The Three Faces ofEve BIBLICAL
EDITORS’ CHOICE
ANCIENT EGYPT
INFINITY IN THE PALM OF HER HAND
Gioconda Belli (trans. Margaret Sayers Peden), HarperCollins, 2009, $23.95/C$28.95, hb, 244pp, 9780061673641.
CITY OF THE DEAD: A Seven Wonders
Novel
T. L. Higley, B&H, 2008, $14.99, pb, 400pp, 9780805447316
When Pharaoh’s chief wife is found dead, Hemiunu, the Grand Vizier who oversees the building of the Great Pyramid, is suspected of murder. It does not help that they were once in love and that Pharaoh knows it. Hemiunu must prove his innocence, and in the process he forges a bond with Neferet, a young woman who believes in one true God. This book is a Christian historical, the second in a projected series, each connected to one of the Seven Great Wonders of the ancient world. From time to time, Neferet voices what seems remarkably like modern Protestant theology. There is no hint of the actual historical roots of monotheism, and as pyramid builders talk about “timelines,” and explain that they must “rework all the numbers,” it’s hard to believe you’re in ancient Egypt. However, Hemiunu is a likable and complex character. As he uncovers the connection between the queen’s killing and a long-ago suspicious death, he also confronts his own imperfections as a man. The mystery has enough twists and turns to satisfy any reader and builds to a suspenseful climax.
Phyllis T. Smith
CLASSICAL
SPQR XII: Oracle of the Dead John Maddox Roberts, Minotaur, 2008, $24.95/ C$27.95, hb, 240pp, 9780312380939
In this, the twelfth of Roberts’ Roman mystery series featuring his sleuth Decius Caecilius Metellus, Italy is on the brink of civil war. Decius, who is serving his year as praetor (judge), decides to escape the tensions of Rome and tour the resort towns of Campania, doing a little judging and a lot of relaxing. But Campania too is in a ferment of political and ethnic strife. This comes to a head when the priests of a local temple of Apollo are found murdered and suspicion falls on the black-robed priestesses of Hecate, who utter prophecies to the credulous peasantry in a Stygian chamber beneath the temple. As Decius investigates, the bodies pile up and he too narrowly escapes death. Roberts serves up a large helping of historical background (sometimes, one feels, almost too much) and is very informative about the curiosa of Roman religion. The plot is well-paced and neatly resolved. For this reader, the book is marred only by dialogue that strikes the ear as rather too modern and slangy.
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Gioconda Belli’s daring feat of climbing inside the world of Adam and Eve, from their creation through the fall and toward a dawn of civilization, makes an extraordinary read. Her roots as a poet are amply evident, even in translation, as she constructs a Blakean idyll that is both nostalgic and horrifying. She makes Adam and Eve into real characters nonetheless, and deals with the issue of primacy between them and their roles in the fall very imaginatively.
One of her most seductive characters is the serpent, who is not cast as completely evil, and who is Eve’s window into the invisible God who created their paradise and then flung them out of it—because Eve ate of the tree of knowledge. No apples here, just figs.
Time is compressed in this slim volume, which takes us all the way to Cain’s slaying of Abel. The rich language is never ponderous, and despite the fact that we all know what happens, Belli keeps us engaged in her story, using words like a magical slide that, once you begin the descent, will not let you off until it ends.
Most fascinating to me is the way she neatly leads us from the Creationist view of the origin of mankind to a place where the door to Darwinism is wide open. This fast, delicious book is a highly recommended read.
EVE: A Novel of the First Woman Elissa Elliott, Delacorte, 2009, $24.00, hb, 421pp, 9780385341448
Susanne Dunlap
The Old Testament tale of Eve informs this imaginative, poetic novel of what the first woman’s life might have been like, both before and after her expulsion from the Garden of Eden. The story of Adam and Eve’s life in the Garden of Eden is told via flashbacks, and both Eve and her daughters struggle with the possibility of returning to the sacred place. Each chapter is narrated by and focuses on the experiences of Eve or one of her three daughters, and Elliott skillfully uses different narrative points-of-view and voices to further the character development. Eve is wise and world-weary, both beaten down by the struggles of her life and faith and comforted by the presence of Elohim. Aya, the middle daughter, is shrewd and opinionated, but her mangled foot keeps her from the public eye. Youngest daughter Dara speaks with a child’s voice as she is sent from her home to assist the Mesopotamian women in the village near her family’s settlement with their children, and chapters focusing on Naava, the eldest and most attractive of Eve’s daughters, are told in the third person, reminding the reader that Naava’s personal story is being dictated by outside forces rather than her own desires. The novel also delves into the Cain and Abel story, describing the origins of their feud and its escalation into murder.
Elliott draws not only on Jewish and Christian scholarship but also on Mesopotamian history for her interpretation, and an afterword describes the sources consulted and the author’s creative process. Biblical literalists may take affront at Elliott’s interpretation of the creation story and assertion that Adam and Eve were not the first man and woman on Earth, but readers who enjoy woman-centered reinterpretations of Old Testament texts (such as Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent) will be drawn to Eve
Nanette Donohue
HAVAH: The Story of Eve
Tosca Lee, NavPress, 2008, $12.99, pb, 363pp, 9781600061240
A whisper in my ear. Wake!
Much has been written about Eve (called Havah in this novel), the seductress who ate the forbidden fruit and thus brought about the fall of mankind, but I doubt her heart has ever been so deeply plumbed as in this lyrical novel by Tosca Lee. Havah comes to consciousness in the Garden of Eden, a place where she experiences a sublime intimacy with both the creator and the creation (most particularly with her husband, Adam).
Havah is a fascinating novel about human relationships at the dawn of time. Although Havah’s marriage begins in the perfection of Paradise, and then lasts nearly a thousand years, its very ordinariness is amusing. When Havah and Adam are cast out of Eden, they must acquire all the skills necessary for their survival, including hunting, farming, and midwifery––and Adam must learn to deal with a wife who experiences depression and moodiness. As time passes, and their offspring multiply and spread out over the region, there is a blossoming not only of art and trade, but also of infidelity, idolatry, and murder. Filled with beautiful imagery, Havah is an enjoyable read about the “Great Mother” of us all.
Nancy J. Attwell
DRAGONFLIES: A Novel
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Grant Buday, Biblioasis, 2008, C$19.99/$18.95, pb, 166pp, 9781897231470
Dragonflies
The ancient Greeks were masters of the written word. From Homer, to Euripides, to Thucydides, their stories of human pathos pulse with a power that, on the whole, is unparalleled in modern literature. A recent resurgence of popular interest in The Iliad, Homer’s epic poem about the Trojan War, has led many writers to try their hand at retelling some portion of the story. Buday may not be the first, but he is definitely one of the best.
When Dragonflies begins, ten years have passed since Paris “…arrived in Sparta wearing an indigo robe trimmed with pearl, crocodile sandals with gold clasps, his hair perfect, while all Helen had to look forward to was cotton dyed in onion skin. So off she went, taking half the treasury with her.” Hector and Achilles are dead, and the Greeks have splintered into factions that hate each other more than they hate the Trojans. Desperate to achieve his dream of conquering Troy, Agamemnon asks Odysseus to devise a plan of victory.
This first-person account of the final weeks of the Trojan War is written in Odysseus’s voice. Filled with longing for his wife and son, Odysseus takes a paternal interest in the welfare of his two young servants, Sinon and Dercynus, but once he conceives the plan for the gigantic wooden horse with its bellyful of soldiers, the fate of both boys becomes entwined with his own. Although Buday adds his own variations to the story, he holds true to the emotional power of the original. Here on the field beneath the walls of Troy are gathered warriors, commanders, and kings whose pride and stubbornness affect all. Violence and hope mingle. Troy falls. The gods laugh. And Homer smiles with delight. Highly recommended for anyone with a passion for the ancient world. Nancy J. Attwell
SHIP OF ROME
John Stack, HarperCollins, 2009, £12.99, hb, 368pp, 9780007285235
This is the first of a series of naval warfare adventures set during the Punic Wars between Carthage and Rome. The main characters are the Roman centurion of marines, Septimus, and the Greek sea captain Atticus, commander of the warship Aquila. So far, so original; but on page
Y THE LOST ARMY
2 we learn that the Aquila is rowed by chained slaves, as are the opposing Carthaginian galleys. It should not be necessary to say yet again that the myth of the ancient galley slaves originated with Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur. The ships steer by degrees, a couple of thousand years too early. Some of the legionaries can’t swim, although this was a part of every legionary’s basic training, and the projected new Roman
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Valerio Massimo Manfredi (trans. Christine Feddersen-Manfredi), Macmillan, 2008, £10.00, hb, 416pp, 9780230530676
The Lost Army is the story of 10,000 Greek soldiers who are spearheading an attack on the Persian king, Artaxerxes, by his brother, Cyrus, who wishes to usurp his brother’s throne. Ostensibly mercenaries, the soldiers are actually recruited and unofficially supported by the Spartan government who, although supposedly allies of Ataxerxes, are looking to promote their own strategic agenda by backing both sides. Unfortunately, the plan goes awry and Cyrus is defeated and killed. Although the battle is lost, the Spartan army is still a cohesive force, and their commanders decide to fight their way through Persian lands back to Greece.
The story is told from the point of view of Abira, a young woman, and is based on one of the most famous works of Greek literature, the Anabasis. The research and attention to detail are faultless. The principal characters spring from the pages with vigour and life while the reality of life for the Greek soldiers as they struggle to survive against all the odds makes for breathtaking reading. Fans of Valerio Manfredi will already have devoured this book. If you are not familiar with his work then this is the book for you. Highly recommended.
Mike Ashworth
navy is described (in my advanced review copy, anyway) as the Classis Romanus. No, “classis” is a feminine noun requiring a feminine adjective, so the Roman navy was the Classis Romana Yet there are good things here, too. The story is exciting, with strong characters and vigorous action, and sets up a multi-generational conflict in future instalments, between the Carthaginian Barca family and the Roman Scipio family. Free those chained slaves, Mr. Stack, and I’ll buy the next novel in this series, even though this one contains more howlers than a pack of wolves at full moon.
Alan Fisk
THE REPUBLIC OF VENGEANCE (US) / OF MERCHANTS AND HEROES (UK)
Paul Waters, Overlook, 2009, $25.95, hb, 480pp, 9781590201428 / Macmillan, 2008, £14.99, hb, 471pp, 9780230530317
In the late third century BC, Marcus, a 14year-old Roman journeying to Greece with his father, is captured by pirates. His father is killed, but Marcus escapes. He becomes the friend of Titus Flamininus, and participates, under Flamininus’s leadership, in Rome’s fight to liberate her Greek allies from Macedonian rule, learning hard lessons about tyranny, democracy, and war. He falls in love with a young Greek aristocrat named Menexenos who has much to teach him about commitment and honor.
Like Mary Renault’s classic historical, The Last of the Wine, this novel depicts the forging of a young man’s character in turbulent times, and posits a society in which homosexual love is completely accepted. Waters’s style is flawless. The voice of the first person narrator is absolutely believable. Few novelists I have read other than Renault bring the ancient world alive as well as Waters does here. Among the novel’s strengths are its vivid battle scenes and the restrained, tender love story.
However, the characterization and the plot leave a bit to be desired. Marcus, after passionately dedicating himself to avenging his father’s death, does not bring about a confrontation but meets the murderer several times in accidental ways that strain belief. Fearless in war, he hangs back when the pirate fortuitously kidnaps his own relative. Menexenos must urge him to hunt the pirate down. Marcus hesitates because he deeply dislikes the relative. This seems sensible enough to me, but I doubt that it would to a Roman hero. Nevertheless, Paul Waters is an extraordinary new talent. An “epic series” is promised by the publisher, and I will be looking forward to the next book. Republic of Vengeance is a breathtaking trip to the past: moving, thought-provoking, and a literary treat.
Phyllis T. Smith
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2nd CENTURY
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DEATH AT POMPEIA’S WEDDING
Rosemary Rowe, Severn House, 2008,
2nd Century-9th Century
£18.99/$27.95, hb, 256pp, 9780727866981
This is the latest in the series of Libertus detective stories written by Rosemary Rowe. As Rosemary Aitken, she has written a series of Cornish sagas set at the end of the 19th century. Libertus is a freed slave, whose trade was that of mosaic maker. An expert on patterns and puzzles, he turns his hand to whodunits for his patron, who is Marcus Aurelius Septimus. Marcus is wealthy and politically influential in the Roman province of Britain.
The novels are placed at the end of the second century AD, in south-west Britain. Marcus is off to Rome but has a wedding invitation. He summons Libertus and asks him to attend the wedding as his representative. A death on the wedding day provides Libertus’ first challenge, and the novel’s premise.
The narrative flows easily and the plot develops at pace. Death at Pompeia’s Wedding is written in a simple and accessible style, which makes it a quick and entertaining read. Plot is all in a detective story, and this one twists and turns to a surprising conclusion. However, the plot is a little stretched to sustain itself over the pages. The use of Latin vocabulary gives a period feel, and the historical detailing appears realistic from a Roman perspective. However, the ‘Romanitas’ was not well balanced with the vernacular that coexisted; any native touches seemed additional rather than integral to the novel. Characterisation did not hook me nor persuade me of Libertus’ individuality in a very crowded, if popular, market for Roman detectives, although unfamiliarity with the rest of the series may be a problem in this respect.
Bill Dodds
5th CENTURY
ATTILA, THE JUDGEMENT
William Napier, Orion, 2008, £12.99, hb, 468pp, 9780752861142
AD 449. In this, the final volume of Napier’s ambitious trilogy, Attila has united the Hun tribes. Streaming off the steppes to the banks of the Danube, the horde is poised to sweep down on the crumbling Roman Empire. With porous borders, a restless, unreliable population, and two bickering emperors, one in Ravenna, one in Constantinople—both incompetent—the oncegreat empire has been reduced to vulnerable chaos. Her only hope lies in Master-General Aëtius. Napier follows the theory that Attila was held as a hostage in Rome. He escaped back to the steppes where he may have met Aëtius, definitely a hostage with the Huns. Friends as boys, now they are to meet as enemies. Both men must gamble. For Attila, the prize is hated Rome herself; for Aëtius, the empire’s survival. The novel opens with the siege of a Roman Danube fort covering over one hundred bloodsoaked, absolutely riveting pages. After such a spectacular start, lulls are inevitable but they are few. Napier excels at battle scenes—just as well—but he has also created many colourful
characters. Of the real ones, Aëtius is the most interesting but there are other secondary, invented figures that, despite their modern dialogue, engage the reader. Attila himself is a hard nut to crack, and I am not sure Napier manages this. As a child in the first volume, he was convincing, even appealing, but as one of history’s greatest warriors, he comes across as a bit of a cliché. That, however, detracts very little from the success of the novel as a whole.
Obviously, a novel about Attila should not be for the faint-hearted and squeamish. I am both. But this trilogy is a triumph: beautifully written, fast paced and seeming as historically accurate as is possible for such a misty epoch.
Lynn Guest
6th CENTURY
THE KILLING WAY
Tony Hays, Forge, 2009, $24.95/C$27.95, hb, 320pp, 0765319454
It was only a matter of time before historical mysteries discovered King Arthur. Modern mysteries occasionally feature Excalibur and the Grail; and, like the medieval romances, fantasies sometimes deploy magic to help uncover crimes. This, however, may be the first historical mystery set in a credible Dark Age Arthurian world based upon the earliest surviving records.
Merlin stands accused of murder, and Arthur’s prospects of being chosen high king will be dashed if his favourite counsellor is condemned. To investigate, Arthur turns to Malgwyn, a former warrior who has sunk into drunkenness after losing an arm in battle. Fortunately, his wits and powers of observation remain keen enough to uncover the culprits among Arthur’s enemies, be they lords aspiring to the high kingship themselves, or hostile Saxons. And what about the sinister druids gathering in surprising numbers for the council meeting to choose Ambrosius’ successor?
Malgwyn’s personal struggle with the bitterness of loss, first of wife, then arm, and to reconcile himself with his surviving family, add human interest as he searches desperately for the killers in this impressive (and suspenseful) start to a new series.
Ray Thompson
in-law, who covets the silver by-product of the lead. When her beloved husband is reported killed in battle, Rendil strikes. Falsely accused of adultery and treason, Wynflaed is driven into exile and has her children taken from her. She endures slavery, rape and appalling hardship in her fight for justice.
In his first novel, Sellars presents a detailed, fascinating picture of 7th century England. The Peakland landscapes in all seasons are lovingly described as is the daily life of the thegns, freemen and slaves. He has peopled this landscape with an excellent array of female characters, both high and low. That the women are so much more colourful than the rather dull men is a slight weakness in the novel. Wynflaed herself is a more than feisty match for her various antagonists. She is perhaps not entirely a 7th century creation but not too irritating a 21st century one either. The language combines the colloquially modern with fake but convincingly earthy “Anglo-Saxonisms”—a wife as “cold as a frog’s tit” was a personal favourite.
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7th CENTURY
THE WHISPERING BELL
Brian Sellars, Quaestor2000, 2009, £9.99, pb, 210pp, 9781906836016
In Anglo-Saxon Mercia at the time of King Penda’s wars, the orphan Wynflaed is taken in and raised by a kindly thegn and his family. Upon her marriage to the son of a wealthy landowner, she is given an abandoned lead mine as a “morning gift”. Clever and practical, Wynflaed makes a success of the mine, thus attracting the jealousy of Rendil, her brother-
This is a really excellent read, a page-turner that also gives a vivid and convincing portrait of Mercian England.
Lynn Guest
9th CENTURY
RAVEN: BLOOD EYE
Giles Kristian, Bantam, 2009, pb, 348pp, 9780593061626
Circa 800 AD, Osric cannot remember life before his wretched existence in a Wessex coastal village. When two long ships arrive, their crewmen under Jarl Sigurd are willing to trade, but fear leads to treachery and the obliteration of the villagers. Osric is taken alive on board the long ship Serpent—unaccountably he knows the language of the heathen Norsemen. As graceful Serpent and her sister ship ride an almighty storm at sea, Osric has the gruelling experience of becoming an oarsman, then learning how to use the lethal weapons beloved of these ferocious men: an honourable death in battle will ensure their place with the gods in Valholl. Osric, now called Raven, must match their skill; eventually he excels.
When Sigurd’s ships are impounded the Norsemen are forced by the Christians of Wessex to undertake the quest for a priceless Holy Book. In scenes of merciless cruelty, coarse, brutal and relishing bloodshed, the Norse warriors fight their way inland fiercely opposed by Welsh and Mercians.
I believed every word of this utterly macho story with its powerful, crude language and relentless, sometimes sickening violence. And yet Giles Kristian’s writing is shot through with imagery of startling beauty and precision. Osric-Raven gives readers a hint that Jarl Sigurd yearns for something greater than a life focussed on fields of blood. But what? The sequel has already been written.
Nancy Henshaw
10th CENTURY
FAR AFTER GOLD
Jen Black, Quaestor2000, 2009, £8.99, pb, 186pp, 9781906836030 / Also large print, 9781906836047
This is an unashamedly romantic tale set in 10th century Scotland. Our heroine, Emer, has been kidnapped from her island home, Pabaigh, by Viking raiders. In the Dublin slave market, she is purchased by the “silver-gilt”-haired Flane Kentilsson, and is immediately torn between “terror and fascination” as he takes her to his settlement in the West Highlands to be his “bed slave”.
It’s not a case of will they fall in love, but when, and what are they to do, because Flane is already promised to the beautiful, spoilt Katla, only daughter of the chieftain of the settlement—and of course, will Emer ever see her beloved Pabaigh and her family again?
Flane and Emer frequently come across as rather too 21st century. She is as accommodating of his pagan faith as he is of her Christianity, and the portrayal of life in the Viking community veers towards the rose-tinted.
However, this story has plenty of sexy romance, a bickering, bantering hero and heroine, a hissable villain, an orphan boy (with an appealing dog!) and beautiful scenery. Just the thing for a cold winter evening!
Mary Seeley
THE HIGH CITY
Cecelia Holland, Forge, 2009, $25.95/C$28.95,
Y SCARLET
hb, 320pp, 9780765305596
This novel continues Holland’s Viking series. Raef Corbansson is grieving the loss of his cousin Conn, who lies dead back in Kiev. Because the coming winter makes it impossible to return home, Raef marks time by taking wages to row for a trading ship in the warmer climate of the Greek Sea. A storm and the subsequent shipwreck land him in the middle of a Byzantine civil war, where his aid in disabling the stone-throwers earns him an offer to join the imperial Varangian guard. Constantinople’s size and richness dazzle Raef, but despite having acquaintances in the guard, he is reluctant to enlist. His non-servile attitude lands him in trouble when he insults Helena, wife of co-Emperor Constantine. Constantine’s brother Basil, who holds the real power, seizes an opportunity to send Raef on a mission that should rid him of both his traitorous sister-inlaw and the troublesome Viking.
Readers who want to be spoon-fed information may have problems staying with it, but those who are content to wait for the author to reveal plot points and relationships will be more than satisfied. In the beginning, Raef doesn’t speak Greek and is a stranger in a strange land, also leaving the reader in the dark, at least at first. Ancient place names had me checking the reference books, and dates have to be deduced from the context. But this is not meant as a complaint. The thing I enjoy most about Holland’s books is that they introduce me to eras and settings I don’t know much about, while making me care about the characters. As always, her historical detail, such as Byzantine
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Stephen Lawhead, Thomas Nelson, 2008, $15.99, pb, 443pp, 9781595540898
In the second book of his King Raven trilogy, Stephen Lawhead continues his re-imagination of the Robin Hood legend as mythic Welsh adventure, this time from Will Scarlet’s point of view. William Scathelocke, a halfWelsh half-Saxon forester, loses his home and livelihood when an invading Norman baron kills his Saxon liege. Homeless, without family, and in a mind for revenge, Will heads for the land of his mother’s birth, where word is spreading that an otherworldly hero known as King Raven is leading a last stand against Norman encroachment. What Will finds is a band of feisty forest dwellers led by a man named Rhi Bran y Hud, a displaced Welsh lord seeking to reclaim his stolen kingdom and his people’s independence by any means necessary. In Bran’s company Will finds friendship, love, and a cause worth fighting—and likely dying—to win. But in Will’s mind, death is a small price to pay for the chance to live such an adventure.
Relocating the Robin Hood legend from the shires of Richard the Lionheart to the Welsh forests of a century prior lends a mysterious, fantastical element to the adventure; the Celtic names and tinge of magic only enhance the feeling. Frequent switching between Will’s memoir and a third-person narrator takes some getting used to, but the prose is so natural and the pace so taut that the pages turn themselves. Scarlet stands alone as its own story, but after reading it, you’ll want to get your hands on the other two titles. I know I did. Very highly recommended.
Heather Domin
court intrigue and military life, is very vivid. The High City is well up to Holland’s standard. B.J. Sedlock
12th CENTURY
THE TIME OF SINGING
Elizabeth Chadwick, Sphere, 2008, £18.99, hb, 514pp, 9781847440976
AD 1173: Roger Bigod knows he must work hard for his rights and his desires. As the eldest son of a brutal nobleman, he ought to be heir to the earldom of Norfolk. His father rebelled against King Henry the Second and was deprived of the title. Roger knows that his unwavering loyalty to the king deserves the restoration of his patrimony, but he is ruthlessly opposed by his eldest half-brother and implacable stepmother. Roger becomes a renowned fighter and leader of men. But he has also mastered the King’s Law—the laws of England—and this last brings him his rights and deserts.
But what about his desires? His marriage to beautiful Ida de Tosny is one of passion and lasting love, but he must work to accept that she was King Henry’s last mistress and mother of his youngest son. Ida is a home-maker on a truly magnificent scale, but she must learn to accept Roger’s long absences from his estates, as soldier or as diplomat.
As always, readers will benefit from Elizabeth Chadwick’s well-known “hands-on” approach to research and elegant prose. Her theme is serious: the story of men and women who contributed to the making of England. The politics are even more fascinating than the romance.
Nancy Henshaw
THE JOYS OF MY LIFE
Alys Clare, Severn House, 2008, £18.99/$27.95, hb, 224pp, 9780727866950
This is the latest and last of the Hawkenlye mysteries, based at the fictitious Hawkenlye Abbey in the Weald of Kent. It begins with a death at the siege of a French castle, and then moves to the Ile d’Oléron where the main characters of the series, the kind-hearted bonehead Sir Josse d’Acquin and the headmistressy Abbess Helewise, have been summoned by the dowager Queen Eleanor to receive orders for a new chapel at Hawkenlye. Queen Eleanor charges Sir Josse to investigate rumours that the late King Richard had participated in the murderous rites of an evil cult of knights on the island. Another building is also in progress: the cathedral of Chartres. Not only is the Church involved, but also the wicked cultists, and a third group: the forest pagans who moved into the Hawkenlye series several volumes ago like a particularly aggressive band of squatters. There is enough of Sir Josse and Helewise, and of other appealing characters, to make this an engaging read, but there is far too much of the annoying pagans. Severn House has contracted Alys Clare to start an unrelated new mediaeval series. If it has the charm of the early Hawkenlye books, I shall look forward to it. Alan Fisk
LOYALTY’S WEB
Joyce DiPastena, Leatherwood, 2008, $16.95, pb, 352pp, 9781599921235
Though they are sisters, Clothilde and Heléne de Laurant are very different. Clothilde is renowned as one of the greatest beauties in Poitou, while Heléne is gangly and ordinary. Henry II sends the Earl of Gunthar to the de Laurant home to ensure that the rebellion has been quashed, and Gunthar arrives with the intention to wed Clothilde, but he unexpectedly finds himself attracted to independent-minded, tomboyish Heléne. Heléne is also interested in Gunthar, but cannot bear to betray her emotionally fragile sister. Meanwhile, rebellion is brewing among the neighbors of the de Laurant family, and Heléne must act quickly to ensure the safety of her family and her beloved.
DiPastena’s novel is a medieval potboiler, full of secret trysts, promises of love, backstabbing, and betrayal. The focus is more on the de Laurants and their circle rather than the larger events of the era. Heléne is an interesting character, and while her independent spirit sets her apart from the other women in the novel, she isn’t implausible for the era. Gunthar is your standard alpha-male romance hero with a strong sense of loyalty and duty toward his king—and his lady love. Readers who enjoy historical romance with a strong dose of intrigue will find Loyalty’s Web a pleasing read.
Nanette Donohue
THE TREASURE
Iris Johansen, Bantam, 2008, $25/C$28, hb, 368pp, 9780553807318
In this sequel to 1996’s Lion’s Bride, two popular side characters get a passionate story of their own. Lady Selene Ware, a young Scottish noblewoman, and Kadar ben Arnaud, a (mostly) reformed assassin, are whisked off into another 12th-century adventure. After years of freedom, Kadar’s Syrian master presses him back into service to help attain two dark goals: one that warps the love between Selene and Kadar into perversion, and another that will lay claim to one of the most famous religious artifacts in history.
The story opens with fun, snarky dialogue between Selene and Kadar, but then the action tends to drag until the main plot kicks in. Perhaps reading Lion’s Bride beforehand would have clued me in to the villain’s back story; without that, it was confusing for a while. But the characters have great chemistry, the adventures are exotic, and the sex is so decadent as to border on kinkiness. (That’s not a complaint.) A sensual romance/adventure read.
Heather Domin
THE BLUE WOLF: A Novel of Chinggis Khan
Inoue Tasushi, Columbia Univ. Press, 2008, $29.50, hb, 304pp, 9780231146166
Chinggis Khan is obsessed with an ancient Mongolian legend which states that the
Mongols are descendants of a mythical blue wolf. This ferocious animal could see and hear far beyond human ability, fearlessly grabbing everything around it. Through the mating of this noble beast and a delicate, slender, beautiful doe are born the Mongolian warriors destined for greatness. Such a lineage haunted Chinggis because he was unsure about his own father’s identity. Was Chinggis such a true descendant or was he the bastard child of a man who raped his mother, O’elun, while she was a captive and before she was rescued by his father, Yisugei? Chinggis vows to become the wolf and have his sons train to become wolves equal in strength and military prowess, superior leaders proud of their heritage.
Tasushi clearly charts Chinggis’s amazing evolution from a young man abandoned after his father’s death to an incredible warrior and khan of a united clan of over 200,000 soldiers. While any knowledgeable reader will not be surprised by how the great khan conquers China, Bukhara, Samarkand and the state of Khorazm in the 12th and 13th centuries, how he chooses commanders and organizes each victory is extraordinary and wise beyond anyone’s expectations. In the process, the reader is shocked, amused, bemused and finally deeply appreciative of Chinggis’s ability to understand and satisfy the few atypically strong women in his life. The great khan will struggle at his reactions to one of his sons suffering from the same doubts that plagued the khan’s youth. Chinggis Khan is an epic, yet all too human, character sure to mesmerize readers in this wellresearched account of one of the greatest leaders in Asian history. The Blue Wolf is a superior work of historical fiction.
Viviane Crystal
Y THE UNICORN ROAD
N13th CENTURY
n
FALCONER AND THE RITUAL OF
DEATH
Ian Morson, Severn House, 2008, £18.99, hb, 202pp, 9780727867025
Oxford University, 1271, and Regent Master William Falconer is presented with a skeleton— minus its head—discovered when an old building is demolished. Falconer determines that the body must be at least 20 years old and recalls that during that time the ritual murder of a child had been blamed on the Jews by an appalled and angered community. But could that death really provide the solution to this mystery?
As the weather worsens, and Oxford is in danger of being flooded, one of the men who found the remains is himself killed, and Falconer begins to suspect the involvement of the Knights Templar.
In this sixth Falconer mystery Ian Morson conjures up all the bigotry and anti-Semitism of 13th-century England. He does a nice job in describing the academic community in Oxford and uses many convincing details to bring the period and atmosphere to life.
Falconer continues to grow and develop into an interesting and novel historical sleuth, and this latest book is definitely the most enjoyable so far. If you haven’t discovered Ian Morson’s series yet then this would be a great place to start.
Sara Wilson
FORSAKEN SOUL
Priscilla Royal, Poisoned Pen Press, 2008, $24.95, hb, 216pp, 9781590585214
What could be more peaceful than summer in
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Martin Davies, Hodder & Stoughton, 2009, £12.99, hb, 327pp, 9780340896341
On the coast of medieval Sicily, an expedition, led by the scholar Antioch, sets sail for the East to seek out the wondrous beasts contained in an exquisite bestiary. A page, Benedict, the formidable General Decius, and the renowned translator, Venn, are amongst the travellers. Decius has his own agenda, one linked to the fate of the Cathars in France. Venn’s skills as a linguist are put to the ultimate test in China where he discovers a trail of messages written in a secret language shared only by women. His fate becomes entangled with that of Ming Yeuh, a young girl, who travels to the Emperor’s court to marry a warrior. When he fails to return, Benedict is sought by his father. Through his father’s narrative many of the novel’s themes and the characters’ true motives are revealed.
This is a remarkable novel which deserves to be shortlisted in 2009 for a serious prize. Davies’ prose is poetic and erudite, his plotting superb, the narrative gripping, and, above all, The Unicorn Road contains memorable characters the reader will find intriguing. Finally, the book has a moral integrity. It is set against a background of great power struggles which are repeated in our own times, but there is also the inspiration for the novel: the death of one of the last surviving users of nushi, a secret language passed down through generations of Chinese women.
Carol McGrath
an English seaside village—the seaside village of Tyndal, for instance? A summer in Tyndal without a serial killer on the loose, that’s what. It is 1273 and the local cooper, disliked by all, dies a most gruesome death. The modus operandus points to a female killer, or perhaps to a male bent on throwing the irascible Crowner Rulf off his scent. While Rulf pursues the prime male suspects, Prioress Eleanor of Tyndal Priory seeks answers from two women deeply scarred by the cooper’s brutality. The investigation, however, becomes mired in emotional entanglements, bitter memories, and old unsettled scores. From hovel to priory, all the souls of Tyndal harbor guilty secrets and illicit passions that keep them from seeing what’s right before their eyes. By the time reason prevails, the killer has struck again— and again.
Forsaken Soul is rich in dialogue and personal musings. Ms. Royal displays a rare understanding of the medieval mind beset with terror of demons and hellfire. Each character agonizes over real and imagined sins, and struggles mightily to discern the voice of God from the seductive snares of Satan. One wonders if the true mystery of Tyndal is, after all, which of its souls is most forsaken. It is a grim, somber tale but a good addition to your collection of medieval mysteries.
Lucille Cormier
THE FALL OF THE TEMPLARS (US) / REQUIEM (UK)
Robyn Young, Dutton, 2008, $25.95/C$28.50, hb, 496pp, 9780525950684 / Hodder & Stoughton, 2008, £16.99, hb, 512pp, 9780340921401
In this novel, set in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, Will Campbell, a Knight Templar, returns to Europe after the fall of the Christian empire in the Holy Land. He finds that the Knights have allied themselves with Edward I, the enemy of his native Scotland, and his own daughter, a servant at the French court, has fallen in love with perfidious King Philippe IV. A man of integrity, Will attempts to find an honorable course though surrounded by a web of intrigue and lies. Much of the plot flows from his decision to desert the Templars and fight for Scotland.
Robyn Young paints on a broad canvas. In addition to meeting the two kings, we go into battle with William Wallace and, in France, see up close the destruction of the Knights Templar. Will Campbell’s survival and that of those he loves are often at risk, and the action scenes are suspenseful and vivid. There are memorable characters, including Philippe IV, whom readers will love to hate. Young’s portrait of William Wallace is as heroic and ultimately tragic as Mel Gibson’s but rings truer historically. The torture, execution and battle scenes are not for the squeamish, but the gore never seems gratuitous.
The figure of Will Campbell holds the disparate elements of the story together and is the moral center of the book. Without any sentimentality,
Young shows us a truly courageous and noble human being, trying to adhere to his deepest beliefs despite the ethical chaos and cruelty that surround him. This book, which is the third in a trilogy but can easily stand alone, deserves a broad readership.
Phyllis T. Smith
Oxford Clerk’s tale of parted lovers intertwines with doings in the afterlife including a priest fighting the minions of hell. Frightening indeed to the modern reader, but terrifying those weary pilgrims en route to Canterbury. A fun read.
Tess Allegra
PEOPLE OF THE THUNDER
14th CENTURY
N n
HANGMAN BLIND
Cassandra Clark, Minotaur, 2008, $24.95/ C$27.95, hb, 320pp, 9780312537302 / John Murray, 2008, £7.99, pb, 311pp, 9781848540200
In the year 1382, England emerges from violent religious rebellion into precarious peace. It is during this time that Hildegard, recently widowed and financially wealthy, becomes a Cistercian nun at the Abbey of Meaux. Her grief is deep and her husband’s death a mystery. Here she discovers her life’s purpose: to set up a priory to help care for the sick, poor and homeless. Even though the countryside is unsafe, she undertakes an uncertain journey to Castle Hutton in York to ask the Abbot of Meaux for assistance. On the way she stumbles upon the gruesome sight of five hanging eviscerated corpses. Later, she discovers a slaughtered young boy and can’t help but wonder if the two incidents are connected.
After arriving at Castle Hutton, Hildegard reports her findings to Lord Roger. Murder follows her inside when, during a celebration feast, Lord Roger tumbles over into his plate of food. Assumed poisoned, his apparent death sets up a game of deception and intrigue to catch a killer. Hildegard, the key investigator, faces deceit, evil, lust, greed, and her own divergent feelings.
A debut author with raw nerve, Cassandra Clark places Hildegard, an independent woman of means, into an unheard-of role during this age. This courageous nun is an anachronism I can only describe as CSI meets the 14th century. This first book in Clark’s series will delight historical crime fans who enjoy constant plot twists.
Wisteria Leigh
A HAUNT OF MURDER
P.C. Doherty, Minotaur, 2009, $24.95, hb, 320pp, 139780312359614
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales have been reworked by contemporary author P.C. Doherty, whose pilgrims want their tales told at night to stave off boredom, and the creepier and more gruesome the better.
They are not disappointed with the final tale of the journey. It finds the group lost in Ravenscroft, an evil forest with a history of death and satanic retribution about which the Clerk of Oxford is eager to relate. Young love thwarted by murder, a hunt for buried treasure and two discovered corpses stir up the blood and blur the line of time for the wet and weary pilgrims. The
W. Michael Gear & Kathleen O’Neal Gear, Forge, 2009, $25.95/C$28.95, hb, 384pp, 9780765314390
It’s about 1300 CE in what today is Mississippi and Alabama. The dominant Sky Hand people have quickly risen to power under the leadership of the skilled but nefarious warrior Smoke Shield, the soon-to-be chief. He has aligned himself with the dark Red Power and is planning even more ambitious conquests. Meanwhile, Old White, Trader, and Two Pedals journey to Split Sky City for a rendezvous with fate. As the story unravels, their lives are revealed as a history of inevitable convergence leading to a conflict that they cannot escape. At the center of this narrowing vortex is Two Pedals, the mystic who is known as a Contrary. It is she who has sought out Old White and Trader to draw them to their destiny and to resolve their haunted pasts.
The Gears have crafted another impressive narrative of pre-European North America. The novel is rich in historical detail combined with elements of political machination, spiritual intervention, and gripping adventure. The protagonists are well-drawn characters that animate the history of the period. Readers should first explore the companion novel, People of the Weeping Eye, where the Gears introduce and create a context for the action of this novel. Still, read alone, this is a fascinating story of a moment in North American history that is certain to enlighten and entertain.
Gerald T.
Burke
N n
15th CENTURY
THE MIRACLES OF PRATO
Laurie Albanese and Laura Morowitz, Morrow, 2009, $24.95/C$26.95, hb, 384pp, 9780061558344
Set in 15th-century Italy, The Miracles of Prato relates the fictionalized story of the scandalous romance between real-life Renaissance painter and Carmelite monk Fra Filippo Lippi and Lucrezia Buti, the young woman who fled the Convent of Santa Margherita in Prato to be with him. As the narrative opens in Prato, Lippi, smitten by Lucrezia’s beauty, arranges for the girl to sit for him so he might paint her face as that of the Madonna he is creating as part of an important altarpiece. Of course they fall in love. Then Lucrezia is raped by Santa Margherita’s prior general, she and Lippi elope, Lucrezia bears him a son (Filippino Lippi, who apprenticed with Sandro Botticelli and became a great Renaissance painter in his own right), and a sacred relic goes missing.
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Y AGINCOURT (US) / AZINCOURT (UK/Canada)
Bernard Cornwell, HarperCollins, 2009, $27.95, hb, 464pp, 9780061578916 / HarperCollins, 2008, £18.99/C$29.95, hb, 464pp, 9780007271214
Agincourt is a stunning ride through the battle best known from Shakespeare’s Henry V. Through the eyes of archer Nicholas Hook, I was entrapped at the siege of Harfleur; I marched relentlessly, cold and hungry, across France as I was chased doggedly by the French army; I shot arrows skillfully at a legion said to be almost five times larger than mine. I experienced the worst in men and trembled as hard decisions were made about my future without my consent. After turning the last page, I was exhausted yet exhilarated, much as Hook and his lord felt after their unlikely triumph.
As the book opens, Hook is outlawed from England after striking a priest; he heads to France to try out his archery skills and ends up a fugitive in the attack on Soissons. From there, he returns to England, where Henry V assigns him to Sir John Cornewaille’s men. Under Sir John’s instruction, Hook accompanies Henry’s army back into France with the plan to use Henry’s birthright to seize the throne. Trapped at Agincourt, the vastly outnumbered English must employ their archers to lead to an improbable victory. Threaded neatly throughout is Hook’s ability to “hear” the voice of St. Crispinian in his head; Hook comes to rely on his patron to guide him in his uncertainty.
Agincourt is filled with blood, gore, and treachery, and Cornwell gives a human face to the suffering through Hook’s travails as well as those of his army. The characters are vivid, and the gusto of Sir John is particularly rousing. Cornwell has a gift for bringing the past to life, and this is without a doubt his finest work to date. I emerged broken, beaten, restored, and victorious as I closed the final page, and that is a testament to Cornwell’s skill.
From the dramatic opening sentence to the epilogue, Bernard Cornwell takes us on another page-turning adventure as we follow the life of skilled archer, Nicholas Hook. The year is 1413 and Nick is from a simple home, unloved by his superstitious grandmother; his life has been dogged by a feud and tragedy. Nick is a survivor; strong and determined, he becomes an outlaw. In a place called Soissons, he witnesses the atrocities committed by the French on their own countrymen as well as the torture of his fellow archers. Nick responds to the voice of saints, is hunted, yet manages to rescue a novice, Melisande, by killing a knight. When the army tries to take the defiant town of Harfleur, precious time is lost and Henry V’s army is weakened by sickness.
The research throughout is meticulous; the reader has an instant feel for what life was like. The brutality and gore are vividly and honestly described.
Tamela McCann
The battle of Agincourt (Azincourt is the French spelling) was fought in horrendous conditions mainly caused by the wet weather, the lack of French leadership and the presence of the strong longbow archers that were feared by the enemy. Nick is a worthy hero, not born to privilege, making his reputation and achieving advancement by his battle sense and skill. This novel is more than an adventure. Throughout, both priests and lords are shown in their many facets; some good, some not so good, some bad and occasionally some capable of great evil. Like the violence, the motives of men of power are exposed when the end justifies the means; for God, country or honour. In the epilogue, there is a poignant scene between Hook and Father Christopher when discussing a priest who has kept his faith true to Christ.
This is Agincourt, Cornwell style, packed with adventure, drama, detail and utterly believable—highly recommended.
Valerie Loh
Quattrocentro Italy abounds with tantalizing gossip regarding its rich and famous, be they private citizens or renowned artisans. In his Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari writes that Fra Filippo Lippi, a great “sensualist,” would stop at nothing to gratify his immediate longings. Knowing this, a patron once locked Lippi in a room to ensure that the artist would complete a painting for him. In answer, Lippi tied some bed sheets together and escaped by the window to follow his lustful inclinations. Although the novel is well written, particularly when the authors describe the artist at work with his brush, with such a hot-blooded protagonist to draw from and an almost empty slate to work with, Miracles seemed to me curiously tepid and lackluster rather than a compelling story made of blood and bone.
Alana White
CROWN IN CANDLELIGHT
Rosemary Hawley Jarman, Tempus/Trafalgar Square, 2008, $12.95/C$13.95/£6.99, pb, 414pp, 9780752445625
Originally published in 1978, Crown in Candlelight covers a tumultuous period of English and French history between 1405 and 1461. This is the story of Katherine of Valois, the strikingly beautiful yet demure daughter of King Charles VI, as told through her eyes. Her father was mentally unstable and known as “the mad king,” while her mother, Queen Isabeau, was more interested in her own concupiscent behavior then attending a sick child.
After the ambitious and handsome King Henry V of England conquers France, he strengthens the joining of the countries by making Katherine his wife and queen. King Henry adores his sweet Katherine, but tragically their time together is short-lived when Henry dies of sickness, but not before giving life to an heir. This leaves Katherine alone in a hostile and dangerous court teeming with deception and treachery.
When Owen Tudor returns two of Katherine’s repaired harps, their eyes meet. With that fleeting moment Katherine feels lonely no longer. Feeling “re-baptized,” she meets him clandestinely. They agree to meet in one week, leaving each of them with a sense of almost unbearable anticipation.
Jarman has compiled extensive research to write this expertly detailed novel. Her strength is in the development of her main characters, the descriptive setting, and the ambiance of the period. I really felt close to Katherine and could empathize with her plight. The plot is richly complex, and although the profusion of characters makes it difficult to follow at times, this is a romantic historical novel to get caught up in. With elaborate details and plot entanglements, Jarman, a master of her craft, will command your focus.
Wisteria Leigh
THE KING’S GREY MARE
Rosemary Hawley Jarman, Tempus/Trafalgar
Y THE KING’S GRACE
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Anne Easter Smith, Touchstone, 2009, $16.99, pb, 608pp, 9781416550457
Grace Plantagenet is a bastard child of King Edward IV and, after his death, finds her way to the household of Edward’s wife, Elizabeth Woodville, to be incorporated into the family with all the good—and bad—that entails. How just plain Grace blossoms into the Lady Grace is a beautiful, often moving and extremely satisfying journey.
Rather than being treated as another royal by-blow, Grace is taken under her stepmother’s wing and is given the same benefits, advice and love that her other siblings receive. In return, Grace stands firm by Elizabeth Woodville until her end. She and her sisters, primarily Bess and Cecily, form a fast and unbreakable bond. But more even than her loyalty, Grace’s intuitiveness and “street smarts” stand her in remarkable stead, most especially with the overriding passion of her early life, John Plantagenet, Richard III’s bastard son by Kate Haute (see the author’s A Rose for a Crown) and, later, with the pretender, Perkin Warbeck.
This expansive novel is, after all, particularly about Perkin, the story of whom is brilliantly interwoven with Grace’s own. Indeed, Grace is both the eyes and ears of the Tudor court and that of the surviving Yorkists, who hope to overthrow Henry VII.
I have read—and reviewed—all of Easter Smith’s novels, of which this is third. Although I have enjoyed each offering immensely, this one is the richest, most engrossing tapestry of royal life. Easter Smith has the ability to grab you, sweep you along with the story and make you fall in love with the characters. She has managed to take one fleeting historical reference to a Grace Plantagenet and spin a glorious tale based upon fact and pure imagination.
You know you have loved a book when you’re sad it ends. I cannot recommend it enough—and it is absolutely a wonderful winter read!
Square, 2008, $12.95/C$13.95/£6.99, pb, 399pp, 9780752445632
Elizabeth Woodville, young and unbelievably beautiful, finds favor at the court of her mother’s cousin, Marguerite of Anjou. Catching the eye of a handsome, soon-to-be knight, Elizabeth marries him and retires to his estate as a contented wife and mother. But the factions of York and Lancaster vie for the English throne, and her husband is killed in one of the many battles. Lancastrian Elizabeth’s home is confiscated by the Earl of Warwick, who has put Edward of York on the throne as Edward IV. Returning home in shame, Elizabeth becomes the pawn of her ambitions mother, who uses witchcraft and her daughter’s beauty to allure the new king. Elizabeth becomes Queen of England, but the Earl of Warwick vows to destroy her.
First published in 1973, this fictionalized account of Elizabeth Woodville is filled with lush descriptions of setting and clothing. The political and bloodthirsty maneuvering of York and Lancaster is also detailed, and you understand the tumultuous era where no one was safe on the throne. Elizabeth changes from a starry-eyed bride with her first husband to a manipulative siren with her second. The story slips into the realm of fantasy with Elizabeth’s mother’s use of wax dolls to hurt Warwick and secure Edward for her daughter. The novel would have worked well without this device, although legend often declares witchcraft as an excuse for their marriage.
Ilysa Magnus
I enjoyed the detail and for the first time felt sympathy for the much-maligned Elizabeth Woodville.
Diane Scott Lewis
THE RED APPLE
Jonathan Levitan, Çitlembik, 2008, $18.95, pb, 320pp, 9789944424387
A Thracian boy is conscripted into the Ottoman Janissaries. The author presents something of the life course of soldiers in this elite corps before concluding the story two decades later as Constantinople falls into their hands in 1453.
I am the first person to say that the Western world could use more books that shed light on the East, and the Janissaries are an attractive subject. I cannot recommend this book, however.
Almost anything that can go wrong in storytelling does so here. The characters, especially the women, are cardboard. Entitling the book “The Red Apple,” meant to be an emblem of a life’s goal (in the Conqueror Mehmed’s case, Constantinople), only underlines the ironic fact that our characters’ goals are ill-defined, too frequently changed, or unsubstantiated. No scene is drawn so as to make us find ourselves in it. What I call the “anthropology” is missing: we don’t get a good sense of what people eat or wear or what grows on the hillside.
Usually I protest the beginning-writer advice of “show don’t tell,” “avoid adverbs,” “don’t switch point of view erratically” and “avoid the passive” lorded over our fiction. In skillful hands, any of this can work. There are, however, reasons for these rules, which The Red Apple amply illustrates. “Show don’t tell” is particularly important in battle scenes, I’d say. What usually happens in The Red Apple is that some historical event happens off screen. Someone else then brings it in for our hero’s vague rumination. Most serious of all is the poor timing and pacing—we’re zapped here and there with no focus for our sympathies, without proper preparation to resonate. Who could imagine such tedium in a book where Vlad Dracul makes a cameo appearance?
Ann Chamberlin
SIGNORA DA VINCI
Robin Maxwell, NAL, 2009, $15, pb, 416pp, 9780451225801
An imaginative speculation on the life of Caterina, Leonardo da Vinci’s mother, this firstperson account begins in 1452, when a tryst with a faithless lover produces the child who proves to be the great love of her life. She endures scorn from both the small town of Vinci and the ambitious family of Leonardo’s father, but has an ally in her learned and unconventional father. He hatches the idea of Caterina following her young apprentice artist son to Florence as the proprietor of an alchemist shop. Once she takes on her scholar’s garb, the world of the Italian Renaissance opens to “Cato.” She becomes her son’s beloved “uncle” and gains admittance into the “Companies of the Night,” a secret underground society led by Lorenzo de Medici. When her friendship with Lorenzo catches fire, Cato is delighted to shed her bindings, and the two become lovers.
But trouble is brewing in the form of Savonarola, the “mad monk” who is threatening Florence with his inquisition of heretics. Leonardo must be sent to Milan, while Lorenzo and Caterina struggle against the fear and torture enveloping their city. Together, all three seek to end the monk’s influence by creating a hoax centering on the shroud of Turin.
Maxwell provides an adoring mother’s eye view of Leonardo’s life and inventions as well as Florentines rediscovering ancient wisdom and the joy of their own expression. Playful nods to the future spark sometimes dark proceedings as Lorenzo “makes him an offer he cannot refuse” and extols the “embarrassment of riches” of his life. Caterina is both a witness to and participant in history. And if you wonder what the mother of the incomparable Leonardo looked like, by her journey’s end, the answer will be provided. Great fun!
Eileen Charbonneau
THE BOOK OF UNHOLY MISCHIEF
Elle Newmark, Atria, 2008, $26.00, hb, 384pp, 9781416590545 / Doubleday, 2009, £12.99, hb, 384pp, 9780385615372
In her highly anticipated debut, Elle Newmark faces a daunting task: produce a novel that lives up to the hype surrounding its phenomenal auction and still stands on its own in a time where anything resembling The Da Vinci Code fast approaches its expiration date. Fortunately, Ms. Newmark succeeds, though perhaps not quite as literally as some readers will expect.
Set in 15th century Venice, the novel conjures with delightful ease the cramped canals, crumbling palazzos, and sumptuous allure of the floating city, as seen through the eyes of a wily urchin named Luciano. Orphaned and intelligent, hopelessly enamored of a seductive convent beauty, Luciano is snatched off the streets unexpectedly by the Doge’s own master chef and brought to work in the kitchens, where he soon discovers that his meticulous maestro of the culinary arts guards untold secrets. All of Venice and most of Italy’s rapacious nobility are seeking a book of alleged supernatural powers, one that could contain the key to immortality itself. As he becomes privy to the chef’s own secrets, Luciano finds himself thrust into an unpredictable world where recipes are seasoned with danger.
Newmark excels in describing the sensory delights of food and its mystical influences on the human heart; yet as the truth about the unholy book of the title becomes apparent, the familiar revelation of heretical gospels deprives the story of some of its fey originality. Nevertheless, Newmark’s Venice lingers in the mind; it is a place of sea-salt and veal in white wine, of ambition, violence, and greed in an era when the quest for otherworldly power coupled quixotically with the worldly pleasures of the table.
C.W. Gortner
PORTRAIT OF A LADY
Diane A.S. Stuckart, Berkley Prime Crime, 2009, $14.00/C$15.50, pb, 328pp, 9780425225738
The year is 1483, and Leonardo da Vinci and his apprentice Dino are asked by Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, to investigate the mysterious deaths of two women of his household. When the artist decides to place a spy inside the Sforza palazzo, Dino is chosen but is asked to dress as a female. Of course, this proves to be no problem since Dino is really Delfina, a young woman who has run away from an arranged marriage.
Investigating the deaths embroils Delfina in the inner workings of the Duke’s household. Not only does she act as a lady-in-waiting to the Duke’s niece, Caterina, but she also finds herself in close and frequent proximity to Gregorio, the handsome captain of the ducal guard. Will her heart be broken by Gregorio’s roving eye? Will she end up as the third victim if Death pays another call to the palazzo? Only the tarocchi (tarot) cards with which Caterina plays seem to tell the answer.
From the outset, I had a problem suspending my disbelief. The author plays lip service not
only to the social mores of the time, but also to the historical characters. Leonardo da Vinci was undoubtedly one of the most intelligent men ever born, yet he can’t seem to figure out that his apprentice Dino is really Delfina, a woman of twenty. In reality, a month or two in the company of da Vinci and his apprentices would unmask her, yet Delfina’s gender is never discovered—even when s/he is romping around dressed as a woman.
I hoped to have more of the story worked around da Vinci. Unfortunately, the great artist appeared mostly as a supporting character to Delfina, the apprentice-turned-sleuth. I was also disappointed in the author’s overuse of adjectives and adverbs and characters that proved less engaging than I had hoped.
Monica Spence
THE KING’S DAUGHTER
Sandra Worth, Berkley, 2008, $15/C$16.50, pb, 416pp, 9780425221440
Sandra Worth deftly illuminates the violent and messy political complexities of 15th-century England through the eyes of Elizabeth of York, the wife of Henry VII.
You’d think that the daughter of Edward IV, the niece of Richard III, and the mother of Henry VIII would be a most fierce queen, but “Good Queen Elizabeth” of this story is just the opposite. Raised amid the familial
bloodshed of the Wars of the Roses, Elizabeth is determined not to let ambition destroy her world. In the hopes of peace she willingly weds the man who defeated her uncle in battle; in the hopes of domestic tranquility she knuckles under the demands of her formidable motherin-law; to avoid conflict she rarely confronts her own husband even as he tortures and kills her friends and family. In this turbulent era, Elizabeth’s determination would appear to be a great strength—a moral superiority. Yet as woe is piled upon woe, the good queen’s lack of response to every calamity—other than wallowing in sorrow—begins to grate. Thus, the author’s considerable talents in portraying the era are hamstrung by a story propelled by events happening to the main character, rather than influenced by her.
Sometimes the little mouse in the corner has the best vantage point, but oh, how I wish—just once—she’d run out and bite!
Lisa Ann Verge
16th CENTURY
N n
THE VIRGIN QUEEN’S DAUGHTER
Ella March Chase, Crown, 2009, $24.95/ C$27.95, hb, 368pp, 9780307394804
Who is Elinor de Lacy, and why is she the protagonist of this novel? Chase takes us on a
Y APOLOGY FOR THE WOMAN WRITING
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Jenny Diski, Virago, 2008, £16.99, hb, 282pp, 9781844083855
France in the 16th century. Marie de Gournay is a selfeducated “difficult” child whose life is centred in her dead father’s library in Picardy. An uncle gives her a copy of Michel de Montaigne’s Essays, and Marie is besotted with the book and the author’s elegant expression and direct narrative voice. She engineers a meeting with her hero and inveigles him into adopting her as his literary helpmate, although for Montaigne it is more of way of extricating himself from an awkward position. Nevertheless, Marie thus achieves her ambition and becomes involved in assisting Montaigne with producing further editions of his Essays. Marie’s belief in her own literary abilities are shared by no-one else though, including, crucially and unknown to Marie, Montaigne.
Following her mentor’s death, Marie appoints herself as the guardian of his literary reputation and for the reminder of her life as a confirmed spinster, she constantly campaigns to achieve acceptance as a one of a then almostunknown species—a woman of letters of non-noble birth. The problem is Marie constantly overestimates her own literary abilities and thus becomes a figure of fun, even into her old age, in the demanding and competitively cruel, predominantly masculine cultural world of Paris in the early 17th century. Her only constant companion is her servant of 45 years, Nicole Jermyn, who watches by the bedside of Marie as death approaches.
This is a highly literary and engaging novel that is firmly set in the world of literature, of writing and reading. It is also a tale of obsession and self-duplicity, as well as having a feminist trope that demonstrates the difficulties women faced in having any sort of independence or a chosen career. Marie de Gournay was a real person, and thus the essential structure is based on historical events, but as Jenny Diski admits in a suffix, there is much that has to be invented to make the book work as fiction. This is a thoughtprovoking, strikingly original and superbly narrated novel. Doug Kemp
merry, and not-so-merry, journey with Elinor, purported by some to have been the daughter of a teenaged Elizabeth Tudor and Thomas Seymour. Was she or wasn’t she?
Young Elinor is precocious, brilliant in fact, tutored by her father, Lord Calverley. She asks the difficult questions and truly wants to know the answers. She is everything her studious, intellectual father would have wanted in a daughter. Her mother, on the other hand, is harsh and punitive. Her nanny, Eppie, is the closest thing Elinor has to a mother.
As Elinor begins to mature, she feels trapped. She wants to explore the world beyond her parents’ estate. When her father takes her to meet Dr. John Dee, Elinor is enraptured. When she meets the young Princess Elizabeth during that trip, with whom she becomes enamored, her fate is sealed. Elinor wants to be part of life at Court. Her parents oppose her at every step. After her father’s death, Elinor writes in secret to Elizabeth, who is now queen, and begs her to bring her to Court. That letter begins the unraveling of Elinor’s life as she knows it. All the trappings of Court and its political intrigues pale in comparison to the possibility that she is Elizabeth’s daughter. That could be a deadly potentiality for Elinor.
This is a well-done, well-researched and imaginative undertaking. The developing plotline, interesting characters and a nice handle on Elizabethan court politics maintain interest. Although I was not convinced that Elinor is Elizabeth’s child, Chase leaves no doubt that, in this novel, Elizabeth thought so.
Ilysa Magnus
SAWNEY BEANE: The Abduction of Elspeth Cumming
Frieda Gates, Cambridge House, 2008, $14.95, pb, 256pp, 9780981452606
In 1593, off the coast of Galloway, Scotland, a family of 48 people lived in a cave and practiced both incest and cannibalism. They would attack and kill anyone who ventured close to their hideout, drink their blood, and feed on their body parts. Sawney Beane’s wife, Nettie, was very good at “dividing up the spoils.” When traveling home from a convent, Elspeth Cumming and her brother were captured. Her brother was brutally killed, and one of Sawney’s sons took her to a secluded part of the cave where she was kept alive and away from his family.
Ms. Gates has written a page-turner of a novel, a historical thriller with a touch of the macabre. It is not for the squeamish or for those who enjoy historical romance, because this novel does have an unusual love story. I must admit this novel was not exactly what I expected from someone who is better known for her books for children. Even though the story is based on a 1734 publication by Daniel Defoe, I found it hard to believe that a family of cannibals could coexist with the general population and kill over a thousand people over a period of several years without getting caught. That said, I enjoyed the novel. The tale was well written, with excellent
character development, especially with regard to Sawney Beane and Nettie, detailing how they changed from their youth as outcasts to become the evil couple that interbred and turned to cannibalism.
Jeff Westerhoff
MISTRESS SHAKESPEARE
Karen Harper, Putnam, 2009, $24.95/C$27.50, hb, 384pp, 9780399155451
Basing her premise on a marriage bond found in Worcester, England, author Harper has fashioned an intriguing and plausible story about William Shakespeare and Anne Whateley of Temple Grafton, who may have been his (first) wife.
The two grew up together and were close until a tragedy ensued, and their families separated them. Several years later, they reunite, become lovers, and marry in secrecy. When Will is forced under pressure to marry the older, pregnant Anne Hathaway, their plans of a life together in the theatre and playwriting are thwarted. The hurt and angry Anne Whateley flees to London to run her deceased father’s carrier business. The lively, pretty and smart Anne manages to fend off other suitors, survive plague, fire, betrayal, and heartache, and become Will’s earnest promoter on his eventual arrival to pursue his theatrical ambitions. Constantly drawn together, their relationship, while never completely satisfying for either, becomes special to both.
The narrative abounds with genuine period details, witty dialogue, and intertwined references to Shakespeare’s works. Spanning over fifty years of Elizabethan and Jacobean history, Anne and Will’s tale is engagingly told and provides an enjoyable glimpse of a Shakespeare torn between two wives and lives.
Michael I. Shoop
THE QUEEN’S LADY
Barbara Kyle, Kensington, 2008, $15/$17.95, pb, 530pp, 9780758225443
The Queen’s Lady—a reprint of Barbara Kyle’s 1994 novel, A Dangerous Temptation strides boldly into Philippa Gregory territory, as it chronicles the adventures of a strong-minded lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first wife.
Honor Larke is a young orphaned heiress who becomes, after great difficulty, a ward in the house of Sir Thomas More. This powerful man teaches her to read and write and obtains for her a plum position as a lady-in-waiting to the queen. But much political and religious strife is brewing in England and abroad, and the king grows restless for a son. Honor finds herself in the heart of the troubles. She helps her Catholic queen send dispatches to Spain; at the same time, horrified by the burning of Lutheran heretics, she sets out to save them with the help of a handsome wool trader. Her loyalties waver, at times to the point of betrayal, and she soon finds herself involved in intrigues far above her abilities. Forced to flee England, she looks for
safety in the German states, only to find herself threatened by more religious violence and chaos.
The Queen’s Lady is a marvelously researched story. Barbara Kyle portrays in clear detail the complexity of the political and religious situation in England and Europe during this period, mostly by peopling her book with welldeveloped characters that come in all shades of gray. Some readers of faith may wince at the main character’s ultimate resolutions about religion, and the love story has a few rough patches, but overall this is a classic historical novel in the lovely old style—sweeping, gritty and realistic.
Lisa Ann Verge
ROANOKE
Margaret Lawrence, Delacorte, 2009, $24.00, hb, 405pp, 9780385342377
Lawrence weaves a spidery web of intrigue and adventure as she delves into the unsolved mystery of the true fate of the English settlers of Roanoke Island. The spying duo of Gabriel North and Robin Mowbray, after preventing an assassination attempt on the life of Queen Elizabeth, is sent to the fledgling New World colony of Roanoke, Virginia. Gabriel, the ladies’ man, is supposed to seduce the Indian peace chief of the Secota people and learn from her where mines of gold are.
But Gabriel bonds with the pearl-laden Naia and with her two small children. After disastrous confrontations between the two peoples, they sail for England. Gabriel wishes only to return. He gets his chance as colonists, including women and children, arrive, leading to more misunderstandings and violence even as the love between Gabriel and Naia intensifies.
Meanwhile, back in England, the longanticipated Spanish Armada arrives and the war with Spain is used as an excuse to leave the settlers on their own. When ships finally come, they find Roanoke deserted and sail for home within three days. Robin strives to sort out the mystery even as he hears rumors that Gabriel might be back. When the two team up again, vengeance is on their minds.
This grim novel of historical suspense and first contact is told simply but with the flavor of its 16th-century setting. Lawrence does well with her English characters, especially the complex and vibrant Gabriel, but the Indians seemed to be living in service to the plot and not sufficiently rendered as human beings of another culture and world view.
Eileen Charbonneau
A CONSTANT HEART
Siri Mitchell, Bethany House, 2008, $13.99 pb, 384pp, 9780764204319
Facing an arranged marriage to the Earl of Lytham, a stranger, 17-year-old Marget is reassured somewhat when her betrothed sends her an astrolabe and a romantic sonnet. Yet when Marget meets her husband at last, the
Y LUTHER’S AMBASSADORS
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Jay Margrave, Goldenford, 2008, £8.99, pb, 286pp, 9780955941504
In the second of Margrave’s “mystorical” novels, Tom Priedeux jumps from 1399, where we left him in The Gawain Quest, to the reign of Henry VIII. The book opens at the French court where Anne Boleyn is the youngest lady-inwaiting to Henry’s sister, Queen Mary of France, the new wife of Louis XII. While still in her teens, Anne burns with ambition to reform the church in England and to allow the people to read the Bible in their own language. It is here, at the French court, that she befriends Jean Dinteville and George de Selve—who later feature in Holbein’s painting— as well as Stefano, their Italian companion who disappears so mysteriously.
Once Anne has been summoned back to England, Tom Priedeux, a family servant, becomes her trusted messenger. The bond between them is cemented by their affection for Mother Muncy, their wet nurse. Surrounded by growing intrigue and danger at the Tudor court, Tom protects his mistress from her impetuosity and ambition—and teaches her never to leave written evidence. Tom has another mission: to trace his own family, a subplot that is convincingly woven into the well-known political events of the period.
Margrave was inspired to write the book after visiting an exhibition where she became intrigued by Holbein’s extraordinary painting of two French ambassadors separated by a skull, which appears as an anamorphic image in the foreground. The author has devised an intriguing plot, told around the familiar events of Anne’s life up to the birth of her daughter, but stopping short of her execution. Convincing detail and, above all, an emphasis on the importance of religion in the struggle for power and influence make this a compelling read. Margrave also weaves various disputed facts about Anne into the story, including her extra finger and the unknown date of her birth which led to rumours about her actual age and real parentage. As for the painting, the book offers an imaginative solution to the identity of the anonymous patron.
earl, still embittered from his first marriage to a beautiful, unfaithful wife, is barely civil to his new countess. Life is no better at Queen Elizabeth’s court, where the newcomer Marget is shunned.
Determined to win the affection of her husband by proving herself useful to him in his frantic quest for royal favor, Marget becomes friends with Lady de Winter, who advises Marget that in order to make her way at court, Marget must obscure her natural beauty with layers of white paint. Slowly, Marget finds acceptance among the queen’s ladies—but is Lady de Winter acting in her best interests?
Mitchell vividly depicts the atmosphere of Elizabeth’s court, as poisoned by jealousy, back-biting, and intrigue as are the women who damage their looks and their health with lead paint. Her newlyweds, struggling to build a successful relationship with each other and to maintain their integrity in a setting that is hardly conducive to such goals, provide an interesting— and fresh—perspective on a familiar period.
Susan Higginbotham
TO HOLD THE CROWN: The Story of King Henry VII and Elizabeth of York
Jean Plaidy, Three Rivers Press, 2008, $14.95, pb, 416pp, 9780307346193
This novel, a reissue of Uneasy Lies the Head, published in 1982, tells the story of the reign of Henry VII and his struggle to keep the crown he won at Bosworth Field. For the most part, it is
Lucinda Byatt
very thinly fictionalized history. The portraits of Henry, his wife, Elizabeth of York, their sons, Arthur and the future Henry VIII, and Katharine of Aragon hold few surprises. Plaidy makes her greatest imaginative leap when it comes to the disappearance of the little princes in the Tower. She does as good a job as any historian I’ve read in attempting to account for all the contradictory evidence about their demise, including the hard-to-understand behavior of their mother, Elizabeth Woodville. Plaidy’s solution to the mystery is unveiled little by little in the course of the book, and is a major source of suspense in the story.
The center of the novel is the relationship between Henry VII and his queen. Elizabeth of York comes off as a doormat. Henry likes her that way, and she finds a small place in his chilly heart. Grand passion this is not. None of the characters are capable of fully engaging either the reader’s sympathy or loathing. The good ones, like poor Perkin Warbeck, are ineffectual. The evildoers are not monstrous but have understandable motives and earnestly try to rationalize their behavior. This may or may not be an accurate take on the human condition, but in this novel it does not make for great fiction. However, the slow unraveling of the little princes in the Tower mystery kept me interested, and I did feel caught up in the broad sweep of history.
Phyllis T. Smith
17th CENTURY
GARLANDS OF GOLD
Rosalind Laker, Severn House, 2008, £18.99/$28.95, hb, 215pp, 9780727867162
Set in 17th-century Rotterdam, this is the tale of Saskia, a lady’s maid to a wealthy merchant’s wife. Saskia’s real talents, however, lie in creating unique and flattering beauty products; the secret recipes for which she has inherited from her French mother. When she meets Grinling Gibbons, the only son of her mistress, she falls head over heels in love with him. Grinling, who is already gaining an impressive reputation as an artist, is completely unaware of her feelings. His friend Robert Harding, however, is not so unappreciative or unaware. Soon after Grinling decamps to England to further his career, an opportunity comes for Saskia to settle in the same country. In England, Saskia develops an increasingly prosperous cosmetics business. While she wins in business, she loses in love as Grinling marries another. Nobody can cure her of her love, or is there one man who has the courage to fight for her?
This is a tale of talent and perseverance overcoming obstacles of class, nationality and jealous enemies. While the main characters are well drawn and there is a strong sense of place, Garlands of Gold does suffer from an occasional overdose of historical information when a lighter touch would have sufficed.
Gordon O’Sullivan
THE COURTIER’S SECRET
Donna Russo Morin, Kensington, 2009, $14.00/ C$16.95, pb, 384pp, 9780758226914
In 1682, the Court of Versailles is in its heyday. The reign of the Sun King, Louis XIV, is at its zenith. Secrecy, intrigue and violence are a way of life. Jeanne du Bois joins the court when she is sent from the convent in disgrace, much to the embarrassment of her abusive and royal-climbing courtier father. The obvious solution is to marry her off as soon as possible, a solution that Jeanne eschews. She prefers to fence and go out on her own at night dressed in men’s clothing under the assumed identity of Jean-Luc, her “cousin.” That is when she meets Henri d’Aubigne, a Musketeer, and his fellow Musketeers, whom she befriends and supports in swordfights. One day Henri meets Jeanne at court and they fall in love. All the while, Henri never suspects that the beautiful Jeanne is also the brave sword-fighting Jean-Luc, his nightly drinking companion.
Ms. Morin’s knowledge of the Palace of Versailles and the daily routine of the court is extensive, but it tends to dominate the story. Her heroine is gutsy and likable if a bit too modern in her outlook for the period. The premise, however, is implausible even with a good stretch of the imagination. The sense of the time involved in accomplishing certain acts is a bit skewed and absurd.
Audrey Braver
IN THE SHADOW OF THE SUN KING
Golden Keyes Parsons, Thomas Nelson, 2008, $14.99, pb, 384pp, 9781595546265
Madeleine Clavell is devastated when her estate is overtaken by the king’s dragoons. As a Huguenot in Catholic France, she hides her sons from being kidnapped and forced to convert. Fearing for her family’s safety, she rushes to Versailles to beg King Louis XIV—a close childhood friend—to uphold the Treaty of Nantes, which guarantees tolerance. But Louis now wants to unite France under one religion. He is furious when Madeleine refuses to become his mistress, and vows revenge on the Clavells. Madeleine returns home to find her estate burned, her husband arrested, and her daughter snatched into a convent. Now she must rely on God’s mercy and an unexpected source for help.
With its simple prose, this reads like a young adult novel. Character and setting details are sparse. The grandeur of Versailles is mentioned several times but never described. The author often tells what happens rather than shows. Most of the dialog is preceded by the “telling” of what speakers are about to say before they say it. The religious aspect, the characters’ unshakeable faith in adversity, is strong in the last third of the story. For fans of inspirational novels.
Diane Scott Lewis
THE QUEEN’S DEVOTION
Jean Plaidy, Three Rivers Press, 2008, $14.95, pb, 320pp, 9780307346186.
The Queen’s Devotion, a novel in Plaidy’s Queens of England series, is a reprint of the previously published William’s Wife, and depicts the story of Queen Mary II. When the novel opens, Mary and her younger sister, Anne, are carefree princesses with loving and devoted parents. The girls’ father, the Duke of York, is in line for the throne if their uncle, King Charles II, and his wife fail to produce a male heir. Because of the tumultuous political and religious climate in England, the girls are raised as Protestants. Mary and her sister are blissfully unaware of the trouble that is looming in the future. Once Mary turns fifteen, her life changes when her father informs her that she will be marrying her cousin, William, Prince of Orange, and will be moving to his homeland of Holland.
Mary is very young and naïve when she is married and feels that her world has been turned upside down—she is unhappy with the ladies accompanying her to her new home, she must leave behind her beloved father and sister, and she does not like her husband, who treats her very coolly.
When Mary’s uncle dies without an heir, her father becomes King James II. He is unpopular with the people because he is Catholic, and numerous plots begin to brew. As time goes on, rumors drift their way across the Channel, and Mary realizes that soon she will have to choose between her loyalty to her father and her husband.
Plaidy’s detailed writing style evokes
sympathy for Queen Mary. She effectively writes of the prominent scandals that were sprinkled throughout the queen’s life and superbly shows the tension and guilt that Mary faces, as she and William eventually become the co-regents of England.
Troy Reed
18th CENTURY
THE ONLY SON
StéphaneAudeguy (trans. John Cullen), Harcourt, 2008, $25.00, hb, 246pp, 9780151013296
The passing mention of an older brother in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions sent author Stéphane Audeguy in search of the rest of François Rousseau’s story. What emerges in The Only Son is an engaging portrait of a man of little means and much insight finding his way through the seamy and often chilling social and political reality of Paris and Geneva (both Rousseaus’ birthplace) in the years leading up to and immediately after the French Revolution. Raised as a foppish and prematurely sexualized mama’s boy, François Rousseau is cast off by his indifferent and absentee father after the mother’s early death. François finds his way largely through his sexual encounters with both men and women who mentor, shelter, and teach him about survival in a chaotic and corrupt world. The book is at its best in the chapters that frame it. It opens with François watching, with ambivalence and some jealousy, as his famed brother’s remains are reinterred in the Pantheon after the Revolution. It closes with a fascinating and vivid account of François’s release from prison during the storming of the Bastille, and his later involvement in secretive meetings of revolutionaries during the Reign of Terror. With François as their eyewitness, readers are privy to the hidden agendas, especially the misogyny, that left so many—including Sophie, his greatest love—dead in the violence that gripped Paris.
This book is not for the sexually squeamish. Although scenes of pederasty and a variety of other hetero- and homosexual encounters are brief, they include some graphic language and details. Readers interested in the backdrop of the French Revolution and its aftermath, JeanJacques Rousseau and his times, and narrators with deeply conflicted psyches will find this book a worthwhile read.
Laurel Corona
WIND DANCER
Jamie Carie, B&H, 2009, $14.99, pb, 308pp, 9780805445343
Set in the northwestern frontier settlements of the American Revolution (1778), Wind Dancer recounts the ill-fated journey of siblings Isabelle and Julian Renoir to deliver books for their parish priest. Their Indian guide disappears, but they meet American spy Samuel Holt, who uses them as a front for his espionage, helps them survive a Shawnee attack, and joins them in captivity. Isabelle and Samuel bond in their trials, while
Isabelle’s mother searches for her children and Samuel’s father keeps the Virginian home fires burning for his return.
Anachronisms and clichéd writing mar this fast-paced story of larger-than-life characters and grand destinies. From a “ponytailed” hero to a heroine who moves like “a world-class ballerina,” the cringe factor is high. Worse is the author’s disrespect towards the Shawnee people, who do not share the same degree of humanity bestowed on white characters. Shawnee faces are “totem masks” (long before Lewis and Clark met those far West totem-making people), and they gleefully torture their captives before mourning their dead. No worries. Isabelle plans to face them down with her rendition of “Amazing Grace,” whose lyrics were not yet in print and which was not sung in America for another 60 years.
Eileen Charbonneau
LUCASTA
Melinda Hammond, Robert Hale, 2008, £18.99, hb, 233pp, 9780709086857
Brown-haired, brown-eyed Lucasta is not surprised when Viscount Kennington falls instantly in love with her blonde and blue-eyed sister, Camilla, a ‘diamond of the first water’. Nor is she surprised that her sister appears to return his affection, for he is handsome, rich and titled. But she is disgusted when Camilla distances herself from the Viscount when he is accused of murder. Angry at her family’s attitude, aware that he is innocent, Lucasta knows she has to overcome her shyness and help him.
Melinda Hammond, who also writes as Sarah Mallory for Harlequin Mills & Boon, has written another vivid Georgian romance, set mainly in London, amongst both the upper crust and the lower classes (including an amusing scene in a cheese shop), with some memorable characters and a historical detail which shows her usual accurate, but lightly worn, knowledge of the period. With its descriptions of Newgate, and taverns in the less salubrious areas of the East End, and with a plot centring round the uncovering of the real villain, this is a darker book than her previous ones, but is, like them, a thoroughly enjoyable read.
jay Dixon
THE BOOK OF NEGROES (UK/Canada) / SOMEONE KNOWS MY NAME (US)
Lawrence Hill, Doubleday, 2009, £14.99, hb, 486pp, 9780385616263 / Norton, 2008, $14.95, pb, 512pp, 9780393333091
Africa, 1755. Aminata, age 11, is captured by slave traders and sold into slavery in South Carolina, where she suffers rape and other terrible abuses. She becomes a skilled midwife and is eventually re-sold to Solomon Lindo, who teaches her to read and write.
American agitation for independence is gathering strength, but it becomes obvious that their call for ‘freedom’ does not include slaves. Aminata escapes and finds herself on the British side, inscribing the names of freed slaves in The
Book of Negroes (a real historical document containing the details of 3000 slaves). In return for their help in the war, they will be given land in Nova Scotia to start a free life. Tragedy ensues. Aminata loses her husband and her two children. She joins a group of freed slaves, sponsored by abolitionists in London, sailing to Sierra Leone to create a free colony. Even here they are not safe, being surrounded by rapacious slave dealers, and eventually Aminata travels to London to help the abolitionists’ campaign to get a bill through Parliament abolishing the slave trade in British territory.
This epic tale, spanning three continents and fifty years, won the 2008 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize. Hill illuminates the horrors of the slave trade through concentrating on a small, often ignored, story: the plight of the Blacks who supported the British, believing that they would be helped to live free, independent lives. Every slave has a tale to tell of exploitation, doubledealing, betrayal and official incompetence. They are at the end of every queue, their opinions unsought and their aspirations ignored.
In this first person narrative, Aminata comes across as an archetype of the brave, intelligent Black woman, slightly detached from the events she so vividly describes. I found the book thought provoking and absorbing: a fascinating read.
Elizabeth Hawksley
AN AFFAIR BEFORE CHRISTMAS
Eloisa James, Hodder & Stoughton, 2008, £19.99, hb, 388pp, 9780340961056 / Avon, 2007, $6.99, pb, 400pp, 9780061245541
In 1778 Paris, the Duke of Fletcher falls in love with Miss Perdita ‘Poppy’ Selby. Swept away by the charm of Parisian Christmas-time, he is looking forward to a marriage filled with passion and pleasure. Poppy, dutiful daughter to an ambitious mother, is delighted to have snared a Duke—and such a handsome man at that.
Four years later and back in England, the Fletchers find themselves estranged from each other. While Poppy devotes much of her time to charity, the Duke has gained the reputation of a dandy.
Desperate to find out where her childless marriage is heading, Poppy engages the help of her good friend Jemma, the Duchess of Beaumont, whose own scandalous reputation precedes her. Equally unhappy in her marriage, Jemma begins a dangerous card game with a renowned rake. Awed by her friend’s independence, Poppy decides to teach her husband a lesson. But will he take the bait?
An Affair Before Christmas is the second novel in Ms James’s Desperate Duchesses series. It is sparkling with wit and humour, spice and intrigue. Many games are played, and the consequences are not always predictable. However, the novel lags in places. The many characters and their plots can be a touch confusing, but as the story unfolds you become desperate to discover how they might succeed.
This is the perfect read for a week of quiet
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Y BLINDSPOT: By a Gentleman in Exile and a Lady in Disguise Jane Kamensky and Jill Lepore, Spiegel & Grau, 2008, $24.95/C$27.95, hb, 600pp, 9780385526197
Academics Kamensky and Lepore have produced a deliciously entertaining novel of pre-Revolutionary Boston. By turns bawdy, poignant, satirical, and patriotic, it is an energetic and enlightening story. Not only is painter Stewart Jameson in debt to an enemy, he’s desperate to find his friend, the brilliant Dr. Alexander—a freed black transported to America and enslaved.
Jameson arrives as Massachusetts is erupting with frustration at British rule, and promotes himself as a face-painter. Miss Fanny Easton, daughter of a wealthy and prominent colonial, was cast off after bearing her drawing master’s illegitimate child. Disguising herself as a lad, re-naming herself Francis Weston, she becomes Jameson’s apprentice, astonishing him with her drawing and painting skills and inspiring a passionate affection that he dreads but does not deny. In letters to her confidante, she frankly reveals her feelings for her master and the hazards of her all-toosuccessful impersonation of a young man.
The couple’s solvency seems assured as Boston’s prominent residents line up to have their portraits painted, but when the most prominent of all is murdered they unite to find the culprit. In the process, Fanny makes certain unsavory discoveries about her parent and her past, while Jameson must contend with an altered and decidedly damaged Dr. Alexander, determined to use his superior intellect to solve the crime. For his apprentice’s sake, and his own, he also resolves to pack Easton off to London to study with the great Joshua Reynolds.
In creating this graphic and vivid version of colonial Boston—people, professions, politics—the authors have also provided lovers of historical fiction with a highly entertaining story, brimming with style and substance. A rollicking good read!
nights in, with its romance and sense of adventure. Curl up on the sofa with a cup of tea and allow yourself to be taken back to Georgian England.
Stephanie Patterson
KISS OF A TRAITOR
Cat Lindler, Medallion, 2009, $7.95, pb, 590pp, 9781933836515
Willa Bellingham may live in Revolutionary War-era South Carolina, but her loyalties lie with the British, and she wants nothing more than to capture the Patriot spy Francis Marion. Her father and stepmother want Willa to settle down, so they arrange a marriage to Lord Montford, an English peer who appears to be a fop of the worst sort. But Montford isn’t who he appears to be—he’s actually Brendan Ford, brother to the real Lord Montford and an ardent patriot. Ford assumes Montford’s identity in order to spy on Willa and her Loyalist family. He doesn’t intend to court Willa seriously, but he soon finds her irresistible. Can two strongly passionate people set aside their political differences for love?
While portions of Kiss of a Traitor are entertaining, I found the novel problematic. Willa seems too good to be true. She’s an expert rider who is adept with a variety of weapons— and these aren’t typical traits of a young lady of this era. The relationship between Willa and Brendan vacillates between love and hatred a little too quickly, and the villains are one-
Margaret Barr
dimensional, including a wicked stepmother whose standout characteristic is her voracious sexual appetite. Lindler does keep the timeline of the war accurate, but some careful editing would have made the story easier to believe.
Nanette Donohue
A KINGDOM FOR THE BRAVE
Tamara McKinley, Hodder, 2008, £6.99, pb, 419pp 9780340924716
The story begins seven years after the first settlers arrived in New South Wales, following the fortunes of three interconnected families and Aborigines whose lands have been stolen. Eloise, locked in a loveless marriage with the brutal Edward, falls in love with George. Three emancipated convicts work their own farm, with Alice, who ventures from England to join her fiancé.
The backdrop of this raw country is described in loving, evocative detail. The complicated strands of the lives of several characters are neatly interwoven with real events such as the Rum Rebellion and the coup against Governor Bligh. The free settlers, army, emancipated convicts and Aborigines are shown fighting for their own objectives, but there is surprisingly little detail about the lives of the convicts themselves, for whom the colony was set up. Many of these characters have already appeared in Lands Beyond the Sea, and readers who have enjoyed that will relish the opportunity to follow up their later lives.
Marina Oliver
Y NOR THE BATTLE TO THE STRONG
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Charles F. Price, Frederic C. Beil, 2008, $25.95, hb, 464pp, 9781929490332
This novel of the American Revolution in the South is told from the contrasting viewpoints of Major General Nathanial Greene and Private James Johnson, a Scottish immigrant and runaway indentured servant. Their lives are both leading toward the 1781 Battle of Eutaw Springs, one of the bloodiest actions of the war.
The men are a study in opposites: Greene is highly educated, Quaker-bred and asthmatic, a plodder pouring over military texts and as quietly eager for fame as the more conspicuous Lighthorse Harry Lee, the beloved thorn in his side. Private Johnson comes with a sprightly sister in tow and is humble, resilient, and unselfconscious, an American Candide on the adventure of his young life. But Johnson has his decency forever corroded by the brutality that marked the war even as he faces a future as a free American.
Nor the Battle to the Strong is a treasure trove of detail (Baron Steuben smells of roses and cloves), vivid characterization, and hard truths about the nature of warfare. It does not shy away from the prejudices that marked the time, and comes with illustrations and maps that are skillfully rendered. Highly recommended.
Eileen Charbonneau
FIRE AT MIDNIGHT
Lisa Marie Wilkinson, Medallion, 2009, $7.95, pb, 380pp, 9781933836546
Rachael Penrose has been confined to Bedlam by her wicked uncle Victor, who frames her in order to steal her inheritance. Unfortunately for Victor, Rachael isn’t insane—nor is she willing to let him take her money and murder her baby brother. She makes her escape and is thrust directly into the arms of Sebastien Falconer, a French smuggler who believes that Rachael is responsible for his problems with the law. Sebastien knows who Rachael is, but he keeps his identity concealed so he can exact his revenge. As Rachael and Sebastian get to know each other better, they realize their attraction. Will they still care for each other when their secrets are revealed, and can Rachael save her brother and her inheritance from her greedy uncle?
The Great Storm of 1703 figures prominently in this historical romance set on the English coast, providing a dramatic backdrop for this suspenseful tale. The romance between Rachael and Sebastien is sensual but not graphic, and the mistaken identity plot, a cornerstone of the romance genre, is handled nicely. There are a number of secondary characters, and an interesting subplot regarding Sebastien’s parentage. Overall, this is a fast, enjoyable read set in an atypical era for historical romance.
Nanette Donohue
19th CENTURY
THE CASEBOOK OF VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN
Peter Ackroyd, Chatto & Windus, 2008, 296pp, hb, £16.99, 9780701182953
Peter Ackroyd’s fiction has a strong historical rooting, particularly in novels like Hawksmoor
and Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, which are set in a Gothic and eerie London. This is a retelling of Mary Shelley’s novel, moving Victor Frankenstein the student and scientist to early 19th-century London. Here he becomes friendly with Shelley and Byron and indeed accompanies them and the newly married Mary Shelley on their visit to the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva, where Mary’s novel was famously conceived during a period of prolonged inclement weather.
Dr Frankenstein has a fearful secret in the knowledge that during his experiments with electrical forces in London he has reanimated a corpse, who is now running amok as a fearsome and ugly monster, seeking some form of revenge for his resurrection, haunting Frankenstein with the terrible being he has unleashed.
As expected with Peter Ackroyd, the story is authentically and capably narrated by Frankenstein in the language of the time, utilising plot strands, phrases and patterns of speech from Mary Shelley’s novel. As an entertaining and literate tale, the book works, even with a joke or two (i.e., the identity of the monster) and an unexpected twist at the end.
Doug Kemp
DEAREST
Michelangelo Altiére, London House, 2007, $99.99, limited edition hat box (other formats available; see londonhousepublishing.com), 9780980020014
In 1872, Anne, a small-town milliner, meets a wealthy engineer from Pittsburgh while on an Ohioan riverboat. After sharing a meal together, they feel an immediate bond for one another, and once they have reached their respective homes, they begin writing letters back and forth. It is these one hundred-something handwritten letters, newspaper articles and artifacts, tied
together in a hat box, that tell the story of Anne and James. Through Anne’s eyes, readers will learn what it is like being a woman in industrial America, and owning a business. She shares with James the intimacies of her daily life—from designing new hats, to teaching her maid to read and write. And in letters from James, we learn the hardships he encounters in the engineering world, and the changes the country undergoes in transportation and technological advancements. The more letters they write, the more they begin to feel for one another, and a romance soon blooms from this correspondence.
Historical fiction at its best, Dearest is handmade and available in three different three-dimensional editions. It is the first of a number of “experience novels” by London House Publishing. The unique style certainly is an experience; it makes you feel as if you’re snooping into the lives of these two people. As you work your way through the box, the remarkable story of Anne and James unfolds with each letter. The detailed design, organization of letters and articles, and gentle romance intertwined with historical details indicate that this was a carefully researched project, written with passion and love for all things Victorian. Rebecca Roberts
PRYDE AND THE INFERNAL DEVICE
Malcolm Archibald, Severn House, 2008 (UK)/2009 (US), £18.99/$27.95, hb, 236pp, 9780727867193
This novel continues the adventures of engineer Matthew Pryde, which began in Pryde’s Rock (see HNR 39, Feb. 2007). In the spring of 1805, Matthew, now a mining engineer in Kent, finds his expertise called upon by those in high places. He is sent to France to look for evidence of an invasion tunnel being dug under the Channel. Accompanying him are the enigmatic Mr Black, and, rather unexpectedly, bluestocking Kate Denton. For Matthew and Kate, this is the beginning of a perilous adventure, which brings them to a close encounter with Madame la Guillotine herself.
The book is well researched—detailing Kentish May Day customs, coal-mining and early steamships—and mostly this fits seamlessly into the narrative. However, there are some awkwardly constructed phrases— Kate does not seem like a woman who would “scamper” or “trot”—and one or two odd similes involving zebras and the tango. The author also makes a number of references to significant events in Pryde’s Rock which would need further elaboration for someone (like me) who had not read the first book. These quibbles aside, I would recommend this book. It is a real edge-of-the-seat read, with a whiff of villainy and a strong dose of romance. Matthew is an unassuming yet valiant hero, and Kate makes a marvellous heroine: outspoken and brave, but with an interesting vulnerability and her own demons to fight. I would look forward to their future adventures.
Mary Seeley
THE SCANDALOUS LIFE OF THE
LAWLESS SISTERS: Criminally Illustrated With What Was To Hand
Philip Ardagh, Faber & Faber, 2008, £9.99, hb, 67pp, 9780571239047
Using cartoon illustrations from Punch, January-December 1880, Philip Ardagh has concocted a rollicking tale involving a group of Victorian ladies he calls, the Lawless sisters. By replacing the original captions to the drawings the staid and upright figures reveal their darker sides as, at the mercy of Ardagh’s pen, they become drug dealers, murderers and robbers of a bank security van armed with Russian made umbrella rifles.
Imaginative, ridiculous but most of all extremely funny, this is the perfect antidote to any approaching winter blues. And, happily, the final pages hint that the Lawless sisters’ reign of terror may not be over yet.
Ann Oughton
MR. DARCY’S DREAM
Elizabeth Aston, Touchstone, 2009, $15.00, pb, 284pp, 9780416547266
Phoebe Hawkins, niece to Mr. Darcy, is twenty years old, handsome, and well-born, and she possesses a fortune of fifty thousand pounds. Unfortunately, she is recovering from an affair of the heart and retreats to her uncle’s estate to recuperate. There she is put in charge of planning the annual Pemberley ball in order to take her mind off her broken relationship. This story, part of Aston’s “continuation” of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, is chock full of love triangles and misadventure, as all good Regencies are wont to be. Of course, there is a happy ending, and love triumphs. Should a light-hearted romance end any other way?
Aston is an excellent storyteller, and true to the original characters, mores, and morals of the time. However, rather than overwhelming the reader with facts, she slips them in when no one is looking. This is historical fiction at its most enjoyable, a period romp of manners.
I recommend Mr. Darcy’s Dream to lovers of the Regency era, and for anyone looking for a fun read. Miss Jane Austen would be very comfortable in Ms. Elizabeth’s Aston’s world.
Monica Spence
UNTIL WE REACH HOME
Lynn Austin, Bethany House, 2008, $13.99, pb, 432pp, 9780764204951
Life’s vicissitudes have conspired to force Elin, Sofia and Kirsten Carlson to do the unimaginable, to leave the land they have loved and cherished in Sweden in 1897. It’s a time when females really don’t have much say. The death of their parents, the abuse Elin has suffered from a vile relative, and the promise of more hardship gradually draw the sisters to agree that life in Chicago bears more promise of financial and emotional stability than they have known in a very long time. A wise, compassionate young man comforts the girls with Biblical verses through a grueling shipboard journey, and
strangers offer compassionate, merciful help when typhus hits them so hard they are worried they will be deported to Europe.
On reaching America, however, these young women discover their uncle has sent Elin travel money acquired from men hoping to buy wives in Wisconsin short of female residents. Can the sisters pay their way out of this totally shocking scheme? Becoming servants for a demanding female employer in a mansion, they reach out carefully to heal a lonely, bitter woman, a process that forces them to realize what they have that is more precious than any amount of money. Just as they let go of worrying about the future, through a most unexpected gift, the sisters realize how the Lord has blessed them with abundance to choose a future they will continue to embrace in spite of any difficulty, grounded in a life of faith and love for God and each other. Lynn Austin crafts a fine story as these characters mature to depict a prayerful tradition close to many readers’ hearts, the love that binds family and true friends. A touching, realistic and inspirational read!
Viviane Crystal
THE MATTERS AT MANSFIELD
Carrie Bebris, Forge, 2008, $22.95/C$25.95, hb, 286pp, 9780765318473
Fitzwilliam Darcy’s Aunt Catherine is up to her manipulative best, but Elizabeth Darcy is determined that Aunt Catherine’s daughter, Anne de Bourgh, be spared the constant presence of her mother long enough to enjoy a turn around the dance floor at Riveton Hall. Unfortunately, Elizabeth’s small kindness leads to some rather dire consequences.
The Matters at Mansfield is the fourth book in the Mr. & Mrs. Darcy mystery series. This delightful novel is set two years after the marriage between Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet. Since situations and characters in this series are primarily based on those in Jane Austen’s novels, here we see characters Anne de Bourgh of Pride and Prejudice falling in love with Mansfield Park’s rogue, Henry Crawford. Carrie Bebris’s style, replete with humor, is reminiscent of the Austen narratives, though with a slightly easier, contemporary feel. My favorite witty lines come in a series of dialogues where Aunt Catherine gets her comeuppance courtesy of a rather common young woman called Meg. For a mystery, it’s good, but The Matters at Mansfield’s real strength is the fusion of the Austen elements in a relaxed way. Nothing stuffy about this period novel! It’s a fun book to read.
Janette King
THE LAND OF SUMMER
Charlotte Bingham, Bantam, 2008, £14.99, hb, 336pp, 9780593061213
1880s Massachusetts: ‘Poor’ Emmaline Nesbitt, being the eldest of four sisters, had always understood from her mother that she must marry. At the ball for her 25th birthday she was still awaiting her first proposal and had
come to believe that it would never happen. On this evening, as ever the wallflower, she found herself being swept off her feet.
Julius Aubrey, the debonair and handsome proprietor of Aubrey & Aubrey, purveyors and designers of fine English furniture, had come to America with a business proposition for Emmaline’s father, the wealthy owner of the Nesbitt & Nesbitt Catalogue. Some weeks later in England, after her indeed hasty marriage to Julius, Emmaline discovers that life in Somerset has a mysterious edge…
The Land of Summer is, for the most part, an amusing story where prose is often interspersed with poetry. Charlotte Bingham has a way with words and writes with erudition. The atmosphere of late Victorian England, although seldom addressed directly, is conveyed wonderfully.
Tighter proofreading would have been useful, but the book shows the author’s sense of fun and her ability to embroider a story well. Written in Ms Bingham’s characteristic style it is a lively, enjoyable and easy to read historical novel which only awaits being adapted into a play for the small screen.
Gwen Sly
TRAITOR’S KISS / LOVER’S KISS
Mary Blayney, Bantam, 2008, $6.99/C$8.99, pb, 720pp, 9780553592122
Two Regency-era romantic suspense stories for the price of one! Members of the Pennistan family are the main characters of two novels with interlinked plotlines and characters. Despite the connections between them, these stories stand independent of one another.
Traitor’s Kiss opens with the hero, Lord Gabriel Pennistan, rotting in a French prison in Napoleon’s France. Charlotte Parnell, a prostitute, is hired to return Gabriel to his family in England, where he may stand trial as a traitor to the Crown.
In this story nothing is as it seems. The names change, the plots twist, the circumstances are questioned and even the characters are not who they appear to be. When Charlotte is discovered to be an agent of England, more complications ensue. Love, however, conquers all. At times, the romantic aspects seem like an afterthought. The characters seem as if they don’t like each other for most of the story, and the romantic aspects feel forced.
In Lover’s Kiss, the heroine, Olivia Pennistan, Gabriel’s sister, is found half-frozen in the snowy woods wearing only her tattered chemise. She has been hiding in fear for her life after escaping from kidnappers and is discovered by Michael Garret, a retired soldier and spy from the previous novel, who falls in love with the young woman before he realizes her identity. The characters seem genuinely attracted and care for one another, and that draws the reader in. The plot is not as complex as the companion story but keeps the reader entertained.
While Traitor’s Kiss left me wanting, I enjoyed Lover’s Kiss
Monica Spence
SOLDIER’S FAREWELL
Johnny D. Boggs, Five Star, 2008, $25.95, hb, 212pp, 9781594146893
Smith Munro chronicles his experiences at a stagecoach station in New Mexico territory in a diary he receives for his 12th birthday in 1860. Smith helps his father change mules and feed the passengers traveling to and from California on the Overland stage line. It’s a lonely life, with few neighbors and constant fear of Apache attack. Then Smith’s brother Julian arrives unexpectedly, having resigned his Army commission, intending to fight for the South in the coming war. This distresses both Smith and his Unionist father, but that’s nothing to their dismay when they learn that Julian is conspiring with bandits to steal a payroll shipment from the stage, which he claims is destined for the Confederate treasury.
I hadn’t read anything with this setting before, so the details about stagecoach station life were interesting. The unusual angle of mules being the featured livestock in a Western instead of horses was also enjoyable. I was a little skeptical about desperate bandits allowing Smith to write in his diary while he was being held at gunpoint, despite his brother’s protection, but that’s only a quibble. Multidimensional characters and a plot that kept me guessing make this a compelling Western.
B.J. Sedlock
OSCAR WILDE AND A GAME CALLED MURDER (US) / OSCAR WILDE AND THE RING OF DEATH (UK)
Gyles Brandreth, Touchstone, 2008, $14.00/ C$16.00, pb, 416pp, 9781416534846 / John Murray, 2009, £7.99, pb, 432pp, 9780719569609
In this mystery, set in 1892, Oscar Wilde and friends—including Bram Stoker and Arthur Conan Doyle—indulge in an after-dinner game. Each picks the person he would most like to murder and writes the name on a slip of paper, and then they all try to guess who wants to murder whom. Some want to murder people sitting at the table with them. Some choose distant individuals. One guest apparently longs to murder a parrot. The game turns frightening in the days that follow when several of the people named meet with sudden deaths, which the police attribute to coincidence. Wilde and his loyal and longsuffering wife are on the list of potential victims, so he is understandably motivated to play sleuth. This is the second in a series of historical mysteries featuring Wilde. Brandreth writes with a light touch, but conveys a sense of the moral hypocrisy and oppressive class system of the time. What raises this book several notches above most mysteries is the authentic historical detail and the engaging portrait of Wilde, the foreshadowing of his unfortunate end, and the inclusion of sparkling bits of his wit and wisdom.
Phyllis T. Smith
HEARTS ON THE WIND
Leslee Breene, Five Star, 2008, $25.95, hb, 299pp, 9781594147166
Ingrid Johansson’s close-knit Swedish immigrant family brought many of the traditions of their native country to their new farm on the prairies of northern Minnesota. Ingrid has big dreams, though—she wants to go to school to become a teacher, much to her father’s chagrin. When Ingrid meets Andreas Eriksen, a Norwegian railroad worker, at a local wedding, they are immediately attracted to each other, but Ingrid wants to be sure that her education comes before love and marriage. Ingrid’s desire for a career is not the only obstacle between the young lovers—her father disapproves of Andreas, both because of his heritage and his profession, and Andreas’s conniving stepsister, Dagmar, wants Andreas for herself.
Breene’s tale of Scandinavian immigrants in late-19th century Minnesota contains charming period details, as well as a more serious backdrop of labor unrest on the railroads. Through her relationship with Andreas and her friendship with two young Irish immigrants, farm girl Ingrid unexpectedly finds herself caught up in the drama of the railroad business. Ingrid is ambitious and hardworking and seems to revel in new experiences, and Breene ensures that the path to a happy ending is neither smooth nor predictable. Entertaining secondary characters, including Ingrid’s cousin Nettie, round out the story nicely. Readers who enjoy American historical romance will appreciate Breene’s take on the genre.
Nanette Donohue
DALLIANCE
Diana Burg, Syracuse Univ. Press, 2008, $26.95, hb, 386pp, 9780815609315
In May of 1848, while visiting relatives and friends in New York City, Mary Turner has a very strange dream. Encased inside a seal on a moonlit rock, she suffers burning palms but falls asleep, knowing she cannot escape her present fate. The dream obviously foreshadows a great difficulty to follow in her life, but Mary forgets the dream, so caught up is she in upper aristocratic social parties and dinners. Serious and frivolous conversations occur about Susan B. Anthony’s women’s suffrage speeches and demonstrations; the fashionable literature of Poe, Hawthorne, Dickens, Charlotte Brontë and other notable writers of the time; the writings of Sojourner Truth; the Lincoln-Douglas debates following the Missouri Compromise; and so much more.
Why is Mary rejecting the one man who obviously and reverently declares his love to Mary and the public through a poetic song that could be interpreted in many different ways? Women at the time are possessions whose ideas are heard halfheartedly but who clearly know society’s boundaries. Courtship rites and plans are exposed as alliances forged through opportunistic plans, a realization that Mary realizes far too late as she unwittingly flirts with
an acquaintance of her staid banker husband, Mr. Isaac Burch. Forcing her to sign a confession, her husband seeks a divorce and forces a trial that has since become historically famous.
The transcripts of the trial and journalistic accounts are fascinating reading, with a most unexpected ending and numerous casualties ensuing therein. Dalliance is a spellbinding story of a world on the verge of revolution for slaves and women, but not yet. A superb read!
Viviane Crystal
A BOUQUET OF THORNS
Tania Crosse, Severn House, 2008, £18.99, hb, 240pp, 0727866966
In A Bouquet of Thorns, Tania Crosse continues the story of Rose Maddiford, the freespirited Dartmoor mill-owner’s daughter she introduced in Cherrybrook Rose
The year is 1877. With her father now dead, and trapped in a loveless and abusive marriage to Charles Chadwick, Rose finds her spirit crushed. Her only source of strength comes from her love for the kind and gentle Seth, who is locked away in Dartmoor prison for a crime he didn’t commit. While Charles’s cruelty increases as his wife fails to bear him a son, Rose becomes more and more determined to rescue Seth from his fate. But will jealousy and betrayal prevent Rose from ever finding true happiness?
For those who enjoyed the first instalment of Tania Crosse’s saga, A Bouquet of Thorns offers another gripping and heartbreaking tale. Rose is a feisty well-drawn character whose fate you will want to follow, and the plotting is intelligent and fast-paced, making this novel a page-turner even if it does tread familiar romantic territory.
It’s clear that Tania Crosse’s real passion is for the Dartmoor landscape and its history, and her careful attention to the sometimes grim details of life at Dartmoor prison and the Cherrybrook Gunpowder Mills gives the novel real authenticity and a strong sense of time and place.
You can expect an exciting and explosive climax, but let’s hope this won’t be the end for the author’s tales of the Dartmoor Cherrybrook Mills.
Chris Lean
THE PEACHGROWERS` ALMANAC (UK) / A PROPER EDUCATION FOR GIRLS (US)
Elaine diRollo, Chatto & Windus, 2008, £16.99, hb, 344pp, 9780701181789 / Crown, Apr. 2009, $25.95, hb, 352pp, 9780307408341
This debut novel is set in India and England in 1857. It is narrated in turns by twin sisters, Lilian and Alice. Lilian has been married off to a dull missionary and sent to India as punishment for some mysterious sin while Alice has remained at home with an eccentric father, his strange collection of all manner of artifacts and several aunts. Both sisters are somewhat similar in character as both are strong-willed, independent and intelligent. Nevertheless, they still struggle in different ways to be taken
seriously in a man’s world.
The style is one of quirky dry humour as it pokes fun at the social mores of the day. Underneath the amusing observational wit, serious themes such as male control of women in a patriarchal society, attitudes to colonialism and the advancement of science are examined. The Victorian era is well depicted, particularly in the descriptions of scientific developments in various fields, including early flying machines and photography. The hypocrisy at the centre of Victorian life is clearly revealed, particularly in the sinister figure of Dr Cattermole, who wishes to use his medical knowledge to control women in an especially nasty way. These serious themes resonate strongly with the reader, who is reminded that there are parts of the world where things like this still occur. The garish cover is somewhat off-putting, but the novel itself is very enjoyable, funny and horrific by turns and with well-drawn, memorable characters. Very much recommended.
Ann Northfield
NO CURE FOR LOVE
Jean Fullerton, Orion, 2008, £6.99, pb, 376pp, 9780752883724
This debut novel by Jean Fullerton is a masterpiece of its genre and will be the start of a glittering career.
The writing sparkles from the first page as the reader is drawn into the seamy world of Victorian London. The feisty Irish heroine, Ellen, is fighting to survive in the East End. She is a widow, supporting her mother and daughter by singing in a dingy pub in the evening and taking in laundry during the day. She is determined to save a sufficient amount from her earnings to pay for the three of them to sail to New York to join her brother. Danny Donovan, a terrifying and convincing villain, is determined to break her down. Into this mix comes Dr Robert Munroe, a quiet, determined man, who takes the poverty and squalor of the East End as his personal crusade. Danny Donovan’s grip on Whitechapel is challenged by Dr Munroe and Ellen is drawn into this; but she knows her growing feelings for Robert will come to nothing. Class is a permanent barrier. No one ever defies Danny and lives to talk about it.
This book is a compelling read. Every page is packed with authentic historical detail; you can smell and taste the poverty. The violence and despair of the impoverished is carefully balanced by the charm and gentleness of the two main protagonists. Jean Fullerton’s authentic knowledge of both London and Victorian history allows the reader to become immersed in the period. No Cure for Love is not just a saga, it is an accurate and believable story seen through the eyes of credible and riveting characters. I can highly recommend this book; it is a tour de force and will make the author a leader in this field. I can’t wait for the next one. Fenella Miller
A SILENT OCEAN AWAY
DeVa Gantt, Harper, 2008, $13.95/C$14.95, pb, 373pp, 9780061578236
In 1833 Richmond, Virginia, fifteen-year-old Charmaine Ryan leaves poverty behind when she takes a job as companion to wealthy Loretta Harrington. The daughter of an alcoholic wifebeater, Charmaine naturally distrusts most men yet remains open to whatever opportunities life might offer her. Three years later, Mrs. Harrington helps her obtain a position as governess on Charmantes, the Duvoisin family’s private Caribbean island estate. Charmaine quickly befriends Colette Duvoisin, the youthful mother of her three charges, but all is not well in her adopted island home. As she gets drawn into the Duvoisins’ circle, Charmaine puzzles over the reasons behind their obvious discontent. Why are relations uneasy between Colette and Frederic, her elderly shipping magnate husband, and what caused his estrangement from his eldest son, John? Is there an unnatural reason for Colette’s constant ill health? And will Charmaine act on her attraction to Paul, Frederic’s dashing bastard son?
The novel, co-authored by two sisters writing under a pseudonym and previously selfpublished, lacks a certain polish. There are many abrupt viewpoint shifts (do we need to hear every minor character’s thoughts?), and the prose veers from clunky to elegant and back again. Perhaps the lush, informal island setting can excuse the lack of attention paid to some social niceties, but one would expect sharper divisions between the classes, and Charmaine’s position as governess doesn’t involve much academic instruction. Yet despite its flaws, the saga never failed to keep my attention. It has an epic, pageturning quality many other novels only aspire to. I found myself transported to the authors’ fascinating fictional creation of Charmantes, caught up in the drama of the characters’ lives and eager to continue the Duvoisins’ story in the next volume of the Colette trilogy. Put this one in the “guilty pleasure” category.
Sarah Johnson
ENVOY OF THE BLACK PINE
Clio Gray, Headline, 2008, £19.99, hb, 341pp, 9780755343539
‘This is a very strange book,’ I was told after I had agreed to review it. It moves between the Cotswolds and the island of Hiiumaa, one of an archipelago in the Gulf of Riga, and it is not until the very last stages that the reader discovers just what is going on, and the connections between disparate events. The village of Lower Slaughter is devastated by a flood; Griselda Liit, originally from Hiiumaa, decides to return home. Meanwhile, amateur detective Whilbert Stroop, on the trail of a lost miniature library, also sets off for this remote island. On Hiiumaa the remains of mutilated animals keep being found, clearly placed to provide some sort of warning, and ships are attacked by pirates.
Clio Gray can write a good action scene, but her particular talent lies in her evocation of
landscape and place.
RIVER’S REACH
Ann Lyon
Christina Green, Robert Hale, 2008, £18.99, hb, 224pp, 9780709085959
In 1887 Rose Adams, a schoolmistress in a village school, longs for a better life. She has exciting ideas for reform but the new schoolmaster, Thomas Devlin, takes exception to her new methods. When a local artist, Laurence Vane, asks her to model for him she takes the opportunity of spreading her wings and accepts. She is offered the post of companion to the artist’s sister and goes to live with them in Sandiford House, but Rose finds her life becoming more complicated. When tragedy comes and an answer to a mystery behind a locked door in the house is made clear, Rose needs to make a fateful decision.
I enjoyed this book for the insight it gave into village school life and the differences it brought up about the quality of life in the clay pits as opposed to those who lived in the village, not to mention the lives of the gentry in Sandiford House. Rose wanted to teach her class to value their surroundings and have self respect—qualities that are still relevant today. An informative and interesting read.
Karen Wintle
UNION PACIFIC
Zane Grey, Five Star, 2009, $25.95, hb, 438pp, 9781594147432
The early American West was a rough terrain to conquer. For Union Pacific railroad workers, it meant impossible logistics through mountains and deserts and dealing with a number of understandably irate Indians who feared and resented this “Iron Horse” brought by these pale, whiskey-drinking men. Women also fought dangers keeping the men fed, caring for their families and fighting abduction by warrior tribes. Years of laying track and overcoming nature culminated as the Union Pacific headed West from the East Coast and met up with the Southern Pacific on that eventful day in 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah, where the final spike was driven to loud cries of “Done!” Five years of rough living and constant danger gave the new country a continuity that is taken for granted these days.
This reissue taken from Zane Grey’s original manuscript reveals the author’s view of this undertaking and the pioneer spirit that makes miracles possible. One worker declared that the railroad was built by whisky and tea: the Irish from the East and the Chinese in the West joining the country from coast to coast. Fastpaced dialogue and authentic characters create a novel which begs to be read.
Tess Allegra
BEDLAM SOUTH
Mark Grisham and David Donaldson, State Street Press/Borders (avail. at Borders.com), 2008, $24.95, hb, 324pp, 9780764204319
In 1863, Alabama native Dr. Joseph Bryarly
reluctantly accepts an invitation from a family friend, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, to leave his post at London’s notorious Bethlem Royal Hospital to become Chief Superintendent of Wingate Asylum in Richmond, Virginia. Meanwhile, young Zeke Gibson gleefully joins the Army of Northern Virginia, where he is reunited with his older brother, Billy, a corporal. The Battle of Gettysburg, however, soon sends the Gibson brothers in separate directions, while nightmare-plagued Joseph finds that he has exchanged the living hell of London’s Bedlam for that of Richmond’s Bedlam South.
Co-written by childhood friends who utilized the novel to blend their interests in psychology and the Civil War, Bedlam South has all of the elements of a wartime epic as it moves with ease between battlefields, the asylum, gracious and humble homes, prisons, bordellos, and city streets, with episodes that show its men and women at their worst--and at their best. It’s a fast-paced and well-plotted story, with a varied and large cast of characters, sympathetic and complex protagonists, a couple of romances, and some staggering coincidences. I recommend it highly.
Susan Higginbotham
SONORAN RAGE
Melody Groves, La Frontera, 2008, $19.95, pb, 259pp, 9780978563448
In Arizona Territory in 1861, Trace and James Colton were stagecoach drivers. Their route took them through dangerous territory populated by renegades, outlaws and warring Apaches. When returning home to Mesilla, the Chiricahua Apache, led by Cochise, captured them. His “henchman,” One Wing, took particular pleasure in inflicting pain on James Colton. Both brothers barely survived the torture, while those they loved in Mesilla feared they had died when they did not arrive on time. Cochise decided to use the Colton brothers as hostages in an attempt to obtain the release of his brother, who was imprisoned by the army.
This book is Volume 2 in the Colton Brothers saga. Volume 3 (Arizona War) was released last year prior to the release of this prequel. I can only assume there will be a Volume 1 released later, with events occurring prior to this novel. The book is a page-turner, written for those who enjoy a fine Western story with good guys, bad Indians, an egotistical Army officer, and a love interest that doesn’t get in the way of a fun read.
Jeff Westerhoff
WHIRLWIND
Cathy Marie Hake, Bethany House, 2008, $13.99, pb, 2358 pp, 9780764203190
Millicent Fairweather pours her energy and life into the two young girls under her care in London of 1892, only to have them suddenly and without explanation sent to a boarding school. Unsure what to do, Millicent decides to immigrate to America with her sister Isabelle, and brother-in-law Frank.
Y WHERE SERPENTS SLEEP
EDITORS’ CHOICE
C.S. Harris, Obsidian, 2008, $23.95, hb, 342pp, 9780451225122
Set in a grim version of Regency London, this fourth outing for Sebastian St. Cyr has him teamed up, almost against his will, with the daughter of his archrival, Lord Jarvis. Soon the reform-minded Hero leads him on a labyrinthine path to discover the perpetrator behind a brutal killing of eight prostitutes in a Quaker house of refuge.
Still reeling from being parted from his lover and seething with resentment against his father, the troubled hero still exudes both honor and courage as he wanders though places like Seething Lane, a leper graveyard under St. James Park, and a brothel called “The Academy” (whose owner paints sun-dappled churches and nude women in his spare time), with Hero as a formidable ally.
With short, clipped chapters, Harris weaves her spell in a richly imagined, atmospheric world. The plot and characterizations are complex and rewarding, and the ending left this reader breathlessly awaiting the next installment from this gifted storyteller. Highly recommended.
Widower Daniel Clark, determined to begin life anew in Gooding, Texas, brings his son across the ocean to open a mercantile. During the voyage, Millicent becomes nanny to Daniel’s young son, and Frank agrees to go into business with Daniel. But tragedy strikes as they reach the port of America, and Millicent makes a whirlwind decision to marry Daniel. Starting a new life, in a new country, with a new husband isn’t easy, and Daniel wants more than a loveless marriage with his new wife. Hake takes readers through a magical transformation, while Isabelle heals from her tragedy and Daniel and Millicent fall in love.
This historical, inspirational tale has it all: romance, laughter and kindhearted characters who learn and grow through the story. Millicent and Daniel are both lively, engaging characters trying to follow their hearts and their beliefs. It is with simplicity and grace that Hake shares their growing love for one another in this heartfelt tale.
Rebecca Roberts
THE BRIDE BARGAIN
Kelly Eileen Hake, Barbour, 2008, $10.97, pb, 285pp, 9781602601758
In 1855 in Nebraska Territory (modern Wyoming), Clara Field and her Aunt Doreen are abandoned by the leader of their wagon train when one of their oxen runs off. Once they finally reach the small town of Buttonwood, local merchant Josiah Reed convinces them to keep house for him for the season rather than venturing on to Oregon alone. The arrangement proves mutually beneficial, so much so that Josiah strikes a bargain with Clara. His doctor son, Saul, will be paying a visit soon; if Clara finds him a local bride, Josiah will deed his two-story house over to her. Matchmaking shenanigans ensue.
The author, the daughter of novelist Cathy
Marie Hake, writes in a similarly flowing style, with obvious respect for the women who braved the 19th-century Western frontier. Unfortunately, the characterization is weak or inconsistent, the protagonists have little chemistry, and some plot elements are completely nonsensical. Among many examples, Saul subjects his new ward, a poor inner-city girl, to the rigors of the Oregon Trail for a quasi-vacation in idyllic Buttonwood before proposing to enroll her in an elite boarding school back East. In another scene, Josiah sets off to visit his daughter in Baltimore with only his horse and a couple of saddlebags. One can suspend disbelief only so far.
Sarah Johnson
THE SINS OF LORD EASTERBROOK
Madeline Hunter, Bantam Dell, 2009, $6.99/ C$7.99, pb, 384pp, 9780440243960
Soon after arriving in England from her home in Macao, Leona Montgomery meets up with the one man she can’t forget. She remembers him as Edmund, the man she lost her heart to seven years ago. Now she discovers his real name is Christian, Lord Easterbrook. Many people believe he is crazy. She thinks he might be responsible for the death of her father, a Country Trader who befriended him. Despite all this, Leona still finds herself attracted to this man as the two of them struggle to solve the mysteries surrounding her father’s death.
Although the actions of the main characters seem too modern for the time period, other aspects of this story set it firmly in the early 19th century. Ms. Hunter’s historical detail is well researched, and her description of the politics of the East India Company and the hazards of Opium addiction are the novel’s greatest strength. This is an interesting and entertaining romantic novel.
Nan Curnutt
Eileen Charbonneau
THE EMPTY MIRROR: A Viennese Mystery
J. Sydney Jones, Minotaur, 2009, $24.95/ C$27.95, hb, 320pp, 9780312383893
A young country girl, model and lover of painter Gustav Klimt, is viciously murdered in 1898 Vienna. Klimt, the bête noire of Viennese painting, is arrested and charged with her murder. To clear his name, the painter calls his friend and lawyer, Karl Werthern. Werthern and Hans Gross, a well-known criminologist, join together to uncover the perpetrator of the crime. This quickly becomes difficult since it appears that the model’s killing is linked to four other sadistic murders. Discarding theories and hindered by increasingly antagonistic authorities, Werthern and Gross are soon entangled in a dangerous investigation that leads them deeper and deeper into a conspiracy involving not only the upper echelons of the Austrian aristocracy, but the imperial House of Hapsburg.
With cameo appearances by Mark Twain, Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand and a host of other characters, Jones, the author of many nonfiction books about Vienna, takes the reader on a historical tour of his favorite city. Adorned with art nouveau chic, Vienna appears beautiful and intriguing, an intellectual and artistic center in the European landscape of the time. Before CSI and the advent of forensics, The Empty Mirror is an account of bizarre murders, highly unusual suspects, and a pair of sleuths who, step by logical step, solve this engaging thriller.
Adelaida Lower
TEXAS SUNRISE: Two Novels of the Texas Republic
Elmer Kelton, Forge, 2008, $24.95, hb, 368pp, 0765320649
Love and hate drive Massacre at Goliad, the first novel in this two-novel collection depicting the Texas Revolution in the 1800s. Thomas and Joshua Buckalew emigrate from Tennessee to farm and raise cattle. They know difficulties will arise for sure but initially never realize that the hatred overlying deep fear among the whiteskinned “Texians,” Mexicans and marauding Indians will irrevocably propel the settlers to the precipice of disaster. Elmer Kelton highlights this fascinating story by exploring the conundrum of rational and irrational prejudice. As Josh and Tom get to know their neighbors, the Hernandez family, Tom exemplifies the generalized dislike of Mexicans based on one experience of attempted robbery the brothers experienced on their trek to Texas. But Josh is the more interesting character, especially as this novel culminates in the notorious Goliad massacre of March 27, 1836, when Mexicans accepted the surrender of Sam Houston’s Texian soldiers at the Goliad fort and then proceeded to murder every one of them. It seems that Josh loses too many people he loves. Now he must make wise choices based on horrific memories, internally warring with the knowledge that hatred fuels both prejudice and war.
After the Bugle, the second novel, chronicles the return of Josh, Ramon Hernandez and other
neighbors to rebuild their homes after Texan independence is declared. Tensions fester into battles up to the last suspense-filled page.
Those readers who love historical detail laced with dynamic characters and exciting action will be more than pleased by these exhilarating two novels that are far more than typical Western stories. Elmer Kelton understands what shapes peoples’ attitudes and beliefs, and his expansive knowledge of Texas history and the rigors of pioneer life is superb! This reviewer highly recommends Texas Sunrise Viviane Crystal
ETTA
Gerald Kolpan, Ballantine, 2009, $25.00/ C$28.00, hb, 321pp, 9780345503688
Very little is known about Etta Place, the lover of the Sundance Kid. In this warm, deftly plotted novel, Gerald Kolpan gives the beautiful young woman an adventurous life.
Born Lorinda Jameson, a Philadelphia debutante, Etta Place takes her pseudonym at the turn of the 20th century, when, after her father’s death, she discovers he owes the mafia a great deal of money. Running off to Colorado to be a “Harvey Girl,” Etta soon captures the interest of a wealthy ne’er-do-well who she is forced to kill in self-defense. Before she can hang for murder, however, she’s sprung by a friend and joins forces with Butch Cassidy’s gang. There, she meets the Sundance Kid and they fall in love. She becomes adept at robbing trains, and as the gang disperses she’s the one trusted to deposit the cash in a Brooklyn bank. While she waits for Harry to join her in New York, she becomes friends with a young Eleanor Roosevelt, and works for a while, as Annie Oakley, in Bill Cody’s Wild West show. But the Pinkertons are still looking for her; an old nemesis from the gang is bent on killing her; and the mafia hasn’t forgotten her name. It takes skill and the help of a few powerful friends before Etta and Harry can escape to safety in South America.
Interspersed with telegrams, letters, and newspaper reports, Etta is a charming story as filled with train robberies and prison escapes as any dime novel of the time—but written a whole lot better. Gerald Kolpan has painted such a vivid picture of the era—and the woman living it—that it’s difficult to imagine that Etta had lived any other life.
Lisa Ann Verge
THE BALTIC GAMBIT
Dewey Lambdin, St. Martin’s, 2009, $25.95/ C$28.95, hb, 368pp, 9780312348069
The Royal Navy’s incorrigible Alan Lewrie has been outsmarting and outfighting Britain’s enemies while simultaneously practicing adultery on a Herculean scale for fifteen novels. He is an immensely likable man who fits the term “rake” and “rogue” as do few others in historical fiction.
Dewey Lambdin’s latest adventure finds Captain Lewrie in a courtroom battle carried over from previous escapades. His troubles with
the law take up almost half this book, but even the hardiest sailor will find the description of trials in early 19th century England entertaining and amusing. The most engaging aspects of the English courts of the day were the almost total absence of law and justice in favor of political and social connections. Lewrie’s triumph in the halls of justice leads into his service in the naval battle at Copenhagen and in convoying agents into tsarist Russia. Has Napoleon ever faced a more redoubtable, and jaded, foe? From courtroom to brothel to quarterdeck, Alan Lewrie is once again proving to be an unstoppable force.
John R. Vallely
THE DE VERE PAPERS
Michael Langford, Parapress, 2008, £7.99, pb, 229pp, 9781898594833
The De Vere Papers is set in 1868, at a fictional college in Cambridge. The papers in question throw doubt on the authenticity of William Shakespeare having written the work that is attributed to him. When the librarian is murdered and the papers relating to De Vere are stolen, Dr Simon Weatherspoon, a divinity scholar, investigates. However, he is hiding a secret of his own. When he meets the feminist critic, Theresa Brown, he wishes he could be open with her. Lord FitzSimmons, and someone undiscovered, is also searching not only in the last papers but also for a very hidden treasure. Although this book is a light and amusing read, filled with charming illustrations, it is hard to become involved with the characters, which are sketchily drawn. It is written from an omnipresent narrator’s point of view, with long passages of unnecessary description and historical facts and very little dialogue.
Fenella Miller
THE SCENT OF SAKE
Joyce Lebra, Avon A, 2009, $13.95/C$14.95, pb, 384pp, 9780061662379
Lebra’s debut is a biographical novel of Rie, the sole heir of the House of Omura, a sake-brewing family in 19th-century Japan. Although Rie shows signs of being a shrewd businesswoman, she is not allowed to enter the brewery, which means that her future husband will assume sole responsibility for the future of the family business. When Rie is betrothed to Jihei against her wishes, her mother tells her that the basis of a successful marriage is to ”kill the self” and let go of her own needs and desires in favor of those of her husband. Unfortunately for Rie, her husband is a heavy drinker who does not intend to give up his relationship with O-Toki, a geisha. Though Rie is under pressure to produce an heir, Jihei’s attention is focused on O-Toki, and she soon finds herself caring for her husband’s son with his lover. Though Jihei is outwardly in charge of the House of Omura, Rie is the brains behind the operation, making important, and often risky, business decisions. The dynasty that she continues, both with her own children and those born to Jihei’s lovers,
is formidable.
Rie’s fight to keep her ”self” alive despite societal pressures to submit to her husband makes for an engaging read. There’s enough discussion of business to set a realistic stage for the action of the novel, but Lebra doesn’t get bogged down in technical details of the sakebrewing process. The politics of the era, both at the local and national level, are mentioned, but the focus of the novel remains steadily on Rie and her place in the family business. While the narrative is easy to follow, some of the abrupt shifts forward several years in time can be disorienting, and the large number of characters, many with similar names, take a while to sort out. Overall, an enjoyable novel for readers who appreciate stories of women’s lives and struggles.
Nanette Donohue
SECRET BRIDE
Sharol Louise, Five Star, 2009, $22.95, hb, 288pp, 9781594147180
Damion Templeton, Viscount Woodhurst, is experiencing a problem all too common in Regency romance novels—to satisfy his dying grandmother he needs a bride immediately, but doesn’t care to be married. His plan to hire an actress is altered when fate places indigent school teacher Alix Adams in his path. Explaining his predicament, he finds the young woman willing to assist. Damion escorts Alix and her favorite pupil Elizabeth, falsely identified as her little sister, to his country estate to meet his grandmother. As his lordship’s relationship with the pair develops, evidence indicates that the little girl is Alix’s own baseborn daughter. Alix discovers that the viscount has a self-described fiancée-in-waiting, aware of the deception and all too eager to put her in her place.
Despite an abundance of stock characters— mentoring older female, predatory other woman, precocious child, sneering villain— and misunderstandings piled high, the story is capably written and should appeal to devout fans of the genre.
Margaret Barr
THE DETECTIVE WORE SILK DRAWERS
Peter Lovesey, Soho, 2008, $14.00, pb, 218pp, 9781569475249
The second of Peter Lovesey’s Victorian mysteries (now reissued) plunges Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackery into the underworld of bare-knuckled pugilism. In 1880, fighting with “the raw ‘uns” has been outlawed in England for a decade, yet matches in out-of-the-way locales still draw huge crowds. When the headless body of a man with scarred knuckles washes up on the Thames Embankment, Cribb recruits a young policeman, Henry Jago, to pose as one of these midnight pugilists. But young Henry, goodlooking, fit, earnest and callow, is no match for the seductive, sadistic Mrs. Vibart, who manages a stable of brutal fighters on her estate. And when Mrs. V. is herself found brutally murdered
in her bed, the evidence points to, of all people, Henry. Will Sergeant Cribb crack the case—and hopefully before the unfortunate Henry is beaten senseless in the ring? Read on.
Like all the Sergeant Cribb mysteries, this one is deftly plotted, lightly ironic, and full of the color of Victorian sport.
Bruce Macbain
WOBBLE TO DEATH
Peter Lovesey, Soho, 2008, $14.00, pb, 234pp, 9781569475232
It is a cold November morning in 1879 and a dozen ‘pedestrians’ in silk drawers and white tights gather at the Agricultural Hall in Islington, a structure so vast that it contains its own fog. The occasion is a ‘wobble’—a grueling six-day marathon race. This is the setting of Peter Lovesey’s first Victorian mystery, now reissued.
The competitors are rough working-class types except for Captain Chadwick, ex- Guards officer and the favorite to win, and MostynSmith, a puny self-styled doctor who arrives for the contest with a trunk full of mysterious potions. The race is only in its second day when Captain Chadwick’s strongest competitor, Charles Darrell, dies of strychnine poisoning. Enter Detective Sergeant Cribb and his partner, the stolid Constable Thackeray. As Cribb sifts the evidence, the footsore contestants, fewer each day, slog on toward the finish line.
Lovesey, an expert in Victorian sports arcana, guides the plot with a deft touch and plenty of period atmosphere. Readers who have not yet made his acquaintance will find him a delightful companion.
Bruce Macbain
THE LONG KNIVES ARE CRYING
Joseph M. Marshall, Fulcrum, 2008, $24.95, hb, 441pp, 9781555916725
This second book in Joseph Marshall’s Lakota Westerns series tells the story of Custer’s Last Stand from the Lakota viewpoint. Opening with John Richard Cloud, an old man in 1920, we see the epic 1875 battle through his eyes as he revisits the site on a trip with his daughters and grandson. Cloud recounts the Lakota unease with the incursion of the white man, and the building tension as Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull decide they must reclaim their land. Cloud is a key player in the tale, standing alongside Crazy Horse as the fight is planned and carried out in a time when the Lakota way of life was rapidly disappearing.
Having not read the first novel in the series, I felt at a distinct disadvantage in the beginning pages of this book. The names and places came fast and furious, and I often had to reread passages to understand relationships. However, once I got into the rhythm of the story I found myself brought into the Lakota world; Marshall does a superb job of showing how difficult things were becoming for the Lakota as their land was overtaken and the buffalo herds disappeared. The white man does not come off well in any
47, February
instance in this novel, but since it’s meant to be seen from a Native American point of view, that is understandable. The dialogue is very stilted, however; it seemed that Marshall tried overly hard to give the Lakota a strong way of speaking, but it felt forced to me. At times the story did drag, and there was a major coincidence I found hard to believe. Overall, though, this is a unique and interesting perspective on a battle that I knew little about.
Tamela McCann
THE INDEPENDENCE OF MISS MARY BENNET
Colleen McCullough, Simon & Schuster, 2009, $26.00/C$29.99, 352pp, hb, 9781416596486 / HarperCollins, 2008, £18.99, hb, 9780007271832
Whatever became of Mary Bennet, the middle sister of the five young ladies memorialized in Pride and Prejudice? Not nearly as witty as Lizzie, who won Mr. Darcy’s heart, nor as pure as Jane, who married Mr. Bingley, not as cute as Kitty, nor as naughty as Lydia, who ran off with Mr. Wickham—with her crooked tooth, spotty skin, and horrible singing voice, Mary spent a lot of time being ignored. Until now, that is, when Colleen McCullough tells us what happened.
Now, gentle reader, please be forewarned: the characters of this novel may have the same names as those of Austen’s book, but the personalities have changed, the language is shockingly different, and the nuances of tone, emotion, and plot have all disappeared. What we have instead is a coarse coincidence-riddled adventure centered on the newly emancipated Mary. She has spent the last seventeen years as companion to her silly mother, hidden away at Shelby Manor, days distant from Pemberley. Mary has used this time to educate herself, however, and with her tooth fixed, her skin clear, and her beautiful violet eyes yearning to see the wider world, she spurns Fitzwilliam Darcy’s meager settlement investment and draws out the funds to support her research into the povertystricken peoples of the country. Her adventure goes awry almost immediately, and the Darcy and Bennet families spring into action, aided by Darcy’s friend Angus Sinclair, who unwittingly gave Mary the idea for this scheme in the first place. He and Charlie Darcy, son of Lizzie and Fitz, are two of the few likeable (or believable) characters in this tale.
Read the story for what it is: an early 19thcentury romp through the seamier side of England, and pay no heed to any passing reference to people you thought you knew.
Helene Williams
THE ORGAN GRINDER
Maan Meyers, Five Star, 2008, $25.95, hb, 332pp, 9781594147210
The latest book in the Dutchman Historical Mystery series by husband-and-wife team Martin and Annette Meyers (writing as Maan Meyers) is set in 1899 New York City. Detective
cousins John “Dutch” Tonneman and Bo Clancy investigate the murder of a prostitute named Delia Swann whose viciously slashed body is discovered by a cop on his beat. After the cop himself is killed, it becomes clear to Dutch and Bo that the murderer is looking for a heart-shaped locket once owned by Delia. More victims turn up as the detectives follow the trail of the stiletto-wielding murderer. Dutch fears that his sweetheart, photographer Esther Breslau, may be next on the murderer’s list. It’s a race against time as the detectives try to find the murderer before he finds Esther.
Some of the characters are a bit wordy at times, relying on explanation more than action to advance the story, but that fault can be easily overlooked as the tale unfolds. Peopled with Irish cops, Tammany Hall bosses, street urchins, prostitutes and thugs, such as the Italian members of the Black Hand, The Organ Grinder is a wild and colorful ride through the culture of turn-of-the-century New York.
John Kachuba
A CONSPIRACY OF RAVENS
Gilbert Morris, Thomas Nelson, 2008, $13.99, pb, 314pp, 9781595544254
In this second Lady Trent novel, 1850s Victorian London finds Lady Serafina Trent working once again with Dylan Tremayne. This time, she’s helping determine the true heir to her neighbor’s sizable estate. After some investigating, Serafina astounds the Haydens by revealing that the child they believed had died at birth is actually alive and living as a criminal in London’s worst slum. Then, when the Haydens’ butler is found poisoned, Lady Serafina must employ her famous scientific reasoning to discover answers before foul play strikes again.
The lively dialogue and engaging characters make for a suspenseful plot with a satisfying conclusion. The character of Dylan is an excellent example of a truly committed Christian, and the growing attraction between the two heroes of this story make this fun to read. With mischief, murder, and blossoming love, this cozy mystery is a delight. Readers will anxiously await the next installment from this beloved Christian fiction author.
Rebecca Roberts
WHERE LOVE DWELLS
Delia Parr, Bethany House, 2008, $12.99, pb, 320pp, 9780764200885
Volume 3 in the Candlewood Trilogy finds widow Emma Garrett expecting her sons and their families home for her birthday. She is apprehensive about their reception of the news that she plans to marry her attorney, Zachary Breckenwith. Also complicating matters is the arrival of Wryn, a young and troublesome relative of her daughter-in-law’s, who threatens to disrupt the birthday celebrations with her unruly behavior. Another bar to Emma’s happiness arises when she and Zachary disagree on their future. She wants to help with his law practice, while he objects that since women
can’t become lawyers, she shouldn’t meddle in legal affairs. It begins to look like this will not be the joyous family party she had planned. I haven’t read the other volumes in the series, but was able to follow the narrative thread without knowing the backstory. Emma is an interesting character, a rather independent woman for the 1840s, running her own boarding house business and aspiring to a man’s profession. I was a little surprised that no one even mentions corporal punishment for the wayward Wryn in an era when “spare the rod and spoil the child” was the prevailing attitude towards discipline. An enjoyable inspirational romance.
B.J. Sedlock
A DANGEROUS AFFAIR (US) / DEATH OF A DANCER (UK)
Caro Peacock, Avon, 2009, $13.95/C$14.95, pb, 320pp, 9780061447488 / Harper, 2008, £7.99, pb, 384pp, 9780007244218
A Dangerous Affair, an elegant mystery novel set in early Victorian London, is the second installment in a series involving a very unconventional female sleuth by the name of Liberty Lane.
After the death of her father, Liberty struggles to make a respectable life for herself in London, working as a music teacher. But when a famous actress is poisoned, and a young dancer of her acquaintance is accused of the crime, Liberty finds herself drawn into an investigation that becomes more complicated by the day. Between music lessons and morning rides on her beloved horse, Liberty negotiates London’s elegant neighborhoods as well as its slums, rubbing shoulders with prominent politicians as well as prostitutes, all in an effort to track down lost witnesses and unusual clues. Time grows short after the young dancer is sentenced to hang, and Liberty—with the help of a few good friends— must take great risks in an attempt to catch the real murderer.
Caro Peacock reveals an intricate working knowledge of late 1830s London in this lithe and well-plotted story, revealing through detail—of clothes, cost, and class-consciousness—how very awkward Liberty’s position is, as a reputable single woman in a dangerous town, and how well she manages nonetheless. Bravo to this talented author: A Dangerous Affair is the perfect combination of charming characters, a frisson of romance, and a well-crafted mystery.
Lisa Ann Verge
A PROMISE TO BELIEVE IN
Tracie Peterson, Bethany House, 2008, $13.99, pb, 364pp, 9780764201486
It is 1879 in Montana Territory. Gwen Gallatin is beginning to feel she is cursed. First, her husband, Harvey Bishop, came down with the measles on their wedding day and died a few days later. Then she and her two sisters are left to fend for themselves when their father dies from a stray gunshot wound. Not knowing what else to do, the young women decide to run their father’s boarding house themselves, despite
interference from the saloon owner next door. Just as things are beginning to run smoothly, a stranger comes to town claiming to be Harvey’s brother. The trouble is that Harvey told Gwen he had no family.
Ms. Peterson blends humor, romance and intrigue into this multi-layered tapestry, the first in a new trilogy called Brides of Gallatin County. Each sister struggles with her own problems as they work together to make a living. The author includes descriptions of the Montana landscape in the 1870s, the importance of the coming railroad, and other historical details. A light and entertaining read, with deeper inspirational messages woven in.
Nan Curnutt
AN UNEXPECTED LOVE
Tracie Peterson and Judith Miller, Bethany House, 2008, $13.99, pb, 395pp, 9780764203657
This second book in The Broadmoor Legacy continues the story of cousins Sophie, Fanny, and Amanda Broadmoor, three heiresses who, in 1897, live in Rochester, New York. Uncle Jonas, who does not want to lose control of Fanny’s money, sends the trio to England, and pays his lackey, Daniel Irwin, to court Fanny on the voyage despite her previous engagement to Michael Atwell. When the girls arrive in England, Sophie ignores the warnings of her father’s friend, Paul Medford, and succumbs to the charms of the handsome widower, Wesley Hedrick. The three cousins return to Rochester where Fanny awaits word from the Klondike of her fiancé, Sophie pursues her romance with Wesley, and Amanda applies to medical school. This story would be significantly more enjoyable if the series had been published as a single novel. There is no introduction to the various characters, and no dominant storyline. It is also frustrating that nothing happens in England that could not have occurred in New York, which makes the journey feel like an elaborate plot device. On the plus side, the writing is smooth, the plot twists are unexpected, and the characters are interesting enough to create curiosity as their future.
Nancy J. Attwell
MURDER MOST WELCOME
Nicola Slade, Robert Hale, 2008, £18.99, hb, 224pp, 9780709085690
Charlotte Richmond is an outwardly grieving Victorian widow who comes to live with her husband’s family. Her husband’s apparent death in India came as a welcome relief to Charlotte, and she hopes to settle down to a quiet life in an English village after her own rather shady upbringing. When her husband returns unexpectedly he puts the house in an uproar. It is when he is murdered for a second time that the fun starts and Charlotte’s own past threatens to catch up with her. Villains and fainting Victorian ladies--this book has it all. Nicola Slade’s attention to period detail and fast action with a mix of romance makes this a worthy successor to those 19th-century sensation novelists. It is a
well paced and witty read from start to finish, and one of the most entertaining books I have ever read.
Karen Wintle
TREACHERY (UK) / THE PRIVATEER’S REVENGE (US)
Julian Stockwin, Hodder & Stoughton, 2008, £17.99, hb, 344pp, 9780340961117 / McBooks, 2008, $24.00, hb, 352pp, 9781590131657
Commander Thomas Kydd is devastated by the unexpected death of his fiancée, Rosalynd. Distraught with grief he embarks on a mission to protect the Channel Islands that ends with betrayal and the loss of his command.
With only his old friend Nicholas Renzi standing by him, Kydd becomes a privateer, sailing the Atlantic in search of wealthy French merchant ships and Bonaparte’s fighting vessels—ruthless in his ambition to secure once again the riches and glory he has lost.
This is an entertaining nautical yarn, and fans of Aubrey, Hornblower and Drinkwater should certainly find much to enjoy in the adventures of Thomas Kydd. My only reservation—and it is only a small niggle—is the frequent phonetic rendering of the hero’s dialogue, of which I am not a huge fan. A small sprinkling provides flavour; too much is overpowering and verges on pantomime.
That aside Treachery is a jolly good read, even for readers new to the series.
Sara Wilson
THE PARLOR HOUSE DAUGHTER
Joanne Sundell, Five Star, 2008, $25.95, hb, 289pp, 9781594147227
Rebecca Rose’s beginnings are inauspicious. Born to a Nevada City prostitute, she witnesses her mother’s murder at an early age. In an attempt to prevent Becca from finding herself in similar circumstances, a fellow prostitute who was a friend of her mother’s arranges passage to Denver, providing the young girl with the address of one of the city’s most infamous parlor houses. The parlor house madam, Jenny Clayton, takes Becca in and offers her work as a maid. Becca grows up under Jenny’s wing, but Jenny cannot prevent Becca from pursuing a career as a prostitute. Becca’s first client, Morgan Larkspur, is gentlemanly and cannot bring himself to despoil the lovely (and naïve) young woman. Rather, he installs her as his mistress in Denver’s finest hotel while he returns to his job in the mining town of Leadville, where tensions are high between the miners and the mine owners. While Morgan is away, Becca continues her dangerous, lifelong search for her mother’s murderer.
The Parlor House Daughter is a fast-paced, suspenseful romance set in the Wild West. Becca’s shrewdness and determination are appropriate for a character of her background, although her naïvete in regards to sexuality seems odd considering that she grew up around prostitutes. The details of the labor unrest in Leadville add realism to the story, but Sundell
keeps the romantic relationship between the main characters, as well as Becca’s quest for revenge against the man who killed her mother, at the forefront. The language can be somewhat harsh, especially early in the novel, but it suits the era and setting. Readers who enjoy Western romances with out-of-the-ordinary settings should give this novel a try.
Nanette Donohue
CITY OF GOD
Beverly Swerling, Simon & Schuster, 2008, $27, hb, 522pp, 9781416549215
City of God, the fourth installment in Beverly Swerling’s fabulously plotted multi-generational family saga, takes place in mid-19th century Manhattan. Dr. Nicholas Turner is a promising young doctor who leaves Rhode Island to take a position in the notorious Bellevue Hospital. There, he undertakes controversial research in an effort to understand—and abolish—disease, while also fighting to better the conditions in the corrupt and dysfunctional institution. While in Manhattan, Dr. Turner crosses paths with several cousins by marriage—including the widow Manon, who in the process of her charity work considers the socially radical step of converting to Catholicism—and more particularly, with the lovely Caroline Devrey, married to a cruel shipping mogul in love with a Chinese girl he’d “bought” years ago. These characters live out their passions in the midst of a multi-racial, multi-religious city spreading up the island at an alarming pace, undergoing massive population changes, all while the issues of slavery—and the Civil War—loom on the horizon.
Ms. Swerling deftly juggles the many threads of her stories while portraying with passion the history of the times. Family sagas have been quite out of vogue lately: Ms. Swerling may very well revive the genre with this solid, engaging series.
Lisa Ann Verge
NO LESS THAN THE JOURNEY
E.V. Thompson, Robert Hale, 2008, £18.99, hb, 336pp, 9780709087441
Wesley Curnow, a young miner, leaves Cornwall for the United States in response to an invitation from his uncle, who is working on the mines in Missouri. Taking passage on a boat from New York bound for New Orleans, Wesley finds himself befriended by a charismatic U.S. marshal who is en route to the Western territories to bring law to the area. It is the marshal who helps Wesley in his quest to find his uncle. Along the way the young Cornishman finds himself in a variety of scrapes with river pirates, hostile German miners, an old mountain man and a group of outlaws, while romantic interest is provided by an attractive half-Mexican croupier.
Descriptions of both characters and places are economical, a few short sentences allowing the reader to paint their own mental pictures, and not overwhelming the narrative. The plot and the main characters are all plausible, while
the political and social pressures to curb the casual violence and banditry in order to gain statehood provide the background to the actions of both marshal and young Cornishman. An entertaining, enjoyable read.
Mike Ashworth
LUCKY BILLY: A Novel about Billy the Kid John Vernon, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008, $24/C$29.99, hb, 294pp, 9780547074238
This novel takes place between 1878 and 1881 when young Billy the Kid was involved in the Lincoln County War in New Mexico, fought between an Irish gang controlling the town of Lincoln and a newcomer from England bent on breaking up their hold on the county. Each group had hired gunmen working to disrupt the peaceful scene of Lincoln County, with young Billy working for an Englishman named John Tunstall. Billy was loyal to his boss and sought revenge for his murder. Eventually, because of the corrupt political rivalry between the two factions, the war came to a head as Pat Garrett sought to capture or kill Billy the Kid as a result of a jailbreak where The Kid killed two men. I’ve read about the life of Billy the Kid and enjoyed Mr. Vernon’s tale of Billy’s life as a gunfighter. The author shows the outlaw as defiant and tough with his adversaries, but a friend to those who treat him kindly. A lost soul caught up in difficult times, The Kid eventually paid the price for living by the gun. Lucky Billy is highly recommended for anyone who is interested in the legend of Billy the Kid and his times. John Vernon is a fine writer known for his meticulous research, and I will be looking for his historical novels in the future.
Jeff Westerhoff
NORTH STAR
Richard S. Wheeler, Forge, 2008, $25.95/ C$28.95, hb, 320pp, 9780765316639
In 1870, legendary trail guide and former mountain man Barnaby Skye realized that the West he knew and loved was coming to an end. The wilderness was vanishing, along with the buffalo herds; Indian tribes were forced to reservations; and, as a man over sixty years of age, he longed for living his remaining days in a house with a roof and a fire, rather than living in a tepee and sleeping on the cold ground. His Shoshone wife Mary (Barnaby had two Indian wives) longed to see her son, whom she hadn’t seen in seven years. This novel is about the journeys of these two people: Barnaby’s search for a permanent home, and Mary’s attempt to connect with her long-lost son.
This is the seventeenth novel of the adventures of Barnaby Skye. I’ve read several of the books in the series and found them to be a delight. The author writes books that are characterdriven and easy to read. I became immersed in the escapades of this ageing rascal from the early West and highly recommend North Star to anyone who enjoys Western stories, especially tales of how the West changed in the 1870s and how the change affected the people who lived
during those times.
UNBRIDLED DREAMS
Jeff Westerhoff
Stephanie Grace Whitson, Bethany House, 2008, $13.99, pb, 347pp, 9780764203275
In 1886, thanks to a successful banking business, the Friedrichs are social leaders in South Platte, Nebraska. Eighteen-year-old Irma is determined to ride in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Exhibition as the ranchero “Liberty Belle,” but her mother, Willa, insists that Irma first attend finishing school. To please his daughter, Otto Friedrich deceives his wife, and secretly arranges for Irma to join the Wild West in St. Louis as it begins its seasonal tour. Although Irma regrets the deception, she is so happy to be riding in the show and making new friends––including handsome Shep Sterling, King of the Cowboys––that she ignores the growing tension between her parents.
This novel is a little dreary at the start, but once Irma arrives at the Wild West the story takes off with a gallop. Irma has much to learn under Buffalo Bill’s tutelage, and those lessons have more to do with overcoming her stubborn pride than with perfecting tricks in the ring. Shep Sterling is a charmer, and the relationship between Irma’s parents adds depth and poignancy. Set against the backdrop of the Wild West Exhibition, Unbridled Dreams is an unusual novel whose characters stayed with me long after I closed the book.
Nancy J. Attwell
THE LONG WALK HOME
Valerie Wood, Bantam Press, 2008, £17.99, hb, 348pp, ISBN 9780593060216
Not being a fan of Catherine Cookson, I was a little dismayed when the publisher’s details proclaimed this book to have been written by the ‘Catherine Cookson of the North East’. That being said, I must confess to having enjoyed this book more than I expected. The novel is set in Hull in 1852 and opens with the chance meeting of a poor boy, Mikey, and a rich lawyer’s daughter, Eleanor, when Mikey is arrested for stealing a rabbit to help feed his hungry family. Mikey decides to seek his fortune in London and together, with other waifs and strays, he makes the long journey on foot. Some years later, he meets up again with Eleanor and they end up fulfilling the title of the book together by walking back to Hull. I don’t think anyone will be surprised by the romantic ending. The characters are somewhat one-dimensional and the good-hearted poor willing to share their last slice of bread with the hungry protagonists are thick on the ground, which is perhaps rather unlikely.
Basically, it does what it says on the tin. It is an entertaining cosy light read with a kindhearted benevolent heroine and an equally good, honest and generous hero. The historical setting is conveyed to some degree through the descriptions of the conditions for the poor and at times the annoying local accent. This is
the fourteenth novel by Valerie Wood. It isn’t a novel for me, but readers who are already fans, and I am sure there are many, will be very satisfied with this new addition. Fans of Catherine Cookson would indeed also be happy with this novel.
Ann Northfield
BELOVED CAPTIVE
Kathleen Y’Barbo, Barbour, 2008, $14.95, pb, 304pp, 9781602602304
In the opening chapters of Beloved Captive, Emilie Gayarre finds herself traveling home to New Orleans in 1836 to tend to her dying father and hopefully obtain financing for a new schoolhouse for the island where she now lives. While home, she discovers a family secret that upends her self-perception; her travails increase when the ship upon which she’s returning to Fairweather Key is taken by pirates and Emilie finds herself kidnapped. Meanwhile, Caleb Spencer, a young Washington lawyer returning briefly to his mother’s plantation, comes upon the pirate ship and works out a plan to rescue Emilie. The tangled relationship these two embark upon from this point revolves around mistaken identities, mistrust, and denial of attraction.
This novel is the second in the Fairweather Key series of Christian historical novels. Not having read the first, it took me a while to understand Emilie’s motivations. Neither of the main characters inspires sympathy; both were at times short-tempered and standoffish, then righteously pious. The ending is incredibly rushed and unbelievable; after being set up for a showdown between Caleb and Emilie’s captor, the whole scene is over in less than a page. While this novel isn’t a chore to read, it certainly won’t lead me to more in the series. I was left with a decidedly “ho hum” feeling about the entire story.
Tamela McCann
20th CENTURY
N nTHE ISLANDS OF DIVINE MUSIC
John Addiego, Unbridled, 2008, $24.95, hb, 256pp, 9781932961546
Rosari Cara, the daughter of a peasant barber whose wife left him, is constantly poring over books and newspapers while still on the lookout for her mother. One of the few educated woman in a small Southern Italian town, Rosari writes a threatening yet comical letter from a criminal, an act which eventually forces the entire Cara family to immigrate to America, where they become the prosperous, flamboyant Verbicaro family. Their story is depicted with each chapter focused on one family member, a story spanning the entire 20th century. Experiencing snow for the first time on the ship to America, Rosari and her found mother, Eleonora, hear a heavenly sound “as of glass rubbing on silk,” an odd yet beautiful simile foreshadowing the immigrant family’s connection to America’s evolving history.
Through Giuseppe’s astute thinking and decision making, the reader sees the Verbicaro family’s rise to riches through investment in land and construction. Joe, the eldest son, becomes obsessed by business. Giuseppe believes that his not-so-innocent second bride, a young Hispanic second wife, has conceived his new child by an immaculate conception. Up to the time of Giuseppe’s death, this story carries a magical realism style reminiscent of Gabriel García Márquez and Isabel Allende, evoking the ephemeral sense of seeking the sacred in a markedly profane world. The narrative firstperson children and grandchildren’s voices now become palpably real as they live through the confusion and stark fear of the Cuban missile crisis, the enthralling greatness of American baseball, the crushing defeat and rebellion during the Vietnam War years and the discarding of tradition fostered by the new millennium.
John Addiego has written a riveting Verbicaro family saga reflecting the Italian immigrants’ animated point of view of American history, a kaleidoscope of the ordinary perceived by quite extraordinary characters.
Viviane Crystal
THE TALE OF BRIAR BANK
Susan Wittig Albert, Berkley Prime Crime, 2008, $23.95/C$26.50, hb, 305pp, 9780425223611
This fifth entry in the mystery series featuring children’s author Beatrix Potter opens in December 1909, when a snowstorm brings life in the village of Sawrey, where Beatrix owns a farm, to a standstill. Shortly after her arrival, Beatrix finds out that Hugh Wickstead, a collector of antiquities, has been killed by a falling tree limb. But how could a limb have fallen on him when there was no wind? Is it true, as the village gossip would have it, that he was killed because of a curse on a treasure he discovered? While Beatrix and her talking animal friends work to solve the mystery, she begins to develop an attraction to local solicitor Will Heelis, which is hard for her to acknowledge because she wishes to remain loyal to her dead fiancé’s memory.
Many readers will find this series, with its talking animals, too cutesy, but I find these books an absolute delight, the ultimate comfort read. Albert is careful to make her stories fit the actual events of Beatrix Potter’s life, while at the same time creating believable fictional characters, both human and animal. Curl up with a cup of tea (or your favorite hot beverage) and enjoy!
Vicki Kondelik
THE LEOPARD’S PREY
Suzanne Arruda, Berkley Prime Crime, 2009, $24.95/C$27.50, hb, 384pp, 9780451225863
Fourth in Arruda’s Jade del Cameron series, The Leopard’s Prey is thoroughly engaging from beginning to end. American Jade is living in Kenya in 1920, supplementing her income as a photojournalist by working for an American zoological company, wrangling and
photographing the animals they collect. She finds herself playing detective once again when a body is discovered on the coffee plantation of her friends, the Thompsons. The victim, the co-owner of the local dry goods store, was not just an unpleasant blackmailer; he was last seen arguing with Sam Featherstone, the decidedly independent Jade’s suitor.
As Jade, Sam, and their friends work to clear Sam’s name, they must cope with all manner of obstacles: Sam’s malaria, competition for Jade’s hand by a pushy American, the capture of wild animals before they are killed by local hunters, and the arrest of the African boy Jelani for inciting a riot. Arruda accomplishes the delicate balancing act of keeping true to the place and time in which the story is set without imposing present-day sensibilities. In 1920s Kenya, Jade sees the corralling of African animals for zoos as protection rather than plunder. Equally truthful is the growth of Jade’s relationship with Sam, and I’m sure the fifth in the series will find her attempting to reconcile her feelings for him with her desire for independence.
Ellen Keith
THE FIRST WAVE
James R. Benn, Soho, 2008, $13.00/C$14.50, pb, 291pp, 9781569475171
Irreverent and sarcastic, young Billy Boyle arrives in French North Africa in 1942 to broker a peace between the Vichy France-appointed leaders and the invading American forces. Things quickly deteriorate and the young Irish American cop is soon investigating murders, checking out a gambling ring, dodging smugglers, and trying to reunite with his incarcerated lady love, a British spy. His allies are a Polish baron with a death wish, a British speedboat captain with a grudge, and his stern commanding officer. His enemies are well, just about everyone else, including French collaborators, well-armed Nazis heading north, suspicious American hospital personnel, and anyone who doesn’t like his style.
Billy’s dark sense of humor is infectious. He does his best to keep his head down and get through the war. But subtle political maneuvering on a large scale and petty acts of individual violence on a small scale make that impossible. A well-paced story with engaging characters wading through the blood, flies, and treachery of World War II North Africa.
Rebecca Cantrell
NEMESIS: The Final Case of Eliot Ness
William Bernhardt, Ballantine, 2009, $26.00/ C$30.00, hb, 368pp, 9780345487582
Eliot Ness, the real-life lawman who took down Al Capone, is appointed Safety Director of Cleveland, a city that in 1935 is rife with corruption and crime. Although he is determined to fight the organized criminals that run illegal gambling and smuggle hooch from the rural districts, as well as installing traffic lights to reduce the number of traffic fatalities, his activities are thrust into the shade by the Torso Murderer. This vicious madman is America’s
first known serial killer. Ness succumbs to pressure from a frightened populace and vows that he will catch the killer.
Bernhardt is a skillful writer of thrillers and detective fiction. He creates suspense well and keeps the reader guessing almost until the end. In the afterword, he states that the minor characters were largely conflations of several individuals, and it’s clear that he’s a little more comfortable writing for those characters he has invented than for the famous Ness himself. It is the hard-working police sergeant, Merylo, who ends up the most sympathetic character in the book, while others remain superficial.
Unfortunately, Ness himself seems not to develop at all, maintaining his stubbornness toward both his work and his personal life, losing our sympathy in long scenes where he is so clueless about the way he behaves toward his lonely wife that it’s tempting to skim over those passages and get back to the action.
Overall, the book is a satisfying, lightweight thriller, although a little anti-climactic because of the need to adhere to history, and will appeal to those interested in the post-Prohibition, preWorld War II era in the U.S.
Susanne Dunlap
A GOOD WAR
Patrick Bishop, Hodder, 2008, £6.99, pb, 521pp, 9780340979006
In 1940 Adam Tomaszewski is a fighter pilot in the RAF when he meets the charismatic Irish soldier Gerry Cunningham. They form an unlikely friendship; Gerry is forceful and garrulous and Adam is diffident. Their friendship is severely tested when they become rivals for the attentions of the wealthy and mysterious Moira. As the war continues, each man goes his own way. Adam turns to piloting drop planes and Gerry joins the special forces. As the Allied invasion of Europe begins, Gerry and Adam meet again behind the lines with more than one kind of battle to fight and resolve.
The novel basically takes a young Polish airman and charts all aspects of his life during World War II. The characters are not always likeable, but they are well written and the reader can empathise with their decisions and choices. Both the combat and the emotional dramas are charged with tension, and the outcomes do not always take the usually trodden path. The writing is strong and assertive and powerfully conveys the atmosphere of living on the edge—although everyone did seem to eat suspiciously well for the times, and I found it odd that rationing of food and petrol did not seem to be issues.
This is Patrick Bishop’s first novel, following on from non-fiction, and a fine debut.
Susan Hicks
book, architect/designer Frank Lloyd Wright, changed the course of history. Whatever his faults, foibles, or eccentricities, he ushered in a new way of thinking about the way people should live with and look at the world around them. He was a control freak, certainly, but the primary focus of this novel is to show the ways in which he was influenced by the women in his life.
The narrator of this novel, by way of a third party translator, is Tadashi Sato, a young Japanese American, who, at the beginning of Part One, arrives at Wright’s Minnesota estate, Taliesin, to begin an apprenticeship with the great man. While Sato’s personal story moves forward chronologically, in a creative twist, his narrative moves backward in time, beginning with the last of Wright’s love affairs with Montenegrin dancer Olgivanna Milanoff, who eventually became his third wife.
The tale of each preceding wife/lover is told in subsequent sections. These include his second wife, Maud Miriam Noel, a spoiled southerner with addiction problems; mistress Mamah Borthwick Cheney, whose story ends tragically; and Catherine “Kitty” Tobin, his first wife and mother to six of his children.
Reading T.C. Boyle is always a treat. His trademark comic touches, ironic and insightful, complement the precise plotting and pace. This is by far my favorite of his historical novels, including The Road to Wellville (about John Harvey Kellogg) and The Inner Circle (about Alfred C. Kinsey).
Alice Logsdon
A WHISPERED NAME
William Brodrick, Little Brown, 2008, £16.99, hb, 346pp, 9780316731544
Father Anselm, a bee-keeping monk of Larkwood Monastery in Suffolk, receives two visitors who wish to see a now deceased monk, Herbert Moore. It is a puzzling visit, which sets in train a convoluted research project for Anselm, delving into the obscure past and centring on the apparent execution for desertion of a young Irish soldier, Private Joseph Flanagan, in Belgium 1917. The story is split between the Great War and late 20th-century efforts to uncover the murky truth of the events of the past.
It is a dense, complicated story that seems to be reluctant to yield its secrets to the present day. It reveals core human emotions and traits such as cowardice, guilt, selfishness, bravery and love. In the almost unimaginably horrific mélange of terrors of World War One, a story of spiritual fulfilment and an acceptance of very human limitations emerges, ending with a feeling of redemption.
THE WOMEN
T.C. Boyle, Viking, 2008, hb, $26.95, hb, 464pp, 9780670020416 / Bloomsbury, 2009, £12.99, hb, 464pp, 9780747597582
The visionary, egocentric subject of this
From the many fictional treatments of the Great War, this is one of the very best in providing some sort of understanding and appreciation of the unbearable conditions of the Western Front for so many millions of soldiers, so many of whom, of course, did not return to tell of their horrific experiences.
Doug Kemp
DANCE WITH WINGS
Amelia Carr, Headline Review, 2009, £6.99, pb, 440pp, 9780755347087
The book opens in 2006 in Florida with the character of Sarah, a successful career woman who has yet to find the right man. She is asked by her grandmother, Nancy, to find her old wartime love and return his DFC medal to him. In attempting to fulfil Nancy’s wish she stirs up all sorts of family secrets and comes to question her own romantic involvements.
The setting moves between the 21st century and the 1940s and between America and England. The technique of multiple narrators is used to create tension and anticipation but sometimes has the opposite effect of slowing the narrative and distancing the reader from the characters. The structure is almost writing by numbers: set the scene, introduce the characters, set up a question or mystery, then return to the time it happened, show the reader and explain the mystery.
The characters are also somewhat clichéd. There is an interesting exploration of the war and the toll it takes on individuals, but the writing is sometimes hackneyed with an annoying use of exclamation marks to indicate emotions the writing cannot create. There is some sense of the 1940s, but the romance between the protagonists is the important theme and how secrets and misunderstandings can damage family relationships.
This book is presented as a debut novel, but the author has in fact published several others under the name of Janet Turner. Fans of Judith Lennox and Rosie Thomas would probably enjoy this book, and it would pass a rainy afternoon very nicely curled up with a hot chocolate.
Ann Northfield
TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING
Alan Cheuse, Sourcebooks, 2008, $25.95/ C$28.99, hb, 502pp, 9781402214042
While Edward S. Curtis’s iconic photos of Native Americans, taken in the early years of the 20th century, revealed much about that culture and its peoples, little has been written about the photographer himself. Alan Cheuse’s novel To Catch the Lightning sheds light on Curtis, who spent roughly thirty years of his life tramping across the length and breadth of America, even as far as Alaska, photographing Native Americans before, as he feared, they vanished completely.
Cheuse depicts a man driven by an obsession that threatens to destroy his own family life as he spends more and more time away from his wife and children. Clara, the long-suffering wife, is forced to manage Curtis’s studio in Seattle while also tending to the Curtis children and the household. She discovers some satisfaction in her accomplishments, however, and develops a more assertive nature that only deepens the estrangement she feels for Edward. On his part, Edward remains a doomed romantic as he captures the images of a vanishing culture. He is helpless even as his family begins to
disintegrate.
The story is told mostly through the viewpoint of William Myers, Curtis’s longtime assistant, with another perspective coming from Jimmy Fly-Wing, a Native American friend and guide. It would have been helpful if the author had given us more of Curtis’s thoughts directly, rather than filtered through the point of view of others, especially regarding his familial difficulties. Still, this book is an interesting and evocative look at a man whose history has long been waiting to be told.
John Kachuba
DEATH OF A PILGRIM
David Dickinson, Soho, 2008, $25.00, hb, 336pp, 9781569475409 / Constable, 2009, £18.99, hb, 288pp, 9781845297299
It is 1905 in New York City. Millionaire tycoon Michael Delaney’s son is near death at St. Vincent Hospital amidst avid prayers and lighted candles. When a miraculous recovery occurs, Delaney promises a pilgrimage to the shrine of his son James’s patron saint in Compostela, Spain. Consisting of family Delaneys from all parts of the globe, the pilgrims must go with purpose and all expenses will be paid.
The journey begins in LePuy en Velay, France, when a suspicious death occurs and Michael Delaney spares no cost investigating the crime. Lord Francis Powerscourt, former
Y ANARCHY AND OLD DOGS
Army intelligence officer, answers the British embassy’s call to discreetly investigate, but additional suspicious deaths at the holy sites en route put the pilgrimage at risk. Traveling through picturesque and historical sites and dodging danger at every turn, Powerscourt realizes his own life is in peril, culminating at the notorious Bull Run in Pamplona, Spain.
This is the eighth book in the Lord Powerscourt mystery series, but the novel stands well on its own largely due to the author’s excellent storytelling skills. Highly recommended.
Tess Allegra
HIGH SPIRITS
Alice Duncan, Five Star, 2008, $25.95, hb, 258pp, 9781594146954
In 1921, this third book in the series continues the story of Daisy Gumm Majesty, who supports her World War I-disabled veteran husband, Billy, by pretending to be a spiritualist in Pasadena, California. When her best client wants a séance in a speakeasy, Daisy is more than a little nervous. Performing in front of murdering gangsters isn’t exactly her cup of tea, and when the place is raided, Daisy’s troubles multiply. Billy’s best friend, Detective Sam Rotondo, saves Daisy from arrest, and in return, he asks her to help take down the gangsters with the aid of her spiritual control, Rolly (whom Daisy made up when she was ten years old).
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Colin Cotterill, Quercus, 2008, £12.99, hb, 258pp, 9781847245762 / Soho, 2008, $12.00, pb, 288pp, 9781569475010
This is the fourth in Cotterill’s much-praised series about Dr. Siri Paiboun, national coroner of The People’s Democratic Republic of Laos, first introduced to readers in the bestselling The Coroner’s Lunch. When a blind, retired dentist is run over and killed, it looks like a straightforward job for Dr. Siri and his team, until he finds a letter in the dead man’s pocket, encrypted and written in invisible ink. The coroner’s subsequent investigation tests long friendships, re-awakens an old romance, and leads to a surprise marriage which is possibly—or possibly not—the one foreseen by Auntie Bpoo, the transvestite fortune teller who plies her trade outside the Aeroflot office.
The novel is set in 1977, and Cotterill displays a sound grasp of the complex politics of South-East Asia at the time as well as telling an entertaining story full of wonderful characters who, while excessive and eccentric, always avoid falling into caricature thanks to Cotterill’s skilful and subtle development of their interior lives. I found the plot a little on the thin side, but this was more than compensated by the unfolding of Dr. Siri’s equivocal relationship with his past, with communism and with patriotism. Beneath the good beach reading froth, this novel grapples with serious and absorbing questions about the relationship between the individual and the state, and about what comes to fill the vacuum left by the pulling out of a colonial power. There is also some very fine writing, particularly about the weather. Cotterill himself lives in Thailand and clearly has a feel for the tropical climate and the talent to convey it almost physically on the page.
Although Cotterill has been compared with Alexander McCall Smith, I think this does scant justice to his abilities. This is the first of his novels I have read and I shall certainly be looking out for the previous three in the series. A lovely read—entertaining, thoughtful and full of style. Recommended.
Sarah Bower
Y THE ELEVENTH MAN
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Ivan Doig, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008, $26 hb, 426pp, 9780151012435
In 1941, the Montana State College starting eleven all entered into military service. Each lost his life in that great effort. This is the spark that kindled Ivan Doig’s The Eleventh Man, an unforgettable saga that makes you wonder all over again at the vagaries of human nature.
The “eleventh man” is Bill Reinking, former left end and captain of Treasure State University’s 1941 undefeated “Supreme Team.” After Pearl Harbor the Supreme Team eleven answered the call to arms. Just as Reinking is about to earn his pilot’s wings, he is yanked from training and given a set of unexpected and unwelcome orders. He is to function as war correspondent for the military’s civilian information service. His assignment is to track the Supreme Team through the war, reporting on each man’s missions in the service of his country. He is told that the odds are that all but two of his teammates will make it.
The team soon meets its mortality quota, and Reinking realizes that some of the players are on far more dangerous fields than others. Tension builds as he sees more than the hand of fate remaking them into a Supreme Sacrifice Team. The climax is bittersweet, believable and sadly satisfying.
Riveting only begins to describe the war scenes from Guam to Antwerp and the alltoo-human dramas of family, lovers, and friends. Doig’s narrative is as varied as the landscapes he describes—rugged and forceful, tender, lyrical at times. The Eleventh Man is a virtuoso performance. The story is rich in historical data, much of it new in World War II fiction. And for bibliophiles, the publisher’s quality binding and paper are a pleasure to handle. In every category this is a first rate book.
If you appreciate historical errors, an annoying heroine who has one too many swoons and headaches, and rather mediocre wit, this book is for you. Daisy constantly fears for her life, in a rather eye-rolling manner, and there really isn’t much mystery to the story. The overall tone of the novel is flip, sarcastic, and unrealistic. Not exactly the best storyline, this novel falls short of its promise.
Rebecca Roberts
IN ZODIAC LIGHT
Robert Edric, Doubleday, 2008, £16.99, hb, 368pp, 9780385612586
This novel is bound to invite comparison with Pat Barker’s Regeneration: set in an asylum for shell-shocked soldiers, its ostensible raison d’etre is to examine war’s impact on an artistic temperament. The action of Edric’s novel revolves around musician and composer Ivor Gurney, as Barker deals with the experiences of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen at Craiglockhart.
But there the resemblance ends. Sassoon and Owen were officers. Their doctor was an enlightened pioneer in the field of mental health. They were patients at Craiglockhart during the First World War, when most people could still see the point in it. In Zodiac Light, by contrast, is set in 1923. The patients in the City of London Mental Hospital at Dartford have become an embarrassment to a society anxious to move on from the traumas of war. Gurney was an enlisted man, a poorly educated country boy whose musical ability was seen by many as an aberration, merely an extension of the mental
Lucille Cormier
illness from which he was already suffering before he joined the army. Even his doctor at Dartford, the nameless narrator, only ever expresses an appreciation of his patient’s genius in the most general and ill-formed terms.
Juxtaposed with the account of Gurney’s treatment at Dartford are the narrator’s recollections of his childhood and his father’s obsession with bee-keeping. The purposeful and orderly society of the bees is contrasted with the ignorant, self-serving management of the asylum. This is done without comment by the narrator who, both as a child and adult, is a passive watcher, perceptive yet incapable of employing his perceptiveness in the best interests of his patients or his lonely mother.
This could make the novel a frustrating read, but it is redeemed by the quality of Edric’s prose. His language is precise and compressed, each word invested with a world of meaning. An uneasy, thought-provoking work which stays with you long after you have finished reading it.
Sarah Bower
THE TSARINA’S DAUGHTER
Carolly Erickson, St. Martin’s Press, 2008, $24.95/C$27.95, hb, 324pp, 9780312367381
Erickson calls this retelling of the fall of the Romanov family an “historical entertainment”— more like alternative history in many respects, while remaining historically accurate on many levels. Where Erickson diverges from historical fact is in permitting Tatiana Romanov (“Tania”) to survive the slaughter of her family and to
tell her story under her assumed name decades later.
Erickson is clearly a talented writer, bringing many of her characters to a full, rich existence. Nicky is weak and truly pitiful with no sense of impending doom or any thought given to ways to avert it; Alexandra is a full-blown psych case with little meaningful existence; Grandma Minnie is a miserable, manipulative old witch. Tania is a lovely, thoughtful child who, despite the grand style in which she lives, develops a sense of social conscience, a sense that is utterly missing in the rest of her nuclear and extended families. She actually believes that the naked, cruel terror of the lives of the poor that surround her should be alleviated and she does her best, in her own small way. I suppose this is Erickson’s way of creating a raison d’etre for permitting Tania to live. Of all the characters, however, I was hoping that Rasputin would create a connection for me to the book, but I found Erickson’s portrayal of him not to be fully realized.
While I enjoyed Tania’s story and I recognize that none of the Romanovs survived, I was not engaged enough in the story to care about anyone other than Tania, and even then, not on a totally visceral level. However, Erickson is a master craftsperson, capable of telling a good, entertaining story and giving the reader sufficient historical facts to get a solid sense of time and place. Was the end of Czarist Russia a horrible place for those trying to survive? Erickson makes it so, and the squalid misery is palpable. I guess I was so annoyed by the absolute senselessness of Romanov life that I didn’t really care what happened to them.
Ilysa Magnus
$PANISH FLY
Will Ferguson, Harvill Secker, hb, £12.99, 386pp, ISBN 9781846551253
$panish Fly (the dollar sign indicates the main characters’ preoccupation) is set in 1939, in the ‘dustbowl’ of the south-eastern United States, memorably portrayed in fiction by John Steinbeck. Jack McGreary joins a pair known only as Virgil and Miss Rose in a journey around the small towns of the area in a Nash Ambassador sedan. Their plan is a simple one, to gain as much money as possible from the hapless inhabitants by a series of confidence tricks and then get out of town fast before they are rumbled.
$panish Fly is billed as a comedy, but perhaps it is a limitation of my sense of humour that I just did not find it funny (but then, I do not find Blackadder or Monty Python funny, and much as I liked the James Herriot books, I read them at a ‘serious’ level). The various scams are ingenious, and carefully described, and the author certainly has a gift for invoking the atmosphere of a place in the grip of poverty and despair.
Ann Lyon
HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET
Jamie Ford, Ballantine, 2009, $24.00/C$28.00, 304pp, hb, 9780345505330
In World War II Seattle, Henry Lee, the son of Chinese immigrants, faces a changing world. On one side are his parents, who, wanting an American life for their son, have arranged for him to “scholarship” at the whites-only Rainier school. They forbid him to speak Chinese at home, though they insist he honor Chinese customs. On another other side are his prejudiced classmates; on yet another is Sheldon Thomas, a black saxophone player, a friend and protector to Henry. Directly in Henry’s path, and central throughout his life, is Keiko Okabe, a secondgeneration Japanese-American who is also on scholarship at Rainier. She and Henry battle the iniquities and bullies of the time, but are separated when the military evacuates everyone of Japanese descent to internment camps. Fast forward forty years to Seattle in 1986, when the new owner of the long-boarded up Panama Hotel unearths the belongings of Japanese families who hoped to return after the war: could some of these ancient suitcases and boxes hold a clue to Keiko and her family? Henry has never forgotten his first love, and now that his wife has died, he has some time and emotional energy to think about Keiko. Ford’s debut novel alternates between the 1940s and 1980s timeline, weaving together the young and old Henry, his past experiences with current attitudes and realizations. The descriptions of Seattle, then and now, are vivid and accurate, from the views to the sounds to the smells. The bullies of Henry’s childhood are also realistically evoked, as are the few friends he finds. This story truly is both bitter and sweet, and Ford has done an excellent job of combining historical fact with fictional narrative for a captivating read.
Helene
Williams
THE SPIES OF WARSAW
Alan Furst, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2008, £16.99, hb, 276pp, 9780297855415 / Random House, 2008, $25.00/C$28.00, hb, 266pp, 9781400066025
This is a difficult to follow but fascinating study of French intelligence-gathering in Central Europe, prior to World War II. Alan Furst is a master of accurate research. Indeed, that mastery makes the book difficult to follow. Too many names and locations in an unfamiliar language with obscure (to the English at least) spelling affect the continuity of a read. Too many Zs make it difficult to remember how and when a character or location has appeared.
This is not an easy read. After eight pages of a scene setting preamble and a subsidiary character’s exploits, we at last meet the main character, Colonel Jean-François Mercier. A decorated hero of World War I, he then moves by express train between embassies and hideouts in Paris and central Europe gathering information on Nazi rearmament. He is drawn
Y RESTITUTION
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Eliza Graham, Macmillan New Writing, 2008, £14.99/C$24.95, 393pp, 9780230709133
In January 2006 Alix is tracked down by her birth son, Michael. He asks the question she has long dreaded: ‘who is my father?’ The answer is simple and yet so complicated— he was her most feared, most adored enemy. Rewind the clock to 1945, and Alix’s story begins with her flight from the Red onslaught which is brought harrowingly to life. Death and fear stalk the pages and her meeting with old sweetheart, Gregor, is fraught with mistrust and passion. Rewind to 1939, and part-Jewish Gregor has his own story to tell—again confused by betrayal and fear—as he and his mother flee from Nazi aggression and try to find a place to call home.
Interspersed between Alix and Gregor’s stories are those of their parents and friends. But for Alix and Gregor, the truth behind their encounter in 1945—and the puzzles it created—will only be understood after the passage of sixty years.
At the heart of Restitution is the belief that corruption, hatred and fear cannot destroy love and hope, and that acts of kindness can take place even in the most appalling conditions. It is unusual to read a book written from the German point of view, showing many everyday Germans in a favourable light. It also focuses on the harsh treatment of German women by the Soviet army, a subject that many readers may not be familiar with. For all these reasons it is well worth reading, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
into a world of abduction, betrayal and intrigue in the salons and back alleys of Warsaw. He enjoys a passionate affair with a lawyer for the League of Nations, a Parisian woman of Polish heritage. Sometimes acerbic, the author paints Mercier’s sense of fear and his characters’ innermost feelings. Fascinating descriptions of restaurants, flats, food, clothes, weather and landscape enrich the novel as Mercier ricochets between lovers and handlers. But he becomes too involved with his informants, too sensitive to their needs, too generous. With persistence, Mercier finds success. He obtains maps of Nazi plans to invade France through the Ardennes. He has technical details of the Panzer tanks to be used—ground clearance, power, fuel consumption, etc.
Impressing his seniors, he receives promotion and a chance to move back to Paris with his Polish lover. What could go wrong now?
Geoffrey Harfield
CROOKED PIECES
Sarah Grazebrook, Allison and Busby, 2008, £7.99, pb, 440pp, 0749080949
I’ve not found first person point of view, present tense, a good way to tell a story set in the past. I’ve always preferred it for literary or mainstream present-day stories, yet Sarah Grazebrook chose to use first POV present tense for Crooked Pieces and makes it work so well.
This is a story about Maggie, starting with the young East End girl in 1905 and finishing, in 1918, with a very different Maggie, a young woman we’ve grown to like and sympathise with. Maggie is reluctant to leave her East End home but her mother is determined that her bright daughter should have a chance to escape
Sara Wilson
the grinding poverty. With help from their local vicar, Maggie is found a place as maid of all work in the home of Mr and Mrs Roe. They are good people and a guest of theirs is Sylvia Pankhurst, who stays with them more as a family member than friend. Maggie slowly learns to accept that this new world does have a lot to offer her and becomes fascinated by the Pankhursts and rights for women. As the suffragettes grow more militant, Maggie finds herself torn first between her policeman boyfriend and what Christabel Pankhurst wants her to do because she is the leading example to all other working women, and then between what her good sense tells her, and what she is being pressured into doing.
The story is a lively and convincing read, with historical details well researched. For readers interested in the suffragettes, and who like to see a working-class heroine set in a realistic milieu, this book is highly recommended. I thoroughly enjoyed it and will look for Sarah Grazebrook’s next novel.
pdr lindsay-salmon
FALLEN SKIES
Philippa Gregory, Touchstone, 2008, $16.00, pb 528pp, 9781416593140 / HarperCollins, 2006, £7.99, pb, 640pp, 9780007233069
Still in her teens in 1920, Lily Valance is embarking on a promising stage career as a singer. She is exceptionally beautiful and captivates Capt. Stephen Winters at first sight. Stephen, a decorated hero, is handsome and elegant; his scars are not visible but affect him nevertheless, as manifested by horrible nightmares. Lily fits his vision of the perfect wife and he has decided that with a little time her love will banish his nightmares. He views himself as the perfect
husband—naturally superior, a good provider, wealthy, and socially prominent. Lily will have everything that any woman could want, but Lily wants only to succeed in her career. At seventeen, she is dependent on her mother to make all her decisions and would never have married Stephen if her mother had not died. It is Charlie Smith, her accompanist, whom she loves. While Charlie returns Lily’s love, he is incapable of making love to any woman, due to a war wound, so Lily remains only his protégé.
In Stephen Winters, Philippa Gregory has created a difficult, complex, and deeply disturbed sociopath. She shows how Stephen’s experiences in the trenches in World War I affected his mind, but also how they were seeded by his loveless childhood. Lily is no better than she should be with one foot in her recent working class girlhood and the other in the snobbish upper-class drawing room of Stephen’s family. As husband and wife, Stephen and Lily Winters compare easily to Soames and Irene Forsyte. Both men concentrate entirely on appearances, material advantages, and the façade of social acceptability, while their wives love other men who know how to make a woman feel loved.
Audrey Braver
THE LAZARUS PROJECT
Aleksandar Hemon, Picador, 2008, £14.99, hb, 294pp, 9780330458412 / Riverhead, 2008, $24.95, hb, 304pp, 9781594489884
On 2 March 1908, Lazarus Averbuch, a recently arrived East European Jewish immigrant, attempts to deliver a letter to George Shippy, Chicago’s Chief of Police. Instead, Shippy shoots and kills him claiming he is an anarchist assassin intent on destabilising the USA.
Nearly 100 years later, Vladimir Brik, a disillusioned Bosnian writer living in Chicago, becomes fascinated with the case. Accompanied by his old school friend, Rora, Brik sets out to investigate Lazarus’s past.
The book alternates between Brik’s reimagining of the events leading up to and immediately following Lazarus’s death, particularly as they affect his sister, Olga and Brik’s physical and psychological journey. A third strand to the narrative is provided by Rora’s (possibly untrue or embellished) tales of surviving in the gangster underworld of wartorn Sarajevo.
The parallels between the paranoia in the early 20th century against East Europeans and Jews in particular and the current climate of fear of extreme forms of Islam are never laboured but cannot be overlooked. Though not primarily a historical novel as such, paradoxically, I believe this novel will grow more historical with the passage of time. Whether or not Rora’s war stories can be taken at face value, they are still testimony about events that changed the course of history and which could still have farreaching consequences.
Jasmina Svenne
THE ARCHIVIST’S STORY
Travis Holland, Bloomsbury, 2008, £7.99, pb, 243pp, 9780747593201 / Dial, 2008, $13, pb, 256pp, 9780385339964
Moscow 1939. Pavel Dubrov, a young archivist, is given the final works by the author Isaac Babel to destroy. The young man, in a small act of rebellion against the vast corrupt Stalinist bureaucracy, decides to save the stories of the writer who he admires. It is a small but highly dangerous decision in a world where any form of dissent will, if discovered, result in arrest by the secret police.
Set against the background of the German invasion of Poland, The Archivist’s Story is a simple but compelling story about ordinary individuals caught up in the faceless totalitarianism of Soviet Russia. The atmosphere of hopelessness mixed with, at times, blind, unfounded optimism is chillingly evoked in this book. The characters evolve through their actions and conversations rather than springing forth through the lines of description, and their ordinariness makes them more vulnerable and sympathetic.
As the book progressed I found myself drawn in to Pavel’s rather mundane life where every action taken could have fatal consequences. An understated but thought- provoking read.
Mike Ashworth
THE PLAIN SENSE OF THINGS
Pamela Carter Joern, Univ.of Nebraska Press, 2008, $18.95/C$20.95, pb, 224pp, 9780803216198
Joern’s novel is really a series of interwoven short stories, each of which can stand on its own, but taken together they form a deeply intricate picture of the hardscrabble lives of a Nebraska family over the course of three generations. From 1930, when we meet Billy, an orphan in Heartstrong who is unwillingly claimed by his grandfather, to 1979, when we see the adult daughter of one of Billy’s cousins coming to grips with her life and family, it’s difficult not to be drawn in to this world of quiet love, even quieter pain, and life on the plains.
Joern’s writing reflects the times she portrays: it’s stark, spare, and matter-of-fact. There’s no flowery springtime love here, just the cold hard facts of life in a family with not enough money or food and very few dreams. Although the main character of the novel could be said to be the state of Nebraska itself, central to nearly all the stories is Alice, the first one of Billy’s cousins to marry, and the one who most embodies Joern’s themes of self-sufficiency and acceptance. When bad things happen—crops fail, husbands drink, children fight—Alice soldiers on, moving forward slowly in spite of setbacks. Despite the dearth of happy celebrations and successes, there is joy to be found in this family, and on the land they work; those are moments for both the characters and the reader to cherish. As with Joern’s previous novel, The Floor of the Sky, Joern’s writing is evocative and riveting, revealing her deep respect for those who live,
and even thrive, on the plains.
Helene Williams
THE GENERAL OF THE DEAD ARMY
Ismail Kadare (trans. Derek Coltman from the French of Jusuf Vrioni), Arcade, 2008, $24.95/C$29.00, 264pp, hb, 9781559707909 / Vintage Classics, 2008, £7.99, pb, 272pp, 9780099518266
Winner of the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005, Kadare’s debut novel (originally published in 1970) embodies the problem of a state which belongs to no one, and to everyone. Albania has been invaded repeatedly through the ages, including by both Italy under Mussolini and Germany under Hitler during the Second World War. Twenty years later, the families of the fallen invading soldiers demand that the bodies be located, exhumed, and returned to their homeland. Careful political and religious negotiations have prevailed, and the unnamed general of the unnamed country (presumably Italy, from the few clues Kadare offers), accompanied by an unnamed priest, sets out on this dirty, humbling, and nearly impossible task.
The work is slow, cold, wet, and grueling; the general spends his days marking off names from his long list of missing and presumed-dead soldiers, and arranging for their bones to be transferred to small boxes in a large warehouse. His nights are spent drinking, mainly with the priest, but at times with wary locals or a competitive lieutenant-general who is scouring the country on a similar mission. It is during these times we learn what the general thinks about raising this dead army and what opportunities he’s missed in life. The reader senses that this mission is his last opportunity to make a name for himself; if he succeeds, perhaps then he can join the only two named characters in the book, who, though minor figures, play notable roles in the story.
Although some readers may feel as if nothing happens in this book (and indeed, those seeking action/adventure are urged to look elsewhere), the internal psychological machinations reveal a great deal about the aftermath of war for both the invaded and the supposed victor.
Helene Williams
THE LADIES’ LENDING LIBRARY
Janice Kulyk Keefer, Harper, 2009, $13.95, pb, 368pp, 9780061479076 / Atlantic, 2009, £10.99, pb, 320pp, 9781843547488.
Kalyna Beach is the summer home of a close-knit group of Ukranian-Canadian women and their children. The women meet to drink cocktails and discuss the racy novels of the day, their daughters are obsessed with the movie Cleopatra, and their husbands visit on the weekends. This summer is different, though— tensions are higher, the children are getting older and more worldly, and minor rivalries between the women have increased.
Keefer attempts to present a microcosm of society in her Kalyna Beach families, showing how they respond to the societal changes that took place in North America during the early 1960s. While there are some interesting characters, especially the children, and some entertaining narrative threads, the lack of a main character or an ongoing conflict makes the novel difficult to follow. There are no chapters, just three lengthy ”parts” that divide the novel neatly into thirds, making the frequent shifts back and forth between the adults’ point of view and the children’s point of view distracting. Despite being mentioned in the title, the women’s book group comes off as a somewhat-misleading afterthought, since this is more a novel of women’s inner lives than it is an easily marketable novel of women’s friendships. Depending on your point of view, The Ladies’ Lending Library is either as leisurely and meandering as a summer day at the beach, or as slow-going and frustrating as the traffic on the way home at the end of the season.
Nanette Donohue
CARDIGAN BAY
John Kerr, Corona, 2008, $25.00, hb, 344pp, 0972063048
Cardigan Bay is both an old-fashioned romance and an espionage thriller. When I say “old fashioned,” I mean that the plot revolves around the idea of good versus bad—a black and white perspective of the Allies versus the enemy—and that there is a sexual modesty in this romance that is quite uncommon in our modern era. I found both of these elements refreshing.
The story revolves around a developing and precarious romance between the two main characters: a British Army officer, Charles Davenport, erudite, courageous, and cogitative, who is wounded in the fighting in North Africa at the beginning of the book, and Mary Kennedy, a young American widow seeking refuge from her losses in Ireland. Wrapped up in the plot are also the elaborate planning for the Normandy invasion, the top-secret code breakers at Bletchley Park, and the plot by antiNazi German military officers to assassinate Hitler.
Cardigan Bay takes the reader on a winding journey through these themes, with the plot thickening and intensifying in the last one hundred pages of the book, culminating in a satisfying conclusion.
The book is not perfect, however. I did feel there were several points where the story slowed to a crawl, but my curiosity to see the plot resolved overcame this distraction. At times Charles spoke like an American rather than a Brit, for example, using the word “sure” rather than “certainly” or “of course.” And the frank openness of Charles and his good friend Evan about their top-secret work was disconcerting. I would hope people with top-secret clearances would not speak this openly of classified projects these days, and I doubt they would have at that time, either.
Andrea Connell
THE LOST THRONE
Chris Kuzneski, Penguin, 2008, £6.99, pb, 592pp, 9780141037073
Built high on the natural rock of Thessaly in Greece are a series of six monastries (once there were more). The monks who live on these mountains of Meteora are few and, during the middle of one night, they are slaughtered by a band of men wearing bronze helmets and carrying ancient weapons. At the same time, across the European continent, a well-known academic searching for hidden treasure fears for his life.
Thus begins Chris Kuzneski’s latest thriller, The Lost Throne of that genre, not an historical novel. Yes, it is teeming with historical facts which appear to be lifted almost verbatim from books of reference, its pages filled with huge swathes out of travelogues, but it is set in the present day and research should be seamless. The tale can be, at times, suspenseful, harrowing and entertaining yet flits from location to location and character to character making for butterfly storytelling. The basic language and loosely layered structure limits its appeal and reads like a form of tabloid writing.
I recognise and applaud the author’s attempts to combine historical details with mythology and adventure but the breadth of ignorance demonstrated by the characters themselves becomes so unbelievable as the story progresses that it slips to the farcical. The Author’s Note at the end of the book actually insults the intelligence of his knowledgeable readers.
Gwen Sly
THE PIANO TEACHER
Janice Y. K. Lee, Viking, 2009, $25.95, hb, 336pp, 9780670020485 / HarperPress, 2009, £12.99, hb, 352pp, 9780007286195
Claire and Martin Pendleton arrive in Hong Kong: Martin to work in “water,” and Claire to teach piano to Locket, daughter of wealthy Chinese parents, Victor and Melody Chen. Claire falls for William, the Chen family chauffeur and former lover of Trudy Liang. Each character carries a heavy burden of war memories, a time when one did what was necessary to survive.
Many novels have been written about the Japanese takeover of China in 1942, including the horrific prisoner of war camps, the brutal raping and murder of local Chinese and foreigners, the greedy acquisition of Chinese artistic treasures, and the post-war attempt to escape responsibility for one’s moral and immoral actions. But Janice Y. K. Lee’s story is unique for its characters’ moods as they manifest and infuse into their surroundings.
These evolving moods are a microcosmic window into the larger historical tone evident in Hong Kong’s decline from a profligate center of Asian prosperity to a very dangerous, suspicious marketplace. Only the powerful survive by trading secrets and goods for protection, a bartering process that inadvertently and literally fosters life and death to the careful or lucky few.
William is dark, mysterious and inexplicable to his lovers, Trudy and Claire. The latter attempt, in similar and different ways, to be shocking and carefree, but the Japanese invasion calls forth truth of one’s being. Are the consequences of survival to be understood as truth, integrity or sheer cowardice? Who are the enemies among one’s own friends and acquaintances?
The Piano Teacher depicts a tapestry of life, hope, betrayal, terror, sadness and finally an attempt to reconcile the past with the present; not an easy composition, but Lee has skillfully crafted and offered it as an amazing concert in the form of historical fiction. Superb!
Viviane Crystal
THE GIVEN DAY
Dennis Lehane, William Morrow, 2008, $27.95/C$29.95, hb, 702pp, 9780688163181 / Doubleday, 2009, £16.99, hb, 720pp, 9780385615341.
Set against the waning years of World War I, the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic and the increasingly turbulent social changes sweeping through Boston, The Given Day attempts to capture a multitude of historical events with the heated political and racial tones of its day, still strikingly relevant today. It falls short of Lehane’s usual abilities to seamlessly weave characters and plot, though not by much.
Danny Coughlin, Boston beat cop and son of a dominant police captain, is torn between personal ambition and empathy for the emergent Boston Social Club clamoring for improved working conditions. Luther Lawrence, a black munitions worker from Tulsa fleeing from a violent crime, finds work with Danny’s family. As Danny and Luther forge an unlikely friendship, Luther staves off ruthless members of the Coughlin family who may block his road to redemption.
Lehane has plotted a book that is rich in detail and meticulously researched. His main characters speak, have life, and act accordingly. Even though at times The Given Day is overstuffed and needlessly slows, it is a remarkable, evocative narrative that would work on all counts if the author didn’t feel the need to be so inclusive. J. E. Hoover and Babe Ruth, while interesting as sidenotes, add no texture to an already overlong story. Eddie McKenna, a nasty piece of work and vital to the plot (uncle to Danny, scourge to Luther) is evil minus the motivation; no one does vile, motivated characters better than Lehane.
Still, The Given Day is epic and moving, gripping and informative, delivering social and racial plotlines of intense realism on a level far above any shortcomings I’ve cited.
Wendy A. Zollo
A PASSION REDEEMED
Julie Lessman, Revell, 2008, $13.99, pb, 477pp, 9780800732127
In 1919, this second Daughters of Boston novel focuses on Charity O’Connor, who sets her sights on the crabby Mitch Dennehy, editor
Y THE VAGRANTS
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Yiyun Li, Random House, 2009, $25.00, hb, 352pp, 9781400063130 / Fourth Estate, 2009, £12.99, hb, 352pp, 9780007196647
“If you look at history, as no one in this country does anymore, a martyr has always served the purpose of deception on a grand scale, be it a religion or an ideology,” thinks Teacher Gu in an imaginary dialogue with his first ex-wife. This inner dialogue follows his daughter’s execution as a counterrevolutionary on the spring equinox, March 21, 1979. The story about Gu Shan’s demise doesn’t hold back the horrific details or its fragile, tender moments, binding together a motley group of characters into a solidified reactionary force protesting tyranny and mourning the loss of more than a person. The reader sees how the crippled girl Nini has been connected to Gu Shan and what the latter’s death means to Nini’s satisfied parents. The tension increases with the questionable actions of Bashi, who seeks a childbride but is also capable of unspeakable cruelty. Tong, a seven-year-old boy, carefully observes his mother following through on her determined words, “A thousand grains of sand can make a tower.” Finally, we watch Kai, a young woman married to a politically connected, successful man, who evolves from a government announcer parroting Communist party propaganda to a reactionary force willing to risk literally everything.
The Vagrants isn’t a typical story depicting Chinese history but a testament to loyalty to higher, democratic ideals. Yiyun Li’s first novel introduces a powerful, literary author who has crafted her story with carefully placed metaphors, reflections, storyline twists and turns, and vibrant characters the reader comes to deeply respect and honor. The Chinese history may be familiar, but Yiyun Li’s exquisite writing style is one of the most extraordinary this reviewer has read in a long time. Don’t miss it.
at Dublin’s Irish Times, and also her elder sister’s ex-fiancé. Charity’s stunning beauty and flirtatious ways have always succeeded with men, but at the cost of a shallow heart. Mitch has unwittingly stolen her heart and although the sparks fly, he refuses to get involved again with the O’Connor family. Charity has a plan to turn up the heat, and she always gets what she wants--one way or another. But when her flirtations get out of hand and cause her damage, her grandmother asks Mitch to help get Charity back home to Boston.
Full of intense passion, betrayal, and forgiveness, A Passion Redeemed will delight Lessman’s fans and draw new ones in. Charity’s transformation from a spoiled, selfish girl to a loving, caring woman is inspiring. Returning favorite characters, such as the spunky youngest O’Connor, Katie, return and add flavor and zest to this already luscious story.
Rebecca Roberts
COURAGE
Alan Littell, St. Martin’s Press, 2008, $18.95, hb, 160pp, 9780312384364
This spare literary novel set in the year 1950 follows the destinies of two ships which meet in the perilous seas of the North Atlantic off the coast of Ireland. One is an English tramp which breaks apart. Nearby, an American liner sends out a desperate attempt at rescue for the five survivors. Driscoll is the officer at the helm of the rescue. He struggles with his own fears and memories of Isabel, a New York artist who is his
Viviane Crystal
lover, pulling him toward the land.
But land life is a grey mystery. Courage comes to full life on the sea in its stark coldness, isolation, tests of character, and unforgiving force. Cross narratives of Driscoll, Isabel, Captains Bride and Tyrrel and their crews join the relentless narrative heading for the disaster. This is almost an anti-historical historical novel, for these are men who live in an everlasting present, with only personal memory occasionally interrupting their powerful draw towards the salt water in their veins.
Author and former merchant mariner Littell’s mountainous waves and lashing sea become the overwhelming character in this stark hymn to the life of men and the sea.
Eileen Charbonneau
HOLD MY HAND
Serena Mackesy, Soho, 2008, $25.00/C$27.50, hb, 350 pp, 9781569475331 / Constable, 2008, £18.99, hb, 288pp, 9781845296391
Bridget Fletcher—make that Sweeney—is trying to free herself and her young daughter from a violent, stalker ex-husband and a life of poverty in present-day London. Given her need to disappear and her lack of current work experience, her best, and in fact, only chance of survival is to take a job as housekeeper at Rospetroc, a mansion outside a tiny Cornwall village. Rospetroc is now a holiday rental since Felicity Blakemore, the decidedly odd and more than slightly tipsy family matriarch died and the rest of the family decided to live in their other
properties. Bridget takes on the cleaning, the hostessing and the faulty electrical system in good spirits, but soon realizes that something is not quite right. Figurines keep moving. Lights go on and off. Guestrooms are vandalized. Bridget feels like she’s being watched. And her 6-year-old daughter, Yasmin, has a new friend, Lily, who no one else sees; in fact, no one has seen Lily Rickett since she was a child evacuee during World War II.
Hold My Hand weaves together Lily’s tale from the 1940s with Bridget’s present-day life, and the reader gets tantalizing glimpses into the lives of the people who inhabited, or tried to inhabit, Rospetroc in the intervening decades. There’s not a great deal of historical description or action, however, as the greater part of the story takes place in the present day; Mackesy relies on the reader’s general knowledge of wartime England, food rationing, and the evacuation of children from the cities to the country. That said, this part chick-lit, part ghost story contains enough creepiness as well as enough proof of good in the world to keep readers of both those genres interested.
Helene Williams
HUMAN LOVE
Andrei Makine (trans. Geoffrey Strachan), Arcade, 2008, $25.00/C$28.00, hb, 264pp, 9781559708579 / Sceptre, 2008, £12.99, hb, 256pp, 9780340936771
In a crude dwelling on the border of Angola and Zaire, two imprisoned men meet during a shocking night of terror and violence. They are a young Russian soldier and a dreadfully wounded African man, Elias Almeida, a “professional revolutionary,” whose story unfolds in memory and through the shared experiences of the two soldiers. The forming of the young revolutionary takes place in 1960s colonial Angola, when Elias witnesses the death of his mother after his father’s role in the resistance movement becomes known. As an adolescent Elias joins his father fighting in the Congo, and eventually becomes a Soviet agent sent to train in Cuba and Russia. In Russia Elias meets a woman whom he accompanies on a visit to her native Siberia, an experience during which Almeida finds love, a meaning in existence that sustains him through the remainder of his violent career.
Andrei Makine’s Human Love does not shy from descriptions of rape, murder, and torture in this story of the “chaos that prevailed in the bestiary of African revolutions” (p. 94). He describes these acts with an economical prose that neither amplifies nor reduces their horror, laying bare the human toll of the conflicts in Angola, Zaire, and Mogadishu. The scenes in Russia are equally moving, but much of the story is related as memory and there are far too many passages ending in this manner: “…,” which only serves to remind us we are reading a novel. Yet the Russian soldier narrating Human Love convinces us that in these wars “we’re not unique, but all alike and interchangeable, pieces of meat, seeking pleasure, suffering and battling
against each other,” and that “one day losers and winners will be joined together in the perfect equality of putrefaction” (p. 5).
Eva Ulett
GERMANIA
Brendan McNally, Simon & Schuster, 2008, $28.00, hb, 368pp, 9781416558828
Germany, 1945: the final days of the Third Reich. As the Allies close in, the upper echelons of the Nazi regime plan their various escapes, some realistic, some fantastic. Plots, schemes, and intrigues abound, and danger is everywhere both from the Allies and from fellow Nazis. In the center of these plans mixes an unlikely group of agents: the Flying Loerbers, a celebrity act of quadruplets from Berlin’s cabaret heyday. Separated by the war, each brother uses his own talents and skills as a performer—skills both practical and magical—to make his way through the dangerous years. The four brothers play vastly different roles in the maze of plots and campaigns, until a threat to one of them brings them all together again. But will the reunion save the family or destroy it?
Mixing fact with fiction, real people with original characters, and the gritty realism of war with a little bit of magic, Germania is packed with military and historical detail, bringing the reader into the dirty, panicked world of the defeated Third Reich. It does take the reader some effort in the first few chapters to figure out what is going on, and the ending is somewhat abrupt and vague, but readers of literary fiction will be accustomed to that. A unique premise, interesting characters, a good historical feel, and a tangle of intrigues make for an enjoyable literary debut tinged with a hint of the fantastic.
Heather Domin
FAMOUS SUICIDES OF THE JAPANESE EMPIRE
David Mura, Coffee House, 2008, $14.95, pb, 280pp, 9781566892155
The murmur of Yeats forms the essence of this haunting novel: “Sacrifices might come in many different forms. Too long a sacrifice makes a stone of the heart. All changed, changed utterly. A terrible beauty is born.” Ben O’Hara charts the family sacrifices made before and after his father’s suicide and his brilliant scientist brother’s disappearance. Ben is now an adult, married and the father of two sons. But Ben is still tortured by the mystery of his father’s silent past as a “No-No boy” of the Japanese interment camps after the Pearl Harbor attacks. Ben moves through a rough few years as a juvenile delinquent, who eventually straightens out to become a mediocre high school history teacher unable to find focus on his doctoral thesis, the famous Japanese suicides forming the basis for the novel’s title. A piece of the puzzle linking these stories and his father’s suicide is missing; one which Ben knows will redeem the repressed reality of hidden lies and looming madness.
He travels a painful journey with the reader, who begins to empathize as Ben moves closer
to the truth and eventual freedom. While the novel jumps forward and backward in disjointed segments, the set pace parallels the effects of Ben’s quest for meaningful answers. David Mura exposes a side of Nisei history unknown to the majority of Americans about Japanese residents living in America who not only resisted signing an American loyalty oath after the Pearl Harbor attack but also refused to fight in a segregated military unit of the American Army against Japan. Readers will be riveted by the connection between this hidden aspect of history and the demise of both Nisei and Sansei family members haunted by an unspoken civil war that former Japanese camp prisoners and their descendants cannot escape.
Viviane Crystal
THE FAIRFAX LEGACY
Pamela Oldfield, Severn House, 2008 (USA 2009), £18.99/$27.95, hb, 216pp, 9780727867100
The story opens in 1921, with eight-yearold Elena Fairfax eavesdropping on a quarrel between her parents, Oscar and Hermione. “When the truth comes out, it will ruin her life!” her mother shouts. Elena, of course, does not understand, but she is already troubled by Hermione’s apparent dislike and has turned to her father, and to her nanny, Miss Franks, for affection. When Hermione gives birth to a son, James, Elena is overjoyed, but we already know this is a family with secrets, and what should be a happy event precipitates a series of crises that almost destroys the family.
The novel captures the upper-middle class world of the Fairfaxes with just the right amount of period detail, but there are a couple of rather far-fetched and convenient plot twists and the multiplicity of viewpoints (sometimes from very minor characters) proved distracting at times. This form of narrative does, however, lend a poignancy to Elena’s story, as we, too, eavesdrop on the adults surrounding her, and know what she cannot, or can only partially, understand.
Elena is an engaging character, both as a child, as the young woman we encounter in the concluding chapters, set in 1939 and 1946, for whom we hope for a happy ending.
Mary Seeley
A DEAD MAN IN BARCELONA
Michael Pearce, Soho, 2008, $25.00, hb, 208pp, 9781569475379 / Constable, 2008, £18.99, hb, 256pp, 9781845298302
Set in 20th-century Barcelona, this is the fifth entry in Michael Pearce’s “a dead man in” series, featuring series protagonist Sandor Seymour of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch.
The year is 1912. This time out, Seymour is dispatched to investigate the death of prominent Englishman Sam Lockhart who, two years earlier, was found dead in his cell in Barcelona, apparently of poisoning. Upon his arrival in Barcelona, Seymour discovers Lockhart was rounded up during “Tragic Week,” when
the Spanish government conscripted young Catalonian men and ordered them onto ships bound for the unpopular war in Spanish Morocco. At the city’s dockside, the soldiers and their civilian supporters rebelled. In the ensuring riot, many of the dissenters were killed in the streets by the Spanish army called in to put the riot down.
Was Sam Lockhart a supporter of the anarchists and part of the rebellion, or was he mistakenly imprisoned that bloody night, only to die in jail? Seymour finds the Spanish investigation into the two-year-old murder ongoing and appallingly unorganized. As he conducts his own investigation into the case, Barcelona comes to life with Pearce’s description of an energetic and lovely city beset with intrigue. Ultimately, though, even with its tragic set-up, the story seems lackluster and thin, and the history is sometimes confusing.
Alana White
DEATH WAS IN THE PICTURE
Linda L. Richards, St. Martin’s Press, 2008, $24.95/C$27.95, hb, 288pp, 9780312383398
Times are tough for Depression-era girl Friday Kitty Pangborn and her PI boss Dexter Theroux in their run down LA office—but in nearby Hollywood, things are booming. Much to their surprise, the intrepid investigators find themselves pulled into that world when they are hired by the attorney of screen star Laird Wyndham, who has been arrested for the murder of a starlet. Never mind that Dexter has already been hired by someone else to prove the actor’s guilt. Complicating matters even more for Kitty is that Wyndham is a dreamboat, and the investigation puts her smack in the middle of the fantasy creators of tinsel town.
With this second book in the series, Ms Richards continues the tradition of the LA noir novel, with the twist of telling the story through the PI’s faithful secretary, Kitty. No sophomore slump here, the story is as fresh as the first, and the characters remain both sharply drawn and realistic. The author’s real talent, however, lies in her sense of time and space. Readers will find themselves immersed in the LA of the 1930s, not only in the mean streets familiar to fans of Raymond Chandler, but in the everyday world of the rest of the city, as well as the glittering universe of Hollywood. Those with an interest in those worlds will not be disappointed. Fans of the noir genre, and mysteries in general, should find this latest offering most satisfying.
Ken Kreckel
NO MORE DYING
David Roberts, Constable, 2008, £18.99, hb, 259pp, 9781845296902 / Soho Constable, 2009, $25.00, hb, 288pp, 9781569475393
February 1939. As Europe teeters on the brink of war Lord Edward Corinth is asked to unmask an enemy agent with possible links with the American embassy who has been sent to assassinate Churchill.
Coincidentally, Edward’s journalist fiancée,
Verity Browne has been ordered by her Communist Party superiors to befriend the American ambassador, Joe Kennedy, for reasons she is not told and therefore distrusts. Things get a lot worse when a dead body turns up at Clivedon, the Astors’ country house, where she, Edward and Kennedy’s entourage are staying for the weekend.
Being used to more breakneck thrillers, it took me a while to adjust to Roberts’ relatively sedate pace. I’m also in two minds about his tendency to introduce every character, real or fictitious, with a potted history of their life and political opinions. On the one hand, the background is important, particularly to someone like me who has joined a long-running series so late and has only a cursory knowledge of the period. On the other hand, it slows down the action.
However, it is a pleasant read with nothing too grisly for readers of a sensitive disposition, and if there were any anachronisms I didn’t spot them.
Jasmina Svenne
RACHEL’S SECRET
Susan Sallis, Bantam, 2008, £17.99, hb, 336pp, 9780593060902
In 1943 two friends, Rachel and Meriel amuse themselves by tracking down imaginary German spies. It all seems a harmless way of spending the long summer holidays until their game becomes reality and its consequences affect their whole lives. Rachel becomes a reporter for the local newspaper while Meriel moves to Florida as a GI bride, but the bonds of friendship that hold them together can never be broken.
The blurb says the book is engrossing and it is but, at the same time, it is a real tangled web woven together on both sides of the Atlantic. The plot line is a reasonable tale but full of deceptions and blackmail and, added to the mix, a touch of murder and scandal. It became for me a bit complicated. It shows how keeping secrets from one another leads to more and more lies and heartbreak. There is more to this book than meets the eye, and it makes the basis for a good tale if you take the time to work it out. Worth trying.
Karen Wintle
WHERE THE HEART LEADS
Kim Vogel Sawyer, Bethany House, 2008, $13.99, pb, 347pp, 9780764202636
Set in 1904, Where the Heart Leads follows the story of Thomas Ollenburger, a young man recently finished with college and unsure of his direction in life. His rural Mennonite upbringing in Kansas conflicts with his lifestyle in Boston, where he earned his degree, and Thomas must decide if his future lies in the big city or back home with family. His relationship with the beautiful socialite Daphne and her family stands at odds with the simple friendship Thomas shares with his Kansas neighbor Belinda, and Thomas’s core beliefs are put to the test when he discovers his friends don’t share them. What
will he choose for his life and can he live with the results?
Sawyer’s historical Christian novel is well written, and she has a gift for bringing her characters’ inner conflicts to life. The story moves deftly between characters and gives us insight into motivations and dreams. However, the major conflict of racial inequality is very politically correct, which pulled me out of the story. Also, the conversion to Christ of one of the main characters seemed unrealistic to me. Regardless, this is a sweet story that kept me entertained, and I would welcome opportunities to read more from this author.
Tamela
McCann
FOXFIRE
Anya Seton, Chicago Review Press, 2008, $14.95, pb, 346pp, 9781556527883
This novel, first published in 1951, is set in New York City and the Arizona in the 1930s. Amanda Lawrence, a sheltered young woman, meets Jonathan Dartland on board the Bremen returning to America from Europe. Amanda’s father died of a heart attack sometime after the 1929 stock market crash, and she can’t afford to return to Vassar to complete her studies. Jonathan, a mining engineer, is on his way home from a mining job in South Africa. Jonathan is different than the carefree playboy types Amanda knows. His mother is part Apache Indian, and Amanda’s family is somewhat scandalized when she falls in love with him. Amanda and Jonathan marry and head off to Lodestone, Arizona where he has a new position as mine foreman at the Shamrock Mine.
In spite of her love for Jonathan, Amanda has difficulty adjusting to being poor, to the loneliness of the town and its’ rustic conditions. “Dart” works long days, there are no other women her age in town, and the older women are put off by Amanda’s refinement. Dart has troubles at the mine because of his disagreements with the mine superintendent. Amanda is being pressured by family to divorce Dart and marry her wealthy ex-boyfriend. All these stresses take a toll on the marriage. When Amanda hears an Apache legend about a lost gold mine, she becomes obsessed with searching for it, thinking that this will be the answer to their difficulties. Much adventure ensues.
Amanda is immature, but likable, and I found myself rooting for her and Dart and the survival of their marriage. But this is not just a story of a marriage; it’s also a beautiful evocation of the Southwestern landscape and Native American culture and a great adventure story. A very good read.
Jane Kessler
Manning, with whom she had had a difficult, yet loving, relationship. But that relationship was not as difficult as Rose’s relationship with her mother, Lu Lawson, a Broadway legend. They had been estranged since Carrie was a very small child, since, in fact, the death of Carrie’s father, Bobby Manning. Bobby was another Broadway legend, having written six hit shows back-to-back. Carrie had no memory of either her father or grandmother, Lu. In her grief, Carrie sets out to learn about her mother’s family and why Rose had decided to cut herself off from them. Why Rose devoted her life to good works, preferring to live simply without frills or lavishness despite the high income she had from Bobby’s residuals, which she mostly gave away to charity. Carrie also learns the story of her great-grandmother, Mifalda, an Italian immigrant who raised Rose. It is a fascinating journey, and Carrie learns a lot about herself as well as the family she never knew.
Ms Shaffer has written a story with humor and intelligence in complicated flashbacks. Yet the plot unfolds and flows with graceful prose. The characters are strong, and well developed. There is a grittiness about Serendipity that is believable. You know these people or people like them, the problems they faced and overcame, their strengths and weaknesses, and you like them despite their flaws.
Audrey Braver
BLACK ORCHIDS
Gillian Slovo, Virago, 2008, pb, 374pp, 9781844083114
SERENDIPITY
Louise Shaffer, Ballantine, 2009, $14.00/ C$16.50, pb, 327pp, 9780345505094
Serendipity is an intergenerational coming-ofage story set in the present day. The main heroine is Carrie Manning who has just lost her mother, the beautiful and once socially prominent Rose
The first ninety pages and the last thirty of this profound novel are arresting, sensual, initially in 1946 Ceylon, later 1972 Sri Lanka. The book begins with Evelyn, nineteen, genteelly impoverished, rebellious, dreading moving with her mother and elder sister to an England of which she knows nothing as Ceylon becomes independent. She meets Emil, a wealthy, handsome Sinhalese. At the end, their 25-yearold son, Milton, visits Sri Lanka for the first time. Between these two scenarios is a series of vignettes, some set years apart through 1950s and 1960s Britain, creating a study in racial prejudice and of a family unable to communicate with each other. Emil is extrovert, genial; Evelyn shrinks under the weight of perceived public disapproval. As her husband and small son walk through a crowded shop, ‘the moving points of magnetism, first repelling, then attracting’, she prays the child she is expecting will not be ‘too black’. The crisis of the marriage is played out in the orchid house Emil has built in the garden. Because of the fragmented nature of the narrative, after the opening, promising scenes, the characterisation is thin, making it difficult for this reader to empathise. The book is more a fable, a parable, the author’s message of alienation, dislocation—for which she drew on her own memories as daughter of anti-apartheid activists in South Africa with whom she came to Britain as a child—more important than the characters. Not an easy or satisfying read, but
thought-provoking.
THE LIE
Janet Hancock
Linda Sole, Severn House, 2008, £18.99, hb, 218pp, 9780727867117
Neither the nondescript title, nor the bleak cover, does justice to this outstanding wartime saga, a charming family story with excellentlydrawn young characters. Four sons and two daughters have lost their father to an old war wound. On a Fenland farm they get to grips with division of their land to honour their father’s will. But there is a barely tolerated, erotically exciting young stepmother. With an excellent sense of the time, the family of grown-up orphans comes to terms with labour shortages, Dunkirk horrors, war work, money and property problems. Refreshingly, this book shows crossclass generosity. The rich do not throw their weight around. Labouring husbands are not drunken lechers. It makes a change to read a story where the problem of poverty is absent and steady girls marry fighter pilots.
This novel, which extracts every grain of emotional value from events, shows the best of humanity in wartime, subtly underlining sex as nature’s driving force and the last fence to climb. Brilliant love stories interweave as young characters develop into responsible adults and marriages come thick and fast. There is a sensitive approach to homosexuality as one young wife sees her injured husband and lover kissing in his hospital ward. I dislike clichés appearing in book narration. We have ‘strings could be pulled’, ‘really did them proud’, and ‘swelling the numbers’ in one paragraph followed quickly by ‘joined in with a will’. Born well before the war, I have never heard airmen here described as ‘fly-boys’. In Britain this was reserved for spivs. There are a few anachronisms. Photos (which were expensive to have printed at the chemist’s) were rarely shared with friends, and what was a carrycot in 1940?
The book cleverly winds up tension to the end. It is one of the very best wartime sagas and a pleasure to review.
Geoffrey Harfield
A GOOD WOMAN
Danielle Steel, Delacorte, 2008, $27.00/ C$32.00, hb, 9780385340267 / Bantam, 2008, £17.99, hb, 336pp, 9780593056776
In 1912, nineteen-year-old Annabelle Worthington’s privileged world is shattered forever when the sinking of the Titanic destroys her family. Her life of glitz and glamour in New York society is over, and, hiding from grief, she volunteers at Ellis Island. Nursing the poor ignites a passion for medicine that shapes the course of her life, and eventually Annabelle finds love only to be betrayed. Pursued by a scandal she does not deserve, she flees New York for war-ravaged France, hoping to lose herself in a life of service. There, in the heart of the First World War, Annabelle finds her true calling, working as an ambulance medic on the
front lines, studying medicine, saving lives. Following the life of Annabelle from her sparkling youth to the stark reality of war, lost love, and betrayal, Steel’s newest novel resounds with themes of love, courage, and passion. But, in typical Steel style, the basis of this story is a beautiful rich girl who faces tribulations at every turn, her life in constant turmoil and none of it her own fault, when she finally finds a wonderful man to make it all right. Disappointing, this novel echoes a similar storyline to Steel’s other books and contains little originality.
Rebecca Roberts
THORNYHOLD
Mary Stewart, Chicago Review Press, 2008, $12.95/C$13.95, pb, 207pp, 9781556527937
A welcome reissue of Mary Stewart’s novella, this story is set in 1940s England, and features Gilly Ramsey, a young woman who inherits her favorite aunt Geillis’s country house named Thornyhold. Upon taking possession of the house, Gilly meets the curious Agnes Trapp, her aunt’s former housekeeper, who dabbles in potions and spells. Gilly suspects Mrs. Trapp is anxious to get her hands on a lost ancient book of potions hidden in the house, and namely, one important love potion.
As the plot unravels, Gilly discovers much about her favorite aunt, including her serious study and practice of herbalism, poisons, and her practice of caring for carrier pigeons. As a result of eating Mrs.Trapp’s pie, Geillis has a strange dream in which she flies as a witch;
Y DARKNESS RISING
she realizes later the dream is a result of Agnes’s tampering with her food. Enter a kindly neighbor, Christopher John, and his son William who provide insight into the doings of the local community and potential romance for Geillis.
Mary Stewart’s style is engaging and her descriptions rich with sensory detail. We experience the enchantment of the peculiar house, and we enjoy the sympathetic characters she enlivens in her narrative. There is enough tension throughout the book to keep the reader guessing. Thornyhold casts its own magical spell on us.
Liz
Allenby
A MATTER OF JUSTICE
Charles Todd, William Morrow, 2009, $23.95/ C$25.95, hb, 336pp, 9780061233593
When a mystery series gets into the double digits, I grow concerned that the plot and character development become rote, that the author has nothing new to say but a publisher’s contract demands the series continues. I am happy to say that this is decidedly not the case in A Matter of Justice, the eleventh in the Inspector Ian Rutledge series, co-written by a mother and son. Yes, Rutledge continues to be haunted by Hamish, a soldier whose execution he ordered in the Great War. However, that aspect of Rutledge’s life takes a back seat in this outing as Todd explores the aftermath of an incident that occurred in the Boer War and the idea that revenge is a dish best served cold.
Rutledge is summoned to Cambury in
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Frank Tallis, Century, 2009, £12.99, hb, 391pp, 9781846053603
If we talked about historical novels like a pâtissier then amongst the rich and deeply satisfying tortes would be the novels by C. J. Sansom, Anne Perry, John Biggins and Frank Tallis. Not only do these authors take the reader into a historical world which is convincingly real, they have the skills to make the reader believe their fiction is actually history.
Darkness Rising is the fourth novel involving the Viennese doctor, psychoanalyst Max Liebermann. It is 1903. Vienna is beginning to promote and support pro-German, anti-Semite views, so when first a monk and then a city councillor, both aggressively anti-Semite, are discovered outside churches, with their heads torn off, the radical Hasidic Jews are suspects. But there are certain strange aspects to the killings which make Detective Inspector Rheindhart ask his friend, Max, for help.
Complexities arise as Max is forced to re-examine his Jewishness, outface racist city councillors, keep his job at the hospital, where prejudiced people want him out, and be a good psychoanalyst. This and the relationships between both major and minor characters, the little episodes where their lives are disclosed, make for compelling reading. Tallis’s Vienna is a character in its own right: tangible, you can see, hear, smell and, of course, taste those delicious Viennese pastries that Tallis’s characters eat with relish. Presented through the music, buildings, and even the lectures of Freud, intelligently discussed by Max, Tallis’s Vienna exists. This writer not only writes well, he researches thoroughly.
Readers who love to be transported in time to another period and place will want to read all four novels. I certainly do. pdr lindsay-salmon
Somerset, where the part-time squire and fulltime London financier is found murdered, strung up in his barn in an angel rig used in the Christmas pageant. The dead man had no shortage of those who wished him dead, including his estranged wife, his erstwhile partner, and any number of villagers. His list of enemies extends even further back into his past as Rutledge discovers. With a denouement that is ambiguous, it may seem odd to describe this book as satisfying but satisfying it is. The author is by no means finished with Rutledge’s story. I’m now quite intrigued by Rutledge’s tentative friendship with Meredith Channing! Ellen Keith
SWEEPING UP GLASS
Carolyn D. Wall, Poisoned Pen Press, 2008, $24.95/£15.95, hb, 278pp, 9781590585122
After reading Carolyn Wall’s debut novel, I literally could not move. With its haunting images of racial bias from the past, this book is terrifyingly real. It is 1938, during some say the coldest winter ever in Kentucky. Olivia Harker and her grandson Will’m discover that someone is killing silver-faced wolves on their property. Olivia has an idea who is responsible but doesn’t know why they are targeting them.
They live behind Harker’s Grocery, and yet her mam, Ida, lives in a tar paper shack out back. Olivia had her husband put her there many years ago, as she was unable to forgive her after years of neglect and physical abuse. On the other hand, she is very close to her pap, Tate, a self-made veterinarian.
One day, with Olivia in the car, Tate has an accident that alters Olivia’s life. Her pap is buried in an unmarked grave next to the outhouse, but she hopes to move him someday.
Olivia befriends and is also protected by members of the black community during a time of shameful segregation. She also stumbles upon covert meetings of white men with talk of racial hatred. She hears about stories of young blacks disappearing. Betrayal and an old secret are unearthed when Olivia’s own life is threatened.
In this twisting tale, which offers a shocking secret and a bit of romance, Ms. Wall has created original, distinct characters that will stand the test of time.
Wisteria Leigh
ROMMEL AND THE REBEL
Lawrence Wells, Sanctuary, 2008 (abridged edition), $18.95, pb, 408pp, 9780916242732
ROMMEL’S PEACE
Lawrence Wells, Sanctuary, 2008, $14.95, pb, 2008pp, 9780916242725
Erwin Rommel occupies a special place in the historical and fictional accounts of World War II. The praise awarded him by friend and foe alike was due to his skilled leadership of the famed 7th Panzer Division (the “Ghost Division”) in France in 1940 to his dramatic exploits as the Desert Fox in North Africa, to his still debated role in the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. Saying Lawrence Wells
believes Rommel as one of the century’s greatest heroes is to be guilty of serious understatement. He presents his readers with two Rommels in these books. Rommel and the Rebel is the prewar German officer studying the tactics of Confederate Nathan Bedford Forrest in a tour of 1937 Mississippi. Rommel is escorted by Max Speigner, a proud Mississippian who serves as a U.S. Army Intelligence officer. Together, the two soldiers join with William Faulkner as the unlikely trio follows Forrest’s tracks through various Civil War battlefields. Fast forward to World War II in North Africa and Speigner is assigned as an advisor to the 8th Army. Glimpsing evidence of the long-dead Forrest in Rommel’s tank tactics, Speigner advises British officers on the proper countermoves. The Rommel-Speigner friendship survives German defeat in North Africa and is tested once again in Normandy when the American is ordered to contact the Desert Fox in the hopes of seeking a truce to end the fighting. Rommel’s Peace follows this intriguing tale of the July 20, 1944 plotters against Hitler as an example of all that could have happened if responsible Germans had been able to kill Hitler. The action surrounding Rommel and the young American is intense and fast-paced as they struggle to achieve their ends in a contest to outwit Gestapo investigators and the confusion of the Normandy fighting.
The Rommel of both novels is a proud solider and fervent patriot equally comfortable trading Civil War stories with William Faulkner as with leading tanks into combat. Max Speigner is the youthful, altruistic optimist convinced that the Desert Fox is a man to be admired, a soldier to be studies, and a hero to be followed.
John R. Vallely
CURSEBREAKER (Order of the Scrolls)
Nancy Wentz, Whitaker House, 2008, $9.99, pb, 464pp, 9781603740807
Ten-year-old Luke runs away from his home near Denver, because his father’s abuse is potentially lethal. Rescued by a pastor and his wife, Luke learns about Christianity and discovers his gift of prophecy. Luke enjoys his new life until spooked into flight again. This time, he is hit by a car and becomes involved in what looks like a blackmail scheme to get the young deputy district attorney who hit Luke, Joshua Parnell, to throw a case for the Fratelli gangster family. However, Papa Fratelli, who is possessed by the family demon, has additional motivation concerning Luke’s prophecy gift. If he can destroy Luke, the threat of Luke finding and using the hidden sacred scrolls to banish their demon to damnation will be gone and the family’s success will continue.
While not heavy on historical context, Cursebreaker melds a 16th century curse with a 1930s Denver gangster setting. The feuds with the rival gangster families, drama in the courtroom, and conflict in Luke’s family life give Wentz ample opportunities for action scenes to be enhanced by the demonic possession and prophetic ability storylines. Characterization
is stereotypical right down to the hooker with a heart of gold, and the dialogue is sometimes unrealistically verbose. However, the story and message will still appeal to some readers.
Suzanne Sprague
WINNIE AND WOLF
A. N. Wilson, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008, $25.00, hb, 368pp, 9780374290962 / Arrow, 2008, £8.99/C$23.95, pb, 384pp, 9780099492474
The title refers to Winifred Wagner, the English wife of Richard Wagner’s son Siegfried, and Wolf, the self-chosen nickname of Adolf Hitler. The novel is constructed as a sort of confession and memoir written by an unnamed secretary and admirer of Winnie’s, meant for his adopted daughter, to inform her that her birth parents are none other than Winnie and Wolf. This startling and complicated premise provides the framework for a novel that is at once an interesting biographical portrait of Winifred, a history of the rise of Hitlerism, a thesis on Wagner’s works and an open discussion on all manners of philosophical thought. And those are just the major themes! Side stories, parenthetical references, essays, minor acts and subplots abound.
There is much to appreciate in this book, its portrait of Germany in the twenties and thirties for example, but it is often difficult to discern amidst the maddeningly numerous philosophical and musical asides. This is a ponderous tome more about ideas than plot or character. As a result, historical personages, Hitler in particular, come off fairly superficially, complete with their every idiosyncrasy but lacking depth. Similarly, there is the occasional perplexing historical error. What depth is exhibited within its pages include the philosophical underpinnings of antiSemitism as well as the interplay of Wagnerian themes and the events of the times, a well-worn analogy to the growth and downfall of Nazism. On the plus side, the sections concerning Richard Wagner and his family are both interesting and informative. However, unless one has a particular interest in either Hitler or Wagner, it is best to leave this opaque and nearly impenetrable volume alone.
Ken Kreckel
MULTI-PERIOD
THE LOST QUILTER: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel
Jennifer Chiaverini, Simon & Schuster, 2009, $24.00, hb, 336pp, 9781416533160
More than one story must be repeatedly told so that we remember! In a northern American town, Sylvia Bergstrom discovers a packet of old letters ranging from 1868 to 1897, letters whose author is begging for information about a former slave, Joanna, and her son, Mr. Douglass Frederick. So begins the prologue to Joanna’s life as a seamstress/laundress slave in the preand post-Civil War southern states of Virginia N n
and South Carolina.
One must mourn the brutality of her existence as she is captured as a runaway slave, beaten almost to death, sold to satisfy a white woman’s greed for beautiful clothes, marries only to be separated from her husband and child, reunites with her child, and so much more standing in stark contrast to the hope she sustains. Waiting for her emancipation, she creates a historically famous quilt, the Birds in the Air quilt which holds secret clues to the route to freedom in the North of America. Two objects symbolize Joanna’s undaunted spirit: a silver needle case holding the tools of her incredible talent, and a corn boiler pot which can hold precious water to drink or be used to heat water for cooking. Woven through Joanna’s tale is a realistic, vivid picture of secession, the taking and surrender of Ft. Sumter, the blockade of Charleston, South Carolina, the burning of this famous city and finally the war in which whites and slaves fought for very mixed motives.
The Lost Quilter transcends an objectified view of slavery; it’s a tribute to a terrible historical period and the noble, all-too-human beings attempting to fulfill promises and dreams. Readers will be swept into this heart-rending, beautiful story, a fine example of great historical fiction, and will definitely remember the cost of precious freedom.
Viviane Crystal
A SECRET ALCHEMY
Emma Darwin, Headline, 2008, £17.99, hb, 399pp, 9780755330652 / HarperPerennial, June 2009, $14.99, pb, 316pp, 9780061714726
The Secret Alchemy is a book of three parts and three voices. First there is Una Pryor, brought up, after the death of her parents during her early childhood, by relatives in an old chantry which housed the family’s printing business, the Solmani Press. Now grown up she is fascinated by the story of Elizabeth Woodville, the Wars of the Roses, and the fate of the Princes in the Tower, and seeks to tell their story from the Woodville point of view. The book begins with Elizabeth on the eve of her first marriage to Sir John Grey in 1452. The third voice is that of Elizabeth’s brother, Anthony Rivers, one-time guardian of the young Prince Edward during his early years in Ludlow. As his part in the book opens, time has moved on to 1483 and he is about to embark on his last journey to Pontefract Castle, where he will be executed for treason on the orders of Richard, Duke of Gloucester.
The book constantly switches from one voice to another, and in following the story, it does help to know the chronology of the events which took place in the second half of the 15th century.
I have mixed thoughts on this book. The historical research was good, but it took me some time to really get into it. Although I had warmed more to it by the end, I still felt that by having these three totally separate viewpoints and constant flashbacks it remained somewhat disjointed.
Marilyn Sherlock
THE MYSTERY OF THE FOOL AND THE VANISHER
David and Ruth Ellwand, Candlewick, $18.99/ C$21.00, hb, 103pp, 9780763620967
This gorgeously designed book is a journalwithin-a-journal, the story of a modernday photographer who finds the papers and photographs of a Victorian faerie researcher. It is also a meditation on the uses of history and photography and the enduring power of folklore.
David Ellwand, photographing the Downs one day, comes across a mysterious locked box near a crumbling ruin. He finds that the box contains the effects of Isaac Wilde, the official photographer on a Victorian archaeological dig, and collector of faerie artifacts. Included in the box is a series of wax phonograph recordings, the transcription of which forms the middle section of the book, Isaac’s daily journal of his work on the barrow Downs dig.
Isaac comes to believe, as the locals do, that disturbing the great barrow will disturb the pixies. He attempts to photograph the fae in their environment in order to show evidence of the destruction to the arrogant scientist in charge, in order to stop the dig. When the scientist mysteriously disappears, Isaac is forced to flee and leave the evidence of the fae hidden…until Ellwand finds the evidence and shares it with us.
Ellwand’s photographs of the Downs and the twisting trees of the forest are moving and ethereally beautiful, and the photos “taken” by Wilde are clever and lovely in their own right. The book is beautifully designed with charming surprises throughout. This is a clever, enchanting book that would be a welcome addition to any history, photography, or folklore buff’s coffee table.
Julie K. Rose
THE PAGAN HOUSE
David Flusfeder, Harper Perennial, 2008, £7.99, pb, 410, 9780007249619
Thirteen-year-old Eddie Pagan (or Edgar as he prefers to be called) travels from London to New York State to visit his paternal grandmother, Fay. She is frail and is looked after by Warren, a conscientious and somewhat mysterious young Irishman. Left much to his own devices, Edgar decides to turn detective when Fay’s elderly cat goes missing and then is found with its throat cut. Could Warren be responsible or could it be the disenfranchised Onyataka people? Edgar, an awkward blend of Adrian Mole and Holden Caulfield, suffers teenage (mainly sexual) embarrassment as he struggles to establish himself as the cool outsider, rather than the English geek he fears he is. This section is entertaining and frequently laugh-out-loud comic.
This story-thread alternates with that of the religious sect that founded the town, the chief members of which are John Prindle Stone and Mary Pagan. They call their beliefs Perfectionism or Bible Communism, which espouses what we
today call ‘free love’. They even hope to abolish death. Their story is very closely based on the real-life Oneida community, founded by John Humphrey Noyes that flourished in New York State between 1848 and 1881. In this section we see, however, not Christian perfectionism, but a supreme ego and human folly.
This is a strangely compelling novel, but I can’t say I enjoyed it. It is very well written but many ideas are not pursued and left unresolved. But less satisfactory still is that the two parts fail to gel. The modern tale is brash and quirky whereas the ‘historical’ section is a more traditional and somewhat heavy-going narrative. In a novel such as this, surely it is important for one strand to support and inform the other? Here, two quite different novels fight for attention.
Sally Zigmond
THE BOOK OF LOVE
Kathleen McGowan, Touchstone, 2009, $25.99, hb, 512pp, 9780743299978 / Simon & Schuster, 2009, £12.99, hb, 544pp, 9780743295369
Estranged both from the man she loves and her brother, Maureen Pascal requires their assistance to unravel Matilda of Tuscany’s biography and find Jesus’s Book of Love before a secret faction within the Catholic Church does. They fear the revelations both of these documents will have on the Church and its doctrine, and they will do whatever is required to make certain Maureen and her friends fail in their mission.
Matilda is one of the Expected Ones, who undergoes trials and triumphs that impact world history and the Church. Her father’s trusted mercenary teaches her to be a warrior, for Matilda has no intention of allowing a man to rule her. When her father is murdered, her life changes, and she is betrothed to her stepbrother, a hunchback who fears women with red hair and who will not tolerate Matilda’s wild and free ways. Once she escapes from her imprisonment, she returns to her beloved Tuscany and aligns herself with Pope Gregory VII. Together they wage political and personal struggles to combat Matilda’s overlord, King Henry of Germany, and her husband, who want control of her lands and the Catholic Church.
Intriguing on their own, the numerous interwoven story threads make it difficult to convey the true breadth of what The Book of Love entails. While Jesus’s manuscript plays a role, its presentation sometimes leaves one wondering about its pertinence to the whole story. McGowan cut significant portions from the original manuscript, which may explain the lack of cohesion among the various threads. Unlike The Expected One, which was clearly Maureen’s search for the Magdalene Gospel from both Maureen and Mary Magdalene’s perspectives, The Book of Love is primarily Matilda’s tale and how she preserves Jesus’s teachings, rather than Maureen’s investigation or her personal relationships, and both are told as if witnessed by an outsider looking in rather than by the characters themselves.
Cindy Vallar
OCTOBER SKIES
Alex Scarrow, Orion, 2008, £12.99, hb, 479pp, 9780752886169 / pb, £9.99, 9780752892023
In the spring of 1857, a starving man dressed in rags emerges from the forest surrounding a small American town. All he can tell people is that his name is Ben. Jump forward to autumn 2008. Television researcher and presenter, Julian Cooke, stumbles across the journal of Benjamin Lambert, a young English doctor and chronicler of a wagon train on the Oregon Trail which disappeared without trace in the harsh winter of 1856. Cooke’s discovery plunges him into a nightmare world of religious bigotry, racial hatred and political corruption in the highest places.
The Blair Witch Project meets The Tenderness of Wolves in this grisly but unputdownable thriller from the author of A Thousand Suns. The plot grips from first to last, though the pace slows somewhat in the middle of the book when Scarrow addresses the serious issues behind his unashamedly entertaining story. The contemporary and historical story strands are cleverly woven in a way which illustrates their parallels but also their divergences; on one level, the novel is about history itself, about how we misread it, and repeat it, and how it can be fatally distorted in the telling. I was quite unable to second guess the author until virtually the last chapter, and even then he leaves many questions hanging in the air. He is, as they say, a master of suspense, though one unresolved mystery did leave me slightly dissatisfied.
Scarrow’s style is spare and pacy, but there is some lovely, lyrical writing about the dangerous beauty of the Rocky Mountains in winter. Unlike some others writing in his genre, he is also strong on characterisation, as the screwball love story which weaves its faltering path through the novel illustrates.
Strongly recommended. I have been at a loss what to read since finishing it. Mind you, I wouldn’t take it with you if you’re planning a camping trip in a forest...
Sarah Bower
THE TEMPTATION OF THE NIGHT JASMINE
Lauren Willig, Dutton, 2009, $25.95/C$28.50, hb, 400pp, 9780525950967
Fifth in Willig’s “Pink Carnation” series, this latest outing finds historian Eloise Kelly sidetracked in her search for the floral spy of the Napoleonic era. Instead, she becomes engrossed in the story of Lady Charlotte (best friend of Lady Henrietta, heroine of The Masque of the Black Tulip) and her love for her long-lost cousin Robert. Having sold his commission, Robert has returned from India to infiltrate the debauched Hellfire Club to avenge the murder of his mentor, Colonel Arbuthnot. Falling in love with Charlotte and discovering a plot to drive King George to madness once again did not figure into his plans.
Although Willig’s books follow a formula—man and woman fall in love while
misunderstandings abound and the British Empire is saved—each book has featured a distinctive couple, and this latest is no exception. Charlotte is the first to admit she prefers novels and fantasy to real life but proves to be more adept than she thinks at facing reality. Robert is more tortured by his past and his deception of the woman he loves than previous heroes (excepting perhaps Lord Vaughn of The Seduction of the Crimson Rose). Devotees of all things royal get a tantalizing peek into the household of King George. My only complaint (and spoiler alert) is that the Night Jasmine plays a fairly insignificant role.
Ellen Keith
HISTORICAL FANTASY
HEIR TO SEVENWATERS
PHARAOH
Valerio Massimo Manfredi (trans. Christina Fedderen-Manfredi), Macmillan, 2008, £12.99, hb, 357pp, 9780230530737
This book starts in Jerusalem in 586 BC. The Kingdom of Judah is caught up in a violent war with the Babylonians. During the ensuing chaos the prophet, Jeremiah, tries to save the sacred Ark of the Covenant. The scene then switches to the third millennium in the Middle East. An Egyptologist, William Blake, is called in to oversee the find of an unusual ancient Egyptian tomb located a number of miles from the Valley of the Kings. The site of the tomb is in a highly sensitive area both politically and militarily. What Blake discovers threatens to destroy the balance of the modern world.
Juliet Marillier, Roc, 2008, $23.95/C$26.50, hb, 416pp, 9780451462336
Marillier returns to the world of her bestselling Sevenwaters trilogy in this historical fantasy. The house at Sevenwaters exists during a historically fascinating between-time when Christianity has come to Ireland and a man can have the name of Johnny, yet the family there is committed to protecting the ancient uncanny dwellers of the forest by which they live. One of five daughters of the household, Clodagh, seems destined to an uneventful life of housewifely duties until her mother gives birth to the longedfor son and heir—who, under Clodagh’s watch, is stolen by beings from the Otherworld and replaced by a changeling.
I have not read any of Marillier’s other work. Although the historical details and writing were solid enough, I have to confess that the first couple days of my reading were as dull as Clodagh’s life seemed destined to be. Of her vying suitors, neither seemed inspired. Dialogue, while sometimes energizing, more frequently seemed to bog the story down. We were told the forest holds many preternatural powers, but saw little indication of them. Even Clodagh’s ability to communicate over long distances with her twin was squelched when her sister married and asked to discontinue the bond. Around page 100, however, the little changeling appears, whom only Clodagh can see and hear, a wonderful creature, “mossy lids opening over pebble eyes, a little mouth shaped from twigs stretching to reveal brown, barky gums.” I was enchanted from that point on—well, until another spate of dull pages at the end heralds our heroine’s return to the mundane world. The power in this historical fantasy is definitely on the fantasy element, and for this time and place, it seems appropriate.
N n N n
Ann Chamberlin
TIMESLIP
As far as I am concerned this novel is gripping from start to finish. Not only is it fascinating archaeology, (and I am partial to mummies), but it is absorbing reading. I read the blurb, which said it was, ‘masculine’. Don’t let this put you off. It has the usual politics and terrorists, but I don’t see that this should be the deciding factor. The Biblical figures, Egyptian tombs and cataclysmic happenings should appeal to anyone who likes a good adventure story. Exciting and well worth reading.
Karen Wintle
ALTERNATIVE HISTORY
N n
1942
Robert Conroy, Ballantine, 2009, $15.00/ C$17.00, pb, 358pp, 9780345506078
Robert Conroy has established himself as a leading writer of “what if” historical fiction in his 1901, 1862, and 1945 novels. 1942 continues this rather curious fixation on dates as titles by asking “what if” the Japanese had launched a second air strike on Pearl Harbor? The answer is the U.S. Navy would have been paralyzed by further damage and a hastily planned Japanese amphibious assault would then seize control of Hawaii. The large number of historical participants is worked into the tale of Japanese occupation and American response in a perfectly seamless manner with the nicely outlined fictional characters. The central American fictional personalities are the resourceful Captain Jake Novacek and the pacifist-turned-warrior Alexa Sanderson. Their Japanese counterpart antagonist is the sinister and thoroughly corrupt Colonel Shigenori Omori of the Kempetei. Omori’s task is to use terror and torture to extinguish any opposition to Imperial rule over Hawaii. Alexa comes into this brutal world and endures only because of Jake’s instructions to do anything to survive. Jake becomes a resistance leader who works with the U.S. forces on the mainland in their counterattack. The “what ifs” in the story are not totally outside the realm of possibility, and they offer a fitting background for the tale of heroism, greed, subterfuge, and the search for
love in the shadows of total war and barbaric militarism.
John R. Vallely
THE UNITED STATES OF ATLANTIS
Harry Turtledove, Roc, 2008, $23.95/C$28.50, hb, 438pp, 9780451462367
Atlantis has been settled by the English and the French for over 300 years. Now, at the end of the 18th century, and following a bloody war for dominance of the island in which the French were vanquished, the English Atlanteans are beginning to rankle under the heavy hand of George III. When tensions over taxation bubble over and the garrisoned redcoats on the island are attacked, England decides to put the upstart colony in its place. Victor Radcliff, descendant of the man who discovered Atlantis and hero of the war against France, is again pressed into service, and the United States of Atlantis are born.
The story is an alternate history, imagining what would have happened if Atlantis was discovered and colonized first, rather than North America (“Terranova” in the world of the book). It is the latest in a series, though it is not necessary to have read the previous books.
While the concept is interesting, I found the writing choppy and the book hard to get into. There was little character development (in fact, many of the Atlanteans were simply stand-ins for Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson, while Howe and Cornwallis are included as they were). I found I did not care for the protagonist, Victor, or his struggles.
While the world building is convincing, and the concept is interesting, the book overall is dry. I would have expected that the book would have taken the idea of colonies and revolution in a new direction—it is Atlantis, after all—but it is simply a retelling of the American Revolution in a new geographical setting. I was hoping for more invention and creativity and, sadly, did not find it in this book.
Julie K. Rose
CHILDREN & YOUNG ADULT
THE REVOLUTION OF SABINE
Beth Levine Ain, Candlewick, 2008, $16.99/ C$18.50, hb, 214pp, 9780763633967
Sabine Durand, an aristocratic sixteen-yearold living in 18th-century Paris, is growing weary of her mother’s fixation on society and entertaining. Obsessed with finding a rich husband for Sabine, Madame Durand doesn’t bother to consider her daughter’s opinions on the matter. Even Sabine’s best friend Elodie seems to be pushing her toward a self-absorbed and possibly abusive man simply because he is from a prominent, wealthy family. Feeling trapped, Sabine finds escape through reading Voltaire and spending time with her childhood friend, Michel. Michel is not of her class, but has extraordinary
ideas about equality and freedom—ideas that captivate Sabine. He takes her to a salon, where she meets Benjamin Franklin and hears talk of revolution. When Michel decides to join the Marquis de LaFayette in fighting to free Americans from British tyranny, Sabine must decide how much she is prepared to risk in order to claim her own personal freedom.
The strengths of this novel are its clear language and brisk pace. The narrative is well structured and unfettered by confusing subplots. Unfortunately the story itself is unoriginal and the 3rd person point-of-view voice seems flat and detached. We are constantly told rather than shown how the heroine feels, and the author relies too much on backstory for character development, which detracts from the immediacy of Sabine’s story. Though this is classified as a young adult novel, it seems better suited to the 8-12 age range. Younger readers might be more likely to find the story fresh and romantic.
Sonia Gensler
CHAINS
Laurie Halse Anderson, Simon & Schuster, 2008, $16.99/C$19.99, hb, 316pp, 9781416905851 / Bloomsbury, 2009, £10.99, hb, 320pp, 9780747598077
Teenaged Isabel and her five-year-old sister Ruth had understood they would be freed upon the death of their owner. But the recent Revolutionary upheavals in distant Boston prevent contact with the lawyer who drew up the will, and the girls are sold to a Loyalist couple, who take them to New York. Isabel is set to work in the kitchen, and Ruth is made a half pet, half page for Mrs. Lockton. Isabel overhears Lockton’s friends talking about a plot to kill George Washington. If she passes the information on to the Rebels, they may be grateful enough to assist her to freedom. Her information helps foil the plot, but she learns that both sides view slaves as legal property of their owners. When the Rebels give her back to Mrs. Lockton, an attempt to run ends with Isabel caught, beaten, and branded on the face. Worse, she learns the Locktons have sold Ruth away. Isabel realizes that if she is going to find justice, she can only rely on herself. She embarks on a dangerous plan to make an ally of a fellow slave who’s a British prisoner.
Chains vividly portrays slave life in colonial New York. Anderson includes rich detail not found in the average history textbook, such as constantly having to suppress feelings, even when ill-treated, never owning shoes that don’t pinch, and what it feels like to be branded. These cruelties will make the reader really feel for Isabel, and root for her to find a way out. This is an absorbing book that immerses the reader into the colonial world. A “runaway slave” ad at the end of the story advertises a coming sequel, and an appendix answers questions, such as whether Isabel was based on a real person.
B.J. Sedlock
YOUNG SAMURAI: The Way of the Warrior
Chris Bradford, Puffin, 2008, £5.99, pb, 323pp, 9780141324302 / Hyperion, 2009, $16.99, hb, 368pp, 9781423118718
1611. Japan. Twelve-year-old Jack’s ship is attacked by brutal ninja pirates and his father and all the crew are murdered. The ninja leader, Dokugan Ryu, recognizable by his single green eye, is after Jack’s father’s uniquely detailed navigational map.
Jack is rescued by the renowned samurai warrior, Masomato, who takes Jack into his family and has him trained in samurai martial arts—an action which his younger son, Yamato, resents. Jack, who speaks not a word of Japanese, must learn to integrate into a culture very different from his own. Yamato isn’t the only person who dislikes gaijins (foreign barbarians), and Jack will need all his physical strength and mental endurance to earn the respect of his fellow students.
Jack’s only friend is Akiko, a beautiful girl skilled in archery, also training to be a samurai. So far his father’s map is safe, but Jack suspects that Dokugan Ryu hasn’t given up. But who can he trust? Akiko? Masomato?
I enjoyed this rite-of-passage book, which takes Jack through the gruelling samurai training and presents him with various Herculean tasks involving obnoxious fellow students who are determined, by fair means or foul, to show Jack how inferior foreign barbarians are. There’s not much of a plot (the question of the map and Dokugan Ryu more or less disappears); instead, it’s a series of events—not the same thing.
One caveat. The samurai way involves accepting the importance of such virtues as honour and loyalty. Why then, at the end, does Jack jettison his responsibility for his little sister, left behind in England, and opt to stay in Japan? He knows the money his father left to support her will run out. However, it’s a very readable opening salvo in an exciting series. Aimed at boys, 11 plus.
Elizabeth Hawksley
SACAJAWEA
Joseph Bruchac, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008, $5.95, pb, 208pp, 9780152064556
The eagerly anticipated paperback edition of this acclaimed story of the Bird Woman of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806) is here. The adventure often called the American Odyssey is beautifully told in alternating chapters by William Clark and a grown up Sacajawea to her young son, Jean Baptiste, who becomes a man of both worlds, a person who bridges cultures. His bright, inquisitive nature is reflected in his devoted mother’s attentions as well as the delight William Clark takes in his “dancing boy.”
Sacajawea was kidnapped, sold, and married to a French Canadian trapper before she served as translator, guide, and peacemaker on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, all the while with a baby in her care. In one of the great coincidences
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Y THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF OCTAVIAN NOTHING, TRAITOR TO THE NATION: Volume II, The Kingdom of the Waves M.T. Anderson, Candlewick, 2008, $22.99/C$25.00/£12.99, hb, 561pp, 9780763629502
African-American youth Octavian escapes with his trusted tutor Doctor Trefusis from the eccentric Bostonian gentlemen who raised him as a comparative experiment between the European and African cultures. Octavian and the Doctor flee into British- controlled Boston at the start of the American Revolutionary conflict in 1775. A student of Greek, Latin, philosophy and an accomplished violinist, Octavian sustains himself and Doctor Trefusis by playing in the orchestra of one of the King’s regiments. In the pursuit of liberty, Octavian joins Virginia’s ousted Governor Lord Dunmore’s Royal Ethiopian Regiment, composed of runaway slaves and freedmen. Among these men, Octavian is called ‘Buckra’ for his ‘white’ manner of speaking and his education. A tale both of the coming of age and quest for liberty of this unique and noble black youth, and that of a conflicted new nation, Octavian Nothing, Volume II is a beautiful epic novel.
It is also an astonishing book filled with masterstrokes of language. Revolutionary America is stunningly depicted in Octavian’s firsthand account, letters and newspaper extracts (some actual contemporary documents), and diary entries. But this is not just a well-executed story; it’s also a novel that examines liberty in America and ‘The freedom —economic, social, and intellectual—enjoyed by the vocal and literate elite of the early Republic [that] would have been impossible if it had not been for the enslavement, displacement, and destruction of others’ (Author’s Note). The Kingdom of the Waves is marketed as a young adult novel, and if the novel gains a wide readership among young people—the book contains a great deal of fun and entertainment—then concerns about literacy among the young would appear to have little basis. Volume I of Octavian Nothing’s tale won several awards; Volume II richly deserves more such honors.
of history, when the expedition is in desperate need of horses, the person who can help them is Sacajawea’s brother, who had become chief.
Dangers abound, as do misunderstanding and quarrels with each other and the native people the Corps of Discovery encounters. But there are also moments of peace and joy and great wisdom which Clark and Sacajawea impart to her beloved son through the story of the journey they shared. Highly recommended. Ages 12 and up.
Eileen Charbonneau
THE LADY GRACE MYSTERIES: INTRIGUE
Grace Cavendish, Red Fox, 2008, £4.99, pb, 202pp, 9781862304185 London, 1570. Lady Grace Cavendish, one of Queen Elizabeth I’s maids of honour, embarks on her 9th adventure. The queen and her court go to the Key Inn to see a performance of Intrigue, the play everyone is talking about. It has a very convincing death scene and anyone in the audience who can guess which of the three suspects is the murderer, will win a prize. So far, no-one has succeeded.
But this performance goes horribly wrong and the handsome and popular actor, Richard Fitzgrey, really is killed by the arrow. The hunt is on for the actor who shot him… but Grace is convinced that the accused man could not have killed Richard as the arrow was shot from the
Eva Ulett
wrong angle. She is determined to track down the real murderer and she thinks she knows who he is: Bartholomew Rouse. Her deductions convince the queen and Bartholomew is arrested.
Then Grace discovers that there was a darker side to the heartthrob Richard and there are more questions which need to be answered urgently. She may have caused an innocent man to be thrown into the notorious Clink prison and it is up to her to discover the truth before it is too late. And time is running out…
This lively story would make a good introduction to Elizabethan London, a smelly, dangerous place where cutpurses abounded. It also illuminates the theatre world. This was an age when acting troupes had to be adaptable enough to stage their plays anywhere, even in the courtyard of an inn, and versatile enough to invent ingenious stage effects such as shaking a metal sheet to simulate thunder.
I enjoyed this. Aimed at girls of 11 plus.
Elizabeth Hawksley
I thought this book was a good read and I really enjoyed it. The plot line was very original. I liked the structure of the book because it was different. Most mystery books set the scene and then have the crime later on, whereas the author here puts the mystery right at the beginning. This is good because it means that later in the book there are lots of clues to try and piece together.
There are also quite a few red herrings but they are all interesting and each, in the end, leads to another clue.
The descriptions of the setting and scenery are clear. Despite there being descriptions of the characters in previous books, there are none in this book. It would have been nice to have had some details about them.
This book is aimed at girls aged 11-14. Rachel Beggs, age 13
BLACK JACK ANDERSON
Elaine Forrestal, Penguin Australia, 2008, AU$19.95, pb, 244pp, 9780143005940
There is always a danger when writing a pirate story of making it too exciting, of somehow condoning the crime. Elaine Forrestal has not fallen into that trap. But her novel of Black Jack Anderson, an African-American seaman who sailed the seas of south-western Australia during the 1830s and sustained himself by sealing, whaling and theft, is not particularly compelling.
The narrative starts well. The weather-beaten pirate, Nimble Gimble, reports the murder of Black Jack Anderson, a man believed to have drowned two years prior. Forrestal then goes on to ‘tell’ us the story of Anderson’s youth and early employment, leading up to the night he accidentally killed a man and descended into piracy. Unfortunately these scenes lack dramatic tension; I found myself easily bored.
No one can fault Forrestal’s attention to detail. We get a good sense of where Anderson and his men lived, how they planned their raids, and how they etched out an existence in a harsh maritime environment. But we gain no real insight into Anderson’s personality. This wouldn’t have mattered if a supporting character was brought to life, or if we were able to experience Anderson through his impact on someone else’s life. But this did not occur. The only character I developed any empathy for was Dorothy, Anderson’s woman, but she didn’t enter until page eighty of the narrative.
Black Jack Anderson is not an altogether bad book. I suspect the fault lies in its marketing. We are promised a page-turning pirate story, a portrait of a ruthless, passionate and charismatic man: terror of the seas. Instead, we are given a landscape, a picture of daily life in the early maritime settlements of Western Australia. It was bound to be disappointing.
Liz Corbett
THE SLAVE DANCER
Paula Fox, Aladdin, 2008, $6.99/C$7.99, pb, 192pp, 9781416971399
This reissued Newbery Honor book tells what could easily be a true story. Beginning in 1839, thirteen-year-old Jessie Bollier is on the bustling New Orleans docks playing his fife for pennies. He does this every day to help support his widowed mother and ailing sister. He’s not afraid of the rough sailors who surround him; his father, until he drowned, was one of them. One night, he is kidnapped and carried aboard
The Moonlight, bound for Africa. The hard men on the ship set him to work learning what might have been his trade anyway, but this is a slave ship. On the return voyage, he will “dance” the slaves, who will be released for a short time each day from the hold where they are packed like sardines. This book does not turn away from the horrors of the trade. Jessie carries buckets of human waste from the filthy hold and witnesses disease and floggings. He learns how the sailors justify the horror in which they participate, and how the man who smiles the most can be the one who betrays you. This is an unshrinking look at a terrible chapter in our history, and at the horror of slavery, which even today still exists. The Slave Dancer is moving, harrowing, and, unfortunately, entirely believable.
Juliet Waldron
DEN OF THIEVES
Julia Golding, Egmont, 2007, £8.99, hb, 417pp, 9781405228183 / Roaring Brook, 2009, $16.95, hb, 432pp, 9781596434448
London, Paris, 1791. In this, the third of Cat Royal’s adventures, Cat finds herself homeless and penniless when the Drury Lane theatre closes. And she has another problem. Her old enemy, Billy Shepherd, has called in a debt: either she gets him one of the crown jewels to add to his collection (he is going up in the world), or she remains in his power. Cat desperately needs to get out of London.
She is rescued by her friend Frank who is about to join his family in Paris. The Bastille, the hated symbol of autocratic power, has fallen. King Louis XVI is still, if shakily, on his throne, and the people are demanding their rights. Mr Sheridan, owner of the theatre but also a M.P., wants to know what’s going on and will pay Cat to keep him informed. It’s just what Cat needs.
But they arrive in Paris at a bad time. The king and queen have just fled and Frank, an aristocrat, is suspected of helping them. The mood of the mob is volatile and could easily turn ugly. Frank and Cat are taken prisoner by Jean-François (JF), King of Thieves of the Palais Royale. J-F has sworn to protect them but his rival Ibrahim, the ruthless ‘Bishop’ of the Nôtre Dame thieves, has his eye on the reward offered for Cat. Have her letters to Sheridan been intercepted? Things are looking bad.
This gripping story has an action-packed plot and would make a terrific introduction to the French Revolution. The author captures the mixture of excitement, fear and uncertainty of the period. The old order is crumbling, but a power vacuum can be dangerous. The Revolutionary Tribunal and the guillotine are waiting in the wings…
Boys and girls of 10 plus should enjoy it.
Elizabeth Hawksley
Wow! The third Cat Royal adventure does not disappoint. Cat is cast out of the Theatre Royal, journeys to Paris in the middle of the revolution, mixes with seedy characters, gets into tight spots, and there is always the lurking threat of
her number one enemy, Billy Shepherd. I found this book very readable and fast paced, with lots of surprises and of course, mystery (although the mystery is a bit too obvious, I thought, ah well). The French Revolution is described in a very interesting way because we learn how people feel about what’s happening to them. The plot goes off in lots of different directions and I found I always wanted to read on. The characters are funny and interesting with lot of the original characters reappearing as well as some new people. I would really recommend this book.
Ella McNulty, age 13
THE DRAGONFLY POOL
Eva Ibbotson, Dutton, 2008, $17.99, hb, 377pp, 9780525420644 / Macmillan, 2008, £12.99, hb, 397pp, 9780230704589
Eleven-year-old Tally Hamilton loves her simple life in London with her physician father and doting aunts. But when a second world war seems imminent, Dr. Hamilton decides she should accept a scholarship to the freethinking Delderton School in the quiet safety of Devon. (Readers will be pleased to learn that Delderton is based upon the boarding school Ibbotson herself attended as a girl.) Tally is homesick at first, but being a good-natured and sensitive child she quickly grows attached to her schoolmates and teachers. When the students attend an international folk dancing festival in Bergania, Tally leads the way in hatching a plot to save the young Berganian prince from the Nazis. This story features the usual cast of quirky characters that makes Ibbotson’s stories so beloved. Like Ibbotson’s other heroines, Tally is sweetly good but also a feisty and creative problem solver. Readers in the 8-12 range will be charmed by the story’s humor and poignancy, as well as by the elegant simplicity of the prose. Teen and adult readers will also find much to love, but ultimately might prefer Ibbotson’s A Song for Summer, which has similar characters and situations but is aimed toward a more mature audience.
Sonia Gensler
BETWEEN TWO SEAS
Marie-Louise Jensen, Oxford Univ. Press, 2008, £5.99, pb, 305pp, 9780192755308
Marianne begins her story in Grimsby in a world of poverty, cruelty and illness. The victim of bullies, Marianne, is illegitimate and is not allowed to forget it. This heartbreaking situation only adds to her misery and distress as she tries to cope with her ailing mother, who is dying. She makes a promise to her mother that once she has died Marianne will travel to Denmark to find her father. Her mother has hidden sufficient funds to pay for her daughter’s passage, even though she desperately needed medicine.
The journey Marianne embarks upon to reach the treacherous Danish shores is described carefully and with detail. The town she arrives in is no stranger to wrecks, storms, flooding and
death; yet they continue and adapt in order to survive.
Marianne is finding her own identity as she is born of two cultures. She is also between her past and her present. Keeping her promise to seek out her father, who knows nothing of her, she has to be strong enough to face an uncertain future on her own if she is to be rejected. It is with great uncertainty that she embarks on a journey from which there is no going back.
The descriptive narrative, told in the first person, drives the story. Marianne faces a culture which is very different to that of her mother’s, but she too strives to adapt and find happiness. This is a very vivid and dramatic book suitable for a more mature reader.
Val Loh
BABYLONNE
Catherine Jinks, Candlewick, 2008, $18.99/ C$21.00, hb, 400pp, 9780763636500
Sixteen-year-old Babylonne, an orphan reared to the Cathar faith in the Languedoc region of 13th-century France, suffers abuse and humiliation in the home of her aunt and grandmother. When she learns of plans to marry her off to a senile old man, she knows she must escape. Disguised as a boy, she sets out for Aragon to offer her services to the exiled Cathar warriors. Along the way she falls in with Isidore, a Roman Catholic priest who claims to have known her father. Just as she’s beginning to trust and admire this supposed enemy to her faith, she is captured by the same Cathar warriors she initially sought. Taken to a fortress doomed to attack by French Catholic forces, Babylonne must be strong and clever if she is to survive the siege and see Father Isidore again.
From the start, this novel thrusts the reader squarely into the muck and chaos of the Middle Ages. In fact, the plucky heroine gives an almost stream-of-consciousness account of every sight, sound, and nauseating smell. Catherine Jinks certainly possesses a scholar’s knowledge of the period, but at times seems to revel overmuch in the filth and stench of it all. Fans of fast-paced historical adventures with a vast array of colorful characters will find much to like here. Due to the gritty nature of Babylonne’s experiences, I would recommend the novel to readers 14 and up.
Sonia Gensler
JACK’S ISLAND
Norman Jorgensen, Freemantle Press, 2008, AU$16.95, pb, 218pp, 9781921361197
Jack’s Island is a book about war: about rationing and blackouts, enemy alerts and, above all, a fear of the Japanese. The setting is Rottnest Island, a small island off the coast of Western Australia, which was a military base in World War Two. When Jack Jones and his friend Banjo find a Japanese helmet and rifle in the island’s scrub, the stage is set for a riveting read.
Jack and Banjo ride bikes, build hill trolleys, and sail homemade canoes. When a young intellectually disabled boy, Dafty, finds a live
hand grenade, the boys simply have to explode it. When the big guns on Oliver Hill are being tested, they simply have to sneak into the restricted area and watch. Jack and Banjo never mean to get into trouble but some how they always do.
Jack and Banjo attend the island’s small school. When the bullying schoolmaster, Mr Patterson, hits Banjo, causing blood to flow, Dafty comes to his defence. As a consequence, Dafty is sent to an asylum in Perth. During the ferry ride to the mainland, Dafty jumps overboard. He is believed drowned. But strange things are happening on the island. When a mysterious stranger is sighted, everyone assumes it is a ‘Jap’. Only Jack and Banjo know otherwise.
Jack’s Island has all the elements of a Boys Own adventure story: the island, the enemy, and prohibited activities. Yet, it has an unexpected depth that was never tiresome or preachy. I laughed aloud many times during the reading, not from any cheap attempt at comedy, but from the innocence of its narrative voice and from the pranks of its protagonists. Thoughtful boys (and girls) of an upper primary school age would enjoy reading it.
Liz Corbett
THE DARKNESS UNDER THE WATER
Beth Kanell, Candlewick, 2008, $16.99, hb, 320pp, 9780763637194
Beth Kanell has crafted a multi-textured novel dealing with self-discovery, Vermont history, and the Abenaki people. It is the story of Molly Ballou, an Abenaki teen trying with her family to fit into her Vermont community in the 1920s. Molly is faced with discrimination and is haunted by the ghostly presence of her drowned sister, Gratia. She is torn between a life of movies and parties with her school friends and the traditional Abenaki ways introduced to her by her friend, Henry. Kanell melded together family stories, a neighbor’s stories of his Abenaki heritage, and the history of her own town to create The Darkness under the Water
Unfortunately, some Abenaki people have been disappointed with the novel’s historical accuracy. Judy Dow, an Abenaki living in Vermont, and Dorothy Seale, a Native American also of Abenaki heritage, have written a scathing essay on the book’s accuracy. Among their issues they state that Molly’s family would not have been the targets of the Vermont Eugenics Survey because they were trying hard to assimilate into the Vermont community, but rather that her friend Henry Laporte, a traditional Abenaki boy, would have been a target.
In spite of these discrepancies, The Darkness under the Water is an enjoyable tale with relatable coming-of-age issues and which can facilitate discussions of this awkward period in Vermont’s history. Ages 12 and up.
Nancy Castaldo
C$20.00, hb, 312pp, 9780763636647
After Mexican raiders murder her fouryear-old brother, teen-aged Siki turns from a traditional woman’s path to begin her training as a warrior of her Southwest Apache tribe. But the 19th century is progressing with a vengeance through the time-honored ways of her beloved people, with the white-eyed soldiers of the Americans encroaching.
As Siki endures her trials, she is haunted by the mystery surrounding her father’s last days with the band. Did he die a dishonorable death? She has visions of him, the past, and the future that she struggles to understand. Are the People watching to see if she too will betray the tribe? She has an envious opponent in the proud fellow warrior, Keste, but also a beloved teacher and friend in the band’s greatest warrior, the griefravaged, fellow visionary, Golahka.
At times, the language of I Am Apache seemed too self-consciously poetic. Occasionally the viewpoint, as in animals being described as “brute and stubborn, with no sense and little feelings” seemed more European than nativebased. But this infinitely sad story is touched with the grace and beauty of its setting and wonderful characterizations. Told with both an eye toward its action-adventure plotline and the complexities of a warrior’s life and the consequences of revenge, Landman’s tale haunts.
Eileen Charbonneau
THE ANCIENT OCEAN BLUES
Jack Mitchell, Tundra, 2008, $9.95/C$11.99, pb, 188pp, 9780887768323
Though young Marcus Oppius Sabinus is less than thrilled when his cousin Gaius sends him on a spy mission, Marcus does find this preferable to helping Gaius in his everyday business of buying elections through bribery. Soon, therefore, he’s traveling to Athens, in the company of a Greek publisher and Marcus’s fiancée, Paulla (who stows away in hopes of improving her acquaintance with the heroic Aulus Lucinus Spurinna, not for the pleasure of Marcus’s company). Needless to say, smooth sailing does not lie ahead.
Narrated in a breezy, humorous style by Marcus, this was a fun read in which the carefully researched history went down painlessly and where the historical figures (including Gaius Oppius) easily mixed with the fictitious ones, several of whom first appeared in Mitchell’s previous novel, The Roman Conspiracy. I especially enjoyed Paulla, a connoisseur of romances who turns out to be anything but a starry-eyed romantic. Young adults, even those not normally interested in the ancient world, will find this an engaging read.
Susan Higginbotham
is dropped off at her grandmother’s home in Atlanta, Georgia, so her hippie parents can move to Canada to avoid President Nixon’s policies. It is 1969 and a confusing time—war, racism, and intolerance of differences abound. Bliss’s grandmother promptly enrolls her in the elite Crestview Academy. Innocent, openminded Bliss, who was raised on a commune, has a hard time navigating through the cliques of high school. She befriends a group of girls who try to teach her the ropes at school, and she also forms a friendship with Sandy, the school’s social outcast. Bliss, being a bit different from other girls her age, feels that she should be friends with all and give everyone a chance.
As soon as Bliss sets foot on campus, she is plagued with hearing a blood-chilling voice of a girl from the past. The voice grows stronger and stronger and continues to invade Bliss’s thoughts. Sandy becomes obsessed with the death of a student, which happened on campus many years before. The tension and danger mount throughout the story, and Myracle does an excellent job of building a sense of foreboding from the opening pages to the powerful conclusion.
Each chapter starts with quotes from media and television at the time including the Andy Griffith Show and the Manson family murder trial. Interspersed throughout the book are eerie journal entries penned by an unknown author. Reminiscent of Stephen King’s Carrie, Bliss is a page turner that includes a mix of high school drama, teenage first love, and the occult, set against the backdrop of the South in turbulent 1969.
Troy Reed
OUR WHITE HOUSE: Looking In, Looking Out
National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance, Candlewick, 2008, $24.99, hb, 242pp, 9780763620677
Created by 108 renowned authors and illustrators and the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance, Our White House: Looking In Looking Out is a treasure of a book for every American. It is divided into seven parts, each pertaining to a period of White House history. Within each part are essays, prose, reflections, poems, and art that will inspire and invigorate readers to become more knowledgeable citizens. There are excerpts from famous presidential documents such as The Four Freedoms from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Address to Congress and an informal letter from George H. W. Bush to his children. There are personal memories of White House visits from Linda Sue Park and Jerry Spinelli. There are tales of White House ghosts, famous visitors, festivals, and pets.
BLISS
I AM APACHE
Tanya Landman, Candlewick, 2008, $17.99/
Lauren Myracle, Amulet, 2008, $16.95/C$18.95, hb, 464pp, 9780810970717
Fourteen-year-old Bliss Inthemorningdew
Gregory Maguire writes: “And let’s look out, too. Out of the windows, into the world. Residents and visitors alike see another set of rules at work: not of geometry, but of history. Herewith, a history as it involves human progress and potential, human despair – and human hope.”
Our White House certainly does both. It looks deep within the walls to the house itself, but it also looks out to the world around it, to the people who shaped it and the bigger picture of a nation continuously stretching and yearning toward a greater purpose. In this historical year, Our White House gives readers a chance to take pause and appreciate all the historical years that came before and anticipate what the future holds for our people’s house. Well recommended. Nancy Castaldo
MAGIC TREE HOUSE: MAMMOTH TO THE RESCUE
Mary Pope Osborne, Red Fox, 2008, £3.99, pb, 72pp, 9781862305687
New Stone Age. In the seventh Magic Tree House adventure, Jack and Annie find themselves in an Ice Age landscape wearing only their swimsuits! They are looking for the third of the objects their friend Morgan le Fay needs to be released from the spell which binds her. As before, the author introduces a few facts in a simple adventure story. The children nearly wake up a hibernating cave bear, explore a cave decorated with wall paintings of prehistoric animals, put on warm clothes made of reindeer skin and examine some stone age artifacts. Finally, they fall into a trap for mammoths and are rescued by a Cro-Magnon shaman and, leaving historical reality behind, are given a lift home by a woolly mammoth, providing they can escape the marauding sabre-tooth tiger…
Philippe Masson’s black and white drawings are simple and lively and give clear pictures of Stone Age life—the interior of a cave dwelling, for example. Children of 5 plus should enjoy it—as, indeed, they do (see Louis’s review, below).
Elizabeth Hawksley
Annie and Jack were walking in the woods and saw a big tree. This turned out to be the magic tree house, and it took them to the Ice Age. They met the mammoth and the bone guys and the bear and I think it was really good because it was kind of adventurey and I really want to go on an adventure too. I thought it was really cool when Annie and Jack saw the sabretoothed tiger because once I saw a snake with the same pattern as the tiger. I would like to read lots more of these books. I like Annie and Jack because in every one Jack says ‘let’s go back’ and Annie is braver is Jack because I think that Jack is scared to go out of the tree house. But he does always turn out to be brave because he follows Annie. And about Peanut the mouse, I like the way Annie called it Peanut.
Louis McNulty, age 5
MAGIC TREE HOUSE: Night of the Ninjas
Mary Pope Osborne, Red Fox, 2008, £3.99, pb, 72pp, 9781862305663
Mediaeval Japan. In their fifth adventure, Jack and Annie find a note from their friend in the Magic Tree house, the magical librarian Morgan le Fay. She is under a spell and they must find
four things to rescue her. They also meet a little mouse, whom Annie names Peanut, and a book lying open showing a mountain, trees and a river—and some shadowy people with scarves covering their faces and wearing black clothes. Impulsively, Annie wishes they could go there and instantly they are transported to mediaeval Japan. They are captured by two of the swathed people, who turn out to be ninja warriors (they are obviously excellent linguists, too—they have no difficulty in reading Morgan’s note).
Will the ninjas help them find the four things Morgan needs? Jack, Annie and Peanut must brave icy rivers, meet the mysterious ninja master and avoid the fierce Samurai warriors who are after them. They learn the ninja way: use nature, be nature, follow nature. But will it be enough to save them and will they find the Magic Tree house again before the Samurai find them?
I liked this. Other books in the series have a series of events rather than a plot in which actions have consequences (not the same thing); this book, however, has a simple plot. The children’s courage and resourcefulness are tested; they must prove themselves worthy of receiving the ninjas’ help.
The book, sensibly, has a useful prologue, telling you the story so far. And, as before, there are a few simple pieces of information about ninja and samurai warriors and excellent illustrations which depict them clearly. It should appeal to boys and girls of 6 plus.
Elizabeth Hawksley
This story has lovely illustrations and it is very interesting because it teaches you about Japan and ninjas. I think it is a bit babyish for people over 7, but it’s great for 5-6 year olds. The main characters, Jack and Annie, are both brother and sister and Annie is extremely brave while Jack is a bit of a scaredy-cat. Peanut the mouse is a cute and mysterious character. I think Peanut might be Morgan, the M-person that the children are looking for and trying to help. The book does get the readers involved but I think I’m a bit old for them now.
Minna McNulty, aged 8 and a half
TRAITOR
John Pilkington, Usborne, 2008, £5.99, pb, 220pp, 9780746087114
Elizabethan London. In this second Elizabethan Mysteries adventure, prentice actor Ben Button is thrilled when Lord Bonner’s Players are commanded to perform a new play in front of the queen. He hopes that his fellow prentice, Matthew Fields, will now stop bugging him. The company moves temporarily to the Rose Theatre in Southwark and begins rehearsing. Nearby is the Swan Theatre where their rivals, Lord Horsham’s men, work—and they are not very welcoming. Nor is Alderman Gilbert, who denounces the theatre as an instrument of the devil: he will close the Rose if he can.
When an expensive costume goes missing and a mysterious fire breaks out one night, the company begins to wonder if Lord Horsham’s men are behind it. One of them, Edward Ratcliff—the Rat—has taken a particular dislike to Ben, and he is known to be dangerous. Things go from bad to worse when their principal actor, Hugh Cotton, is badly wounded, and the Rat and his cronies beat up Ben and Matt. If their play is to be ready for the royal performance, Ben and Matt must forget their animosity and work together to unmask whoever is behind the attacks on the company—and soon.
This fast-paced story would make a useful introduction to both Elizabethan London and its theatre. The author is good at getting his readers inside the theatre world: all actors are expected to be adaptable. For example, Ben, who plays female parts, also has lessons in sword-fighting from an Italian fencing master. The book illuminates the city’s dangerous underbelly, too. Southwark is full of thieves and cut-purses, and the warren-like ruins of the old Whitefriars monastery is now an underworld rookery. It is obviously aimed at boys but girls should enjoy it, too. 10 plus.
Elizabeth Hawksley
I think Traitor is a well-written book but it could have explained the characters’ dilemmas in greater depth, so that the problems they had would have been more exciting. It had a good story structure and I enjoyed this book more than the first of the series, which I found too complex. It is a very exciting story with plenty of surprises. John Pilkington is a very good writer and I very much hope that he will write another book in the series Elizabethan Mysteries. My favourite character is Matt because I like his cheeky style, which reminds me of myself. So I think Traitor is an excellent book.
Hal McNulty, age 11
THE NIGHT OF THE BURNING
Linda Press Wulf, Bloomsbury, 2008, £5.99, pb. 9780747591344 / Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $16.00, hb, 224pp, 0374364192
This novel tells the true story of Devorah and Nechama Lehrman, the only survivors of a massacre of the Jews in their Polish village by Russian Cossacks. Sent far away to an orphanage, the sisters are chosen by Isaac Ochberg to be among the 200 children he takes to safety in South Africa in 1921.
The story is told in the first person by the eldest, Devorah. Nechama is young enough to recover, but Devorah is deeply traumatised. She is constantly on the alert, anxious to protect her sister and sensing danger everywhere. The orphans stay in London in a grand hotel then travel by ship to South Africa, where they are cared for in another orphanage. The sisters are happy there, but then Nechama is chosen for adoption by a wealthy couple who want only one child. Devorah is distraught, and her first thought is to grab her sister and run. But
she soon realises it isn’t as simple as that. For Devorah, a happy ending develops slowly and is all the more satisfying and believable when it comes.
There is a lot of factual information in this story which might have cluttered the narrative, but the author skilfully avoids this by making her main focus the emotions and perceptions of Devorah. The first half of the story is told in alternate chapters: the ‘here and now’ of 1921, and Devorah’s memories of poverty, sickness, and the pogroms in Poland which build to the terrible night of the burning.
It is Devorah’s feelings and the effect she has on others that give this story its power. It tells of appalling events but also of great resourcefulness, courage, and the love and kindness of many people. I found it incredibly moving.
Ann Turnbull
THE LETTER WRITER
Ann Rinaldi, Harcourt, 2008, $17.00, hb, 218pp, 9780152064020
Popular YA historical novelist Rinaldi has a go at imagining what it was like to be in the middle of Nat Turner’s Rebellion, a bloody insurrection that startled the Virginia countryside in the summer of 1831. Eleven-year-old Harriet is the narrator and letter writer of the title. Born outside wedlock and living discontentedly with her missing father’s legitimate family, she is pressed into the service of writing letters for her almost blind stepmother. When the slave Nat Turner is hired to do some work at her plantation, Harriet is drawn to the gentle, mystic preacher and his kindness. He enlists her help in something she knows is forbidden: copying a map of the surrounding countryside so that, he says, he can find his way while preaching the word of God. This makes her an unwitting accomplice in the bloody uprising that follows. Harriet learns, too late, that her despised stepbrother would have laid down his life for her. She goes on, as her family’s survivor, to run the plantation until her father’s return.
Rinaldi tells her grim story of a young person becoming overwhelmed by the events of her time with fast-paced chapters that are unfortunately marred by very informal dialogue and too frequent anachronisms (Christmas trees and pajamas before they were popular in America, and wince-inducing “can I go with you,” “I kind of like Papa,” and “as the only grown-up around here…”).Young people deserve better and more carefully rendered historical novels.
Eileen Charbonneau
THE CAPTAIN’S DOG: My Journey with the Lewis and Clark Tribe
Roland Smith, Harcourt, 2008, $6.99, pb, 291pp, 9780152026967
This is a tale of the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1803-06 as told by Captain Lewis’s Newfoundland dog, Seaman, who accompanied the explorers. Each chapter
begins with an excerpt from Lewis’s diary, followed by Seaman’s recollections of that part of the journey. He tells of Indian encounters, squabbling amongst the men, and the hardships of the trail. The lack of food, bad weather, dangerous wildlife, and bothersome insects require a heroic level of stamina from dog and humans alike. What happened to the real-life Seaman after Lewis’s last mention of him in his journal is a historical mystery, but Smith imagines a satisfying closure for the fictional dog.
The canine point of view will attract animalloving young readers and ought to make them curious to learn more about the Lewis and Clark Expedition. I enjoyed the book, and it even sent me on a fact-checking mission afterwards. The short chapters will keep kids reading, and the period words such as “cache,” “pirogue,” and “gunwale” should entice them into expanding their vocabulary. A dog as narrator can cause problems, however. An active ability to suspend one’s disbelief is needed when the dog states: “I had seen him have minor bouts of melancholy along the trail…” or “Captain Lewis could not quite get his mind around what he had just heard.” Seaman must have been a smart dog to read Lewis’s mind. Still, the sweep and scope of the epic journey can’t be denied, no matter whose point of view the story is told from. A “reader chat page” at the end of this edition poses discussion questions which could be used in a classroom setting.
B.J. Sedlock
THE YOUNGEST TEMPLAR: Keeper of the Grail, Book I
Michael P. Spradlin, Putnam, 2008, $17.99, hb, 248pp, 9780399247637
A young boy named Tristan, abandoned as an infant with a note about his innocence and need for safety, is trained by monks in late 12thcentury England to read, write, tend garden crops, and care for the stable horses. While welcoming knights serving King Richard the Lionhearted in the current Crusader wars, he accidentally injures Sir Hugh Monfort’s horse. The latter’s reaction is so brutal that Sir Thomas Leux, second in command but possessing greater influence with the king, stops the retribution from continuing. So taken with the young boy’s abilities and responses, Sir Thomas invites the boy to become his squire.
So begins an absolutely fascinating, adventurous journey as Tristan accompanies the King’s soldiers to Outremer. But that excitement pales next to the battles Tristan fights in, an unexpected, heroic reaction that brings him fame, and his narrow escapes from secret men doing their best to destroy him for a reason he cannot fathom. In the process, might he discover what his worst enemy claims to know about the teen’s true identity? Finally, Tristan and a young archer from Sherwood Forest travel with an even more important mission.
Readers will be flipping the pages as fast as
their eyes can move to discover what friends and enemies will help and hinder the youngest Templar’s quest that is much larger than even the Crusades’ outcome. Michael P. Spradlin deserves the highest praise for this wonderful first book celebrating medieval bravery, and the reader will definitely be looking for the second installment of this thrilling new historical fiction series for readers both young and old.
Viviane Crystal
The Youngest Templar is about a boy who was adopted by monks in medieval England. When a group of the Templars, crusading knights sworn to help the church, visit the abbey he is staying at, and when a knight named Sir Tomas asks him to be his squire, he joins them. Soon he is caught up in the 3rd Crusade, saves King Richard, meets an outlaw ex-king’s archer and an assassin who turns out to be a girl, and has been entrusted by Sir Tomas with one of the most sacred items of Christendom, the Holy Grail.
I would recommend this book to boys and girls from age 10-14 who like the Middle Ages. Lucas Tecumseh Asher, age 10
DOWN SAND MOUNTAIN
Steve Watkins, Candlewick, 2008, $16.99/ C$18.50, hb, 286pp, 9780763638399
It’s the 1960s and Dewey Turner is twelve years old, growing up in a small town called Sand Mountain in Florida. Not popular among the kids in school, Dewey decides to don blackface—to imitate a boy who’d danced and sang in a local minstrel show—but this backfires when shoe polish he used won’t wash off completely. Not the best impression Dewey could make on the first day back to classes from summer holidays. He’s teased as though he were really black, and the teasing continues long after the shoe polish has worn away.
Dewey’s on the cusp of adolescence, trying to hold on to childhood as long as he can. He becomes friends with Darla Turkel, who’s more mature for her age but not quite willing to see reality. Together they try to solve the mystery of an unfinished building in town known as the Skeleton Hotel. What happens as a result of this collaboration is difficult for Dewey to understand.
Down Sand Mountain is clearly inspired by one of my favorite books, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. A lot of the same elements are there, but author Steve Watkins has changed and rearranged them in very interesting ways. The characters are quirky and memorable. Unlike Mockingbird, though, Down Sand Mountain is a boy’s story—a more contemporary tale for a contemporary audience. Since I can’t read To Kill a Mockingbird again for the first time, it was such a treat to discover this book. It’s one I’m certain I’ll read again.
Janette King
NONFICTION
THE FOG OF GETTYSBURG: The Myths and Mysteries of the Battle
Kenn Allers, Jr. Cumberland House, $16.95/ C$18.95, pb, 288pp, 9781581826470
Another book on Gettysburg? Fortunately, the answer is “yes.” While the battle of Gettysburg is indeed the most analyzed three days in American history, the time for revisions, interpretations, and critical analysis is not even close to coming to an end. Noted Civil War publishing firm Cumberland House here offers a number of brief essays by Ken Allers, a licensed Gettysburg battlefield guide. The essays range from the seemingly trivial to those critical to an understanding of the battlefield leadership of both Union and Confederate generals. Some knowledge of Gettysburg is not essential, but it will certainly aid in seeing why the author chose to highlight the topics covered.
John R. Vallely
PATTERNS OF FASHION 1540-1660
Janet Arnold, with add. material by, Jenny Trimani and Santina M. Levey, Macmillan, 2008, £30.00, pb, 128pp, 9780333570821
This illustrated work devoted to linen clothes of the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods is the companion to the previous volume on tailored clothes of the same era—the latest in Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion series, published by Macmillan since 1964. Twenty years in the preparation, its pages are lavishly illustrated with concise and detailed descriptions of the fabrics and stitches, how each item was constructed and worn. There are scaled down patterns and a useful bibliography including all previous publications in this series. This is the only book dedicated to the linen clothes that covered the body, from the skin outwards. It is an invaluable guide to the history and the re-creation of these beautiful garments and an excellent resource for the historical novelist.
Ann Oughton
KENTUCKY CLAY
Katherine Bateman, Chicago Review, 2008, $24.95/C$27.95, hb, 199pp, 9781556527951
When I received this book to review, I expected it to be largely centered on two of Kentucky’s most famous Clays, statesman Henry and his cousin Cassius Marcellus. While both are descendents of John Thomas Claye, a landless second son of noble birth who arrived at Jamestown Colony in the year 1613, this history primarily traces the author’s branch of the family.
The Clay family migrated in stages from the Virginia shores to the heart of Appalachia. They amassed land, farmed tobacco, tamed the wilderness, and raised large families, establishing traditions and patterns of behavior that followed them into the present century.
Bateman digs into family lore not just to verify, but also to more fully understand her own life. She uncovers some hitherto unknown details during her investigation. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself absorbed in the details of this genealogical history.
Alice Logsdon
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE: The Making of an Icon (US) / FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE: The Woman and the Legend (UK)
Mark Bostridge, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008, $35, hb, 672pp, 9780374156657 / Viking, 2008, £25, 672pp, 9780670874118
What could a brilliant, wealthy young woman do in Victorian England if marriage did not entice her, and domestic spinsterhood could not contain her fierce energy? She could become Florence Nightingale. The saccharine popular image of the Lady with the Lamp has very little in common with the subject of this biography. She was a rebel who broke free of family constraints at great emotional cost to herself, her parents, and her more conventional sister. Partly motivated by religious faith, she wished to alleviate suffering, but did little hands-on nursing. She reorganized military hospitals and reformed the care of wounded British soldiers during the Crimean War, and came home a national heroine, having set the groundwork for nursing as an acceptable vocation for women. Though a chronic illness contracted in the war made her a semi-invalid, she tirelessly crusaded for medical and sanitary reform, and had a worldwide impact. Judgmental, driven, fonder of humankind than of any particular person, she was admirable without being very likable. This well-written, exhaustively researched biography is admirable, too, but once Nightingale’s youthful struggles and wartime heroism are over, the life of this cool customer makes for rather dry reading.
Phyllis T. Smith
CHEROKEE THOUGHTS, HONEST AND UNCENSORED
Robert J. Conley, Univ. Of Oklahoma Press, 2008, $19.95, pb, 196 pp, 978806139432
Novelist Robert J. Conley explores his own heritage in this nonfiction collection of essays about the Cherokee people, their history and culture. In fresh, entertaining prose, Conley discusses the lives of such famous Cherokees as Will Rogers, General Stand Watie and Nancy Ward. He gives his views on the Dawes Roll, the Trail of Tears, Cherokee-owned casinos and Oklahoma Sooners. He tells the story of Cherokee outlaws from both sides—the side of the Marshalls who are pursuing them and the side of the Cherokee people. He talks with insight about and the Civil War and revelation about Cherokee humor. (They are laughing more often than people know.) He reveals interesting information about slaves and freedmen in the Cherokee nation.
Conley’s writing style is informative and engaging. The book is well-researched, containing notes and an index for those who want to dig deeper. Besides offering an entertaining (but not chronological) history of the Cherokee people, Conley’s essays open the reader’s mind to Cherokee ways of thinking. This book is highly recommended reading, especially for lovers of Native American history.
Nan Curnutt
METROSTOP PARIS: History from the City’s Heart
Gregor Dallas, John Murray, 2008, £18.99, hb, 240pp, 9780719560620 / £7.99, pb, 209pp, 9780719560644
This is basically a literary walk around Paris, except that since it ranges over the whole metropolis the imaginary journey takes place by Metro. Dallas takes us to 12 Metro stations, at each of which he tells us some anecdotes about the quartier, usually centring upon a particular character associated with it. They include literary figures such as Sartre, Zola and Wilde, but also a musician (Debussy), a sculptor (Bourdelle) and various others from St Vincent de Paul to Alfred Dreyfus.
Each chapter is long enough to say something informative and interesting, but the book is essentially an entertainment rather than serious history. If you know Paris well or hope to know it better you will find Metrostop Paris an elegant and delightful companion.
Edward James
FRONTIER MEDICINE: From the Atlantic to the Pacific, 1492-1941
David Dary, Knopf, 2008, $30/C$34, hb, 416pp, 9780307263452
Despite the subtitle, this is primarily a history of medical practice in America’s frontiers, concentrating on the time after the Revolution. The author explains how the medicine of the frontiers evolved from superstition and procedures borne of ignorance to the mostly scientific approach used today. Within its pages are incredible stories of healing and mispractice, a treasure trove of historical trivia, and not a few surprising facts.
Told in textbook style reminiscent of books written fifty to a hundred years ago, this is hardly scintillating stuff. The book is, after all, primarily a reference work, and a very good one at that. At the same time the anecdotal nature of the material, as well as the colorful characters and stories of the time period, does provide some interest for a general audience. To students of the frontier or medical history and especially to writers of the period, this book will likely prove an invaluable reference.
Ken Kreckel
LUCA ANTARA: Passages in Search of Australia
Martin Edmond, Oldcastle Books, 2008, $32.95, hb, 272pp, hb, 9781842432723 / No Exit, 2008, £10.99, pb, 288pp, 9781842432891
A New Zealander transplanted to Australia in the early 1980s, Martin Edmond divided his time between learning to get around Sydney as a taxi driver and obsessively researching the discovery of the mythic land of Luca Antara— or, Australia itself. Edmond’s somewhat indolent ramble—by turns memoir, travelogue, history, and fiction—takes the reader from recent-day Sydney to 17th century Southeast Asia, and then back to the present. He traces the paths of Portuguese explorers, focusing on the story of Antonio da Nova, a servant who was sent to find the mysterious Luca Antara; along the way, Edmond deftly ties in da Nova’s story with other 17th century accounts of voyages, discoveries, and rebellions, based on both primary source documents and his imagination. Dumped by his girlfriend, a drug- and alcohol-addled Edmonds leaves Sydney to meet a mysterious
correspondent who claims to have proof that the Portuguese did land in Australia in the 1600s. Edmond’s travels through Malaysia and Indonesia parallel da Nova’s trek, from the perils of sea travel to the vagaries of native guides. The picture created by Edmond is fascinating and fluidly written, and a worthy diversion from straightforward historical fiction.
Helene Williams
THE LOST CITY OF Z
David Grann, Doubleday, 2008, $27.50/C$32.00, hb, 352pp, 9780385513531 / Simon & Schuster, 2009, £16.99, hb, 368pp, 9781847374363
Since the 15th century when Spanish invaders first contacted indigenous people in the Amazon basin, there have been rumors of a fabulous El Dorado, or City of Gold. Over the next five centuries many explorers have attempted to discover this legendary site. Some disappeared into the “Green Hell.” Others went mad or were kidnapped by local Indians. Therefore, in 1925 when the then famous explorer, Percy Fawcett, his twenty-year-old son, and his son’s best friend headed into the Amazon wilderness, the expedition was trumpeted by newspapers on every continent. Fawcett (who called this lost city “Z”) was one of the last of a fabled breed of intrepid, stiff-upper-lip gentleman explorers. Mysteriously, and like others before, his party utterly vanished. Today the search continues, in one of the few last wild places left on earth. David Grann, a staff writer at the New Yorker, is a modern day victim of the “Z” obsession. The Lost City is actually two stories, Fawcett’s and the author’s. An accomplished journalist, Grann searches first through the explorer’s paper trail—there is an impressive bibliography and copious notes—but it isn’t enough to simply do the research. Eventually, the author finds himself entering the same lethal jungle. This book has drive and narrative flow; it is enormously readable. If there is even a little bit of Indiana Jones in your soul, you’ll thoroughly enjoy this one.
Juliet Waldron
1918: A Very British Victory
Peter Hart, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2008, £20.00, hb, 552pp, 0297846529
1918 is an account of the last year of the Great War on the Western Front, leading to the collapse of the German army. It focuses on the British contribution to the war and draws heavily on memoirs and diaries of British soldiers. Although occasional use is made of French and German source material, the reliance on British material limits the usefulness of the book. An evaluation of the sources would have been helpful; as it is, the reader is left to his own judgement. In a war where the educational, cultural and social backgrounds of the individual combatants were very different, this is a failing. The argument of the book appears to be that the British generals had by 1918 developed a doctrine of “all arms warfare,” which was a significant factor in the defeat of Germany. I felt the evidence presented did not support the thesis. The German spring offensive was resisted in the same way as previous attacks: hold land at all costs and grind the enemy to a standstill.
The allied successes in autumn 1918 may have been due more to the collapse of the German economy and political structures than improved Allied tactics. The book appears to have a promilitary, anti-political tone. Far more evidence is needed to justify such a stance than anecdotes and the perception of serving soldiers. Haig is hardly an impartial witness; he is an actor in the political processes as much as Clemenceau or Lloyd George. Because of the mass of first-hand accounts of British soldiers’ experiences in the final year of the Great War, 1918 is worthwhile. In a sense it is homage to those who fought, but therein is its weakness as historical analysis.
Bill Dodds
TWO VICTORIAN LADIES ON THE CONTINENT
An anonymous journal edited by Michael Heafford, Postillion, 2008, £15, pb, 199pp, 9780955871207
In 1844, Miss W., a well-educated lady in her forties, with her teenage charge, Minnie, set out on a tour of France, Switzerland and Italy. It is part educational (Minnie has language and piano lessons throughout), part finishing school: fashion (Minnie’s stays remain a problem), letters of introduction, and sight-seeing. Miss W. emerges as intelligent and practical, Minnie as lively. Both are game for most things: they endure a five-hour trip by sea to see the temples at Paestum; climb Vesuvius, which spits out ‘red hot volleys of lava’; Minnie (shades of Sherlock Holmes) nearly falls down the Reichenbach Falls; and they are bitten by bedbugs in France. For members who are also novelists, Miss W’s journal is a goldmine, illuminating how two single ladies coped with travelling, putting up at inns, hiring guides etc. whilst touring Europe in a pre-railway age.
Michael Heafford, a linguist and travel historian, has done a splendid job of editing the anonymous manuscript. His introduction looks at the itinerary, the social contacts Miss W. made and the manuscript itself. The fascinating postscript unravels the mystery of who Miss W. and Minnie were and why they were travelling. Highly recommended.
Elizabeth Hawksley
COLD WAR
Jeremy Isaacs & Taylor Downing, Abacus, 2008, £12.99, pb, 536pp, 9780349120805
This book was first published in 1998, having its origins in a TV series. Now reprinted, it has a new introduction by Peter Hennessy (himself an author of a Cold War analysis) and a new afterword by the authors. The book covers fortyfive years of the era after the Second World War when the superpowers dangerously held the balance of power with nuclear weapons.
This is a very thorough work, beginning with a chapter covering the years between 1917 and 1945, when Soviet Russia and the West had a difficult relationship, but which lead to an uneasy alliance to defeat Nazi Germany. During that time, the seeds were sown for the Cold War. There then follows a series of concise chapters covering post-Second World War history, with its various stand-offs, spies, air space and territory violations, culture clashes, and Sputnik.
This book would be a great asset to anyone writing about 1945 onward, as it would be easy to find out what the world political climate was in any given decade up to the early 1990s.
S Garside-Neville
THE GRAND INQUISITOR’S MANUAL: A History of Terror in the Name of God
Jonathan Kirsch, HarperOne, 2008, $26.95/ C$28.95, hb, 258pp, 97800608166995
Jonathan Kirsch does not mince words or cater to delicate sensibilities in this welldocumented history of the Inquisition’s 600 year reign of terror.
From the 13th century to the 19th the Catholic church engaged in a program of doctrinal cleansing using terror, torture, and death to eliminate those accused of deviating —in thought or deed—from official Church doctrine. Kirsch chronicles the persecution and displays its grisly “toolbox.” But sadism and inhumanity are not his principal focus. His aim is to warn against regimes that use fear to enforce conformity, that police free thought and prosecute “thought crimes.”
The Grand Inquisitor’s Manual is a thoughtful and timely book, passionately written and well worth the read.
Lucille Cormier
SALEM
WITCH JUDGE: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall
Eve LaPlante, HarperOne, 2008,$14.95/ C$16.25, pb, 352pp. 9780060859602
In 1692 Samuel Sewall, age 44, was one of the nine judges presiding over the Salem witch trials. Eve Laplante, a direct descendent of Sewall, states that her purpose in writing this biography was to uncover the truths and restore Sewall to the hero she believes he was.
Her bibliography shows extensive research including Sewall’s daily journals. He was devoutly religious and struggled with his sense of right versus wrong during and after the trial. After five years he was compelled to repent for his role in condemning twenty witches to death by hanging based on spectral evidence.
Sewall was the only judge to ever take any responsibility. His admission was just the beginning of what would be a lifetime of self-mortification and praying to God for his restoration to good grace. Sewall spent his life working for the rights of women, blacks and Native Americans. His actions demonstrated his courageous nature and sense of morality. His relationship with God would be the most important part of his life.
LaPlante tells her history in a fluid narrative style. This is a gripping account of a conflicted man; an essential biography for understanding the allure of the Salem witch trials.
Wisteria Leigh HESTER, The Remarkable Life of Dr Johnson’s ‘Dear Mistress’
Ian McIntyre, Constable, 2008, £20.00, hb, 429pp, 9781845294496
This is the biography of Hester Thrale, nee Salusbury. Relying heavily on over thirty years of her own writings known charmingly as, Thraliana, Hester paints a picture of an extraordinary and idiosyncratic lady. Although
Hester was made famous by her relationship with Dr Johnson, Ian McIntyre ensures that she steps out from his shadow and into her own limelight.
Georgian England in general—London in particular—is brought into sharp focus along the way showing it for the gloriously cultured and spirited place it must have been. The reader not only follows Mrs Thrale’s ups and downs but learns a mass of 18th-century details along the way. The result is as captivating as the lady must have been herself.
Sara Wilson
ELIZABETH IN THE GARDEN
Trea Martyn, Faber & Faber, 2008, £18.99, hb, 325pp, 9780571216932
The grand gardens of the Elizabethan era with their mazes, lakes and burgeoning flower beds were not imagined merely for pleasure but as a means of advancing the careers of their creators. Elizabeth’s favourite, Robert Dudley and her Lord Treasurer, William Cecil were bitter rivals each going to extraordinary lengths to impress their queen and win her favour. As Dudley spent his energies and money in his quest to woo Elizabeth, Cecil concentrated on thwarting Dudley’s plans.
This is Trea Martyn’s first book, and her research is impeccable. As she delves into the archives and visits the Elizabethan houses she brings to life, not a distant queen but the woman Elizabeth taking her daily exercise, ‘in the most sensational gardens ever seen in England… a place of pleasure, a multi-sensory experience.’
Trea Martyn’s easy writing style and imaginative descriptions make this an absolute jewel of a book.
Ann Oughton
I BELIEVE IN YESTERDAY
Tim Moore, Jonathan Cape, 2008, £12.99, pb, 248pp, 9780224077811
Tim Moore, known more for his amusing travel books, has written a wonderfully funny and intelligent account of his seven experiences in various periods and locations of “living history” or re-enactment. These range from Iron Age England to the 19th century US Civil War. He is searingly self-honest and is prepared to laugh at himself as well as the occasionally easy targets of those who enthusiastically embrace this expanding phenomenon of trying to live in and recreate the past. These groups range in degrees of commitment from uncommitted amateurs, to those who are essentially looking for a good brutal fight and, more recently, to the impossible and almost ideological Holy Grail of pure historical authenticity where no aspect of the contemporary life is allowed to contaminate the unadulterated purity of the past. Living history participants can seem a bit, well, wacky, but like most human endeavours it attracts a range of people, from thoroughly decent, sociable folk to those who anyone would want to avoid in any situation, and certainly not when they are tooled-up with a variety of ancient and potentially lethal weaponry. A delight to read.
Doug Kemp
THE POPES OF AVIGNON: A Century in Exile (US) / AVIGNON OF THE POPES: City of Exiles (UK)
Edwin Mullins, BlueBridge, 2008, $24.95/
C$26.95, hb, 246pp, 9781933346151 / Signal, 2009, £9.99, pb, 256pp, 9781904955566
In the 14th century, Avignon, a small Provençal town beside the Rhone River, became the site of the papal court. Because of political unrest in Italy, Pope Clement V was forced to flee Rome in 1309. Pope Gregory XI (the seventh of Avignon’s popes) was unable to return until 1377. After that, for thirty more years, antipopes kept their courts in Avignon. While histories dealing with this era will almost invariably mention these events, Mullins’s book instead discusses this turbulent century (Black Death, Hundred Years’ War, Petrarch) by using the story of the Avignon popes and the rise and decline of the city as the focal point. It is well-organized, clearly written and reads quickly. In relatively few pages it covers a lengthy period of time and touches on a broad spectrum of topics with particular emphasis on the lives/lifestyles of the “exiled” popes. Readers should not expect an in-depth treatment of the subject or of church politics, but it is an entertaining introduction to a complex and fascinating time.
Sue Asher
FROM GUNS TO GAVELS: How Justice Grew Up in the Outlaw West
Bill Neal, Texas Tech University Press, 2008, $29.95, hb, 384pp, 9780896726376
Lost in the Western frontier tales of steelyeyed gunfighters, crafty cattle thieves, and daring bank robbers is the slow but steady evolution of the American West from a lawless region to a land of law and order. Bill Neal is well versed in this forgotten and largely ignored chapter of the “Wild West” both through his years as a criminal lawyer and as an award-winning historian. He focuses on West Texas from the 1890s to the 1920s and introduces a number of truly remarkable characters and equally exciting historical events. Readers will be captivated by the savage Tom Ross, the desperate John Matthews-Bill McDonald feud, and numerous other stories from the Texas of both legend and fact. Any historical fiction writer seeking food for thought for frontier tales need search no longer.
John R. Vallely
GOD’S EXECUTIONER: Oliver Cromwell and the Conquest of Ireland
Michael Osiochru, Faber & Faber, 2008, £14.99, pb, 316pp, 9780571241217
God’s Executioner opens in October 1649 with the seizing of the Charlemont fort in County Armagh and continues through to a conclusion in 1689 and William of Orange. Politics, military conquest and religion are inextricably linked in this period of Irish history, with Protestant leaders fighting to maintain the status quo which entrenched their status and supremacy while Catholic leaders struggled to change the restrictive laws and covenants which had such negative impact on their lives. Mixed in the pot was the Protestant hatred of the Catholic religion and a civil war between King and Parliament.
The detailed research carried out makes this an excellent history of the period. Well balanced, it looks at actions taken by both sides in the war while the massacres at Drogheda and Wexford by Parliamentary forces under Cromwell’s
command are detailed, they are shown in the context of bloody actions taken by both Catholic and Protestant forces throughout the era. For students of the history of Ireland at this period this will be an excellent resource. However, Cromwell’s character is hardly covered, and I am still no wiser about the man and his motivation. With only some 73 pages out of 250 devoted to him I feel that the title of the book, while thought provoking, is not completely apt. Nevertheless, a well researched book. Mike Ashworth
NATHAN HALE
M. William Phelps, St. Martin’s Press, 2008, $25.95/C$28.95, hb, 320pp, 0312376413
Nathan Hale was born in 1755, the child of a devout Connecticut family. At fifteen, he went to Yale, the path to either teaching or the ministry. Hale pursued the former, and despite his youth, taught for a brief time before the Revolution began.
A history of dissent among New Englanders made it natural for them to embrace the American cause, the latest rebellion against a king. When General Washington called for men to serve the army as spies, Hale offered himself, despite the fact that spying was considered immoral and dishonorable for a gentleman. His letters indicate he believed that God intended America to be free, and whatever he did for the Cause was God’s Will.
His conviction, though sincere, did not make him a good spy. He seems to have betrayed himself on the eve of his escape with tavern talk to a Tory colonel. The drawings he’d made of fortifications around New York City were easily found, and he was hanged soon after his capture, a sorry end for any 21-year-old. A sympathetic British officer preserved his famous dying words.
Nathan Hale starts slowly. Although the pace and style improves and there are interesting notes, the book makes a brief life seem almost too long. If you are specifically interested in Nathan Hale, you might try this one, but I found the wider ranging Washington’s Spies more readable.
Juliet Waldron
CHARGE – THE INTERESTING BITS OF MILTARY HSTORY
Justin Pollard, John Murray, 2008, £12.99, hb, 270pp, 9780719523045
Charge is a miscellany of curious snippets of military history culled from Ancient Egypt to WWII. Most of the entries are short (usually two pages) and for the most part they are indeed interesting and amusing. However, at times I feel the author strains rather too hard to be amusing over incidents which are essentially tragic accidents. In war the boundary between farce and tragedy is narrow. Useful reading for quiz contestants.
Edward James
THE SLAVE SHIP, A HUMAN HISTORY
Marcus Rediker, John Murray, 2008, £9.99, 434pp, pb, 9780719563034
‘One of the recurrent sounds of a slave ship was song. The sailors sometimes played instruments and sang, but more commonly, day and night, the Africans sang.’
Not one’s first thought about a slave ship, but
why not? The story of the slave trade is a tale of inhumanity and suffering but also an epic of the resilience of the human spirit. Rediker’s book does not pretend to be a history of the slave trade (the best book remains Hugh Thomas’ The Slave Trade, Picador 1997). It concerns only one aspect of the trade, the slave ship, in one century, the ‘long’ 18th century (1700-1807), for two nations, Britain and the American colonies. Within this narrow compass it is as good as one can get. It is based essentially on a mass of personal testimonies by captains, seamen, and where available, the slaves. Essential reading for anybody interested in the slave trade or in maritime history of the 18th century.
Edward James
LADY WORSLEY’S WHIM: An 18thCentury Tale of Sex, Scandal, and Divorce Hallie Rubenhold, Chatto & Windus, 2008, £25, hb, 9780701179809
In the latter part of the 18th century, British society was enthralled and scandalised by the long-running and very public divorce battle between the wealthy Lord Richard Worsley and his heiress wife, Lady Seymour, who could count Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire amongst her friends in the haut ton. Lady Worsley eloped with her lover George Bisset and the enraged cuckolded husband brought a charge for crippling damages against Bisset, as was not uncommon in those days. Society was shocked at learning through Bisset’s defence that Worsley had not only appeared to assist and observe the lovers in their extramarital affair, but had also tacitly consented to Lady Worsley’s previous infidelities with a number of other members of the aristocracy. Lord Worsley was humiliated and the battle raged between the two parties in the print and pamphlet press.
The story is expertly narrated so that it is as entertaining to read as work of literary fiction than history. It provides a superb insight into the sexual mores and conventions of the times. A most enjoyable read and well-written book. Doug Kemp
DESCARTES’ BONES: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason Russell Shorto, Doubleday, 2008, $26.00, hb, 286pp, 9780385517539
This is not so much a “historical detective story” as a forensic travelogue of the remains of scientist/mathematician/philosopher Rene Descartes, who died in 1650. Shorto makes much of a small irony: the mortal remains of the hero of secular reasoning being picked apart, preserved, and passed from owner to owner over the 350 years since his death, revered both as objects of naturalistic study and as “holy” relics. This irony becomes Shorto’s metaphor for the (dis)connections between reason and faith, and the framework upon which he hangs the rest of his tale. Alas, the tale itself is so bare-bones that he must embroider it with his own personal interpretations and philosophy in order to stretch it to book length. What Descartes’ Bones ultimately becomes is the Gospel According to Shorto; he would have done better to explore experts’ varying interpretations of Cartesian philosophy in more depth. Even while attempting to present a bipartisan, both-are-right picture of the nature of faith and reason (which comes across as vacillating), Shorto’s own prejudice
against (and incomplete understanding of) secularism will be immediately obvious to those who approach it from the secular side of the fence. A good first step toward more substantial reading, if nothing else.
Val Perry
NAPOLEON IN EGYPT
Paul Strathern, Bantam, 2008, $30.00, hb, 368pp, 9780553806786 / Vintage, 2008, £9.99, pb, 496pp, 9781844139170
Paul Strathern is a rare example of an intellectual who is eminently qualified in diverse fields. An award-winning novelist, Strathern has also earned praise for philosophy and popular science writings. Now, he offers an endlessly fascinating and superbly written history of Napoleon’s futile attempt to conquer an eastern empire in 1798. This adventure remains the least studied of all Napoleon’s military and political efforts, and analysis of this topic has been long overdue. Readers will find the accounts of the Battle of the Pyramids, Lord Nelson’s brilliant victory on the Nile, and the larger-than-life Sir Sidney Smith to be as exciting as any fictional accounts of Hornblower and Sharpe. Warfare and politics are accompanied by descriptions of the discoveries of the long-buried riches from the Egyptian past. The 28-year-old ambitious and power-driven Napoleon, French plans for empire at the cost of British interests, Britain’s stalwart resistance, interplay between Muslim and Christians, Murad Bey and Ibrahim Bey and the new world they confront—all this in a finely crafted book.
John R. Vallely
COME ON SHORE AND WE WILL KILL AND EAT YOU ALL
Christina Thompson, Bloomsbury, 2008, £14.99, hb, 270pp, 9780747582526
The book starts with Abel Tasman’s discovery of New Zealand in 1642 and tells the story of the first contact between Europeans and New Zealand’s Maori population. It proceeds to examine the misconceptions and stereotypes engendered between both cultures since then. In juxtaposition is Thompson’s own love story; how she met and married a Maori man called Seven and travelled over the years between Australia, Hawaii, New Zealand and America.
Though her exploration of New Zealand history is well researched and interesting her academic and often clinical impersonality is at times irksome and, however unintentional, tinged with a patronizing undertone. The premise of mirroring her own relationship with early crosscultural encounters, though provocative, is not wholly realistic. She recounts an exchange with her Maori brother-in-law when she tells him of her intention of writing their family, (Maori), story whereby he replies bluntly, ‘Write your own first.’
However she might claim that this is, ‘her story’, the book for the most part focuses on the cultural collision between Europeans, (Westerners), and Maoris. In this telling the latter’s opinions, as with her husband’s voice are, for the most part, silent and absent.
Majella Cullinane
MISTRESS OF THE MONARCHY: The Life of Katherine Swynford, Duchess of Lancaster
(US) / KATHERINE SWYNFORD: The Story of John of Gaunt and his Scandalous Duchess Alison Weir, Ballantine, 2009, $28, hb, 416pp, 9780345453235 / Vintage, 2008, £8.99, pb, 384pp, 9780712641975
The latest beneficiary of Alison’s Weir’s biographical attentions is the little-known but often reviled Katherine Swynford, the longtime mistress and eventual wife of John of Gaunt, son of Edward III and patriarch of the House of Lancaster. Katherine would be the woman from whom all future English monarchs would descend, but as with most independent females, history has been less than kind to her. With her usual deftness Weir cuts through centuries of legend and hearsay to paint a portrait of the woman behind the historical figure, a woman quite different from the brazen harlot labeled a witch by her contemporary chroniclers. As in many of Weir’s biographies, much is learned not only about the title figure but also those around her—Katherine’s family, friends, enemies, and contemporaries, including her brother-in-law Geoffrey Chaucer. The historical research is meticulous and seamlessly integrated into the narrative. The result is the story of a real woman with virtues, flaws, and an altogether fascinating life. Fans of the author will not be disappointed. Recommended.
Heather Domin
BECOMING QUEEN
Kate Williams, Hutchinson, 2008, £20.00, hb, 414pp, ISBN 9780091794798
Despite the picture on the cover of a young Queen Victoria, this book is actually about both her and Princess Charlotte, George IV’s daughter, whose death in childbirth was the reason for Victoria’s accession to the throne. (Indeed, it was the reason for her conception— Charlotte’s death left the royal family without any legitimate heirs from the next generation; consequently, there was a mad rush by George IV’s brothers, including Edward, Duke of Kent, Victoria’s father, to abandon their mistresses and marry suitable, i.e. royal, women.)
Princess Charlotte was a tomboy, ill-educated, and impetuous. She was, however, greatly loved by the country when she died in 1817. I found this third of the book the most interesting and informative, as it is not often one reads much about Charlotte.
Victoria’s life, on the other hand, is well known: how she was brought up by her mother and Sir John Conroy, who she loathed; how she became queen at eighteen, fell in love with her cousin Albert and married him, and how she retreated into a long widowhood after his death in 1861, until her own death in 1901, having reigned longer than any other English monarch.
Williams covers the first 22 years of Victoria’s life, with an epilogue describing the two Jubilees. She argues that Victoria established the tradition of service to one’s country amongst the British royal family, and that she was the first monarch to embrace the diminished power of the throne.
Written in an easy style, this book is a good introduction to the lives and times of two young women during the turbulent years of 1796-1841, before the long Victorian period took hold. jay Dixon
Historical Novels Review
ISSN: 1471-7492
© 2009, The Historical Novel Society
