suit the narrative. This is a luxurious tale of wealth and distinction with sumptuous description of the Titanic and her distinguished guests, but this by no means diminishes the immensity of the tragedy. Links to time and place are very authentic. The opulence and accumulated wealth aboard ship are sensitively juxtaposed against the lifeboat scenes, the eerie calm, the frigid cold, and the fading cries of the dying. The thirdperson thoughts and actions of the sisters are not defined by chapters or sections, but interweave fluidly to capture their individuality, so real they jump off the page. Sparkling with a huge cast of mostly real society wealth, the introduction of the characters makes for a slightly slow start. But do hang in for the long haul. You will be richly rewarded. Fiona Alison

SOMEDAY I’LL FIND YOU C. C. Humphreys, Doubleday Canada, 2023, C$25.00, pb, 404pp, 9780385690515 / Two Hats Creative, 2023, $22.99, pb, 428pp, 9781989988169

Two of this novel’s protagonists, Billy and Ilse, are inspired by and partially based on the author’s parents: his father, an actor/

storyteller and fighter pilot in WWII, and his mother, who was Miss Oslo 1936, a spy, and a true Norse beauty. This fictional adventure and love story set in London and Oslo from 1940-1945 gives a rare glimpse into Nazioccupied Norway. With a story told from the point of view of three main characters, you know at some point they will converge. With ice blue eyes and white-blonde hair, flautist Ilse Magnusson, whose half-German journalist father is pro-Nazi, becomes a spy for the SOE (Special Operations Executive, out of Britain). Canadian Billy Coke is an actor/ entertainer fighting in the R.C.A.F. Klaus von Ronnenberg, a violinist and pilot with the Luftwaffe, loses an arm and is seconded to intelligence work. He sits in direct contrast to the arrogant major Erich Striegler, who takes delight in strafing the Basque village of Guernica. The novel’s love story helps to offset visceral and wrenching scenes of torture and battle, and the characters are well-developed and believable. Gail M. Murray

TOM’S VERSION Robert Irwin, Dedalus, 2023, £9.99, pb, 218pp, 9781915568274

A sequel to Irwin’s 2021 novel The Runes Have Been Cast, which features several of the same characters. The story starts in 1970, so the characters from the earlier Sixties-set book are no longer university students. Lancelyn is now teaching English literature at St Andrews University. The new leading character, Tom, is an Irish poet working in a warehouse – he admires Yeats and quotes him frequently – who is introduced to this intellectual world through meeting (at a nude encounter group) Molly, who was previously involved with Lancelyn. Other characters include Molly’s long-vanished husband Bernard; a St Andrews lecturer named Jaimie who at times is stalking Molly; Mortimer, a thuggish fighter who happens to be a reviews editor for the Times Literary Supplement, and Marcus, Molly’s later protector. There are many more. Tom is asked to act as Molly’s bodyguard, and in this way becomes the recipient of various other stories the characters tell each other – these stories, and some mild mystery about the legacy of deceased university tutor Edward Raven, form the plot of the book. The story takes numerous twists, turns and deviations, taking in interesting byways such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s time in Samoa, the levitating Saint Joseph of Copertino, the Spiritual Exercise of St Ignatius of Loyola, and many more. The authorial voice is elegant and wellinformed, though the dialogue offers little real distinction between one character and the next. Instead we are given epigrammatic thoughts, such as ‘If only the real world could be strictly nonfiction’. At times this is very amusing and the brilliance of everybody is reminiscent of Iris Murdoch, though the author never quite succeeds in corralling his coterie of clever characters, and weird incidents, into a

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narrative coherent enough to form a satisfying whole. Ben Bergonzi

SALONIKA BURNING Gail Jones, Text Publishing, 2023 (c2022), A$22.99, pb, 256pp, 9781922790538

The novel opens with harrowing scenes of the great fire sweeping through Salonika in 1917. It destroys two-thirds of the ancient city and leaves countless thousands homeless. Four witnesses to this event are real people who were little-known at the time but went on to greater fame. (The author’s notes expand on who they are.) Here, they are simply Stella, journalist and assistant cook; wealthy Olive, who drives her own ambulance; Grace, surgeon in the Scottish Women’s Hospital; and Stanley, medical orderly and artist. Diseases, especially malaria, felled more troops in the “Balkans sideshow” of World War I than battles, and this novel is also a sideshow in its way, focusing primarily on these individuals and their struggles in their respective situations. Stella is a fierce imperialist who cloaks the reality of war, writing of “beautiful Serbian men.” Olive despises herself and others who are “safe and sound.” Grace has “no regard for the dense world of sentiment, for small, fragile and personal things.” Stanley agonises that “nothing … had any meaning” and prefers to communicate with mules. The bizarre arrival of a shipment of frozen rabbit carcasses from Australia and the illicit treatment of a wounded German soldier bring these four together. The author freely admits that she has taken “many liberties” with both history and the characters, who are unlikely to have encountered one another. This makes for a quandary in summarising this compact novel. Readers who favour literary fiction will appreciate its creativity and exceptional narrative skill in relating the group’s inner conflicts and therefore may be unconcerned with historical anomalies. Other readers might wish for a more inclusive, accurate story that gives voice to the unsung participants in the Macedon Campaign and those Salonika residents who tragically lost everything. Marina Maxwell

THE DEVIL AND MRS. DAVENPORT Paulette Kennedy, Lake Union, 2024, $16.99/£8.99, pb, 351pp, 9781662514883

Missouri, 1955. A young girl, Darcy, is missing, which is disturbing enough, but then Loretta Davenport begins seeing disturbing visions of the girl’s location, and, sadly, knows where her body can be found. This paranormal ability does not sit well with her husband, a Bible professor at a local college. He’s already upset about her lack of energy and weight gain. Their perfect life seems threatened enough without psychic messages that overwhelm her. After the vision of Darcy, the door to the “other side” seems to open for Loretta, and she 44

begins to see more of the dead. She seeks out a psychologist to try and make sense of it as her life turns upside down. This story of a 1950s housewife who can suddenly see and receive messages from the dead is so fascinating and compelling that it will be hard to put down. Loretta’s growing abilities and the cracking facade of her life are so well described. The author expertly begins to pull the curtain from Loretta’s marriage and show the truth—her husband is not perfect, and is, in fact, abusive. The combination of a bad marriage and explosive new psychic abilities makes this book shine. The lack of basic rights for women in the 1950s is also explored, as Loretta becomes almost a prisoner in her own home. And a mystery is involved, as Loretta is trying to find Darcy’s killer to save others from the same fate. There is a bit of romance, and a theme of embracing one’s true self. This is a satisfying mix of historical mystery and paranormal fiction that fans of those genres will enjoy. Highly recommended. Bonnie DeMoss

MARY NOT BROKEN Deborah L. King, Red Adept Publishing, 2023, $14.49, pb, 311pp, 9781958231357

1930s Mississippi. Fifteen-year-old Mary Johnson rebels against her preacher father’s rules and rural life in Flora, Mississippi. When well-to-do, older Reverend Will Bevers courts her, she hastily marries Mason Carter, her sharecropper boyfriend, and they move to Chicago to pursue big city life and Mason’s music career. Mary births a son, and the couple relocates to NYC. Tragic events occur. Mason and their four children die, and Mary is convinced she has induced God’s wrath by her wild, shameful behavior. She returns to Flora and agrees to marry Bevers. Soon, his abuse causes her to flee, but Bevers pursues her. Later, as challenging and unexpected circumstances unfold, Mary must choose who and what is important. Following Deborah L. King’s two successful coming-of-age novels featuring Glory Bishop, the daughter of Mary Johnson, Mary Not Broken offers an intense, immediately engaging prequel to King’s earlier books. King tells the story of Mary, a headstrong and tradition-defying protagonist, as she matures from a bold, impulsive girl to a passionate woman of faith. Her transitions from Deep South rural life to cosmopolitan cityscapes are vividly portrayed through skillfully crafted dialogue, intriguing characters, and detailed, intimate family scenes, creating a heart-wrenching, inspirational follow-up. Mary’s recipes at the novel’s end add a unique cultural twist. Marcy McNally

SISTERS OF THE SKY Lana Kortchik, HQ, 2023, £9.99, pb, 329pp, 9780008512644

Lana Kortchik tells the story of the Soviet

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women’s aviation regiments created by Marina Raskova after Hitler invaded Russia in 1941. The two protagonists, Nina and Katya, are best friends who volunteer as pilots for the motherland. The actual Russian commanders – including Raskova – appear in their adventures, which are also influenced by the memoirs and diaries of many real-life women flyers. In the face of the German invasion, in a besieged Moscow, Nina and Katya say tearful farewells to their last remaining male relatives – Nina’s brother, Vlad, and Katya’s husband, Anton – who are flying to the front. It is not long before the women sign up for Raskova’s regiment. But Katya is ambivalent, not knowing whether volunteering or staying home is best for her baby, Tonya. By the winter of 1942, the women’s Dive Bomber Regiment, equipped with Pe-2 twin-engined aeroplanes, is defending Stalingrad in its epic battle and destroying Nazi infrastructure. The women are joyfully reunited with Vlad and Anton, who have volunteered for the Stalingrad front to be near them, but the pressures of frontline combat over enemy territory begin to test them all, intensifying anxieties and eventually forcing fissures in the strongest relationships. Kortchik effectively conveys the Russian experience of the Second World War. She is skilled in the vignette which exemplifies the deprivations and tragedies of ordinary people, as well as their heroism and endurance. Less predictability in descriptive phrasing and a little more variegated weight to Nina’s emotional monologue would have convinced me more. But readers who enjoy stories of women’s wartime experiences will enjoy flying combat missions with them on the Russian front line. It will also appeal to readers who enjoy historical romance in a well-evoked setting, with a pair of star-crossed lovers thrown in. Louise Tree

THE RIVER WE REMEMBER William Kent Krueger, Atria, 2023, $28.99/ C$38.99/£18.99, hb, 432pp, 9781982179212

What’s not to love in this absorbing, moving novel? The River We Remember has all the page-turning propulsion of an intriguing murder mystery, matched with deeply believable characters, a hint of romance, and a historical setting that oozes

authenticity. Memorial Day, 1958. Although he’s a veteran, Sheriff Brody Dern doesn’t get involved in the parade in the small town of Jewel, Minnesota, on the Alabaster River. That

means he’s free to answer the call when news reaches him that the mutilated body of an unpopular local farmer, Jimmy Quinn, has been found washed up under a bridge in a jumble of driftwood. Brody, unlike too many of the population of Jewel, doesn’t rush to suspect Noah Bluestone, a Native American with a Japanese wife, recently sacked by Jimmy Quinn. He’d rather pass the whole event off as an accident. But the facts don’t lie, and the circumstantial evidence against Bluestone is hard to ignore. As Brody investigates, Quinn’s unpleasant character suggest a range of possible murderers, but local prejudice isn’t easily extinguished. With a stellar range of secondary characters, Krueger brings the light and the dark of humanity to life. Jewel lives and breathes in these pages, and the opaque Alabaster River is almost a character in its own right. As thoughtful as it is dramatic, The River We Remember also offers writing to savor. Take this one, for example: “When the world throws at you nothing but stones, maybe to survive you simply become a stone yourself.” One of the best books I’ve read this year. Kate Braithwaite

THE SILVER BONE Andrey Kurkov (trans. Boris Dralyuk), HarperVia, 2024, $28.00/$35.00, hb, 304pp, 9780063352285 / MacLehose Press, 2024, £20.00, hb, 288pp, 9781529426496

Andrey Kurkov is one of Ukraine’s greatest authors, with over 19 novels to date. The Silver Bone is his latest translated work and is set to be the first in a mystery series. Following WWI and the Russian Revolution, Kyiv in 1919 is beleaguered by different factions wanting control. In this absurdist novel of dark humor, Samson Kolechko’s career is on hold and his life tossed about by circumstances beyond his limits. Cossacks attack with sabers on the street, killing his father and cutting Samson’s ear off. Back home and grieving his losses, he is now the last remaining member of his family. He wraps his severed ear, placing it in his father’s desk. When his home is requisitioned for two Red Army soldiers, his ear in the drawer, independent of himself, hears what the soldiers are plotting. When his father’s desk has been mistakenly requisitioned, Samson heads for the police station to reclaim it. He finds that filling out the paperwork will not accomplish anything; his ear remains in the drawer. The police force has been mostly dismantled, and there is no one to use the desk, so the director hires Samson. Someone to track down criminals and restore a resemblance of order is sorely needed. The desk is now his. He can start by investigating what the two soldiers are doing with stolen goods stashed in his home – goods only made of silver. When he finds a life-size femur made of silver, he hunts down why this oddity was crafted. This is a delightfully dark novel – refreshing, unique, comical. Kurkov introduces us to

many quirky characters as Samson makes his way around Kyiv. He is a character that is so inimitable and loveable, I am happily looking forward to his further adventures in investigation. I’m sure his ear will be able to assist when needed. Janice Ottersberg

THE UNSPEAKABLE ACTS OF ZINA PAVLOU Eleni Kyriacou, Aries, 2023, £14.99, hb, 375pp, 9781837930340

In a way this is a police procedural, but whereas most ‘procedurals’ are told from the point of view of the chief investigator, usually the Detective Inspector, this story is told from the point of view of the accused, Zina, and her police interpreter, Eva. Eva is crucial because Zina is a Greek-speaking Cypriot immigrant who speaks little English and reads and writes neither Greek nor English. Her acts are truly unspeakable except via Eva. We often think of interpreters as mere transmitters of other people’s words, but a good interpreter needs to be a diplomat and a psychologist, knowing what the speaker wants to say and the listener wants to hear, and what is best left unsaid. Zina is accused of murdering her daughter-in-law at their home in London in 1954. Eva, partly as a result of her own experience as a Cypriot immigrant, gradually begins to identify with her and steps beyond her role in trying to save her from the hangman. This is a poignant study of alienation and culture shock, love and friendship, which will remain with you long after you have finished the book. It is based on an actual case, but please do not read the author’s note until you have read the book, as it is a real spoiler. Edward James

WELL BEHAVED WOMEN Caroline Lamond, One More Chapter, 2023, £8.99/$18.99/C$21.00, pb, 384pp, 9780008527662

In 1919, innocent Maybelle Crabtree arrives in Los Angeles from Kentucky. She’s giving out church leaflets when she spots a beautiful woman, Joan, and everything changes. Joan invites her to meet a friend of hers, the Hollywood film star Alla Nazimova, and Maybelle discovers the allure and decadence of movieland. The story is based on the real life of Nazimova, a Russian who made her way to America and found fame and fortune on stage and screen. In private, she was married but gay. She founded the Garden of Allah hotel, where women could behave badly, partying away from prying eyes, and was said to have created the phrase ‘sewing circle’, a code for lesbian and bisexual women. All this is covered in the novel, which is written in alternate chapters, following the two women’s lives. Maybelle starts off as saccharine sweet, and I felt she was a rather obvious foil to the feisty Nazimova. But as

the story went on, I warmed to Maybelle as she discovers her own sexuality and, in a land where everyone is playing a part, the secrets she hides are revealed. After all, why did she really come to LA? The difficulty of gay stars trying to keep their sexuality a secret at that time is poignantly covered. Nazimova had to face up to the complexity of a lavender marriage while aiming to keep fans happy. Other stars pop up – including Greta Garbo. It’s a great insight into a forgotten star who did it her way at a less accepting time. Kate Pettigrew

THE SHAPE OF HER Anne Lauppe-Dunbar, Seren, 2023, £9.99/$15.00, pb, 260pp, 9781781727324

We begin with Katya, the youngest member of a group of characters who, in common with many affluent Jewish families, were robbed by the Nazis of their art and wealth, in this case, a cache of diamonds, still unrecovered decades later. When new clues, hidden in a mysterious code, emerge, regarding the whereabouts of the stolen hoard, Katya, driven by a compulsive loyalty to her dead mother, is drawn into a search. At this point Anne Lauppe-Dunbar lures us into a world of almost unbearably heightened tension, which she sustains throughout her story. Along with the novel’s unrelentingly fast pace, the reader, barely able to draw breath, is challenged by the rewarding task of engaging with the numerous vividly drawn characters (family members and those emotionally linked to them) who become involved in a story that is intensely harrowing. This is no easy read. Whether involving a mouse’s scuttle across a violent, breathtaking scene or the bleak twitter of a bird in a silence brittle with suspense, Anne Lauppe-Dunbar’s prose is luminous and electrifying. Negotiating and in many instances narrowly surviving the hazards she encounters, the focus is always on Katya and her emotional and physical involvement as she pursues her objective across a Germany still bruised and corrupted by the legacy of the Second World War. The writer’s portrayal of Katya cleverly avoids sentimentality, leaving us with a strong character whose vulnerability can still move us as we travel with her through the harsher elements of her story. If you seek a cosy read in a comfortable armchair, don’t choose The Shape of Her. But if you want to be captivated, enthralled, chilled and indeed thrilled, this is one for you. Julia Stoneham

THE WILDEST SUN Asha Lemmie, Dutton, 2023, $28.00, hb, 336pp, 9780593185711

This is a Bildungsroman—a novel of education and formation of character—as our narrator, a French teenager named Delphine Auber, helpfully informs us. Tragedy drives

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Delphine out of postwar Paris and propels her on an educational odyssey, first to Harlem, then to Havana, and finally back to France again as a fully formed adult and successful author. She holds fast to the dream of being a writer throughout the many vicissitudes she suffers during this sprawling, romantic novel. Delphine has always believed that she is the love child of her bohemian, alcoholic mother, a poet, and Ernest Hemingway, conceived during Hemingway’s Moveable Feast years. To know him, to be acknowledged as his daughter, is another dream of Delphine’s. Unlike David Copperfield or Jane Eyre, Delphine is not to be trusted. Trading on her apparent charm, for she’s not beautiful, as well as her youthful writing skills, she’s actually an ingrate, a thief, an arsonist, and possibly a murderess. She is capable of friendship, however, and some of the best parts of the novel recount her relationships with Louise, a Parisian nun; Teddy, a New York starlet; and Elián, a well-connected young Cuban. Established in Havana in the late Forties, Delphine stalks Hemingway, finally makes his acquaintance … and what happens? Is she or isn’t she? By the conclusion of the Bildungsroman, it doesn’t even matter anymore, for without his help she stands on her own writerly feet. Delphine’s “A Star is Born” story occasionally seems predictable. But somehow by the triumphant ending, Asha Lemmie (a bit of a young literary phenomenon herself) and Delphine have managed to charm their way into all but the least susceptible of hearts. Susan Lowell

PICASSO’S LOVERS Jeanne Mackin, Berkley, 2024, $17.00, pb, 352pp, 9781101990568 / Headline, 2024, £14.99, pb, 352pp, 9781035413881

In sultry, sun-drenched southern Europe during the 1920s, various women fall in and out of favor with the famously passionate painter Picasso. Meanwhile, in the 1950s, a career woman named Alana attempts to track down Sara, one of the women closest to the temperamental Spaniard and increasingly reclusive artist, in an attempt to learn more about him. Alana’s interest in Picasso and Sara stems partly from her late mother’s love of the former’s work, as well as a mysterious newspaper clipping about Sara that Alana found amongst her mother’s books. As family secrets come to light, these two timelines come together nicely. The book weaves real history with enticing, well-plotted fiction. Although the start and finish are a little drawn out, I enjoyed Picasso’s Lovers. The sensual, succulent prose draws the reader in like a particularly delicious work of art. Speaking of art, I found myself googling the individual works referenced out of curiosity. Previously I hadn’t even been aware of Picasso’s undeniably charming ceramics, for example. On a thematic note, the book displays the author’s solid understanding of the difficulties 46

faced by career-oriented women in the 1950s, as well as women in general in the 1920s. Her depiction of Alana’s internal conflict over her relationship with her fiancé, who wants her to settle down and abandon her dream of writing about art, is thoughtful and historically plausible. I found the ending satisfying, if slightly bittersweet. Lee Lanzillotta

COLD VICTORY Karl Marlantes, Grove, 2024, $28.00, hb, 352pp, 9780802161420

In the late winter of 1946, Louise Koski and her husband Arnie, a career military officer, arrive in Helsinki, Finland. Louise is a freshfaced Oklahoma girl who has never traveled outside the United States. Arnie has been assigned an important State Department post with the American legation. While the war with Nazi Germany is over, a new war is underway: the Cold War with former ally turned enemy, the Soviet Union. Almost immediately, Louise makes friends with the wife of a Russian official, Natalya Bobrova. Natalya’s husband, Mikhail, coincidentally knows Arnie from the dying days of World War II. The story explores the paranoia of not being able to trust anyone— even the best of friends—and anything they say or do. Louise and Natalya both are fully aware they are being spied upon by the relentless MGB, the Russian secret police. Yet their friendship grows as Louise, needing to feel relevant, engages Natalya in a plan to help a local orphanage raise funds. Their husbands, in the meantime, impulsively challenge each other to a cross country skiing duel for the pride of their combat units. These acts of kindness and bravado, in any other place and time but Cold War Finland, would be harmless. Instead, unwittingly, the Koskis and the Bobrovas have plunged themselves into a struggle for survival. Cold Victory brilliantly captures the impossibility of living in a state where a misinterpreted smile or misguided gaze can lead to one’s demise. The pace picks up as the Koski-Bobrova cross country race becomes an international battlefield for prestige. War could erupt. Lives hang in the balance. Author Marlantes doesn’t write for the Disney Company. His warning is clear: if we descend into authoritarianism, we may no longer be able to trust those we hold most dear. Peter Clenott

DANGER OF DEFEAT Edward Marston, Allison & Busby, 2023, £19.99/$25.00, hb, 320pp, 9780749029654

The tenth in the Home Front Detective series, this story is set in London in 1918. Inspector Harvey Marmion is called to attend a robbery at a jewellery shop. Violence erupts, a police constable is shot dead, and Sergeant Joe Keedy is seriously injured. As Marmion’s daughter, Alice, is engaged to the injured sergeant, her father has both a professional and a personal

REVIEWS | Issue 107, February 2024

motive to see the murderous robbers brought to justice. With his fellow officers he pursues the thieves, taking the reader delving into unexpected parts of London both past and present and even to places where green fields predominate. The plot is constructed with the precision of a Swiss watch, and it ticks along at a brisk pace. Tension is built and crises are resolved, theories are developed and abandoned. The horrors of the First World War make their presence felt but are not allowed to dominate the murder investigation. The author contrives to give the impression that the characters, unlike the readers, are unaware that the war is coming to an end. I have tried to find fault with one of the historical details sprinkled judiciously among the action and failed. There is drama and emotion, but the characters do not wallow in it. When Keedy’s injury interferes with her wedding plans, the practical Alice decides to use the time to wallpaper their new home. There is a strong cast of interesting minor characters. Sergeant Keedy’s brother spreads alarm among the patients when he makes a brief appearance at the hospital. He is wearing his working clothes of a black suit and brandishing a black top hat; he is an undertaker. Danger of Defeat is written in good clear English, the kind of language a sergeant might use to brief a constable on a mission. The author’s fans will not be disappointed. Jane Stubbs

MURDER BY CANDLELIGHT Faith Martin, HQ, 2024, £14.99, hb, 277pp, 9780008589981

In the summer of 1924, life in the charming Cotswold village of Maybury-in-the-Marsh is quiet. That is, until Amy Phelps needs help with a murderous ghost. She turns to the local expert, Arbie Swift, a young man who recently published a bestseller: The Gentleman’s Guide to Ghost-Hunting. Who better to purge the restless spirit haunting the Old Forge – the Phelps family residence for generations – than the man who wrote the book? Arbie, generally a useless fellow, prefers not to get involved. However, when Valentina Coulton-James, the vicar’s daughter, declares that she will join Arbie in the ghost vigil, she commits him to acting the hero. They visit the Old Forge and meet the inhabitants: family members, old friends, and the staff. They spend a restless night but see nothing suspicious. But when the housekeeper asks for help with a locked bedroom door, Arbie and Val break in through the locked window only to find a dead body. Every one of the occupants at the house have something to gain by this death, so is a ghost really behind it all, or is someone of flesh and blood hiding behind the spectre? Murder by Candlelight is a cosy murder mystery. There are nice red herrings and false trails, but the clues are so subtle that readers aren’t quite given the chance to solve the mystery themselves. The cast of characters grows and grows, and it’s difficult for readers

to have a good grasp on who’s who. There’s occasional head-hopping, but the reader is never confused as to who is narrating. The language suits the era, but at times feels unconvincingly immersive and extreme. Still, the novel is a light and easy read, perfect for readers who want a nice ghostly mystery. Kelly Urgan

MRS. GULLIVER Valerie Martin, Doubleday, 2024, $28.00/ C$37.99, hb, 304pp, 9780385549950 / Serpent’s Tail, 2024, £16.99, hb, 304pp, 9781800815391

Lila Gulliver is the madam of a sedate, respectable brothel on an unnamed tropical tourist island. This is a historical novel only in the sense that its setting is sometime in the mid-20th century; although the location of the fictional island of Verona is never pinpointed, it seems to be in the Caribbean – possibly the Florida Keys – because its population is mostly white and Latine, and its economic and cultural connections seem to be to the American mainland. None of that is really important, however, as our first-person narrator invites us into the events that disrupt her comfortable, uneventful life. Lila takes pride in the exclusivity and quality of the entertainment she presides over. Pragmatic, compassionate, and frank, her reliability as a narrator is tinged by her stubborn belief that she offers her workers a path to success unavailable to most women. The narrative begins when an enthusiastic new sex worker, Carità, arrives. Despite her blindness, Carità is resourceful and ambitious, and soon becomes the object of desire for the idealistic son of a wealthy local attorney. Lila’s attempts to protect the young couple bring her a new lover – the boy’s father – and a raft of complications that reveal the transactional nature of even the most affectionate of relationships. The pace of the novel is slow, with exhaustively detailed descriptions of food, clothing, and weather, all of which are deliberately unexotic. Likewise, the descriptions of Lila’s increasingly passionate affair are surprisingly unerotic, considering her profession. But Martin peppers her twisty, noirish plot with sly references to Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift, and Hemingway, revealing that this is a literary, not a crime novel, a careful excavation of one woman’s slow realization that exploitation taints almost all relationships in the modern world, and what it might take to change that. Kristen McDermott

THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE James McBride, Riverhead, 2023, $28.00/ C$37.99, hb, 400pp, 9780593422946 / W&N, 2023, £20.00, hb, 400pp, 9781399620406

Chicken Hill, Pottstown, Pennsylvania. The 1930s. The world of Moshe and Chona Ludlow. Moshe is a Jewish immigrant, a theater owner and entrepreneur. Chona is

also Jewish, but born in America, and insists on staying in Chicken Hill, running the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store at a loss, because supporting the local community means more to her than making money. In Chicken Hill, Jews and African Americans are neighbors and friends, and so naturally Chona agrees to hide a young deaf Black orphan boy, who the authorities want to send to the infamous Pennhurst School for the Feeble Minded. It’s a decision with deadly consequences. This is a novel with a large cast of deeply realized characters, and McBride understands that no one sees themselves as the villain in their story/life. So there’s Doc Roberts, who marches as a White Knight and believes “their parades weren’t hurting anybody. They were a celebration of the real America,” but there’s also Monkey Pants, a brave boy with cerebral palsy; Nate, determined to keep his inner darkness at bay; and of course Chona, whose humanity warms all who know her. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store rewards the patient reader with a memorable portrait of human resilience and kindness that shines in an ugly world. McBride ably demonstrates the power of historical fiction in its ability to illuminate lives, ideas and cultures, and offer lessons on who we are today by revisiting our past ways. A timely and moving read. Kate Braithwaite

THE BUTTERFLY CAGE Trish MacEnulty, Prism Light 2023, $16.99/C$21.99/£12.99, pb, 9798987645031

Press, 329pp,

In this second in a series set in 1913, initially in New York City and then rapidly fanning out across the United States, from Wyoming to Chicago to Lenox, Massachusetts, and ultimately to Panama, society writer Louisa Delafield and her assistant, Ellen Malloy, set out to find a blind woman’s missing companion. The young woman has apparently been snatched off the street while running an errand for her employer. Little do Louisa and Ellen know that the search is about to unleash a maelstrom of activity involving political figures, royalty, and some really bad, corrupt people. This missing woman comes to represent the tip of the proverbial iceberg in a sea of sex trafficking as Louisa’s alter-ego journalist persona percolates to the surface, with the assistance of others sharing her passion for justice. Although the international trafficking of girls is the focus, this series introduces us to two amazing characters who continue to evolve: Louisa, an independent, gutsy woman recognized not merely as a society writer but as a brilliant investigative journalist (albeit under a pseudonym), one who does not envision herself as a “traditional” woman seeking to settle down. Ellen, a wise Irish immigrant who has seen her share of tragedy, has developed into a character who no longer must make her way in America as a domestic and has come to terms with her sexual identity. Together they

play off each other’s strengths and bolster each other’s weaknesses. The story propels the reader along into some truly shocking revelations about the depths of high society corruption and how limitlessly awful people can be to each other for money and power. A prince, a mayoral candidate, Buffalo Bill Cody, and even Teddy Roosevelt all play roles, but the women make this novel a winner. Highly recommended, and I can’t wait to read the next two entries. Ilysa Magnus

MURDER AT HOLLY HOUSE: THE MEMOIRS OF INSPECTOR FRANK GRASBY Denzil Meyrick, Bantam Press, 2023, £16.99/$29.99, hb, 368pp, 9781787637184

The novel of found manuscripts and associated papers can give a pleasant frisson of anticipation to the reader of historical and mystery fiction, and this entertaining tale does not disappoint, though the memoirs are a little unconventional. It is 1952; police Inspector Frank Grasby, based in York, is transferred to work in the small, bleak village of Elderby on the North Yorkshire moors as Christmas approaches. He has made an egregious error and is despatched to an obscure bucolic locality as a punishment and to get him out of the spotlight. In his autobiographical ramblings, Frank is a likeable sort of chap, honest in his selfappraisal as to his personal limitations. But he is decidedly accident-prone and very often of limited perception and awareness in detecting and in his daily interactions. The style of his first-person narration reminded me a little of the discursive inanities of Bertie Wooster. Grasby comes across a body in an unlikely location at the home of the local gentry Lord Damnish, and he then finds that Elderby is indeed an isolated and secretive village. When another murdered corpse is found, Grasby knows he has a major incident upon his buffoonish hands, and matters get terribly complicated and even lurch into matters of national security. The historical context is light but comes across as reasonably authentic, and it’s all quite crazily melodramatic at times. It is entertaining as the plot rumbles along in one complication after another for the hapless Grasby. His ruminations at the close of proceedings suggest that sequel(s) may well be on the way! Douglas Kemp

SISTERS UNDER THE RISING SUN Heather Morris, St. Martin’s, 2023, $30.00/ C$40.00, hb, 384pp, 9781250320551 / Zaffre, 2023, £20.00, hb, 400pp, 9781786582218

This is the harrowing story of a group of Australian, British and other expats, including nurses and children, who flee Singapore as

A publication of the Historical Novel Society | www.historicalnovelsociety.org

the Japanese advance in 1942. A handful of survivors make it to Bangka Island after their ship is bombed but are massacred on the beach, while others become prisoners of the Japanese. For the next several years, the prisoners move from camp to camp, starved, given no medical help, and are treated brutally, such as being commanded to serve as “hostesses” to the Japanese guards. The women cope as best they can, forming an orchestra of voices to sing Beethoven and Ravel to provide a little beauty in their world. The only “medicine” they have are wet rags for fever patients. The guards give them vegetable cuttings to plant but, at harvest time, confiscate all the food. Children crawl under the guards’ huts to collect grains of rice that fall through the floorboards. As the war winds down, they are ruthlessly moved yet again while many die of malaria. These events have been portrayed on screen before (Tenko and Paradise Road) but, not having seen either, I can’t compare them with this version. Saying I “enjoyed” the story doesn’t seem right given the hell the women went through, but I was certainly gripped by the tale, eager to find out how/whether they survived. Nearly as distressing as the women’s captivity was learning about society’s attitude after the survivors came home, as explained in the author’s note: they were told not to talk about their experiences, and any mention of sexual assault was suppressed, both by the authorities and the women themselves. The injustice of the women’s treatment and admiration for their ability to endure will stick with the reader for a long time. Recommended. B.J. Sedlock

DOWN THE STEEP A.D. Nauman, Regal House, 2023, $19.95/ C$26.95/£17.95, pb, 326pp, 9781646033706

This novel is set in the Tidewater section of Virginia in 1963, where Willa McCoy has just turned thirteen and idolizes her father, a local teacher and member of the Ku Klux Klan. In Willa’s innocence, she believes what her father espouses, that the Klan is protecting their way of life and that Black people are dangerous. Willa’s life progresses without incident until she is sent to babysit for Ruth, the new pastor’s wife who recently moved down from the North. When Willa arrives, she discovers that Ruth has invited Langston Jones, a Black boy from town, into the kitchen after he mows the lawn. Willa has never encountered any Black person on a one-to-one basis. As the plot unfolds, Willa begins to understand how smart Langston is, changing all her preconceived beliefs and forcing her to acknowledge the racism in her small town. It isn’t until Langston discloses that Willa’s father is having an affair that Willa’s world begins to implode. Furious that she has spent 13 years trying to impress her father, she now vows to expose him for his infidelity. Launching her plan, she is too young and naïve to realize the ensuing maelstrom that will envelop her 48

life, put Langston at risk, and ultimately destroy her family. The plot moves swiftly along with strong characters that are definitive of that era. I hoped and prayed that Willa would make the right choices and then furiously read, turning the pages to find out if she did. Highly recommended. Linda Harris Sittig

THE BOOTLEGGER’S DAUGHTER Nadine Nettmann, Lake Union, 2024, $16.99/£8.99, pb, 317pp, 9781662515583

After being abandoned by her father, Letty and her mother struggle through hard times in the rural San Fernando Valley during 1920s Prohibition by selling sacramental wine until the church stops buying. The only way to survive is for Letty to enter the dangerous and shadowy world of bootlegging in nearby Los Angeles. Letty’s journey takes her through the seedy reaches of the city; into lively speakeasies with their quick knocks and passwords, tommy guns and flappers; and to the tony enclaves of the wealthy. Letty’s first-person account of the beginnings of her bootlegging career drives the story, and is interspersed with thirdperson accounts of a female cop trying to make it in a misogynistic environment and a crooked cop who revels in providing muscle for the bad guys. Crisp dialogue propels the tale forward and suspense builds until Letty’s inevitable reckoning with the cops. The female protagonists are quite memorable with grit, courage and determination that likely would have been uncommon in the rum-running rackets. Early 20th-century Los Angeles noir is well-drawn and authentic. The author is a certified sommelier who provides interesting detail on winemaking and Prohibition. A well-paced historical mystery with plenty of twists and an action-packed and surprising conclusion. Brodie Curtis

THE THINGS WE DIDN’T KNOW Elba Iris Pérez, Gallery, 2024, $27.99/C$36.99, hb, 320pp, 9781668012062

When in the opening pages of The Things We Didn’t Know, Raquel—the mother of the heroine Andrea—nearly drives her husband’s car off a cliff, readers intuit they are in for an adventure. But whereas Raquel’s first attempt to leave the factory town of Woronoco, Massachusetts, as well as her husband Luis, to return to her beloved native Puerto Rico is thwarted, her second try in 1959 is crowned by success. After Raquel, Andrea, and her brother Pablo arrive on the island, Cecilia, aka Titi Machi, Raquel’s loveable sister, welcomes them on her farm near Caguas. Thanks to Cecilia, Andrea and Pablo experience an enchanted summer exploring the countryside and enroll in the local school. In the meantime, Raquel,

REVIEWS | Issue 107, February 2024

who has abandoned her children, resurfaces. She is determined to take Andrea and Pablo to live with her second, far poorer sister, to collect child support. After Luis finally tracks Andrea and Pablo down and takes them back to Woronoco, they witness its transformation into a lively Puerto Rican community against the backdrop of a radically changing and conflicted 1960s America. While Andrea studies, marries, and finds happiness, Pablo, who has always suffered more from their divided childhood than his sister, struggles with his sense of identity. In the end, familial love and devotion save even those who would otherwise be lost. A sparkling, vivacious portrait of Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican diaspora, The Things We Didn’t Know is peopled with inimitable, larger-than-life characters. The novel is strongest in its evocation of childhood, when Andrea’s brilliant powers of observation and her capacity for joy and love render the novel’s atmosphere the most compelling. Elisabeth Lenckos

THE CLAIRVOYANT Gervasio Posadas (trans. Kathryn Phillips-Miles and Simon Deefholts), The Clapton Press, 2023, £12.99, pb, 324pp, 9781913693299

The Clairvoyant: The Man Who Predicted Hitler’s Rise to Power tells the true story of Eric Jan Hanussen, one of the greatest stars of the 1930s Berlin entertainment world. The narrator of this fictionalised account is a young Spanish journalist, José Ortega, who is posted to Berlin in 1932 to report on the turbulent political scene. Hanussen is a stage clairvoyant, who takes the reporter under his wing. The original Spanish-language novel, El mentalista de Hitler (2016) is described as a ‘historical noir’ novel from Posadas, a Uruguayan author, and closely based on Erik Jan Hanussen’s true biography. Hanussen was a hit at Berlin’s La Scala, where he performed a mind reading and hypnosis act which made him a star. He became close to high-ranking Nazis and predicted that Adolf Hitler would become Chancellor of Germany, a prospect that, at that time, no-one could envisage. He is credited with teaching Hitler techniques to control crowds using gestures and dramatic pauses. In the novel, as in life, Hanussen becomes more and more celebrated as his predictions come true. He is depicted as a chilling, arrogant and tyrannical enigma. But his rise in fame and influence put him on a dangerous path, with conflict and enemies just around the corner. The novel captures the hedonism of Berlin in the dying days of the Weimar Republic and a sinister foretaste of the horrors readers know are to come. Ortega makes for a sympathetic if naïve narrator, enabling the reader to be thrust right into the heart of the action. Posadas’ research is meticulous, with the bulk of characters taken from real life. After the story reaches its inevitable conclusion, the author reveals what

happened to them. It is a compelling and distressing tale. Margery Hookings

WHERE THE CORN GROWS TALLEST Scott Douglas Prill, Scott Prill, 2023, $11.50, pb, 358pp, 9780990860440

A historical mystery with heart and intrigue, Where the Corn Grows Tallest is filled with twists and turns. It follows a detective, Fred Barnes, who’s being plagued by a dark moment in his past, and a teenager, Brent, from a small town that only seems to get smaller. Taking place in the American ‘70s when the Vietnam War was a hot-button social issue, the novel approaches the topic with representation on both sides of the controversy. Connecting the disappearance of a businessman in the ‘40s and the suspicious death of a young Vet in the ‘70s, this easy-to-read mystery will keep readers guessing. The cast of characters, while large, is accompanied by a format that makes keeping track of names simple. The chapters are short and flow with ease between perspectives. For those who remember the time periods being addressed, Prill’s book will make an intriguing throwback and look into the history of America’s heartland and rural Iowa. With likable main characters in relatable and sometimes heartbreaking situations, readers of mysteries and historical fiction with dynamic plots may enjoy this very much. From the standpoint of someone interested in history, murder mysteries, and America’s past, this book was a great read! Ellaura Shoop

THE PHOENIX CROWN Kate Quinn and Janie Chang, William Morrow, 2024, $18.99/C$25.99, pb, 400pp, 9780063304734 / HarperCollins, 2024, £9.99, pb, 384pp, 9780008644543

On April 4, 1906, 32-yearold opera singer Gemma Garland arrives in San Francisco, hopeful that her new contract with the Metropolitan Opera traveling company will revitalize her dwindling career and excited to reunite with her old friend Nellie. But when she arrives in San Francisco, Nellie is gone without a trace. Meanwhile in Chinatown, 19-year-old Feng Suling is nursing a broken heart. Her love, Reggie, abandoned her without a word of farewell, and Suling is about to be married off as the third wife of a much older man. Desperate to raise money to escape San

Francisco, Suling embroiders small pieces for the city’s white gentry. She lands a job repairing a silk robe taken from a Beijing palace for wealthy businessman Henry Thornton and meets Gemma, who became Thornton’s mistress after he promised to launch her career. The women soon discover a link between the disappearances of Nellie and Reggie and realize they’ve been caught up in a nefarious scheme. As they race to rescue themselves and their friends, the infamous earthquake rips the city apart, and Thornton disappears, along with the titular Phoenix Crown—another looted Chinese antiquity. The women know they’ll never be safe until Thornton is brought to justice. Action-packed, this novel skillfully uses its strong female leads to examine racism, sexism, and classism. Quinn and Chang seamlessly blend their voices to explore opera, Chinatown, and the effects of the great earthquake on the city of San Francisco. The appearance of the real-life Alice Eastwood, the mildly eccentric, no-nonsense curator of botany at the California Academy of Sciences, adds an additional strong female lead with a light touch of humor. Readers won’t want to put this one down. Sarah Hendess

THE LAST LINE Stephen Ronson, Hodder & Stoughton, 2023, £22.00, hb, 328pp, 9781399721233

Besides the obvious preparations which the British made to defend themselves in 1940 against a German invasion – all that concrete and barbed wire everywhere – there was a hidden component. Secret partisan units, termed Auxiliary Units, were set up to operate behind the lines in the event that their localities were occupied by the enemy. The personnel were selected clandestinely, trained in sabotage and irregular warfare, equipped with guns and explosives and ordered to prepare their own hideouts. Stephen Ronson was fascinated when he learned about the Auxiliary Units, and the hero of The Last Line, John Cook, veteran of WW1, is the leader of one such unit in Sussex. I think he is meant to be a super-hero, but he seems to be an out-and-out psychopath who prefers to kill people with his bare hands. But then, partisan leaders are not necessarily nice people. The problem for a novelist is that the Germans never invaded. Unless one writes alternative history, how can one write a thriller about the Auxiliary Units? Ronson tackles this by drawing Cook into a totally unrelated murder inquiry, which leads him to uncover a paedophile ring which preys upon evacuee children. To judge from his author’s note, Ronson prides himself on his authenticity. The WW2 background is meticulously researched, and he knows the locality well, but the plot is so full of improbabilities (e.g., the Messerschmitt pilot who lands in a Sussex field to congratulate

the pilot of the Spitfire he has just forced down) that the authenticity is largely wasted. Nevertheless, the book succeeds as a fastpaced thriller even if the Auxiliary Units are largely irrelevant. Edward James

THE PARIS HOUSEKEEPER Renee Ryan, Love Inspired, 2023, $18.99/ C$23.99, pb, 359pp, 9781335448583

Ryan was inspired by the true story of Irena Gut’s heroism; the housekeeper of a Nazi officer, she hid Jews in his basement until their eventual escape. Ryan imagines a suspenseful tale of three interconnected women: blonde, blue-eyed, Aryan-looking chambermaid, Camille, who supports her family back in Brittany; Rachel, a dark-haired French Jew, also a chambermaid at The Ritz; and the final heroine, glamorous, auburn-haired fortysomething American heiress, Vivian, who openly dines with Coco Chanel and secretly helps Jews escape occupied France with forged papers. Each woman has her reason for remaining in Paris as the tanks roll in. Most of the action takes place at the Ritz Hotel from June 1940 to September 1942. The Nazi high command requisitions this luxury hotel as headquarters for Luftwaffe and S.S. officers. The focus is on the relationship between the women. Emotions run high. For Camille it is guilt for not protecting her younger sister; for Rachel it is shame. Throughout, the reader is made aware of Nazi restrictions, then persecution, then expulsion of the Jews. Roundups occur for shipping to concentration camps, culminating in the Vél d’Hiv, as the puppet government in Vichy attempts to appease Hitler. Tension continues to build until Camille, now employed as a housekeeper to S.S. officer Hans-Dieter von Bauer and his mistress, Vivian, hatches a plan to hide Rachel and her mother in the secret underground concrete bunker of von Bauer’s home (confiscated from wealthy Jews). Ryan creates well-developed characters in recounting this slice of life during the Nazi occupation of Paris from three distinct points of view. Perfect for fans of Pam Jenoff. Gail M. Murray

MRS. LOWE-PORTER Jo Salas, JackLeg Press, 2024, $17.00, pb, 286pp, 9781956907056

Knowing Helen Lowe-Porter translated Thomas Mann’s extensive output piques our interest from the moment young Helen Porter arrives in Germany to further pursue German language and literature and devote herself to her own novel writing. We watch her develop from this gifted, independent young woman determined to avoid wedlock to one diverted not only by translating the 800-page Buddenbrooks and decades more of Mann’s works, but also by marriage to a demanding, brilliant man and raising three daughters. Mann wins the Nobel prize in 1929, largely on the strength of her translations (still available

A publication of the Historical Novel Society | www.historicalnovelsociety.org

on used book sites), opening his books to a wide readership—not that the Nobel announcement credited her or Alfred Knopf, the publisher. Helen pours all her creative energy into making Mann’s masterworks into lucid English, short-changing her own works. Her husband Elias Lowe can be a great companion, but he personifies gender relations of the day and lands a bombshell on their honeymoon. Mann, too, a dear friend over the years, can be autocratic. Helen’s struggles with these two men define her life, even though she’s a suffragist with an intense personality. Stifling so much isn’t easy, and our hearts go out to her, fitting challenging translations with family responsibilities as she yearns for more. Jo Salas fictionalizes family members—she married Helen’s grandson—but the characters and their difficulties through WWI and WWII ring true, as do the gender attitudes. I admire Salas’ writing, especially a lyrical chapter on the art of translation and several on writing, including Helen’s poems. Most of the book is chronological but early on skips forward to 1963, shortly before Helen’s death, to give perspective on the arc of her life. A literary book in the best sense: about literature and its creation, and artistic in itself. Highly recommended. Jinny Webber

WHEN THE WORLD GOES QUIET Gian Sardar, Lake Union, 2024, $16.99/£8.99, pb, 319pp, 9781662518669

“There was nothing the wind couldn’t do. It was alive and angry and eager,” recalls Evelien, when she’d heard it whilst sheltering from a storm in her parents’ farm’s root cellar in Belgium. Later, in 1918, the twenty-one-yearold hears it again during Allied bombardments. She lives with her in-laws in German-occupied Bruges while her husband is away at war. Having no news for over two years, she fears for him. Evelien, an aspiring artist, spends her days painting on walls of bombed-out buildings and continues to work in the mansion— occupied by a German officer—of her former employers, who’d fled the city. Asked to protect their valuables, they’d promised her a prized painting. A resistance fighter meets Evelien with an irresistible proposal: a letter from her husband in return for a secret German list kept in the mansion. However, while executing her clandestine undertaking, Evelien becomes enamored of a soldier, which could put her future life in turmoil. Gian Sardar has penned this gripping historical novel with much realism, transporting 50

us to WWI-era Belgium. As she writes in the acknowledgements, “I’ve chosen to explore my own family’s past,” that being her BelgianAmerican mother’s side. Her lyrical writing is somewhat Eastern in style, perhaps influenced by her Kurdish-American father. The storyline has all the interwoven elements of an epic: historical details, well-developed characters, a captivating love story, and a resounding ending. Most of all, the novel examines human survival, love, and loyalty in a time of war in an occupied area with a shortage of resources and denial of services by the oppressors. The plight of the innocent civilians impacted by aerial bombings is well narrated. The inclusion of art, paintings, and other artifacts adds appeal to the story and plot. Highly recommended. Waheed Rabbani

TERROR IN TOPAZ A.M. Stuart, Oportet, 2023, $17.99, pb, 364pp, 9780645237900

1910: Inspector Robert Curran is suspended from his position in Singapore and has slunk away to Kuala Lumpur (KL). Unknown to all but a few officials, though, he is a man on a mission. The mission is to neutralise the threat from a house of vice called the Topaz Club. The operators of this establishment have “found that artistically arranged photographic images (are) very conducive to cooperation” from rich and powerful men. Actually, unknown to those who have appointed Curran, he is on two missions. He has good reason to seek out the men behind the Topaz Club, because his stepsister may be trapped there. At the very same time, Harriet Gordon, his partner in crime-fighting, accompanies her brother to KL as he evaluates an employment offer from a school. As luck would have it, Harriet becomes a witness to the events surrounding a sensational scandal and true event (familiar to readers of Tan Twan Eng’s The House of Doors), Edith Robertson’s shooting of a man who she claims attempted to rape her. Curran and Harriet’s paths collide with those of their enemies in an explosive mix of action, spiced with historical and social commentary. One may quibble with some details. For experienced crime-busters, the two are rather lax with some important pieces of paper. Some of the action is unconvincing, with Curran putting himself in untenably risky situations. However, Terror in Topaz shines in its portrayal of “the meeting of souls” that Harriet’s relationship with Curran blossoms into. It is nuanced in its treatment of Edith’s character; as she reflects, “What about women? Don’t women have needs, Harriet?” The appearance of Su Wei, the mistress of the man whom Edith has shot, is an interesting touch. An entertaining, fast-paced read.

REVIEWS | Issue 107, February 2024

A.K. Kulshreshth

EMBERS IN THE LONDON SKY Sarah Sundin, Revell, 2024, $17.99/C$22.49, pb, 400pp, 9780800741853

Sarah Sundin places the reader immediately in the center of a tale filled with tension, loss, and romance. Hearing rumors that German troops are at the Dutch border, Aleida van der Zee Martens finalizes her plans on May 10, 1940, to leave her home with her three-yearold son. To her dismay, Aleida’s detailed plans are altered when her husband, Sebastiaan, hears that the German tanks have already crossed the border and are invading the Low Countries. Sebastiaan insists they immediately pack their car and leave for London together. In the chaos of their escape into Belgium, Aleida loses her son, Theo, and is unable to find him. At the same time, Sebastiaan is killed in a German attack. The story follows Aleida’s search for Theo as she navigates her new life in London. She engages the help of Hugh Collingwood, a BBC radio correspondent known for his personal charm and talent. Aleida hopes he will air her ordeal on the radio. A driving force in this historical novel is whether their romance can grow and flourish in the midst of the horror and destruction of the London Blitz. The story moves forward at a fast pace. The author creates scenes that invite the reader into emotional conflicts, building suspense as well as good character development. The author’s metaphors conjure up the scenes by enhancing the reader’s understanding of characters and plot at a deeper level. The major characters in this inspirational story do struggle to make ethical decisions in their lives. They show compassion, hope, and faith as they face personal challenges. Embers in the London Sky is a pleasure to read. Frances E. Stephenson

CODE NAME BUTTERFLY Embassie Susberry, Avon, 2024, £9.99/$19.99, pb, 423pp, 9780008591519

In the early days of WWII, American journalist and literature student Elodie Mitchell is marking time in Paris, desperate to get the first ship out of Europe. But a not-entirelychance encounter with fellow American Grant Monterey leads her to one of Josephine Baker’s shows – and its after-party, which sucks her into an inner circle of American ex-pats working to identify French traitors who are feeding information to Nazi Germany. Halfreluctantly, Elly chooses to stay and help, but will she leave it too late to escape? What sets this WWII spy thriller-cumromance apart from all the others I have reviewed is that all the central characters are African Americans, whose part in the war is, I suspect, little known to the general public. This is the author’s first traditionally published novel, but her experience as an independent author shows in her confidence with handling characterisation, dialogue and plotting. It’s a little startling, but historically correct, to find the characters referring to themselves

as either ‘coloured’ or ‘Negro’. Elsewhere, however, there’s the occasional use of a phrase that feels too modern for the 1940s (e.g., ‘I’m good’, meaning ‘I’m fine/well/okay’ or ‘I get where you’re going with this’). Similarly, Josephine Baker is occasionally referred to as Ms Baker – not a mode of address that was used at the time, as far as I’m aware. But apart from these minor blips, this is a well-written novel with an engaging heroine, a complicated hero, a multi-faceted supporting cast, and a page-turning plot. I did wonder about the framing device of the prologue and epilogue featuring Elly’s descendants, but it allows the author to fill in what happened next in an economical fashion. It’s refreshing to read a new perspective on a war that has grown hackneyed with repeated retelling. Jasmina Svenne

THE QUEEN OF SUGAR HILL ReShonda Tate, William Morrow, 2024, $19.99/£10.99, pb, 432pp, 9780063291072

Seeing this biographical novel about Hattie McDaniel, you may initially assume it traces her journey from her humble Wichita origins through her groundbreaking achievement as the first Academy Award-winning Black actor, for her depiction of Mammy in Gone with the Wind. Instead, Tate begins at that pivotal point, and in doing so tells an engrossing, less familiar story that digs deep to reveal what a dynamo McDaniel truly was. Although accustomed to Hollywood racism, which tries to segregate African Americans and gives them on-screen roles as domestics, Hattie expects her Oscar triumph will open new doors. Sadly, this doesn’t happen. Through a charismatic first-person account that holds no emotion back, we experience all her victories, disappointments, missteps, and transformative close relationships. As white audiences laugh at her comedic theatrical performances as Mammy, unaware they’re being mocked, Hattie draws the ire of the NAACP and its leader, Walter White, who claims she plays to demeaning stereotypes. His campaigns overshadow her later career. Hattie always works toward better roles and remains proud of her talent and background, having been a maid herself. She also recognizes that lighter-skinned Black actors have better opportunities. Despite the industry’s attempts to erase her sexuality, Hattie has an eye for handsome men and dives into new romances with passionate zest. Novels about old Hollywood can become

a dizzying whirlwind of famous names, but Tate gives her secondary characters defining moments in the spotlight. These include Clark Gable, whose supportive friendship sustains her; up-and-coming stars Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge; and the unconventional Tallulah Bankhead. At her mansion in LA’s Sugar Hill neighborhood, Hattie throws fabulous parties and battles against restrictive covenants, just one among many little-known accomplishments. This novel, the prolific author’s first historical, is book club gold for its many discussion points. Read it to discover more about an exceptional woman who gave life her all. Sarah Johnson

CITY OF BETRAYAL Victoria Thompson, Berkley, 2023, $28.00, hb, 320pp, 9780593440605

Nashville, 1920. Suffragists and antisuffragists gather in Tennessee’s state capitol to lobby legislators who must choose whether to ratify the 19th Amendment. The stakes are high, because if Tennessee becomes the thirty-sixth state to ratify the amendment, women throughout the U.S. will be able to vote, but if the state fails to ratify the amendment, a long time will pass before another opportunity arises. Elizabeth Bates enters the fray, along with her husband Gideon and her mother-in-law. The three Bateses and a swarm of their suffragist friends employ various methods—mostly ethical—to persuade state representatives and senators to vote for ratification. Meanwhile, the anti-suffragists employ different methods, including blackmail, intimidation, threats of violence, and offers of abundant alcohol and prostitutes. As the plot advances, legislators who pledged to support ratification ignore their commitments and go over to the enemy side. Elizabeth must do everything she can to convince those men to do the right thing. In the background, Elizabeth’s father, a conman, shows up in Nashville to entice wealthy men to invest in distilleries that get around Prohibition by filling doctors’ prescriptions. Elizabeth considers whether there is a way to maneuver her father’s con to the suffragists’ benefit. Alternating points of view between Elizabeth and Gideon, Thompson evokes the feel of a crowded city where tensions run high. Even readers who do not expect to enjoy tales of legislative shenanigans will find themselves caught up in the triumphs and defeats of Elizabeth and her allies. Thompson skillfully interweaves the complex details of politics with the activities and passions of her characters. In City of Betrayal, volume seven in the Counterfeit Lady series, Thompson informs while she entertains. Marlie Wasserman

SHOT WITH CRIMSON Nicola Upson, Faber, 2023, £16.99, hb, 331pp, 9780571373673

This is the 11th historical crime novel

featuring the investigative double act of novelist Josephine Tey and Detective Chief Inspector Archie Penrose. Here the real-life heroine (Tey being one of the pseudonyms of Elizabeth MacKintosh, 1896-1952) is thrust far from her historical existence with a September 1939 journey via the Queen Mary and the Super Chief train to Hollywood, and the film set for Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca. Meanwhile back in England, the forbidding mansion Milton Hall (one of the inspirations for Daphne Du Maurier’s Manderley) happens to be the setting for a killing which Penrose is assigned to investigate. A story of murders and near-murders, whose murky roots lie in World War I days when the Hall was a military hospital, is enlivened by the ingenious insertion of personages such as Hitchcock, his wife and daughter, Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine and Du Maurier herself. The studio scenes are enjoyable, though the connections with Penrose’s investigation back in England are rather contrived, Josephine being given little to do apart from observe the filming, and have explicatory conversations. The author’s research is admirable: the filming of Rebecca is a fascinating story in itself – whilst their home country entered into total war, from the safety of Hollywood a British director and actors reenacted Britain at peace. The California coast stood in for the Cornish beaches. Upson shows how the scriptwriters had to weaken the book’s ending due to the Hollywood production code. There is also a sub-plot in which young Patricia Hitchcock is kidnapped, though readers who have seen her acting in Strangers on a Train will know that she will be safely returned. Possibly more successful as a re-creation than as a thriller, this remains a rewarding read. Anyone who does not know the story of Rebecca should beware spoilers. Ben Bergonzi

UNSINKABLE Jenni L. Walsh, Harper Muse, 2024, $17.99/ C$21.99/£10.99, pb, 352pp, 9781400233946

This dual-timeline story follows the lives of Violet Jessop, who in real life survived the maritime disasters of the Olympic, Titanic, and Britannic, and that of Daphne Chaundanson, daughter of a famous actor who becomes an agent for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), French Section, during WWII. The book opens with young Violet, a White Star Line stewardess, preparing for the Titanic’s departure from Southampton Port. Despite her frightening experience on the Olympic, the tips she receives from passengers help support her mother and siblings. Daphne’s story opens in 1942 as she interviews to join a resistance movement. Angered by the Germans’ invasion of her home country, she sets out to break the German oppression. One connecting thread ties these two women, and two wars, together in tragedy. To me, one of the most difficult aspects of writing historical fiction is creating authentic character mindsets, and Walsh captures this

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aspect beautifully. Daphne is passionate about taking back her country and is modeled upon the experiences of the 39 real-life SOE women. For Violet, the Titanic’s a job. She knows details employees of White Star Line would know, like the proper way to secure a life vest under a coat despite the uncomfortableness of the stiff cork against the body. While history tells us what happened, through Walsh’s compassionate prose, we’re able to feel what happened as well. Sitting in a lifeboat, wrapped in shadows of the night, as a ship groans its last and plunges into the Atlantic to the setting of explosives in a German depot while guard dogs bark close by: these settings feel that much more authentic under Walsh’s deft pen. Unsinkable is a story of courage, resilience, and steering your own course in life. Recommended! J. Lynn Else

SNAPSHOTS FROM HOME Sasha Wasley, Pantera Press, 2023, A$29.99, pb, 419pp, 9780645476729

It is 1917. Edie Stark is grateful for the opportunity to escape her tyrannical and bigoted father, Frederick, when she takes up a teaching post in the Western Australian town of York. She is also mourning the death of her soldier brother, Aubrey, and has lost her passion for photography until her friend Florence signs her up for the Snapshots from Home League, which organises the sending of family photographs to men at the Front. The scheme brings Edie into contact with individuals from all walks of life, many of them the kind of working-class people Frederick despises. One of her students, the precocious and enthusiastic Kitty, becomes her able helper, but it is Kitty’s conscientious objector brother, Teddy, who is the catalyst for the greatest change in Edie as he introduces her to social issues and the injustices of the War. They have spirited arguments on the pros and cons of conscription and workers’ rights. Edie’s influence also opens Teddy’s eyes to ‘shortcomings in [his] personality’ as he realises he must act more strongly on his beliefs and take real action. Although continuing to be browbeaten by Frederick, who controls her money and manipulates a marriage prospect, Edie embraces life beyond Frederick’s control. As she slowly blossoms, you find yourself rooting for her with every step she takes towards selfdetermination. There is also an unexpected twist towards the end that further strengthens Edie’s confidence as she comes to the realisation that Frederick had ‘… never learned to love … or been loved himself.’ The historically accurate dialogue, characterisations and lesser-known political and social issues affecting Australia during the First World War are richly incorporated in this entertaining, exuberant, and compassionate novel that will leave you both informed and uplifted. Marina Maxwell

QUEENS OF LONDON

A COLD HIGHLAND WIND

Heather Webb, Sourcebooks, 2024, $16.99/ C$25.99, pb, 368pp, 9781728282947

Tasha Alexander, Minotaur, 2023, $28.00/ C$37.00, hb, 304pp, 9781250872333

Queens of London is a whirlwind adventure through the streets of the Elephant and Castle neighborhood in early 20th-century London. Alice Diamond, also known as “Diamond Annie” because she once punched a cop with her ring hand and gave him a bloody lip, is the head of the Forty Elephants. The Forty Elephants were a real, all-female crime syndicate in 19th and 20th-century London, focused mainly on shoplifting. And from the descriptions in the book, they were genius at it! Lilian Wyles is one of the first female police officers at Scotland Yard, and because of her gender, she’s been relegated to staking out department stores in London to watch for shoplifters. Like the Forty Elephants, Wyles is also a historical figure, and Webb combines the history and fiction brilliantly in this book. Little Hira is only 10 years old and on the streets, thanks to her mean Uncle Clyde and her position as a half-Indian orphan. Dorothy McBride is a shopgirl at Marshall and Snelgrove, a real department store in London. Maybe you think you know how these characters’ worlds eventually collide, but I think you’ll be surprised. And after only the first few pages you’ll be reading as much because you care about the characters as you will for the plot. Amy Watkin

NO BETTER TIME Sheila Williams, Amistad, 2024, C$37.00, hb, 240pp, 9780063307933

$30.00/

When the United States enters World War II, Dorothy Thom, a librarian at Atlanta’s Spelman College, and Lelia Branch, a single mother living in her own mother’s boardinghouse in Dayton, Ohio, each join the Women’s Army Corps. For Dorothy, it’s an adventure with the possibility of the trip abroad she’s longed for; for Lelia, it’s the allure of $21 per month, the chance to improve life for herself and her infant son. No Better Time follows these young WACS, and their friend Hazel, to Fort Riley in Kansas and ultimately to England and France, where the women process heaps of long-neglected army mail. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, not least because of its sprightly, resilient heroines, who must cope not only with the usual rigors of army life but with the racism of their fellow Americans, at home and abroad. Though it’s rather thin on plot—what there is consists mainly of the women traveling from place to place—the heroines and the vivid details carry it along nicely. In its depiction of these venturesome women doing unglamorous, but necessary and patriotic work, No Better Time reminds us that there are still plenty of tales about the war just waiting to be told. Susan Higginbotham

M U LT I -P E R IOD

REVIEWS | Issue 107, February 2024

Book seventeen in the series starts with Lady Emily and her husband Colin Hargreaves enjoying a vacation with their three young sons at Cairnfarn Castle. They travelled there during the summer of 1905 to visit their friend, the Duke of Bainbridge. The vacation turns grim when the gamekeeper is found murdered after a local festival. As Emily and Colin investigate, they find that even in small villages it is possible for secrets to run deep. More than 200 years earlier, in the village of Cairnfarn, Lady MacAllister is removed from the castle by her stepson and given a small cottage to share with her companion, Tansy, a young woman who was stolen from her home in North Africa years before. The two women navigate their new position in the village with the help of some of the local women. But not all are as friendly as they seem. The two women will be caught up in the furor over witchcraft and forced to make difficult choices. The novel is filled with delightfully quirky characters, including the three young boys and two great aunts who provide comedic relief at just the right time. The sense of place is strong in this book and plays a role in shaping the story. In fact, I was unable to detect a link between the two storylines other than they occurred in the same location, which left me feeling as though the promise of the story was not quite fulfilled. Despite that, it makes for an enjoyable read for those who want to be immersed in the Scottish countryside. Shauna McIntyre

THE HIDDEN LIFE OF CECILY LARSON Ellen Baker, Mariner, 2024, $28.00/£20.00, hb, 384pp, 9780063351196

On a cold day in November 1924, four-yearold Cecily Larson’s single mother places Cecily in a Chicago orphanage. Mother promises to return and take her back but never does. Three years later, the orphanage sells Cecily to a traveling circus. She becomes part of a bareback riding team, falls in love with a roustabout, injures her knee and wrist, and is kicked out of the circus. Eighty years later, Cecily, now a 94-year-old widow, lives alone in a Minnesota small town. A hard fall in her too-big house lands her in the local hospital. Her daughter, Liz, helps her recover, as do granddaughter Molly, fourteen-year-old great-grandson Caden, and even Caden’s divorced father. This makes the perfect setting for Caden’s honors bio project—collecting DNA samples from four generations and checking everyone’s background. The timelines of Cecily’s early life and that of her family in 2015 unfold side-by-side. Bit by bit, readers and Cecily’s modern-day family learn of Cecily’s hidden past, longburied heartaches and survival. Author Baker adds subplots of other health scares, sexual abuse, alcoholism, more orphans with other

adoptions, and faraway strangers sending in for their own DNA searches. This novel delves deeply into human cruelty and kindness, evolving racism, the Depression’s crushing impact on common people, and relationships based on love or to satisfy social expectations. Through it all, the main and secondary characters ring true and are easy to abhor or admire. The detailed settings fit the time and place. Several plot twists require readers to suspend belief, and some dialogue passages are too long and too perfect. But overall, this is an intense true-tolife literary family saga spanning ninety years. Recommended. G. J. Berger

THE UNEARTHED Lenny Bartulin, Allen & Unwin, 2023, A$32.99, pb, 274pp, 9781761067440

Old bones – ‘mossed and soft’ – are discovered in the wilderness near Queenstown. Forensic scientist Antonia Kovacs arrives from Hobart to investigate them, also to see her father, retired policeman, Dicky Nolan. Tom Pilar inherits a house from Slavko Cicak, a man he can barely remember who was a friend of his late father, Ivan. The unresolved hit-and-run death of a child in 1959 is what links them all. From the ravages of war in Eastern Europe to the 1950s and beyond, these are characters who have been shaped by stark environments. Many are refugees from the Fascist or Communist regimes in Yugoslavia: hardbitten individuals, carrying scars, secrets, and grudges. This psychologically astute novel is concise but also rich with haunting prose, such as Tom’s impression of the mining town with its: ‘Centuries of silence, stillness, dead rock … cold remnants, chipped facades, weeds in the cracks. The air chalky, refrigerated, old. Nothing moved, nothing flickered; the few trees stood dark, asleep … There was no grass in Queenstown. The gravel was thick, like running over a lake of poured teeth.’ And Antonia’s observations of unreliable memory, being: ‘… merely an impression … wavering, thinning, changing. Not like DNA … The body couldn’t escape time, it held on for eternity, even when it was rotted and transformed and worn down to dust. But everything in the mind was fleeting, smoke, tenuous images reflected in mirrors of water.’ If you have experienced the rugged West Coast of Tasmania, then the setting will resonate on many levels. And for those who have never been there, the brooding and

challenging atmosphere with its broken characters is just brilliantly conveyed. An inspiring and highly recommended fictional exploration of Australia’s post-war migrant experience. Marina Maxwell

SHELTERING ANGEL Louella Bryant, Black Rose Writing, 2023, $18.95, pb, 378pp, 9781685132408

Andrew Cunningham, a Scotsman, seeks a life at sea and becomes a steward of the White Star Line’s RMS Oceanic in 1889. The possibility of disaster is always in the back of his mind, but he enjoys his work and is good at doing the bidding of first-class passengers under his care. He marries, has a family, and meets Florence and Bradley Cumings, an American couple, on his last voyage aboard Oceanic before transferring to the newest vessel of the company, Titanic. In 1888, Florence Thayer, a minister’s daughter, falls quickly for the stockbroker, Bradley Cumings, who joins them for Sunday dinner. She’s intelligent, well spoken, and likes to help the less fortunate. She juggles service with marriage and family while her husband becomes successful in business. Although reticent to leave her sons, the couple enjoy their European vacation until just before they are to come home; a coal strike means only one ship is setting sail for the States: RMS Titanic. The maiden voyage proves to be the icing on their romantic getaway … until the collision. Florence and Andrew find themselves in the freezing Atlantic waiting for someone to rescue them. One may ask, why read another Titanic novel? Sheltering Angel goes far beyond the usual sinking and dying story. This story is personal for the author; Florence Cumings was her mother-in-law’s grandmother, and this novel recounts how a friendship between two disparate people sprang from tragedy on that fateful night in 1912. Poignant, spellbinding, and gut-wrenching, this tale vividly depicts who these two people were and how the sinking affected them. Readers are transported to the White Star Line’s heyday and get a feel for what it was like to work for the company. It’s also a revealing portrait of what the survivors faced upon arriving in New York. Cindy Vallar

AN ITALIAN SECRET Ella Carey, Bookouture, 2023, $9.99/C$12.99, pb, 266pp, 9781837900305

This dual-timeline novel takes place in the Villa Rosa, a lovely Tuscan villa. In the present day, Annie, an American chef, learns she was adopted and she has inherited the Villa Rosa from her biological mother. In Italy, Annie finds out that someone else claims to own the villa, and that he plans to turn it into a conference center. Also, she may be the descendant of the child that the villa’s owner during World War II, Contessa Evelina Messina, had with a Nazi. Annie finds a journal, with missing

pages, kept by Cara, the Contessa’s secretary, during the war, and realizes it might contain the secret of her identity. Cara’s story takes place in 1944, when Tuscany was occupied by the Germans. The Contessa collaborates with the Nazis to protect the nearby villagers. When Cara’s father is shot by the Nazis, she joins the resistance, along with the Contessa’s son, whom she secretly loves, and carries out a dangerous mission, carrying explosives for an attack on a Nazi stronghold. Ella Carey draws the reader in with beautifully written details about the villa and the Tuscan countryside, and mouthwatering descriptions of Italian food. Although technically not a mystery, the book contains a strong element of intrigue in Annie’s search for her heritage. Both timelines held my attention, and I kept wondering whether Cara would survive the war. I figured out the connection between Cara and Annie, but it didn’t spoil the book for me. The Contessa is a complex, somewhat mysterious, character, and there is enough doubt about her activities during the war that you don’t know, until the end, which side she is really on. There are some descriptions of wartime violence, but nothing too graphic. I highly recommend this book. Vicki Kondelik

THE STORY COLLECTOR Iris Costello, Penguin, 2023, £8.99, pb, 388pp, 9780241999110

There are three main narrative strands to this novel: a German baker, Katerina, in London’s East End in 1915 who develops a skill in Tarot reading; Miriam, a German linguistics student, who befriends a British prisoner of war in 1918; and present-day Cornwall, where recently bereaved artist-illustrator Edie discovers a box long-secreted in the walls of the family cottage that she is renovating. This box contains a secret that unites all the main characters in the novel. The story, while entertaining and with a plot that has a natural intrigue and appeal, jumps around, and there are a few leaps in the narrative that require the reader’s attention to understand the authorial moves. But to put it bluntly, the writing and style are not all that competent, and I just could not feel absorbed by the story, as the characters and their circumstances lack that essential feeling of authenticity and credibility to seduce the reader fully into the depths of the account. There are also annoying mistakes: the stage for this was set early in the story when a German professor of linguistics ostensibly in 1918 referred to the phenomenon of the “Estuary English” dialect, a term which was not in use in Britain or anywhere else for that matter until the 1990s. Surely such egregious solecisms should really not be published in fiction that is purported to be set in the past, and certainly should be weeded out by reputable publishing firms such as Penguin Random House. Douglas Kemp

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A CHILD FOR SALE Pam Howes, Bookouture, 2023, $8.99/£6.99, pb, 220pp, 9781800197923

England, 1964. When Laura Sims finds out she is pregnant, she has no family to turn to. Her father has passed away, and her mother is unloving and even seems full of hate. Pete, her child’s father, wants to marry her, but Laura is instead snatched away and sent to a Catholic home for unwed mothers. Overseen by domineering and abusive nuns, Laura is told that her baby will be adopted against her wishes. On the outside, Pete is trying everything he can to get her out and save their child. In England in 2015, Laura and Pete, long married, are notified that remains have been found at the former home for unwed mothers. An investigation is opened into possible illegal activities at the home, and the couple gets renewed hope that they might find their missing son. Social media and DNA technology are now available, but will they be enough? This is a sad look back at the way young, unmarried mothers were treated by the church and often their families as well. The look at the practice of stealing children to sell to rich families for profit is unfortunately reminiscent of true events. The exploitation and abuse of the young mothers and the horrible conditions of the home are brilliantly portrayed and bring the situation to life. The resilience of Laura and some of the other mothers under extremely stressful circumstances is inspiring. Pete and Laura’s romance and their devotion to each other serve as bright spots in dark times. Their search for their son, and the way it is helped by technology, is a light of hope for others in the same situation. The story, while not always a happy one, is quite captivating and will hold the reader spellbound. Recommended. Bonnie DeMoss

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ASTRID BRICARD Natasha Lester, Forever, 2024, $30.00, hb, 464pp, 9781538706954 / Sphere, 2024, £8.99, pb, 464pp, 9780751582291

Natasha Lester’s three-generation romance of the highest levels of fashion design takes a handful of “true stories,” as detailed in her author’s note, and ramps them up into a set of embedded love stories. At the heart of this hefty novel is the passion of designers for the feel and shape of an elegant and alluring garment, shared by Mizza Bricard, her daughter Astrid, and Astrid’s daughter Blythe—all of them strong, determined women attempting to gain agency in a male-dominated, money-hungry domain. Blythe carries on her shoulders the humiliations experienced by the two generations before her. Struggling as a divorced mother of two small children, she carries her mother’s and grandmother’s insight for fashion. On the other hand, the deprivations of her childhood, her vanished parents, and the crude comments often made 54

about her mother and grandmother echo into her current life. When her ex-husband turns out to be tangled with the one offer that could give her room to follow her dreams and also generate financial stability at last, Blythe finds she’s unable to trust such a future—as well as her own continued love for her ex. “She knows it isn’t just time she lacks. Just like she knows that being creative director of MIZZA and resurrecting the legend of her mother won’t make her happy.” Lester’s evocation of the sexual freedoms of the 1970s, as evoked through Astrid’s story, comes wrapped in silken bonds of inescapable sexual attraction between woman and man, as well as jealousies among women competing for the same attention. Though the book’s resolution suggests that trauma and deprivation can be brushed aside with the right marriage and more self-assurance, that’s forgivable within a genre that defends love as the strongest answer. Beth Kanell

THE LOST DRESSES OF ITALY M. A. McLaughlin, Alcove Press, 2024, $29.99, hb, 288pp, 9781639105649

Dresses worn by the English poet Christina Rossetti in Verona, where she traveled in 1865, are discovered there in a hidden chest in 1947. The novel alternates chapters between Rossetti on her Italian trip and those featuring Marianne Baxter, a restorer of antique clothing. Fifteen years after they were in fashion school together, Marianne’s friend summons her from Boston to Verona. Marianne is to prepare these dresses for the reopening exhibition at Verona’s Fondazione Museo Menigatti, its bomb damage finally repaired. Widowed in WWII, Marianne welcomes the challenge and hopes to escape her grief in Italy. She faces not only the intricate work to be completed in a short time but also the unsupportive museum owner. Why did Rossetti leave three stylish dresses behind when she returned to England? They are not all that link the two stories together. Both time periods involve love and betrayal; 19th-century elements extend into the mid20th, and both threads involve Italian politics. In 1865, the country has just been unified after years of strife. In 1947, the traumas of WWII are still fresh. Even readers who’ve read little of Christina Rossetti’s poetry will enjoy how McLaughlin weaves her lines and epigraphs into the poet’s emotional life. Marianne Baxter lost her husband early in their marriage and, like Rossetti, is now in her 30s. Both women are too old for passionate love—or are they? The Lost Dresses of Italy is a compelling read, combining fashion, poetry, romance and a murder mystery, set in Juliet and Romeo’s evocative Verona. Marianne discovers by bonding with the woman who wore the gowns she’s restoring that she’s not only bringing Christina to life but is also revived herself.

REVIEWS | Issue 107, February 2024

However, Marianne’s efforts put her at risk, and as the mystery becomes more dangerous, the emotions become more powerful. Jinny Webber

THE CONCERT Johanna Neuman, BakeMyBook, 2023, $19.50, pb, 385pp, 9798856395999

In the entire universe, so far as we know, music exists in only one place. In Johanna Neuman’s new novel, The Concert, music is the only thing that matters. Hitler’s war machine has invaded and surrounded the city of Leningrad with the intention of starving to death all of its residents. Mercy is unthinkable. Thousands drop dead every day. Whole families die a slow, anguishing death. And Stalin is doing little to help. In the midst of this terrible siege, which lasted more than two years, the musicians of the Radio Orchestra of Leningrad, suffering the effects of starvation and staving off death, performed a concert that lifted the hearts and spirits of the survivors of the city and steeled and energized them not only to survive but, ultimately, to defeat the Nazi army. Olga Berggolts, spokesperson for Leningrad Radio, and her circle of friends, poets and musicians, risk Stalin’s enmity and Hitler’s bombs. This circle of friends includes Nikolai, Olga’s husband; Luby, the grandmotherly woman who runs a puppet theatre and takes in orphans; Maria, Olga’s actor sister; Dhazhdat, the orchestra timpanist, whose powerful drumming evokes a determination to live; his wife, the ballerina Katarina; Eliasberg, the Jewish conductor; Viktoria, the director of the Hermitage Museum, and many more. These people, so elegantly drawn, show how much love matters in the worst of times and how friendship creates bonds that outlast hate. Author Neuman doesn’t sugarcoat the horrors that the orchestra members faced, further dramatizing their courage. It should be noted, for example, that many were too weak to play and others died shortly after performing. Hitler is gone. Stalin is gone. Olga, in the end, worries what will happen to her beloved Russia under the new rulers like Putin. But she knows, as do we who have read this story of great courage, that music and all that it entails will outlive us all. Peter Clenott

THE FOLKLORIST Eileen O’Finlan, BWL Publishing, 2023, $18.99, pb, 455pp, 9780228627951

Set in Vermont during the 1830s and 1970s, this story alternates between Jerusha Kendall in Birch Falls and her several times great-granddaughter, Charlotte Lajoie, of Middlebury. Jerusha’s family has lost a heartbreaking number of children to consumption, known today as tuberculosis. Little was known about the disease at that time, and the townspeople’s well-meant but gruesome attempts to assuage

it caused immeasurable harm to friendships between neighbors. Charlotte is a new folklorist in a Middlebury museum, dealing with feminist issues exacerbated by a chauvinistic boss. While avidly combing through her ancestress Jerusha’s personal diaries, Charlotte comes to suspect that ghosts may be real. What secrets from the 1830s were so upsetting that they caused people to come back from the dead and harass the living? Charlotte uses her background in folklore to help unravel the puzzle. I hate horror, but this book, while it deals with the New England Vampire Panic of the 19th century, is sad and touching rather than terrifying. It will give readers a new appreciation for modern medicine. It is loaded with detail about daily New England farm life in the 1800s, and, in alternating chapters, about the position of women in the 1970s when the feminist movement was still new. The pacing is slow, with the alternating chapters retarding the action in both time periods. A thirteenpage description of Charlotte’s Halloween exhibition at the museum seems like too much information. Like the rest of the book, it needs to be shorter. Despite my quibbles, I think fans of New England life and history will be drawn to this story. Elizabeth Knowles

BENEATH A MIDWINTER MOON Paper Lantern Writers, 2023, $15.00/C$20.80, pb, 266pp, 9798987122235

Historical fiction in vignettes! This collection offers eleven short stories that reflect the theme of winter celebrations in a form that is easy to digest. Much like a holiday s m o rg a s b o rd , readers can sample a delightful array of different writers’ styles, characters, plots, and settings. The historical backdrops range from the 15th to the 20th centuries, and the geographical locations include India, England, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States. The midwinter moon shines on all these locations through holidays such as Christmas, Twelfth Night, New Year’s Eve, and the Indian celebration of Pongal. Frost, snow, ice, and bitterly cold temperatures appear in many of them. Winter holidays are an excellent theme for a collection because they can be memorable, life-changing moments in many different lives. Some of the different lives here include a French newcomer to England during the Wars of the Roses, a boxer in Georgian London, an

Indian- French couple on the cusp of Indian independence, a Dutch grandmother in late Northern Renaissance Holland, an American medic and Belgian nurse during the Battle of the Bulge, and Swiss villagers on the precipice of the industrial age. Young or old, rich or poor, their winter holidays often include both joy and sorrow as well as rage, guilt, and glee. Emotional interactions with families and burgeoning hopes for the future feature in many of them. All these unique stories together underscore the very common human experience of winter holidays. Recommended with gusto for readers wishing to nibble on a wide range of historical fiction pieces in bite size chunks that will nourish their mind and their heart. Karen Bordonaro

A SEEKER OF TALES Marilyn Pemberton, Williams & Whiting, 2023, £9.99/$12.99, pb, 298pp, 9781915887337

Florence, Italy, 1888, and Harriet Marston is overcome by emotion as she views a painting in a gallery. As the tsunami of tears subsides, we begin to learn what caused it. The painting is the Madonna and Child. Harriet is overcome by guilt, grief, and anger, recalling the birth and loss of a child conceived in rape. Twenty-one years later, the narrative is taken over by Imogen Jones, a suffragette who discovers a pouch of fairy tales in her late father’s study. She searches for the author of the tales and begins to unearth family secrets. The secrets are largely already known, or easily guessable, to the reader. It is the characters’ reactions to those secrets – and who they choose to share them with – that make this book a page-turner. The book is populated by strong, modern women, unusual for their times. They are educated, feminist, sexually unconventional, and, most unusually, open-minded. They unearth aspects of life that society of the time went to great lengths to hide from ‘respectable’ girls. The story is easy to read, and the tension of ‘who is going to discover what’ keeps the reader engaged. It is part of a series and set up for a sequel. Recommended for lovers of family sagas, family secrets, and strong women. Helen Johnson

THE ROSSETTI DIARIES Kathleen Williams Renk, Bedazzled Ink, 2023, $19.95, pb, 238pp, 9781960373151

In the mid-19th century, a group of rebel artists challenged the art establishment with their avant-garde ideas, techniques, and behavior. These were not the French Impressionists but the earlier British PreRaphaelite Brotherhood or PRB, who included such luminaries as John Millais, William Morris, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Lesser known then, but increasingly prominent now, was an unofficial PreRaphaelite Sisterhood comprising PRB

models, muses, artists, and poets such as Elizabeth (or Lizzie) Siddal and Christina Rossetti. In focusing on these two women, Renk’s new novel covers some of the same ground as DM Denton’s recent The Dove Upon Her Branch. But the Rossettis and their circle are challenging subjects for any novelist because their lurid lives were stranger than fiction, featuring mental illness, depression, religious obsession, rape, incest, drug addiction, and suicide. Renk opens her dual-timeline novel with a scholar’s wildest dream: a trove of incendiary new material. Her modern protagonist, an aspiring artist named Maggie, discovers, theatrically hidden in the crypt of a church, the previously unknown diaries of Christina and Lizzie, which prove that they were pioneering, underappreciated women artists—and lovers—and that the Brotherhood constantly and cruelly oppressed the Sisterhood. Dante Rossetti is the villain of both diaries, probably deservedly so. The diaries themselves make tough reading. But lugubrious and repetitive as they are, the Victorian characters overshadow the modern ones, who seem thin in comparison, and given to making long expository speeches. Feminism abounds. Ghosts occasionally liven up the proceedings, however, and Renk does an excellent job of weaving Siddal’s and Rossetti’s actual poetry into the text, which may inspire curious readers to explore Christina’s creepy masterpiece, “Goblin Market,” and the PRB’s art, including many exquisite portraits of Lizzie. Susan Lowell

THE TURNGLASS Gareth Rubin, Simon & Schuster, 2023, £16.99, hb, 496pp, 9781398514492

Essex, 1881. Idealistic doctor Simeon Lee accepts a job nursing a distant cousin Oliver Hawes, who is apparently being poisoned in his isolated island home. The only other permanent resident of Turnglass House is Oliver’s sister-in-law Florence, incarcerated behind a glass wall since she allegedly killed her husband in a jealous fit. But Oliver’s journal, concealed within another book, tells a different story… California, 1939. Would-be actor Ken Kourian is struggling until he befriends wealthy Oliver Tooke. When Oliver dies suddenly, Ken isn’t convinced it’s suicide and begins to investigate his past, including the kidnapping of Oliver’s brother in childhood and the presumed drowning of their mother Florence. The only clues lie in Oliver’s recently published novel, about a doctor called Simeon Lee… Rather than being a conventional dualperiod novel, this is what’s known as a têtebêche novel: two interlinked novellas printed back-to-back so the book can be read from either end or, indeed, alternating between stories. The Victorian story draws heavily upon the tropes of classic Gothic fiction – Jane Eyre, The Woman in Black, The Private Memoirs

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and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – while the more modern tale is in the style of a cynical, wisecracking 1940s film noir. The fact that I solved one of the mysteries before the characters proves that the author plays fair by hiding clues in plain sight. However, I can’t help questioning the logic of a fire that apparently starts on the ground floor, destroys the roof of the house – yet leaves the first floor and main staircase almost unscathed. And isn’t the North Sea too cold for Sargasso weed? It’s all very clever, but with the exception of Ken, I felt distanced from the characters. This ultimately made me feel the book was hollow at its core. Jasmina Svenne

THE LEGACY OF LONGDALE MANOR Carrie Turansky, Bethany House, 2023, $16.99, pb, 346pp, 9780764241055

Turansky has penned an enthralling narrative that ties together two deep family stories a century apart. Art historian Gwen Morris, following a grievous professional error with a previous investigation, is sort of banished to England’s historic Lake District. She is charged with the responsibility of cataloguing the contents of Longdale House. However, how might this estate and its deep history help Gwen not only redeem herself to her grandfather and secure some needed selfconfidence, but also discover her own past? Gwen’s biological father is unknown to her, as her mother tragically died before having the promised heart-to-heart chat. In 1912, the sudden death of her father forces Charlotte Harper to trek to Longdale House and confront her own history. Seeking solace from strained relationships, along with some hope for a more financially secure future, Charlotte plans to make amends. Secrets and intrigue abound as Charlotte navigates deepseated pasts. This narrative moves in segments from 1912 to 2012, highlighting the struggles of both Gwen and Charlotte. Readers begin to glimpse how Longdale House and the Lake District might connect past and present while foreshadowing later events. Additionally, as well as dealing with the tensions of valuating historic items, Gwen finds herself drawn emotionally and spiritually into the realm of David, the on-site developer, and his estateowning grandmother. When Gwen discovers Charlotte’s long-lost journal, her quest becomes more complicated as she seeks answers to her own ancestry while pondering Charlotte’s dilemmas. In an intriguing literary vein, the reader is left with several possibilities at the end. Jon G. Bradley

THE EXCITEMENTS C. J. Wray, William Morrow, 2024, $19.99/ C$24.00, pb, 304pp, 9780063337480 / Orion, 2024, £18.99, hb, 352pp, 9781398711839

The Williamson sisters are in their nineties. Both World War II veterans, they spend their days being entertained by their kind nephew Archie, and attending commemorative events and having afternoon tea, or cocktails, in London’s department stores and restaurants. When they’re invited to Paris to receive the Legion d’honneur, naturally Archie accompanies them. He’s hoping to reconnect with an old flame, and is blissfully unaware that Penny and Josephine have their own very complicated history with Paris. The timeline moves from the present day back into the sisters’ lives before, during and after World War II, with Penny’s story taking center stage. She trains for covert spying operations within occupied France, but it’s the women’s time in Paris before the war that lies behind much of how their lives play out, even in the present-day storyline. Penny is the standout character. From the early pages when she steals a crystal elephant in a department store, it’s clear she has her own way of doing things, and as her history is revealed, she becomes a character to root for, trying to settle old scores by carrying out an audacious heist. When all goes awry and the sisters are caught in the middle of a political siege and held at gunpoint, it’s easy to believe her when she notes that the gunman has ‘picked on the wrong old lady.’ With well-rounded secondary characters and a twisty plot, The Excitements certainly entertains. There may be one twist too many in Penny’s background, but overall, this is a very fun read with some laugh-out-loud moments. Kate Braithwaite

HISTORICAL STORIES OF EXILE Annie Whitehead, J.G. Harlond, Helen Hollick, Anna Belfrage, Elizabeth Chadwick, Loretta Livingstone, et al., Taw River Press, 2023, $9.50/ C$11.99/£7.99, pb, 330pp, 9781739272012

Like its predecessor, Historical Stories of Betrayal, this collection of thirteen short stories is from a group of skilled, talented authors who cover a multitude of different times and places: in this case, everything from ancient Rome to a speculative future. The settings are pleasingly diverse, but each is in Europe somewhere. While some stories are either overburdened with characters and plot, most are vividly rendered and enjoyable. My favorite is Anna Belfrage’s “The Unwanted Prince,” an excellent tale of a young, exiled prince who is torn from his family’s loving arms. The story includes compelling historical details, touchingly rendered. Elizabeth Chadwick’s “Coming Home” follows a denizen of the Tower of London in the 12th century. This wellknown historical author skillfully displays her prowess with smooth prose, layered politics, and the nuances of her characters. “My Sister” by Alison Morton is a vivacious tale of sisterly troublemaking and high-stakes politics in

REVIEWS | Issue 107, February 2024

ancient Rome. The Roman details and longsuffering narrator make this tale thoroughly enjoyable. “Kingsman No More” by Charlene Newcomb is a swashbuckling tale of love and derring-do, ripe with passion and purpose. “On Shining Wings” by Marian L. Thorpe mesmerizes the reader with loving details from the point of view of a ger-falcon keeper. Readers can’t go wrong with such a tapestry of historical imaginings. Recommended. Xina Marie Uhl

H I STOR IC A L FA N TA SY THE WARM HANDS OF GHOSTS Katherine Arden, Del Rey, 2023, $28.00, hb, 336pp, 9780593128251 / Century, 2024, £18.99, hb, 400pp, 9781529920031

There are myriad novels that depict the horrors of World War I, but Arden has come up with a new and mesmerizing approach. Her fairy tale adaptations like The Bear and the Nightingale have won frequent acclaim, and in this novel, the lines between history, myth, folklore, and magic are eerily blurred. In her afterword, Arden explains brilliantly, “World War I [was] as close to a moment of historical science fiction as we will ever get: an indescribable mashup of changing mores and technologies.” Laura Iven, a gifted military nurse, is sent back to Halifax by an injury just in time to lose her parents in the catastrophic munitions ship explosion of December 1917. Her trauma is compounded when her soldier brother Freddie’s effects arrive, signaling his death in France. However, things are not what they seem. Her trio of spiritualist landladies (portentously named Clotilde, Lucretia, and Agatha) assure Laura that Freddie is still alive, and the narrative shifts back and forth between her quest to discover his fate and his nightmarish escape through the blasted battlefields of Europe, accompanied by a mysterious German soldier. Into this apocalyptic setting comes a sinister figure, Faland, called “The Fiddler” by those soldiers who are drawn to his promises of relief from the torments of post-traumatic stress. Laura gradually learns that he is the key to rescuing her brother from an eerie halfworld of guilt and terror. In Faland, Arden has created a rich metaphor for the despair created by the “War to End All Wars,” in which those who escape the bombs and bullets face even greater threats from their own memories.

The subject matter is grim, but Arden’s prose is full of emotion and affection for both those who are broken and those who offer healing. It’s an unforgettable, inspiring read. Kristen McDermott

THE DJINN WAITS A HUNDRED YEARS Shubnum Khan, Viking, 2024, $28.00/C$37.99, hb, 320pp, 9780593653456 / Magpie, 2024, £16.99, hb, 320pp, 9780861546268

Akbar Manzil, a mansion neglected and abandoned, is seeing new life with a motley crew of tenants taking up residence in its assorted rooms and wandering its grounds of crumbling walls, “mournful” fountains, and overgrown gardens. Fifteen-year-old Sana and her father, Bilal Malek, arrive in Durban, South Africa to this mysterious mansion. Her furtive new home fascinates her, and the odd, eccentric tenants welcome her – Fancy, Pinky, Razia Bibi, Zuleika, the Doctor, and the parrot Mr. Patel. Unknown to Sana, a djinn has lived a hundred years in the deserted east wing, where a room, locked for 82 years, is waiting to be discovered. Movement in the corner of Sana’s eye – is it just a shadow? Dust motes floating in the dim halls? “The quietness inside is a crouching thing ready to spring.” There are secrets waiting for her to discover. “The garden is better at keeping secrets than the house. Whereas the house has grown still and slow and occasionally drops a piece of history from the rafters…” When Sana discovers the key to the locked room, she enters a world lost in time. Here she discovers Meena’s diary. In 1919 Akbar Ali Khan arrives in Africa from Bombay with his wife Jahanara Begum, to start his own sugar mill and build his fabulous mansion. His life is complete when he falls deeply in love with Meena, his factory worker. He takes her as his second wife, which brings happiness and tragedy into his life. The reader is pulled into this fascinating time. In prose rich with description that animates the inanimate, Khan gives life to the mansion and its objects as they take on features of living beings. It is the djinn, weeping and mournful, that fascinates and enthralls as we discover why its all-consuming grief infuses the mansion with its sorrow. Janice Ottersberg

T I M E SL I P TIMES OF TURMOIL Anna Belfrage, Timelight Press, 2023, $12.99, pb, 380pp, 9789198829846

1718 Pennsylvania is indeed a time of turmoil for Duncan Melville and his timetravelling wife, Erin, in this second of The Time Locket books, spin-offs of the Graham Saga series. Settled on the Papegoja estate near Chester, life is complicated for Erin, dragged back from contemporary times, where being Black had its challenges, to a time where she

has no value at all, other than as a slave. Between the two of them, Duncan and Erin have made enemies along the way, and things come to a head when they encounter Hyland Nelson beating an indentured boy black and blue. Their rescue of him rankles Nelson and his son, and it soon becomes clear why they want the boy back. Tim is a watcher and a listener, and becomes invaluable to Erin over time. Papegoja is invaded by various villains looking to wreak revenge for some sort of wrong, including Felix Chardon, who is carrying the deadly time locket which Erin has encountered before. But she has no desire to be flung back through the maelstrom of time and space again. This is a standalone novel which doesn’t require a lot of exposition to be clear what’s going on. If you want to know why Erin came to be in 1718, you’ll have to read the first book, The Whirlpools of Time. What is clear is that Anna Belfrage is a wonderfully evocative storyteller, weaving the fantasy of time-travel into a detailed history of early 1700s Pennsylvania; and that the locket is responsible for a whole heap of trouble. Now Pennsylvania is following other states in drafting anti-miscegenation laws which will make it impossible for the Melvilles to remain where they are. Belfrage balances the participation of villains in her story to pull out the very best in courage and strength of character from her main protagonists. Readers of Paula Brackston and Diana Gabaldon will enjoy this gripping romance series. Fiona Alison

THE MENDER Jennifer Marchman, Independently published, 2023, $14.99, pb, 414pp, 9798397298322

Eva is a Mender, a fixer of time. She travels to “shadow” timelines, bringing them in line with the “one true timeline,” a line where Germany won World War II. Now her mission is in Texas, in March 1836, but something is off, as she’s arrived several months early. When she meets Jim, a white man raised by Comanches, she is alarmed to see how real he is. He is supposed to be just a shadow, not a feeling human being, and he’s making it hard for her to maintain her people’s vows of celibacy. Then Jim’s friend Pump astonishes her even more when he reveals a secret that only she can understand. This is the first book in The Mender Trilogy. Jennifer Marchman has created an intricately woven story, as complex as the quantum strings Eva pulls to move through time. The method of time travel is fascinating and based

on string theory. The history of Texas, or what would eventually be Texas, is well researched. Every author of a time travel novel must set rules of travel, and what the author has done here is layer many rules, with the reader soon realizing that only some of them are true. It is an intriguing development, as we discover the truths and deceptions along with Eva. The research into Jim’s part of the story is well done, with Comanche customs, culture, and language added throughout. The racism and brutality of life at that time and the poor treatment of women are realistic and true to the period. The characters’ honesty about their own flaws is touching and compelling. This is a captivating and bold combination of time travel, Texas history, and romance that will leave the reader wanting more. Bonnie DeMoss

A LT E R NAT E H I STORY JABBERWOCK Dara Kavanagh, Dedalus, 2023, £12.99, pb, 442pp, 9781915568410

Dublin, the eve of World War II: Ignatius Hackett, one-time journalist, former patient of Dean Swift’s Mental Asylum, is on his uppers and behind in his rent, until he gets an unexpected summons that takes him to France and later to Germany. Hackett’s task? To investigate a Phoneme [sic] War, an increasingly bold attack on the English language as deadly to the war effort as a bomb. There is more than a nod to what we think of as the modern blight of fake truth – and the theft of authors’ work in an age of AI. Kavanagh’s prose is so rich that it is by turns compelling and at other times needs to be absorbed in smaller doses. His debt to Flann O’Brien and James Joyce is acknowledged, in the inventive vocabulary of frabbling, fromulous, garmungling and mahogulous. Kavanagh’s exhilarating novel isn’t so much alternative history as a parallel history, in which historical figures like Goebbels, Donitz and Turing are referenced, but in which Hackett encounters a series of espionage eccentrics, none of whom he is able to completely trust. Some readers might argue that this novel has too much of magical realism to be truly defined as a historical novel; nobody, however, could disagree that on one level it is a colossal, sustained play on words. Kavanagh is a translator as well as a novelist, and it shows. The reader who has a knowledge of German, and indeed Irish, will get the full force – and nuance – of the book’s gags, as in ‘Maulwurf and Leberfleck had been exposed as German moles,’ but even without such advantage, Kavanagh’s novel is an immensely enjoyable tour-de-force. Perhaps never before has the Italian expression ‘traduttore - traditore’ (translator – traitor) been so effectively applied as a plot device. Katherine Mezzacappa

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C H I LDR E N & YOU NG A DU LT THE SONGBIRD AND THE RAMBUTAN TREE Lucille Abendanon, Jolly Fish, 2024, $14.99, hb, 320pp, 9781631638206

Abendanon draws loosely from her grandmother’s experience in a World War II internment camp in Dutch East India, now Indonesia, to present a gripping account of a little-known episode in that war. Before Japan invades the Dutch colony in 1942, 11-yearold Emmy lives a privileged life, with a large house in the colonial capital of Batavia (now Jakarta) and her servant’s son, Bakti, as her loyal playmate. She doesn’t question why Bakti, who is Javanese, must ride in a separate tram car and cannot attend school. Instead, she’s trying to outshine her haughty, wealthier classmate Violet and avoid being sent to music school in England. Then Bakti runs off to join the Japanese, believing the invaders will liberate his people from Dutch rule. Emmy and her neighbors, including Violet, are taken to an internment camp in the suburb of Tjideng, where women and children are separated from the men, and boys are sent for hard labor as soon as they turn ten. Among the women and girls, Emmy makes new friends and engages in acts of resistance small and large, ultimately taking a harrowing journey into the city to save Violet’s life. Abendanon presents the nuances of colonialism through the eyes of a child initially unaware of her privilege until it is taken away. Through Javanese secondary characters, readers see the growing resistance to colonial occupation, whether by the Netherlands or Japan. Within the camp, Emmy emerges as a strong presence as she takes on leadership roles, confronts the guilt she feels for the accident that led to her mother’s death, and rediscovers her joy in singing. Readers will cheer for her during her journey to herself in the worst of times. Lyn Miller-Lachmann

THE DOOR OF NO RETURN Kwame Alexander, Andersen Press, 2023, £14.99, hb, 418pp, 9781839133244 / Little, Brown, 2022, $17.99, hb, 432pp, 9780316441865

UNSPOKEN (UK) / AN AMERICAN STORY (US)

Kwame Alexander and Dare Coulter, Andersen Press, 2023, £12.99, hb, 56pp, 9781839133398 / Little, Brown, 2023, $18.99, hb, 56pp, 9780316473125

Kwame Alexander is celebrated for his contemporary verse novels that explore the feelings of Black boys, their family relationships and friendships, and love of sport. In The Door of No Return, he has used his great skill with this literary form to create an historical novel set in 1860 among the Asante people in the country now known as Ghana. The story is seen through the eyes of Kofi, 58

who is on the cusp of manhood. He attends school where his teacher insists his students speak English in the classroom rather than Twi. This is not the only conflict in Kofi’s life – he and his cousin are rivals for the attention of the same girl, Ama, and then, following an accidental and violent death at a local festival, tragedy ensues, both at the hands of people from a rival village seeking revenge, and subsequently from ‘the men with no color’, referred to as the ‘wonderfuls’ who exploit and enslave his people. While this is a tough tale in terms of the events that happen (and I concur with the publisher’s suggestion of a recommended age of 12+), there is a considerable amount of warmth in the telling, manifested in Kofi’s love for his brother Kwasi and his friend Ebo and in Ama’s gentle intelligence. Kwame Alexander also writes about slavery and African American heritage in the picture book he created with Dare Coulter, published in the USA as An American Story and retitled Unspoken for the UK edition. Alexander asks how it is possible to tell ‘a story that starts in Africa and ends in horror’. He then proceeds to do so most eloquently, a story that is painful but also one of resilience, and one that must be told. In the unforgettable illustrations, Coulter has used a wide range of media, unusually incorporating sculptures. Ann Lazim

THE BLOOD YEARS Elana K. Arnold, Balzer + Bray, 2023, $19.99, hb, 400pp, 9780062990853

Arnold powerfully honors her grandmother’s experiences in this coming-of-age novel set in Czernowitz, Romania (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine), during World War II. Although 13-year-old Rieke is aware of Romania’s antisemitism before the war, her concerns are more mundane—dance class; her glamorous sister Astra, who is falling in love with a doctor ten years her senior; her mother, who has been depressed ever since the girls’ father left the family for another woman; and being worthy of working in her grandfather’s jewelry business. With Hitler’s initial victories and the Romanian government joining the Axis, local gangs destroy the jewelry shop. When the Soviets march into the city in 1940, antisemitic attacks end, but the communists take all the food for themselves, and Rieke falls ill with tuberculosis. Then comes the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, and in the wake of the fleeing Soviets, the real terror begins. Rieke and her family survive through luck, but they witness terrible atrocities and make unspeakable sacrifices to stay alive. Rieke’s narrative—by necessity more a witness than an actor in those horrific times—conveys day-to-day realities that are both mundane and monumental. Some morally reprehensible individuals, like Astra’s philandering husband, turn out to be heroes, while those who hold onto moral principles often put themselves and their families in danger. Desperate times give readers much to ponder, including how

REVIEWS | Issue 107, February 2024

people subjected to these atrocities maintain their humanity and hope. While luck saves Rieke, so does the loyalty of family and friends. Arnold’s extensive author’s note reveals how much of the story actually happened to her grandmother, offers a bibliography for further exploration, and connects what happened in Romania to the rise of hate groups today. Lyn Miller-Lachmann

THE UNDYING OF OBEDIENCE WELLREST Nicholas Bowling, Chicken House, 2023, £8.99, pb, 324pp, 9781912626687

In the spring of 1832, there is unrest in the graveyard tended by an ancient, sick sexton and his fifteen-year-old grandson, Ned. By day they dig graves and look after their ‘residents’, but by night bodysnatchers are at work. When the keys to the graveyard and the mysterious Nameless Grave are stolen, village prejudice puts them under suspicion. On the other side of the village, at the dilapidated manor house, the girl Ned is in love with – Obedience ‘Bede’ Wellrest – is under increasing pressure from her penniless father to submit to marriage with Phineas Mordaunt, a suitor who shares her interests in natural philosophy. But here we find the name ‘Obedience’ is more of an antonym for her character. Tracking the bodysnatchers, Ned finds that Phineas is implicated and experimenting on animals. Bede suspects that what Phineas is really after is her late Uncle Herbert’s scientific diary, which she has deciphered and which contains his secret but fatal research. Ned’s habit of talking with animals contrasts nicely with Phineas, whose animal experiments are grotesque and self-serving. Bede is as wellread in the early sciences as Phineas, and they are determined to outwit each other. When the village mob turns on Ned and his grandfather, Ned is left with nothing but his courage and his pet fly Mosca, with which to assist Bede and to defeat Phineas. Bede uses the power of plants for an audacious escape which leads them all to explore where life might end and death not begin. Bowling blends the elements of old melodrama and early gothic to craft a thoroughly enjoyable mystery about pushing the boundaries of science. A beautiful cover design adds to the magic. Louise Tree

OBAASAN’S BOOTS Janis Bridger and Lara Jean Okihiro, Second Story, 2023, $12.95, pb, 156pp, 9781772603484

Cousins Charlotte and Lou are visiting their grandparents in Toronto. While Lou lives in Toronto, Charlotte has flown with her mother from their home on the west coast of Canada. Both girls are half-Japanese and starting to realize there is much about their family history that they do not know. During this visit with their grandmother in her garden they ask her, respectfully calling her “Obaasan,” about her experiences. Gently, she reveals the

painful stories of Japanese internment during World War ll. In 1940, O b a a s a n married Koichiro, who had been educated in Japan. But in 1941, pregnant with her first child, Obaasan hears of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Public opinion quickly turns against the Japanese in Canada, and they must register as enemy aliens. All their property is confiscated, and they are removed from the coast to internment camps. Obaasan’s camp was in the mountainous interior of British Columbia. In both the U.S. and Canada, Japanese nationals were interned away from the west coast. This telling of a very personal story about the internment and its effect on one family is a deeply moving and evocative tale, told with simplicity for young readers. Throughout the initial uncertainties of wartime, the agonies of separation, and the forced removal of hard-earned possessions, the theme of resilience shines through. The history of this time, place, and people is told without false emotion. We hear the experiences explained in answer to the questions of two young girls curious to understand why, as cousins, they have been raised a continent apart. The concepts involved are explained concisely but vividly. The result is a moving novel with much to recommend it to adult readers as well as to younger people. Valerie Adolph

THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL STRIKES BACK Emma Carroll, illus. Lauren Child, Candlewick, 2023, $19.99, hb, 208pp, 9781536233353 / Simon & Schuster Children’s UK, 2024, £7.99, pb, 368pp, 9781398512832

New Year’s Eve in London of 1887 is delightful only for the wealthy. Nasty weather, miserable air, street thugs, and poor housing make life miserable for all others. Headstrong thirteen-year-old Bridie Sweeney strives to bring a little joy into the one-room home she shares with her “Mam” and younger brother. Spinning constant yarns about her magical matches, Bridie peddles boxes of

them on the street. She wants to earn enough to buy a whole goose from the local butcher. The day starts out well enough but then turns to chaos. Bridie’s matchboxes get smashed in an accident, and later she loses all the money she had made. Meanwhile, gaunt, dead-tired Mam must work long hours for little pay in the match factory. She gets fired at the end of her shift. Bridie can’t sell her last three little matches so lights them herself. Each gives off a magical aura that transports her as if in a dream to the homes of the upper class. Those visits inspire her to try to get Mam’s job back. Carroll tells the story through Bridie’s splendid first-person voice. We believe Bridie could sell match boxes to a fireman. Dramatic illustrations and creative formatting help pull the reader into the time and events. Endnotes with photographs explain that this story is loosely derived from an 1845 Hans Christian Andersen tale but closely tied to labor unrest at a real London East End match factory. Readers from about nine and up will learn about strong women, a bit of London history, the cruel greed of bosses, and the power of workers united. Highly recommended. G. J. Berger

WAGES OF EMPIRE Michael J. Cooper, Koehler Books, 2023, $22.95, pb, 392pp, 9798888241868

Cooper focuses on the beginning of World War I, 1914, especially the developing conflict in the Middle East. The central fictional character is young, precocious Evan Sinclair, son of an Englishman, raised in Utah, who wants no part of his father’s plans for his college education. Evan runs away from home to seek adventure in the explosive war. The novel follows several important reallife people as they experience the conflict: T. E. Lawrence, Gertrude Bell, Faisal bin Hussein, Chaim Weizmann, Anna Spafford, and Winston Churchill. Its most riveting personality, however, is Kaiser Wilhelm, who is obsessed with creating a German state in the Middle East, asserting his authority as the Holy Roman Emperor and Germans as the superior race. While the historical personalities and intrigues in the novel are fascinating, this book is not successful as a work of fiction. Chapters are brief and skip from one geographical location to another, one personality to another. The novel is overly crowded with talking heads: None of the characters is developed emotionally or psychologically to engender sufficient interest or compassion in their fates. Dialogue is superficial, unconvincing. Cooper plans a sequel, Crossroads of Empire. One hopes that he will concentrate on a less expansive history to explore more complex nuances of a few key characters in this second work. Joanne Vickers

AN UNLIKELY PROPOSITION Rosalyn Eves, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024, $20.99/C$27.99, hb, 304pp, 9780374390273

1818. Despite last year’s discouraging experience, Thalia Aubrey remains determined to return to London hoping to find a publisher for her poems, and she is delighted when her application for a position as companion to a widow is accepted. Eleanor Lockhart is much younger than she expects, however, and soon the lives of these two inexperienced young women become complicated. Will Thalia manage to deal with sexist attitudes and a devious brother? Will the plots of the nephew of Eleanor’s late husband to steal her inheritance succeed? And will they negotiate their romantic entanglements? The plot teeters close to farce: Thalia is attracted to Henry Salisbury; he shares the attraction, but he has agreed to a false engagement to Eleanor, who hopes it will relieve her from the nephew’s pressure. For her part, Eleanor is attracted to Owen Jones, who is considered her social inferior; he turns out to be the brother of the actress whom Thalia’s brother tries to rescue from the harassment of none other than Eleanor’s husband’s nephew. The warning against self-centred men who prey upon vulnerable women is as applicable today as during the Regency era, but the melodrama is distracting. Ray Thompson

CIRCUS MAXIMUS: Rider of the Storm Annelise Gray, Zephyr, 2023, £14.99, hb, 363pp, 9781803281063

This, the last in Annelise Gray’s Circus Maximus trilogy, follows our heroine Dido, now back in Rome, intent on returning to professional chariot racing. At the same time, she must keep a wary eye on the Emperor Caligula, whose increasing instability threatens the safety of her family and her beloved horses. Being the emperor’s ‘favourite’, she discovers, is twice as dangerous as being his enemy. The cast list is large: there are sixteen named humans, often characters from the previous two books, as well as ten horses and a dog. However, the book is a stand-alone, if the reader refreshes themselves regularly as to who is who, where we are, and takes on board the important bits of the backstory. On the way, we learn how to train horses and riders for the games, how to avoid the tricks and snares of our opponents, and that being Caligula’s favourite can turn in an instant to being his enemy, followed by a swift and painful death. I loved this book; I liked the way that the horses, too, had strong preferences about who was a friend and who an enemy, and that the female riders each have their own experiences to guide them – often very different from a male character’s. For Dido, gaining her horses’ trust will always triumph

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over the savage use of the whip as used by the male charioteers. For Dido, her horses’ welfare always comes before her own comfort. However, the heroine’s empathy is by no means a ‘soft’ option. I loved the way that the reader is taught exactly how to take a corner in the Circus Maximus, and how to prepare to overtake an opponent by a cunning piece of deception; both extremely dangerous procedures... I’m looking forward to Annelise Gray’s next book. Elizabeth Hawksley

AMIL AND THE AFTER Veera Hiranandani, Kokila, 2024, $17.99/ C$24.50, hb, 272pp, 9780525555063 / Kokila, 2024, £8.99, pb, 272pp, 9780593700303

The partition of India in 1947 was accompanied by genocide, and its fault lines never disappeared. The great tragedy has inspired landmark films and books over the decades. Amil and the After addresses a gap: a book that grapples with the horrors of the partition, targeted at the middle grades. “Do you ever wish we could reverse time?” Amil asks his twin sister, Nisha. Like their father, a doctor whose skills are welcome but whose presence is resented, the children are trying to get their footing in the bustling new world of Bombay. The family are refugees from Sindh, in what has become Pakistan. Both Amil and Nisha long for their mother, who died after giving birth to them. Nisha writes to her in her diary, and Amil draws sketches addressed to her. The twins’ longing for their mother, their coming to grips with their new surroundings, their enjoyment of the small pleasures of life, and their tentative new friendships add up to a complex coming-of-age tale. What makes this tale extraordinary is the historical context juxtaposed with their daily lives. Amil and Nisha are scarred by the horrors they have been through. Amil has heard of women who threw themselves into wells so that they “wouldn’t be touched by evil men.” The twins continue to live through momentous days under the shadows of fear and violence. Amil faces the additional challenge of helping a famished orphan friend, Vishal, fight for survival. The use of “Mama” for mother and Vishal’s repeated use of “man” seem out of place, but in the big scheme, Amil’s voice and his sketches make this an outstanding contribution to the genre and a thoughtful exploration of the consequences of bigotry. A.K. Kulshreshth

MYSTERIES AT SEA: Peril on the Atlantic A. M. Howell, illus. Marco Guadalupi, Usborne, 2023, £7.99, pb, 320pp, 9781801316743

July 1936. As the Queen Mary races across the Atlantic to win the prestigious Blue Riband trophy, Alice’s adventure, to solve a number of interconnected mysteries, begins as time ticks by. It is the summer, and Alice is looking forward to exploring the huge ship with her 60

father, Staff Captain Townsend, but soon finds that she does not have permission to explore the luxury vessel with its celebrity guests. Alice is an engaging, brave character whose insatiable curiosity and quick wit soon have her in a bother as she witnesses an attack upon Joseph, a steward. Her desire to do the right thing is admirable and appealing. Unable to share her experience with her father, lest she is told to stay within her cabin, stopping her from investigating further, she confides in her new friend, Sonny, a boy a couple of years her senior. He is a lovely, understated character with his own sense of mystery. Together they begin their quest for the truth. This maritime adventure is riveting. The author clearly loves the nautical life as it is effortlessly portrayed on the page. The plot moves apace as secrets and sabotage drive their investigation along, placing them in danger and bringing them closer together as friends, unaware that everything they learn will change their lives forever. There are strong themes within the story of loyalty, love, betrayal, friendship bonds, loneliness, and loss. I certainly would follow the series to read Alice and Sonny’s next adventure. Recommended for competent readers of 8+ years who enjoy a page-turning adventure on the high seas. Delightfully illustrated by Marco Guadalupi. Valerie Loh

SEA OF GOLD Gregory Mone, illus. Berat Pekmezci, Amulet, 2023, $15.99/C$18.99, hb, 236pp, 9781419756832

Twelve-year-old impoverished Irish lad Maurice Reidy, nicknamed “Fish” for his love of swimming, is sent to the city to work for his uncle. When delivering a sack of coins at the docks, a thief swipes the bag from him. Fish swims to the thief’s ship to try to get the coins back but discovers the Scurvy Mistress is crewed by pirates. They are looking for the legendary golden Chain of Chuacar, and Fish decides to remain with them so he can earn money from a crewman’s share of plunder to help his family. It turns out that Fish’s bag of coins holds a cipher clue to the location of the hidden treasure, and Fish helps the captain decode it. But fitting in with the crew is no easy task because mutinous crewman Scab takes a dislike to Fish, despite Fish having saved him from drowning. And a rival pirate, a woman called Lady Swift, is determined to destroy the Scurvy Mistress and its crew. If the text contained a date, I didn’t find it, and assumed that the period is in the “golden age of piracy.” Young readers will enjoy exciting plot elements such as code-breaking, pirate raids on other ships, walking the plank, and Fish using his swimming skills to hunt for treasure. The other members of the crew include women, other children Fish’s age, and people of color, providing diversity in an historical setting. The book is a reworking of Mone’s first novel for children, then called Fish,

REVIEWS | Issue 107, February 2024

according to his website. The story is openended, with an excerpt from the next volume, enticing readers to want to find out what happens next. Adventure story fans will enjoy imagining themselves in Fish’s shoes as he sails the high seas. B.J. Sedlock

CITY OF STOLEN MAGIC Nazneen Ahmed Pathak, illus. Sandhya Prabhat, Puffin, 2023, £7.99/$14.99, pb, 375pp, 9780241567487

This debut novel by British Bangladeshi writer Nazneen Ahmed Pathak is as powerful as it is original. We meet 12-year-old Chompa on a riverbank outside Dacca, where her beloved Ammi (mother) is combing her long wild hair. Soon it’s revealed that Ammi is a djinn or witch, and that Chompa too has magical powers. But in her impatience to use her magic, Chompa sets in train terrible events, beginning with the kidnap of Ammi. Chompa’s quest to find Ammi takes her via Dacca to 1850s London and a community of ‘Laskars’ (seafarers) in the East End. The era that Pathak evokes is one where the British unjustly rule and exploit India. Many of the fictional events reflect actual happenings, e.g., the Company behind the kidnap is based on the East India Company – both forced farmers to grow cash crops such as indigo, causing widespread famine. Themes of oppression and exploitation of the poor by the powerful are skilfully threaded through the storyline in small cameos and broad strokes. When Chompa boldly draws together an army of trafficked magical children and adults to fight the Company at the East India Dock, the parallel with the Battle of Cable St is strong. The narrative is pacy, the plot twists, and the chapter endings are the sort that draw the reader on. Magic is used sparingly and to great effect in a story where friendship, intelligence and bravery play an equal part in resolving matters. Scenes are also infused with the language, smells and images of the Bangladeshi and other communities living around Spittlefields [sic]. The ‘chai’ at the Pickled Egg Tavern smells tantalisingly of ginger, cinnamon, clove and cardamom. An enthralling, dare I say spell-binding, read for children of 9+. Highly recommended. It would make a wonderful animation. Marion Rose

ON WINGS TO THE STARS Kate Poels, illus. Sarah Horne, Matador, 2023, £7.99, pb, 175pp, 9781803136844

Eliza is eleven, and she feels very alone. The one person she feels close to in her family is her great-grandmother, whom she calls Ganny. The great-grandmother came to live with the family two years previously after having a stroke. She gives Eliza a journal kept by her older brother, John, who died in 1942 while on operations with the RAF. The book primarily occupies two timelines. Eliza’s is in the present, around 2021, and John’s is in 1941 and 1942, mostly in Malta. This is an

unexplored facet of the conflict of World War Two. Poels evokes the chalky caves and the separateness of an island like Malta. She also points out that Malta was the only island to be awarded the George Cross for the bravery of all the islanders, who often felt overlooked in the distribution of supplies. During this period the islanders and those stationed there nearly starved. Two characters in this narrative are ghosts. Poels develops a discussion of whether ghosts are real and whether their reality matters to people who love them. It is a clever device which works for about ninety percent of the novel. Rebecca Butler

THE DESTINY OF MINOU MOONSHINE Gita Ralleigh, illus. Weitong Mai, Zephyr, 2023, £14.99, hb, 272pp, 9781804545478

Thirteen-year-old Minou is a foundling who lives with her adopted grandmother Dima on a dilapidated houseboat in the bend of a river in Moonlally, formerly a queendom, but now ruled by an autocratic general. A startling change in her circumstances forces Minou to use her intuition as to who is friend or foe and leads to her joining a rebel group, the Green Orchids. In this historical fantasy, the place names are invented, although the map of ‘Indica’ at the beginning of the book clearly suggests the shape of southern India, and connections with India are evoked in several ways. These include flora and fauna – elephants (real and mechanical!) play a significant role (see Weitong Mai’s glittering cover for indication of this), as do crocodiles and bats. Characters are skilled in kalari, an existing martial art originating in Kerala. Clothing is culturally referenced, for example dhotis and saris, contrasting with ballgowns of gold silk or tussore decorated with red jewels for the trousseau of the General’s daughter, Ophelia. The division and power imbalance between Blacktowners and Whitetowners is highly suggestive of the colonial connections between Europe and India. Ophelia is being sent to Lutetia (a previous name for Paris); her teacher is called Mamzelle. Minou is also known as Sparrow, and her name is close to moineau, French for sparrow. There is an airship named Napoleon, and while the date is never mentioned, the inclusion of this invention suggests a time frame of the 1850s onwards. Figures from Hindu mythology such as the elephant-headed god are mentioned but rarely by name. An exciting fantasy adventure with an engaging heroine imbued with details that enable readers to draw parallels with historical events if they wish. As the graveyard poet Farisht says: ‘Stories matter, A land that loses its stories loses its way.’ Ann Lazim

CHARMING YOUNG MAN Eliot Schrefer, Katherine Tegen Books, 2023, $19.99/CA$24.99/£14.99, hb, 288pp, 9780062982391

At first glance, Eliot Schrefer’s Charming Young Man appears to be a romance novel. The story is set in Paris at the end of the 19th century, and while there are many glittering parties, fabulous gowns, stolen kisses, bulging thighs, and even a hero on horseback, this tale is no bodice-ripper. Schrefer’s novel explores the life of French composer and pianist Léon Delafosse and his brief friendships with the celebrated author Marcel Proust and Count Robert de Montesquiou-Fézensac. The three young men occasionally collaborate but more often viciously compete with one another to reach the highest rung of the European social ladder. The author skillfully explores the anguish of trying to make authentic emotional connections at a time when revealing one’s sexual identity could prove deadly. Léon is a sweet, naive, and gifted musician who desperately tries to find his place among his more experienced peers. Slowly and painfully, he finds something so much better—himself. What makes this novel exceptional is the author’s ability to articulate Léon’s internal struggle to accept his sexuality and find the courage to do the unthinkable: share his identity with the people he loves. Although the event in this story took place over one hundred years ago, the feelings of shame, rejection, and fear that the characters navigate will strongly resonate with young audiences. As a parent, I sincerely appreciated how this story helped me understand what children risk when they trust parents to love them as they are. I highly recommend it for romance fans ages 14 and up. Melissa Warren

THE STORM AND THE MINOTAUR Lucy Strange, illus. Pam Smy, Barrington Stoke, 2023, £7.99, pb, 85pp, 9781800902473

This novel tells the story of nine-year-old George, who wants to stay at school but whose family needs him to go out to work. The only job available is mining. Set in the 19th century, it examines the feelings of confusion and frustration that must have affected so many in the same situation. It also references a true story, outlined at the end of the book. George’s family is kind and loving. His mother would like him to continue at school, where his teacher says he is bright and capable, but poverty means that at nine he is more than old enough to go to work with his father, a coal miner. His father is proud of him, but George is torn, realising that a different life could be possible for him. The night before his first shift he finds a book his uncle, killed in a pit accident, had hidden when he was a child, a book of ancient myths, including that of the Minotaur. George imagines a labyrinth of his own, the world of interlocking colliery

galleries and natural caves honey-combing the land beneath his feet, and wonders whether it might hold a monster of its own. But when an accident strikes and it is up to George to lead to safety a bunch of fellow child workers, including his own little sister, the monster he conjures up helps rather than terrifies them. This is a short, well-paced, simple story written with a gentle mix of warmth and jeopardy. Descriptions are vivid – a wooden pen-holder is ‘worn silky smooth’ – and realistic: his father has coal-dust ‘settled into his skin in deep black creases’. This novel addresses an issue modern children will identify with, and should prove an effective page-turner for children aged 8 – 12. Jane Burke

BROOMS Jasmine Walls, illus. Teo DuVall, Levine Querido, 2023, $24.99, hb, 248pp, 9781646142675

In 1930s Mississippi, Emma and Mattie (mixedrace Black and Choctaw girls) are at risk of being sent to a boarding school if they’re not able to buy a permit to practice magic. As jobs become scarce and patrols to find magic users are increasing, Luella, a cousin whose magic has been sealed after a boarding school incident, proposes illegal broom racing. She knows just the person who can help too: a team of racing women who call themselves “The Night Storms.” With training, they might be able to raise enough money. But rivals soon emerge who call their team “The Pedigrees,” mage academy students who will do anything to win. This YA graphic novel brings in a wealth of marginalized perspectives such as indigenous, Black, queer, trans, and deaf. The characters are beautifully drawn and include all shapes, sizes, and colors. Particularly impressive is when sign language is included in the panels. The illustrations convey the tension of racing coupled with the human experience of those fighting to overcome racist laws. Overall, the story is themed around love and acceptance as it reflects upon marginalized experiences of this time with an eye on hope for a better future. Other tropes include found family elements, witchcraft, and a sprinkling of romance. From the color palettes to the fashion to the setting backgrounds, each new turn of the page is a succulent feast for the eyes. Brooms is a heartwarming and impactful tale of courage perfect for fans of diverse magical stories. J. Lynn Else

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CONFERENCES

The Society organizes biennial conferences in the UK, North America, and Australasia. Contact Richard Lee <richard@historicalnovelsociety.org> (UK), Jenny Quinlan <jennyq@historicaleditorial.com> (North America), or Elisabeth Storrs <contact@hnsa.org.au> (Australasia).

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