Historical Novels Review, Issue 53 (August 2010)

A PUBLICATION OF THE HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY

HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW ISSUE 53, AUGUST 2010

WORTHY OF A GIANT

Ken Follett’s Century trilogy different worlds, different times an interview with andrew taylor so much owed to so few the battle of britain’s 70th anniversary the sir walter scott prize a new award for historical fiction a bright constellation a profile of orion publishing

IN EVERY ISSUE historical fiction market news | history & film | new voices | how not to write...

Historical Novels R eview

Hamilton, Michael Joseph, Viking); Short Books; Snowbooks; and Transworld (inc. Bantam Press, Black Swan, Corgi, Doubleday)

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ISSN: 1471-7492 | © 2010 The Historical Novel Society

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edit o r ial boa r d

Publisher Coverage: all self-published, subsidy, and electronically published novels

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Jane Kessler University Library 119, University at Albany, SUNY 1400 Washington Avenue Albany, NY 12222 USA <jkessler@uamail.albany.edu>

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

Publisher Coverage: Algonquin; FSG; Five Star; IPG; Kensington; and Trafalgar Square

Book Review Editor: Sarah Johnson 6868 Knollcrest Drive Charleston, IL 61920 USA <sljohnson2@eiu.edu>

Publisher Coverage: Bethany House; HarperCollins; Penguin Putnam; Random House (all imprints); university presses; and any North American presses not mentioned below

Features Editors: Myfanwy Cook 47 Old Exeter Road Tavistock, Devon PL19 OJE UK <myfanwyc@btinternet.com>

Ken Kreckel 3670 Placid Drive Casper, WY 82604 USA <kreckel1@yahoo.com>

review s edit o r s , u k

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Alan Fisk Flat 25, Lancaster Court, Lancaster Avenue London SE27 9HU UK <alanfisk5@netscape.net>

Publisher Coverage: Creme de la Crime; Duckworth; HarperCollins UK (inc. Flamingo, Fourth Estate, Voyager); Orion Group (inc. Cassell, Gollancz, Phoenix, Weidenfeld & Nicolson); Piatkus; Picnic Publishing; Quaestor2000; Quercus; Severn House; and all small independent UK publishers not handled by other editors

Edward James 2 Hayman Close Cheltenham, Gloucestershire GL53 9FD UK <edward654@btinternet.com>

Publisher Coverage: Arcadia; Canongate; Hodder Headline (inc. Coronet, Hodder & Stoughton, NEL, Sceptre); John Murray; and Robert Hale

Doug Kemp Tulip Lodge, Harrowden Road Wellingborough, Northamptonshire NN8 5BD UK <doug.kemp@lineone.net>

Publisher Coverage: Allison & Busby; Little, Brown & Co (inc. Abacus, Virago, Warner); Random House UK (inc. Arrow, Cape, Century, Chatto & Windus, Harvill, Heinemann, Hutchinson, Pimlico, Secker & Warburg, Vintage), Simon & Schuster (inc. Scribner)

Julie Parker Millbank Cottage, Winson Cirencester, Gloucestershire GL7 5EW UK <julie.pk@talk21.com> Publisher Coverage: children’s historicals — all UK publishers Gordon O’Sullivan 20 Morgan Avenue London, E17 3PL UK <osullivangordon@yahoo.co.uk>

Trudi Jacobson University Library, University at Albany 1400 Washington Avenue Albany, NY 12222 USA <readbks@verizon.net>

Publisher Coverage: Arcade; Crippen & Landru; Hilliard & Harris; HMH Children’s; Houghton Mifflin (inc. Mariner); Hyperion; Little Brown; Medallion; New Directions; Simon & Schuster (inc. Atria, Scribner, Touchstone, Washington Square), Steerforth; Toby; Warner; and WW Norton

Ilysa Magnus 5430 Netherland Avenue #C41 Bronx, NY 10471 USA <goodlaw2@optonline.net>

Publisher Coverage: Dorchester; Grove/Atlantic; Minotaur Books; Picador USA; Poisoned Pen Press; Soho Press; St Martin’s Press; Tor/Forge; and Tyndale

Film Editor: Hannah Sternberg 1125 Old Eagle Road Lancaster, PA 17601 USA <hesternberg@gmail.com>

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Andrea Connell 10011 Beacon Pond Lane Burke, VA 22015 USA <hnsonline@verizon.net>

Richard Lee Marine Cottage, The Strand Starcross, Devon EX6 8NY United Kingdom <richard@historicalnovelsociety.org>

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re v i e ws e d i tors , u s a

Publisher Coverage: Birlinn/Polygon; Bloomsbury; Constable & Robinson; Faber & Faber; The History Press; Macmillan (inc. Pan, Picador, Sidgwick & Jackson); Penguin (inc. Allen Lane, Hamish

Ann Pedtke 38-13 52nd Street Sunnyside, NY 11104 USA

Publisher coverage: US/Canadian children’s publishers (except S&S, HMH)

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confe re nce s

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The Society organizes annual conferences in the UK and biennial conferences in the US. Contact Richard Lee (UK) or Sarah Johnson (USA).

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m e m be rs h i p d e ta i l s

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Membership in the Historical Novel Society is by calendar year (January to December) and entitles members to all the year’s publications: two issues of Solander, and four issues of Historical Novels Review. Back issues of society magazines are also available. For current rates, contact: Sue Hyams 56 Ackroyd Road Honor Oak Park, London SE23 1DL UK <sue.hyams@virgin.net>

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e d i tori a l pol i cy

Linda Abel 3922 NW 68th Street Oklahoma City, OK 73116 USA <Linda@TheMedievalChronicle.com>

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Reviews, articles, and letters may be edited for reasons of space, clarity, and grammatical correctness. We will endeavour to reflect the authors’ intent as closely as possible, and will contact the authors for approval of any major change. We welcome ideas for articles, but have specific requirements to consider. Before submitting material, please contact the editor to discuss whether the proposed article is appropriate for the HNS magazines.

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copy ri g h t

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In all cases, the copyright remains with the authors of the articles. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the authors concerned.

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY was formed in 1997 to help promote historical fiction. All staff and contributors are volunteers and work unpaid. We are an open society — if you want to get involved, get in touch.

HNS WEBSITE: www.historicalnovelsociety.org EMAIL NEWSLETTER. Read news and reviews: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HNSNewsletter

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Historical Novels R eview I s s u e 5 3 , A u g us t 2010 | I SSN 1471-7492

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ed itor ia l b e t ha ny la th a m

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histor ic a l fic tion market n ews s ar a h joh nson

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histor y & film t he t e na nt of wildf ell hall | han n ah s tern b erg

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n ew voic e s p r of ile of debut his torical f iction authors da na h a n d , ga br ie lle kimm , g rant s utherlan d & deb or a h swift | m y f anw y cook

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how no t to. . . s w as h your buc kler | dun can n oble

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9 WORTHY OF A G I A N T ke n folle tt’s centur y trilog y | b y ken k reckel 12

dif f erent worlds , dif f erent ti mes a n inter view with an drew tayl o r | by chris tian stu a rt

14 s o much owed to so f ew the ba ttle o f b ritain ’s 70th an n ivers a r y | by ken k reckel 16

the s ir walter s cott pri z e by lucin da bya tt

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a brig ht con s t el l a ti o n a p r ofile of or ion p ublis hin g | by my f anw y co o k

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book r e v ie ws e d ito rs’ c h oic e & m ore

MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR

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ave you ever had an idea where you thought: hey, that sounds like fun—I think I’ ll give that a go? And then later (when the bandages come off and your mother stops crying), you realize that perhaps it wasn’t the worst idea you’ve ever had, but it goes in the New Heights of Idiocy category?

Maybe it’s just me. But I had an idea like that once. I thought: hey, I’ ll write a book! It’ ll be fun!

That was about two years ago. Maybe three. Time flies when you’re having fun. Or when you’re procrastinating your brains out. I submitted a proposal and a couple of sample chapters; I got a contract. Everything about the contract was lovely, except for this part at the end. Something called a “deadline.” That deadline has ruled my life for the past several months.

I’ve forgotten what sleep feels like. I’ve forgotten what life feels like.

But as of this very week, two days ago, to be exact, my Albatross (as I affectionately refer to it) is finished. Completed and submitted. And with five days to spare!

The Albatross is a work of nonfiction (I would tell you all about it and beg you to buy it, but I’m above shameless self-promotion; besides it won’t be out for awhile), and as such, it required a great deal of time spent in research. More time than I had anticipated.

More time than I wanted to spend. But all that time spent researching impressed something upon me: the sheer amount of work that goes into writing a historical novel. In essence, historical novelists have to do what I did, which can give them elements of historical detail, plus they still have to craft their plotting and characterization and make it convincing within the constraints of what their historical research has dictated. I always knew it wasn’t easy, but I’ve developed a new appreciation for historical novelists and their art.

So I bid you enjoy the fruits of their very difficult labor offered up in this issue of HNR. I plan to patronize them myself; I’ve got a To Read list a mile long, and I’m going to work my way through as much of it as I can while lying on the beach—Albatrossfree, perfectly content, under an umbrella and wearing SPF 100. Maintaining my deathly pallor requires constant vigilance.

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HNR The

BETHANY LATHAM is a professor, librarian, and Managing Editor of HNR. She publishes in various scholarly and popular journals, as well as writing for the EBSCO NoveList database. She also serves as Internet Editor and a regular reviewer for Reference Reviews.

HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Columns | 1

H I STO R I C AL FICTION MAR K ET NE W S

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ould you like your latest publishing deal to appear here? Email me at sljohnson2@eiu.edu.

Conference news Registration is open for the 2010 UK conference, to be held at the Mechanics Institute in Manchester on 17th October.

Speakers include Jerome de Groot, Jean Fullerton, Elizabeth Hawksley, Doug Jackson, Ben Kane, Robert Low, Orna Ross, Mary Sharratt, Harry Sidebottom, and Ann Turnbull, plus industry experts Jim Gill (United Agents) and Marcy Posner (Folio Literary Mgmt). Fees of £55 (HNS members who pay before 31 August) or £65 (non-members) include all workshops/events plus lunch. Register online via the HNS website, or contact Alan Fisk to pay by cheque (address on masthead). HNS is working together with the Manchester Literature Festival and the Manchester Libraries’ Pages Ago promotion. Manchester Libraries’ Readers Day (separate registration; see HNS website) is at the same venue on 16th October, and speakers include Alison Weir, Maria McCann and Sarah Dunant.

Our 4th North American conference will take place June 17-19, 2011, at the Holiday Inn on the Bay in San Diego, California. Author guests of honor will be Cecelia Holland and Harry Turtledove, with a Saturday lunch keynote by Jennifer Weltz of the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency. If you’re interested in speaking, please fill out the proposal form linked from the HNS website by September 30. Registration opens in November.

HNR updates The North American review team is looking for a few good book reviewers. Email Sarah Johnson at sljohnson2@eiu.edu with details on your writing/reviewing experience, if any, and to receive the reviewer guidelines.

Welcome to Ann Pedtke, the newest member of the HNR editorial team. Ann will be overseeing children’s and YA historicals from most N American publishers.

Special thanks go to Troy Reed for magazine distribution and to Jeanne Greene for copy editing this issue.

New historical magazine This summer sees the launch of a new quarterly short story journal – Snapshots of History: Stories from the Past. This publication is dedicated to all aspects of historical short story writing, and most especially to tales with a dramatic or adventurous theme! For subscription details, please contact Sally Bland at snapshotsofhistory@hotmail.co.uk.

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New publishing deals Sources include author submissions, Publishers Marketplace, Booktrade.info, Publishers Weekly, The Bookseller, and more.

Jean M. Auel’s The Land of Painted Caves, continuing the story of Ayla, her mate and their little daughter in Ice Age Europe, sold to Bantam Dell, with Betty Prashker editing, for publication in March 2011, by Jennifer Weltz of the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency.

Jean Naggar sold Karleen Koen’s fourth novel to Heather Lazare of Crown. Before Versailles covers four months in the life of a young Louis XIV, who loses his long-time mentor, discovers he isn’t the most powerful man in France, and falls head over heels in love – all true – intertwined with a story of a boy in an iron mask.

Karen Harper’s new Tudor-era historical The Irish Princess, the story of Elizabeth Fitzgerald, sold to Executive Editor Ellen Edwards at New American Library in a two-book deal by Meg Ruley and Annelise Robey at the Jane Rotrosen Agency, for Feb 2011 publication. Harper’s Mistress Shakespeare and The Queen’s Governess have been sold to editor Gillian Green at Random House UK (Ebury Imprint) by Peggy Gordjin at the Jane Rotrosen Agency. Other recent foreign rights sales for these two novels include Poland and Turkey.

Longtime Penguin editor Carole DeSanti’s debut novel The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R., about a 19th-century Frenchwoman living through the Franco-Prussian War, sold to Adrienne Brodeur of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt via Robin Straus.

Susanne Dunlap’s In the Shadow of the Lamp, the story of a young nurse working alongside Florence Nightingale, sold to Melanie Cecka at Bloomsbury Children’s for publication in Spring 2011, by Adam Chromy and Gwendolyn Heasley at Artists and Artisans.

Essie Fox’s debut gothic novel The Somnambulist, about a Victorian woman who unravels a tangled web of family secrets in order to reveal her true parentage, sold to Kate Mills at Orion, in a two-book deal, for publication in Spring 2011, by Isobel Dixon at Blake Friedmann.

Colin Falconer’s Silk Road, about a 13th-c Crusader Knight with a guilty secret, plus two more historical novels Stigmata and Eastern Messiah, sold to Anthony Cheetham and Nicolas Cheetham at Corvus, by Patrick Walsh at Conville & Walsh.

Persia Woolley’s Guinevere historical fiction trilogy (Child of the Northern Spring, Queen of the Summer Stars, and Guinevere: The Legend in Autumn) sold to Shana Drehs at Sourcebooks.

Former HNR reviews editor Mary Sharratt’s Know the Ways, based on the true story of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), sold to Adrienne Brodeur at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, for pub. in spring 2012, by Wendy Sherman.

Spanish bestseller Maria Duenas’s debut The Couturière, following the life of a poor seamstress from Madrid who, after being abandoned in Algiers by her lover, becomes the most famous couturière in North Africa until becoming embroiled

by British Intelligence, sold to Johanna Castillo at Atria and

In stores soon Steven Saylor’s Empire, a Micheneresque epic of the Roman Empire (and a sequel to Roma), appears from St. Martin’s (US)

and Corsair (UK) in Sept.

The Death Instinct, Jed Rubenfeld’s sequel to his early 20th-century thriller The Interpretation of Murder, is out from Headline Review in Sept, and Riverhead in Jan. A prequel to her bestselling The Heretic’s Daughter, set in 17th-century England and Massachusetts, Kathleen Kent’s The Wolves of Andover will appear from Little Brown in Nov. Pegasus Publishing of Cambridge UK is bringing out D. Lawrence Young’s Marlowe: Soul’d to the Devil, a novel about the life and untimely death of Christopher Marlowe, in July.

A second historical novel, Will Shakespeare: Where Was He? is forthcoming.

Queen Hereafter, Susan Fraser King’s biographical fiction about Queen Margaret of Scotland, the 11th-century Saxon princess who was later canonized, is out in Dec from Crown.

Anne Holman has three short historical novels appearing in large print from Ulverscroft: Vera’s Victory, set during WW2 (Aug); The Follies Hotel, a Regency (Oct); and Vera’s Valour (D-Day, sequel to Vera’s Victory, Jan 2011). DC Thomson published her The Treasure Seekers, a Victorian adventure in South America, in July.

Thomas Berry’s novel Lewis and Clark: Murder on the Natchez Trace is newly available from Booklocker.

For a list of forthcoming titles, visit www.historicalnovelsociety. org/forthcoming.htm.

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Rod Morrison at Picador Australia by Tom Colchie on behalf of Antonia Kerrigan.

Debut novelist Madeline Miller’s In the Armor of Achilles, a Trojan War novel narrated by Patroclus, best friend and lover of the Greek hero, Achilles, sold to Lee Boudreaux at Ecco, at auction, for Summer 2012 publication, by Julie Barer at Barer Literary; also to Alexandra Pringle at Bloomsbury UK, by Caspian Dennis for Barer Literary.

Robert Fabbri’s Tribune of Rome, based on the real-life story of Vespasian, who rose from obscurity to become emperor, first in a new series, sold to Nic Cheetham at Corvus in a two-book deal, for pub. in 2011, by Ian Drury at Sheil Land Associates.

Emery Lee’s Fortune’s Son, a sequel to The Highest Stakes set in Georgian England, sold to Deb Werksman at Sourcebooks,

by Kelly Mortimer of Mortimer Literary Agency.

Hawkeye Sheene’s La Vie Claire, in which a Manhattan socialite with a troubled past flees her powerful husband, only to find herself trapped in Occupied Paris and ensnared in the French Resistance, sold to Kate Seaver at Berkley, for pub. in Summer 2011, by Kevan Lyon at Marsal Lyon Literary Agency.

The Secret Children by Alison McQueen, set in 1920s Assam, based on the author’s own family history and follows the story of two girls born to an Indian mother and British father, sold to Genevieve Pegg at Orion in a two-book deal, for pub. in 2011,

by Grainne Fox at Fletcher & Company.

The Lost Saints of Tennessee, A.E. Willis’s debut about the intersections of love, loyalty and self-sacrifice set in 1940s rural Tennessee, sold to Elisabeth Schmitz at Grove/Atlantic by Amy Rennert at the Amy Rennert Agency.

Far to Go by Alison Pick, an epic historical set during the lead-up to Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia and the fate of one Jewish family, sold to Claire Wachtel at Harper Perennial,

by Barbara Howson at House of Anansi Press.

Claudia H. Long’s Josefina’s Sin, about a wealthy landowner’s wife whose sheltered life is turned upside down when she visits the Spanish Royal Court in 17th-c Mexico, sold to Amy Tannenbaum at Atria, by April Eberhardt at Kimberley Cameron & Associates.

The Roman Mysteries author Caroline Lawrence’s The Western Mysteries, set in the Nevada Territories of 1862 and starring 11-year-old PK Pinkerton, a master of disguise, sold to Jennifer Besser at Putnam Children’s in a 3-book deal, by Brenda Bowen at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates on behalf of Clare Pearson at Eddison Pearson.

Claire Holden Rothman’s The Heart Specialist, about a woman’s evolution from orphaned daughter to one of the world’s most celebrated pioneering women doctors, set at the turn of the 20th c, to Katie Herman at Soho Press, for publication in 2011, by Samantha Haywood at the Transatlantic Literary Agency. UK rights to Oneworld Publications.

SARAH JOHNSON, Book Review Editor of HNR, is a librarian, readers’ advisor, and author of reference books.

She reviews for Booklist and CHOICE and writes about fiction for EBSCO’s NoveList database. Her latest book is Historical Fiction II: A Guide to the Genre.

HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Columns | 3

aHISTORY & FILMe THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL

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nne got a tough break. Emily had passion on her side; Charlotte, perception. Anne was stuck with piety.

Of the three Bronte sisters, Anne is indisputably the most forgettable. Her stories simply don’t have the tightness or the timelessness of Emily’s or Charlotte’s (and that’s saying a lot when held against a book that’s one-third backstory). What she did present, however, was powerfully disapproving social commentary – like Lizzie Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, it seems that the more of the world she saw, the more she was dissatisfied with it. Her first novel, Agnes Grey, is a scathing portrait of English country families, their bratty children and hypocritical mores. Like Charlotte’s early novel, The Professor, it is short, loosely structured, and, like many first novels, is equal parts imagination and an imaginative record of the author’s actual experiences. Agnes Grey is clearly a list of grievances drawn up in the bitter aftermath of Anne’s own stint as a governess.

Her second book, however, was a smash hit when it was released, generating waves of controversy that reverberated for generations.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the story of Helen Graham, the wife of an abusive alcoholic. Helen makes the dramatic choice to flee her husband’s house, flying in the face of convention and English law, taking her young son with her to protect him from his father’s influence. Helen takes up residence in Wildfell Hall and supports herself with her painting, living in continual fear of discovery by her husband’s friends and agents.

But at Wildfell Hall she falls in love with Gilbert Markham, and slowly reveals her history to him, convinced they will never be able to share the life they long to build together.

With such a dramatic, graphic story, why hasn’t The Tenant of Wildfell Hall persisted in popular imagination as vibrantly as Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights? One likely reason is, ironically enough, the cresting of the wave of feminism that Tenant was 4 | Columns | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

at the very origins of. The drama of England’s unjust marriage laws – laws that gave women no legal independence and in all practical ways rendered them their husbands’ property – will generate outrage in any more enlightened time. But now it is the comfortable outrage of what was, not what is. Added to that is the social dimension that makes it practically inconceivable that any woman would be induced by faith or convention to return to such a monster of a husband. And that’s what Helen does – she returns to nurse her ailing husband, leaving the man she loves to fulfill a duty to the man who has destroyed her life.

Helen returns to her husband for more than legal reasons – she is honoring her marriage vow to care for him for better or worse. In her wrenching parting with Gilbert Markham, she discusses the possibility of meeting and fulfilling their purer, truer love in the afterlife, a heaven they can only attain if they resist temptation in this world. In fact, this scene quickly tangles itself up into a complex theological debate that leaves the modern reader wondering at the depth of the characters’ faith and their belief that their spiritual obligations transcend physical desire, even their pure love.

This has not translated well.

It is this vital aspect of the tale that falls through in the 1996 BBC version of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. The terror and misery of Helen’s abusive marriage are painted with shocking intensity, aided by a powerful performance from Rupert Graves as Helen’s brutal husband. The storytelling is deft as well; Bronte’s original tale was unwieldy by current standards – either the tale of Helen’s stay at Wildfell can be seen as a protracted and distracting frame story, or her journal (read by Markham and copied in the novel in full) is a too-detailed and lengthy back story, but the result is a disjointed pair of plots that intersect but don’t quite manage to interlock. In the 1996 television rendition, creative flashbacks to Helen’s marriage inserted during Wildfell scenes and cuts to Markham’s reaction to reading her journal during backstory scenes ensure a more balanced story, so the viewer doesn’t spend so much time apart from either set of characters that her emotions about that set’s plotline cools.

But despite gripping performances and elegant and immersive

Toby Stephens and Tara Fitzgerald as Gilbert Markham and Helen Graham

But the other side of this delicate balance is writing in a cultural language that your audience understands. This is another probable reason that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’s popularity hasn’t had the longevity of Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights, despite its sensational nature. It is a book about faith – faith in love, faith in promises, faith in the ability of people to grow and change, and faith in a set of mores established by the characters’ religion. But the film did not explore the aspects of Helen’s choice that might be more universally accessible to today’s multi-faith (and arguably more jaded) audiences, or even explore the faith aspect in a way that could explain and educate the audience about Helen’s choice. Without either of these things, the plot and audience feel jerked around. It’s a telling lesson for historical fiction writers as well: historical social and religious mores can make stellar plot devices, but let them be something bigger than that as well if you want complete emotional engagement.

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design that defies BBC’s tradition of well-acted but dismallyshot films, which all promised much for this rendition, Helen’s choice to return to her husband is a pale plot device in the film.

This flaw in the film is a telling symptom of a conflict faced by all writers of historical fiction: the conflict between immersion in history and historical viewpoints, and acknowledgement of what the majority of current readers are likely to identify with. While there are still pious Christians today who might sympathize with Helen’s moral dilemma, the truth is that these mores are not as embedded in current culture the way they were in Anne Bronte’s day. In essence, pious Christianity is a language that isn’t commonly spoken by the consumers of culture today, outside of the boutique industry of Christian books and films. And so what was once a thematic statement has become a quaint plot device. Helen’s choice to return to her abusive husband, motivated by her earnest piety, seems forced.

Religiosity is an obvious example of where current writers and filmmakers walk the line between theme and plot device in the historical genre. But is that so great a flaw? It depends on the goal of the work and the prominence of the device in the story. For pure entertainment, using the faith of the characters as a vehicle, with no exploration of its power as a motive, is just as valid as using the abusive husband to elicit outrage or heaving corsets to generate romance. But add too many empty emotional triggers and audiences will grow tired of the manipulation.

HANNAH STERNBERG, HNR’s Film Editor, is a writer and filmmaker in Washington, DC. To read about her upcoming debut novel, visit http://hannahsternberg.blogspot.com.

HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Columns | 5

NEW VOICES Dana Hand, Gabrielle Kimm, Grant Sutherland, and Deborah Swift discuss their debut historical fiction novels with Myfanwy Cook.

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ana Hand is the pen name of Will Howarth and Anne Matthews, who both teach literature and writing at Princeton University and have written eighteen nonfiction books under their own names. Grant Sutherland, who was born in Sydney and grew up in Western Australia, has published four novels previously. For Sutherland, this is his debut as a historical novelist; but for Howarth, Matthews, Gabrielle Kimm and Deborah Swift, this is their debut as novelists, period. All share a love of investigating the past and interpreting it with their own creative viewpoint.

The Lady’s Slipper by Deborah Swift is set in the 17th century, which she knew immediately was “the right period for the novel. In many ways it was one of the most turbulent times in England’s past. A time when a King could be executed for treason by his own countrymen, a time when brother fought brother in the English Civil War, and a time of dark Puritan repression. I liked the idea of this large canvas against which to set my small wildflower, clinging to existence.

“The first character came easily — Alice Ibbetson, a flower painter, who would be passionate about the lady’s slipper and want to preserve it for posterity. People with obsessions or strong convictions fascinate me, as they tend to observe the world through a single lens. This is true of all the characters in The Lady’s Slipper. The characters were built gradually through my research.”

The inspiration for Swift’s novel came from a Sunday walk with a friend when they “came across a white tent. It was blocking our way, so we peered inside. An official-looking man was sitting there who told us he was from an organization called Natural England. He told us he was guarding the rare orchid which was in flower a few yards further on. We followed him, and there was the strangest wild flower I had ever seen.

“Amazingly showy for a wild flower, it has a yellow shoe-like central petal and more petals gracefully twining out to the side like red ribbons — hence its name the lady’s slipper. Common in other parts of the world, it had been reduced to a single plant.

It moved me that something so beautiful could be so close to 6 | Columns | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

being lost to us. The man from Natural England told us that greedy orchid enthusiasts were so desperate to get hold of it, that in 2003 half of it had been dug up by a collector. Since then it has been guarded whilst it is in flower. I was taken by the flower’s strangeness, its fragility, and the fact that it was on the edge of extinction.”

Grant Sutherland set his spy novel, The Cobras of Calcutta: the Decipherer’s Chronicles, in the period when Britain lost one empire, won another, and emerged triumphant after the Napoleonic Wars. He writes about men like his main character, Alistair Douglas, who worked in the shadows, and about “the Decipherers — the code breakers, the interceptors of letters and messages” whose lives left “no memorials” but were spent on “hidden struggles.” Unlike Swift’s The Lady’s Slipper, Sutherland’s novel is an adventure story, but the authors both share a fascination with interpreting the past.

The starting point for Will Howarth and Anne Matthews’ collaborative novel Deep Creek came in 1981. While working on a National Geographic assignment, they learned about the mass murder of over thirty immigrant Chinese miners at Deep Creek, Oregon. It took Howarth years to compile the research into the tragedy and, during his quest, he discovered that “the record was fragmented, the cover-ups entrenched. Eventually, we decided that some true stories are best told as fiction. . . Deep Creek is historical fiction; it’s also a romance, a thriller, a police procedural, a social novel and yes, a Western. But not a conventional one: the book is set in Idaho and Oregon in the years around 1890, at the very end of the Frontier days.”

The authors work together by “beginning with characters, copiously researched back stories, and plot outlines.” Howarth writes a first draft, which Matthews expands, refines, cuts and improves. Back to Howarth for editing and polishing. Back to Matthews for more of the same. “We spent four years on a dozen drafts, using a spare, suggestive style to tell a rich, dense story.” The result is a novel that involves “three unlikely figures who head up the wild Snake River. Slowly they become a team and then a family: a middle-aged judge torn between an easy life and his deepest beliefs; a beautiful French-Indian woman with secrets of her own; and a cocky Yale graduate, China born. Their enemy [is] a charming, brutal psychopath who hunts them all until the very last page.”

Gabrielle Kimm says the inspiration for her novel, His Last Duchess, was “Robert Browning’s monologue, My Last Duchess.

For years I had been fascinated by this masterly depiction of a sinister Renaissance aristocrat, smugly admitting that he had had his wife permanently silenced — basically because she annoyed him! I re-visited the poem in 2003, when I had to teach it to a group of sixteen year olds…and it suddenly struck me that all the elements of a potential novel were here, in the poem’s possible back story: a psychologically problematical anti-hero, a heroine in jeopardy and a work of art possibly commissioned under suspicious circumstances, the story playing out against a gorgeous historical backdrop.

“The idea for the story blasted out of nowhere, on an otherwise inauspicious afternoon, and I found myself frantically scribbling

Dana Hand (Will Howarth & Anne Matthews): http://www.dana-hand. com Gabrielle Kimm: http://www.gabriellekimm.co.uk Grant Sutherland: http://www.panmacmillan.com Deborah Swift: http://www.deborahswift.co.uk

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MYFANWY COOK is currently HNR Features Editor. She is currently working on a project with Bernard Knight and other writers with specialist expertise on How to Write Historical Fiction – A Practical Guide and Tool Kit, which will be published later this year to provide those who aspire to write historical fiction with an activity-based guide book.

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© Charlie Hopkinson

Clockwise from top to bottom: Deborah Swift, Gabrielle Kimm, and William Howarth & Anne Matthews

down the bare bones of a plot, dreading a ‘person from Porlock’ moment that might drive it all out of my head. Within a few hours, though, I had the outline of the story complete, and I’d written the first draft of the prologue and the opening scene. The process had begun!

“Browning’s poem is based in fact. His duke is Alfonso d’Este, the real fifth duke of Ferrara, who, in 1559, married the young Lucrezia de’ Medici. By 1562, Lucrezia was dead. Contemporary accounts differ as to the reason, though Browning’s suggestion of callous murder is certainly one of the theories commonly propounded.

“I decided I would need to explore the character of the duchess.

The more I looked at the poem, the less reliable as a narrator seemed the duke: I began to doubt his emotional stability and became increasingly unsure of the accuracy of his description of his late wife as promiscuous, unthinking and wilful. In fact, I trusted Signor d’Este less and less. The key question soon became clear: what was it in his past that could have led to this dangerous psychological instability? This conundrum, I decided, was what would lie at the heart of the novel. It took several drafts of the book, in the end (as well as an evening with a psychiatrist friend, psychoanalysing my duke) fully to uncover what Alfonso’s problems might have been — and they turned out to be much more complex than I had at first imagined them to be. The duchess held a fair number of secrets too!

“The facts behind the poem had landed me in a specific place and time: in Ferrara, Northern Italy, in 1559. As neither the location nor the era were familiar, I quickly set about discovering everything I could about sixteenth-century Italian clothes, food, sports, painting techniques, medicines, as well as the politics and social mores of the day. I love the research almost as much as the writing. It’s often a pleasingly symbiotic process - new plot ideas throw up new areas of ignorance, and then the investigation that follows can just as frequently inspire an unexpected twist to the plot.”

Howarth, Kimm, Matthews, Sutherland, and Swift write about different periods, settings and countries. It is their shared passion for investigating the past, however, that enables them to create new interpretations to entertain their readers.

For more information about these authors, please see their websites:

HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Columns | 7

HOW NOT TO...

SWASH YOUR BUCKLER

Guest columnist Duncan Noble provides ten tips for introducing the point of your hero’s rapier to the dastardly villain’s person. Nice to meet you.

1. The villain (ie, your hero’s opponent, regardless of ideological stance) is always the finest swordsman in France, or somewhere equally romantic. Villain prerequisites: he has a title, a string of kills to his (dis)credit, and a reputation for fighting dirty.

2. No matter what period you’re in, all swords are rapiers (except the Middle Ages, which has its own set of rules; see entries for “longsword” and “Großes Messer”). Small swords and sabres?

Who needs ‘em? Your reader knows rapiers are long and lethal.

That’s sufficient.

4. When the heroine witnesses the encounter, she stands aside, shocked and powerless, despite her previously feisty nature. It must never occur to her to slug the villain from behind with whatever blunt instrument is historically appropriate. Did they have tyre levers in the 18th century? Pity.

5. Midnight at the crossroads is no problem, for the hero has perfect (even preternatural, if you like) night vision. Presumably the villain’s isn’t bad either. This needn’t stop the hero from falling headlong into a ditch or tripping over the furniture, just as long as he recovers in time.

6. There must be copious stamping of feet and clashing of blades. Heavy breathing is acceptable, although not from the heroine. She’s restricted to squeaks, squeals, and the odd cry of “Oh, don’t!”

7. Speaking of breathing, no matter how out of breath the fighters become, they still indulge in substantial badinage, “I see. You’re trying to get nearer the drawbridge, your horse, the window...” or there’s also the perennial favorite, “You killed my father. Prepare to die!” Oddly enough, historical manuals on real sword fighting seem to emphasize that one should never speak. Apparently it has to do with concentration or some such nonsense. The deadly art of sword fighting was a silent, slow business? Who cares? Bring on the pithiness!

8. Corps à corps. Essential. This is where the fighters press up against each other and the fight stops while each hisses insults and threats at his opponent. “You have come once too often to 8 | Columns | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

Drat! Foiled again.

Nottingham, Robin Hood!” Sorry. That’s the Middle Ages.

Where they didn’t have rapiers.

9. Since he has a reputation to uphold, the villain makes use of the aforementioned dirty tricks. These aren’t in the Gentleman’s Rules, but the hero is too fast/smart/adept for him. He’s probably also been secretly training (with or without the historical equivalent of a Jedi master) and has learned an Unbeatable Secret Thrust that requires just the right opportunity. What’s that knocking I hear? Opportunity, is that you?

10. The hero applies Unbeatable Secret Thrust and the villain, with poetically pained expression, drops in his tracks, stone dead. Modern research shows that most sword fights ended in someone bleeding to death internally and interminably; Shakespeare, who knew a thing or two about sword fighting, took that opportunity to fill the next twenty minutes with a poignant farewell speech (see entry for “Romeo and Juliet”). But nowadays we want action, not philosophical regrets.

The heroine throws herself into the hero’s arms, ignoring all the blood from his wounds, because she’s feisty. And he’s brave. So it’s all right then.

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3. No matter how long the blade, a rapier can be instantly whipped out of its scabbard. This would be the scabbard that no one ever accidentally trips over. Unless you’re writing a spoof, in which case, is this a hilarious pratfall I see before me?

DUNCAN NOBLE is a writer and swordsman. He has had six historical novels published in which there are sword fights. His booklet, “The Rapier,” was published in 2010 by Ken Trotman, and he is currently working on a booklet on Scottish Highland swords and swordsmanship.

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Ken Follett’s epic 20th-century trilogy

28, Ken Follett releases Fall of Giants, the O nfirstSeptember volume of an epic trilogy covering the 20 century. th

With the release of Fall of Giants, Ken Follett embarks on his most ambitious work yet, a trilogy beginning with World War I and ending with the cracking of the Berlin Wall. Coming on the heels of another epic, The Pillars of the Earth, a two-part tome on the building of the cathedral at Kingsbridge, this work promises to be even larger. With Fall of Giants alone weighing in at a thousand pages, the Century trilogy, comprising three books to be written over five years, promises to be his most voluminous work yet.

If the task is gigantic, so is the author’s following. Follett’s readership is estimated at 90 to 100 million.1 Additional millions will be exposed to his work through television when The Pillars of the Earth, timed to coincide with the release of his new book, airs as a blockbuster miniseries.

Three years before the release of Fall of Giants, the work had already amassed over $50 million in foreign deals alone. 2 All this money for a book well before its release might seem excessive but, in this case, it is hardly surprising. Pillars of the Earth hit the best seller lists in many countries and, 20 years later, it still sells well. In a vote conducted by the Times (London) seeking the greatest 60 novels, Pillars was #23. 3 According to Follett’s website, in Germany it was voted as the “third most popular book” after The Lord of the Rings and the Bible! Perhaps best of all, Pillars made Oprah’s list of the top ten most influential books of the decade. 4 The new work is gargantuan in scope. Fall of Giants, the first book, follows five interrelated families — American, Russian, German, English and Welsh — through the First World War and Russian Revolution. The list of the main characters alone is six pages long. The second book, slated for release in 2012, will follow the children of the characters in Fall of Giants through the Depression and World War II. The third book, due out in 2014,

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A TASK WORTHY OF A GIANT

will take the next generation through the Cold War.”5 If this sounds somewhat familiar, it is. Herman Wouk covered much of the period of Follett’s projected second book with two of his own, Winds of War and War and Remembrance. Thirteen years in the making, they established Wouk, already a Pulitzer Prize winner for The Caine Mutiny, as a master of cerebral historical fiction, producing, in the words of Henry Kissinger, “the war itself.” Wouk himself called it the “main tale I have to tell.”

Although superficially similar, Follett’s work is much greater in scope, containing significantly more major characters and a much longer timeline. Inevitably, this makes his work less personal than Wouk’s, while at the same time allowing a faster pace and a greater range of subjects.

For example, in Fall of Giants, the women’s suffrage movement is a major theme.

Follett regards it as the biggest change of all during the 20th century. 6 The rise of the Bolsheviks against the brutally repressive Tsarist regime in Russia is also told in all its violent tragedy. Seeing this through his characters with such clarity and sympathy, the reader may find himself cheering for the Bolsheviks.

It is story lines such as these that ultimately make this book worth reading.

From the perspective of a Welsh family, one feels the repression of the British class system and the folly of the First World War. Reading about hundreds of thousands of casualties at the Battle of the Somme is one thing.

Experiencing it through the eyes of Welshman Billy Williams is quite another. One may not easily forget the plight of Billy’s unwed pregnant sister trying to scratch out a living in London.

Indeed, realizing just how bad the early 20th century was for the majority of the people living then may come as a shock — but it provides a greater measure of understanding as well. As Follett puts it, “Most people know history is more complex than good guys and bad guys. But few of us know why the First World War happened or why the Bolsheviks won the Russian Revolution. I

by Ken Kreckel

Most people... know history is more complex than good guys and bad guys. I want readers to first of all enjoy the story, but second to feel, when they put the book down, that they now understand things that used to seem incomprehensible.”

HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Features | 9

want readers to first of all to enjoy the story, but second to feel, when they put the book down, that they now understand things that used to seem incomprehensible.” 7 Quite an ambition for an author who was best known for his thrillers. Welsh by birth, Follett began his career as an admittedly “not very good”8 journalist in Wales and, eventually, in London.

He claims to have launched his career in fiction as a way to earn £200 to get his car fixed.9 This goal accomplished, he went on to pen a series of indifferent books under a pseudonym. His eleventh novel, Storm Island, or Eye of the Needle, as it is better known, hit the bestseller lists. What followed was a series of highly successful thrillers, enabling him to join the ranks of such seventies blockbuster novelists as Frederick Forsyth, Robert Ludlum and Michael Crichton. 10 An established master of his craft, he then took an abrupt turn. He went nearly a thousand years back in time to cover the construction of a cathedral.

Michener-like in scope and sheer volume, Pillars comprises some 400,000 words. Its sequel World Without End weighs in at 2.6 lbs and 1024 pages,11 a big departure from his previous taut and sparely-written thrillers. One wonders, how does this come from a man who had been a first-rate spy novelist?

His agent has the answer, or at least part of it. The Fall of Giants is “a perfect canvas for Ken to exercise his considerable talents; an historical saga that combines the epic storytelling of The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End with Ken’s trademarked ability to deliver all the suspense and excitement of his classic spy novels.” 12 Fair enough, but the question remains, why did this writer of thrillers suddenly aspire to join the likes of Wouk and Michener and even seek to surpass them?

It began with a notion he had cherished since his first commercial success, when he was “toying with the idea of an adventure tale surrounding one of his personal obsessions— cathedrals. I gave it up because, instinctively, I felt like I couldn’t do it. It was too ambitious.” 13 A self-admitted amateur enthusiast of medieval history and, in particular, the building of the great cathedrals, he says the idea refused to die. “It just kept building up, and when I told writer friends about it they said, ‘What a great idea.’”

Even so, the task was daunting; the initial challenge was to convince others of the practicality of his dream. “Publishers weren’t so keen. They said, ‘Ken, you’ve had a lot of success with Nazis and secret agents and spies. And now this book…it’s set in the Middle Ages, right Ken? And it’s about building a church.

Are you sure?’” 14 He was sure. So were his loyal readers. Pillars of the Earth became by far his most popular book. But initially, its phenomenal success was by no means assured. There was the Herculean task of writing it, all three years and three months of it. On the transition from writing thrillers to something of this magnitude, Follett says, “A thriller is like a snapshot of a group of characters taken at a moment in their lives when they are in great danger. A novel like World Without End tells the entire life story of each major character, from childhood to old age.

The main difference is that there is so much more that has to be invented!”15 World Without End has no less than 200 named 10 | Features | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

characters — so many that Follett had to devise a spreadsheet to keep track of them. 16 The Century trilogy, which will follow five families over the span of several generations, promises even more complexity.

Follett is up to the challenge, perhaps in part because he is unusually attuned to his readers’ demands. He says one fan even convinced him to entirely abandon a project, one concerning the KGB called Country Risk: “My publishers liked it, my agent liked it. Then I talked to a reader about Eye of the Needle. She said she literally had to sit on the edge of her chair because she was so tense. I thought, I don’t think she’ll say that about Country Risk.

I threw it away, and never went back. It was rather devastating.

A year’s work.” 17 Such is his meticulous approach to his craft. A consummate planner, he has been known to take up to a year to outline a novel before writing a single word. Even then, he begins his writing day by rewriting what he wrote the day before. 18 If you think this is a huge risk for Follett, you’re right, but it is more than matched by his ambition, which seemingly knows no bounds. On the release of his last work, Follett said: “I want millions to read World Without End. I wanted it to be number one in America, which thank goodness it was. That’s the kind of ambition I had.” 19 With fulfilled ambitions came great expectations. After the success of Pillars, the author admitted to being anxious about its sequel. “I was nervous about writing [World Without End] because of readers’ high expectations. By the time it was published, it had been read and enjoyed by enough people to calm my fears.” 20 Then came the inevitable question: what to do for an encore.

Before it was even planned, Follett was sure he’d return to the Second World War: “It is still the war we look back on as the great battle of good and evil. There are thousands more stories of real-life heroism to inspire writers such as I.” 21 Follett wants his readers to “understand ourselves and where we all come from.” So he is taking us on a journey back to the Second World War, but in its broadest sense, from its roots in the First World War to its misbegotten progeny, the Cold War. Not everyone is enchanted by Follett’s work. He has his detractors, here and there citing a lack of writing skills, comparing his works to a soap opera, and so on. Like many successful authors, people are apt to read a good deal more into his books than is really there. Some have linked Pillars, perhaps because architecture is the subject matter, to Ayn Rand. 22 The Los Angeles Times suggested that two of the main characters in Pillars were based on George Bush and Karl Rove. 23 Follett, who has been a keen member of the Labour party24 5 and a former Tony Blair intimate, scoffs at all this: “These characters are not based on any of those people. But obviously when I am thinking about powerful men and their sidekicks, I do think about Blair and Peter Mandelson or Bush and Rove.”

25 Follett’s wife has been an active player in British government for many years, which gives the author a “special insight”. 26 This “insight” is especially prominent in Fall of Giants. Politics, both right and left, form a significant part of the story.

millions.

Whatever the success of this trilogy, Follett himself is already considered a giant, at least by one measure. A statue of the author, standing and stroking his beard in a proper authorish sort of way, has been recently unveiled in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, near the Santa Maria cathedral that was the inspiration for World Without End. 30 What other historical novelist can claim that distinction?

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Yet even for this writer, a man who has been dubbed by the Los Angeles Times a “utility author”27 — that is, one who reliably pays the electric and heating bills for his publisher — there are other risks. Herman Wouk’s attempt to go beyond the Second World War, The Hope, was far from a complete success. There is the also time and age to consider. William Manchester, for instance, was unable to complete the third volume of his biography of Winston Churchill. While far younger at age 61, Follett is getting up there.

He is not one to be alarmed.“May we all live so long,” he quips.28 Although he was speaking of the politics of fear, this comment might just as well apply to his writing. “When we’re scared,” he says gravely, “we’re in great danger of throwing something away that is very precious.”29 Will the work itself become a giant? It comes at a time when epic historicals like Exodus or Centennial are on the endangered species list. It’s hard to understand why. Eminently readable, works such as these matter. They hold the promise of both entertaining and informing a generation that has a woeful grip on history, and bringing an understanding of the complexities of human relationships on a grand scale. They seek to answer the questions of not only how we got here, but why. Fall of Giants succeeds on all these levels; but to be great, it must be read. With Follett’s readership, it seems safe to assume it will be, and by the

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Ken Follett

References: 1. Ken Follett website. Retrieved from http:// www.ken-follett.com.

2. Owchar, Nick. “Some random links: Ken Follett and a promising writer.” Los Angeles Times. Nov 11, 2007.

3.Penguin Group promotional information.

4. Ibid.

5. Ken Follett website.

6. Penguin Group promotional information.

7. Ibid.

8. Winfrey, Oprah. “Interview with Ken Follett.” Oprah’s Book Club. Retrieved from http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Oprahs-Interview-with-KenFollett, Mar 14, 2008.

9. Ken Follett website.

10. Kidd, James. “Interview with Ken Follett.” South China News. Retrieved from http://medievalnews.blogspot.com, Sept 16, 2007.

11. Gribble, Jessica.“World Without End (book review).” Retrieved from http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/historicalfictionreviews/fr/ worldWithoutEnd.htm, Oct 2008.

12. Andriani, Lynn. “Frankfurt Book Fair: Writers House announces simultaneous six-country release of Follett’s next novel.” Publisher’s Weekly, Oct 14, 2009.

13. Winfrey, Oprah.

14. Ibid.

15. Hewitt, Kelly. “Interview with Ken Follett.” Loaded Questions with Kelly Hewitt. Retrieved from http://www.loaded-questions.com/2007/11/loadedquestions-world-without-end.html, Nov 22, 2007.

16. Kidd, James.

17. Winfrey, Oprah.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. Hewitt, Kelly.

21. Ibid.

22. Enright, Marsha Familaro, “Did Ayn Rand influence Ken Follett?” The Atlasphere. Retrieved from http://www.atlasphere.com, Jan 10, 2010.

23. Owchar, Nick.

24. Kidd, James.

25. Ken Follett website.

26. Penguin Group promotional information.

27. Owchar, Nick.

28. Penguin Group promotional information.

29. Ken Follett website.

30. Lea, Richard. “Setting an author’s reputation in stone.” Manchester Guardian. Jan 11, 2008.

KEN KRECKEL has published a novel set during World War II and is working on a follow-up. He has contributed articles to magazines and newspapers, as well as a travel anthology. After a career in oil and gas exploration that took him to numerous places in Europe and North America, he left thrillers for the much larger canvas of the historical epic. Kreckel lives in Wyoming, where he teaches at Casper College and consults for environmental organizations.

HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Features | 11

an interview with Andrew Taylor

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Different Worlds, Different Times

C artier Diamond Dagger award-winner Andrew Taylor

I was a child, I returned again and again to novels by Rosemary answers questions from Christian Stuart about his elegant Sutcliff and Ronald Welch. These led me to authors like Mary historical crime novels.

Renault and Alfred Duggan. As for more recent writers, I look for those whose characters seem to inhabit, quite naturally, the CS: Why do you think that The American Boy has been listed by world they write about — Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey novels, The Times as one of the top ten crime novels of the decade? for example, or Manda Scott’s recreation of Iron Age Britain AT: I think that was an interesting list because so many of colliding with the Romans. the novels were not what most readers automatically label as “crime.” The books were trying to do other things as well. I wrote CS: Which is your favourite period of history to write about? Why? The American Boy as a historical novel, AT: I’ve written a number of books first and foremost. But it had crimes in set in the 1950s, a period that many it (always useful for generating plots, readers lived through, so it hardly seems as Dickens knew so well). And it also part of history to them. But if you treat allowed me to explore imaginatively Poe’s it as a historical period and go back to lost English childhood. contemporary sources, a very different picture emerges, untainted by nostalgia CS: How much of your work is written or unreliable memories. From the outset, based on the experiences of your own life?

I designed my Lydmouth series (eight AT: I suspect almost all novels have novels so far) as a way of examining how elements of autobiography in them, albeit that strangely important decade affected (in most cases) warped, refracted and a small town and its hinterland — and diluted beyond recognition. the lives and attitudes of its inhabitants.

The psychological baggage that people CS: Do you model characters around carried — the morals, the fears, the social individuals you’ve come into contact with, or assumptions, etc — was very different yourself? from our own.

AT: Frances Trollope, mother of Anthony But one of the pleasures of writing and herself a novelist, was asked the same historical fiction is that you can explore so question, to which she replied: “Of course many different worlds and times: Bleeding I draw from life — but I always pulp my Heart Square offered me a way of finding acquaintance before serving them up. You out about Britain in the 1930s, and in would never recognize a pig in a sausage.” That’s exactly right. particular about the rise of the British Union of Fascists. The American Boy gave me the perfect excuse to spend two years CS: Your ability to keep your novels close to the reality-fiction border in Regency England. My new book, The Anatomy of Ghosts, lines has been compared to that of Hitchcock. Who are your literary is different again — the time is 1786, the main setting is influences?

Cambridge.

AT: That’s a big question. In terms of crime, Josephine Tey and There’s only one thing in common about these periods so Patricia Highsmith taught me that crime needn’t be formulaic, far. They are relatively recent, so they allowed me to attempt a that the genre could be as elastic as you wanted as long as you had pastiche of the way that people spoke at the time, because their a crime and story. But I’ve always read historical fiction. When language is still more or less recognizable today. So, too, is their

by Christian Stuart

I’ve made them all up...

the voices, the characters, the stories. But they do take on a vivid halflife of their own as the book progresses.”

12 | Features | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

Andrew Taylor

CS: You say that you often prance up and down your workroom and talk to yourself in silly voices when you write. Do you have to draw a line in your own head between fantasy and reality? If so, where?

AT: I’ve made them all up — the voices, the characters, the stories. But they do take on a vivid half-life of their own as the book progresses. They are not real — but they are absorbing. I suspect it’s the same for artists working in any medium because they have to concentrate so hard on whatever it is they are creating. I’m my first reader, too — I’m telling myself a story, and I want to find out what happens next.

With a first draft, I tend to write at a gallop as the end approaches. That’s the time of maximum concentration, when everything else tends to go by the board. Lost in a good book, as they say.

CS: Have you ever created a character of whom you have been

afraid?

AT: No. I’ve created some pretty loathsome individuals. But as their characters develop on the page I understand them more.

And the more you understand them, the harder it is to condemn or to be scared of them.

Andrew Taylor’s latest novel, The Anatomy of Ghosts, will be published in the UK by Michael Joseph/Penguin in September 2010 and by Hyperion in January 2011 in the US. For further information, please see http://www.lydmouth.co.uk.

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belief system. One day I’d like to write a historical novel set further back in the past because it would be, at least in part, a different challenge.

CHRISTIAN STUART is a 17-year-old student at Marlborough College, Wiltshire, where he is studying history as one of his A level subjects. He loves reading both fiction and nonfiction books, and he presented Andrew Taylor with what Taylor described as “an interesting set of questions to answer.”

HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Features | 13

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the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain

anniversary of the Battle of Britain, perhaps we O nhavethisnot70forgotten, but do we really know the whole story? th

It’s easy to forget that seventy years ago the world held its breath while a small island, the last bastion of freedom in Europe, desperately held out against an onslaught from the world’s greatest military power. The Germans, fresh from their stunning defeat of the French, who just a few months previously were secure behind the massive fortifications of the Maginot Line backed by the world’s largest and most well regarded army, were coming for them. Few gave the British much chance, among them none other than the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, Joseph Kennedy. No wonder. Their army was essentially disarmed after their rescue at Dunkirk, and their navy, their most formidable counter, would be effective only if the Nazi command of the air could be ended. Thus the onus fell to a handful of squadrons of the Royal Air Force to defend the country. In Churchillian rhetoric, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

On this 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, we find these “few” have not been forgotten. Far from it. Celebrations are planned throughout the United Kingdom. Various museums and galleries, led by the Imperial War Museum, will be featuring special exhibits and events. The National Gallery will be paying tribute to Dame Myra Hess “who initiated, directed and performed in a series of morale-boosting concerts at the National Gallery during the Second World War.”1 The 70th anniversary of the arrival of legendary Enigma code breakers Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman will be commemorated at Bletchley Park. The Royal Air Tattoo in July boasts no less than the Luftwaffe as special guests for its tribute.

Nor has the rest of the English speaking world forgotten.

In motion pictures alone, there continue to be many additions to the lore of World War II. We have Pacific, the mini-series companion piece to the highly regarded Band of Brothers.

National Geographic weighs in with Apocalypse: The Second World War. There is the planned release of Red Tails by George Lucas, telling the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first AfricanAmerican pilots to fly in a combat squadron during World War II. These follow the 2009 movies Valkyrie, about the attempted assassination of Hitler, Defiance, a true story of Jewish resistance, as well as the unfortunate and outrageous Inglourious Basterds.

Books about or set during the war continue to be popular.

The following is a mere sampling: Last year, Steven Pressfield issued Killing Rommel, a tale based on the real-life operation by the British to take out their most painful thorn in North Africa.

More recently, Jeff Shaara released No Less Than Victory, the last installment of his trilogy highlighting the American war in Europe. Chris Bohjalian’s Skeletons at the Feast unforgettably reveals the heartbreak of refugees fleeing the victorious Soviet army, ground first plowed by the factual Woman in Berlin. In Jane Smiley’s new release, Private Life, a woman confronts the truth about her husband’s role in science as the war approaches.

Several recent offerings have been set in wartime America itself. The Art Student’s War by Brad Leithauser gives us a vivid depiction of Detroit in its heyday of production for the war. Not the only home front tale, Margit Liesche continued her mystery series with a heroine of the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots in Hollywood Buzz. In a more serious tone, Tori Warner Shepard sets her story in Santa Fe as she examines the plight of POW’s and the women they left behind. Continuing the theme, we have Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford, a novel of Seattle during the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II. The period has become something of a staple for the inspirational genre as well. A Distant Melody by Sarah Sundin is but one example.

As can be seen, many of these works deal with either the most odious aspects of Nazi and Japanese domination or the American contribution to victory, which didn’t even begin until the Battle of Britain had been long since won. Once the United States came into the fray, the issue was no longer in as much doubt. Those darkest days of the war, when the British stood totally alone and the smart money was all on the Germans, are perhaps not given their due.

Pictures of the Blitz and the gallant few who fought in the air have become iconic images of victory quite literally snatched from the jaws of defeat. That the British survived to later triumph is largely taken for granted now. Admittedly it is difficult, when the issue had long since been decided, to put ourselves in their position. It’s like reviewing a football game when one already knows who won. What is not so easily appreciated is just how close the British came to losing. How the island almost perished, or worse, how they nearly came to negotiate with the Nazis to get out of the war with their island and Empire intact, is largely forgotten, if it’s known at all.

Michael Dobbs attempts to rectify this. A political columnist,

by Ken Kreckel

Never... in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

14 | Features | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

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So much owed to so few

America, among others. The chief way to tell them apart, the ‘other’ Dobbs insists, is that he mainly writes nonfiction.2 Our Michael Dobbs is a political columnist with a degree in nuclear defense studies. He’s also a former Chief of Staff and later Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party. Dobbs traces his writing career to a bored holiday taken in 1987 to recover from a beating delivered by Maggie Thatcher. His first historical novel owes its birth to a chance discovery that on a critical day in history, Churchill was at home at Chartwell conversing with a known Soviet spy, Guy Burgess. The meaning of that conversation hooked him, and Winston’s War was the result. 1 First published in the UK, Winston’s War was nominated for the prestigous International IMPAC Literary Award in 2004, as well as being shortlisted for Channel 4’s Political Book of the Year. Typical of the glacial pace of the publishing world, these books have been released only gradually in the United States, Never Surrender first arriving in 2009.

Michael Dobbs’ writing style and substance takes its cue from a quote by Winston Churchill: “One of the most misleading factors in history is the practice of historians to build a story exclusively out of the records which have come down to them. The records are in many cases a very small part of what took place, and to fill the picture one has to visualize the daily life — the constant discussions between ministers, the friendly dinners, the many days when nothing happened worthy of record, but during which events were nonetheless proceeding.”3 Dobbs does this admirably, making a very dark time in history come alive in all its ambiguity, treachery, double-dealing and pettiness. These are human beings he writes about, not the mythical giants of history the world has come to know. Rather than diminish them, however, Dobbs holds them up for even more admiration, as the reader comes to appreciate just how difficult the time was, and just how much of a giant Churchill and the others had to be to emerge victorious.

Let us remember them that way, on this 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, and their role in our deliverance from a never-ending nightmare.

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References: 1. Michael Dobbs website. Retrieved from http://www.michaeldobbs. com 2. Dobbs, Michael. “The Fact Checker: The Real Michael Dobbs.”

The Washington Post. Online edition. Retrieved from http://voices. washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/06/the_real_michael_ dobbs.html.

3. Michael Dobbs website.

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BBC presenter, and prolific author, he has penned a remarkable series of five historical novels set in World War II. Perhaps the greatest of these, Never Surrender, was a finalist for the IBPA’s Benjamin Franklin Award for best historical fiction of 2008. That novel and another, Winston’s War, deal specifically with the early years of the war. No stirring dogfights here, the author instead focuses on the political intrigues that swirled in those days, a subject that comes naturally to this professional political columnist. Before the speeches about fighting on the beaches and the landing grounds, there was the first month of Churchill’s premiership, a time of great uncertainty, a time when it was by no means clear that Britain had the will, let alone the means, to stand up when all around them, the old, great nations of Europe, were falling.

Dobbs presents this time with crystal clarity. We have a doubting Churchill, not at all convinced of his ability to shoulder the immense burden of a devastating military defeat that began on the very day he gained power. There is his War Cabinet, dedicated more to the notion of a negotiated peace than a continuation of a war already lost. The only hope, an early American intervention, is dashed on the defeatism of a duplicitous Joseph Kennedy. And there is the British Army, beaten almost before it entered the fight, facing a choice of surrender or fighting to the last bullet.

In the previous volume, Winston’s War, we find Winston in the political wilderness just prior to the outbreak of the war, banished under Chamberlain’s seemingly brilliant and wildly popular policy of appeasement with Hitler. The Prime Minister attempts to cement his advantage by hatching political intrigues designed to keep Churchill out. Meanwhile, Adolph Hitler, correctly interpreting appeasement as weakness, has his own ideas, and Chamberlain’s politically expedient guarantee to Poland collapses in the horror predicted by Winston all along.

Dobbs produces compelling historical novels, breathing life into what seems a familiar history. Instead of the slightly rumpled, wing-collared and hopelessly outdated Neville Chamberlain of the newsreels, we have a fiercely competitive Prime Minister, one who doesn’t hesitate to use all the power at his disposal to defeat his rival, Churchill. Dobbs presents his political characters as real human beings, with all the frailties and vices that infect our modern politicians. The reader will not soon forget the womanizing Joseph Kennedy showing off portraits of his actress conquests to an appalled Brendan Bracken, who himself is trying to seduce the diplomat’s niece. But it is in the politics itself than Dobbs shines. The notion that many of the events leading up to the war were born more out of political expediency than any strategic plan speaks volumes on how the tragedy of World War II came about. Dobbs gives us a sober reminder that pettiness and self interest have a far larger role in the formation of world events than we would like to think.

Then, at least, there was a Winston Churchill to make it right.

But just who is Michael Dobbs? To start with, there are quite literally two of them. No kidding. What’s more, they both are authors, and write about similar subjects. The ‘other’ Michael Dobbs, for instance, is a former diplomatic correspondent for the Washington Post who penned Saboteurs: The Nazi Raid on

KEN KRECKEL has published a novel set during World War II and is working on a follow-up. He has contributed articles to magazines and newspapers, as well as a travel anthology. After a career in oil and gas exploration that took him to numerous places in Europe and North America, he now lives in Wyoming, where he teaches at Casper College and consults for environmental organizations.

HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Features | 15

a new award for historical fiction

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The Walter Scott Prize n appropriately old-fashioned act of patronage of the arts”: the new £25,000 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

Hilary Mantel who sadly was not well.

The current owners of Abbotsford and generous patrons of the prize, the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, have – in Mantel’s Rows of leather-bound books in subtle reds and browns still own words – undertaken “an appropriately old-fashioned act line the bookshelves in the library at Abbotsford; the ceiling of patronage of the arts” and the accolade now ranks as one is heavy with of the top intricately carved five literary oak, and through awards in the windows the the country. lawns roll down Taking its cue past hedges from Scott’s and rose beds own example, to the River the entry Tweed. In the criterion for early nineteenth this brand century this new prize is tranquil scene that novels was half a day’s must be set journey from sixty years Edinburgh, ago or more. with its buzzing The genre literary and has had a cultural scene, particularly the capital of s t r o n g the Scottish year, and Enlightenment, in his short the Athens of presentation, the North. It the chairman was this national of the judges, pride and the Alistair Shortlisted authors (L to R): Simon Mawer, Robert Harris, Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch (sponsors), Adam rapidity of the Foulds, Iain Pears, and Adam Thorpe. Hilary Mantel and Sarah Dunant could not attend.

Moff at , changes that had sought an taken place in Scotland over the previous century that prompted explanation for the genre’s resurgence by stating, “Historical Walter Scott to write his bestseller Waverley or tis Sixty Years fiction may have become more popular because, at a time when hence, a book that launched a genre in 1814 and made him the the future seems terrifying to us, we need to refer back to and founding father of the historical novel. Nearly two hundred understand the past more fully.” He then went on to announce years later, this beautiful room was chosen as the place to launch the prizewinner, Hilary Mantel. This was no real surprise the first Walter Scott prize for historical fiction. All of the since Mantel’s Booker-winning book, Wolf Hall, is so widely shortlisted authors (see opposite page) were present, except for acclaimed, but I still felt that maybe one of the other authors Sarah Dunant, who was celebrating her birthday in Italy, and would have been equally deserving – my own favourite would

by Lucinda Byatt

Historical Fiction... may have become more popular because, at a time when the future seems terrifying to us, we need to refer back to and understand the past more fully.”

16 | Features | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

The Walter Scott Prize 2010 shortlist: Hodd by Adam Thorpe Lustrum by Robert Harris Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant Stone’s Fall by Iain Pears The Glass Room by Simon Mawer The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel CCCCCCCC CCCCCCCC

have been Simon Mawer’s The Glass Room.

Mantel was sadly not present, but in a message that was read out to the audience, she stated: “Intense involvement in history was what started me writing. And now – although I hope to go on writing contemporary novels – the challenges and perplexities of historical fiction have become my preoccupation. And just in time, because this has been an interesting year for writers and readers of the historical novel – perhaps a turning point year.” On that closing note, she has thrown down a gauntlet to enthusiasts of the genre, above all its writers: good historical fiction is now safely back inside the fold, as it were, and a dedicated prize will do much to keep these standards high. Gone are the bodiceripping days that gave historical fiction such a bad name in the past. Above all, the new historical fiction is firmly rooted in extensive research, but not at expense of terrific plot, character and, perhaps most importantly, a resonance for own times.

Framed against the magnificent fireplace in the library, unlit on this brilliantly sunny day, the Duke of Buccleuch added: “So the venue for today’s presentation could not be more appropriate, and it is, I believe, a wonderful way of reminding the world of the profound importance of this great house and of the man who created it.” In many ways, the historical novel has come home.

LUCINDA BYATT is Profiles Editor for Solander, translates for a living, and also teaches Renaissance Italian history to mature students at Edinburgh University. She is working on a biography of a Renaissance cardinal.

Abbotsford House, Melrose, Scotland HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Features | 17

a profile of Orion Publishing Group

in 1991, the Orion Publishing Group Ltd has lived Fup ounded to its name. Astronomically, Orion is one of the largest and most visible constellations in the night sky, and Orion Publishing is a very bright star in the publishing firmament.

Orion rapidly drew into its publishing orbit Weidenfeld & Nicolson, which included JM Dent and Everyman Paperbacks, and both houses brought with them a reputation for quality publishing. The Orion Paperback Division was created in 1993, expanding to include Chapman Publishing and Littlehampton Book Services and, in December 1998, acquiring Cassell & Co, whose imprints included Victor Gollancz Ltd. In 2003, Hachette Livre became Orion’s sole owner.

Orion’s image as the hunter suits a company which has managed to track down well-known contemporary fiction authors such as Michael Connelly and Maeve Binchy. The authors who publish with Orion, such as Lilian Harry, seem to hold it in great esteem, “I must have been one of Orion’s earliest authors. When Rosie Cheetham (as she was then) asked me in 1993 to write a series of six novels about the Second World War, I accepted with alacrity, and have never looked back.

Through several changes of editor I have been helped, encouraged, listened to, advised and, on occasion, made much of.

Orion is a lovely house to write for and thoroughly deserves its success.” Seventeen years later Harry is still writing for Orion, with her latest novel, An Heir for Burracombe, due to be published in August 2010.

Another popular historical fiction novelist published by Orion is Grigory Chkhartishvili, known to readers of historical crime fiction as Boris Akunin. His Erast Fandorin novels have sold over 18 million copies in Russia. Orion also keeps in print books by noteworthy historical novelists who are deceased, such as Noel Barber (1909 – 1988), the bestselling author of Tanamera.

Orion also promotes historical novelists who are starting to

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A Bright Constellation

establish their names, but currently accepts submissions only through agents. Joanne Owen, whose first novel, Puppet Master, set in late 19th-century Prague, was published in 2009, is an example of the type of rising historical novelists Orion promotes.

Her first novel, with its gothic flavour, has been followed by her latest work, The Alchemist and the Angel, published in June 2010, which is set in 16th-century Prague and Vienna. In complete contrast is The House of Dust and Dreams, which is a love story set in Greece in the 1930s and written by Brenda Reid, an award-winning script editor.

Interestingly, Orion also sponsors competitions to encourage new writers, such as the CWA Debut Dagger, a competition open to anyone writing in the English language who has not yet had a novel published commercially. Orion’s authors have also had some noteworthy success recently, with Alan Bradley winning the 2010 Agatha Award for Best First Mystery Novel for The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. This is not typical historical novel fare; in a small English village in June 1950, a dead body is discovered in Colonel de Luce’s cucumber patch. The novel is further embellished with a dead snipe, a rare stamp impaled on its beak, left on the Colonel’s doorstep and the introduction of an eccentric family.

Orion and the other publishing houses that are joined together under Hachette Livre are exceptional in the range and quality of their authors. With names such as Ursula Le Guin and Katherine McMahon, avid hunters of historical fiction will find much to read and delight in in the Orion Publishing firmament.

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References: http://www.thecwa.co.uk http://www.katharinemcmahon.com http://www.lilianharry.co.uk http://www.orionbooks.co.uk http://www.malicedomestic.org

by Myfanwy Cook

Orion’s image... as the hunter suits a company which has managed to track down well-known contemporary fiction authors such as Michael Connelly and Maeve Binchy.”

18 | Features | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

Reviews |

ancient egypt

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CHILD OF THE MORNING Pauline Gedge, Chicago Review Press, 2010 (c1977), $16.95, pb, 403pp, 9781569763247 Child of the Morning, set in ancient Egypt, follows Queen-Pharaoh Hatshepsut from her early childhood as the favorite daughter of Thothmes the First to her death. Intersecting with the story of Hatshepsut’s rise to power, her fall, and her final act of defiance is that of Senmut, a restless, ambitious young priest whose destiny will become intertwined with his queen’s.

Moving at a deliberate but never dull pace, Gedge’s first novel, originally published in 1977, offers not only detailed descriptions of life in the Egyptian court but a rich and numerous array of complex characters. Gedge conveys what appears to be an exhaustive knowledge of the period and provides the necessary background to her story without resorting to the dreaded “information dumps” or to the awkward device of having characters give each other information in dialogue for the benefit of the reader. Even readers who are not particularly interested in this period should enjoy this tale of a remarkable woman’s passions and struggles.

Sadly, author’s notes do not seem to have been in vogue when Gedge published her novel; it would have been fascinating to hear what Gedge had to say in hers.

Susan Higginbotham

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biblical

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J: The Woman Who Wrote the Bible Mary F. Burns, O Books, 2010, £11.99/$20.95, pb, 336pp, 9781846943249 Several scholars have advanced the idea that the Yahwist, or J writer, of the Old Testament was a woman who lived at the court of Solomon, a daughter of the royal house. In J’s stories, the heroes are often women, like Rachel and Rebecca, whose vigor and force outshine the men. J’s purpose may have been to give the upstart David a good pedigree and glorify the Hebrew past; if so, then almost inadvertently she created a world-historical literature, the foundation for monotheism and some of the best-loved stories of all time.

J: The Woman Who Wrote the Bible begins with this premise. Readers who enjoyed The Red Tent will like this book too, with its retellings of many of the stories of the Old Testament. Janaia is her father’s prophetess, and witnesses David’s career from the time in the cave of Adullam to the glory, Ancient Egypt — 2nd Century

crimes and tragedies of his reign in Jerusalem.

Mysteriously, Burns has opted to incorporate the Qu’ran’s version of the Ishmael legend, which has the effect of reducing the whole story to a gloss on the modern crisis in the Middle East. This may be comforting to many, who want to find the familiar in the extraordinary, the present in the distant past, the now in then, but it gets pretty threadbare after a while.

Cecelia Holland JUDAS: The Gospel of Betrayal Frederick Ramsay, Perfect Niche Publishing, 2010, $14.95/C$18.95, pb, 285pp, 9780967759036 Ramsay’s novel gives a fresh perspective on Judas Iscariot, the most hated man in the New Testament. Setting his subject firmly within the context of life in Palestine during the era of Roman domination, he fleshes out Judas’s tale with a very plausible backstory. Bastard son of a Roman soldier and a Jewish woman, young Judas is forced to flee with his mother and younger sister from their seaside home in fear of being accused of a murder committed by Romans. Arriving in Corinth, fueled by thoughts of revenge against the Romans, he quickly learns to survive on the streets and helps his damaged sister find sanctuary.

Struggling to understand how his mother’s god could allow horrible things to happen to him and his family, Judas spends years wandering through the eastern Mediterranean. Finally seeking out his mother’s people, he learns of his Galilean grandfather’s failed rebellion against the Roman government, and becomes ever more determined to be involved in such a movement. After joining up with Barabbas’s band of thieves and then suffering their terrible betrayal, he is taken in by the Zealot community. This group eventually leads him to the charismatic teacher they call Jesus.

Enthralled and enthusiastically believing that Jesus is the tool needed to destroy the Romans, Judas is ultimately forced to make a painful choice concerning Jesus that will have devastating consequences for everyone involved. Although I wish the author had provided more insight into other familiar characters like Mary Magdalene and Peter, his smooth narrative and a different twist on Judas’s story make this a good choice for readers who enjoy Bible-based historical fiction.

Michael I. Shoop

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classical

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THE SILVER EAGLE Ben Kane, Arrow, 2010, £6.99, pb, 640pp, 9781848090132 / St Martin’s Press, 2010, $25.99, hb, 480pp, 9780312536725

This is the second in The Forgotten Legion trilogy set during the turbulent fall of Republican Rome in the 1st century BC. Romulus is a soldier in Crassus’s army defeated at Carrhae, its survivors forced to fight for the Parthian victors. His twin, Fabiola, having escaped prostitution, is targeted by slavehunters amid the mayhem of political thuggery in Rome and flees to Gaul in search of her lover, an officer in Julius Caesar’s army. Will Romulus and his comrades escape? Will Fabiola reach her lover’s arms? Will the twins be reunited? To find out we must wade through lashings of battle and torture: gouging, stabbing, amputation, disembowelling, whipping, branding, crucifixion and a smattering of Latin. Interspersed through the narrative are snippets of historical background which may seem like irritating info dumps to some but came as light(ish) relief to this reader. It’s all done with gusto, as befits the highly popular Roman military fiction trend. A map and glossary are provided, as is an excerpt from the final part.

Sarah Cuthbertson THE LOST BOOKS OF THE ODYSSEY Zachary Mason, Jonathan Cape, 2010, £12.99, hb, 228pp, 9780224090223 It is possible to believe that the author has taken the loose pages of The Iliad and The Odyssey and tossed them skywards, inviting Odysseus to give his personal restructuring of the mighty work of Homer.

Odysseus, ingenious archetypal trickster, survivor and forerunner of anti-heroes (including Flashman, but less committed to cowardice) gives readers a sparkling multiple telling of these famous stories, backwards, forward and sideways in a world of beauty and terror. A gentle conclusion suggests that Odysseus recognises the ending of the heroic age; he does not maintain that that age never existed. All the great figures of the tenyear Trojan War and its ten- year aftermath are here fractured and recast: Helen, Penelope, Circe, Scylla, Achilles, Hector and Agamemnon whose public relations are, as usual, appalling – no one ever has a good word to say for the unmitigated lout. The Cyclops, always for me a sympathetic and vulnerable character, has his own fascinating footnote suggesting that his physique was based on a small fossilised mammoth skull.

Knowing Homer’s version may enhance the joys of Lost Books but this is not necessary: simply relish, and if it sounds daunting, it is not. There is a light hand at work here and the chapters are reassuringly short.

Nancy Henshaw

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2nd century

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HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 19

RUSO AND THE ROOT OF ALL EVILS (UK) / PERSONA NON GRATA (US) R S Downie, Penguin, 2010, £8.99, pb, 435pp, 9780141036922 / Bloomsbury USA, 2009, $24.00, hb, 368pp, 9781596916098 A letter urging his return from Roman Britain sends doctor Ruso rushing home to southern Gaul, on extended sick leave due to an ankle injury, taking his mistress cum servant Tilla with him. Once there he discovers the letter was a forgery, yet his help is needed. His family is in dire trouble, facing debt and suspected of poisoning their principal creditor, who just happens to be the husband of Ruso’s former wife. There is also the puzzle of the missing cargo ship, which seems to have been sunk deliberately, with his brother-in-law aboard, the new religion, Christianity which appears in the neighbourhood, and the hard investigators who come to find the murderer and are determined to pin it on Ruso and his family. Somehow Ruso must beat them to it if they are not to charge and ruin his family.

I thought it a pity to imitate the device used in the Falco novels, of a list of characters with amusing comments, as it invites comparisons, but the book, the third of the Ruso novels, needs none. It stands on its own as an enjoyable mystery.

Ruso, Tilla, his brother and young family, his

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step-mother and half-sisters, are well-drawn and plausible. The other characters satisfyingly add to the mystery. The background is carefully portrayed, clearly researched in some detail, and realistic, especially in the domestic field. The horrors of the gladiatorial fights are not avoided, and the mystery is convoluted enough to please fans of historical crime novels.

Marina Oliver

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5th century

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ATTILA: The Gathering of the Storm William Napier, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2010, $13.99, pb, 320pp, 9780312598990 / Orion, 2007, £6.99, pb, 336pp, 9780752881423 In the second volume of William Napier’s Attila trilogy, the prince returns from exile to reclaim his place as king from his usurping uncle. But it is not mere revenge Attila seeks – thirty years of survival in barren wastelands has forged something stronger in his heart. He has a single goal: to unite all the Huns into one people, a people as empowered and unified as they were in the legends of ancient times, not a scattered federation of tribes but a powerful, mobile empire. Attila assembles a cadre of chosen

JUSTINIAN, THE SLEEPLESS ONE

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Ross Laidlaw, Polygon, 2010, £12.99, pb, 320pp, 9781846971587 This is the story of Uprauda Ystock, son of an illiterate peasant who might have been destined to spend his life working the land had it not been for his mother.

Appealing to her brother Roderic she managed to secure for her son an education and a foot on the first rung of the ladder to the Senate.

As Petrus, Uprauda quickly learns how to progress and improve his situation, but not always by the most honest means. When challenged to a fight that he fears he might lose, Petrus injures himself and claims that his opponent cheated. This pseudo-victory gives him no pleasure, and the guilt haunts him for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, Petrus succeeds in repaying his uncle’s patronage by speaking on his behalf, leading to Roderic becoming the emperor Justin, therefore Petrus becomes Justinian and as such succeeds him.

The love of Justinian’s life appears as Theodora, daughter of a bear-keeper and former actress with a colourful past. As the stronger character she dominates and manipulates affairs and when Justinian succumbs to plague he is totally dependent on her. Understandably, when Theodora dies he is distraught, seeking solace in endless work. He is thereafter known as, ‘The Sleepless One’.

Justinian was a man beset by self-doubt, a flawed character who tried to do what he believed to be the right thing. Although he never took part in any military campaign his ambition was to expand the Eastern Roman Empire’s territory but he succeeded only in the impoverishment of the Empire, the ruin of Italy and the final parting of the ways between the churches of East and West.

Spanning the years from 482-565 ad, Ross Laidlaw’s fictionalised history, including copious notes, maps, appendices and afterword, completes a sterling work that breathes life into a character that, for me, was an unknown from the distant past.

Ann Oughton 20 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

men and begins training his people for conquest.

One by one, through battle and bribery, the eastern tribes come under his rule. Attila pursues his goal relentlessly, ignoring loss and danger, waiting for the day when he will turn his gaze to the west and take his new empire all the way to the slowly rusting gates of Rome.

The middle book in a trilogy is often the least complete, but the introduction here immediately captures the reader and brings the story up to date without any shoehorning. The story stands on its own, yet it also entices the reader to come back for the conclusion. Not a book for the squeamish, the author never shies from describing the brutality of life and death among Attila’s people. The scene-setting is marvelous, the dialogue curt and snappish, the history incredibly real. The shift to Rome in the middle halts the flow somewhat, with a different and less engrossing style, but the rest of the book makes up for it. This is an adventure as consuming as the fires that blaze through its pages, as thrilling as the arrows singing through every word. It is sure to raise the blood of any battleloving reader. Highly recommended.

Heather Domin

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6th century

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DARK MOON OF AVALON Anna Elliott, Touchstone, 2010, $16.00, pb, 430pp, 9781416589907 This suspenseful novel is the second in a trilogy that sets the love story of Trystan and Isolde in a violent, 6th-century Britain, where Arthur’s successors quarrel over the scraps left after the disaster of the Battle of Camlann. Isolde, daughter of Modred and Gwynefar, granddaughter of Arthur and Morgan, is both the former high queen and a talented healer like her grandmother. Despite her devotion to Britain and her concern for its suffering people, she, like them, is prey to the ruthlessness of its ambitious, quarrelsome rulers and the brutality of their soldiers. Thus she undertakes the mission to persuade Cerdic of Wessex to ally himself with Madoc, the British High King, rather than Octa of Kent.

Her guide on this perilous journey is Trystan, who is not only the son of the traitorous Marche of Cornwall and grandson of Cerdic, but the beloved companion of her childhood. Unsurprisingly, their mutual attraction intensifies until they finally declare their love, though it is delayed by many factors: the dangers and disruptions of their journey, the demands of conflicting obligations, and, most importantly, the sense of their own unworthiness of each other. Isolde feels tainted by her father’s betrayal and her grandmother’s reputation as a witch; Trystan by the dark deeds he has committed in the past as a spy and mercenary.

This is a dark vision of life in a cruel era, and as an empathetic healer Isolde must deal with the agony inflicted not only on the bodies, but on the minds of those she tries to help. Amidst the fears 2nd Century — 6th Century

and horrors that haunt their experience, moments of happiness for the lovers are few and fleeting.

Strongly recommended.

Ray Thompson BRENDÁN Morgan Llywelyn, Forge, 2010, $24.00/C$29.99, hb, 302pp, 9780312860998 Baptized into the Christian faith by Bishop Erc, a converted Druid, Brendán fosters with Sister Íta. She instills in the lad a love of God, but their sheltered world differs from the reality of 6thcentury Ireland. Upon his father’s death, their cherished connection is rent asunder, and Brendán returns to a stark, coastal village where everyone is a stranger. Under Erc’s tutelage he studies to become a priest, but is forbidden to set foot near the ocean, which caused his father’s death.

But Brendán is drawn to the sea. A brief sail with two fishermen opens this world to him, leading him on a path different from the one Erc has preordained. Cherishing solitude, inner reflection, and discovery, Brendán believes God wishes him to become a monk. A conflict arises and Ercsends Brendán on a wandering pilgrimage through Ireland. Those he meets further shape him, strengthen his faith in God, and show him the differences between the Celtic and Roman Churches. He attracts followers and establishes monasteries, but his passion for learning and the sea never die. He makes several voyages to Scotland, Wales, Brittany, and more distant and unknown places.

Llywelyn uses a medieval text that recounts Brendán the Navigator’s life as the basis for this fictional biography. Her recreation of 6th-century life and the Celtic Church, as well as the saint’s passion for truth, knowledge, and faith, shine throughout the narrative. She falters, however, in the telling. There’s a constant shift between omniscient and first-person points of view and the past and the present; this prevents the reader from becoming absorbed in the story. The book became more a chore to read than a wonderful voyage of discovery with one of Ireland’s beloved saints.

Cindy Vallar EIGHT FOR ETERNITY: A John the Lord Chamberlin Mystery Mary Reed and Eric Mayer, Poisoned Pen Press, 2010, $24.95, hb, 308pp, 9781590587027 This mystery is the eighth in the series set in the time of Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora in 6th-century Byzantium featuring sleuth/eunuch John the Lord Chamberlain. The backdrop of this crime is the riots between the Blues and the Greens (chariot racing fans) which lasted a week in early 532 AD, killed tens of thousands and burned much of the city, including the church which Justinian would eventually replace with the glorious Aya Sophia which stands in Istanbul today.

A Green and a Blue are among a number of men condemned to death. This pair, however, escape the hangman’s nooses when the ropes break twice.

Then they vanish from the Church where they’ve 6th Century — 12th Century

been taken for sanctuary until this miracle can be explained. One turns up dead in a nearby cistern.

John the Lord Chamberlain is then pressed into housing a trio of Justinian’s relatives for safekeeping as the riots flare, Persian envoys come to treaty, old friends die of poison and demons haunt the city walls.

I agree with the sleuth’s final assessment that the riots with their massive loss of life are a distraction, both for the Lord Chamberlain and for the reader.

Although the factions are integral to the plot, violence of the footballer variety defies the tidy logic we like in our mysteries.

Ann Chamberlin

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11th century

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GREAT MARIA Cecelia Holland, Sourcebooks, 2010 (c1974), $16.99/C$19.99, pb, 560pp, 9781402244469 Maria, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a robber baron in 11th century Italy, is given in marriage to Richard, an ambitious young knight. “I have to give him something to keep him satisfied for a while,” her father explains. Besides, the father has no sons and would like grandsons. The fact that Maria loves Richard’s younger brother, Roger, is beside the point. Cecelia Holland in taut, spare prose creates a hard, unsentimental world in which people fight for survival and betrayal is always possible. Richard will battle the Saracens and other Christians for his place in the sun. Maria will fight with different weapons, for her own personal autonomy. She is a survivor and then some, strong, canny, and brave. Both Richard and Roger exert a pull on her emotions. The reader sees her grow as a wife, a mother, and a power in her own right. In the end, she must make a fateful choice. It is a tribute to Holland’s skill as a novelist that we don’t know what Maria will do until she does it, and yet her action rings absolutely true.

This book has everything a good historical novel should have: a wonderful sense of the place and time, exciting battle scenes, and a deeply felt, surprising love story. Holland excels at characterizing individuals by showing them in action. She conveys in one gesture what other authors might take paragraphs to tell. Hemingway at his best did this. Few other writers can manage it. The writing lifts this book to a level of excellence few novels even aspire to.

Phyllis T. Smith KINGS OF THE NORTH Cecelia Holland, Forge, 2010, $27.99/C$33.99, hb, 416pp, 9780765321923 Kings of the North opens with England being ruled ineffectively by Ethelred, his sons ripe for rebellion, and the Danes poised for usurpation.

Meanwhile, young Knut, future king of England, bides his time as an English ward, learning survival and leadership skills as he closely watches the machinations of the adults around him. Amid the

chaos, two men and a girl arrive on shore planning to go to Jorvik (York), but evil in the form of Queen Emma not only waylays them, but threatens England itself. Tension mounts as all these stories build toward an epic collision for domination of the English.

Holland’s story is a masterpiece as it deftly showcases several different viewpoints, including those of Emma, Prince Edmund, Knut, and Raef Corbanson, a member of the trio returning to Raef ’s childhood home. Raef is a mystical man; his ability to have his spirit leave his body gives him a unique perspective into the evil that inhabits the body of Queen Emma. It is this evil, known as The Lady, that stirs much of the conflict among the men vying for control of the English, and Raef knows it will ultimately destroy everyone if he cannot find a way to stop it. This is the sort of story that envelops you as you read; rich in detail and vibrant characterizations, it breathes life into a distant time period and deposits you squarely in the middle of the action. With men changing sides frequently and backstabbing rampant, this story really did not need the addition of mysticism, and I found it a little distracting as I tried to keep names and events straight. Also, it is a sequel to The High City, and I felt a bit lost not having read first. Kings of the North stands well on its own, however, and is deliciously full of fighting, betrayal, and history literally leaping off its pages.

Tamela McCann CONQUEST Jack Ludlow, Allison & Busby, 2010, £19.99, hb, 352pp, 978074907607 David Donachie is a busy man – two series on the go under his own name and two more as Jack Ludlow. Conquest is one of the latter, the third volume in the adventures of the twelve sons of Tancred de Hauteville, who carved out territories for themselves from the decaying remnants of Byzantine Italy during the 11th century. Anyone who has read John Julius Norwich’s The Normans in Sicily will know that this subject is a gift for historical writers – though a strangely neglected one.

However, the writer seems here to be concentrating on quantity rather than quality.

Conquest reads as though written in a hurry, as Roger, the youngest Hauteville, arrives in Italy, enjoys tricky relations with various elder brothers, notably Robert Guiscard – ‘the Crafty’ – and eventually conquers Sicily. It reads smoothly enough, but at times too much like straight history, and even during the battle scenes I never felt as though I was actually living the story. To be fair, I was coming ‘cold’ to volume 3.

Ann Lyon

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12th century

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FOR THE KING’S FAVOR (US) / THE TIME OF SINGING (UK) HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 21

Elizabeth Chadwick, Sourcebooks, 2010, $14.99, pb, 544pp, 9781402244490 / Sphere, 2009, £7.99, pb, 528pp, 9780751539004 Ida de Tosney is a very young woman when her beauty attracts the attention of King Henry II. Never quite comfortable as the king’s mistress, it is only the beginning of the pain she will endure for surrendering to the king’s choice. Meanwhile, Roger Bigod has decided to rebel against his tyrant father, the Earl of Norfolk, who is rebelling against the King. When one has nothing, there is nothing to lose by following a different path!

After giving birth to Henry’s bastard son, William, Ida asks the King to grant her a marriage to Roger, who is waiting for his petition to have his inheritance restored to him as the eldest son of the now-dead Earl of Norfolk. But the latter battle will persist for years, with increasing enmity among Roger, his stepmother and brother, Huon. It will be Ida who becomes Roger’s source of strength and deepest love, despite the hard years ahead of being King Henry’s legal representative, then King Richard’s soldier and judge, and finally beginning service to the untried and unpredictable reign of King John. The cost of Ida’s marriage will affect the rest of her life and becomes raw when Roger is away more than he is home to soothe her loss.

The tensions begin to mount, and the reader is not sure which way the loving couple will travel, together or alone. In typical Elizabeth Chadwick style, this tale is replete with details about the history and culture of late 12th-century England, a time of royal, financial, familial, marital and political conflicts that keep the reader riveted to every page. A grand read!

Viviane Crystal THE SECRET ELEANOR Cecelia Holland, Berkley, 2010, $15, pb, 368pp, 9780425234501 Just as her marriage with the insipid King Louis VII of France is coming to an end, Eleanor of Aquitaine has a clandestine meeting with the 19-year-old Henry, the heir to Anjou and Normandy, not to mention a possible claim to the throne of England. The result of the meeting is a secret that develops over the nine-month timeframe of the novel. Eleanor needs to use all her power and ingenuity to conceal her embarrassment.

One of the few things I remember from a university education long ago was the assertion by a professor who claimed that love as we know it was invented by Eleanor of Aquitaine. Holland’s Eleanor is original enough to make her own definition of what it means to fall in love with Henry. When his father dies, and he cheats his younger brother of his meager share of the estate, one of Eleanor’s retainers warns her: “‘And if he would do such to his own brother, what we would he do to a wife?’

She laughed, angry. ‘Bah. I am not a mere wife, am I?’” An appealing subplot involves one of Eleanor’s ladies in waiting and a troubadour, but the book’s real heroine is Eleanor’s sister, Petronilla, always 22 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

in the shadow of her imperious sister, the queen.

If Eleanor’s concealment seems improbable, we should remember that, like the best historical fiction, it could have happened, maybe should have happened and probably would have happened if their world had been more like ours. Holland has long been one of the most versatile and prolific writers of historical fiction, and this latest entry can only enhance her reputation.

James Hawking FOOL Christopher Moore, Sphere, 2010, £6.99, 372pp, 9780751543957 Set in a bizarre Britain of the 12th century, Fool is a retelling, of sorts, of Shakespeare’s King Lear.

It is a madcap, bawdy Blackadder-like scatological comedy. Narrated by the story’s hero, Pocket, who is Lear’s eponymous Fool, it relates how Lear was betrayed by his disloyal daughters Goneril and Regan and the subsequent intrigue, bloodshed and general zaniness. Moore brings in all sorts of references from other Shakespearian plays, such as the three witches from Macbeth, and the characters speak an odd mix of contemporary slang and dramatic dialogue. It is just one daft thing after another – you have to be in the mood for extreme silliness, otherwise it will leave you cold. Quite definitely not to be taken seriously and probably not a good idea for maiden aunts or, indeed, cultured uncles.

Doug Kemp TAMING POISON DRAGONS Tim Murgatroyd, Myrmidon, 2009, £16.99/$22.95, hb, 510pp, 9781905802289 This novel opens in 1196 with Yun Cai in exile on his family estates in western China. The oncefamous poet has lost the love of his life, Su Li, and also his position within the elite of the civil service. His sons are a disappointment to him, and his mean-spirited daughter-in-law is a constant challenge to his poetic soul. However, “the poison dragon of misfortune” is about to unleash its full power, and Yun Cai finds himself trying to help P’ei Ti, an old friend, escape from prison. Eventually Yun Cai must confront General An-Shu and his consort with little more than his wits and intelligence as weapons to defend himself. This is a story of friendship and of Yun Cai’s personal quest to conquer his own “dragons” and find peace within.

The cast of characters range from Yun Cai’s cheerful Cousin Hong and other impoverished relatives to Yun Cai’s own cruel and wayward second son. They are often described in intricate detail, as is the pattern of everyday Chinese life during this period. The author clearly has a passion for ancient Chinese history, which shines through in this first novel set against the disorder caused by the Mongol invasion. What interested me particularly about this novel is the style in which it is written. Tim Murgatroyd has tried to conjure up a sense of period and place by using speech patterns that are both formal and poetic.

Myfanwy Cook

SHADOW OF THE SWORDS Kamran Pasha, Washington Square, 2010, $16.00/C$19.99, pb, 416pp, 9781416579953 Kamran Pasha brings the Third Crusade and the great personages of Richard the Lionheart and Salah al-Din ibn Ayyub (Saladin) on an intimate level with the reader in Shadow of the Swords.

Richard’s relations with his father, King Henry, the machinations of royal siblings and courtiers, and the Lionheart’s standing in his kingdom provide motivations for the pursuit of a holy war. One of Richard’s trusted knights, Sir William Chinon, unique in possessing a Christian conscience, explains that for the king of England the crusade is less about God and more “about a civilization that was once the center of the world and is now reduced to a humiliated and impoverished backwater.”

Saladin, meanwhile, has just regained the city of Jerusalem, sacred to Muslims, Jews, and Christians, from the last invading horde of barbarians. In middle age he must prepare to defend the holy city and the rest of Palestine against King Richard’s forces.

The Muslim leader Saladin is clearly the man with greater claim to be called noble and civilized.

Richard’s brutality is unequaled. Connecting the two leaders, Kamran Pasha has cleverly portrayed the historical rabbi Maimonides, personal physician and advisor to Saladin, as well as his original creation, the rabbi’s niece Miriam. The Jewish doctor and Miriam, a young woman who has suffered the violence of the religious conflict in her homeland, are called upon to save Richard the Lionheart when he falls ill. Miriam becomes involved with both leaders in the turmoil and events of this latest crusade. Shadow of the Swords is an epic tale of the clash of nations, faiths, love, and loyalty. The novel illuminates the history of the relations of Jews, Muslims, and Christians and contains interesting end material discussing this and its repercussions on today’s society.

Eva Ulett CAPTIVE QUEEN (US) / THE CAPTIVE QUEEN (UK) Alison Weir, Ballantine, 2010, $26.00, hb, 496pp, 9780345511874 / Hutchinson, 2010, £14.99, hb, 512pp, 9780091926212 This epic novel tells the story of the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine, beginning when she first meets the future King Henry II. For the most part, it is concerned with their marriage – presented as a love-hate relationship definitely not made in heaven. An epilogue summarizes the final years of Eleanor’s life.

Twelfth-century women were supposed to be submissive and pious. Eleanor, who ruled in her own right over the Duchy of Aquitaine, was neither. She was strong and power-oriented and not devout in any conventional sense. At the age of 29, she managed to extricate herself from her marriage to the king of France in order to marry 18-year-old Henry. She evidently expected a degree of power and autonomy Henry was not disposed to 12th Century

allow her. Their conflict eventually embroiled their sons, most notably Richard the Lionhearted, and Eleanor spent long years locked away in captivity by her husband.

I enjoyed this book, with its drama and rich, authentic historical detail. However, Eleanor never captured my sympathy as a reader, despite her hardships, losses, and travails. She is presented as someone who leaves a loving if dull husband, and two children, because she is seized by overwhelming lust for a teenager eleven years her junior. They both know that his father was a previous lover of hers, but it doesn’t bother either one of them a bit. Then she expects said teenager to be faithful, and is bitterly hurt when he is not.

Henry II frequently acts like a shallow bully who needs an anger management class. True, these portraits may well be historically accurate. Maybe I read this novel when I was in an overly judgmental mood, but I closed it feeling both partners in the marriage got what they deserved.

Phyllis T. Smith

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13th century

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TO DEFY A KING Elizabeth Chadwick, Sphere, 2010, £14.99, hb, 540pp, 9781847442369 Mahelt Marshal is the most beloved daughter of William Marshal and he is determined to see her well settled in a secure marriage. To that end she is betrothed to Hugh Bigod, son of the Earl of Norfolk. This proves a wise move in the politically charged atmosphere of King John’s rule. Although it is an arranged marriage, Mahelt grows to love her husband and together they begin a family of their own. Yet time and again her loyalty to the Marshals threatens her standing within the Bigod family.

As the barons are brought ever closer to revolt by John’s abuses of power, Mahelt finds her loyalties divided once again. It is a long road that will end with Magna Carta, but Mahelt will need to use all her wisdom and all her courage to survive the journey.

It’s a competitive market, but Elizabeth Chadwick is one of the best practitioners of historical fiction published today, and she got there by living and breathing the period of history she is writing about. To Defy a King is yet another example of her skill. The characters come alive and the reader can really believe in their thoughts, beliefs and deeds. Her drip feed of historical facts and snippets of everyday living are very effective, and the reader comes away having learnt a massive amount about the period without ever being made overly aware of her research. When others may fail to impress, Elizabeth Chadwick continually produces the goods.

Sara Wilson THE SIXTH SURRENDER Hana Samek Norton, Plume, 2010, $16.00, pb, 480pp, 9780452296237 12th Century — 14th Century

Young Sister Eustace (née Juliana de Charnais), learned but naïve, longs to experience the world outside the convent – the world of the high-born and their political machinations and marital politics – and Alienor of Aquitaine is about to grant her wish. Accepting a marriage that returns to her the viscounty of Tillieres, she is betrothed to the enigmatic, shadowy, and disreputable Guerin de Lasalle.

Taking place in 13th-century France, The Sixth Surrender is set against the backdrop of Alienor of Aquitaine’s battle to secure the crowns of England and Normandy for her last surviving son, John Plantagenet. Alienor is portrayed as a strongwilled woman who fights endless battles to secure her holdings for an irresponsible son whose flawed decision-making threatens to doom all she has fought for. The devious Lusignan family, aggrieved

by John’s theft of Count Hugh’s betrothed, plays a prominent role, and much of the dramatic tension is focused around their conflict with the Plantagenets.

Rich in medieval detail and bursting with heart-thumping suspense scenes, this debut novel is a surprisingly seductive mystery-romance with a cleverly designed plot. My issue with this book is that, as clever and unpredictable as the plot was, it was also at times disjointed and could have benefited from some expanded explanation.

Overall, however, The Sixth Surrender will be an entertaining read for those who enjoy their adventure and drama with a medieval flair.

Andrea Connell THE SHEEN ON THE SILK Anne Perry, Headline, 2010, £19.99, hb, 500pp, 9780755339068 / Ballantine, 2010, $27.00, hb, 528pp, 9780345500656 “The character of eunuchs was like the sheen on the silk – fluid, unpredictable. A third gender, male and female, yet neither.

This is the disguise adopted by Anna Zarides on her arrival in Byzantium. Not easy to achieve but one which will allow her to follow her calling as a physician whilst also fulfilling an entirely different mission – to prove her brother innocent of murder.

But this is Byzantium of 1273, on the cusp of religious and political conflict. Another crusade is imminent and the onslaught of Roman Catholicism is threatening the Orthodox theology of the city.

Although it comes from the pen of Anne Perry, the acclaimed crime novelist, and is based around a mysterious death, The Sheen on the Silk is much more than a straightforward detective story. It is a complex and multilayered novel dealing with a heady mix of politics and religion. In fact there are so many strands, characters and plots within plots that it can become confusing and is best read with a clear head. That aside, it is a truly epic piece and one that totally immerses the reader in 13thcentury Byzantium. Indeed the sense of time and place is so remarkable that even readers with no expert knowledge of the era will come away feeling that they have glimpsed into the past.

A remarkable achievement and well worth

seeking out.

Sara Wilson

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14th century

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THE KING’S MISTRESS Emma Campion, Crown, 2010, $26.00, hb, 464pp, 9780307589255 / Arrow, 2010, £6.99, pb, 560pp, 9780099497936 Campion is the foremost scholar on the subject of Alice Perrers, who is primarily – and notoriously – known as the young mistress of an aging King Edward III. Was Perrers the beautiful, manipulative widow of a merchant who raised herself above her class, or was she a sympathetic, complex woman caught in the class, political, social and economic turmoil of her times?

Fourteen-year-old Alice is married off by her father to a wealthy merchant, Janyn Perrers.

Thankfully for Alice, Janyn is sweet, wise and loving. She adores him and the life she builds with him. Unfortunately, Alice learns that the Perrers family is the keeper of a most deadly secret that ties them inextricably to Queen Isabella, mother of Edward III. Campion promulgates a theory about what that secret is – and it is devastating, indeed. As the Perrers family’s protectoress, the aging Queen Isabella is also owed obeisance for her substantial largesse.

After Janyn disappears on a trip to Milan and Isabella dies, Alice is taken into what can only be described as protective custody by Edward and his wife, Philippa, a woman who Alice grows to adore as Philippa loves her. Campion’s theory about how Alice becomes Edward’s mistress is fascinating, if not a bit “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.” Alice then spends years looking after and loving the king, nursing him through life’s tragedies and being his soul mate. She pays the price for her loyalty, however, when Edward’s kin orchestrate a forfeiture and worse after his death.

Campion’s Alice is mostly to be pitied, a pawn in a man’s world. The one constant friend in Alice’s life is Geoffrey Chaucer, and his Troilus and Criseyde forms a backdrop against the perils Alice faces. A well-written, comprehensive view of the period in which women were marginalized, their glittery, gem-laden gowns reflecting the corruption of the times.

Ilysa Magnus THE BISHOP MUST DIE Michael Jecks, S&S UK/Trafalgar Square, 2010 (2009), $24.95/£19.99, 384pp, hb, 9780755344209 The bishop in question is the Bishop of Exeter, Walter de Stapledon (1261-1326), a favorite character in Michael Jecks’ Knights Templar medieval mysteries. In this 28th volume in the series the bishop meets a grisly end in spite of Sir Baldwin’s and Simon Puttock’s best efforts.

Sir Baldwin of Furnshill, former Templar and now Keeper of the King’s Peace, and Simon HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 23

Puttock, a bailiff who has been dispossessed by Edward II’s favorite, Hugh le Despenser, join forces once again, this time to uncover the source of death threats being left in Stapledon’s private chambers.

The list of suspects is long, as Stapledon and Despenser have colluded in usurping numerous properties throughout England.

The author prepares his chessboard painstakingly, moving each piece – Stapledon, Edward, Despenser, Baldwin, Puttock, the loyal knight Peregrine de Barnstaple and his fiancée, the Lady Isabella Fitzwilliam – from their respective starting places in the story to the Tower of London.

There the action begins. Stapledon’s nemesis is somewhat caught – to explain would spoil the story – but London’s angry mobs become a larger threat. The king and Despenser flee. The bishop refuses to be cowed and surrounded by an armed entourage proceeds down suddenly quiet London streets…

The rest is history, accurate history as in all of Jecks’ stories. Already being a fan of Baldwin & Simon Puttock, I enjoyed this latest of their exploits. My only complaint is that it seemed to take forever for the characters’ individual stories to come together. But patience was rewarded in the end, and I look forward to the next in the series.

Definitely recommended to medieval mystery and history enthusiasts!

Lucille Cormier TEMPTED BY A WARRIOR Amanda Scott, Hachette, 2010, $6.99/C$8.99, pb, 432pp, 9780446561327 In June 1377, in Scotland, Lady Fiona’s husband has disappeared. Until her husband can be found, her father-in-law, Lord Jardine, forces her to accept the guardianship of Sir Richard Seyton, the Laird of Kirkhill, a neighboring clan member and relation of Lord Jardine. As a woman who speaks her mind, Lady Fiona experiences a stormy relationship with Sir Richard, especially after her ill father-in-law dies shortly after Sir Richard arrives. Before Lord Jardine’s death, Sir Richard promised him that he would look into the disappearance of Lady Fiona’s husband and, if it is found that he is dead, make sure the property is inherited by Sir Richard and not Lady Fiona. Everyone suspects foul play, including many who believe that Lady Fiona killed her husband.

This is a historical romance written by prolific romance writer Amanda Scott. If you are looking for a “bodice-ripping” novel with sexual overtones, you will be sadly disappointed. I found the story well-written with well-drawn major characters, especially Lady Fiona and Richard Seyton. The story line is predictable, but the author has added a few surprises to make the plot entertaining. A quick read, and if you enjoy historical romances, you may enjoy this one.

Jeff Westerhoff

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15th century

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24 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

PEOPLE OF THE LONGHOUSE W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O’Neal Gear, Forge, 2010, $25.99, hb, 304pp, 9780765320162 This 17th installment of the Gears’ North America’s Forgotten Past series chronicles hostilities between several Iroquois tribes. In the story, eleven-year-old Odion and his younger sister, Tutelo, are captured in a raid that has left most of his tribe dead. Despite brutal treatment at the hands of his captors, Odion holds out hope that his parents will track them and rescue them before he and Tutelo are killed or worse…

Though I’ve not read any of the Gears’ other titles, my expectation of the series, based on its title and the Gears’ non-fiction introduction to this novel, was that the series is meant to teach readers about native tribes. However, I don’t think the Gears accomplished that goal in this novel. Rather than writing a story about real historical events or the daily struggles of the Iroquois, they wrote a chiller about a child sex slave ring headed by a fearsome witch.

I might not have questioned such a plot in another novel, but in their non-fiction introduction the Gears explained why, a century before the arrival of European settlers, there was so much intertribal violence and how this set the stage for the Iroquois confederation, which was the origin

C

of American ideals of democracy, human rights, respect for diversity, and public welfare. After reading the introduction, I was expecting a novel about inter-tribal violence with seeds of what was to come with the Iroquois confederation. But the plot’s narrow focus on deviant behavior is at odds with the goal of teaching readers the normative behavior of the Iroquois. This is a compelling read, but it does little to teach readers about the forgotten past of the Iroquois or how that past shaped American Constitutional ideals.

Patricia O’Sullivan THE SCARLET CONTESSA Jeanne Kalogridis, St. Martin’s, 2010, $25.99/ C$31.00, hb, 512pp, 9780312369538 Set in the late 15th century, The Scarlet Contessa capitalizes on the decadence of that time. It is the story of Caterina Sforza, born in 1463, an illegitimate daughter of Duke Galeazzo Sforza of Milan. The story is narrated by her lady in waiting, Dea. Dea describes her mistress’ exploits and misadventures over the course of her life. With her, we follow Caterina from Milan to Rome and her married life with Girolamo Riario, son of Pope Sixtus IV, then to Forli, one of her ducal towns.

Forli is captured by Cesare Borgia in 1500. The

POISON: A Novel of the Renaissance

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Sara Poole, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2010, $14.99, pb, 416 pp, 0312609832 Sara Poole, in her new novel, Poison, captures the color and pace of the best contemporary thrillers. With a style similar to James Patterson, the chapters are short and action filled. The plot is tight, each character clearly drawn. Fans of historical fiction will also be pleased with Poison’s factual and tonal accuracy.

The setting is perfect for intrigue: Rome, 1492.

This is the era of the Borgias whose machinations and decadence rival those of their imperial forebears. The story revolves around Francesca Giordano, fictional daughter of Rodrigo Borgia’s poisoner. When her father is killed, Francesca takes a bold step and herself poisons his successor. Borgia is duly impressed and gives her the job. She becomes a key component in his scheme to acquire the papacy.

Borgia’s scheme is multi-layered, and ultimately successful as he will, in time, ascend the papal throne as Alexander VI. Through Francesca, we meet his redoubtable offspring, Cesare and Lucrezia, and are led through Rome’s dangerous streets and labyrinthine Jewish ghetto. Along the way a tender relationship develops with a talented glass blower with secrets to hide. However, with Francesca’s discovery of a poison that leaves no traces, the toughminded young woman engineers the final means and modus operandi for Borgia’s acquisition of the triple tiara. The plan’s execution turns into a series of harrowing adventures reminiscent of Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons, with escapades in the Castel San Angelo, the tombs of St. Peter’s basilica, and the crypt of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.

Poison is a page-turner. It won’t be remembered as a literary work, and its treatment of the Borgias is perhaps too kind, but as a fun read it can’t be beat. Serpent, the second in the series is forthcoming, as well as a third, tentatively titled Malice. I claim first place on the waiting list for both!

Lucille Cormier 14th Century — 15th Century

story ends with Caterina being taken prisoner after Forli’s fall. In real life, after a brief imprisonment Caterina lived quietly in Florence until her death in 1509.

Caterina Sforza is an impressive historical figure.

She is credited for having commanded troops and held the fort of the Castel San Angelo after Sixtus IV’s death throughout the papal election that would decide her family’s fate in Rome. She is said to have strategized and forwarded her family’s political interests throughout her career.

Her reputation as a beautiful, captivating, and bold leader seems well deserved.

Unfortunately, Ms. Kalogridis chose to write this remarkable woman’s story as a “bodice ripper.”

The long descriptions of period costumes, of the beauty or ugliness of characters, along with several pornographic sex scenes are tedious and occasionally tasteless. Of course, if one’s taste runs to bodice ripping then the focus will be serendipitous. Along the same lines, Dea’s seer-like use of the Tarot and her dabbling in mystical forces may or may not hold appeal for individual readers.

The book is long. It’s not dull, though. There is action and drama aplenty. I would say that it is a very good historical soap opera.

Lucille Cormier KNIGHT OF PASSION Margaret Mallory, Grand Central, 2010, $6.99, pb, 416pp, 9780446559867 Jamie Rayburn first fell in love with Lady Linnet as a teenager living in Paris, only to find that Linnet was using him to get out of marriage to a man she didn’t want to marry. Years later, Jamie thinks he’s over Linnet’s betrayal—and then he rescues her from a London riot. While they are several years older, Linnet is still the same—willing to use others to accomplish her own goals. This time, she’s looking for revenge against the men who destroyed her grandfather’s textile business, leaving her family destitute, and she’ll stop at nothing to find these men and make them pay. But neither Jamie nor Linnet can deny the attraction that they feel for one another, and as their relationship develops, Linnet must choose between her craving for retribution and her love for Jamie.

Mallory’s fast-paced medieval romance features plenty of action, a spirited and intelligent heroine, and a scorcher of a love story. As with most romances, you know how this is going to end, and it’s the getting to that happy ending that makes the book enjoyable. The obstacles preventing Jamie and Linnet from getting to their happy ending are clever and exciting, and both of the main characters are appealing. Good medieval romances can be difficult to come by, and fans of the genre should enjoy this one.

Nanette Donohue

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16th century

HONOUR AND THE SWORD 15th Century — 16th Century

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A L Berridge, Michael Joseph, 2010, £12.99, hb, 630pp, 9780718155445 1636 – the height of the Thirty Years War. As the story opens, Spanish armies invade King Louis XIII’s France. The sleepy border village of Dax-enroi stands in their way. Facing the overwhelming might of the Spanish forces, the Chevalier de Roland rallies a valiant defence, but in vain – his household guard is no match for the invaders.

There is only one survivor – a young boy by the name of André de Roland, the new Sieur of Dax. He must take on the mantle of leader of resistance, while learning what it means to be a nobleman.

The book is a collection of contemporary documents supposedly translated by historian ‘Dr Edward Morton’. Although written in modern idiom it still retains the voice of the period. As it is meticulously researched, you become immersed in the culture of the time. Written in the first person from a variety of points of view – but interestingly not from the view of the central character Andre de Roland – you see the same incident from different angles, bringing an urgency and excitement to this action packed novel. The pace is fast and unrelenting. This is a real page turner. I finished it with a loud sigh of satisfaction – and then started to read it again. If you like your action hot and in large doses, this is for you. Highly recommended.

Mike Ashworth A MURDER OF CROWS P. F. Chisholm, Poisoned Pen Press, 2010, $24.95, hb, 258pp, 9781590586570 / also $14.95, pb, 9781590587379 I am delighted to see the return of Sir Robert Carey and Sergeant Dodd after so many years!

This is the fifth in the series that is normally set in the borderlands between Scotland and England, and in which the reivers (raiders) play such a large role. However, this installment, set in 1592, takes place in London, which makes for something of a change. Sir Robert Carey, Deputy Warden while he is in Carlisle, is seen in this story more through the prism of being the son of a highly-placed father and a redoubtable mother. Sergeant Dodd is having some trouble adjusting to life amongst a higher society than he is used to, and he doesn’t have a lot good to say about the clothing he is being forced to wear. He does manage to bring something of the rough-and-tumble life in the north to his experiences in London, though to be truthful, it isn’t all his fault. The plot hinges around two elements: Dodd’s arrest and beating at the behest of the Queen’s vice chamberlain, Thomas Heneage, and some land deals in Cornwall that seem to have been connected to the deaths of two men. One of these men has been found in Sir Robert’s father’s jurisdiction, and his father wants the matter cleared up. This is enough to get Sir Robert and Dodd involved.

The author (Patricia Finney), a master of the time period, paints a vivid picture of life in London, especially in the seamier undersides. Will Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe are present, as is the “King of London.” This book stands alone

well, but I’d highly recommend starting from the first (A Famine of Horses) for the richest experience of these characters.

Trudi E. Jacobson ALL THE QUEEN’S PLAYERS Jane Feather, Gallery, 2010, $15, pb, 382pp, 9781415525547 Historical romance author Feather tries her hand at historical fiction with strong romantic elements in this Tudor-era novel featuring Rosamund Walsingham, cousin of Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster Francis Walsingham.

Rosamund has grown up in the country with her brother Thomas, a man-about-town and the lover of playwright Christopher Marlowe. When Rosamund and Thomas are summoned to London

by Walsingham, Rosamund becomes enchanted by the theatre, and realizes that she wants nothing more than to be a part of this world even though it’s not a proper place for a young lady of good breeding. But her cousin has different plans for her, and Rosamund finds herself inserted into the court of Queen Elizabeth as a junior lady of the bedchamber, where she is instructed to report back on the goings-on among the Queen’s closest confidantes. While at court, Rosamund gets to know Will Creighton, a handsome courtier with ties to the theatre. Their flirtation quickly becomes serious, changing her cousin’s plans dramatically.

Not surprisingly, the most successful parts of the novel are the romantic scenes between Rosamund and Will. They are fleeting and sensual, hinting at the possibility of a happy ending. It’s difficult to believe that this naïve, untested country girl is able to adapt to cutthroat court life and successfully spy on Mary, Queen of Scots with a little bit of tutoring from Walsingham’s well-meaning wife. A subplot involving a French chevalier who attempts to seduce Rosamund in order to get back at her brother falls flat, and Rosamund’s obsession with the theatre goes nowhere. While parts of this novel are very enjoyable, Feather is trying to do too many things at once. A narrower focus, perhaps on the romance between Rosamund and Will, would have been an improvement.

Nanette Donohue COMING OF THE STORM W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O’Neal Gear, Gallery, 2010, $26.00/C$29.99, hb, 484pp, 9781439153888 In 1539, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto landed his forces in Florida and began a brutal three-year exploration of what is today the southeastern United States, passing through several states and venturing as far north as North Carolina and as far west as Texas. Most of the Native American nations that he encountered had never before seen Europeans, and those encounters often ended with Native Americans slaughtered or enslaved, their villages destroyed, and their religion and customs extinguished by Christianity.

Black Shell is a Chicaza trader who has been chosen by Horned Serpent of the Spirit Beings HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 25

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Lawrence Goldstone, Walker and Company, 2010, $24.00, hb, 304pp, 9780802719867 Do not – I repeat – do not start the last one hundred pages of Lawrence Goldstone’s The Astronomer if anything or anyone will demand your attention before you finish it. Warm the coffee, bolt the door, turn off the phone, and then settle in for takeoff.

The novel is set primarily in 16th-century France, at a time when the Reformation and new scientific ideas were challenging the Catholic power structure.

Through protagonist Amaury Faverges, the reader is brought into a number of communities involved in that struggle, from the dreary and brutally austere college of theology where the opening scenes are set, to the secret meeting rooms of persecuted Lutherans, to the French court of the self-absorbed King François and the openminded court of his sister Marguerite of Navarre, and finally to the cloistered tower of physician-astronomer Copernicus in Poland. Along the way, freethinking Amaury’s ideas are challenged as frequently as his life is threatened, and simple ideas of right and wrong, heresy and piety, heroism and cowardice give way to a more nuanced, although sadder and more skeptical view of humankind. Horrific scenes of brutality in the streets contrast with cool and almost bloodless depictions of the halls of power.

The tension rises toward a tumultuous conclusion, as Amaury braves the nearly impenetrable wilderness and brutal weather of Poland to arrive at Copernicus’ solitary hideaway before the scholar can be murdered and twenty years of work proving the heliocentric theory can be destroyed. The last few pages of this vivid and lucidly written novel reveal that nothing in life turns out quite as predicted, but that reinvention of the self in new circumstances is always possible, and that being true to oneself may lead to a happier, fuller life.

Laurel Corona to do whatever it takes to stop the advancing Kristianos, the Spanish conquistadores. His wife Pearl Hand is half-Spanish and knows only too well the power, arrogance, and cruelty of the invaders. Together, the two must find a way to convince the scattered native nations of Florida to come together to resist the Europeans. Nothing less than the world as they know it is at stake. But how can they possible defeat the Spanish who have such powerful weapons as armor, “fire-sticks,” swords, and the terrifying cabayos?

The Gears, a husband and wife writing team with strong backgrounds in anthropology and archaeology, are the authors of several bestselling novels about Native Americans. Coming of the Storm, the first book in a new series about Native Americans at the time of European contact, is rich in the Gears’ customary adherence to historical and cultural accuracy while maintaining an exciting and fast-paced narrative. There are occasional lapses in dialogue in which the characters sound more contemporary than 16th-century, but those can be overlooked in this fascinating chapter of Native American history.

John Kachuba THE RED QUEEN Philippa Gregory, Touchstone, 2010, $25.99, hb, 448pp, 9781416563723 / Simon & Schuster, 2010, £18.99, 400pp, 9781847374578 Despite her visions of being England’s Joan 26 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

of Arc, Margaret Beaufort is nothing more than a pawn in the House of Lancaster’s struggle to keep the throne during the War of the Roses.

In 1453, at age 11, she is betrothed to the king’s half-brother, Edmund Tudor, who dies before the birth of their son, Henry, a Lancaster heir to the throne. Edmund’s brother, Jasper Tudor, appointed guardian of Margaret’s son, raises him to be king far away in Wales. Margaret rarely sees her son after her marriage at age 13 to an older, trusted Lancaster supporter, Henry Stafford, whom she comes to regard as a coward and a traitor.

When Stafford dies, a delusional Margaret believes that if Edward IV, whom she despises, could meet her, he would rid himself of his coarse, commoner wife, Elizabeth Woodville, and marry Margaret, the wealthy Lancaster heiress. She then pursues the possibility of marrying Richard of Gloucester, but too late; he’s already married Anne Neville. Margaret’s next ploy is to propose a platonic marriage to Sir Thomas Stanley. Once loyal to Lancaster, he’s now highly placed in the York court. Stanley is notorious for always backing the winning side. Although pledged to Richard III, he holds back his army at Bosworth until he determines the winner and then enters the battle on Henry Tudor’s side. On the battlefield, Stanley removes the crown from the fallen Richard’s helmet and, kneeling before Henry, hands it to him.

Ms. Gregory is a consummate historical author.

In The Red Queen she paints a fascinating portrait

of a plain-looking, superstitious, extremely pious woman who is convinced of her divine right to rule England. It’s difficult to sympathize with Margaret.

This is an interesting companion to The White Queen, and the second novel in The Cousins’ War series.

Audrey Braver THE DARK ROSE Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, Sourcebooks Landmark, 2010 (c1981), $14.99/C$17.99, pb, 592pp, 9781402238161 / Sphere, 1981, £9.99, pb, 560pp, 9780751503838 Paul Morland is master of a wool-producing estate near York in the era of Henry VIII. He’s unhappily married and has only one son. He resents his half-brother Jack for his sibling’s many children and ease in social settings. Paul tries to find joy in the arms of his mistress, who gives birth to his illegitimate son. When Jack dies in an epidemic that also takes Paul’s wife and mistress, he has a change of heart and vows to educate and care for Jack’s children, including his half-niece, Nanette.

Nanette is sent to be educated in a prosperous household and later becomes lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine. Once Anne Boleyn arrives at court, she and Nanette become close confidantes, and Nanette witnesses all the turbulence of the king’s many wives and the dangerous machinations of the royal court. At Morland Place, Paul is faced with financial ruin and the jealousy between his two sons, which will have tragic consequences.

Through it all, Paul and Nanette share a forbidden attraction to one another that could destroy them both.

This is a sweeping saga that follows the entire reign of Henry VIII, full of religious turmoil and court intrigues. First published in 1981, the novel “tells” in many places, versus “shows,” and adjectives and adverbs abound, but once I got past my modern sensibility, I loved the historical detail and vibrant characters. Although long at 592 pages, I still didn’t want the story to end. The Dark Rose is one in a vast series on the Morland Dynasty.

Diane Scott Lewis REALM James Jackson, John Murray, 2010, £12.99, pb, 402pp, 9781848540026 1588. The Spanish Armada is ready to set sail from Lisbon while in the Low Countries the Duke of Parma waits with his army to invade England Much has been written about the Armada and much theorising on whether it was Drake and his expertise and fire ships or the sudden storms which saved England from becoming an extension of Spain, but this book tells the tale from a very different angle.

Walsingham is Elizabeth I’s spymaster. His network is vast and those in his pay are many.

Letters and instructions are often carried on the ships which ply between London and the Iberian Peninsula, some of the most famous being those which finally condemned Mary Queen of Scots, the 16th Century

point at which this story opens. In Portugal, ruled

by Spain at this time, Inquisitor Garza, a fanatical Jesuit priest, aims to intercept these messages and eventually to become Grand Inquisitor of England when that, too, comes under Spanish rule. Meanwhile back in England Walsingham is worried by the fact that his intelligence sources are drying up and sends his agent, Christian Hardy to find out what is happening.

This is a real page-turner. Drama and suspense are there in plenty. Life in 16th-century England was raw and this book tells it as it was. Once started, I could not put it down and highly recommend it.

Marilyn Sherlock HIS LAST DUCHESS Gabrielle Kimm, Sphere, 2010, £6.99, pb, 398pp, 9780751544503 This debut novel is a fictionalised account of the real life Lucrezia de’Medici, probably best known for being the eponymous heroine in ‘His Last Duchess’, the wonderful poem by Robert Browning. Set in 16th-century Italy, the novel follows the fortunes of the young Lucrezia as she is married off to the fifth Duke of Ferrara. Anyone who has read or knows the poem will already be aware that this is not going to end well.

Bearing in mind that this is one of my favourite poems and an era of history I find fascinating, the question remains why did this novel leave me cold? There is passion, jealousy, and intrigue, and it is well-researched, full of historical detail. It examines the vulnerability of women in this world where they are totally dependent on the whims of men but for me, the characters came to life only sporadically and there was too many ‘lurching with longing’ type of phrases. All the details of the poem are faithfully included, making it sometimes feel a little bit like an extended creative writing task. It is designed and packaged for reading groups with notes and questions included and there is plenty of scope for discussion. It is targeted at fans of Phillipa Gregory and Sarah Dunant and although of similar ilk, it isn’t quite up to their standards. A pleasant enough romantic read which does create a well-realised historical world, but ultimately fails to compel as much as I had hoped.

Ann Northfield FATE & FORTUNE Shirley McKay, Polygon, 2010, £12.99, hb, 306pp, 9781846971549 Giles Locke, physician, is reluctantly diagnosing yet another case of ‘morbus gallicus’ [the pox].

Hastening to join his wife Meg for the funeral of her father, Justicar Matthew Cullan, he is re-united with his greatest friend and brother-in-law. Hew Cullan has made the long journey to Fife, Scotland, in the very cold winter of 1580. He has been unable to settle to living in Paris and to the legal profession, which he considers holds no natural justice. Discarding all comforts on the way he still arrives too late to be with his father at the end.

Hew soon begins to find the responsibilities he now holds as head of the family irksome. Using 16th Century

the excuse of ensuring Matthew’s book will be published posthumously, he travels south. Arriving into an Edinburgh that holds the new 15-year-old King James VI, there is a sense of renewal and vibrancy in the air. However, before long, Hew finds himself immersed in a hidden mystery, a brutal murder and a missing child. Against his natural inclination he becomes once more involved in the practice of law.

Shirley McKay has written a gripping novel, having created a true hero in Hew Cullan.

The book is well researched and intelligently plotted. The characters fit well into the historical background which gives them a sense of period and place. If the depth of Scottish dialect hampers the flow at times, the balance of the story makes for compulsive reading.

Fate & Fortune is very well told and holds a worthy place in the growing genre of historical crime fiction.

Gwen Sly CAPTURED BY DESIRE Kira Morgan, Forever, 2010, $6.99/C$8.99, pb, 384pp, 9780446548182 Florie Gilder is a skilled apprentice goldsmith living in the Scottish Borderlands during the reign of England’s Edward VI. Lady Mavis, the wife of Lord Gilbert, wheedles an heirloom pomander from Florie’s servant, who sells the piece by mistake. Florie panics. The pomander is the only way she has to find her real father. Finally, Florie grabs it, tosses Lady Mavis’s money back at her and runs. Florie, now an outlaw, takes refuge in an abandoned church, where she can safely hide for forty days and nights.

Enter the hero, Rane McAllister, master huntsman to Lord Gilbert. Because Rane shot Florie in the leg with his bow, Gilbert charges him to care for Florie while she is in sanctuary, and then bring her in or Rane will take her place on the gibbet. Of course, Rane and Florie fall in love.

The one thing I love about romance novels is that there is a “Happily Ever After.” No matter how terrible and challenging the circumstances would be to us ordinary mortals, the hero and heroine survive and prosper. So, too, the villain, in this case Lady Mavis, gets it in the end. You can rest assured the causes of justice and love are served here. Captured by Desire is a fun, fast read perfect for the beach.

Monica E. Spence EMPIRE OF THE MOGHUL: BROTHERS AT WAR Alex Rutherford, Headline, 2010, £18.99, hb, 436pp, 9780753347544 The novel opens three months after the death of the first Moghul Emperor, and the coronation of his son, Humayan. Right from the start Humayan finds that his brothers are plotting against him, each wanting their own share of the Empire; instead of executing them he grants them governorship over various regions. However, having secured his throne against the immediate threat, Humayan

finds that threats to his reign can be more subtle than and just as effective as assassination. He becomes addicted to opium as supplied by the mother of one of his half brothers and his empire collapses as his enemies, including his brothers, take advantage of his addled state. The latter half of the book is taken up with Humayan striving to restore his empire.

This is the second in the series and carries on naturally from the first. The whole life and times of the Mughal dynasty are brought to life in vivid imagery. The battle scenes are effectively written; while the characters are colourful and believable. Alex Rutherford is a pseudonym for two writers, but the writing is seamless, and reflects a deep knowledge of the period without being overpowering. I was really drawn into the book. This is compelling reading and is a worthy successor to Raiders from the North. It can be read without reference to its predecessor, but readers will gain more by reading Raiders first. More please! Recommended.

Mike Ashworth THE SECRET CONFESSIONS OF ANNE SHAKESPEARE Arliss Ryan, NAL, 2010, $15.00/C18.50, pb, 480pp, 9780451229953 NB: This is a novel. This is among the great things historical novels can do.

A year or so after her famous and much younger husband leaves Stratford-upon-Avon, their three children and their crumbling marriage to make his fortune with the Queen’s Men players, Anne née Hathaway (without warning) heads out on her own for London to join him. She finds him holding horses for gentry come to see the plays. He is an actor of bit parts, never likely, Anne instantly sees, to do better. He does not want her and cannot afford to keep her. When a costume repair job and some script copying come her way, she takes them. And sometimes she repairs the scripts she copies. And she takes Kit Marlowe as her lover.

Between romps, they write Richard III together.

Later, Ben Jonson adds his acerbic attentions and his two cents. In general, Will wrote all the bad stuff (Cymbeline), and all the best stuff (Hamlet) is Anne’s, which she was forced to put under her husband’s name in that day and age.

I have never been a believer in any of the other “Who Wrote Shakespeare?” exercises, no matter how well argued with facts. This novel, however, has me considering. Yes, I have always chafed under the image of the cruelly used Anne, wasting her life away in Stratford to die in that “second-best bed.” The collaborative nature of the crafting of the greatest plays in the English language is beautifully illustrated. Even the publication of the first folio makes perfect chronological sense now, just before the widow Anne’s death. I’m buying this, at least enough to get sucked into the story. Only a few modernisms, and the children—I can’t get over those abandoned children—toss me out.

Ann Chamberlin HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 27

SHADOW PRINCESS Indu Sundaresan, Atria, 2010, $25.00, hb, 333pp, 9781416548799 The norm in the 16th-century Mughal Indian imperial palace is for a lesser wife from the harem to become chief confidante of the Shah and female head of the household upon the death of a favorite wife. Jahanara, however, assumes that role upon the death of her mother, Mumtaz Mahal, becoming comforter and advisor to the revered Shah Jahan.

Her sister, Roshanara, vies with her for power and even for a lover, as the Shah or Bapa, father, will allow neither to marry. He is only concerned about marrying off and carefully placing his sons in power and ensuring that the correct son eventually succeeds him as Emperor.

Not presenting a stereotypical plot, this story concerns the building of the Taj Mahal in tribute to Mumtaz Mahal, The Luminous Tomb, and other lesser burial sites for royalty and nobility, each gorgeously and intricately planned, constructed, and decorated. The novel is also a cultural exposé of Indian art, music, dress, bloody sport, jewelry, food and so much more of this historical period, all included with such delicate and yet precise explanation that the details enhance rather than detract from this fascinating tale. Obedience is inviolate, that is, until the opinion of the Empire begins to sway away from the expected heir.

Assassination of male siblings is an acceptable act

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that mandates a powerful son do it – or it most certainly will be done to the one implementing a successful coup. Character is the definer of quality leadership, not necessarily one’s place in the line of succession.

The reader comes to know Jahanara well in so many different facets of her engaging, complex personality and actions. Shadow Princess is an exquisite historical novel by an obviously talented writer.

Viviane Crystal HIS LAST LETTER Jeane Westin, NAL, 2010, $16.00/C$20.00, pb, 400pp, 9780451230126 As Elizabeth I celebrates her defeat of the Spanish Armada, tragic news arrives: the queen’s dear friend Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, has died. With the news of his death, however, has come a farewell letter from the man who was the queen’s greatest love.

Having started at the end of the relationship between the queen and her favorite, His Last Letter proceeds to go back in time, shifting between the remote and the recent past and alternating its point of view between Elizabeth and Leicester.

While this was an interesting approach to the story, I found that something was lost: a sense of the characters and their relationship deepening and changing over time. As a result, while I found

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Kenneth Wishnia, Morrow, 2010, $25.99, hb, 387pp, 9780061725371 Sara Paretsky’s cover blurb gets it exactly right: Kenneth Wishnia’s The Fifth Servant is indeed “an extraordinary novel.” Set in 16th-century Prague, it revolves around the murder of a young Christian girl whose mutilated body is found inside a Jewish merchant’s shop. How different individuals and communities within Prague react to the murder illustrates the tensions within and between Jewish and Christian communities, each struggling with religious “freethinking,” and other challenges to the orthodoxy of the past, as well as with their own foibles and idiosyncrasies and those of their neighbors.

In another’s hands, the resulting novel might end up grim and pedantic, but Wishnia manages to turn the story into something Dickensian in its comic turns, richly drawn cast of characters, and plot twists.

Wisecracking newcomer and protagonist Benyamin ben-Akiva struggles to find the evidence that the Jewish merchant is being framed as a means of fanning the ever-present hatred of Jews into open riots. At the same time he is trying to win back his frivolous, estranged wife and break through the suspicions the entrenched Jewish community has about an outsider serving as the new shammes (adminstrator) of one of the synagogues.

His sleuthing takes him from yeshiva to brothel, from palace to graveyard, where he encounters some of the most engaging secondary characters in recent historical fiction—a Christian butcher’s daughter with the soul of a Talmudic scholar, an herbalist fighting charges of witchcraft, bickering yeshiva students, tough guys, tender hearts, complete idiots and fearless heroes. This book is highly recommended not just for those who like a good read, but for serious students of the craft of fiction writing.

Laurel Corona 28 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

this novel entertaining and readable, I never felt the emotional connection to the leads that one should feel in a novel that is essentially a love story. Worse, although Leicester’s death provides the framework for the story, Elizabeth’s grief and recovery seemed almost an afterthought. I did find compensations, however, in the scenes between Elizabeth and her other courtiers and in those between Leicester and his wife Lettice. The latter, though unsympathetic, never felt like a cardboard villain.

Westin does seem to feel at home in the Tudor court, and her dialogue has a period feel without sounding stilted. Fans of Tudor fiction will probably find this a diverting read.

Susan Higginbotham

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THE ITALIAN POTION Edward Bewley, Hale, 2010, £18.99, hb, 224pp, 9780709089421 Set in Restoration London, in 1663, this is Bewley’s first novel. As a journalist he is well able to string words together, and he obviously knows his period. But the book didn’t ‘sing’ for me. Perhaps because the characters are flat, perhaps because I didn’t believe in the love the hero had for the woman to whom he becomes engaged, perhaps because there was a lack of descriptive detail.

Dress, place, people are hardly described at all, which impedes the reader from entering into the world the author has created.

The story opens with a meeting for a demonstration of how to turn base metal into gold, which the hero, Francis Wyld, attends. When the man who claims to have found the secret is later murdered, Wyld is called in to investigate. The plot twists its way through Court intrigue, villainous attacks and murder to the denouement, where all – or nearly all – we never do discover how the transmutation of lead to gold was achieved! – is explained and resolved.

Written in the first person, the style has overtones of Pepys, which adds a period feel, but I found the story slow-paced, which did not make for an enjoyable read. jay Dixon THE PINDAR DIAMOND Katie Hickman, Bloomsbury, 2010, £11.99, pb, 279pp, 9780747499951 / Bloomsbury USA, 2010, $16.00, pb, 288pp, 9781608192137 This is a beautiful book set in a beautiful city, Venice at the beginning of the 17th century. It is the sequel to The Aviary Gate, set in Constantinople a few years earlier. Readers who enjoyed The Aviary Gate will enjoy the lush descriptions and rich prose of The Pindar Diamond and they will also be better equipped to follow the plot. The plot of The Aviary Gate is summarised by one of the characters in The Pindar Diamond but not until chapter 28.

Neither plot is ever fully explained. How did Pindar’s lost lover reach Italy? Who tried to drown 16th Century — 17th Century

her? Who is the father of her child? Perhaps it is wrong to treat this as a detective story. The book is like the canals of Venice, beautiful, dark, mysterious, meandering and confusing. The characters are colourful and exotic and by modern standards quite crazy.

Hickman is good at building up tension, whether in a nunnery or a gaming house, and her sense of place is superb. Revel in it but don’t try to rationalise it.

Edward James LIBERTINE’S KISS Judith James, HQN, 2010, $7.99, pb, 384pp, 9780373775057 Elizabeth Walters has lost much during the English Civil War, including her father, her husband and her lands. But when a handsome stranger knocks on her door one stormy night, weak and wounded, so begins her own personal restoration on the eve of the political restoration of King Charles II. I have mixed feelings about this novel. From a romance novel standpoint, it had some surprisingly good historical elements, but from a historical novel standpoint, the romance was predictable, and there were a surprising number of errors. First, the latter point: references to novels, cranberry crisp, china plate and tea are anachronistic for mid-17thcentury England. Also, General George Monck’s name is spelled incorrectly, and the author suggests that Richard Cromwell was pardoned and had his lands restored by Charles II when, in truth, Cromwell fled England, spending most of the rest of his life in exile. In addition, this novel is stuffed with adjectives and adverbs that serve to distract from rather than illuminate a scene or character.

However, the author does an excellent job of capturing the personality of Charles II and his court and has a good understanding of the political difficulties Charles II faced.

Patricia O’Sullivan LADY OF THE BUTTERFLIES (US) / REBEL HEIRESS (alt. title, UK) Fiona Mountain, Putnam, 2010, $25.95, hb, 544pp, 978-0399156366 / Arrow, 2010, £6.99, pb, 672pp, 9781848091658 The Glanville Fritillary, a butterfly now found primarily on the Isle of Wight, is named for Lady Eleanor Glanville, who first captured them in the marshes of coastal England in the 1600s. Although labeled as mad even by her own family, we now know that the Lady of the Butterflies was in fact a remarkable woman of genius and passion.

Had Eleanor Goodricke been born a man like her father wished, she would no doubt have become a prominent member of the Royal Society. Instead, her only choices for a future lay in marriage.

Although she lost her entire family by early adolescence, Eleanor’s bond with her Puritan father had been especially strong. For the rest of her life, she would seek comfort in his teachings. Mountain suggests that her fascination with butterflies was in part due to her father’s belief that God had placed 17th Century

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Paul Lawrence, Beautiful Books, 2010, £8.99, pb, 438pp, 9781905636914 A Plague of Sinners is the second chronicle of Harry Lytle, newly-appointed King’s Agent, and follows on from The Sweet Smell of Decay (reviewed in May’s HNR). Now working for the king under the authority of Lord Arlington, Harry, and his valiant companion Dowling the Butcher, is tasked with investigating the grisly murder of the Earl of St Albans. This investigation is hampered at every stage as various antagonists intervene, further murders occur, and the plague ravages the city of London.

Harry is at his most splendid when up against impossible odds, and his own violent death is threatened at every turn of the page. But still our dogged hero sets himself to catch a serial killer who takes pleasure in the pain and fear he inflicts.

With all the glory and dissolution of Restoration London as its backdrop, this novel is a fine rollicking romp that serves its humour pitch black and its terror in Technicolor. Harry Lytle is a great character, full of bluster, wit, cunning and morality. The action never lets up, and the reader is kept guessing right to the final pages.

A strong stomach may be required, and those of a squeamish disposition might spend much time flinching, but this is historical mystery at its very best.

Sara Wilson

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E D I TORS’ CH OICE THE FINAL ACT OF MR SHAKESPEARE

Robert Winder, Little Brown, 2010, £16.99, hb, 446pp, 9781408702062 London 1613, and William Shakespeare returns from Stratford to the oppressive reign of King James.

On visiting Sir Walter Raleigh in the Tower, he is “persuaded” to write a play about the reign of Henry VIII. Instead, Shakespeare decides that he will draft a true history of Henry VII, and after receiving some encrypted claims about the first Tudor king’s reign from one Stanyhurst, he is determined to include some incendiary and very dangerous passages about his demise and Henry VIII’s role in this. Shakespeare thus brings together for one final time the King’s Men, and they extemporise the outline of the play until it is ready for Shakespeare to finesse and write a final version. Most of the book is thus focused on the process of creating and developing the Henry VII play. This is a dangerous pursuit for all those involved, and indeed, there is much intrigue, deception suspected treachery and clandestine behaviour.

The basic historical context is sound with the main characters true, although the author freely admits to creating events and massaging others to develop the tale. And indeed, he does this spectacularly well. He digs into the very soul of Shakespeare to examine the man and his dramatic genius, as well as the setting of early 17th-century London. Winder also makes an impressive attempt at writing this new Henry VII play, most of it in capable and near authentic faux Shakespearean iambic pentameter lines, i.e. five feet beats.

Doug Kemp

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ISLAND BENEATH THE SEA

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Isabel Allende, Harper, 2010, $26.99, hb, 464pp, 9780061993626 / Fourth Estate, 2010, £18.99, hb, 400pp, 9780007348640 Isabel Allende is at the top of her game in Island Beneath the Sea, a seductive, sprawling historical novel set in Haiti and New Orleans in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Zarité is a young slave bought by a French nobleman, Valmorain, to help care for his mentally unstable Spanish bride on a Saint-Domingue sugar plantation. She soon experiences the fate of many female slaves, and gives birth to a son who Valmorain callously sends away. However, when Zarité proves herself irreplaceable taking care of Valmorain’s white son, Maurice, the master allows her to keep their second child, a daughter by the name of Rosette. These twin ties are enough to keep Zarité from racing to freedom with her young lover, a runaway slave who has a prominent role in the bloody slave revolt, but her price for saving Valmorain’s life—and getting them all out of Saint-Domingue—is a paper promising Zarité and her daughter their freedom. After moving to a plantation in New Orleans, Valmorain neglects his promise, and this leads to trouble not only for Zarité and Rosette, but also for Valmorain’s only son, Maurice, who grows up determined to be a different sort of man than his father.

Isabel Allende is a fabulous storyteller who brings to life a world of disparate characters and makes the reader care—even for the very worst of them. The author effortlessly portrays slave life as well as the fine gradations of New Orleans’ white and multi-colored society. Once again, Ms. Allende has written the kind of novel that you swiftly sink into; the kind that you wish would never end.

Lisa Ann Verge

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THE BELLS

Richard Harvell, Shaye Areheart, 2010, $24.00, hb, 384pp, 9780307590527 When I look at my copy of The Bells sitting in front of me, I cannot believe it lies there immobile and lifeless. The sounds and music within its pages should make the book throb and vibrate across the table.

During the time I spent entranced with this story, my body rang like the bells within its pages.

The Bells is a fictional autobiography, a letter written by a castrati father to his son, explaining how their relationship came to be. Moses Froben is born in a remote Swiss village to a deaf-mute woman who finds her one great pleasure (apart from her love for her son) in the vibrations she feels ringing the massive bells in her village’s church. These bells are so loud that the villagers clamp their hands to their ears, but the sound has a different effect on Moses, giving him an almost magical ability to hear and dissect sounds, near and far. When the village priest (his father) discovers that Moses is not deaf like his mother, the man attempts to drown Moses in a river. Moses is rescued by traveling monks, Nicolai and Remus, and taken to the monastery at St. Gall. Here his angelic voice is discovered by the choir master and preserved for all time by a horrible act of castration.

Surprisingly, The Bells is a love story, for Moses falls in love with a woman who is forbidden to him. The Bells is also a mystery—for how can Moses, a castrati, a musico, be the father of the recipient of this novel-length letter? Finally, The Bells is music. Harvell’s magical prose gives sound to Moses’ life: the bells, the arias, and the uneven breath of true love.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt 30 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

them on the earth to remind us of eternal life – that butterflies emerged on glorious wings like the bodies of the dead on Judgment Day. Eleanor’s story, told against the background of the politics of the Restoration, is foremost a passionate romance. After the death of her first husband, Eleanor marries Richard Glanville, a man whose love for her results in their mutual sexual intoxication. But as much as Eleanor Glanville was a woman born centuries too soon, she was also a woman of her time. As much as she sought personal freedoms, she was bound by a Puritan upbringing she could never truly abandon.

Fiona Mountain has given us a beautifully written story about one woman’s desire to be herself. She has created a story that touches the soul and lingers in the mind. This book is highly recommended.

Veronika Pelka AFTER THE FIRE John Pilkington, Hale, 2010, £18.99, hb, 224pp, 9780709090335 Set in London, 1670, four years after the Great Fire which destroyed so much of the city, this novel follows the fortunes and amateur investigations of actress Betsy Brand. The mysterious deaths of several men connected with the theatre, enforcing its closure due to the scandal, inspires Betsy to set about finding the killer and solving the puzzle of how they were killed and why, with a little help from her amiable landlord and doctor, Tom Catlin.

There are several inventive and amusing scenes involving elaborate disguises and an unusual filling in a pie and while not particularly believable, the action rattles along at a good pace and certainly provides entertainment. The historical setting is conveyed more with the odd words used such as ‘buffle-head’ and ‘molly- men’ rather than detailed description and the heroine is remarkably modern in her outlook and behaviour. While unlikely to set the world on fire (sorry for the pun), this novel tells a good yarn. Characterisation and setting are somewhat thin but on the whole I enjoyed the tale.

Ann Northfield

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THE REBELLION OF JANE CLARKE Sally Gunning, Morrow, 2010, $24.99, hb, 288pp, 9780061782145 It’s 1769, and Jane Clarke of Satucket, Cape Cod, has been banished from the family home as punishment by her domineering father after she refuses a marriage proposal from an eligible suitor.

Although she cares for the man, she balks at the idea of marrying someone she doesn’t know well.

She is sent to Boston to look after an elderly aunt.

There are British soldiers in Boston at this time, stationed there to help enforce the Townshend Acts, and the city is a tense place. But Jane is happy to be there, away from her father, and near her brother, who is a law clerk for John Adams.

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Jane, an intelligent young woman, quickly becomes interested in the political situation in Boston. Tensions eventually erupt into violence, and Jane is an eyewitness to the Boston Massacre, where five civilians are killed when British soldiers fire into a crowd after being harassed by patriots who resent their presence. Jane’s brother is among the wounded. The British captain who commanded the soldiers involved in the massacre is put on trial, with John Adams serving as his lawyer. During the trial, Jane must come to grips with her conscience when she sees all around her, even those she loves and admires, changing their narration of events to suit their political purposes.

Sally Gunning is equally adept at depicting a city on the brink of rebellion, a young woman’s coming of age, and the beautiful Cape Cod landscape. I was completely caught up in the story and enjoyed every moment.

Jane Kessler WICKED INTENTIONS Elizabeth Hoyt, Grand Central, 2010, $6.99, pb, 416pp, 9780446558945 Young widow Temperance Dews manages a foundling home in London’s notorious St. Giles slum with her brother, Winter. When the home’s landlord threatens to evict them from their home, Temperance realizes that she must take action.

An opportunity presents itself when Lazarus Huntington, Lord Caire, approaches Temperance with a proposal. He is looking for the murderer of his mistress, a prostitute who plied her trade in St. Giles. In exchange for Temperance’s assistance with the colorful denizens of the slum, Caire will provide her with entrée into London’s wealthiest drawing rooms, allowing her to find a new benefactor for the foundling home.

It’s exciting to see Hoyt, a talented author of Regency romances, turn her attentions to the mid-18th century, but Wicked Intentions is light on history. If you remove a few passing references to “the king” and change the fashions, it could be set at any time during a 200-year period. However, the love story is enjoyable. Both hero and heroine are flawed—Caire cannot abide a woman’s touch due to events of his childhood, and Temperance has a dark secret that she refuses to share with anyone—and the relationship between Caire and Temperance grows slowly but steadily. As this is the first in a series, loose ends abound, and readers may find themselves eagerly anticipating the next novel.

Nanette Donohue THE RAKE AND THE REDHEAD Emily Johnson, Hale, 2010, £18.99, hb, 222pp, 9780709086291 This is the story of Miss Hyacinthe Dancy and Blase, Lord Norwood, based around a small village on Lord Norwood’s estate not far from Oxford.

He is planning a major re-landscaping project which will mean destroying the village, including the ancient village church and moving all the inhabitants into new cottages. Hyacinthe’s cousin, 18th Century

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THE MISTAKEN WIFE

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Rose Melikan, Sphere, 2010, £11.99, pb, 402pp, 9781847442871 / Touchstone, 2010, $15.00, pb, 432pp, 9781416560906 1797 and in the aftermath of the French Revolution, General Bonaparte’s armies are sweeping across Europe. The British government is deeply concerned about Bonaparte’s territorial ambitions, suspecting that invading Britain is next on his agenda. Their secret contacts have brought the unwelcome news that the newly independent USA may be considering an alliance with Revolutionary France.

Meanwhile, the independent-minded Mary Finch embarks on another assignment for the reclusive Government agent, Cuthbert Shy. He wants her to go to France and persuade the American delegation that it is in their interests to remain neutral. It all sounds horribly vague and Mary is well aware that it is also exceedingly dangerous. The Terror has ended, but arbitrary imprisonment and executions have not.

Moreover, she must deceive her ‘dearest friend’, Captain Robert Holland, as to her mission – especially the fact that she will be travelling as the wife of an American portrait painter hoping for new clients in Paris. Shy has not told her that Captain Holland will also be in France on an equally dangerous mission to find out about a new invention the Americans are trying to interest the French in – a ‘submarine’; it must be either stolen or sabotaged.

I was gripped by this book from the very first page. Post-Revolutionary Paris comes across as a city teetering on the edge of paranoia; the secret police are everywhere. But there are also new opportunities. The characters are fully three-dimensional (the villain is particularly creepy because he seems so innocuous at first) and the situations Mary and Holland find themselves in are tense, dramatic and always unexpected. I was on the edge of my seat, desperate to know what would happen next. This is a quality book, told by a master storyteller. Highly recommended.

Elizabeth Hawksley Jane, is one of those who will lose her home. The romantic theme follows the usual Regency formula intertwined with lost jewels, secret passages and a haunted manor house.

I found the story interesting in that it had a genuine historical background. This sort of enterprise was common in the late 18th and 19th centuries, another great exponent being Capability Brown, but found the style of writing, after a while, irritating with an overabundance of supposed Regency terms and not a few inconsistencies. We are told that Hyacinthe wore a coquelicot Poland mantle. Although this was very fashionable in America, I could find no reference to it in English dress. The author also had the two girls described as ‘twits’ on one occasion. The word, in this sense, was not used until 1935.

A book to pass the time on a long journey but not one to be taken seriously.

Marilyn Sherlock THE BROKEN TOKEN Chris Nickson, Crème de la Crime, 2010, £7.99, pb, 269pp, 9780956056610 1731. Leeds, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, has grown prosperous on the cloth trade. It is a town of great wealth and even greater poverty.

When the Constable, Richard Nottingham, is summoned to the scene of a double murder, he is

shocked to find that one of the victims is a young woman who was once a much-loved family servant.

Nottingham makes a personal vow to catch the killer, but, as the murderer claims further victims, he and his deputy, John Sedgwick, find themselves short of clues and they are forced to seek help from among the town’s criminal fraternity.

This is a realistic crime thriller – Nottingham makes mistakes, becomes frustrated, has lucky breaks, and allows the escapades of his rebellious younger daughter, Emily, to impinge upon his work. The author paints a vivid, olfactory portrait of Leeds, from its municipal comforts to squalid slums, and he has a marvellous ear for the nuances of Yorkshire speech and the tang of street slang.

Perhaps too pedantically, I would have preferred to see “gaol” rather than “jail”, and Sedgwick addresses Nottingham as “boss”, which in early 18th-century English was still a particularly American word, and had the connotation of “overseer”. On one occasion “Jacobin” is used to refer to the supporters of the Stuart claim to the throne instead of “Jacobite”.

Nevertheless, this is a very enjoyable, vividly characterised tale. I would be interested to see Richard Nottingham and John Sedgwick tackle further cases.

Mary Seeley HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 31

ANATOMY OF MURDER Imogen Robertson, Headline, 2010, £19.99, hb, 373pp, 9780755348428 London 1781. Gentlewoman Harriet Westerman and reclusive anatomist Gabriel Crowther have gained a surprising reputation in the field of criminal investigation. When a body is dragged out of the filthy waters of the Thames they are invited by a member of the government to investigate. Their investigations take them into the glamorous world of opera where the new celebrity castrato singer, Manzerotti, has arrived in the capital to perform. The unlikely duo find themselves dragged into the murky and dangerous world of espionage as the nations’ military secrets are being revealed to the French. Murder stalks the streets, not only among the glamour of the operatic world, but also in the dark, poverty stricken world of London’s underclass, and their search for the truth provides a dangerous link between the two.

This is the second book featuring this unlikely pairing of the strong minded gentlewoman and the standoffish, unforthcoming anatomist. That the characters work so well is testimony to the strength and quality of the writing. The plot moves along briskly, while the characters are well drawn and convincing. Less a crime novel, more a thriller, the story has pace, vivid descriptions and strong characters. I look forward to the next instalment of what I am sure will be a long and fruitful series.

Recommended.

Mike Ashworth

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SWORD AND SONG

A BATTLE WON Sean Thomas Russell, Penguin, 2010, 502pp, hb, £12.99, 9780718153427 / Putnam, 2010, $26.95, hb, 464pp, 9780399156892 1793, and the Reign of Terror is sweeping through France. Toulon has put itself under the protection of the English Navy. Master and Commander Charles Hayden is summoned to Plymouth to take command of the frigate HMS Themis and sail to Torbay to escort the last of the season’s convoys to meet up with Admiral Hood with supplies for the fleet. But all is not plain sailing. HMS Themis had previously been involved in a mutiny and is not a popular ship to be on; the weather is worsening as the winter storms gather; and the island of Corsica is in French hands and has to be taken if there is to be a safe haven for the English fleet in the Mediterranean.

This is all based on fact, which makes fascinating reading. Charles Hayden has his work cut out maintaining order on his ship, and the Army and Navy are constantly at loggerheads, neither group fully understanding the work or the role of the other. Then there is the priest on board who, full of his own importance, refuses to acknowledge shipboard rules. The characters are well drawn, the action described so that the reader is drawn right into it and, at the climax, is left wondering at the skill and bravery of these men. Threaded throughout runs the romance between Captain Hayden and Henrietta, the niece of Lady Hertle.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, the second to involve Charles Hayden, and its final chapter leaves

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Roz Southey, Crème de la Crime, 2010, £7.99, pb, 266pp, 9780956056627 Charles Patterson, musician by trade and detective by inclination, returns for another 18th-century murder mystery. This time he is called to the murder of a young prostitute, Nell, who also happened to be loved by his good friend Constable Bedwalters. It becomes apparent that Nell has been murdered because of a tatty old book of church music.

Whilst trying to track down the killer, Charles is also hired as a resident musician for Edward Alyson’s country house party. There he meets Casper Fischer, an American gentleman searching for an unusual inheritance – a tatty old book of church music.

Matters are initially complicated when Patterson is attacked at the house party and further by the unexpected appearance of Esther Jerdoun, the older woman who he loves but has foresworn.

Sword and Song is a rather unusual historical mystery. 18th-century Newcastle is vividly portrayed, the characters are quirky and charming, and the plot is satisfyingly perplexing. Nothing unusual about that, but here comes the twist. Alongside all the expected elements of the genre, this novel also has a unique selling point. Many of the characters are spirits, tied to the places in which they died but quite able to talk, gossip and lie to the living. Alongside that, there also exists an alternate reality that Charles can step into and out of, a place where time and events differ somewhat to “real” life. This adds a whole new dimension to the novel and lifts it above the ordinary. Well worth looking out for.

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it wide open for a third.

Marilyn Sherlock THE PURSUIT Peter Smalley, Century, 2010, £18.99, hb, 324pp, 9781846052460 Set in the spring of 1792, the title captures the main thrust of the 36-gun frigate HMS Expedient’s crew mission in this, the sixth book in Phillip Smalley’s successful series. Yet another secret mission brings together Captain Rennie, restored to active service after a yearlong gap ‘on the beach’, and his friend Lieutenant Hayter. The latter is emotionally down with his marriage in a state of collapse and intentions set on a career outside the Navy. Both men need the demands of active duty yet they are sent on a mission unlike anything they and Expedient’s crew have undertaken before. The ship they are tasked to shadow contains somebody or something that will change the nature of future warfare. Tasked by their spymasters to follow a ship along the Norwegian coast, Expedient is badly damaged but her necessary repairs cannot be done lest the ship they are shadowing is lost; their course is to pursue the ship into a stormy Atlantic.

As the pursuit progresses, there are naval battles, mutinous crew members, disease and dissention between Rennie and Hayter. An intricate and clever storyline with twists and turns in every chapter as the devious plan unfolds. Enormous fun and a most enjoyable summer read.

Vivien Cringle THE COBRAS OF CALCUTTA: The Decipherer’s Chronicles Grant Sutherland, Macmillan, 2010, £12.99, hb, 455pp, 9780230736221 Between the years 1757 and 1815, the Decipherers were locked in battle with the Cabinet Noir, the secret agency of Britain’s deadly enemy, France. The spread of British power was fuelled by ambitious men, but it was also fuelled by lesserknown figures that aren’t written about in the history books. It was Alistair Douglas’s job to act as the messenger for the Decipherers. These were the code breakers and the interceptors of messages and letters. Their work lay at the heart of the empire in India. Alistair’s cover work was as a ‘writer’ for the East India Company in Bengal. He was both well versed in writing, sketching (which came in handy) and the use of the sword, and don’t forget the rifle, for Alistair also found time to participate in the various battles that take place in this book with both the Moors and the French. I finally figured this out halfway through the book. The number of battles he fought in made me a bit dazed at first, but it livened up afterwards and I understood the part he was playing. It’s full of intrigues and devious planning. An exciting read – intrigue, spies and battles – this has it all. It is the start of a series, so more of the same is in store.

Karen Wintle

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TEARS OF THE MOUNTAIN John Addiego, Unbridled, 2010, $25.95/C$29.95, hb, 400pp, 9781609530068 This book chronicles one day – July 4, 1876 – in the lives of Jeremiah McKinley and his family of Sonoma County, California. In addition, each alternating chapter is a flashback of Jeremiah’s life prior to 1876 and his trip by wagon train heading west from St. Louis. Celebrating the centennial of America’s founding, the story unfolds with the assassination of a local senator; meanwhile, strange messages are being sent to Jeremiah from an unknown source. There is also a mysterious young child who speaks to Jeremiah with knowledge only his dead father would know about his family.

The cast of characters is fascinating, each one helping to move the tale forward. This characterdriven novel is well-written with historically accurate information regarding California’s early settlement, the Gold Rush, and the Bear Rebellion that led to adding the California territory to the United States. I found it intriguing how the author moved from a flashback chapter to July 4, 1876 by tying sentences together from one chapter to the next. This novel is difficult to put down; Addiego is a talented writer who has composed an exceptional story that will linger in my thoughts for some time.

I look forward to reading his next book.

Jeff Westerhoff HOME LIGHT BURNING Jim H. Ainsworth, Sunstone, 2010, $24.95, hb, 361pp, 9780865347458 At the end of the American Civil War, rebels Lev and Hy Rivers return home to their family in Texas. On the way home, Lev is wounded and treated by a woman whose father was a doctor.

Accused of horse theft and murder by a local tavern keeper named Filson, a Yankee sympathizer, the brothers flee the town and head for Texas. Upon arriving back home with their family, they are faced with Yankee carpetbaggers looking for revenge who desire the property that belonged to anyone who fought with the South.

Based upon actual events in the lives of his ancestors, Ainsworth’s story tells the disturbing tale of Reconstruction in Texas. Families were torn apart or forced to move and settle elsewhere because of the lawlessness and injustice that visited the land after the Civil War. Resolved to fight back, the Rivers brothers were faced with strong opposition, except for a former powerful Texas politician who tried to help them fight against the injustices brought upon their family.

I really enjoyed this novel. The principal characters, the Rivers brothers, were well drawn.

Even though actual character names were changed by the author, the events described are accurate because they were based upon incidents in his ancestors’ lives. This made the story even more 19th Century

believable. This exceptionally well written work is highly recommended.

Jeff Westerhoff THE INTRIGUE AT HIGHBURY or EMMA’S MATCH Carrie Bebris, Forge, 2010, $22.99, hb, 317pp, 9780765318480 The Mr. and Mrs. Darcy mystery series continues with this superbly plotted tale of murder and devious behavior on the part of supposed friends and foes in 19th-century England. Our married protagonists are on their way to visit family when they meet a young woman who claims she has been attacked by robbers. Five minutes later, the woman is gone and the couple finds their carriage driver unconscious and their baggage gone.

The plot thickens when they learn of a wedding dinner to celebrate the marriage of friends, Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax, during which Frank’s uncle is found dead after having exhibited some extraordinary and upsetting behavior.

The plot thickens from this moment and readers will be delighted to see the sleuth couple’s skills in full gear. At the same time, the Darcy couple never loses the intelligent and caring personality traits originally depicted in Jane Austen’s notable and much-loved novels. History is presented within the framework of the story in an intriguing subplot of the place of gypsies residing in England, a group with a very rich culture and yet often maligned because of a few criminal miscreants. The role of women and manners of the times add to the spice of this story as several dynamic characters step out of the norm, to the delight of other characters as well as the reader. All, in all, Carrie Bebris’ tale is a terrific romantic mystery sure to entertain many.

Viviane Crystal ECHOES OF A PROMISE Ashleigh Bingham, Hale, 2010, £18.99, 224pp, 9780709090298 Victoria Shelford had always been her father’s favourite so when she runs away to sea and elopes with a sailor, her parents disown her and she feels the pain of their rejection keenly. Nevertheless, the undaunted Victoria sets off to make a new life elsewhere.

I read that this book reminded someone of Victoria Holt’s style of writing. Bingham does write very much like this with a sweeping tale that takes the reader across the sea to an exotic 19thcentury Kashmir which forms the backdrop to this tale. There is that little element of excitement and momentary suspense, as well as a little twist to a romantic tale. It’s a familiar story and may follow a familiar pattern but it holds your interest. All in all it is a pleasant read if you desire escapism.

Karen Wintle WHISKEY KILLS Johnny D. Boggs, Five Star, 2010, $25.95, hb, 226pp, 9781594148347 In the latter half of the 19th century, most of the Comanche Indian tribes lived on reservations. The

law was represented by members of the tribe who wore badges and were called “metal shirts” by the Comanches, or Indian Police by the white men.

This is the second installment in the saga of Daniel Killstraight, educated at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to learn the “white man ways.” The story involves the unlawful selling of whiskey on a Comanche reservation, where the death of a little girl, as a result of her drunken grandfather, leads to a series of investigations. Limited in his authority to investigate the crime (he is not allowed to arrest a white man), Killstraight comes up against powerful white men who create trouble for him and try to hurt his chances of bringing justice to the reservation.

This book is another fine Western written by Johnny Boggs, a prolific writer of Spur Awardwinning books. The author’s tales of the racial problems after the Indian wars are both sad and compelling. His characters are interesting, the bad guys are really bad, and the protagonist, Dan Killstraight, has become an exciting hero. Highly recommended.

Jeff Westerhoff A LADY LIKE SARAH Margaret Brownley, Thomas Nelson, 2010, $14.99, pb, 309pp, 9781595548092 In 1879 Missouri, the Reverend Justin Wells journeys west to begin his new post in Rocky Creek, Texas. He meets an injured U.S. Marshal and his prisoner, Sarah Prescott, of the infamous Prescott Gang, who has been arrested on charges of murder.

As Justin aids the Marshal and gets to know Sarah, he realizes that she has been wrongly accused.

When they discover an orphaned baby, and Justin sees how tender Sarah can be, he struggles with his ethics. He must make the decision to take this woman to Texas to await her trial – and inevitable hanging – or follow his heart and let her go. The decision, however, is out of his hands when Sarah’s brothers, the Prescotts, show up to help her escape.

This inspirational novel is filled with details of the Old West, interesting characters, and moral dilemmas. While it is slow to start, the pace picks up as Justin and Sarah get closer to Texas and her fate. Brownley has successfully conveyed the struggles of settling in the West as well as the rough and tumble atmosphere of so many small towns.

Overall, this is a fine inspirational romantic read.

Rebecca Roberts THE TRANSFORMATION OF BARTHOLOMEW FORTUNO Ellen Bryson, Henry Holt, 2010, $25, hb, 400pp, 9780805091922 In 1865, the complacent Bartholomew Fortuno, billed as the World’s Thinnest Man by P.T. Barnum, enjoys his life as one of Barnum’s Human Curiosities, housed and displayed in Barnum’s New York City American Museum. Bartholomew and his friends, also Curiosities, live in apartments in a resident wing in the comforting protection of the museum. Before Bartholomew’s awaking begins, he rarely ventures into the chaotic world outside HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 33

of the museum’s gates. When a new Curiosity, Iell Adams, is added to Barnum’s collection, she ripples the status quo, forcing him out of his comfort zone when Barnum sends him across town on a mysterious errand on Iell’s behalf. Bartholomew develops an obsession with Iell and is gradually becomes more aware of life’s offerings outside of the museum.

Bryson portrays the physical anomalies of these characters tactfully, without grotesque or demeaning descriptors. The physical characteristics of the Curiosities, such as the fat lady, the giantess, Zippy, and also the Gaffs, while crucial to the setting, never overshadow the relationships between the characters nor the flow of the story.

The authentic historical details woven deftly into the narrative along with fictionalized characters demonstrate the author’s depth of research and understanding of her topic. As we watch Bartholomew’s transformation as he discovers the origins of his “gift,” Bryson reminds us that everyone has the same basic needs, regardless of body design.

Entertaining and insightful, this novel is inspired

by Isaac W. Sprague, Barnum’s Original Living Skeleton, and includes illustrations of news clippings, notices, and correspondence. While the fascinating lifestyle of the Curiosities may initially attract the reader’s attention, the well-crafted story about a man’s self-discovery will be the actual reward.

Suzanne J. Sprague MCNAUGHTON Sian Busby, Short Books, 2010, £7.99, pb, 475pp, 9781906021887 The book opens in the winter of 1843. It is a time of political turmoil, with the threat of revolution hanging in the air. A young Scotsman, Daniel McNaughton, shoots the Prime Minister’s Private Secretary, Edward Drummond, as he makes his way to Downing Street. Was this a botched assassination attempt or merely a form of political protest which has gone horribly wrong?

The wound is relatively minor, but unfortunately due to the incompetence of a trio of doctors the patient dies. McNaughton refuses to help the police, hinting at mental illness. But is insanity a defence?

The book is full of unsavoury characters, each with their own vested interests, both political and personal, in the outcome of the trial. The political turbulence of the time with the pernicious effects of the Corn Laws on both rich and poor contributing to the threat of revolution is effectively portrayed, while the use of the vernacular contributes to the overall atmosphere and portrayal of this tumultuous time. On a personal level I would have liked to have seen more made of the trial, feeding not only into the political debate and turmoil which this shooting created, but also the question of mental capacity. Readers with an interest in this period will enjoy this.

Mike Ashworth SCATTERED PETALS 34 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

Amanda Cabot, Revell, 2010, $14.99, pb, 382pp, 9780800733254 Priscilla Morton talks her parents into accompanying her to 1850s Ladreville, Texas to attend a family wedding. But she gets more adventure than she bargained for when bandits attack, killing her parents and raping her. Guilt over both the rape and having lured her parents to their deaths slows her recovery. When she discovers she is pregnant, Zach Webster, a kindly ranch foreman, agrees to marry her to give her baby a name. But Priscilla doesn’t know that Zach also has a shameful past that he’s trying to forget. Can the two wounded souls heal each other?

Cabot researched women’s rape accounts, and she makes Priscilla’s conflicted state of mind in the aftermath believable. It’s an unusual theme for a Christian prairie romance. Readers will wish for a mate as compassionate as Zach, who is willing to wait months or longer for Priscilla to get past her trauma. There is an interesting subplot about Ladreville’s German and French settlers’ prejudice against each other because of past conflicts in Europe. While I enjoyed the book, the plot would have been even more intriguing if the pregnancy had had a different outcome. This is volume two of Texas Dreams.

B.J. Sedlock A KISS FOR CADE Lori Copeland, Harvest House, 2010, $12.99, pb, 299pp, 9780736927635 Left with her dead friend’s four children on her hands in 1885 Kansas, Zoe Bradshaw is not anxious to contact their uncle. Cade had vowed to return and marry Zoe after a spell of bounty hunting, but he’s been gone 15 years. Zoe’s determined to raise the children herself, but the returning Cade objects, saying that children need two parents. But she’s not about to marry that cad who stood her up, so the scene is then set for sparks to fly. Then the brother of a man Cade killed when bounty hunting comes looking for him, bent on revenge. The townspeople pull together to try to keep Zoe, Cade, and the children safe.

This Christian novel is a reworking of the author’s 1997 historical romance The Courtship of Cade Kolby. Copeland removed the bedroom scenes, replaced certain dialogue (“If that don’t beat all” instead of “I’ll be damned,” for example), and inserted some light religious content. There are touches of humor, such as a scene where Cade wakes up to find the kids’ pet tarantula on his chest.

Readers will guess the outcome of the conflict between the likeable protagonists from the first, but it’s an enjoyable journey.

B.J. Sedlock ONE TRUE LOVE Lori Copeland, HarperCollins, 2010, $12.99, pb, 325pp, 9780061364945 Third in the Belles of Timber Ridge series, One True Love is the story of Copper Wilson, who, with her friends, Willow and Audrey, has survived the Civil War and is living in the little town of Thunder

Ridge, Texas. Willow and Audrey have found husbands, but Copper worries she will remain a spinster. Then, while rescuing her students from a fire in the school, Copper breaks her ankle. Now she must travel by wagon train to reach the only doctor skilled enough to save her foot. Copper spends her days in pain and, to make matters worse, she must put up with the arrogant wagon master, Josh Redlin. But along the dangerous route to Colorado, Copper falls in love with Josh, learning that he is a God-fearing Christian willing to take risks in order to live out his faith. But Josh is a man with secrets and Copper isn’t sure that Josh’s past will allow her to be part of his future. This is a sweet, light romance. The Christian elements work well, but the plot is predictable and the characters are rather two-dimensional.

Patricia O’Sullivan THE ELEVENTH PLAGUE Darren Craske, Trafalgar Square/HarperCollins UK, 2010, £7.99/$12.95/C$17.95, pb, 320pp, 9781906321857 Members of the Hades Consortium have controlled history for centuries, but it seems they have met their match in Cornelius Quaint, master conjuror and proprietor of Dr. Marvello’s Travelling Circus. In this second book of the Cornelius Quaint Chronicles, Cornelius has learned that, in less than two weeks (on New Year’s Eve, 1853) the consortium intends to spill into the River Nile a poison that will decimate the population of Egypt.

Although the novel gets off to a slow start, with approximately thirty pages devoted to introducing a multitude of characters who play no part in the current story, once Cornelius and his elderly exgoverness, Madame Destine, board ship for Cairo, the adventure begins. In humorous slapstick style, Cornelius remains oblivious to the many attempts to kill him while on shipboard. After landing in Egypt, Cornelius and Destine are separated, but it doesn’t slow them down in their quest to find the elixir before it is too late. While Cornelius infiltrates the den of desert thieves known as the Clan Scarab, Destine follows a series of clues she receives in a mysterious letter.

In direct imitation of the Victorian ‘penny dreadfuls,’ this adventure story is deliberately overwritten. Black-hearted villains, unbelievable rescues, and hair-pin plot changes all send the story hurtling toward its not-so-predictable conclusion.

It is the protagonist, Cornelius Quaint, who poses the biggest problem. One of the characters states, “I cannot imagine that a circus run by an old grump like you would be very entertaining.” Unfortunately, that lack also holds true for a novel. One hopes Cornelius spends a few days in charm school before the next book in the series begins.

Nancy J. Attwell FOR THE KING Catherine Delors, Dutton Adult, 2010, $26.95, hb, 352pp, 9780525951742 In post-revolutionary France, an attempt has been made on the life of Napoleon Bonaparte using 19th Century

an “infernal machine”—a bomb. Though Bonaparte escapes unharmed, the collateral damage is devastating; several innocent citizens are blown apart, others seriously injured. Young police inspector Roch Miquel must find the plotters responsible. As will be familiar to all readers of police mysteries, Miquel’s given a deadline—in order to motivate him, his boss imprisons Miquel’s father, who will be deported (the equivalent of a death sentence) if Miquel cannot apprehend the plotters in a matter of days. Political machinations provide one hurdle to overcome, and even the solace Miquel seeks in the arms of his beautiful mistress is not without its consequences—she has devastating secrets and her own agenda.

At times, this feels like a modern police procedural, with Miquel methodically examining remains, questioning witnesses, and drawing conclusions; in other instances, it has the texture of an espionage thriller—even one’s colleagues cannot be trusted, and intrigue lurks everywhere. Though both of these are genres more familiar to fans of contemporary fiction, Delors has a gift for historical feel—she creates an ambiance with a few short, well-placed descriptive sentences which ground the reader in the period. The experience is not immersive, but it is convincing, and it allows for a focus on the plotting. Delors’ characterization is also strong; Miquel himself is a somewhat flawed hero, but readers will still pull for him, and the secondary characters, such as his father, the Minister of Police, and the leader of the plotters add to the color and depth of story. Overall, an engaging combination of history, mystery, and politics that makes for an enjoyable read.

Bethany Latham BARELY A LADY Eileen Dreyer, Forever, 2010, $6.99/$8.99, pb, 432pp, 9780446542081 Olivia Grace is aghast when she finds her exhusband, Jack Wyndham, Earl of Gracechurch, wounded on the battlefield after Waterloo, dressed in the uniform of a French officer. Could he possibly have become a traitor in the five years that have passed since he cast her off following an untrue allegation of gambling? Olivia’s life has been terribly difficult during these years. An outcast from society, she has only just been taken in by a duchess who rather delights in shocking that society. When it becomes clear that their presence threatens Lady Kate’s household, Olivia feels that she and Jack must leave, despite the fact that she isn’t sure she can ever trust Jack again.

Eileen Dreyer, an accomplished author who is writing historical romance for the first time, does an excellent job situating her tale in Brussels, particularly, in the weeks following the battle. The characters that we are supposed to admire are a joy to spend time with, and the villain is very evil indeed. I am delighted to see that this is just the first book in the Drake’s Rakes Series—I’ll be keeping an eye out for the next.

Trudi E. Jacobson 19th Century

LADY FARQUHAR’S BUTTERFLY Beverley Eikli, Hale, 2010, £18.99, hb, 223pp, 9780709090571 I do wish Hale would edit their books more critically. Many, like this one, are full of errors – for instance, how does someone sitting in a chair manage to rest her head on the thigh of someone sitting on the arm? Is our heroine really so small and limber that when her head falls to one side, it lands in the region of the hero’s lap?

Rather more pertinent to the plot, why does she set out to meet the hero at all? He is the guardian of her son, who has been taken from her as she has been unjustly branded an adulteress, and takes her in when she has an ‘accident’ outside his home. She thinks that ‘truth would be her ally’, and yet she does not tell the hero who she is. She plans to tell him ‘every detail to prove her innocence’, but does not. She ‘would fight for Julian [her son] to the death’, yet when Max proposes, knowing who she is, she refuses him, because she is afraid the villain will tell Max that Julian is a bastard, the son of her dead husband’s mistress. But as her husband accepted him as his heir, he is, in the eyes of the law at any rate, legitimate, something she, and the author and the editor, appear not to know.

This Regency novel comes with high praise from the quotes on the back cover, but I found it psychologically incoherent, and, while well-written, not particularly enthralling. jay Dixon APRIL AND MAY Beth Elliott, Robert Hale, 2010, £18.99, hb, 224pp, 9780709090427 Rose, with her sister Helena, is in Egypt with their aunt and uncle’s archaeological expedition, when the three women have to leave in a hurry.

They arrive in Constantinople where Rose meets Tom, the man she was in love with four years ago, but who abandoned her and left her to make a loveless marriage, fortunately short. Aided by the handsome Kerim Pasha and his sister, the women anxiously await news from Cairo, and a boat to take them back to England. It is 1804, the English and French are vying for influence in the Middle East, and Tom asks Rose to help him with a secret document he is preparing for the Sultan. Then the scene moves to England, where Rose faces danger as well as the dilemma of whether to trust Tom. To add to the mix Kerim Pasha, in London incognito, makes no secret of his admiration for Rose, and she is attracted to him.

This is an unusual setting, a tense love story against a background of political intrigue and deadly danger. Some of the details of life in a Turkish household are lovingly described, especially the gorgeous fabrics, but I would have liked more about the city itself and its life. Similarly the final danger Rose encounters is muted, over almost before it began. Nevertheless, this is a good read and a satisfying love story for those who like suspense and physical danger alongside the romance.

Marina Oliver

TO SIN WITH A SCOUNDREL Cara Elliott, Grand Central, 2010, $6.99, pb, 372pp, 9780446541299 The first installment of Elliott’s Circle of Sin series, which features a collective of learned Regency women, focuses on widowed scientist Ciara Sheffield. Accused of murdering her husband, Lady Sheffield is tired of the rumors and innuendoes plaguing her good name. Fortunately for Ciara, Lucas Bingham, the Earl of Hadley, needs her help. Hadley’s name appears in the society pages as often as Ciara’s—he’s a notorious rake known for his shocking exploits. Hadley needs Ciara’s scientific assistance, and Ciara needs someone to pose as her fiancé until the scandal surrounding her late husband die down. It’s a perfect bargain—or is it? As the two travel through society together, they find that their make-believe romance is quickly turning into a reality.

Though the “reformed rake” plot is nothing new, Ciara and Hadley’s romance is enjoyable. Both are forced to adapt to the other’s needs, and Hadley proves to society that he is more gentleman than rakehell. The subplot involving an older member of the Circle of Sin and Hadley’s beloved uncle is the highlight of the novel. Overall, the dialogue is fresh and, at times, funny, and the resolution of the scandal that plagues Ciara throughout the novel is exciting.

Nanette Donohue ROY & LILLIE: A Love Story Loren D. Estleman, Forge, 2010, $24.99, hb, 272 pp, 9780765322289 The admiration the infamous Judge Roy Bean had for Lillie Langtry, the “Professional Beauty” of late Victorian society, has been the stuff of biographies, plays, films and other novels. Spuraward winning author Estleman has a go here, treating their stories as parallel lives.

An early fabricator of his own legend, Judge Roy Bean’s “Only Law West of the Pecos” dispensed rough justice largely without mercy but with an eye for profit and a nose for notoriety. The self-styled ladies’ man could charm all, it seemed, save his wife, who bore him four children and left him a head scar via her frying pan. But one of his educated daughters helped her father correspond with the beauty who graced the walls of his drinking establishment for over twenty years.

Lillie Langtry became friends with admirers of her style and beauty – Oscar Wilde, Whistler, and Edward, Prince of Wales, who may or may not have fathered her daughter. Her beauty fading, she tried acting, endorsing products like soap and owning a racehorse, and was greatly successful. Finally keeping her promise to visit her correspondent Bean, her train stopped at Vinegarroon, Texas, now renamed Langtry in her honor, to find the Judge’s original saloon burned down and her admirer dead a few months before.

Estleman’s conjuring of lost letters are few, his omniscient voice sardonic and snide both east and far west of the Atlantic. And his love story is only one if the reader shares his belief that “theirs is the HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 35

ideal love story, because it never had the chance to be anything else.”

Eileen Charbonneau MY DANGEROUS DUKE Gaelen Foley, Avon, 2010, $7.99, pb, 400pp, 9780061733970 Kate Madsen was orphaned as a girl and raised by a family friend in an isolated cottage near the sea. She’s surprisingly educated for a young Regency woman of little means and has little contact with the outside world. So it’s especially shocking when she is kidnapped and brought to the Duke of Warrington as a “gift.” Her captors believe she is the daughter of one of Warrington’s enemies, and they expect that Warrington, known for his roguish ways, will appreciate a beautiful young woman. As Warrington gets to know Kate, he learns the secrets of her past—secrets that Kate herself did not know. Together, they manage to figure out the mystery of Kate’s parentage, as well as further dismantle a bizarre enemy organization If all of this sounds convoluted—it is. There’s a lot going on in this novel, and much of it falls outside the realm of possibility, even for a purely escapist read. It’s difficult to believe that Kate (who was purportedly raised in isolation) is so worldly about sexuality—she goes from shy virgin to complete wanton in a matter of pages. A more gradual transition would have been more likely.

Warrington is a tough hero to like—an intelligent man who, for reasons unknown, believes that any woman he marries is cursed to die a violent death.

I’m all for a bit of camp in my historical romances, but sometimes too much is just too much.

Nanette Donohue ROMANCING MISS BRONTË Juliet Gael, Ballantine, 2010, $25.00, hb, 432pp, 9780345520043 Juliet Gael takes readers to the 19th-century Yorkshire village of Haworth, where sisters Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë live in the parsonage with their half-blind father and their self-pitying brother, Branwell. In an atmosphere of loss and fading dreams, the three young unmarried women attempt to open a girls’ boarding school, only to find no takers: Haworth is too isolated.

Since childhood they have been writing poetry and stories. When Charlotte suggests they submit their work for publication, intensely private Emily agrees on one condition—they shall remain anonymous. So it is that using pseudonyms and working in secret, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne write, respectively, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey.

Into this insular world comes the reserved and unsmiling Irish bachelor Arthur Bell Nicholls, the newly appointed curate to Haworth. Charlotte, by her own reckoning plain and undesirable, pays Arthur scant attention. She has seen the mocking glances other men give her, and in her heart, she bears an aching sadness for another man she can never have.

Romancing Miss Brontë focuses in the main 36 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

on the sisters’ exasperating relationship with their brother, their rocky path to publication (which should intrigue most writers), but keeps the spotlight on Charlotte, who in her quiet way eventually becomes the literary toast of London. In the end, this is a story of longing in all its forms, and it is the patient curate Arthur Nicholls who proves the constant in Charlotte’s life—Arthur who shows her a thing or two about the true nature of passion and love. While I found the author’s forays into nonfiction jarring, overall this is an entertaining, enlightening look at three unassuming women who wrote some of the most well-known novels not only of their own day, but of ours as well.

Alana White NEVER A BRIDE Amelia Grey, Sourcebooks Casablanca, 2010, $7.99/C$9.99, pb, 384pp, 9781402239786 Camden Thurston Brackley, Viscount Stonehurst, has returned to Regency London from America after six years. A longstanding betrothal awaits, necessary to shore up his family’s failing financial position. Lo and behold, at a party he encounters his fiancée, Lady Mirabella Wittingham, who is enacting a strange plan. Bent on finding the man who seduced and ruined her dead best friend, she is kissing young men at parties in order to find a tell-tale scar on the seducer’s neck.

Sparks fly as Camden and Mirabella fall in love and find pleasure in each other’s company, both physically and intellectually. Meanwhile, Mirabella takes great risks as she continues to search for the seducer. She dons male garb and infiltrates the elite men’s clubs of London, and even dresses as a maid in order to gain access to men to check for the scar.

Grey has written a lively romance novel with a fairly accurate depiction of life in Regency London.

Her incorporation of the newspaper gossip columns adds verisimilitude to the Regency time period. At times the dialogue is simplistic and predictable, but overall this romance provides an enjoyable light read.

Liz Allenby DEEP CREEK Dana Hand, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010, $25.00, hb, 320pp, 9780547237480 This novel is a little difficult to quantify. Though the setting and elements of the characterization might throw it into the Western genre, it’s primarily a historical whydunit with prevailing elements of social commentary. In 1880s Idaho Territory, Chinese miners work the area known as Deep Creek. When more than two dozen, almost the entire mining camp contingent, are brutally slaughtered and then mutilated, Judge Joe Vincent is hired by the Sam Yup Company, which employed the miners, to discover the perpetrators and bring them to justice. He’s assisted in his investigation by the company’s representative, Lee Loi, and a partIndian guide, Grace Sundown, with whom Vincent has a history.

Hand (the nom de plume of authors Anne Mat-

thews and William Howarth) have based their novel on an actual historical event, and this book certainly feels deeply real—from the Snake River setting to the development of the characters. This novel shifts, temporally and narratively, which gives the writing style an impressionistic feel, and can be a bit confusing initially until one becomes accustomed to it. The characterization fits with this dynamic—there are no ridiculously expository paragraphs of dialogue here; the reader is slowly and plausibly drawn into her understanding of the characters and, by extension, the Western society of which they are a part. Perhaps the strongest element of this story is its revelation of the racial discord inherent in the melting pot created by the expansion into the American West. Chinese, Indians, and Whites of all classes are thrown together, with the result—the massacre at Deep Creek—a tragedy whose examination illuminates the deepseated prejudices in us all. This novel is well worth the read, and is refreshingly dissimilar from just about everything else currently on offer in the realm of historical fiction.

Bethany Latham THE EXILE OF SARA STEVENSON Darci Hannah, Ballantine, 2010, $15.00/C$17.50, pb, 379pp, 9780345520548 Sara Stevenson, spoiled daughter of a wealthy lighthouse builder, gives her love to a common sailor; but, after promising to return to her always, he disappears, leaving Sara pregnant. She means to wait for him, but this being 1815 Scotland, her father has other plans. He sends Sara to a remote lighthouse to have the baby.

During the severe winter that follows, Sara gives up on ever seeing her sailor again. She learns to cope with hardship, becomes involved with the island community, and begins to fall in love with the handsome, brooding light-keeper. Letters from a stranger seem to reveal the sailor’s fate – and yet Sara cannot forget him. Will her lover return after all? Suffice it to say, true love transcends the barriers of time and space.

The Exile of Sara Stevenson contains all the elements of a gothic novel: the dark mood and remote location, a hero with a past, a touch of the supernatural, and a courageous young woman who tells the tale in florid language. The action scenes are colorful and the plot complex, but, alas, the characters (as described by Sara) appear on stage like silent movie actors with wild eyes and furtive gestures. This was an age of extravagance, but we learn nothing real; to understand people, we need the subtlety that is sadly lacking.

Hannah is a writer of promise. Her work may appeal to romantics who enjoy a long, slow read, but probably not to HNR readers.

Jeanne Greene THE TURNABOUT TWINS Barbara Hazard, Hale/Trafalgar Square, 2010, £18.99/$24.95/C$27.95, hb, 224pp, 9780709086253 Amelia and Anne Fairhaven are the beautiful 19th Century

daughters of the Duke of Severn. They have only just turned 18 and have not made their coming out, but they have set the Regency ton on its ears all the same. They are identical twins who are so alike they share the same thoughts and often complete each other’s sentences. Amelia, a talented artist, is quieter and more thoughtful while Anne is a madcap. Both girls love the same man. He loves only Amelia, leaving Anne to nurse a broken heart.

Anne throws herself into the Season, taking the ton by storm, engaging in risqué behavior that brings her to the brink of disgrace. Fortunately for her, the Earl of Cornwell, an older and more experienced man than Anne’s usual swains, keeps her in his sights and does what he can to restore her reputation.

Ms. Hazard has written an intelligent, amusing, and interesting Regency historical. A truly enjoyable read.

Audrey Braver A COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE Sandra Heath, Hale, 2010, £18.99, hb, 223pp, 9780709089971 At the whim of an eccentric relative Caroline Lexham is willed a magnificent Mayfair mansion – on the condition that she maintains it without selling its contents. Impoverished as she is this makes it a hollow inheritance. However Caroline is nothing if not resourceful and scandalises Society by opening the house as a high class hotel.

Sadly there is a fly in the ointment in the form of Cousin Dominic, who will inherit if Caroline fails in her bid. He will stop at nothing to hinder the enterprise. Sir Hal Seymour could just be Caroline’s saviour and the attraction between the pair is strong. But Caroline is unsure of his motives and unwilling to trust a man she knows so little about.

Sandra Heath has a strong track record in writing Regency romances and she scores again with this charming novel. It is a classic piece of escapism, transporting the reader to another time, another place and bringing a smile to the face. For that reason alone it is worth its weight in gold.

Sara Wilson ALTHEA’S GRAND TOUR Emily Hendrickson, Hale/Trafalgar Square, 2010, £18.99/$24.95, hb, 224pp, 9780709082880.

This Regency-era romance, originally published in 1994, is about a headstrong, lonely woman named Althea Ingram. Her tall stature sets her apart from the other ladies of society, and she finds herself the butt of jokes. John Maitland, the handsome Earl of Montmorcy, called her an Amazon, an incident that Althea can never forget.

Deciding that she needs time away, Althea seeks permission from her father to go on a Grand Tour. He obliges, but her widowed cousin and several companions must accompany her. While in Europe, Althea stumbles across none other than the Earl of Montmorcy, much to Althea’s chagrin.

Throughout the course of her trip, Althea begins to fall for the Earl, though she is convinced he could 19th Century

never love a woman like her.

Unfortunately, there are several issues that are difficult to look past in this novel. The author repeatedly refers to Althea’s height to elicit sympathy, while her companion is constantly mocked for her weight. Mixed signals between Althea and John and unlikely plot scenarios abound. However, the author does a good job showing how women were confined by the rules of society during this time period, though this does not make up for an otherwise disappointing read.

Troy Reed 31 BOND STREET Ellen Horan, Harper, 2010, $25.99, hb, 368pp, 9780061773969 / Blue Door, 2010, £12.99, pb, 320pp, 9780007304042 Ellen Horan makes an impressive debut with 31 Bond Street, a novelized depiction of a sensational murder investigation in mid-19th century New York City.

When Doctor Burdell, a prominent Manhattan dentist, is found nearly decapitated in his own office, the young widow Ellen Cunningham swiftly becomes the prime suspect. The politically ambitious District Attorney immediately sequesters the pretty housekeeper at the scene of the crime, convenes a jury, and begins interviewing witnesses. Fortunately for Ms. Cunningham, a young lawyer by the name of Henry Clinton becomes morally outraged by the trampling of her constitutional rights, and takes up her cause at great risk to his career. It soon becomes evident that the investigators are more interested in protecting shady hidden interests than discovering who actually committed the murder, and Mr. Clinton has his hands full fighting for his publicly slandered client in a court case followed, word-by-word, in the scandal sheets of the day.

Ms. Horan details the development of the case while skillfully weaving in the story of how Ellen Cunningham became involved with the dentist.

The result is a perfect mix of legal drama and emotional intensity, as well as a true portrait of the difficulties of being a widowed mother of two in a period of time when women had few career options. Some of the characters are so keenly drawn, particularly Henry Clinton—the reallife defending lawyer—and his quick-thinking, supportive wife, that it gives rise to speculation as to whether Ms. Horan intends to showcase them in a whole new series. Brava to Ms. Horan for developing great characters, depicting a gritty and energetic pre-Civil War New York, and writing a page-turning story that this reader devoured in one heady gulp.

Lisa Ann Verge A KISS AT MIDNIGHT Eloisa James, Avon, 2010, $7.99, pb, 384pp, 97801626845 When Kate Daltry’s beloved father dies, her spendthrift stepmother takes over the family’s lands and fortune and relegates Kate to secondclass citizenship within the household. As a result,

Kate is independent and headstrong, but not exactly wise to the ways of elegant young women of Regency society. Kate’s stepsister, Victoria, finds herself unable to attend a major social event due to an injury, and Kate is forced to step in and attend—while masquerading as Victoria. Kate catches the attention of Gabriel, the prince of a tiny European principality, and the two begin an intriguing flirtation. Gabriel is one of the few people who knows Kate’s true identity, and the shared secret gives them an immediate feeling of intimacy—and love soon follows.

One of James’s strengths is her dialogue— her characters are witty, and Kate and Gabriel’s repartee is a joy to read. However, occasional out-of-character turns of phrase (“wardrobe malfunction” was the most memorable) yanked me out of the story. The Cinderella theme isn’t forced, and appealing secondary characters, such as Kate’s bawdy godmother, round the novel out nicely. This isn’t James’s best work, but a mediocre Eloisa James novel is still pretty good, and readers looking for a light romantic escape will enjoy Kate’s fairy-tale inspired story.

Nanette Donohue ORIGINAL SINS: A Novel of Slavery and Freedom Peg Kingman, Norton, 2010, $25.95, hb, 416pp, 9780393065473 Grace Pollocke is an artist; she paints portraits in miniature. Her husband arrives home to Philadelphia after being in China for several years.

Traveling with him is Anibaddh, the Rani of Nungklow. It is not the first time she has been in America, for she is a runaway slave from Virginia.

At great personal risk she has returned to establish a silk business, but this raises Grace’s suspicions.

Grace, a woman with a sharp intellect, is well read in politics and literature, a rare find in 1840. Her current patron, Mrs. Ambler, arrives accompanied by her sister, Mrs. MacFarlane.

Engaged in a conversation about religion and slavery, Grace becomes disturbed by her subject, as her views are completely contrary to theirs.

Anibaddh overhears the women and immediately recognizes their voices. They are the daughters of Judge Grant of Grantsboro Plantation and therefore Grace’s cousins.

When Grace steps in harm’s way to save her son, she realizes why Annibadh has returned. There could be only one reason she would risk her own life and sacrifice her freedom: a child. Unaware of their common ancestral lineage, the women invite Grace to visit Grantsboro to paint other family members. Realizing she can help Anibaddh with her mission, she accepts their request.

What follows is the complicated and almost too coincidental yet thrilling story of Grace’s past, the discovery of her family’s slaveholding past, and their unspeakable transgressions. Grace is a character with vitality: bold and daring, with unconventional thoughts and actions for the time in which she lives. As a painter, she is mesmerized by the daguerreotype photography process and HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 37

saddened by the newly installed gaslights in her city.

Original Sins, the author’s second novel, is a deeply creative and honest look at slavery and the ugly truths of human bondage that still emerge from America’s past. Highly recommended.

Wisteria Leigh GIRL ON THE ORLOP DECK Beryl Kingston, Hale, 2010, £18.99, hb, 214pp, 9780709090229 Marianne Morris is a plain girl from a solid upper-working class family in Plymouth at the start of the 19th century. Unexpectedly she catches the eye of the darkly handsome Jem Templeton, who has just completed an apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker and is in a hurry to get a wife. Unfortunately the shortness of the courtship between this inexperienced couple results in a disastrous wedding night, and in a state of depression Jem runs off to sea. Distraught, Marianne resolves to search him out by disguising herself as a man and also signing on in the Royal Navy. In the course of her search she meets various famous people and has several adventures, culminating in the battle of Trafalgar.

You don’t get a lot for your £18.99, as this novel is only about 75,000 words long. However, what you get is really very good. Girl on the Orlop Deck is a cracking novel and historically very accurate, correctly portraying the mores and attitudes of the time, while yet managing this in a way that makes it accessible to a modern reader. It’s a fundamentally optimistic book too, showing the good rather than the bad in people. It is, in the classic meaning of the term, a true romance.

The speech patterns of the characters are particularly well done. Strong accents are interesting and help to identify characters and time periods. They are also notoriously difficult to pitch correctly. Too little and the period feel dissipates. Too much and the characters become unintelligible. Beryl Kingston has them just about perfect here. Highly recommended.

Martin Bourne KING, SHIP, AND SWORD Dewey Lambdin, Thomas Dunne, 2010, $25.99/ C$31.00, hb, 358pp, 9780312551841 In the fifteen previous well-received novels in the series, the Royal Navy’s Alan Lewrie has bedeviled the King’s enemies on land and sea and in both America and Europe. Lambdin’s latest tale has our rakehell protagonist becalmed in a period of an Anglo-French truce brought on by the 1801 Peace of Amiens. Peace proves more risky than war, however, as Lewrie is forced to return to his farm in Surrey and face Caroline, his strongwilled wife fully aware of her husband’s issues with fidelity. Opportunity arises as Lewrie is tasked with returning French officers’ swords to Napoleon himself. Caroline and he remove their uncertain relationship to Paris, where Lewrie finds himself an unwilling victim of Caroline’s shopping sprees and the cause of Bonaparte’s temper tantrum, 38 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

owing to Lewrie’s less than diplomatic actions.

Naturally, Lewrie’s marriage is complicated by the return of former lovers, including the hot-blooded Creole Charite, and former enemies, including the thoroughly unlucky Guillaume Choundas.

Forced to leave Paris to avoid death, Lewrie, Caroline, and friends are picked up by a British ship to be returned to England. Lewrie returns to sea by taking command of H.M.S. Reliant. His eldest son Hugh is also taken into the Royal Navy as a midshipman, while his younger sons steals away to also serve on a British warship.

With every passing book, Alan Lewrie pushes Horatio Hornblower further from center stage.

John R. Vallely

novel and you have a book that is hard to put down.

In for a Penny is a delightful mix of historical detail and Regency romp – an excellent debut novel.

Audrey Braver

THE BRAZEN BRIDE Stephanie Laurens, Avon, 2010, $7.99/C$10.99, pb, 328 pp, 9780061795176 / Piatkus, 2010, £7.99, pb, 320pp, 9780349400044 Laurens’s racy Black Cobra novel (after The Elusive Bride, 2010) is set in Guernsey, ca. 181015. When lovely Linnet Trevassian, a powerful landowner, rescues shipwrecked officer Logan Monteith, sparks fly. Linnet doesn’t intend to marry (and take orders from a husband), so she settles for fantastic sex, which is fine with Logan – until he falls in love. Logan’s on a secret mission to incriminate members of the nefarious Black Cobra cult, who will stop at nothing (the shipwreck!) to kill him. How can he allow Linnet independence and still keep her safe? Not to worry, Linnet’s a ship’s captain, a swordswoman, and a formidable ally. Logan learns to trust her like a second self.

Never mind if the villain escapes. Logan wins the battle of the sexes, and Linnet is Logan’s for life.

If this sounds all too predictable, it’s not.

Whether the action’s in bed or aboard ship or both, Laurens is an inventive and skillful writer. Expect 3:1 sex, not kinky, but lots of it. A pleasure for romance readers.

Jeanne Greene

THE BOOK OF HUMAN SKIN Michelle Lovric, Bloomsbury, 2010, £12.99, pb, 500pp, 9781408805886 This is an ingenious, complicated tale, set on the cusp of the 18th and 19th centuries and ranging from Lovric’s trademark Venice to the town of Arequipa in Peru. The central love story of the aristocratic Marcella Fasan, scion of a Venetian Golden Book family, and the humble Doctor Santo Aldobrandini, is told in multiple voices, including that of Minguillo, Marcella’s monstrous, Sadeian brother, Sor Loreta, a holy anorexic who is actually a diabolical bully, and a Fasan family retainer whose phonetic spelling reveals truths about his thoughts and feelings which you could call Freudian if it wasn’t an anachronism. The book’s title derives from the fact that Doctor Santo has a professional obsession with skin diseases and that Minguillo collects books bound in human skin (and what fun Lovric has with this – A Vindication of the Rights of Women bound in the skin of a dead prostitute, for example). It also involves the health of Napoleon and how this affects his conquests, and the portrait painter Cecilia Cornaro, first encountered in Lovric’s debut novel, Carnevale, and her skill in painting human skin.

There is a lengthy historical note at the end of this book, which seems to claim for it a seriousness which it does not have. It is a terrific romp, with more plot twists than a pig’s tail and some Grand Guignol set pieces of jaw-dropping monstrosity.

Despite its length, you are almost compelled to read it in a single sitting, so skilled is Lovric at keeping the reader in suspense. Perfect beach reading and, in the unlikely event you don’t love it, heavy enough to hold a towel down.

Sarah Bower

IN FOR A PENNY Rose Lerner, Leisure, 2010, $6.99/C$7.99, pb, 310pp, 9780843963359 When Lord Nevinstoke’s father is killed in a duel in 1819, he inherits more than the title of Earl Bedlow; he also inherits impossibly huge debts. The only way to solvency is for Nev to marry the daughter of a Cit, owner of a brewery.

Penelope Brown wants to marry another man, but her family has forbidden the match. When Nev comes courting, she knows it is her fortune he really wants, so she draws up a list of conditions – which he accepts. In accordance with her wishes, he gives up his two best friends, his mistress, and his profligate lifestyle. It is a good match: Penny has excellent management skills but feels socially inept, while Nev shines in social situations but cannot add a column of figures. To make matters worse, the area’s farm laborers are on the verge of a bloody revolt to rival the Peterboro Massacre of 1816.

Put Rose Lerner’s graceful writing style together with a plot that is a cut above the average Regency

MY LADY DOMINO Jeannie Machin, Hale, 2010, £18.99, hb, 224pp, 9780709089988 This frothily entertaining Regency romance features the beautiful Adele Russell, once rich and pampered, now penniless and forced to earn her own living working in a haberdashers run by her doting and very lenient old nurse. As inevitably with such heroines, she has the requisite ‘cornflower’ blonde hair and big blue eyes plus an admirable figure. Her love rival, a thoroughly nasty piece of work, gloats over Adele’s reduced circumstances and feels sure she will now be able to ensnare the handsome and devilishly manly David Latimer, Adele’s ex-fiancé.

There is also another plot involving Adele’s father whom she believes was defrauded and then murdered in a house fire by his ex-clerk and the villainous Duke of Bellingham. The title comes from the mask or domino worn by Adele when she gatecrashes the most important ball of the season; a plot device enabling her to meet David again and 19th Century

also become involved with a mystery man. There is suitable sneering from the villains, appropriate damsel in distress behaviour and situations to be rescued from by Adele and the sense of the period is well-conveyed with telling details and vocabulary.

Overall, while not startlingly original or full of surprises, I have to confess to having thoroughly enjoyed this escapist tale. Fans of Regency romance are sure to be happily absorbed for a few hours.

Ann Northfield THE ILLUSION OF MURDER Carol McCleary, Hodder & Stoughton, 2010, £19.99, hb, 438pp, 9780340978429 This is the second book in the adventures of Nellie Bly, ‘America’s first female investigative reporter’. The first book, The Alchemy of Murder, took Nellie to Paris for the Expo where she met, amongst others, Oscar Wilde and Toulouse Lautrec, and fell heavily for Jules Verne. This time she has a less star-studded list of encounters, but none the less meets Sarah Bernhardt and (fleetingly) the Prince of Wales and falls for Frederick Selous, the famous big game hunter.

Nellie’s current assignment is to break the round-the-world record of 80 days set by Jules Verne’s fictional hero, Phineas Fogg. She does it in 72 days and en passant foils a jihadist assassination attempt on the Prince of Wales and unmasks the villains. The plot is ridiculous and so too is Nellie.

She is naïve, opinionated, quaintly ignorant of everything outside America, gauche, tactless and a strident, self-righteous feminist – in short a typical female American journalist. Not surprisingly most of the people she meets find her a nuisance and treat her with patronising disdain, which put the reader on her side despite all her faults. She outwits the villains largely because they fail to take her seriously.

Do not take this book seriously. Most historical novelists and murder/mystery writers take their work very seriously and avoid jokes. The Nellie Bly books are a sustained joke. So far it is enjoyable, but what will happen when she gets older and wiser?

Edward James SOMEWHERE TO BELONG Judith Miller, Bethany House, 2010, $14.99, pb, 368pp, 9780764206429 In 1877 Berta Schumacher, a spoiled society girl from Chicago, comes with her parents to live in the Christian community of Amana, where her rebellion against the rules tests the patience and the faith of those around her. Her willful struggles expose other people’s secrets, long kept hidden, but in the end Berta has grown into a devout and compassionate woman.

Judith Miller—not to be confused with the controversial one-time New York Times reporter— writes in a placid style that never breaks out of a walk. Nonetheless the story of Berta, her influences and her eventual redemption, is expertly crafted and ultimately satisfying. Miller details life in the self-contained Amana colonies of Iowa very well, although at times I could understand 19th Century

why a spirited girl would kick up her heels; and it might have done to show life on the outside more realistically, as a contrast. Nevertheless, this novel, one of Miller’s Daughters of Amana series, will please fans of what’s now called “Bonnet Fiction” as well as a wider audience looking for an affirmative read.

Cecelia Holland SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY Siri Mitchell, Bethany House, 2010, $14.99, pb, 395pp, 9780764204333 The Gilded Age in New York City, 1891, is for the wealthy and debutantes; a magical place filled with glitz and glimmer, and of course: marriage proposals. But for teenage Clara Carter and her friend Lizzie Barnes, the season is a time of nerves, stress, and oppression. Clara’s father and aunt are determined that she marry. And marry no one but Franklin De Vries, heir to the De Vries fortune.

Added to the terror of their first season, and the realization that Lizzie’s family also expects Lizzie to marry Frankin, is the pressure Clara feels from her family, especially when they hire a news reporter to cover her every move and to make sure she gets noticed in the society papers.

Unfortunately for Clara, she discovers Franklin is a pompous, nasty fellow. And her heart begins to beat fast every time she meets his goofy younger brother, Harold, instead. Clara must learn to navigate the gossip, the pressure, and the expectations of society as she struggles to follow her heart, as well as her familial duties.

Mitchell has crafted a delightful novel that

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A LITTLE FOLLY

sparkles like the ballrooms in her story. Clara epitomizes the struggles young debutantes of the age suffered, from the tight corsets to the oppressive expectations of society, and her trials and tribulations are expertly written. However, the sudden bits and pieces dealing with poverty and Clara’s attempts to understand class differences seem out of place and are not dealt with fully. I was a bit disappointed that Mitchell never entirely tackled these aspects or gave Clara the chance to fully change and grow. Overall though, this is a lovely romantic read.

Rebecca Roberts CHARLOTTE AND EMILY: A Novel of the Brontës (US) / THE TASTE OF SORROW (UK) Jude Morgan, St. Martin’s Press, 2009, $14.99/ C$17.99, 373pp, 9780312642730 / Headline Review, 2010, £7.99, pb, 464pp, 9780755339006 “It was as if silence were nakedness, and every moment must, for decency’s sake, be verbally clothed.”

The Brontë family lives on the windy moors of Yorkshire, but despite their numbers, six children, they are brought up in a kind of sacred silence that suits their father’s nerves and sense of propriety.

Their mother dies young and the older daughters are sent away to school so that quietude might be preserved. But then the older daughters also die and the four remaining children, three girls and a boy, huddle together whispering, imagining a world in which the passion of raised voices is commonplace even as it hints at violence and madness. And then

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Jude Morgan, Headline Review, 2010, £19.99, hb, 376pp, 9780755307661 Louisa and Valentine Carnell have lived a constrained life under the domination of a strict and old-fashioned father. On his death they decide to throw caution to the wind and embark on a lively round of merriment as they head to London. Louisa is finally able to decline her father’s favoured suitor, Pearce Lynley, and search for one of her own, perhaps even Pearce’s brother, Francis.

Valentine is less circumspect and indulges a little too heavily in gambling, then falls in love with Lady Harriet Eversholt – a married woman.

Throughout their London sojourn the siblings are supported by their great friend, James Tresilian, who is always there to offer advice and comfort. The series of little follies that the Carnells commit help both the siblings realise what is really important to them. And, perhaps more significantly, who is really important to them.

A Little Folly is a delightful concoction, one that manages to emulate all the sharp observation and wit of Austen, with all the dash and romance of Heyer. And it has a plot to rival both those Greats. It is effortlessly entertaining, but has greater depth and soul than a Regency romance might reasonably be expected to have, which makes for a refreshing change. The sense of historical accuracy is impeccable and the characters perfectly drawn. This novel cannot be recommended highly enough.

Sara Wilson HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 39

the children grow up and begin to write: silently, anonymously, passionately.

Despite its title, Charlotte and Emily is the story of all the Brontës whose story, though familiar, compels the reader with poetic turns of phrase, exceptional characterization, and insights about the how the family dynamic shaped both their lives and their artistic work. It is possible, as Jude Morgan suggests, that the unhappiness of the Brontës, particularly the girls, served as their muse. And yet, his scenes of the quiet evenings in which they sat together sharing one candle, writing, reading each other’s verse out loud and talking about their writing are poignant in their being both familial and rebellious. This is the kind of book I’d read again because it is so well written.

Patricia O’Sullivan FLOATING GOLD Margaret Muir, Hale, 2010, £18.99, hb, 224pp, 9780709090519 In 1802, during the brief period of peace in England’s war with France, Captain Oliver Quintrell is given a special commission. Under secret orders, the frigate HMS Elusive is despatched to a remote island at the end of the earth in search of an unusual treasure – the “floating gold” of the title. Although the crew faces the expected hazards of a voyage into the least-navigated and unpredictable Southern Ocean, this story doesn’t feature the guts-and-glory cannonade that is so often the basis of Napoleonic-era fiction, but is rather an intriguing mystery featuring murder, spies and skulduggery. The plotting and pace are well maintained throughout and the penultimate chapter is page-turning historical fiction at its best.

Quintrell is a welcome new addition to the cavalcade of fictional naval heroes, as also the young carpenter, Will Ethridge. Female readers hoping for romantic interludes may be disappointed and find Quintrell’s love entanglements low-key, but there is scope for this aspect to be expanded in a potential sequel.

Margaret Muir’s own first-hand experiences of life at sea on tall ships add honesty and veracity to the writing. Her historical research is on the whole impeccable, although some esoteric anachronisms will be spotted by Nelson’s Navy aficionados who know that the terminology specific to RN frigates of the time is somewhat different from that relating to square riggers, but this is unlikely to concern most readers. Floating Gold is a book to be enjoyed by anyone who likes historical mysteries or cracking adventure yarns about ships and the sea.

Marina Maxwell WILD WESTERN DAYS Clarence E. Mulford, Forge, 2010, $21.99, hb, 576pp, 9780765323071 Anyone who is a Western-movie lover remembers the movies about Hopalong Cassidy, but here are the three novels that preceded that cinematic fame – The Coming of Cassidy, Bar20, and Hopalong Cassidy. These books reveal all that can be written about the Texas cowhands or 40 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

punchers, as they were called.

The first novel is about Billy (Hopalong) Cassidy and those who shared work and friendship with him before and after working at Bar-20, one of the best cattle ranches in the Gulf. The nickname he received was not so much for the thigh wound he received but “a name that stood for loyalty, courage and most amazing gun-play… a cowpuncher who lived and worked in the days when the West was wild and lawless… the only Court at hand, Judge Colt, enforced justice as he believed it should be enforced.” That is the essence of these novels that deal with cattle rustlers or thieves, gambling card cheaters, tempting and fearful women surviving the Wild West, Native Indian attackers, gun lovers who fought to the death for the fun and challenge of the quickest draw, etc.

Hardworking cowpunchers of integrity stuck together through thick (mostly) and thin times.

Mulford also manages to characterize their full humanity in scenes of comic tomfoolery and trickster tales to challenge the most gullible in every town. So it is that Hopalong in the second novel manages to talk the sheriff out of arresting him for manslaughter. In the third novel, the sinister Antonio is introduced, a confirmed troublemaker for the Bar-20 gang, a man who lets others do his dirty work.

Wild Western Days is a collection of classics to attract old and new fans who will relish these prime examples of the early 20th-century American Western novel.

Viviane Crystal

Red Rain is a colorful and lively novel with twists that never fail to surprise the reader and is highly recommended for anyone interested in that period in American history.

John Kachuba

RED RAIN Bruce Murkoff, Knopf, 2010, $26.95/C$32.00, hb, 352pp, 9780307272072 In 1864 Will Harp returns to his home in the Hudson Valley after an absence of more than a decade. As wounded Civil War veterans return to the town of Rondout, he is continually reminded of his military service in the West against the Shoshone and haunted by unspeakable incidents in that campaign. All he wants to do is retire to The Clove, the farm he has inherited from his father, and reconstruct the ancient mastodon whose bones are discovered in a swamp on the farm.

But a greedy and brutal local businessman has designs on The Clove, the last piece of property he needs to build a resort hotel. Harp adamantly refuses to sell so the rich man unleashes his thug enforcer Mickey to “persuade” Doctor Harp to close the deal. Offsetting Mickey’s aggressive nature is his sister Jane, whose betrothed is missing in action at Cold Harbor and who finds herself drawn to the brooding and inscrutable Harp.

Murkoff weaves an intricate and exceptionally well detailed tale of mid-19th century life along the Hudson River. The novel casts a wide net for character types, including the gang of Dickensianlike boys who engage in petty crime; the Jug Hill people whose blood is both African and Dutch; the Irish gangs that continually fight “American-born” gangs; and the rich upper class who have found success in shipping and land speculation.

THE SISTER WIFE Diane Noble, Avon, 2010, $12.99, pb, 400pp, 9780061962226 Lady Mary Rose Ashley isn’t quite sure what to think of her grandfather’s newfound interest in Joseph Smith and the Latter-Day Saints, but she bravely goes with him to America in order to learn more and perhaps gently sway him to return to his native England. On the journey, however, Mary Rose herself comes to believe when she witnesses a miracle wrought by the prayer of Brigham Young, who is also traveling on board. So when her heart is captured by Gabriel McKay, the ship’s builder, she is thrilled when he also joins the Saints and the two joyfully make their way to the religious settlement of Nauvoo, Illinois. Once there, however, things take an unsettling turn as Gabriel succumbs wholeheartedly to the teachings of Joseph Smith, and those teachings dictate that he must take multiple wives in order to get to the highest heaven.

The Sister Wife follows the story of Mary Rose’s divided heart as she decides whether she can share her husband with another wife as decreed by the Prophet. Set in 1841, this book is heavily preachy, though I couldn’t always tell if the author was for or against the Saints’ movement. Mary Rose, spunky and opinionated at first, seems to lose herself after her marriage, and I found the addition of three young children as wards an unnecessary distraction.

The story moves around among several characters, several of whom seem severely lacking a backbone.

TOM WASP AND THE NEWGATE KNOCKER Amy Myers, Five Star, 2010, $25.95, hb, 254pp, 9781594148705 The dawn of the year 1863 sees London chimney sweep Tom Wasp visiting his friend Eliza in prison just before her execution. She’s got a gift for him: a pawn ticket that he redeems for his next adventure. On hand is Tom’s apprentice Ned, a 12-year-old on the brink of a choice between a life of crime or finding solutions to crime; pretty and bright Jemima, daughter to a leader of the Rat Mob; and master of disguise Mr. Chuckwick who does his best to protect them all.

The mystery compounds with two murders, then the stakes escalate when it looks like upper classes are keeping their own secrets, involving international intrigue being played out on the eve of the wedding of the Prince of Wales to a Danish princess.

Tom Wasp’s second adventure is clever as Tom himself, whose simple faith and integrity help the reader navigate a world alive with eccentrics of all classes, with settings from rag fairs to grand balls.

By the suspenseful end, it is, in Tom’s words, “time to come clean—although this is hard for sweeps.”

Eileen Charbonneau

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There is some action but it isn’t satisfying, and haste seems the key to most characters’ decisions.

Most disturbing is the fact that the prologue is repeated almost verbatim as a chapter later in the book. The premise of this novel is excellent, but the execution is flawed. Sadly, I don’t think I will be looking for the next two installments in the series.

Tamela McCann HEARTS AWAKENING Delia Parr, Bethany House, 2010, $14.99, pb, 320pp, 9780764206702 This story begins in August 1840 on a 100-acre island in the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Dillon Island was the dream child of James Gladson, who purchased the island several years earlier and planted an orchard. Jackson Smith had been on his own for quite some time when James took him in and gave him a good home and promising future. Jackson repays this kindness by marrying Rebecca, James’s only daughter, and giving him the grandsons he desires to carry on the island legacy.

When the story opens, Jackson is struggling to maintain the orchards and raise his two sons alone.

James has been dead for some time and Rebecca has tragically drowned a year earlier. Enter Ellie Kilmer, a plain spinster without prospects of her own, who comes to the island to keep house for him and care for his sons. When the handsome widower offers his hand in marriage, it’s in the form of a contract, legal and binding, that requires her to stay until the youngest son comes of age in exchange for a roof over her head. She is sad at the prospect of a loveless marriage, but believes God has given her the gift of family and is determined to succeed. She soon falls in love with this bitter man and his grieving children. When she learns that his bitterness is caused by an unrequited love and when Dorothea comes to the island to reclaim that love, Ellie’s faith is tested in ways she never knew possible.

This is the first book by Delia Parr that I have read, and although she has been favorably compared to Janette Oke, I found the writing to be stilted and the storyline too predictable. Those readers more familiar with this genre may not agree with me.

Susan Zabolotny A FAMILY AFFAIR (US) / A CORPSE IN SHINING ARMOUR (UK) Caro Peacock, Avon, 2010, $13.99, pb, 464pp, 9780061447495 / Harper, 2009, £7.99, pb, 448pp, 9780007244249 Liberty Lane, the heroine of Peacock’s A Foreign Affair (UK title Death at Dawn) and A Dangerous Affair (Death of a Dancer) is back with a new mystery to solve.

The elderly Lord Brinkburn has been in an asylum for the mentally insane for several years and is now near death. His elder son, Stephen, would inherit the family title and great wealth, but a rumor is going around London society that Stephen is not legitimate and that younger brother 19th Century

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Patricia O’Reilly, Cape Press, 2010, £9.99, pb, 312pp, 9780956363206 This is the story of Kathleen, or as she was familiarly known, Kate Newton. Her short life was dazzling in both its variety and drama. She is perhaps best known for her love affair with the French artist Jacques Tissot, which caused a huge scandal in the conservative society of Victorian England. Their passionate relationship takes centre stage in A Type of Beauty, but the elements of her life before that are equally interesting.

The book opens with Kate forced back from London to her childhood home of India to marry a man she has never met. Her life quickly unravels, partly through her own honesty, and soon she is back in London with an unconsummated marriage, pregnant by another man of the worst moral character, and with a divorce pending.

But Kate is a courageous woman of independent thought, and she quietly refuses to bow to the societal restrictions of the day. When she travels to Paris with her sister, she finally meets happiness in the person of Jacques Tissot. Theirs is an instant and intense chemistry, and together they manage to overcome a variety of obstacles to end up together in London. Kate becomes his artistic inspiration and domestic companion before tragedy strikes once more.

Patricia O’Reilly renders the emotional landscape of the Victorian era with a sharp wit and vivid imagination and creates the fascinating character of Kate Newton with the subtlety of an artist’s palette. Highly recommended.

Gordon O’Sullivan Miles must inherit. Strangely, the rumor seems to have been started by the boys’ mother, Lady Brinkburn.

In an effort to quietly and without scandal discover the truth, sometimes sleuth Liberty Lane is hired by the Brinkburn family lawyer. Liberty is able to befriend one son, gain the confidence of the lady, and be on hand when a family servant is found murdered. More complications are introduced when Stephen goes missing, and, a little later, so does Liberty’s new maid, Tabby. The novel is filled with a host of likable and unlikable characters, none of whom the reader can wholly trust.

Peacock’s London is a mixture of stable dust, apricot silk gowns, and a bit of mutton; her subtle use of Victorian minutiae brings to life the setting, while keeping the focus of the story on the Brinkburn family secrets and the escapades of Liberty Lane. Liberty is a clever and independent detective, and A Family Affair is a fun and entertaining mystery novel.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt MORNING’S REFRAIN Tracie Peterson, Bethany House, 2010, $14.99, pb, 368pp, 9780764201523 Dalton Lindquist has lived most of his life in Sitka, Alaska – the exception being the brief time he spent as a baby with his half-brothers and sisters after they shot his mother and kidnapped him to gain control of his inheritance. Dalton’s mother survived the assault and got him back through the help of one of the sisters, who brought Dalton back to Sitka and remained there herself. At age

eighteen, Dalton learns about the kidnapping and assault and wants to go to Kansas City to get to know these mysterious half-siblings better and see if they have changed their evil ways.

When Alaska receives a new governor, Phoebe Robbins moves to Sitka with her family. Her father is a longtime friend and colleague of the governor.

Unfortunately, the Robbins family has a tainted past, as Phoebe’s grandfather, a banker, stole from his clients. The money was never recovered, and many in Vermont blame Phoebe’s father. This move to Alaska will hopefully take him far from news of this crime. Phoebe’s father is innocent of any wrongdoing.

As the boat carrying the Robbins nears Sitka’s shores, Phoebe falls overboard and Dalton dives into the cold water to rescue her. It is love at first sight for them both.

A Christian romance set in 1889-90, Morning’s Refrain is heavy on the religious elements, with characters (including five-year-olds) turning frequently to God and often quoting scripture.

Some of the difficult situations the characters find themselves in seem forced, but for those who seek God’s help, everything works out at the end.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt A HIGHLAND DUCHESS Karen Ranney, Avon, 2010, $7.99, pb, 384pp, 9780061771842 Karen Ranney has long been one of my favorite authors, and she does not disappoint in her latest Victorian historical romance. Emma, the beautiful Duchess of Herridge, is called “the Ice HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 41

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Jane Smiley, Knopf, 2010, $26.50, hb, 320pp, 9781400040605 / Faber & Faber, 2010, £12.99, hb, 432pp, 9780571258741 Early on, the heroine of this wonderfully deceptive novel, Margaret, rides a bike along a country road: “covering distance in this solitary manner was marvelously intoxicating…she gripped the handlebars and felt the cold wind lift her hair and, it seemed, her cheeks and eyebrows. The brim of her hat folded back, and the hat itself threatened to fly off her head, but though she gave this a passing thought, she didn’t, could not, stop.” But she does stop, unfortunately, almost at the feet of a man who “looked as if leaning in any direction were impossible for him.”

Margaret marries this man, and her free wild rides are over. Marriage, in the late 19th century the necessary condition of a respectable woman, has sacrificed her to her crackpot husband and his monomania – that rigid inability to change forecast in her first glimpse of him. The unfolding of this story is heartbreaking and ultimately tragic, and Smiley’s evoking of emotional intensity from the most ordinary events raises her heroine to the status of an Everywoman, crippled by social conventions and shackled to a man who is not worthy of her.

This is a hard, angry book, served up in a bland disguise, beautiful and scary and true.

Cecelia Holland As a creative writing teacher, I know Jane Smiley from her excellent 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel and had not, until now, read any of her fiction. I shall be remedying this in short order.

Private Life is a wonderful novel, sparely written yet full of passion, a simmering pressure cooker of rage and grief on behalf of its heroine, whose lack of self-esteem makes her unable to express these feelings for herself.

The novel follows the life of Margaret Early, from her childhood in post-bellum Missouri, haunted by a hanging she knows she witnessed but cannot remember, through to 1942 in California, by which time she has been married to Andrew, her increasingly eccentric astronomer husband, for almost forty years. This marriage is the novel’s main focus. Like many marriages in fiction, it is a disappointment, but what gives the novel its power and originality is the fact that Margaret sticks it out. She doesn’t abscond with a lover or escape into the supportive network of her women friends, though both possibilities present themselves at different times in her life, because nothing in her upbringing has given her the confidence to do so. Margaret is not a conventional heroine. In many ways she is an everywoman for her generation. The unremarked and unremarkable tragedy of her life is an eloquent and moving testament to the courage and endurance of all respectable women who found themselves trapped in mistaken marriages in the first half of the 20th century.

Though Margaret’s life is quiet, great historical events do impinge upon it, from the aftermath of the American Civil War, through the San Francisco earthquake of 1905, the Spanish Flu, and both world wars. Andrew’s lifelong obsession with the theories of Einstein is woven with great skill, in ways funny, frightening and utterly heartbreaking, into the fabric of the marriage.

Highly recommended.

Sarah Bower Queen” by her detractors. When she returns to Chavensworth, her husband’s home, she discovers the Duke dead – much to her secret relief. She will not lower herself to make it known that she has been the victim of physical, mental and sexual abuse for her entire married life. No longer must she play the submissive, humiliating role of sexual slave to her domineering husband.

When she is kidnapped from her bedroom by a mysterious Ian McNair, the Earl of Buchane, she is liberated for the first time in her life. She can 42 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

finally be herself. She falls in love, only to discover that he is to be wed. When her uncle forces Emma to accept the suit of a wealthy, callous man, she despairs of ever finding happiness.

Historical romances rarely address the subject of sexual abuse, but Ms. Ranney faces it with taste and delicacy. Adding a touch of mystery, she assures a good read with serious overtones. I would recommend A Highland Duchess.

Monica E. Spence

BEDLAM: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë Laura Joh Rowland, Overlook, 2010, $24.95, hb, 346pp, 9781590202715 In this Victorian mystery-thriller historical, demure but spirited heroine Charlotte Brontë once again races breathlessly through England, France and Ireland accompanied by the darkly heroic, devastatingly sexy John Slade, Her Majesty’s Royal Spy. The pace is indeed breathless, with rapid changes in fortune around every corner (just when you thought they were safe…) and evil villains barely a step behind the intrepid duo. Love, romance and relationship issues surface as Charlotte and Slade struggle with society’s taboos and the demands of their high-flown and sensual love for each other, now tested through episodes of torture, captivity in London’s infamous insane asylum, fistfights, conflagrations and sea sickness—all in the service of the Queen and greater humanity, as the defiant pair track down a psychotic Russian agent and a truly mad scientist out to destroy the world to prove a point.

Rowland provides interesting historical tidbits of the science of the times, including bizarre techniques to cure the insane (ugh), preposterous medical theories, and a run through the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London, 1851, which featured exotic, foreign animals and people, as well as the latest inventions. Occasionally Rowland gets a touch gory while describing murders, and I admit I grew a little tired of Charlotte’s constant lamenting about her desires warring with her sense of propriety, but she was, after all, a Victorian lady.

The continuous on-the-run suspense with either the villains or the law on her heels was a bit tedious as well, especially as it was a no-brainer that “all would end well” (more or less). However, there are a few very un-Victorian sex scenes (ooh-la-la), and overall it’s a good and fun if somewhat hectic read.

Mary F. Burns SILVER AND GOLD David Sakmyster, Dragon Moon Press, 2009, $19.95, pb, 340pp, 9781896944982 In 1895, in the Yukon Territory, young Delin Wetherwax is a reclusive prospector known for his uncanny ability to find gold and silver. This novel is his and his father’s story, spanning several years set in the Gold Rush era of California, Nevada and the Yukon. Against the backdrop of the cold and snow-covered Yukon lurk a vicious Sesquat, a rich industrialist responsible for killing Delin’s parents, and exciting deadly dog races.

This revenge tale plays out against the lure of gold and silver, as Delin attempts to discover enough valuable minerals to purchase food to live on. Delin, faced with avenging his father’s death by an unscrupulous mine owner, has become the enemy of a monster Sesquat in the Yukon. He also manages to find a love interest in this cold desolate country, but she will cause him even greater emotional pain as the story unfolds.

I found this novel an exceptional read. The 19th Century

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FAR ABOVE RUBIES

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Anne-Marie Vukelic, Hale, 2010, £18.99, hb, 217pp, 9780709090533 Catherine Dickens is the subject of Far Above Rubies. She was married not only to one of the most famous novelists of the Victorian era but to a restless, mercurial and often difficult man. As Anne-Marie Vukelic tells us through Catherine’s journal, Catherine was devoted to and in love with a husband who was the constant centre of all things in their lives. For Catherine this was difficult yet often thrilling.

Catherine’s story does not have a happy ending, but the journey is worth it for the reader, both for the sadness in Catherine’s life as well as the interludes of great happiness. This is a moving portrait of a marriage which ultimately failed and Vukelic tells it well, analysing it with sensitivity, using Catherine’s own viewpoint. Her research is faultless and for those interested in reading more, there are end notes on each chapter. Importantly, Vukelic recreates Catherine’s domestic world convincingly. She shows how Victorian men could legally and emotionally manipulate their wives. Whilst Vukelic portrays Dickens as trying, brilliant and very social, she casts Catherine as patient and tolerant, often anxiously controlling her jealousy of Dickens enthusiasms for his female friends, including her sisters. Moreover, although her Catherine is disappointed, Vukelic is not judgmental of either Catherine or Charles.

Time and place are authentically portrayed, bringing to life contemporaries such as William Thackeray, Wilkie Collins and the colourful Count D’Orsay. Equally significant are Dickens’ family and Catherine’s relationship with their sons and daughters. Far Above Rubies is beautifully written. I wanted to read more about Catherine’s sisters and Catherine’s visits to America and Italy. My appetite is whetted. This is a fascinating novel about an intriguing Victorian woman.

Carol McGrath

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E D I TORS’ C H OI C E THE BLIND CONTESSA’S NEW MACHINE

Carey Wallace, Pamela Dorman/Viking, 2010, $23.95/C$$30.00, hb, 224pp, 9780670021895 Eighteen-year-old Contessa Carolina Fantoni lives a charmed life. She has a wealthy family, a beautiful estate, and is about to marry the most eligible bachelor in the region. But just as her future seems to be falling into place, Carolina’s sight begins to falter. Day by day, darkness closes in over her beloved lake house, her books, even the dresses she must don each morning. The only person who truly understands her predicament is Turri – the eccentric inventor who has been her friend from childhood.

As Carolina is cut off from communication with her friends and family, Turri builds her a machine, a wondrous device that types letters onto paper and reconnects Carolina to the outside world. The gift sparks an illicit love affair that leads both Turri and Carolina into danger – and proves that love is, and always will be, blind.

Debut author Carey Wallace has crafted a lyrical novel in which each scene is sketched with brushstrokes as spare and beautiful as those of an Impressionist painting. While Wallace’s characters inhabit a near-fantasy world, bounded only loosely by the historical context of early 19th-century Italy, each lives and breathes as a real person with real joys and conflictions. Wallace’s dialogue is witty, her descriptions superb; every sentence holds a surprise. Wise, melancholy, and achingly beautiful, this little book is a gem.

Ann Pedtke 19th Century

author provided fascinating characters, eventful settings and an exciting plot. From the American Civil War to the Boxer Rebellion in China, the author combines very good storytelling while introducing real people, such as Samuel Colt and a young Herbert Hoover. The descriptions of the cold, bleak Yukon were spectacular. You could see and feel the cold icy conditions that the characters felt. I highly recommend this book and, because of the author’s writing style and knowledge of history, can’t wait to immerse myself into his next novel.

Jeff Westerhoff PROMISE BRIDGE Eileen Clymer Schwab, NAL, 2010, $15.00, pb, 432pp, 9780451230034 Promise Bridge is the debut novel from Schwab, a talented new voice in historical fiction. The novel is set in pre-Civil War Virginia, where tensions are running high and danger lurks around every corner. Hannelore Blessing is a young woman with a privileged though unhappy upbringing. Her parents died when she was a child, and she was taken in by her mother’s sister, plantation owner Aunt Augusta. Hannah and her long-time friend, Colt, encounter a group of runaway slaves in the woods near the plantation, one of whom, named Livie, is accidentally wounded by Colt. Since Livie cannot travel, Hannah and Colt devise a plan so that she becomes Hannah’s servant and is therefore somewhat protected while she heals.

A deep friendship quickly grows between Hannah and Livie; however, each woman lives under the constant threat of having their friendship discovered. Twitch, the overseer at the next plantation, keeps a watchful eye on the two of them and threatens Hannah. Hannah promises to protect Livie, but soon discovers that in order to do what is best for her friend; she must find the strength to let Livie go so she can travel north to freedom.

The novel focuses on Hannah’s growing realization of the social injustices that occur everyday on the plantation, something that Hannah had not given much though to before befriending Livie. Throughout the course of the novel, Hannah learns to trust what is in her heart and forge her own path, even if that means defying the social standards of the South. The only drawback is that at times the dialogue is a bit forced and unrealistic.

All in all, Promise Bridge is a moving story of the power of friendship, trust, and learning to open one’s heart to love and new possibilities. Very much recommended.

Troy Reed VICTORY Julian Stockwin, Hodder & Stoughton, 2010, £12.99, hb, 342pp, 97803040961193 / McBooks, Oct. 2010, $24.00, hb, 320pp, 9781590135082 This is the 11th book in the ‘Kydd’ series, following the career of Thomas Kydd from ordinary seaman to (so far) frigate captain in Nelson’s navy.

Followers of the series will know what to expect, and this latest book will not disappoint.

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Stockwin consciously follows in the tradition of C S Forester and Patrick O’Brian, with extravagant attention to technical detail. As a retired Lieutenant-Commander in the Royal and the Royal Australian navies (O’Brian only ever went to sea in a small yacht) such things are understandably important to him. Yet this is a long-obsolete technology, so why do we find it so fascinating? A whole chapter of Victory is devoted to the sea trials of the new frigate. Yet many of us clearly relish it.

Victory is essentially a retelling of the Trafalgar campaign. As Stockwin himself asks in his Author’s Note, what new can be said about this? He tackles the problem by telling the story alternately from Kydd’s viewpoint and that of a midshipman on HMS Victory. The midshipman did not inspire me and I do not find Kydd’s companion, Renzi, very convincing (he is no Maturin). Kydd and his ship keep the story moving, giving us a real sense of being in a tall-masted fighting vessel, braving the battle and the breeze.

Edward James HEARTS DIVIDED Joanne Sundell, Five Star, 2010, $25.95, hb, 288pp, 9781594148828 Hearts Divided, book one of The Quaker and the Confederate series, follows the stories of Willa Tyler, a female soldier in the Confederate army; Surry Lion, Willa’s best friend and a slave who seeks freedom in the North; and Levi Clement, a Quaker who falls in love with Willa and helps Surry on her trip.

This is one of the least believable books I’ve ever read. At age eight, Willa and Surry cry when Willa’s father explains freedom to them, and they realize that Surry is a slave. How did Surry live for eight years not knowing she was a slave? Willa is able to fool her fellow soldiers into thinking she is a man, but in a single, distant glance, Levi sees she is a woman and falls in love. These are a few examples from a story overrun with unlikely occurrences. The Quakers seem nothing like Quakers. They appear to be people following a list of rules they don’t understand. The soldiers are one-dimensional, interested only in killing Yankees for Virginia. The complicated issues of the time are simplified or ignored.

This historical romance has very little romance—just the slow developing, incomprehensible relationship between Willa and Levi. The characters are flat and inconsistent, the writing clunky and repetitive.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt CHANGE OF FORTUNE Sandra Wilson, Hale, £18.99, hb, 224pp, 9780709089995 A Regency romance that delivers. All the usual ingredients are here; a silver fair beauty, a select seminary, dukes, balls and even a ‘rakish’ on the first page. Leonie Conyngham is the top pupil at her school – rich, beautiful, with a glittering future.

She is nice to the maids (always a sign of good 44 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

character) and secretly reads scandalous Byron.

Her future comes crashing down when her father is ruined and dies in India; now she must earn her own living as a teacher in the school.

The situation is complicated by the presence of the wilful niece of Sir Guy, the fiancé of her old school rival Imogen. Does nasty Imogen deserve him? This is really a plot device to have her disadvantaged and vulnerable ready to be rescued by a suitably handsome and rich knight in shining armour but it is escapist fun and it works. The novel shows what jealousy can do and what some women are prepared to do to get or keep a man and it also creates a sense of the time. Anyone who likes this genre will know what to expect and will enjoy the novel very much. There are twists and turns and appropriately perilous situations from which our brave and morally upright heroine can be rescued.

Recommended unreservedly for fans of the genre.

Ann Northfield JOHNNY MONTANA Michael Zimmer, Five Star, 2010, $25.95, hb, 246pp, 9781594148316 Gold lures men to the Redhawk mining district of Montana in the late 1880s. Unfortunately, leaving the district with your gold is difficult because Brett Cutter and his gang of Cut-throats would take it from you. Johnny Montana, along with three partners, has gathered enough gold dust to make an attempt to leave the district. Johnny is elected to try to get the gold out of the district without the Cut-throats’ knowledge. After Johnny leaves camp, he is joined by a woman whose prospector husband died recently. She would accompany him on his trip, feeling safer than making the journey alone. The book tells of the problems the duo run into when they try to leave, followed closely by the Cut-throats.

With each chapter ending in a cliffhanger, the book is a page-turner filled with excitement and suspense, as Montana attempts to make it out of the mining district. The Cut-throats eventually learn that Montana would be difficult to rob and kill.

The author has written five other Western novels, and his extensive research on the Old West has paid off. His characters come alive in this tale of western desperadoes, a good guy with a cool name, and the mysterious ability he has to stay alive (as their fellow gang members continue to die by his hand, the Cut-throats ask the question: “Who is that guy?”). Highly recommended for Western enthusiasts.

Jeff Westerhoff

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20th century

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HEMINGWAY CUTTHROAT Michael Atkinson, Minotaur, 2010, $24.99, hb, 272pp, 9780312379728 Ernest Hemingway was an infamously unlikeable guy, and Atkinson’s frank portrayal

calls for adjusting one’s “empathy” threshold to very low. Atkinson’s premise is that this is what really happened to Hemingway in Spain in 1937, providing the content for his most famous book, For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hemingway is a journalist, sending back dispatches to U.S. newspapers about the Spanish Civil War. When a Spanish friend “disappears,” Hemingway throws himself into the fray like the proverbial bulldog clamped onto the bull’s neck, and won’t let go until he finds out the facts.

As a woman reader of historical novels primarily written for women readers, I decided to challenge myself to read a novel about this outrageously macho man, written by a man, to see if the content, style and overall experience could possibly be all that different. Honey, you don’t know the half of it.

Atkinson is a good writer and at times, delivers some great sentences; for example, after witnessing a cold-blooded murder, “The inside of his heart was a slightly different country now, cloudier, brutalized by midnights and less beguiled by mornings.”

But there’s also non-stop swearing, drinking and passing out, whoring, fighting, beatings, torture, kidnapping, car chases and precious little sleep.

The atmosphere is hot, dark, smoky and utterly masculine; the few women who appear are either hard-boiled American dames who cross swords with Hemingway (and lose), or tough Spanish women who defy him then invite him into their beds. Hemingway’s occasional moments of clarity about the meaning and direction of his life, his writing, and his family aren’t enough to make him truly sympathetic, but they help.

Occasional observations about the experience of writing are intelligent and interesting; I would have liked more of this and less action-adventure à la Jack Bauer. A challenge for Austenites!

Mary F. Burns HEMINGWAY DEADLIGHTS Michael Atkinson, Minotaur, 2009, $24.99/ C$31.99, hb, 244pp, 9780312379711 It’s May 1956, and Ernest Hemingway has writer’s block. Hiding from his fourth wife, Mary, in Key West, he is drinking heavily and hunting geckos. That’s how he falls off the roof. Waking the next morning with no recollection of the events that left him with a cast on his leg, he has the added annoyance of policemen in his bedroom.

Peter Cuthbert, fisherman, smuggler, and drinking partner, has been found impaled on a whaling spear, and his last call was to Hemingway. When, eventually, the local police lose interest in the case, Hemingway begins his own investigation.

All of the action takes place in Key West and Cuba, both vibrantly depicted in this mystery.

Michael Atkinson populates the scenes with colorful characters, both fictional and historical. The dialogue is witty and quick. His characterization of Hemingway, however, is inconsistent, swinging back and forth from Papa as a liquor-fueled, hot mess with a roving eye and poor impulse control, to the swaggering, tenacious, man’s man, able to fight his way out of any situation. Overall, though, this 19th Century — 20th Century

was fun to read.

Alice Logsdon HEART OF TANGO Elia Barcelo (trans. David Frye), Quercus, 2010, £12.00, hb, 192pp, 9781906694609 In a seedy quarter of 1920s Buenos Aires, Natalia, a young innocent Spanish immigrant, is promised in marriage by her well-meaning father to a much older Austrian seaman. Natalia obeys although she does not love the man. At her wedding, she dances a tango with Diego, a handsome stranger, and they fall in love. Knowing that their love is hopeless, Diego vanishes. Immediately after her unhappy wedding night, her husband returns to the sea and is reported lost, presumed dead.

Natalia’s father dies; she is alone; where is Diego?

In 21st-century Austria, a man and a woman in different cities search out dance halls where each meets the perfect tango partner. Mysterious messages left in coat pockets draw the two separately to Buenos Aires and the house where Natalia once lived.

That the plot is melodramatic and predictable is irrelevant. Heart of Tango is a spicy soup of puzzles, coincidences and atmosphere. A ghost story that throbs with the steamy heat and smells of a rundown South American port contrasted with the rain and snow of a European night. Passion for the tango links the characters, although none is an Argentinian. Beautifully caught is the shabby dignity of immigrants whose dreams have faded into poverty and loneliness in an uncaring foreign land. Each character is rounded and believable, his or her actions dictated by the period and social demands of the time.

This is a strange, rich novel, fluently translated from Spanish. It is short, which is just as well, because once having picked it up a reader may be lost in its passionate, sensuous yet real world, and will not want to put it down. An intriguing and impressive novel.

Lynn Guest THE ORIENTALIST AND THE GHOST Susan Barker, Black Swan, 2009, $14.95/ C$21.95/£7.99, pb, 430pp, 9780552772419 A more apt title for Barker’s second novel (after the award-winning Sayonara Bar) would be The Orientalist and the Ghosts, as it is the plethora of spirits which command this book.

Christopher Milnar, a classically-trained British scholar of Oriental languages and culture, is sent to Malaya during the Chinese Communist uprising in 1951 to help at one of the many “resettlement camps.” These camps housed thousands of poorlyfed, overworked, undereducated, and often angry Malays of various extractions; the British felt that separating the population from the insurgent threat was the best way to deal with the situation.

It’s a steep learning curve for Milnar, as he figures out how to live in a jungle teeming with enemies both human and botanical. Decades later, these enemies still dog his path in their spectral form, from the always-drunk Resettlement Officer 20th Century

Charles Dulwich, to the eviscerated Lieutenant Spencer, to his one and only love, Evangeline, who was a Chinese nurse in the camp. Their relationship was brief and fraught, but out of it was born their daughter Francine, who spent her life—and now, her afterlife—hating her father, who is guardian of her two children.

The book jumps between decades and continents, from the jungles to the cities, the government housing of England to the exclusive boarding schools of Kuala Lumpur. The cast of spirits keeps up, however, contributing background and movement to the narrative, and proving time and again how tenuous the connections are between people who don’t, or won’t, understand each other. Barker is at her best in the jungle and with the crowd scenes, when the distrust and unrest clamor. Whether any of the characters, including the grandchildren, gains enough selfknowledge not to repeat the mistakes of the past is another question.

Helene Williams THE SCORPION’S BITE Aileen G. Baron, Poisoned Pen Press, 2010, $24.95, hb, 160pp, 9781590587539 This is the third in a series featuring Lily Sampson, a doctoral student in archaeology. In the midst of World War II, Lily has been assigned to conduct an archaeological survey of Transjordan for the OSS. She’s accompanied by the director of the American School of Archeology in Jerusalem, Gideon Weil, and a German photographer. Things quickly go awry as their Bedouin guide is murdered and Gideon becomes the prime suspect. Lily soon learns that the archaeological survey is just a front for their real mission – protecting the pipeline that supplies oil to the Allies and sabotaging the pipeline that supplies the Nazis. Add to this a Nazi plot to kidnap the eight-year-old King Faisal of Iraq, and you have a fast-paced story set in a fascinating time and place.

The only criticism I have of this book is that it was not longer. For me, not knowing much about the history and geography of this area, a map would have been a useful addition, as would some more background. While I enjoyed the story, I was left wanting a little more.

Jane Kessler THE PARIS VENDETTA Steve Berry, Hodder & Stoughton, 2010, £12.99, pb, 418pp, 9780340977415 In this modern thriller we have a secret society planning to gain power by manipulating the world’s finances, a man determined to avenge the death of his son caused by an aristocratic terrorist, various secret agents, and a search for the reputed treasure hoard of Napoleon. The scene shifts kaleidoscopically from Egypt to Copenhagen, to Corsica, to Paris, to England – even to a private jet over the Atlantic, with minor side trips to St Helena.

Keeping track of all these elements in rapid-fire scene changes is complicated, especially as there is

no indication of which of the too-many characters is the protagonist. There is sometimes no hint as to which character is speaking, and a great deal of swift one-liner dialogue. The scenes are often too short (there are several scenes no more than five lines long) for a reader to become interested. Little in this novel interested me.

There are snippets of Napoleonic information, but the opening third was slow, indeed boring, as I felt no empathy with any of the characters or their preoccupations. I did not care whether they solved the mystery, foiled the crooks, found the treasure, or indeed died before the end of the book. I understand this novel is one of a series, an example of the newly popular crossover conspiracy fiction sub-genre using historical mysteries in a modern setting (what about Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time?) but I will not be seeking out more from this author.

Marina Oliver MONSIEUR PAIN Roberto Bolaño (trans. Chris Andrews), New Directions, 2010, $22.95/£15.99, hb, 134pp, 9780811217149 This novella, set in 1938 Paris, was one of the early works of the Chilean Roberto Bolaño, whose 2666 has won him much posthumous acclaim. As a favor to a beautiful female friend, the title character, Pierre Pain, agrees to use his skills as a mesmerist to treat Cesar Vallejo, a Peruvian poet, dying from a severe case of hiccups. Two mysterious Spanish-speaking characters trail Pain and hand him a bribe to drop the case. The most important historical event in the background is the Spanish Civil War, about which we hear disagreements and predictions. Pain begins to suspect that there is a conspiracy to kill the poet, but he does not know how to go about confirming his suspicions.

One of Pain’s earlier colleagues in mesmerism has evidently gone to work for Franco, and he might be part of a plot against Vallejo. Why anyone would fear the intervention of a mesmerist is one of the many mysteries that remain unexplained.

Atmosphere plays a more central role than plot, as we follow Pain through the underworld of Paris seeking answers. Translating a Spanish book about people speaking in French into English must have been a challenge, and Chris Andrews met it well, conveying the meanings in colloquial English while keeping some of the flavor of the Spanish expressions. This early novel may not be the best introduction to Bolaño’s work, but it has its own interest as a dark puzzling story.

James Hawking THE HOUSE OF SPECIAL PURPOSE John Boyne, Black Swan, 2010, £7.99, pb, 712pp, 9780552775410 In this so-called ‘novel of the Romanovs’, John Boyne does what he has done so successfully in his previous novels, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and Mutiny on the Bounty. He takes an innocent, in this case Georgy Jachmenev who, as a 17-year-old boy, steps in front of an assassin’s bullet intended HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 45

for the Tsar’s uncle, and puts him at the heart of a major historical event. Georgy’s heroism catapults him from life as a peasant farmer to a position as companion to the Tsarevich Alexei. The year is 1915, and all too soon, Georgy’s loyalties are put to the ultimate test.

Using a double narrative, in which Georgy looks back over his life while sitting at the bedside of his dying wife with chapters interspersed with the story of his life in St. Petersburg, Boyne unfolds a terrific tale of heroism, endurance and romance.

His descriptions of the wanton extravagance of the Romanov court, through the eyes of a boy from the sticks who has rarely had enough to eat in his life, are wonderfully atmospheric, both horrifying and fascinating. He has captured a strong, authentic voice for the older Georgy, both tough and courtly. Not only is the novel a great feat of exciting storytelling but a wise and compassionate reminder that the very old are not anonymous and should not be invisible. When we meet Georgy, he is in his eighties, but though his body is subject to the usual range of aches and pains and failures, his heart is undaunted and his devotion to his wife, Zoya, undimmed by the many hardships and tragedies which they have endured.

Boyne has been criticised for spinning a yarn out of the facts and rumours surrounding the last of the Romanovs which is implausible. My response to that – and, I hope, his – is that he is writing fiction, not history, and this is very high quality fiction, gripping, atmospheric and unashamedly romantic.

Sarah Bower THE WEED THAT STRINGS THE HANGMAN’S BAG Alan Bradley, Orion, 2010, £12.99, hb, 342pp, 9780752897134 / Delacorte, 2010, $24.00, hb, 384pp, 9780385342315 Flavia de Luce is eleven years old, bold, precocious and great fun. In 1950 in the village of Bishop’s Lacey, Flavia lives in a shabby mansion with her remote father, Haviland, and older sisters, Daphne and Ophelia, whom she is at odds with. The book opens in the cemetery with her imagining her own funeral, and their feelings about her passing. She stumbles across a weeping woman, Nialla, accompanied by Rupert Porson, a puppeteer who has achieved television fame, and who is now touring the country with his creations.

Their van has broken down, and while the couple wait for repairs to be made, the vicar invites them to perform a show in the village hall.

Flavia is a keen observer and listener and appoints herself as their assistant. Rupert claims never to have visited the village previously, yet one of the marionettes at the performance bears an uncanny resemblance to a boy found hanging in Gibbet Wood many years before. Flavia’s suspicions are aroused, and she begins to investigate the boy’s death using guile, cheek and lies to gain information. In a memorably funny scene involving Mrs.Mullet, the family’s housekeeper, she learns about the boy’s inquest and post-mortem.

As a keen chemist with a specific interest in poisons, Flavia secretes herself in the laboratory of their mansion to analyse and create chemical formulas. She applies the same precise methodology and analysis to the evidence she gathers. When 46 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

Rupert is murdered and her efforts increase, she finds herself in great danger.

The plot strands draw together as if pulled by a puppet master as Flavia unravels the mysteries surrounding both deaths. In so doing she achieves a deeper understanding with her family.

Janet Williamson TESTIMONY OF TWO MEN Taylor Caldwell, Chicago Review, 2010, $18.95, pb, 624pp, 9781569763278 Rereading a popular novel forty years after publication is a unique experience. Then it was just a gripping read, an intriguing story about medicine and crime. It is definitely now so much more!

Taylor Caldwell was a master at characterization and a painter of architecture and interior design of the early 1900s in a provincial Pennsylvania town.

This is the story of Dr. Jonathan Ferrier, a man acquitted of murdering his own wife via a botched abortion but who has been socially convicted by the town. The only reason he remains, while always preparing to leave “soon,” is that he keeps receiving last-minute, desperate requests to save the life of some poor human suffering from leukemia, leprosy, and other diseases that other sham physicians refuse to recognize, let alone know how to treat. Dr. Robert Morgan is the young man of means who becomes Jonathan’s friend. Jonathan is caustic, insulting, bitterly truthful and blunt to all, an atheist or perhaps more of an agnostic, and becoming more and more of a heavy drinker as time passes.

This history of curing formidable diseases and the opposing points of view about the increasing militancy behind America’s Manifest Destiny are given brief but potent focus, underscoring Jonathan’s blistering attacks on his community.

However, one will rarely find a physician with a larger heart of gold for the truly sick and suffering, especially young children, those suffering in mind and spirit, and those who have led long lives of suffering due to the callousness of family and friends. We little by little discover the truth behind Jonathan’s crime, secrets exposing more than one character. In the Gospel of John, Jesus Christ says the testimony of two men is true – Taylor Caldwell brilliantly debunks that comment with stark, riveting drama. What an amazing writer!

Viviane Crystal A NIGHT OF LONG KNIVES Rebecca Cantrell, St. Martin’s, 2010, $24.99/ C$29.99, hb, 320pp, 9780765320452 The second in a gripping mystery series set in 1930s Berlin, Rebecca Cantrell brings back her journalist Hannah Vogel who again, and despite her previous vow, returns to her native Germany while the Nazis maintain power. As Hannah, accompanied by her foster child, Anton, reports on a zeppelin journey from South America to Switzerland, the aircraft is diverted to Munich, where Hannah and Anton are kidnapped and separated. Three years earlier, Hannah had kidnapped Anton from Ernst Rohm, the head of the Hitler’s Brown Shirts. Hannah’s rescue of the child has now backfired as she finds herself back in Germany, met by Rohm who insists she will marry him. She then suspects Rohm’s mother has hidden the boy.

Soon after, during the event called A Night of Long Knives, Hitler executes Rohm and hundreds of his stormtroopers, desiring to wipe out any remaining children bearing the Rohm name. In the meantime, Anton has disappeared, and Hannah uses tireless methods, including infiltrating a sleeping SS officer’s quarters, to uncover clues to his whereabouts. She enlists the help of her former lover, Boris, a banker, Agnes, a madam, and Sefton Delmer, a British journalist, in order to untangle the web of lies surrounding Anton’s whereabouts.

Although at times the quest for Anton becomes monotonous, the novel succeeds in relating the tension and uncertainty surrounding Hitler’s rise to absolute power over the Germans. Cantrell weaves historical fact and fiction effectively as she blends the reality of Hitler’s threats and atrocities with the accurate setting of Berlin as only a native would be able to recount. The plot moves quickly, causing the reader to cringe at every twist and turn.

This novel will satisfy the reader curious about life and death in 1930s Germany.

Liz Allenby A DARKER GOD: A Laetitia Talbot Mystery Barbara Cleverly, Bantam, 2010, $15.00/C$18.95, pb, 397pp, 9780385339919 In her third lively Laetitia Talbot mystery, author Barbara Cleverly tosses her would-be archeologist into the mixing pot that was 1928 Athens—a city still seething with post-war resentments. Fresh from a dig in Crete, Letty arrives in time to see her mentor and former lover, Andrew Merriman, an eminent British scholar, in an amateur production of Agamemnon; but when Dionysus, the dark god, demands a sacrifice, Merriman is killed. Shortly after, Merriman’s wife falls to her death, and Letty is drawn into a dual murder investigation that becomes uniquely personal when she is mistaken for Merriman’s daughter. To avoid becoming the third victim of what may be a blood feud, Letty, who knows her ancient mythology, turns to the play book for answers.

A Darker God has a little romance, one or two tasty surprises, and a mystery will keep readers guessing. Cleverly is a deft plotter. Her settings feel right because they’re based on sound historical research, but she doesn’t overdo early 20th-century chatter. The characters in A Darker God are colorful and (mostly) believable, but undeveloped.

Letty lacks the smooth style of Cleverly’s series star, Joe Sandilands, but readers will like her more if they get to know her better. Bright Hair about the Bone (2008), written first but published second, and The Tomb of Zeus (2007) answer questions about Letty’s past. But all are standalones; start anywhere.

Fans of Cleverly’s prizewinning Joe Sandilands series (Strange Images of Death, 2010) will enjoy the Laetitia Talbot mysteries and vice versa. A Darker God is highly recommended for all readers who like their mysteries (relatively) non-violent and more challenging than cozy.

Jeanne Greene THE MERRY MISOGYNIST Colin Cotterill, Quercus, 2010, £7.99, pb, 263pp, 9781849161961 / Soho Crime, 2009, $24.00, hb, 272pp, 9781569475560 This is the latest in the series starring Dr. Siri 20th Century

Paiboun, the reluctant national coroner of Laos in 1978. He is also a part-time amateur detective, assisting the not‑always‑grateful Inspector Phosy.

Dr. Siri is faced with two mysteries this time: a mute Indian psychotic has gone missing, but the more urgent matter is that someone is marrying and immediately murdering innocent village maidens. The serial killer’s score is up to at least five, and he has already selected his next target.

1970s Laos is certainly an original setting, and a much more ethnically-varied society than I would have expected. I don’t find Dr. Siri to be an engaging character. He is in a permanent state of being immensely pleased with himself, but then the same could be said of Sherlock Holmes. Dr. Siri solves one of the two mysteries with the help of the supernatural visions to which he is prone, which is the most shameless deus ex machina plot device that I have encountered for a long time.

Although Dr. Siri is supposed to have qualified in medicine in France, and to have spent 18 years there, he is apparently incapable of composing a 12-word phrase in French without making four basic grammatical errors and a spelling mistake; “battleground” is used where “battlefield” is needed; and a meal is described as “exotic fair” rather than “fare”. Be sorry for the bamboozled brides, but mourn also for the death of copy-editing.

Alan Fisk MISSISSIPPI VIVIAN Bill Crider and Clyde Wilson, Five Star, 2010, $25.95, hb, 233pp, 139781594148743 Houston-based private investigator Ted Stephens has been sent to Losgrove, Mississippi in 1970 to look into some suspected cases of insurance fraud. Twelve men from Losgrove are all receiving disability checks for injuries sustained while working in Houston as longshoreman on the Ship Channel. Their checks are all sent to the same lawyer at a Losgrove address. Stephens needs to find out if the claims are valid, or if it is some sort of scam.

Stephens has a tough row to hoe. No one seems to know anything about anything and they don’t think his jokes are funny. The sheriff doesn’t like him much and wants him out of town. Only the local waitress, Mississippi Vivian, will have anything to do with him. She isn’t one to give a straight answer, in general, and her answers aren’t cheap.

This is boilerplate stuff, heavy on the action and not too difficult to follow. There isn’t a great deal of character development, which, for me, is a critical loss. Why is Vivian so testy? Besides the money, what’s in it for her? Why is she the title character?

Alice Logsdon THE OUTSIDE BOY Jeanine Cummins, NAL, 2010, $15.00/C$18.50, pb, 360pp, 9780451229489 Young Christy Hurley is a traveller, a Pavee gypsy, who migrates with his father and extended family around Ireland in the late 1950s. The guilt he carries for killing (he is told) his mother when he was born burdens not only him, but prohibits the whole family from settling down even long enough for Christy and his cousin to get any sort of education or to prepare for their first communion, stretching an even wider gulf between them and 20th Century

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Emma Craigie, Short Books, 2010, £6.99, pb, 204pp, 9781906021894 On 22nd April 1945, Helga Goebbels entered Hitler’s Bunker in Berlin. She was 12 years old and was accompanied by her five brothers and sisters. Ten days later she was dead, having been given cyanide by her mother.

Her life, during the days leading up to that final devastating act, is full of speculation about the war, hope for the future and a little fear. All of which are curiously highlighted by the daily ritual of eating chocolate cake with Hitler. Helga and her siblings sing songs to entertain the adults, play with a litter of puppies, moan about the boredom and generally while away the hours together. But the adults are all behaving strangely and no-one seems to know how or when they will be able to get away.

The details of Helga’s final days can be briefly put together using eyewitness accounts and surviving written records. Emma Craigie has taken these sketches and put them together to produce a fictionalised account of her thoughts and fears during that time. It is a masterful yet intensely harrowing work. The sense of foreboding is as claustrophobic as the bunker itself, and the fact that the reader knows the awful truth of what is to come makes it an almost painful read. Utterly spellbinding and utterly disturbing.

Sara Wilson

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Marlena de Blasi, Ballantine, 2010, $25.00, hb, 336pp, 9780345507341 This first novel by bestselling author Marlena de Blasi takes us on a wondrous journey of love and longing and reveals how deeply rooted is our need to belong.

Sent to a French orphanage as an infant, Amandine grows up knowing nothing of her family. Although she is raised by Solange, a warm and affectionate young woman, she nonetheless longs for her real mother. Unknown to Amandine, her grandmother, the Countess Valeska, has forbidden anyone from disclosing her true origins. She is never to know she was born out of wedlock and that her mother belongs to one of Poland’s oldest and noblest aristocratic families.

The Countess has convinced herself she is acting out of love. To spare her delicate Andzelika more shame, she tells her the child has died. And yet, she leaves with the child one compelling clue.

Although Amandine is born in 1931, it is the early 1940s that form the most dramatic backdrop of the story. When Solange and Amandine leave the convent for a two-day journey to Solange’s childhood home, they unknowingly begin a perilous and seemingly unending trip across German-occupied France. But this is not a story about the horrors of war, even though they encounter them. Ultimately it is a story of hope, determination, and even the heroic kindness of a few strangers.

Marlena de Blasi has given us a timeless tale of the power of love. Her deep understanding of Polish society and culture endow her story with unquestionable authenticity. Her storytelling talent is nothing short of brilliant. I will leave it to you to discover for yourself how mother and daughter are finally reunited. I promise you will not be disappointed.

Veronika Pelka

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the settled folk. When Christy’s grandfather dies, the boy takes on yet more guilt when he talks his cousin into setting the old man’s soul free by burning it in his caravan. On the blowing smoke, an article cut from an old newspaper comes to Christy’s hand. He sees it as a message from the dead and realizes the woman in the picture holding a baby next to a strange man must be his mother.

When Christy’s father makes one more attempt to settle briefly in order to put the boys in school, Christy, a self-taught reader whose favorite book is The Hobbit, finally has the tools to begin to unravel the mystery of the woman in the photo.

Some of the greatness of Angela’s Ashes dampens these pages, maybe as much as is possible for an author for whom this is fiction, not memoir.

Beautifully crafted scenes and characters keep the pages turning. If I had a complaint, it would be that I would have liked more to have been done with the travellers’ skill as animal healers after that first great punch of the grandfather calling on Christy’s help in the difficult births of twin colts. Maybe in the sequel?

Ann Chamberlin THE SEA AND THE SILENCE Peter Cunningham, Gemma Media, 2010, $15.95, pb, 264pp, 9781934848326 “What I was caught up in, I dimly understood, was the embodiment of history.”

Ismay Seston’s world is changing. World War II rages in Europe and, even though Ireland remains neutral, there is no neutrality for the Anglo-Irish who exist between two cultures, despised by both.

But Ismay has the optimism of youth and beauty, ready to choose love over family, heritage and politics. However, history, like the sea, does not discriminate in its tendency to crush, saturate, and drown. Ismay finds that silence is her only weapon against history, but silence too has a price.

This is a beautifully written novel both in its reflectiveness and its imagery. It has the British languor and angst of Ian McEwan’s Atonement and the Irish passion and dysfunction of John McGahern’s Amongst Women. Cunningham’s sympathetic portrayal of the Anglo-Irish during their decline is skillfully done, not glossing over their poor treatment of the Irish or their desire to be considered English, but showing how they were pawns in a greater drama, much as Ismay becomes in her own family.

Some readers might be thrown off by the structure of the novel. The first half describes Ismay’s troubled marriage to Ronnie and the raising of their only child, a boy named Hector.

The second half recounts the events in Ismay’s life that have led to her living in a lighthouse in a rural part of Ireland. While both parts are told in first person, it is the second part which reveals Ismay on an intimate level. I enjoyed this non-linear style of storytelling as it made Ismay’s motives unclear, a mystery that is understood only by reading part two.

Patricia O’Sullivan WORK SONG Ivan Doig, Riverhead, 2010, $25.95, hb, 288pp, 9781594487620 “There are moments in a lifetime when you can taste history as it is happening … So it was, at the 48 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

start of the intense summer of 1919, as the miners of Butte and the mining corporation cooked up strategies against each other.”

Sometimes, an author’s own words are his book’s best review. Ivan Doig is such an author. It takes only a few chapters to see that Work Song is just an excellent story, beautifully constructed and beautifully told.

It starts with “Morrie” Morgan’s arrival in Butte, Montana, rowdy home to the Anaconda copper mines. He is soon dissuaded from his plan of working for the giant corporation by the young widow, Grace Faraday, his feisty tenderhearted landlady. Morrie, witty, silver-tongued and multitalented, lands a job at the Butte Public Library. A chance meeting with a former student, “Rabrab,” draws him into the conflict between the miners’ union and Anaconda management. Against advice not to take sides, Morrie throws his lot in with the union, and in a combination of humorous and hair-raising events provides them with the wherewithal to prevail against their crushing foe.

However, Morrie has a past that is catching up to him and which will bring this story to an end… in a quiet, satisfying way that leaves us hoping we will meet him again.

Work Song left me thinking of Montana’s ClarkFork River which runs near Butte – wide with soft currents in places and tricky rapids in others, a great river for kayaking or rafting, that is, for cool enjoyment. The river has deep undercurrents, serious intense forces beneath its happy, benign surface. Doig gives us all the pleasure of the latter while making us quietly aware of the former.

Recommended? Oh yes, very much so.

Lucille Cormier THE DEAD REPUBLIC Roddy Doyle, Jonathan Cape, 2010, £17.99, hb, 329 pp, 9780224090094 / Viking, 2010, $26.95, hb, 336pp, 9780670021772 This book is the last of a trilogy spanning Ireland’s political history in the 20th century, about a fictional character called Henry Smart, an IRA hit-man. This story opens in 1951 and Henry is returning to Ireland nearly thirty years after his escape to the USA. Considering himself one of the many casualties of the perennial war between the oppressed Irish against an unwanted regime, his previous IRA reputation pitches him once more back amidst the republicans and the political wrangling and dangers leading up to and within the peace process.

I had not read the previous two books: had I done so my grasp and understanding of the intricacies of Henry’s background and IRA involvement in a story line probably created primarily for an American readership, would have been of interest. If Irish political history appeals, read the trilogy in its correct sequence. This book is not an easy read on its own.

Vivien Cringle HUNGRY SPIRITS Alice Duncan, Five Star, 2010, $25.95, hb, 256 pp, 9781594149122 1920s spiritualist/bunkum artist Daisy Gumm Majesty of Pasadena, California has gifts galore, but they don’t include the ability to cook. So when approached by a friend to teach immigrant women

some simple economical meals at the Salvation Army headquarters, well, she’d much rather raise the dead. But under the tutorage of her Aunt Vi, she takes on the challenge. The experience broadens her horizons, shakes up her prejudices concerning Germans, who she holds responsible for her veteran husband’s ruined health, and throws her into an anarchist plot.

Told in a cozy, wonderfully colloquial voice that often directly addresses the reader, Daisy is an idealistic young woman who thrives even under her difficult circumstances. Her colorful cast of family and friends add life to her latest adventure. Author Duncan personifies the shaky times after the Great War and pandemic. Some are looking for guidance with lost loved ones, others a new start in America, and others to further destroy.

Eileen Charbonneau EYE OF THE RED TSAR Sam Eastland, Bantam, 2010, $25, hb, 288pp, 9780553807813 / Faber & Faber, 2010, £12.99, hb, 352pp, 9780571245345 This debut novel of intrigue centers on the execution of Tsar Nicholas and his family by the Bolsheviks in 1918. The hero is Pekkala, a stoical Finn with unbending principles and a photographic memory, who, prior to the revolution, is chosen by the tsar to be his chief counter-terrorist agent under the sobriquet “The Emerald Eye.” The story unfolds in two parallel narratives. One is a series of flashbacks recounting Pekkala’s rise and fall (after the revolution the Soviets send him to a Siberian labor camp where he is tortured by a young Commissar Stalin). The second narrative finds him released from the camp and enlisted by the Soviet secret police to help them discover what really happened to the Romanovs and their fabled treasure.

Unfortunately, the novel’s solution requires some major rewrites of history. The author’s version of the execution diverges widely from all the known evidence; “historical” characters are freely invented while real figures such as Yakov Yurovsky, who commanded the firing squad, or Pavel Medvedev, who later wrote an account of his participation, are never mentioned. If read uncritically, the novel is passable and Pekkala holds promise as an interesting character in subsequent installments, but factual errors and improbabilities were too much for this reviewer’s taste.

Bruce Macbain THIS FINE LIFE Eva Marie Everson, Revell, 2010, $14.99, pb, 352pp, 9780800732745 This novel falls into the genre of “inspirational,” and it really is. The story takes place in Georgia in the early 1960s. Mariette Puttnam, a daughter of the privileged class, has committed a faux pas by falling in love with a worker in her father’s factory – a worker in the mailroom, no less. She is struggling with being on the cusp, as we see it now. She has to decide whether to marry a wealthy provider as her mother desires or go to college to make her father happy – finding her soul mate was never an option.

She meets the new hire in her father’s factory, and her life is turned upside down.

Thayne Scott is just not part of her parents’ plan for their daughter, and their love is forbidden. As 20th Century

hard as the young couple tries, they cannot keep apart. Soon Mariette and the handsome Thayne have eloped. He has been taking seminary classes while working for her father, and his faith is real.

The problem and the plot are that Mariette has never really felt very close to God; she’s used to finer things in her life, and she’s a tad immature.

They go through the minor struggles and joys of all young newlyweds, but soon that paradigm has to shift. They are forced to grow up and grow up quickly when they face tragedy on a personal note, move to a small town, and grapple with a social issue of Biblical proportions.

Thayne is endearing, and Mariette – not so much, but I liked this story. It was well written, moved quickly, and the author did well with her scenario of a very small town with a very big faith.

Susan Zabolotny THE JEWEL OF ST. PETERSBURG Kate Furnivall, Berkley, 2010, $15.00/C$18.50, pb, 432pp, 9780425234235 / Sphere, 2010, £6.99, pb, 464pp, 9780751543308 In 1910, Valentina Ivanova is arguably the most beautiful girl in aristocratic circles of St. Petersburg. In addition, she is an accomplished pianist who attracts the attention of a Danish engineer, Jens Friis. When a revolutionary’s bomb shatters the Ivanovs’ summer home, crippling their younger daughter, Katya, Valentina’s perspective changes. She decides to become a nurse so she can care for her sister. Her bankrupt father, however,

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has other plans. He has arranged a marriage for her with the wealthy Hussar, Count Chernov, whom Valentina despises for his blind snobbery and conceit. She prefers the intelligent engineer.

Valentina bargains with her father that if he allows her to study nursing, she will agree to an engagement with Count Chernov. Adding to her troubles, Valentina discovers the family chauffeur is a revolutionary. She does not report him. To further complicate matters, her mother takes the chauffeur as a lover. Jens Friis arranges a lucrative business deal for Valentina’s father, and he allows Valentina to marry Jens. All this family drama plays out against the background of the pending revolution with a dramatic ending.

As a prequel to The Russian Concubine and, chronologically, the first in a series that ends with The Girl from Junchow, Ms Furnivall eloquently brings alive the decade immediately preceding the collapse of the Romanovs. The denial of the opulent aristocratic class as it careens to destruction is juxtaposed with the inhuman conditions of a working class drowning in the riptide of revolution.

Despite the complicated plot, The Jewel of St. Petersburg is a fast- paced and exciting read. It is, perhaps, the best of the series.

Audrey Braver

SPIES OF THE BALKANS Alan Furst, Random House, 2010, $26.00/ C$31.00, hb, 288pp, 9781400066032 / Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2010, £18.99, hb, 288pp,

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Ken Follett, Dutton, 2010, $36.00/C$45.00, hb, 1008pp, 9780525951650 / Macmillan, 2010, £17.99, hb, 640pp, 9780230710078 This ambitious novel, the first of a projected trilogy covering most of the 20th century, tells the story of five interrelated families—American, German, Russian, English and Welsh—as they negotiate the tremendous events of the First World War and the Russian Revolution. Through the various characters—and there are quite a few—we witness the First World War in the trenches and in the halls of government, from each side of the conflict. Revolutions on the home front, from women’s suffrage to the rise of the workers, keep pace.

It is a period of intense change, a time when giants, be they royalty, tradition, or whole nations, are destined to fall.

Follett’s story builds like the coming of far-off artillery fire. Barely rumbling at first, the tempo quickens until it breaks in a crescendo of worldchanging events. With Follett’s considerable talents as a storyteller, one experiences a fast-paced, unforgettable journey with characters rich in emotion and intellect.

These are people we care about. We feel the plight of an unwed mother trying to survive in a society that affords her few rights and little help.

We’re with the workers of St Petersburg, oppressed by the brutal regime of the Tsar. Although personalized through the lives of these and others, the history is not trivialized. This period is described accurately – even one well versed in history may pick up something new – yet it manages to be superbly entertaining as well. This excellent work is destined to be a classic, and holds great promise for the following two novels.

A sweeping epic with the pace of a thriller, I could scarcely put it down. My only problem is waiting the two years for the release of the next volume.

Ken Kreckel 20th Century

9780297858881 This latest piece of Furst’s massive WWII jigsaw puzzle opens in October 1940 in Salonika, Macedonia.“Senior Police Official” Costa Zannis is investigating a stranger who slipped in on a Turkish freighter. This seemingly routine and tedious task turns out to be anything but. Soon he is drawn into a sort of Underground Railroad for Jews escaping the Nazi terror. All the while Germany is looking for any excuse to invade the Balkans and Greece.

Zannis must soon decide whether to stay and fight them in the resistance or flee with his family.

This book seems a bit of a departure for Furst.

His usual incredible ability to make his readers feel as if they were there in the story is still striking.

But two facets of this novel felt un-Furst-like: more detailed romantic interludes, and a minor subplot involving a trip to Paris. While a visit to Table #14 at the Brasserie Heininger, with its bullet-holed mirror and copious sauerkraut is a touchstone of most Furst novels, this particular episode felt like it was included as an afterthought. As I read through the opening two-thirds of the book, I kept wondering when Paris would come into the plotline. And then suddenly it was there and just as quickly gone. Had the whole episode been excluded entirely, the story would not have suffered. It was as if Furst had realized the omission and went back after the fact to correct it.

Aside from those two minor nitpicks, this is classic Furst, which is to say, a very intriguing, fast moving, well written story with a sense of place that is a hallmark of the author’s style. And as always, the last page comes up much too quickly. I hope we see Costa Zannis again.

Mark F. Johnson ALAMEIN Iain Gale, Harper Collins, 2010, £17.99, hb, 388pp, 9780007278671 Alamein is a novel based on the famous battle in 1942, often (if inaccurately) called the turningpoint of World War II. We follow the ten-day-long struggle through the experiences of a variety of real individuals, who between them offer a crosssection of those taking part.

Unfortunately, the individual parts don’t gel together very well. The use of real-life characters constrains the story to what they actually did.

Some of them inevitably get more involved and are more fully developed than others, so it all gets very uneven. Very few of the characters actually meet, and so we end up with a series of short stories rather than a coherent novel.

I also spotted quite a few inaccuracies, particularly with the equipment. It is the Germans, not the British, who used 88mm guns, for example.

The situation map at the start doesn’t show all of the terrain features or units that are referenced, the various military operations are poorly explained, and because this is combined with the bitty nature of the book it can get very confusing trying to follow what is happening. Not that this matters much, as the description of the fighting is always the same. The first time we read of someone being blown to bits or having a shell splinter slice into their heads it is shocking. By the twentieth time it has lost all effect, which is both bad writing and a disservice to the soldiers who were involved.

On the plus side, it is very easy to read, and for HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 49

once the Italians are not stereotyped as cowards or incompetents. Really though, if you wanted an exciting and tense story about Alamein, you would be better off with a good non‑fiction book.

Martin Bourne THE IMPROPER LIFE OF BEZELLIA GROVE Susan Gregg Gilmore, Shaye Areheart, 2010, $23.00, hb, 256pp, 9780307395030 The first daughter of every generation of Grove women is named Bezellia, after the family’s courageous and iconoclastic matriarch, and teenage Bezellia Grove has grown up amid the stifling pressure of family names and expectations. The Groves are one of Nashville’s finest families, and like many fine families, they hide their secrets well. Bezellia’s mother’s dreams of being a grande dame of society are derailed by her alcoholism, and Bezellia’s father is a doctor who is frequently absent. Bezellia’s main caretakers are the family’s housekeeper, Maizelle, and their handyman, Nathaniel. When Bezellia meets Nathaniel’s teenage son, Samuel, she is instantly attracted to him, though their relationship goes against everything that both teens have been raised to believe. Bezellia finally finds her match in quickwitted, ambitious Samuel. When both families begin to suspect the relationship, Bezellia is sent to spend the summer with her grandparents, where she has a rebound relationship with another unlikely young man—this one, a country boy from the wrong side of the tracks.

Gilmore captures the spirit of 1960s Nashville, a place where the status quo is challenged by

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the burgeoning civil rights movement. She also describes the tense relationship between the African-American servants employed by many Southern families and the families who employ them. Looking back, we know that the South was changing, and we know that this change, built as it was on centuries of oppression and inequality, was both hard-won and resented by many. Bezellia seems to be an emblem of this New South, a young woman willing to speak up and fight against oppression and inequality. Though Gilmore is occasionally a bit heavy-handed in nailing this point home, Bezellia’s story is engaging, and you’ll find yourself wanting her to change the world for the better.

Nanette Donohue THE FROZEN HEART Almudena Grandes (trans. Frank Wynne), Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2010, 774pp, £16.99, hb, 9780297844884 Grandes is a much respected and prize-winning author in her native Spain, which leads me to question whether that excellent country’s literature exports as successfully as its cooking. Though the subject matter of The Frozen Heart is rich territory for the novelist, a saga which embraces both the Spanish Civil War and dark doings on the Eastern Front in the Second World War, the potential power of the narrative is utterly submerged in a welter of over‑writing and a baggy structure involving layers of backstory which are both complex and inadequately signposted to the reader.

The novel sets out not merely to entertain but also to fulfil a serious and necessary task in

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Agop J. Hacikyan and Jean-Yves Soucy, Interlink, 2010, $20.00, pb, 545pp, 978156656809 / Saqi, 2000, £17.95, 545pp, 9780863565380 This is the compelling story of a family caught up in the deportation and extermination of Armenians during the Great War. In the summer of 1915, Vartan Balian, a former writer for the current government’s opposition, is a target for execution. In prison, with his whereabouts unknown, his family is forced to join the Armenian population of Sivas, a small town in Turkey, on a forced march. With only the belongings that could fit into an oxcart, the Armenians are forced to travel to their new home, where they are told that they will live separate from the Turk population. Many Armenians will die or will be sold into slavery on this march. After escaping from his prison, Vartan travels throughout the country for three years in search of his wife, Maro, and their son, Tomas.

This is a remarkable, unforgettable novel of survival based upon the true story of the ethnic cleansing by the Turkish government during the First World War. The novel is well-written with fascinating and memorable characters, both Turks and Armenians, who are caught up in the government’s extermination of millions of people. Translated into English from French, this novel was first published in 1991. I highly recommend this book to all who wish to learn more about this tragedy, an event in world history that still is not recognized by the present Turkish government as having actually occurred.

Jeff Westerhoff 50 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

contributing to Spain’s collective examination of the Civil War which defined its character for most of the 20th century. It follows the history of two families backwards from the death of the wealthy and puissant paterfamilias and pillar of Madrid society, Julio Carrion Gonzalez. Gonzalez’ son, Alvaro, is inspired to begin to investigate the family history by the arrival at his father’s funeral of the mysterious Raquel Fernandez Perea, daughter of Civil War exiles. The enormous cast of characters is inadequately differentiated. I was forever referring back to earlier chapters to refresh my memory as to the roles and identities of different characters, which further hindered my progress through a loose and slow-moving plot.

On the plus side, this is a clever story with intriguing secrets at its heart, and more patient readers than me will find many things to admire about it. I should also observe that there may be inadequacies in the translation. And, of course, the nation which gave us Don Quixote clearly has a greater taste for very long and thinly-plotted novels than we do, but Grandes falls far short of Cervantes’ genius.

Sarah Bower WHEN WINTER RETURNS Kathryn Miller Haines, HarperCollins, 2010, $14.99, pb, 333pp, 9780061579578 When I first began reading When Winter Returns, I didn’t realize it was the fourth in a series, but by the time I was 50 pages in, I had already ordered the first three because I was enjoying myself so much. While I wish I had read them in order, my enjoyment wasn’t diminished in the slightest since the author did such a superb job of pulling me into this mystery set in 1943 NYC. This is one fun book that has definitely hooked me on the entire series!

When Winter Returns follows budding actress Rosie Winter as she comes home from a USO tour with her best friend, Jayne. The first stop the ladies make is to visit the parents of Jayne’s fiancé, who was killed in the South Pacific. While there, however, Rosie makes the startling discovery that Jayne’s fiancé had lied to them by stealing the identity of another soldier who had died earlier in the war. This discovery is only the beginning of the mysteries surrounding Billy DeMille, and while Jayne is inclined to let things go, Rosie is determined to get to the truth. Meanwhile, the girls also find themselves blackballed from the theater by a member of the mob and hiding a male friend in their all-girl boarding house; when another murder occurs, the girls realize they are in grave danger from more than one quarter.

Full of ‘40s flavor and ambience, When Winter Returns is just a delight from start to finish. While the mystery itself isn’t too complicated, the story is fleshed out by the appearance of Rosie’s exboyfriend and relationships among the women of the boarding house. The characters literally jump off the page and capture you from the very start. I cannot wait to read more of this series! Great fun.

Tamela McCann THE CHILDREN OF MOTHER GLORY C. M. Harris, Spinsters Ink, 2009, $14.95, pb, 240pp, 9780307272669 It’s 1909 in Kentucky, and the Reverend 20th Century

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Catherine Hall, Viking, 2010, $24.95/C$31.00, hb, 294pp, 9780670021765 / Portobello, 2009, £10.99, pb, 304pp, 9781846271830 Nora Lynch is sent to the countryside at the start of World War II. She is selected by Grace Rivers and her family to come live with them in the rectory in Kent.

Nora’s desolation at leaving her mother in London soon changes to joy and wonder at the situation in which she finds herself, with soft blankets, what she sees as incredible amounts of food, stimulating lessons given by Grace’s father, and the pleasures of the land.

No longer are there only the sharp angles and corners of the city to look at. Nora becomes increasingly aware of the tensions between Grace’s parents and the effect that this is having on Grace. Grace has become the center of her world, and Nora struggles with her feelings, which have moved beyond friendship. But then something happens that allows her to stay with the Rivers family no longer.

Grace’s story takes place both in the past and the present, in which her existence is attenuated. She spends most of her time just looking out her window She becomes aware of a young woman sitting at the window of the house across the street. One day, she notices that this woman is missing, and becomes uneasy when the entire day passes with no sight of her. Nora girds herself and ventures across the street to find out what has happened, and thus begins the touching relationship between Nora and Rose.

Chapters set in the past and in the present are skillfully interspersed, with hints in one making readers long to find out what happened in the other. This is a first novel, yet it is written with the assurance of an experienced writer. I felt privileged to spend time with Nora and Grace.

This is a gem of a novel.

Trudi E. Jacobson

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Michelle Hoover, Other Press, 2010, $14.95, pb, 224pp, 9781590513460 Michelle Hoover’s debut novel is noteworthy.

Based loosely on a family history written by her greatgrandmother, Hoover gives a moving account of Iowan farm life in the early part of the 20th century. The story centers on Enidina Current and Mary Morrow, who are neighbors thrown together by circumstances rather than commonality. It reveals their in alternating viewpoints, and there is heartache in the telling.

They are as different as two women can be. “Eddie” is robust and capable of working hard to make their farm something of value, a woman who loves her husband and longs for children she may never be able to have. Mary is almost too fragile for farm life and feels a need to keep her home and children set apart from the harshness of everyday farm life. Her husband, Jack, feels betrayed on their wedding night, and their marriage is stormy from the start. She seeks solace in the local church with the minister, who takes advantage of her neediness. Her youngest son, different from his brothers, is unloved by his father, who is hard to the point of cruelty; this cruelty eventually spills over to touch the lives of Enidina and her family. When the Depression pits neighbor against neighbor, Jack nearly ruins the Currents with his demands. Mary’s final betrayal of them is a culmination of all the pain and rejection of the past forty years of her own life.

The author admits to the difficulty of writing about these Iowan farm people who are known for keeping their feelings closed off, but she written a good story. The prose is so beautiful at times you’ll catch yourself reading a sentence twice. I highly recommend this book.

Susan Zabolotny 20th Century

Thaddeus Potter seems quite sure he can trust the precocious nature of his daughter, Glory, for the handling of his ministry. But Glory is a contradiction in terms initially, avidly devouring every book she can get her hands on, sure of her faith in God and even more sure of her ability to write as good as, if not better, sermons than her father. At the same time, her sexual nature awakens with a mild engagement with her best friend, Emma, a tryst that goes no further as Emma’s family is forced to move away due to poverty and unemployment.

The story evolves into Glory inheriting the church upon her father’s death, but this is not a quiet ministry. It advocates pacifism in the face of a looming World War, condemns drinking during Prohibition but curiously develops a side industry of manufacturing that eventually is a bit out of sync with its pacifist doctrine. Another character, Seb, suffers deeply from refusing to serve in the military and suffers even more for his sexual preference.

Danielle, on the other hand, breaks away from faith to allow her lesbian leaning fully but with a high price for that independence.

Advertised as an “inclusive LGBT” novel, Glory is a well-crafted story about characters in a changing world forging ahead in its own insecure but feisty fashion.

Viviane Crystal MY FATHER’S MOON, CABIN FEVER, THE GEORGES’ WIFE: The Vera Wright Trilogy Elizabeth Jolley, Persea, 2009, $19.95/C$22.00, 553pp, pb, ISBN 9780892553525 Much-beloved in Australia, Elizabeth Jolley is finally getting some well-deserved notice in the United States. Though My Father’s Moon and Cabin Fever were both previously available, this is the first appearance of The Georges’ Wife in the U.S., and it is a vital part of the trilogy. The three books are semi-autobiographical, taking the protagonist Vera Wright from her work as a nurse in World War II England to life as a single mother in the 1950s to immigration to Australia more than a decade later.

The multiple settings provide a plethora of historical backdrops, all of which ring true: we hear both the trains full of wounded soldiers arriving at the hospital, and the muffled sound of a hidden, towel-wrapped illicit phonograph album playing in the nurses’ quarters. Bohemian London surfaces, post-war, with bright colors, sunshine, plentiful food and sexual entanglement. Australia as setting takes a backseat to the memories of an older Vera: we learn of the Australian neighborhood she paces, pushing the wheelchair of her aging, dementiasuffering beloved, but not much outside of that.

Readers may be put off at first by Jolley’s fragmented writing style; the narrative hops and skips, then turns back and repeats, with some variations, events that have already been described.

This style, however, very much fits the workings of Vera’s mind. She’s an unreliable narrator at the best of times, and we have the pleasure of experiencing her efforts to grasp at the true narrative of her life through the slippery fingers of memory.

Helene Williams TOMORROW RIVER Lesley Kagen, Dutton, 2010, $25.95, hb, 342pp, HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 51

9780525951544 This is a gripping and engaging story of a young girl’s search for her mother who went missing in 1968. Set in a little town in the Shenandoah Valley, for which the girl is named, the culture of the town is practically antebellum (meaning the Civil War of course) although countercultural change is beginning to happen. Kagen is skillful at presenting the world through the eyes of a twelve-year-old girl, and because of this, we as adult readers are a few steps ahead in understanding and interpreting the signs that “Shenny” takes at face value—and it makes us fear the worst. Shenny’s determination to find her mother, despite a year having passed since her disappearance, is complicated not only by her age, but also by her grieving father’s oppressive watchfulness and her twin sister Woody’s erratic behavior, requiring Shenny’s constant vigilance to keep her sister alive and out of harm’s way. What begins as a child’s journey leads to a troubling, suspenseful mystery deeply embedded in the antique values of a wealthy Southern family with a landed lord’s power over a small town.

I had a little trouble in the first several pages getting used to Shenny’s odd diction and, in addition, felt that the prologue delivered by the adult Shenny could have been left out altogether.

Luckily, I was drawn in fairly quickly and promptly forgot about the prologue, and couldn’t put the book down until the end. An excellent, moving story, very well written, and one that will linger in your thoughts long after you’ve finished it.

Mary F. Burns

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THE REPORT

THE RAGTIME FOOL Larry Karp, Poisoned Pen Press, 2010, $24.95/ C$31.95, hb, 304pp, 9781590586990 The Ragtime Fool concludes Karp’s trilogy of mysteries featuring the influence of Scott Joplin. The first, The Ragtime Kid, introduced Brun Campbell, who came to Sedalia, Missouri as a teenager in 1899 to learn ragtime from the great Scott Joplin.

In 1951, in his late sixties, Brun, a barber in Venice, California, is anticipating a triumphant return to Sedalia, where he will perform Joplin’s music at the dedication of a plaque to the composer. Still smarting from the publication of Rudi Blesh’s book about Joplin and ragtime, a book Brun intended to write himself, Brun is offered Joplin’s journal—if he can cough up $5,000.

Oddly enough, it is not implausible that a New Jersey teenager, as entranced with Joplin as Brun is, enters the plot and that he and Brun find themselves in Sedalia, protecting the journal, while trying to elude the local Klansmen who have plans for the dedication, which is to be held at the all black high school.

As in the first two books, the mystery is secondary to the characters and the atmosphere.

Karp quite effectively evokes Brun’s and his New Jersey protégé’s obsession with Joplin as well as conveys the uneasy race relations in small-town Missouri in the 1950s.

Ellen Keith THE UNDISCOVERED ISLAND Darrell Kastin, Center for Portuguese Culture (UMass Dartmouth), 2009, $25, pb, 410pp,

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Jessica Francis Kane, Graywolf, 2010, $15.00, pb, 256pp, 9781555975654 On March 3, 1943, 173 people died as they entered a tube station serving as an air raid shelter in Bethnal Green, in London’s East End. The deaths were not due to a bomb. Despite fears that the Germans would retaliate after the recent heavy British bombing of Berlin, they never attacked that night. What happened to cause those arriving to create such a crush that so many people lost their lives?

This true event is at the heart of this riveting novel, which alternates between 1943 and 1973, the 30th anniversary of the event. A young filmmaker, hoping to document what happened three decades earlier, aspires to gain the cooperation of Laurence Dunne, the magistrate who was asked to investigate the tragedy immediately after it occurred. Dunne, and the reader, hear a variety of interpretations of the incident as Dunne interviews survivors and medical experts. We also hear how the event affected those who live in the neighborhood, including the priest of the church just across from the tube station, and Ada Barber, who runs a neighborhood grocery with her husband.

The author has captured the feel of the war period exquisitely. The constraints, uncertainties, and fears are vivid. Dunne does his utmost to write a report that does not provide a cover-up of the situation, and that acknowledges the strengths of the neighborhood’s inhabitants. The focus is not on finding the person responsible for the mass blockage in the station, but guilt finds its way into the feelings of a number of the characters. I highly recommend this novel, the author’s first.

Trudi E. Jacobson 52 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

9781933227238 Julia Castro has arrived in the Azores from her home in California, searching for her father Sebastião, an eccentric writer and historian, who has gone missing. The police and locals don’t seem to be willing or able to help in the search for her father. In order to better understand and perhaps find him, Julia pores over his writings and falls into his obsession with the history of Portugal, the Azores, and how the history of their own family intertwines – particularly with that of Inês de Castro, the famous medieval Queen Who Was Crowned After Death.

Coinciding with Julia’s arrival, a local volcano’s rumblings causes not only devastating earthquakes but also a new island to rise out of the ocean – an occurrence her father believed would come, and would spell the arrival of the mythic Enchanted Isle. When her brother Antonio arrives to bring Julia back to California, they fall under the spell of Sebastião’s writings and the mysteries of the Azores. They set out to search the dangerous seas for their father and for the Enchanted Isle.

I found this book frustrating. There are lovely scenes and interesting concepts (inheritance both national and personal, the importance of history, the influence of place) and yet the writing is maddeningly uneven. The first two-thirds is at turns rambling and jagged, and yet the final third is magical and beautiful. The dialog is terribly stilted, and yet the descriptions are beautifully poetic. I never felt connected to Julia – I never felt that she had any real concern about her father’s disappearance – and yet the supporting characters are fascinating and well-drawn.

Had this story been tighter it would have had more impact. It would have made a fascinating novella or short story, but I don’t know that it is quite as successful as a novel.

Julie K. Rose NIGHTS BENEATH THE NATION Denis Kehoe, Serpent’s Tail, 2010, $14.95/£7.99, pb, 240pp, 9781846686795 Told in the first person, this novel, part gay love story and part mystery, just misses being very good.

It is beautifully, even elegantly, written; however, it loses its way and meanders through much of the story until we almost don’t care about its violent end.

In alternating chapters, Daniel, the narrator, begins his story as an elderly gay man, returning to Dublin, Ireland, in the late 1990s, after having lived almost fifty years in the States. His remembrances take the reader to early 1950s Dublin and the circumstances of his exile from Ireland. As a young provincial Irishman who moves to Dublin in the early 1950s, Daniel comes to terms with his homosexuality in the barely increased yet carefully concealed freedom he finds in the city. (The title refers to the symbolic subterranean world in which Irish gay men and women existed during the repressive 1950s.)

The tragedy of young Daniel’s love affair is paralleled with the Spanish play, Blood Wedding

by Federico Garcia Lorca. Without the reader being familiar with this play and its themes of the individual fighting against the strictures of a rigid society, the novel loses some of its impact, although Daniel and his lover are directly impacted by acting 20th Century

in a local production of it. The ending is rather melodramatic but not overly so. The reader should also know that the novel is quite sexually explicit.

Recommended.

Pamela Ortega THE GOD OF THE HIVE Laurie R. King, Bantam, 2010, $25.00, hb, 368pp, 9780553805543 / Allison & Busby, 2010, £19.99, hb, 448pp, 9780749008475 King’s tenth Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes novel starts where the previous entry, The Language of Bees, leaves off. It is 1924, and Sherlock and Russell are being pursued by an enemy who is not merely invisible; he seems invincible. This enemy appears to have unlimited resources; his agents know Holmes’ and Russell’s next moves before they even contemplate them. Their decision to split up to accomplish a mutual goal is likely not the best solution, but it is what they decide must be done for the good of all.

While Sherlock ensures that his son, Damian, is out of harm’s way (he thinks), Russell’s role is to protect Damian’s daughter, Estelle, but they are targets as well. Even though Holmes and Russell are almost a continent away from each other, they still communicate in ways only they understand, sharing a mutual goal – to discover who is behind the effort to destroy the very underpinnings of the government and to take over its intelligence forces. Even Sherlock’s brother, the indomitable Mycroft who is, himself, the most high-ranking intelligence officer in the land, is entangled in this web, taken prisoner and targeted for death. This is a dangerous, ubiquitous foe who will, clearly, stop at nothing.

Fascinating third parties are brought into this complex story, a spy thriller at its best. A young hermit saves Mary and her granddaughter when their plane crashes in the woods; his story, as it evolves, is mysterious yet heart-breaking.

Holmes kidnaps a young woman doctor to care for Damian’s wounds, but she has much to hide and asks few questions. Everyone has secrets and nothing is as it seems.

My personal opinion, though, is that this installment should be read after The Language of Bees. That’s not a bad thing! Highly recommended.

Ilysa Magnus HOW HIGH THE MOON Sandra Kring, Bantam, 2010, $15, pb, 356pp, 9780385341219 Isabella “Teaspoon” Marlene isn’t one of the good girls. She’s not prim or proper, she pals around with the local prostitutes, and she’s not afraid to get into a fight with her snooty neighbors. Her mother, Catty, abandoned her to seek her dreams in Hollywood, and she’s been raised by Catty’s ex-boyfriend Teddy, a gentle man with the proverbial heart of gold. When a well-meaning teacher recommends Teaspoon for a new mentoring program, Teaspoon reluctantly agrees. She is paired with wealthy Brenda Bloom, the town’s beauty queen, whose charmed life is more of a facade than a reality. Brenda’s mother owns the town’s movie palace—Teaspoon’s favorite hangout—and Brenda finds herself pressured to be the woman her mother wants her to be, including dating and marrying her mother’s choice of suitor.

20th Century

As Teaspoon and Brenda grow closer, Teaspoon’s mother returns to Wisconsin from Hollywood, and Teaspoon finds her life turned upside down. Given the choice between her current life in Mill Town and a potentially exciting future in Hollywood, what will she choose?

Kring captures the voice of ten-year-old Teaspoon and the atmosphere of mid-century small-town America very effectively. Since Teaspoon is the narrator, readers see the world through her innocent eyes, adding to the nostalgic feel. The give-and-take between Brenda and Teaspoon is enjoyable. Brenda teaches Teaspoon how to be a little more proper while still being herself, and Teaspoon reminds Brenda that it’s all right to rebel just a little bit. While most readers will see some of the plot twists from a mile away, it’s still an enjoyable novel, especially for readers who enjoy nostalgic fiction.

Nanette Donohue THE BIGGEST LIAR IN LOS ANGELES Ken Kuhlken, Poisoned Pen Press, 2010, $14.95, pb, 252pp, 9781590586976 Set in 1926, The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles is the prequel to the Tom Hickey California Century novel series. At this point our detective is still a young bandleader whose football days aren’t long behind him. He’s guardian to his sister, 17-yearold Florence, who is proving to be as headstrong as their mother, Milly. Clearly removing Milly’s influence over the girl wouldn’t be entirely possible.

When Tom learns of a lynching that the police and the newspapers are covering up, he’s horrified to discover the victim is Frank Gaines, the man who looked after him when it was obvious that his own mother couldn’t. Though circumstances draw Tom and his sister back into contact with Milly, he vows to discover the truth.

The novel centers on control of the media in the 1920s. Is the Gaines cover-up a conspiracy between the police and a publisher of one of the big newspapers of the day – William Randolph Hearst, The Examiner, or Harry Chandler, The Times? Is the evangelist Sister Aimee Semple McPherson (whose disappearance for several weeks may or may not be a kidnapping) manipulating the news for her own gain? Or is the biggest liar in LA someone else?

Ken Kuhlken’s characters feel real and in step with their time. I adore the relationship between Tom and his sister, how he allows her to keep hope.

The plot’s wider picture, though, so easily translates to present day.

Janette King SYMPHONY IN WHITE Adriana Lisboa (trans. Sarah Green), Texas Tech Univ. Press, 2010, $26.95, hb, 208pp, 9780896726710 This is the story of a family, two daughters and their parents, trying to come to terms with their individual demons: the mother, her strange wasting illness; the father, his alcoholism; the elder daughter, her submissive nature; and the younger daughter, her willfulness. Set in Brazil, the narrative moves the reader back and forth over the course of a generation, weaving in the perspectives of each family member as well as those particularly touched by the family drama: a lover, a husband,

a maid, a child, and an elderly aunt. This is not a linear story, but a series of vignettes pieced together to reveal what cannot be uttered.

Despite its pervasive sadness, I found this novel hard to put down. It is full of well crafted metaphors and visual descriptions that are enough to transport the reader without distracting from the story. I especially liked the way the story was told, like a bad memory you had forgotten until you were older and capable of syncretizing it with all your other memories. However, I’m not sure I’d categorize this novel as historical fiction as the story is not grounded in a particular time and place.

Though this is a Brazilian story by a Brazilian author, the story is universal and, while this makes it particularly accessible to non-Brazilian readers, the reader hoping to learn something about Brazilian history might be disappointed.

Patricia O’Sullivan AMERICAN MUSIC Jane Mendelsohn, Knopf, 2010, $23.95, hb, 240pp, 9780307272669 Touch is the magic that reveals the history of early 1930s American music and the horrors of memories of World War I for those American soldiers maimed mentally as well as physically.

American music can be traced back to the 17th century creation of cymbals, and this celebration of sound haunts, heals and creates sanity in a world that all too often leaves behind only vivid pain.

Photographs are woven into the mix, defined as an ink and chemical memory of the subject being photographed.

Milo, a wounded 24-year-old veteran, and his physical therapist fear each other at first. Every time she attempts to massage his back to restore life to the area of a severe spinal cord injury, she begins to see images of a man, a woman, an instrument, and another woman. He knows she senses this story within their story, but it is through a series of future sessions that its true history is revealed. The creation of a new story will give rise to a different, meaningful relationship for both of them and for a 1960s-era photographer.

Haunting, mystical and beautiful, American Music is written in a uniquely creative style that poignantly and powerfully touches the reader contemplating the gift of music in an American period of history yearning for recovery and renewal.

Viviane Crystal PEARL OF CHINA Anchee Min, Bloomsbury, 2010, £11.99, pb, 275pp, 9781408801826 / Bloomsbury USA, 2010, $24.00, hb, 288pp, 9781596916975 China, at the end of the 19th century and in the dying days of the Empire. In the town of Chinkiang two small girls meet and become lifelong friends. One is Willow, a Chinese girl of a very poor family and the other is Pearl Buck, daughter of zealous Christian missionaries. The book follows the lives of these children as they grow to womanhood and live through the changes brought about by the onset of Communism beginning with Chiang Kai-shek and continuing under Mao TseTung.

This was an amazing story, all the more so because this is not one about imaginary characters.

These people really lived and the times they lived HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 53

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MATTERHORN

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Karl Marlantes, Atlantic Monthly, 2010, $24.95/C$34.50, hb, 599pp, 9780802119285 / Corvus, 2010, £16.99, hb, 592pp, 9781848874947 Historical novels of young men at war play a critical role in popular acceptance of this genre. First-time novelist Karl Marlantes’s lengthy novel on U.S. Marines in Vietnam has earned a place on bookshelves with Red Badge of Courage and All Quiet on the Western Front. A combat Marine in Vietnam himself, Marlantes presents the story through the experiences of Lieutenant Waino Mellas and the Marines of Bravo Company. The young men face the challenge of attacking an enemy hilltop position, the “Matterhorn” of the title, in the forbidding terrain near the border with Laos. Lieutenant Mellas is an introspective officer who learns to conquer his uncertainties and fear while simultaneously leading a diverse group of Marines whose backgrounds, actions, and attitudes accurately outline the real Marines on whom they are undoubtedly based.

The combat action is intense and at times seems nonstop. The author writes with both conviction and passion as the fighting takes the battle-hardened Marines up the deadly hillsides of Matterhorn. This novel has been critically acclaimed by reviewers from The New York Times Book Review down to shoppers I have come upon in bookstores. Campaign with Mellas, Cassidy, Sheller, Hawke and their comrades towards Matterhorn, and you will agree this work is a powerful example of the historical novel at is best.

John R. Vallely

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THE DOCTOR AND THE DIVA

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Adrienne McDonnell, Viking, 2010, $26.95/C$33.50, hb, 422pp, 9780670021888 / Sphere, Apr. 2011, £6.99, pb, 432pp, 9780751543605 This amazing debut novel, based on the lives of McDonnell’s son’s ancestors, begins in Boston in 1903, when the opera singer Erika and her wealthy husband Peter consult Dr. Ravell, an obstetrician who helps couples conceive. After years of marriage, they have not had a child. Dr. Ravell feels an immediate attraction to his beautiful patient and makes a terrible decision which would ruin his career if discovered.

Later, after Erika gives birth to a stillborn daughter, Ravell is forced to leave Boston because of a scandal involving another patient and goes to live on a coconut plantation on Trinidad. Erika and Peter, who have not given up their hopes of having a living child, join him there, and, while Peter goes on an expedition to South America, Erika and Ravell have an affair, and she gives birth to a son. But there is one other thing Erika has always longed for: to have a career on the stages of the greatest opera houses in the world. At the time, this meant moving to Italy.

She makes the agonizing decision to abandon her child and move to Florence, but she feels tremendous guilt, especially when her career fails to take off. And, after several years, she has never forgotten her love for Ravell.

McDonnell makes the reader care about her complex characters and understand the reasons behind their decisions. Erika and Ravell are both faced with horrible dilemmas, and whether you agree with their choices or not, the author always lets you understand their motivations.

The author also makes the settings come to life: the tropical island of Trinidad is described in loving detail, and McDonnell draws the reader into the operatic world of Italy. This is, quite simply, one of the best novels I’ve read all year.

Vicki Kondelik 54 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

through are as much a part of human history as the French and Russian Revolutions. In 1938 Pearl Buck was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.

She died in America in 1973.

Once I had begun to read I could not put the book down. The story was vividly but sensitively told and the author, herself Chinese, very much involved with the events in China in middle years of the 20th century. Highly recommended.

Marilyn Sherlock WHAT IS LEFT THE DAUGHTER Howard Norman, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010, $25/C$31.50, 256pp, hb, 9780618735433 Canadian Howard Norman (The Bird Artist, Devotion) delivers another slim but powerful novel in this story of life and loneliness in a small Canadian town.

The book is written as a letter from a father to his 21-year-old daughter, whom he hasn’t seen since she was an infant. In the letter, Wyatt Hillyer traces the events of his life from 1941 to 1967, to provide a family history but also to unburden himself of a secret that may result in his daughter never wanting to see him. Wyatt is a teenager in Halifax in 1941 when his parents die, in one of the best this-is-so-odd-it-could-be-true scenarios in recent memory. Wyatt goes to live with his Aunt Constance, Uncle Donald, and adopted cousin Tilda in Middle Economy (appropriately situated between Upper Economy and Lower Economy), several hours outside of Halifax.

Donald takes Wyatt on as an apprentice in his sled and toboggan business; the workshop is papered with lists of war casualties, and Donald becomes increasingly obsessed with the war, and German U-boat infiltration into Canada in particular. Wyatt falls in love with Tilda, Tilda loves an exchange student, and this little triangle, accented by the other colorful characters, would have been an interesting read unto itself. However, when the war hits close to home, passions flare, irreversible actions are taken, and 21 years later, Wyatt tells all. He does so matter-of-factly, without self-pity and with enough perspective to make for some humorous scenes.

On all levels—from the evocation of Halifax during wartime to the isolation of a small town, to the inner passions of a confused, haunted young man—Norman has packed in a world, and more than one era, in this beautiful, haunting tale of love and isolation.

Helene Williams A RIVER IN THE SKY Elizabeth Peters, Morrow, 2010, $25.99, hb, 464pp, 9780061246265 / Constable, 2010, £18.99, hb, 320pp, 9781849012881 It’s 1910 in this newest edition of the Amelia Peabody mysteries, and the British War Office is concerned over Germany’s ambitions in Palestine.

Soon Amelia, Emerson, adopted daughter Nefret and foster son David are off to the Holy Land to follow an English adventurer who is suspected of working secretly for German intelligence. A more pressing concern to the Emersons is that George Morley might be searching for the lost treasures of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, their son Ramses has been working at an archaeological site north of Jerusalem 20th Century

where he encounters a German woman and her mysterious companion. Shortly thereafter, he finds a man murdered and cannot resist pursuing the villains. Ramses’ peril and rescue drive the second half of the book and keep the reader turning pages. Elizabeth Peters uses text from Manuscript H to fill in the action and plot not given us by her first-person narrative or Ramses’ point of view. The ending is rather abrupt but decidedly unpredictable.

Fans will enjoy this newest story even though it does not take place in Egypt. The foreword tells us that it fits chronologically between two others, Guardians of the Horizon and The Falcon at the Portal.

Veronika Pelka A CURTAIN FALLS Stefanie Pintoff, Minotaur, 2010, $24.99, hb, 400pp, 9780312583965 Stefanie Pintoff ’s second mystery takes place in the spring of 1906 in New York City’s theatre district. A chorus girl, dressed as the leading lady of the current play and posed center stage, is found dead at the Garrick Theatre with no apparent cause of death or signs of struggle. When it’s determined to be murder and not suicide, the stage manager reveals that she is not the first and Police Chief Declan Mulvaney asks his former partner, Detective Simon Ziele to come back from Dobson and help with the case. A cryptic note has been left with the body and a letter is sent to the New York Times. Preventing the letters from going to press causes Simon to compromise in ways he would like to avoid. He teams up with the same characters as the first novel, In The Shadow of Gotham, a winner of the Edgar Award for best first novel. Criminologist Alistair Sinclair and his beautiful daughter-in-law, Isabelle, join forces with Simon and Captain Declan Mulvaney. We’re also introduced to a new character – Simon’s father, who has returned to New York after a long absence.

He wants to make amends with his son, but Simon is not open to forming a bond that was broken when his father left town a decade ago to avoid paying his gambling debts.

Actor Timothy Poe is a memorable person in this novel. He is charged with the crime, but Simon has a gut feeling that Timothy is innocent. Chief Mulvaney drops Simon from the case, but Simon and Alistair continue the investigation on their own. A third murder leads them to Shelter Island and the unsolved murder of a local girl years ago.

Could they be connected?

This second novel from Gotham City is wellresearched and delves into the pitfalls of crimefighting at the turn of the century. It is a fast-paced and enjoyable read.

Susan Zabolotny SIX GRAVES TO MUNICH Mario Puzo, MacLehose Press, 2010, £7.99, pb, 246pp, 9781849162760 This debut novel by Mario Puzo is a revengebased thriller set in 1955. It tells the story of Michael Rosen, a man blessed with a phenomenal intelligence and memory, who was recruited during the war as a cryptologist in the Washington Intelligence Offices. After two years, he yearns for a more active involvement in the conflict, and 20th Century

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GLORIOUS

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Bernice L. McFadden, Akashic, 2010, $15.95, pb, 250pp, 9781936071114 Easter Vanetta Bartlett, born in Waycross, Georgia, sees her sister raped and violated in 1910, an act that quickly drives her family to insanity and death. In the Jim Crow South, a black person is presumed to either be at fault or misunderstand what occurred. Easter has had her first devastating dose of reality, and so her solution for the time is to leave and create a new life.

The bevy of characters throughout this story of Easter’s life is so gripping that one can’t wait to get back to learn about Rain, a bisexual drama queen of the highest order; Meredith, a rich white woman friend who marries a Puerto Rican man whom she eventually discards in a flabbergasting manner; a husband, Colin, whose hatred of Marcus Garvey kindles into a consuming flame for reasons that will astonish those who have a pristine picture of this revolutionary character; the writers of the Harlem Renaissance, who are just beginning their ascendancy into literary renown; and many more minor characters who are just as fascinating in their unique, astonishing style. Easter has a very special gift that some will admire beyond words and of which others will dare to deprive her: the gift of crafting words to create sanity in her own inner landscape and clarity to the outer world about the changing world around them.

The “dream deferred,” as described by Langston Hughes, is portrayed in the language renowned for this literary movement, so exquisitely presented. This reviewer believes that Glorious is bound to become a classic work read in schools and celebrated where great writing is truly appreciated. What a delight!

Viviane Crystal

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Julie Orringer, Knopf, $26.95, 2010, hb, 624pp, 9781400041169 / Viking, 2010, £12.99, hb, 240pp, 9780670914586 Paris in 1937 is only a dream place for Hungarian Andras Levi, an aspiring architect, until news of a scholarship from the city’s École Spéciale reaches him.

His last evening home is spent at the opera with his devoted brother, Tibor, where a bank manager’s wife asks him to take a box to her son, Josèf. Andras goes to tea to collect the box as well as a secret letter from the family matriarch, insisting he post it safely from Paris.

During his long train journey across several frontiers, Andras notices the threatening presence of the German Nazis and refuses to buy anything in their country, even though he is starving. Further threats to his future arrive via soon-to-be-canceled scholarships for Hungarian Jews, forcing Andras to find employment to continue his studies. At the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre, he meets other Hungarians but none as devastating as Klara, an older woman of the world who becomes his first lover and his obsession.

(And the actual recipient of the “secret letter” he mailed upon arrival in Paris.)

As Hitler’s influence reaches France and factions are formed to root out the Jews, encroaching danger surrounds Andras and his fellow Jewish classmates. Eventually returning to Hungary, Andras is suddenly drafted into a labor camp and surreptitiously joins a friend in publishing underground newsletters against the Nazi regime. Punishment follows, and, grippingly, the story builds up to the atrocities of Hitler’s Final Solution.

As ambitious as this first novel appears, it never fails to hold the reader, straight through from the innocent beginnings of being young and in love in Paris to the horrifying effects of genocide and hatred that became known as the Holocaust. Told from the rare point of view of Hungarian Jews, it is a compelling read, beautifully written and highly recommended.

Tess Heckel HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 55

is parachuted into France, where he works as an Allied Forces communications officer. He sees himself as a walking code breaker for the French underground movement, the Resistance. Billeted with the Charney family, he meets and falls in love with their daughter, Christine. They marry, and she is five months pregnant when the Gestapo raid the farmhouse and arrest everyone. He and Christine are taken to the Munich Palace of Justice, where seven men torture them separately in adjoining rooms, using his wife’s screams as an inducement to make him reveal all he knows. He gives them useless data, but they are equally as deceptive, betraying his trust and then leaving him for dead.

It takes him ten years to recover, during which time his health deteriorates and his memory has become a curse. His mind repeatedly replays the events within the Palace of Justice, and these images drive him on to extract revenge on his torturers. He is aided by his lover, Rosalie, another person who has been damaged by the war, and as she watches and learns from him, she becomes emotionally stronger and finds the courage to move on.

There are occasions when Puzo tells instead of shows, and the origins for settings and characters in The Godfather are recognisable, but from start to finish this book is an engrossing and compelling read.

Janet Williamson MOONLIGHT OVER DENMARK J H Schryer, The History Press, 2010, £8.99, pb, 237pp, 9780752449197 Moonlight over Denmark is the tale of a small group of characters and their involvement in undercover operations in Nazi-occupied Denmark in 1943-1945. Hanns is a British agent dropped behind enemy lines whose tormented past threatens to turn him into a liability. Young Austrian recruit Gunter Herz/Geoffrey Hart is sent by the Special Operations Executive to pull Hanns out and complete his unfinished mission.

But this means leaving behind the mysterious Danish woman Lilian, with whom Geoffrey is in love and who is also being drawn deeper and deeper into undercover work.

Their movements are coordinated and monitored by Captain George Henderson and his radio operator wife Katharine, both of whom have been keeping secrets from each other connected with the past.

I really wanted to like this book. The blurb seemed to promise a roller-coaster ride of passionate love and thrilling adventure. Instead, I found myself feeling oddly distanced from the characters, as if I was being told how they felt rather than experiencing those emotions for myself.

Possibly it would have helped if I had read Schryer’s previous novel Goodnight Vienna, in which several of the key characters are evidently introduced. The plotting too is a bit dodgy in places, particularly when, without giving away too much, near the end of the book, Lilian accuses Geoffrey of something she has no means of finding out.

On the plus side, by focusing on the work of the Danish Resistance and the British agents helping them, Schryer has found an unusual angle on the oft-told tale of WWII. Jasmina Svenne 56 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

THE MORE I OWE YOU Michael Sledge, Counterpoint, 2010, $15.95/ C$19.50, pb, 329pp, 9781582435763 American poet Elizabeth Bishop spent much of her life running from her demons. In 1951, while recovering from a particularly bad bout with alcohol, she booked herself onto a cargo ship headed for South America – to escape New York, to see something new, to try to purge herself of her feelings of hatred and worthlessness. In Brazil she planned a brief visit with an acquaintance, the exuberant Lota de Macedo Soares, and she ended up staying seventeen years.

Michael Sledge’s novel of these two strongwilled women is at once a raw portrayal of love and artistry as well as a portrait of Brazil in times of great turmoil. The characters, and the country, are well-researched: Bishop’s poems are woven into the chapters with great delicacy and are an organic component of the book. Brazil is wellrepresented, too, in both its flora and fauna and its political chaos. Throughout her nearly two decades in Brazil, Bishop continued to grapple with alcohol and the need to belong; her pained efforts to produce more poems (she managed several a year, at the best of times) infuriated the over-productive Lota, who always had multiple projects and concerns going. Other people are another source of friction, and good narrative fodder. Robert Lowell, Bishop’s would-be lover, provides a worthy subplot, as does Carlos Lacerda, the Brazilian journalistturned-revolutionary.

The women’s relationship reaches its turning point as Brazil does: the crowds outside their apartment building chanting for reform echo their inner desires for change and stability. It is in the conflict that Bishop and Soares, as well as the country, are best understood, and which makes for fascinating reading.

Helene Williams MR ROSENBLUM’S LIST Natasha Solomons, Sceptre, 2010, £12.99, hb, 320pp, 9780340995648 All Jack Rosenblum wants is to be English. He and his wife Sadie, and one-year-old daughter, disembarked at Harwich from Nazi Germany in 1937. In London’s East End he becomes wealthy through the manufacture of carpets, and lives according to rules set out in a pamphlet given to all refugees - 1. Learn English and its correct pronunciation – annotating and expanding the list with his own observations, buying marmalade from Fortnum and Mason, and a bespoke suit from Savile Row. Sadie is at a loss to understand Jack’s obsession, his reverence for Winston Churchill – in spite of being interned during the war – John Betjeman, and the BBC weather forecast. She tries to keep alive Jewish customs and rituals from ‘before’, cherishing her mother’s recipe book, cooking soups, casseroles and cakes that taste of home.

The last item on Jack’s list of Englishness is membership of a golf club. When every club around London turns him down, he relocates to rural Dorset in 1952 to build his own golf course, determined the first game shall be played on the morning of the Queen’s coronation the following year. It is this comic adventure which informs the narrative of the author’s debut novel, inspired by

the experience of her grandparents, who settled in Dorset. The recipes are authentic and she has a feel for the rhythms and legends of rural life, threatened by so-called progress, evoking seasons and times of day in luminous prose. Other passages, however, become weighed down with adjectives and adverbs.

I did not find the characters engaging, many of them thinly drawn, with the exception of Curtis, the centenarian villager, for some while Jack’s only friend. The pathos and the immigrant experience, the very real desire to belong, often get lost amid comedy and bumpkin stereotypes.

Janet Hancock THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN JOHN EMMETT Elizabeth Speller, Virago, 2010, £14.99, hb, 442pp, hb, 9781844086078 London 1921. Laurence Bartram, widower and decorated army officer, is attempting to find a role for himself in post-War society by writing a study on London’s churches. His desultory efforts are disturbed when his receives a letter from the sister of a former school friend, Mary Emmett, whose brother is the eponymous Captain. John Emmett killed himself after suffering psychological problems following the end of the Great War, and Mary wants to know if Bartram is able to tell her more about her brother and his death. Laurence Bartram starts to investigate the matter and is quickly drawn into a complex and unpleasant tale of military incompetence, treachery, cowardice and revenge. He uncovers a series of murders related to the execution of a very young and junior army officer – the events which ultimately lead to the death of Captain Emmett and many others.

This is a well-plotted novel that is narrated with expertise and urges the reader on to uncover the truth. It is soaked with the sadness and unpleasantness of bereavement so prevalent as this time in Britain just after the end to the war. It is a moving, rather sad and sobering story; very capable historical fiction.

Doug Kemp THE GIRL AT THE FARMHOUSE GATE. Julia Stoneham, Allison & Busby, 2010, £19.99, hb, 318pp, 9780749007690 Set in Devon during the Second World War, this is the story of a group of girls drafted into the Land Army. Lower Post Stone Farm, not far from Exeter and on the edge of Dartmoor, is a Land Army Hostel run by Alice Todd. All the girls come from different backgrounds with vastly differing views on life and the war in general. Alice herself is going through a divorce; Hester is in love with her GI which incurs the wrath of her parents while Mabel strikes up an unlikely relationship with one of the farmhands.

There are many WWII novels, but not too many involving the Land Army, and I thought this one gave a very good impression of the countryside and the farm work involved. The characters were well drawn and believable and drew both empathy with and sympathy from the reader. There was no great plot but the everyday lives of the girls as they went about the very necessary work needed to keep the country fed in the austere days of 1944; the Warden and the other inhabitants of the area intertwined with each other and kept the interest 20th Century

going. This was easy to read and would do very nicely for a dark winter evening in front of the fire.

Marilyn Sherlock THE MARROWBONE MARBLE COMPANY M. Glenn Taylor, Ecco, 2010, $24.99/C$26.99, 368pp, hb, 9780061923937 Taylor’s haunting second novel is, like The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart, set in hardscrabble West Virginia, where history and characters are at times inseparable from folklore. Loyal Ledford works at the Mann Glass factory, where he works at the furnace until midnight and afterwards eats dinner in the cafeteria with Rachel, the company nurse and daughter of the manager. Pearl Harbor interrupts his courtship plans and he joins the Marines, to try to make a difference, only to find out at Guadalcanal how difficult it is to tell the good guys from the bad.

Tormented by wartime memories, Loyal returns home to the comforts of Rachel and whisky.

He rebels at the new owners of the glass factory, and has a dream about building a better life for Rachel, his children, and his friends, both black and white. Thus begins the Marrowbone Marble Company, and the trials of building and living in an integrated community in the 1950s and 60s below the Mason-Dixon line. There are corrupt politicians and lawmen, families with decades-old grudges, burned crosses on lawns, and the requisite preachers and gamblers.

In spite of the familiar images, however, the story never succumbs to caricature: the people and the tale are very real, very human, and impossible to ignore. Taylor brings to life not just the sights and sounds of West Virginia during the turbulent civil rights and Vietnam era, but the raw emotions of fear, anger, hope, and sadness as well. Historical events are interspersed throughout the story, providing context for Ledford’s utopian dream, and his setbacks. Although there is plenty of pain and strife in Ledford’s world, the glimmers of hope, like marbles glinting in the sun, make for a valuable perspective and an unforgettable read.

Helene Williams MURDER ON LEXINGTON AVENUE Victoria Thompson, Berkley Prime Crime, 2010, $24.95, hb, 336pp, 9780425234372 Victoria Thompson’s 12th Gaslight Mystery is just as interesting and fresh as her early works in this series. Murder on Lexington Avenue takes place in New York City at the turn of the 20th century.

The story opens with the murder of wealthy businessman Nehemiah Wooten on a Saturday afternoon at his place of business. He is the father of a deaf daughter and lends much support to the Lexington Avenue School. She has been sent to that school specifically because he does not want her to be taught how to converse in sign.

Detective Frank Malloy is called to the case at the request of the school’s president. Frank’s son, Brian, is deaf, and Frank had considered the school for his own son, but decided that signing would be useful to Brian and sent him to another school instead. Frank’s love interest, Sarah Brandt, continues her life as midwife and single mom.

When Frank arrives at the Wooten house to question the family, he learns that Mrs. Wooten 20th Century — Multi-period

is in labor and he sends for Sarah. Soon they are working together again to solve the latest crime.

Beautiful Electra Wooten has been learning to sign without her father’s knowledge and has fallen in love with her instructor, Mr. Oldham. Mr. Wooten’s son, Leander, has angered his father by arranging Electra’s clandestine meetings with Mr. Oldham. Mrs. Wooten has a secret of her own regarding her baby’s father and does not fit Frank’s idea of a grieving widow.

Frank lines up his suspects early on and systematically rules them out until the very end. I especially enjoy the interaction between Sarah and Frank and highly recommend this book.

Susan Zabolotny THE GO-BETWEEN: A Novel of the Kennedy Years Frederick Turner, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010, $25.00, hb, 336pp, 9780151015092 Judith Campbell Exner, who died in 1999 at age 65, claimed that she had a two-year affair with President John F. Kennedy. Her autobiography (My Story) also claimed she had a platonic relationship with Sam Giancana and served as a courier delivering documents between JFK and the mafia. The grey area of fact versus fiction overlaps and sorting out the truth still stirs up controversy.

Frederick Turner has imagined a story of intrigue and mystery based on the known history about her relationship with two of the most powerful men of the time. His narrator is a seasoned journalist, a writer worn thin by his years of covering the news, who stumbles upon diaries written by Exner. His life takes on new purpose when his discovery inspires his story. He comes to believe Exner was not just Kennedy’s mistress and bad girl; rather, she was an idealist and believed in the American dogma of the time, thinking she was promoting the common good and blinded by the Kennedy aura. The sense of doom is evident from the beginning, as Turner uncovers her tragic decline from the moment she met Kennedy. She was tossed aside by the men she loved and hounded

by J. Edgar Hoover’s men.

Entries in the diary are the author’s fabrications, based on Exner’s published autobiography.

Readers will be familiar with historical events of the time, Fidel Castro’s threat, the Bay of Pigs, the Nixon/Kennedy debates and JFK’s election and assassination, but myths, coverup and espionage cloud the history, still. Cleverly written, this story is fun to read but lacks substance, as it’s difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. We may never find the truth about Judith Campbell Exner and her complicated role in American politics, but readers should enjoy the possibilities presented in Turner’s imagination.

Wisteria Leigh THE MAESTRO’S VOICE Roland Vernon, Black Swan, 2010, £7.99, pb, 493pp, 9780552775526 1926. Rocco Campobello is a world-renowned tenor – considered the greatest singer of his age – and after collapsing on stage in New York he retires to Italy, to his home town of Naples, where he seeks to “put his house in order”. His attempts to lay the ghosts from his impoverished past bring him into conflict with both the Italian mafia and

the burgeoning might of Mussolini and his Fascist party, both fighting for supremacy in Naples, a once magnificent city that by 1926 is impoverished and decaying.

Vernon makes good use of musical background to bring Rocco Campobello to life, and he is surrounded by colourful characters that are all too human – good and bad. From the (literally) heart-stopping opening chapter to its violently explosive climax, The Maestro’s Voice is a tale of glamour, greed and intrigue. The almost matterof-fact violence is sometimes uncomfortable but in keeping with a story set at a brutal period of Naples’ turbulent history.

There are echoes of Faust in a plot worthy of an Italian opera and set against the enthralling backdrop of the crumbling city of Naples. A fascinating and enjoyable read.

Melinda Hammond DIAMOND RUBY Joseph Wallace, Touchstone, 2010, $16.00, pb, 464pp, 9781439160053 Ruby Thomas, age seven, catches a fly ball hit

by Casey Stengel on April 5, 1913. As she looks at the ball she imagines herself a pitcher. Whether her unusually long arms, often a source of ridicule, contribute to her success one will never know.

Catching baseball fever that day, Ruby is destined to make a mark on the world.

Later, using a tree in her backyard as a target, she discovers her athletic gift: a mighty fastball with pin point accuracy. Some years later, when her family dies during the Spanish influenza outbreak, she becomes the sole support for her two nieces.

Driven by the need to care for them, she lands a job at a Coney Island sideshow throwing fastballs. The attraction, called the Birdcage, challenges anyone to beat her speed. The abusive owner schedules her for long arduous hours with little rest. The work takes a painful physical toll on her throwing arm.

One day Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey, curious visitors, show up at the Birdcage to watch Ruby, and the resulting newspaper article rockets her to fame. When given the opportunity to pitch for a minor league team, Ruby agrees. As her adoring public craves more of Ruby, others of bad intent emerge. The Ku Klux Klan threatens her, the underworld wants to own her, and the baseball commissioner wants to ban her. All Ruby wants is to play ball and shelter her family.

Wallace has written a dramatically powerful story of determination. Ruby, who is inspiringly special with an innate ability to endure immense hardships, faces difficult choices. Her character is genuine, not sainted, but human facing persistent challenges. Inspired by the life of Jackie Mitchell, Diamond Ruby is a historically uplifting unforgettable journey back to the excitement of the roaring twenties.

Wisteria Leigh THE MAPPING OF LOVE AND DEATH Jacqueline Winspear, Harper, 2010, $25.99, hb, 352pp, 9780061727665 Maisie Dobbs is back (and better than ever) in this seventh novel in the series. It is now 1932, but the Great War still haunts London. This time, Maisie is hired by the Clifton family to discover what happened to their American son, Michael, a HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 57

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BEAUTIFUL ASSASSIN

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Michael White, Morrow, 2010, $24.95, hb, 448pp, 9780061691218 / Quercus, 2010, hb, 448 pp, £19.99, 9781847246608 (hb), 978184724615 (pb) In 1942, Tat’yana Levchenko, codename “Assassin”, was one of the Red Army’s ace snipers, a Hero of the Soviet Union, who was invited to America by Eleanor Roosevelt herself in order to promote the war effort and then disappeared amidst rumours of espionage.

In 1996, a journalist finally tracks the elderly Tat’yana down and persuades her to tell her story.

And what a story it is, taking us from the horrors of the Eastern Front and the siege of Sevastopol, her childhood in the Ukraine, marriage and motherhood and the devastating events that drove her to enlist, and then the visit to America, where, at first, she is all too ready to condemn the Americans for living up to her image of “pampered capitalists” in spite of the temptations of cream cakes, cocktails and Captain Jack Taylor.

Tat’yana discovers that a secret and deadly battle is being fought by countries that speak of being allies.

Ordered to spy on the First Lady, she has to decide where her loyalties truly lie, but nothing is simple and no-one is who they seem.

Michael White has written an epic tale of the Second World War and the nascent Cold War. He does not shy away from the brutal, nor the brutalising effects of war, as Tat’yana calmly notches up her kills. She is a thoroughly believable, complex woman, marked by tragedy and torn by conflicting loyalties, between following orders and following her heart. It is through her eyes that we see the vast supporting cast of soldiers, refugees, secret-service men, diplomats and spies, and a diverse range of historical figures who cross her path This book certainly fell into the category of “couldn’t put it down.” Thoroughly recommended.

Mary Seeley After her family is shattered by the invading Germans there is nothing left for Tat’yana Levchenko than to join the Red Army in the defense of her homeland. Working as a sniper in the ruins of Sevastopol, she finds she is very good at killing Germans, so much so that she is feted as a Hero of the Soviet Union. But with that honor she is to attend a meeting in the U.S. sponsored by none other than Eleanor Roosevelt. Tat’yana soon finds she is a pawn in a battle far more complex than the simple, brutal life she knew at the front. The resulting struggle will test her loyalties to all she knows, including a budding love for a handsome American captain.

Michael White’s professionally rendered tale is both compelling and interesting. So much so that the reader may be reminded of other works. The opening chapters in Sevastopol, for instance, could have been plucked from the movie Enemy at the Gates. When the author deals with Eleanor Roosevelt, he takes pains to include a large number of details from her recent biographies as if to make sure we know he has done his homework. Most crucial, however, is his depiction of Tat’yana herself. Although he has created a powerful main character, there seems to something not quite real about her. To be sure, depicting a Ukrainian woman scarred by war and suddenly thrust into a totally alien world would be a huge challenge to any writer. Perhaps too much of one in this case.

That said, Beautiful Assassin is a worthwhile experience, especially for a reader who is unfamiliar with this aspect of the Second World War. Ken Kreckel cartographer during the war. They have uncovered Michael’s belongings from a recently discovered bunker in France, and found love letters written by an anonymous British nurse. Maisie delves into the mystery of Michael and his secret love with her usual aplomb and common sense, aided by her trusty helper, Billy. As they begin to dig deep, Maisie discovers that Michael did not just die in the bunker; but he was murdered.

Once again, Maisie uses her deduction skills, psychological knowledge, and common sense to 58 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

unravel the mystery of Michael’s death, and the identity of the nurse. Her investigation, as well as Winspear’s usual vivid historical details, provides great insight into the importance of cartography during the war. As always, Winspear has crafted a fine mystery with twists and turns and exciting adventures. The added drama of Maurice’s (Maisie’s mentor) inevitable death, a new romance for Maisie, and the ongoing struggles of Billy and his family provide intrigue and suspense, beyond the main plot. Overall, this is one of the best Maisie

Dobbs stories yet. Highly recommended.

Rebecca Roberts I HOTEL Karen Tei Yamashita, Coffee House Press, 2010, $19.95, 612pp, 9781566892391 Yamashita has undertaken an immense task to chronicle the rise of “Yellow Power”—the AsianAmerican rights experience in the San Francisco Bay Area—in a time when many ethnic and cultural groups were flexing their new-found muscle: black power, gay power, women’s lib, students’ rights, anti-war protestors. This sprawling yet intense story is divided into ten parts, one for each year (1968-1977), and all of them swirl around or focus on the International Hotel, a run-down SingleRoom-Only hive inhabited by aging Filipino and Chinese men left over from before WWII, bachelors by fiat due to early miscegenation laws, poor and beaten down. In the late 60’s and early 70’s, young men of the Socialist/Communist/ Bohemian/Rebel persuasions also found the “I-Hotel” a convenient crash pad, and sometimes a comfort. But developers found the real estate too valuable and began a campaign to evict the tenants—culminating in protests by thousands of people. It became the focal point for many groups, especially Asian-Americans, as a symbol of and rallying point for their growing civil rights efforts.

Many voices tell the stories, and Yamashita is good at portraying different characters; however, I found it hard work and often confusing to keep track of the numbers of people moving in and out of the various chapters, all with similar-sounding names. There is a “core group” of characters who are tracked through the decade, and their stories are interesting as well as heartbreaking. Overall, it’s an intelligently written book, with many successful literary episodes (plays, poems, confessionals, radio interviews) that help keep it moving. However, I often had to put it down out of sheer exhaustion— it’s really long—and picking it back up felt more like a task than a pleasure—and this despite the fact that I lived in San Francisco for the latter years of this story and witnessed the I-Hotel protests myself. Ultimately, though, it’s worth the effort.

Mary F. Burns A GOOD KNIFE’S WORK Sheila York, Five Star, 2010, $25.95, hb, 311pp, 9781594148415 Beautiful screenwriter Lauren Atwill is on the lam from LA. Grabbing her PI bodyguard, she heads for the anonymity of New York City, hoping to write for a popular radio show, only to find the show’s producer brutally murdered in her office.

To get the answers to what must be an inside job, Lauren goes undercover, getting herself hired as a fledgling writer. She soon uncovers plenty of secrets, but one keeps eluding her. How did the killer get in and out of the locked offices?

Posing a variation of the classic ‘locked room’ dilemma, Ms. York provides, by the novel’s end, a clever and satisfying solution. The problem is the in-between, comprising seemingly endless interviews of a cast amounting to well over twentyfive characters. This reduces the pace to something more suitable to a Shakespeare play than a smart radio drama of the late ‘40s. And as the clues slowly pile up, one wonders, why does Lauren care? We 20th Century

never quite seem to get to know the lovely lady.

But if it’s the mystery itself rather than the characters that move you, this one is for you.

Ken Kreckel

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METROPHILIAS Brendan Connell, Better Non Sequitur Press, 2010, $12.00, pb, 102pp, 0974323578 Metrophilias isn’t actually a novel but a collection of short stories alphabetically arranged by title – each one labeled by the name of the city in which it is set. Many of the short stories are reprints from various experimental fiction magazines, and most are only a couple hundred words long. Only a few have any connection with history; some are more a list of descriptive words than prose. All are edgy if not outright shocking.

In “Moscow,” an unnamed man is being interrogated by an unnamed police officer – at least, one assumes that’s who he is – and refuses to admit he killed his friend, who was found hanging from a meat hook in his apartment. However, he does casually inform the officer that he ate his buddy, piece by piece. In “Florence,” we do get a taste of the past, observing beautiful frescoes by Filippino Lippi in Florence, Italy, through the eyes of the heroine. Geronima mourns the loss of her lover, who died in a duel. She soothes herself by sexually exciting herself with an ancient cross that she periodically takes down from her wall for this purpose. And in ancient “Thebes,” the King of Egypt is aroused by inordinately large noses.

To say these stories are quirky wouldn’t do them justice. They are weird, sometimes darkly humorous, wild, sexual, and unpredictable. This is neither a book for the weak of heart, nor for readers with sensitive stomachs. But if you like the ingredients mentioned above tossed into a salad of a few hundred words – it may be just right for you.

Kathryn Johnson JULIET Anne Fortier, Ballantine, 2010, $25.00, hb, 464pp, 9780345516107 / Harper, 2010, £7.99, pb, 9780007321865 This retelling of the classic tale of Romeo and Juliet has the young lovers living in Siena (not Verona) one hundred years earlier than Will Shakespeare’s doomed couple. By using the clever device of telling a story within a story, Ms. Fortier compels our interest as she unfolds a contemporary mystery first.

Our modern heroine is Julie Jacobs, a wisecracking young woman who arrives in the medieval city of Siena wearing flip-flops. There to retrieve a treasure left in a safety deposit book by her deceased mother almost two decades earlier, she soon encounters a rather incredible cast of characters, some friend and some foe. Within days she believes herself a descendant of the ill-fated medieval Giulietta and that a curse still haunts the surviving three families.

Although Julie and her twin sister Janice were born in Italy, they were orphaned as toddlers and subsequently raised by an elderly aunt. Initially only interested in her family inheritance, Julie soon 20th Century — Multi-period

turns sleuth and unravels a series of mysteries surrounding a valuable treasure. Then, when her personal safety is threatened, she seeks help from the very handsome Captain Alessandro Santini – a man whom she does not completely trust and whose true identity is clearly hidden.

Ms. Fortier based her well-told medieval story on the very real, generations-long, blood feuds of prominent Italian families. Her contemporary search for a lost treasure – in addition to having likeable characters – is well paced and often funny.

Although we know the fate of the earlier lovers, we are very interested in the outcome of the story of the modern Romeo and Juliet.

It takes a very talented writer to manage such a difficult and complex narrative so successfully.

This book is destined for the bestseller list and very likely a movie.

Veronika Pelka THE TULIP VIRUS Daniëlle Hermans (trans. David MacKay), Minotaur, 2010, $24.99/C$29.99, hb, 304pp, 9780312577865 This mystery neatly ties together events in Alkmaar, Holland in the 17th century with those in London in the present day. In 1636, a prosperous merchant is found brutally slain in his inn, and in his mouth is an anti-religious pamphlet. Wouter Winckel, however, engaged in more than being an innkeeper. He owned a spectacular collection of tulip bulbs (this at the height of the tulip mania).

And what of the pamphlet?

Another wealthy man is brutally slain, this time in London in 2007. Frank Schoeller, originally from Holland, was holding an old Dutch book about tulips when found by his nephew, a sometime ne’erdo-well named Alec. Frank is able to speak to Alec before dying, which sets Alec and two of his friends off on a hunt to discover why Frank was murdered, and what possible connection he could have with tulips. Alec and his friends learn a great deal about the tulip trade in Holland at the time, and the information is woven into the novel in a way that does not seem pedantic. The book alternates chapters set in the present with those in the past, so readers are able to discover enigmas even before Alec does. I was very impressed with the author’s skill at developing and meshing the two story lines.

The ending seemed to me to be a bit abrupt, but not enough to dilute my enjoyment.

Trudi E. Jacobson WE, THE DROWNED Carsten Jensen (trans. Charlotte Barslund with Emma Ryder), Harvill Secker, 2010, £13.99, pb, 693pp, 9781846553677 In 1848, war erupts in the Danish region of Schleswig-Holstein, and the coastal town of Marstal forms a land guard to do its part. As the town goes through eager preparations, false alarms, and a rude awakening to the realities of war, we are first introduced to Jensen’s unusual choice of narrating voice: first person, plural. We tell the story of Marstal and its people between 1848 and WWII, as sailors, fishermen, and their women are born, live, love, go to sea, go to war, and sometimes come back. We recount how ships and boats are built, cross the sea, are sunk or wrecked, and how, as sailing is abandoned in favour of steam,

traditions are formed, followed, and lost. And We are the Marstal men, the ones who struggle and are lost, killed in war, dead at sea, drowned in the failure of their dreams, and the inexorable change of their world. We will vanish, together with the sense of community, as the maritime fortunes of Marstal change and decline. And yet, We will not completely desert the ones left behind. We, The Drowned is a huge saga, poignant, bitterly compassionate, cruel, and occasionally humorous, told in a powerful, compelling voice. Barslund and Ryder’s translation renders the writing as an elegant blend of everyday detail, a potent, almost myth-like quality, and vivid descriptions of northern lights, and rough seas. Recommended.

Chiara Prezzavento SWORDS FROM THE SEA Harold Lamb, Bison Books (U. of Nebraska Press), 2010, $24.95, pb, 553pp, 9780803220362 Swords from the Sea is one of the University of Nebraska Press collections of Harold Lamb’s stories from Adventure Magazine, published mostly in the ‘20s and ‘30s. As the title says it’s a batch of sea stories, set in a variety of times: besides Vikings, Venetians and Byzantines, the book includes two novella-length pieces on John Paul Jones’s stint with the Russian Imperial Navy, and a splendid account of the English expedition in the 1500s to find a Northeast Passage through the Arctic, around Norway and Russia, to the wealth of the Orient.

Although there’s a definite colonial cast to his stories, Lamb loved multiculturalism before it was even a word, and his stories are full of vividly drawn Mongols, Lapp shamans, Venetian crooks, Arab soldiers and Turkish galley captains. His dialog is often as flowery as a Baroque ceiling, which his wonderful, musical ear makes a pleasure. His narrative skills are formidable, sweeping the reader along exotic landscapes with almost filmic action scenes.

What may be most amazing, along with the sheer range of time frames (there’s a story in the time of the Korean War and another in the time of the Emperor Justinian), is Lamb’s ability to turn endless changes on a few simple plots. There’s only one clunker in the lot: a seemingly endless account of the American expedition against Tripoli in 1805.

A foreword and an essay on Lamb by Adventure’s editor give insight into the writer’s own world.

Thanks to Howard Andrew Jones for bringing out this series of books and offering Harold Lamb to new readers.

Cecelia Holland THE POET PRINCE Kathleen McGowan, Touchstone, 2010, $25.99, hb, 416pp, 9780743299985 / Simon & Schuster, 2010, £12.99, hb, 407pp, 9780743295383 Bestselling author McGowan’s third installment in her “Magdalene Line” series is another exciting historical thriller. The novel slips effortlessly between modern day and Renaissance Italy and showcases McGowan’s talent for bringing the past to life. The novel begins with researcher Maureen Paschal investigating the Confraternity of Saint Mary Magdalen. Through her search she has also uncovered information about the Libro Rosso and the Order of the Holy Sepulchre. Maureen travels to Italy to confer with her beloved teacher Destino.

HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 59

While in Italy, Destino persuades Maureen to study the Poet Prince Lorenzo de’ Medici, a key figure in the shaping of the Renaissance. Maureen learns that Lorenzo de Medici secretly married Lucrezia Donati, one of master artist Botticelli’s primary models. Maureen discovers information about Lorenzo de Medici’s artist friends, including Botticelli, Michelangelo, and others, bringing the art and beauty of the Renaissance alive as she works to uncover clues hidden in the masterpieces of these prominent Renaissance artists. Together Maureen and Bérenger must race against time to unravel a threat that poses a risk to Maureen’s life.

McGowan’s novel is quite complex, so it is best that readers start with the previous two books in the series (The Expected One and The Book of Love) to fully understand the plot intricacies and relationships between characters. The Poet Prince is another fine achievement by McGowan that beautifully combines elements of mystery, religion, and history and is laced with conspiracy theories.

From the ending, it looks like McGowan may be planning another book in this series, which I will anxiously await.

Troy Reed A THOUSAND DEATHS PLUS ONE Sergio Ramirez (trans. Leland H. Chambers), McPherson & Co., 2009, $25, hb, 295pp, 9780929701875 Sergio Ramirez is a Nicaraguan writer whose list of artistic honors is long, thorough, and international. This novel is his fifth book to be translated into English.

On the face, the tale seems simple: Sergio Ramirez himself—a former vice-president of Nicaragua—becomes captivated by an elusive subject: A 19th-century Nicaraguan photographer whose shocking photos captivated the diplomat at a small exhibition in Warsaw. In alternating chapters, Mr. Ramirez strives to trace Castellon’s peripatetic life, while Castellon tells his own story, thoroughly aware, in the tradition of magic realism, that he is being ‘followed.’ In the process, the author explores the themes of beauty and truth, of destiny and failure, and the lost dreams of the young Nicaragua.

Unfortunately, a large portion of the tale is buried under impenetrable prose. (“The wind of gossip, that ventecello which the immortal Rossini sets ruffling in The Barber of Seville, takes great delight in nibbling away at the opalescent oblation from Carrara that our imperial Pylades dedicated to his secretary Orestes.”) Furthermore, Mr. Ramirez’s part of the book is full of obscure references that add little to the narrative. (“They took a chalet, El Torrero, on Calle 2 de Mayo, in El Terreno, at the time a brand new suburb situated between the ocean and the hill on top of which Bellver Castle rises up, where Jovellanos was also imprisoned after Godoy’s underlings decided that the monks of the Palacio del Rey Sancho had been treating him too well.”) Finally, the focus on small events—a drunken binge, for example—rather than more remarkable ones—a cluster of overlapping love triangles related in hurried exposition—saps the story of much-needed dramatic tension.

There is a tale to be told in A Thousand Deaths Plus One, and not an uninteresting one—it’s just buried under the weight of its own prose.

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Lisa Ann Verge THE FORTY RULES OF LOVE Elif Shafak, Viking, 2010, $25.95/C$32.50, hb, 350pp, 9780670021451 / Viking, 2010, £12.99, hb, 368pp, 9780670918737 Disillusioned by her philandering husband, Ella, an American housewife, takes a job as a reader for a literary agency. Her first assignment is the novel, Sweet Blasphemy, written by photographer and world traveler Aziz Z. Zahara. Ella is immediately drawn to the story and to its protagonists, the historical figures of the 13th century poet Rumi and the whirling dervish Shams of Tabriz. On impulse she emails the author and thus begins to learn about Sufism.

A story within a story, The Forty Rules of Love goes back and forth between present and past. The trouble is that Ella is an utterly dull character and it is difficult to care about her. The U.S. setting, Boston and its vicinity, is invisible, and some allusions are simply outdated. Sorry, but collegeage students do not listen to the Beach Boys nowadays. The many 13th-century characters, all using first-person point of view, contribute little spark to the narrative. By the time the syrupy end comes, the reader is grateful.

Adelaida Lower CHANGÓ, THE BIGGEST BADASS Manuel Zapata Olivella (trans. Jonathan Tittler), Texas Tech Univ. Press, 2010, $34.95, hb, 500pp, 9780896726734 Originally written in Spanish and published in 1983, Changó is the story of the African Diaspora.

It begins with haunting poetry about the land of ancestors where tribal wars and the slave trade rend families and cause men to question the gods who cannot save them from being sent to the land of martyrdom. The story continues in a dreamlike narrative about the White Wolf who transports Africans across the sea, and the slave rebellions in the Caribbean that pit different races, black, mulato, mestizo and white, against each other. The latter part of the book highlights important figures in resistance such as Haitian leaders Mackandal and Toussaint L’Ouverture, South American liberators Simón Bolívar and José María Morelos, and activists from the United States such as Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X. William Luis’s introduction is helpful in understanding the style of Changó and its importance in Afro-Spanish-American literature.

While I enjoyed the first poetic section, I found the rest of the book tough going. Olivella writes in his introduction, “Forget about academics, verb tenses, the boundaries between life and death, because in this saga there is no other trace than the one you leave behind: you are the prisoner, the discoverer, the founder, the liberator.” Olivella challenges the dominance of European narrative in the Americas, writing, “Sooner or later you had to confront this truth: the history of the black man in American is as much yours as that of the Indian or the white man.” While I agree with Olivella, I found Changó’s many narrators, its unfamiliar mythology, and its stream-of-consciousness style too burdensome.

For understanding slavery from the slave’s viewpoint, this book is a treasure. However, the narrative’s sexism diminished my sympathy for

the mostly male characters who, like their white captors, seemed to view women, especially Native American women, as possessions rather than humans who desired freedom as much as men.

Patricia O’Sullivan

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timeslip

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TIME’S LEGACY Barbara Erskine, HarperCollins, 2010, £18.99, hb, 448pp, 9780007302277 This time Erskine blends modern Glastonbury and a female Christian priest with a Roman family and Druid priests. In a sweeping epic, she brings echoes of the past to shake and test her characters’ faith.

Abi is working as a curate in Cambridgeshire and immediately becomes aware of the ghosts at a little-used church. Her vicar is deeply disturbed because he has always struggled against what he believes is evil, and he needs her to help him.

Unfortunately, Kier’s obsession drives him too far, and Abi has to resign her post. The bishop sends her to a retreat and it is there that the story truly begins.

Mora and Cynan are Druids. Cynan is a priest and Mora is a healer. Her cures have helped Petra, the daughter of a Roman merchant living with his family in ancient Glastonbury. Everything is peaceful enough until Flavius arrives. He has sworn to kill his brother Gaius, but is here looking for the Jewish healer Yeshua. Herod wants this dangerous enemy of the Empire dead.

As the story unfolds before her eyes, Abi becomes more and more concerned for Mora and the others. She senses that the Druid girl and Yeshua are in danger and longs to help them and to know what happened to them – but Kier thinks her soul is in danger and his obsession may ruin everything.

Yeshua was the original Hebrew name of Jesus.

We are invited to believe that “those feet” did in ancient times indeed walk upon England’s green and pleasant land. This is a powerful and intriguing story, and a good case is made for the author’s theory. As usual Erskine’s beautiful and descriptive writing shines through. I enjoyed it very much but Lady of Hay made more of an impression on me personally.

Linda Sole SEASONS IN THE MIST Deborah Kinnard, Sheaf House, 2010, $13.99, pb, 324pp, 9780982483213 Bethany Lindstrom, an American historian, travels to England on a fellowship to participate in an archeological dig at Oxford. A woman she meets on the plane invites her to visit her historic home in Cornwall. Exploring an ancient hallway there, Bethany falls through a portal and lands in the 14th century. Trapped in the past with its dangers for a lone female, Bethany pretends amnesia and comes under the protection of Baron Veryan. Suspicious yet attracted, Veryan escorts her to the court of Edward III to locate her family. On the verge of denouncement as a witch, Bethany must decide if the past is where God intends her to remain, or should she fight to return to the present.

Multi-period — Timeslip

It’s understandable why a medieval historian would be intrigued by time-traveling to the 14th century, but Bethany shows almost no shock and an immediate acceptance of her fate. She rarely makes a mistake in language or behavior, thus diluting the conflict of a modern woman forced to live a medieval life. The experience does bring her closer to God, and the details of 1353 are interesting.

Diane Scott Lewis

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alternate history

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THE END OF BASEBALL Peter Shilling, Jr., Ivan R. Dee, 2010, $14.95, pb, 340pp, 9781566638487 In 1944, future baseball promoter and hall-offamer Bill Veeck recovers from the loss of his leg at Guadalcanal by gaining control of the Philadelphia Athletics. Although this is the young Veeck’s first foray into the major leagues, he has high expectations, and with good reason. Prior to the war, he brought a minor league Milwaukee Brewer franchise from ruin to financial and sporting success. But for the Athletics, he has something else in mind. His A’s will win a pennant by fielding a team composed entirely of Negro League stars, led by the incomparable Satchel Paige. However, he soon finds powerful forces arrayed against him, from the racist commissioner of baseball, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, to none other than J. Edgar Hoover, who sees integration as an invitation to communism.

Mr. Shilling is a technically capable writer who is obviously passionate about baseball. He weaves an interesting and compelling story. What if baseball was integrated as early as 1944? The answer is anybody’s guess, but Shilling’s reply is both credible and thought provoking.

The tale has it roots in the historical and possibly apocryphal plan of Veeck’s to do the same with the Philadelphia Phillies. But that is where I have a major problem with the book. Some facts are wrong, dates are switched, and much of it never happened. True it is labeled as fiction, but nowhere does the author explain that his work is an exercise in alternative history. A casual reader who is not a baseball expert will not know that Veeck may have contemplated such an action, or worse, may assume that he actually tried it. The addition of author’s notes explaining the actual history of the period would be most welcome, as would a brief description of the real Veeck, a character much larger than any fictional portrayal. It is a strange and inexplicable lapse.

Ken Kreckel

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paranormal & | historical fantasy

HAWK OF MAY Gillian Bradshaw, Sourcebooks Landmark, 2010 (c1980), $14.99/C$17.99, pb, 384pp, 9781402240706 This tale of Gwalchmai’s (otherwise known Alternate History — Paranormal & Historical Fantasy

as Sir Gawain) journey into the service of King Arthur left me breathless. Gwalchmai, younger son of the evil sorceress Morgawse and King Lot, travels a tortured yet hopeful spiritual path toward the Light. Viewing himself as a failure in the arts of war, Gwalchmai believes his best chance to make something of himself lies in the dark arts. But after glimpsing the terrible evil that Morgawse practices, he realizes this path is not for him and decides to follow the noble King Arthur, but he is worlds and journeys away from attaining his dream.

Winner of the 1977 University of Michigan Hopwood Award and first released in 1980, Hawk of May was well received then, and will be just as treasured this time around. It can be described as historical fantasy that combines historical realism with otherworldly magical elements, which together create a unique ethereal exploration of the Arthurian mythological world.

Hawk of May is the first in a trilogy of Arthurian fantasy novels entitled Down the Long Wind, and I will be eagerly awaiting a rerelease of the next two.

Andrea Connell SHADOWS IN THE CAVE Caleb Fox, Tor/Forge, 2010, $24.99, hb, 320pp, 9780765319937 This is a novel of fantasy based upon ancient Cherokee legends of magic, a land inhabited by creatures known as the Immortals, shape-shifting Indians and a mystical monster dragon. Shonan was the War Chief of his village, the Galayi people.

His son, Aku, inherited shape-shifting skills from his mother. They eventually need to ask Aku’s grand-mother, a Cherokee Seer, to help rescue Aku’s twin sister Salya from the Underworld. Her spirit has been eaten by Maloch who consumes the life-fire from others and adds them to his own.

Maloch, leader of the Brown Leaf people, can change to a monster dragon that cannot be killed by normal means.

This novel is the second in a series by Caleb Fox, stories based upon the imagination and mysticism of the prehistoric Cherokee. As a book of fantasy, I thought it contained all the elements necessary to entertain those who enjoy reading about mystical lands – struggles between good and evil, the rescuing of a damsel in distress, and the human emotions built into those who believe in mystical powers and those who do not. I don’t feel it is necessary to read the first novel in this series, Zadayi Red, to follow the storyline or characters in this book. The author did a good job in bringing the reader up to date with the time period in this story.

If you enjoy the Gears’ The First North Americans series, you may like Caleb Fox’s fantasy fiction.

Jeff Westerhoff ABRAHAM LINCOLN: Vampire Hunter Seth Grahame-Smith, Hachette, 2010, $21.99, hb, 336pp, 9780446536086 / Constable, 2010, £12.99, 304pp, 9781849014083 Every once in a while a reviewer sees a title and instantly thinks, I have to read this. But how to review it? First, the synopsis. As a boy Abe Lincoln lost his beloved mother to illness. Later he learns her sickness was not caused by the perils of frontier life, but by something more insidious: a vampire. His heartbreak turns to rage, and so begins a lifelong quest to annihilate the scourge

infecting his country. Along the way he is aided by an unlikely mentor, a series of sidekicks, a few guest stars, and an arsenal of weapons. After starting a family, Abe decides to hang up his axe and fight evil in the political realm rather than the supernatural one—but in Washington DC he finds the two are intertwined more deeply than he could have imagined. The history of vampires in America is as dark as the history of slavery, and both will take a war to eradicate.

At this point likely half of readers have curled their lip in indignation, and the other half are thinking, I have to read this. The bottom line is, if you think you’d like this book, you’ll love it. If you’re sure you’d hate it, you’ll probably prove yourself right. More than a parody but less than a joke, preposterous without mockery, well-constructed but self-aware, equal parts absurd, audacious, exciting, and endearing—this is a book not easily categorized but easily enjoyed. Some devices are repetitious, and the “illustrations” are ridiculous, but the altered history feels authentic and the storytelling is excellent. A book like this either works or it doesn’t—this book works. If you’re up for something different, check out of reality and enjoy the gory, messy, blood-splattered fun.

Heather Domin THE DRUID ISLE Ellen Evert Hopman, Llewellyn, 2010, $18.95/ C$21.95, pb, 256pp, 9780738719566 Some time in the early medieval period in the Celtic lands of Britain and Brittany, fictionalized Druid folk struggle to save their ancient faith against encroaching Christians. Lucius, raised in a monastery thinking he has no family, escapes to spy on forbidden pagan rites – which end up luring him away. Beautiful Aife, raised on idyllic forest truths, manages to save her virtue from the slimy Christian king and is set rudderless into the waves to further her education wherever the wind blows her. Martinus, who might be St. Martin if this were Tours, runs around tearing down sacred groves and disrupting beautiful, uninhibited rites.

The simplistic, almost childlike (except for the sex), plot unfolds as one expects.

What Aife and, eventually, Lucius learn on the Druid Isle is a long, unscrutinized tract on pagan lore – including chakras (for which there is a postlude apology). They win it as easily as hazelnuts of mythological wisdom drop into the otherworldly fountain and the mouths of waiting salmon. How can anything won that easily be worth the trouble?

The conflicts – black and white and all-too easily solved – evolve in undeveloped settings, proving it is possible for anybody’s inspirational fiction to be didactic and soulless.

Ann Chamberlin BITTER SEEDS Ian Tregillis, Tor, 2010, $25.99/C$31, 352pp, 9780765321503 It is 1939 and the British are preparing for war – and against invasion by Nazi Germany. Raybould Marsh, a British secret agent, has learned that the Nazis have a secret weapon – a group of supermen and women who can do the impossible: walk through walls, fly, and seemingly predict the future.

At the direction of his boss and longtime mentor John Stephenson, Marsh calls on the services of HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 61

his old college friend Lord William Beauclerk, who also has strange powers of his own – the ability to call on, and corral the power of, potentially evil natural forces.

Both sides use their secret weapons to change the very nature of the war – the Germans, who have created their small cohort of human weapons using brain surgery, batteries, and willpower, and the British, using warlocks and increasingly horrifying blood oaths.

In this supernatural alternative history, the difference between “natural” and “unnatural” magic is suggested. And while at first the “natural” (British) is positioned as somehow more appropriate, the cost and the effect is more than they bargained for. The book is often very brutal, and the violence is matter-of-fact and unflinching.

The “supermen””are absolutely gruesome – but then, so are the warlocks, and even more so, the leaders on both sides.

The pacing is good, and the plotting is excellent.

The historical detail is well done and feels natural, and there are fantastic turns of phrase throughout.

However, it felt like it wasn’t quite sure where or how it wanted to close and stuttered to a stop.

Given the increasing levels of violence, sacrifice, and Machiavellian scheming, the ending is unsurprisingly grim.

A very original idea, well executed.

Recommended.

Julie K. Rose

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children & young adult

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ESTY’S GOLD Mary Arrigan, Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 2009, £6.99, pb, 221pp, 9781845079659 1840s Ireland. 12-year-old Esther Maher is the naïve daughter of a well-to-do Catholic middleman, who collects rents for his English landlord. It’s an unusual job for a Catholic and, as the potato famine worsens, his position becomes increasingly difficult. When he is killed bravely defending Irish peasants, Esty’s comfortable life changes for ever.

She’s taken on at the Big House as a servant.

Suddenly, she’s on the other side of the fence: one of the have nots rather than one of the haves. The other servants sneer at her. Then she hears rumours about some of the servants who are fighting British rule. Esty must grow up fast and decide whose side she is on. Life is hard but there is a glimmer of light.

She retrieves her mistress’s discarded copies of The Illustrated London News and reads about those who have made a fortune gold-mining in Australia. It becomes her dream of a better life.

When the chance comes to emigrate with her family to the gold-mining town of Ballarat in Australia, she jumps at it. But life there has its own problems. They have to cope with theft, greedy and corrupt officials at the Gold Office, and all the dangers of heat, insects and disease. But Esty refuses to be beaten and she comes up with an idea which could transform their lives…

I enjoyed this. Mary Arrigan propels us into the story and we both feel and learn with Esty. The plight of the Irish peasantry at this period is both 62 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

chilling and heart-rending, and the struggles to make a living in the harsh mining town is equally evocative and absorbing. Aimed at girls of 10 plus, it would make an excellent introduction to a study of the Irish potato famine and its consequences for those forced off the land. Recommended.

Elizabeth Hawksley YOUNG SAMURAI: The Way of the Sword Chris Bradford, Puffin, 2009, £6.99, pb, 353pp, 9780141324319 1612, Japan. This is Jack Fletcher’s second samurai adventure. Now thirteen, he has been adopted by the venerated samurai Matamoto and is now in his second year at the samurai school.

There is a new challenge: the Circle of Three, an ancient ritual which tests a samurai’s courage, skill and spirit to the limit – and only the top five students may enter for it.

Jack has other problems, too. Kazuki, a xenophobic fellow student, will sabotage Jack’s chances if he can. His attitude that gaijins (foreign barbarians) are inferior and unwanted is worryingly echoed in news from the outside world that Christians will soon be banished from Japan and that some have already been killed.

His greatest problem, however, is how to keep safe the rutter his father left him. Jack knows that the dreaded ninja, Dragon Eye, would do anything to get his hands on this priceless navigational book.

He has already killed Jack’s father and he has vowed to kill Jack, too.

Can Jack master the Way of the Sword in time to survive a fight to the death?

I enjoyed this. The mixture is much the same as before – various Herculean tasks in which Jack must demonstrate his skill, bravery and nerve – but none the worse for that. Chris Bradford plainly knows his stuff and his story-telling skills match his knowledge of the samurai Way of the Sword. And this isn’t just a one character book; for example, one of Jack’s teachers, the blind Sensei Kano, and Jack’s gentle fellow student, Yori, who makes beautiful origami figures, have their own stories which are woven into the dramatic fabric. The pace is terrific and there is never a dull moment. Boys of 11 plus will love it.

Elizabeth Hawksley This book is an exuberant and exciting read because every page carries more secrets, lies and mysteries than a detective story. It is not the first of the series and, even though I have not read the first book, I could understand what had happened before and follow it easily. However, sometimes it was difficult to follow exactly what was going on, but I suppose fights are hard to describe. I suggest that Chris Bradford gives his readers more descriptions of characters in the book, and that he explains how the characters feel. Still, I feel that Chris Bradford has written a page-turning and exhilarating book.

Hal McNulty, age 12 YOUNG SAMURAI: The Way of the Dragon Chris Bradford, Puffin, 2010, £6.99, pb, 430pp, 9780141324326 1613, Japan. In his third adventure, young Jack Fletcher is continuing at the samurai training

school, this time struggling to master the Two Heavens, the secret sword technique of his fosterfather, the famous samurai, Masamoto. He is also desperate to recover his father’s rutter, the priceless navigational aid stolen by his arch enemy, the ninja Dragon Eye. Outside, the storm clouds of war are gathering.

The late emperor’s son is a minor and a Council of Regents rules Japan. But there are tensions within it and the powerful samurais are taking sides. The most dangerous faction wants all foreigners killed and, all too soon, Jack learns that atrocities against Christians are escalating.

It is time for Jack to leave Japan but first he needs to recover the rutter and then he needs to make his way to a port and find a ship to take him home. With war imminent, neither will be easy.

As we have come to expect, Chris Bradford gives his readers a roller-coaster of a ride. The pace is terrific and our hearts are in our mouths for Jack and his young friends. However, what gives Chris Bradford’s books their special quality is that they are more than just deeds of derring-do. He also gives us a glimpse into the soul of 17th-century Japan and includes the importance of the right code of conduct for an honourable samurai: the virtues of self-control, courage, loyalty and self-sacrifice, and the recognition of the spiritual and the beautiful. I particularly enjoyed the haikus – short, stand-alone poems encapsulating a moment or the essence of an object; the students are expected to compose haikus as well as fight.

Boys of 11 plus will love it. Highly recommended.

Elizabeth Hawksley THE LADY GRACE MYSTERIES: Loot Grace Cavendish, Red Fox, 2010, £4.99, pb, 201pp, 9781862304208 1571. The Palace of Placentia, Greenwich. The court is abuzz with news. Visitors have come from all over Europe to see Queen Elizabeth re-enact her coronation of twelve years before. The crown jewels have even been brought from the Tower of London – in strict secrecy. The most precious is St Edward’s crown, the one the queen will wear. There is a political purpose to all this: to demonstrate England’s power. Meanwhile, the queen’s ladies-inwaiting are choosing new dresses for the occasion, and the fuss is enormous.

The story is told by Grace Cavendish, one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting, in her ‘daybooke’. Grace has already solved a number of crimes at court and knows that the arrival of the crown jewels poses a special security problem. At first, all goes according to plan, but then disaster strikes: the St Edward’s crown goes missing. If it is not found before the re-enactment, the queen will be humiliated in front of all her guests.

What I enjoy about the Lady Grace books is their knowledge of the period: the clothes, the social customs, the real life people, the daily round and so on. It is all accurate (though I suspect the buddleia is anachronistic).

I also have some caveats. There is too much about clothes at the beginning which holds up the story, and I’d have liked less about how much Grace loved and admired the queen. It’s true that there was a cult of Elizabeth at the time, but one can have too much of a good thing and I found myself thinking, Oh no, not again!

Children & YA

Still, when the story eventually gets going, it’s terrific and zips along at a cracking pace. I’m sure that Grace Cavendish’s fans will enjoy it.

Elizabeth Hawksley This is a clever mystery story with an intriguing plot. For most of the book I couldn’t figure out how the seemingly impossible crime was committed.

Eventually, one obvious clue solved the ‘how’ but not the ‘who’. I was misled by all the red herrings.

I was unsure of the thief until he was revealed and I found it utterly surprising. I did not realise the Queen’s status relied so heavily on her crown, which I found slightly overdramatic, but that may be my ignorance about Elizabethan England.

The book is written in an easily understood style although I would have preferred either modern day Standard English or Elizabethan English; for me, a mixture of both didn’t really work.

It’s best to have read at least one of the earlier Lady Grace books to get a good sense of the characters and the relationships between them.

All in all, it was an enjoyable read and I would recommend it to children aged 9+ who are developed readers and interested in history or just want to get their teeth into a good mystery.

Rachel Beggs, age 15 GREEKS, BEASTS AND HEROES: The Monster in the Maze Lucy Coats, Orion, 2010, £4.99, pb, 79pp, 9781444000672 Lucy Coats’ third collection of Greek myths has metamorphosis as its main theme. Shape-changing in Greek mythology is an occupational hazard for a human attracting a god or goddess’s attention.

For example, The Girl who Grew into a Bay Tree concerns the nymph Daphne who is pursued by the god Apollo. The only way she can escape is when the Earth goddess turns her into a bay tree. In other tales, it is hubris, that is, setting oneself above the gods, which brings about the metamorphosis.

Arachne, in The Web Spinner, is unwise enough to boast that her weaving is better than the goddess Athene’s, and, in revenge, the goddess turns her into a spider, spinning for all eternity.

Interaction with the gods is always tricky. When, in The Golden King and the Asses’ Ears, greedy King Midas is offered anything he wants from the god Dionysus, he asks that everything he touches be turned to gold. He doesn’t bargain on his beloved daughter being turned to gold, too.

Sometimes, the gods themselves are tricked.

In The Grasshopper Husband, Eos, the dawn goddess, falls in love with the handsome human Tithonus, and begs Zeus to grant him immortality.

Unfortunately, she forgets to ask for eternal youth as well. Poor Tithonus gradually shrivels up with age. Eventually, Zeus takes pity on him and turns him into a grasshopper.

The exception to the theme is the title story, The Monster in the Maze. This well-known myth of Theseus and the Minotaur makes an interesting contrast to the other tales. As always, the lively illustrations by Anthony Lewis complement the stories perfectly.

My one negative comment is an editorial one.

The god Dionysus has his name mis-spelt (as Dionysius) throughout. Whatever happened to editing?

Children & YA

Elizabeth Hawksley This book is a really good way of learning about Greek myths and what the Greeks believed in. I liked the way the stories in the series were connected by Atticus telling the stories to people he met on his journey. My favourite is The Golden King and the Ass’s Ears, where Silenus gets a gift but he also gets punished for greed. The message is not to be too greedy for wealth, because there are other important things. I liked the way that the stories had a moral or a message. The illustrations were good because they contributed to the story. I think that there could have been more detail. For younger children it was good as it was, but for my age it could be more complex. I would recommend it for 7 or 8 year olds.

Minna McNulty, age 10 GREEKS, BEASTS AND HEROES: The Dolphin’s Message Lucy Coats, Orion, 2010, £4.99, pb, 76pp, 9781444000689 Lucy Coats’ fourth book of Greek myths is a potpourri collection. There are three tragic tales, the first of which, The Terrible Feast, is, perhaps, the most dramatic. Tantalus invites the gods to a feast. Hoping to impress them with something new, he kills his son, Pelops, and serves him up as a casserole. The Runaway Sun tells the story of Phaëthon, who tries to drive his father Helios’ sun chariot across the heavens, loses control, and is killed by one of Zeus’s thunderbolts. In The Sharpeyed King, Sisyphus unwisely tells tales on Zeus.

We are told that he lives to regret it but not what revenge Zeus took – which is odd, considering how dramatically unpleasant it was.

There are a couple of stories which explain the origin of various astronomical features. In The Starry Hunter, Orion the Hunter arouses the jealousy of the god Apollo. In the title story, The Dolphin’s Message, the dolphin, Delphinus, hides Princess Amphitrite from her unwanted suitor, the god Poseidon. Both Orion and Delphinus are later turned into constellations.

There are two stories of divine births. The Bee of Wisdom recounts how the goddess Athene came to be born from the head of her father, Zeus, and her subsequent competition with Poseidon, the god of the sea, as to who should rule Athens. The Secret of Wine tells of the birth of the wine god, Dionysus, born in equally dramatic circumstances.

There is a prequel to the Theseus and the Minotaur story in the third collection. The Robber’s Bed covers the birth of the hero, Theseus, and one of his early adventures, that of defeating the robber Procrustes. As always, Anthony Lewis’s illustrations deserve a special mention. Unfortunately, Dionysus is still spelt incorrectly.

Elizabeth Hawksley I think it was really good. I liked how in The Starry Hunter, the best hunter’s friend threw the best hunter in the water and he was carried so that he could stand on the sea. I liked how the scorpion was bigger than the man. I liked the chariot in the sky being the sun. I liked the pictures in the book: there are shells and things on each page. I didn’t like the wasp being made a slave because the wasp looks really sad. I also didn’t like it where the man stewed

his own son for a meal with the gods; it was a bit mean and sad. I liked this more than the first book.

I think 7 is the right age to read this book.

Louis McNulty, age 7 HALO Zizou Corder, Puffin, 2010, £6.99, pb, 376pp, 9780141328300 When a family of centaurs find a human baby, Halo, washed ashore on the beach, they have no idea who she is or where she came from but they raise her as though she were their own child.

She is happy amongst the centaurs, but a chance encounter with human fishermen causes her to be abducted and brought to the mainland. This begins an adventure that spans Ancient Greece from Sparta to Athens and beyond. Halo tries to find her way back to Zakynthos and her family but there is war brewing across Greece and tensions are high. She quickly learns that if she is to travel freely and survive in the male-dominated society then she must disguise herself as a boy. She also begins to question who she really is and the meaning of the strange tattoo on her forehead. Who were her parents and what became of them?

Like the author’s previous novels, Halo mixes reality and fantasy in an engaging way. The differing city states of Greece are well drawn and historically accurate. The main theme of the novel is one of equality for women. The folly of war is also explored, as Halo finds herself caught in the middle of conflict and befriended by people on both sides.This is a fast-paced adventure story with many twists and turns – shipwreck, kidnapping, war, plague and slavery. In places it feels a little overlong and episodic, but overall it is an engaging story with likeable characters and enough drama to keep readers of 9+ engrossed. Bonus points should be given for the recipe for baklava and instructions on how to make a bow and arrow.

Julie Nicol AUSLANDER Paul Dowswell, Bloomsbury, 2009, £6.99, pb, 304pp, 9780747594192 Piotr Bruck was born in Poland, but his parents were of German descent. Since their death during the invasion of Poland he has been living in an orphanage with little food and the very real prospect of starvation lying ahead. His fortunes change when he is selected as a perfect candidate for reclassification as German by the Race and Settlement Office. His Nordic looks and ability to speak fluent German mean he is adopted by a wealthy doctor whose research into genetics is important to the Nazi party.

Peter (as he is renamed) is grateful to the family and eager to be accepted as German. He knows that being an Auslander (foreigner) could find him singled out so he does everything he can to fit in.

He joins the Hitler Youth movement, helps with air raid duties and begins dating Anna, the daughter of a highly respected family, but as time goes by he becomes uncomfortable with the Nazi ideals. He sees Polish workers, starving and exhausted, and hears rumours of Jewish death camps.

This is a fascinating and thought-provoking book. Dowswell looks broadly at the Nazi obsession with race, genetics and ethnic cleansing.

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ALCHEMY AND MEGGY SWANN

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Karen Cushman, Clarion, 2010, $16.00, hb, 176pp, 9780547231846 Karen Cushman’s previous novels, including The Midwife’s Apprentice and Catherine, Called Birdy, have opened doors to distant times for young readers, using vivid, gripping scenes that invite them in, heart and soul. Her prose is spiked with emotion and gritty realism. Her characters are endearing without being saccharin. In her latest novel for children, Alchemy and Meggy Swann, Ms. Cushman proves again her flare for creating an adventure that tugs at the heart even as it entertains.

Heroine Meggy Swann, raised in a country village, is new to London, having been sent for by her father.

But she isn’t what he’d hoped for, as she is lame and forced to “wabble about” painfully from place to place with the aid of homemade walking sticks, and appears incapable of aiding in his experiments in alchemy.

Unwanted by her mother, scorned by her father, bitter at her lot in life, Meggy sets out to improve her life.

Although the challenges of surviving Elizabethan life are considerable—with its rogues, thieves, filth, and neighbors who taunt her as a cripple and therefore the work of the Devil—she rallies her wit and sharp tongue and tackles life with gusto. Entertaining, inspiring, steeped in realism and just plain great adventure—this is a novel young readers will soak up with enthusiasm.

Kathryn Johnson of children such as Peter, it also covers the killings of the disabled and mentally ill, the sterilisation of those with ‘tainted’ blood and the medical experiments carried out on humans. The Germans in the novel range from ardent Nazi supporters to passionate dissenters, with most falling somewhere in the middle.

The cover of the novel appears to be designed to appeal to boys, but the story is an engrossing thriller that should appeal to readers of either sex aged about 12+.

Julie Nicol ANASTASIA’S SECRET Susanne Dunlap, Bloomsbury USA, 2010, $16.99, hb, 352pp, 9781599904207 Anastasia Romanova, youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, lives a sheltered existence within the palace walls. With little idea of the revolution stirring in her country, she can only trust in her father’s judgment of political right and wrong. But one day, straying into the garden, she meets Misha – a young soldier of the guard who introduces her to the realities of peasant life outside the palace. As the revolution threatens Anastasia and her family, the young duchess turns to Misha for secret comfort and support. But when danger overtakes the Romanovs at last, Anastasia must decide whether to risk escape with the man she loves, or stay loyal to her family and face the trials ahead.

Susanne Dunlap has brought us another engaging young adult novel to follow The Musician’s Daughter. But where The Musician’s Daughter explored a story rarely encountered in historical fiction, Anastasia’s Secret lacks this freshness.

The tale of Anastasia Romanova and her fate is a familiar one, and this rendition adds little to the narrative. While Dunlap portrays a sympathetic 64 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

Romanov family and holds admirably to historical fact, there are few new personalities here. Anastasia remains so tied to her family’s cloistered life that her moral transformation is never quite believable.

While her love story is effecting, her eventual fates lies all too inevitably on the horizon.

Ann Pedtke THE NIGHT THEY STORMED EUREKA Jackie French, Angus & Robertson, 2009, AU$15.99, pb, 290pp, 9780732285418 Huddled beneath the tombstone of Percival Puddleham, homeless teenager Sam longs for a haven in the past. A time when families lived in big rambling houses with wide verandas, when cooks wore starched white aprons and children ate buttered toast and plump apple pies. It would be nothing like her own life, she reasons. There would be no alcoholic Mum to worry about, or her fist happy partner Gavin. She would be safe there and loved.

Transported back to 1854, Sam finds that the past is not quite as cosy as she imagined. She is accosted by a bushranger, adopted by Elsie and Percival Puddleham and forced to masquerade as a boy on the increasingly restless Ballarat goldfields.

Amid license hunts, police corruption, and eventual rebellion, Sam learns to love and trust.

She also comes to value the freedom those early rebels fought and died for.

Jackie French handles the transition from past to present with ease, utilising the viewpoint of a displaced modern child, to tell a tale that both entertains and informs. Sam is a likeable character with believable flaws. The Puddlehams are delightfully quaint and well drawn. Their pain filled past, plus the philosophical ramblings of the alcoholic Shamus Oblivion, and the struggles of the indigenous boy George, raise the narrative

above predictability. French provides extensive end-notes as well as recipes and anecdotes, making the novel an excellent adjunct to the Australian school curriculum. This is a book for readers in upper primary and lower secondary years.

Elizabeth Jane THE DEATH STALKER Gill Harvey, Bloomsbury, 2010, £5.99, pb, 160pp, ISBN 9780747595663 Ancient Egypt. 1200 B.C. Eleven-year-old Isis and her lame thirteen-year-old brother, Hopi, are orphans. Isis is a talented dancer and works with a travelling dance and music troupe. Hopi, who has a strange affinity with dangerous creatures, such as scorpions, is being trained in the art of healing by a priest of the scorpion goddess, Sequet.

The Egyptian army is returning, victorious, after a battle with Libyan marauders. Hopi is summoned to help a badly-injured young soldier, Djeri. Hopi soon realizes that there is a secret troubling Djeri and it’s hindering his recovery. It is something about scorpions. Hopi knows about scorpions and he begins to have some suspicions.

Meanwhile, Isis thinks that the temporary army encampment might want entertaining – and the troupe needs the money. But some in the troupe are unhappy about performing for the army. Why? Both Isis and Hopi come to understand that life in the army isn’t all glamour and triumphant victory marches and that war is far crueller than they could ever have imagined. Then they learn that Commander Meref is planning something terrible. Can he be stopped? And what does Djeri know about what is planned?

This is a thrilling story with plenty of action.

I enjoyed learning something about soldiers’ lives and how the Egyptian war machine operated.

We see that Hopi’s concern is as much for Djeri’s mental state of health as for his physical recovery and come to appreciate the Egyptians’ sophisticated knowledge of healing. Gill Harvey also shows how the Egyptian religious beliefs permeate their culture: Commander Meref meets his just deserts.

I enjoyed this book – and I learnt something, too. There is a helpful cast list, map, fact file and glossary at the end of the book.

Elizabeth Hawksley This is another masterpiece from Gill Harvey.

We join Hopi and Isis again in a thrilling tale of adventure. The scene is set very well, especially at the Amun army camp – I felt as if I was there. I liked the way that both Hopi and Isis told their story – you were first in Hopi’s shoes and then jumped to Isis’s. The only thing I think could be improved is the character building because unless you’ve read the first book in the series (Spitting Cobra) you wouldn’t have any images of Isis or Hopi apart from the fact that Hopi’s leg was damaged by a crocodile. It was a bit like a detective story because the children made discoveries along the way. I would recommend it to 8-10 year olds – it’s a very interesting story that teaches you what it’s like to be an Egyptian girl and boy.

Minna McNulty, age 10 BLOODFLOWER Christine Hinwood, Allen & Unwin, 2009, AU$19.99, pb, 322pp, 9781741754711 Children & YA

Cam Attling comes home from war one-armed, broken and alone. The villagers of Kayforl want to know why Cam is alone. What happened to the other men that went to war with him? Why was he nursed back to health by the enemy? Sent home with the gift of a fine grey horse? Cam can’t answer these questions. But they burn deep within, eventually driving him back to the North, the land of his enemies, and forever changing him.

Set in the 4th century, in an unspecified land that nevertheless feels somewhat English, Bloodflower opens from the third-person perspective of Cam’s youngest sister Pin. It then shifts through a wonderfully enigmatic range of characters, whose orderly lives have been impacted by invaders from the North. Amid loss and defeat, shifting alliances, the influx of refugees, and the wonderfully drawn humanity of both victor and vanquished, Christine Hinwood tells a tale of war and displacement that could have occurred in any age.

BloodfIower is not an easy read. The dialogue is pithy, fast moving and at times almost cryptic.

It shifts perspective constantly. Nevertheless it is a compelling and deeply satisfying story – a tale to be read and re-read, for the sheer beauty of its language alone. I would recommend it for uppersecondary school readers, and as a wonderful apolitical supplement to any study of war and conquest.

If asked to describe this novel in only one word, I would have to say: sublime.

Elizabeth Jane FALLEN GRACE Mary Hooper, Bloomsbury, 2010, £8.99, hb, 309pp, 9780747599135 Grace Parkes is about to give birth. She is fifteen, single, orphaned, poor and living in Victorian London in 1861. Resigned to the fate of a fallen woman, her sister depends on her to provide as they rent a room in the notorious Seven Dials area of the city. Her ruined, desperate state is abhorrent to society yet, Grace, aptly named, struggles on with determination, dedicated to her older, less able, sister, Lilly.

Grace and Lilly were born in better circumstances but are alone in a society that cares little for the plight of the vulnerable, desperate poor. Grace’s life is shadowed by death. The bereavement industry that blossomed as a result of the mortality rate of the era, is what apparently saves the girls from starvation as Grace becomes a ‘mute’ and Lilly a maid. However, this is yet another ruse of a cynical and greedy family, who seek to use them for their own reward.

I am being deliberately vague regarding the detail of the plot as I would hate to give anything away. Victorian class divides filter throughout the novel. The whole challenge of surviving in stark poverty and the social attitudes towards death and bereavement are explained around this sensitively written and intriguing novel. Never does historic detail take precedence over the characters or plot.

Each chapter is headed with an advertisement, quote or epitaph of the time which adds flavour to the feel of the book.

Subtlety is used in all aspects of the story, which touches on child abuse and rape. However, this is handled in a way suitable for the younger end of the readership, whilst the effects and results are Children & YA

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THE WONDER OF CHARLIE ANNE

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Kimberly Newton Fusco, Knopf, 2010, $16.99/C$21.99, hb, 256pp, 9780375861048 Charlie Anne’s mother has died in childbirth, and the Depression has forced her father to go north to find a job. Charlie Anne and her siblings have to endure cousin Mirabel as a stand-in parent. Mirabel is determined to “civilize” Charlie Anne, forcing her to listen to passages from an etiquette book on how young ladies should behave. There’s no escape via school, because the townspeople can’t afford to pay a teacher. But that’s fine with Charlie Anne, who endured humiliation from the previous teacher for not trying hard enough to learn to read.

Then a neighbor brings home a new young wife, Rosalyn, along with her adopted African American daughter, Phoebe, who is Charlie Anne’s age. Mirabel forbids Charlie Anne to associate with them, but she becomes friends with Phoebe anyway, and enjoys Rosalyn’s help and encouragement. When Rosalyn offers to open the school and teach with Phoebe’s help, the townspeople refuse to have their children taught by a “colored.” Will Charlie Anne be courageous enough to stand up for her new friends against Mirabel and the whole town?

I was nearly late for work two days in a row because this book was hard to put down. I loved the multiple rounded characters. For example, Mirabel starts out like a fairy tale stepmother, but she grows towards the end. The author kept me guessing as to how a character might act, or where the plot would take me next. The story has an element of whimsy, when lonely Charlie Anne holds conversations with both the family’s cow and her dead mother’s spirit. While the ending seems almost too good to be true, I still enjoyed the book very much and plan to watch for Fusco’s next book.

B.J. Sedlock included so that older readers will not miss the devastating consequences.

This is an excellent story, sensitively told, extremely informative about life and its complexities in Victorian London. Highly recommended.

Val Loh MONTACUTE HOUSE Lucy Jago, Bloomsbury, 2010, £10.99, pb, 288pp, 9781408803769 This is an unusual idea for a story, taking the National Trust property Montacute House and re-peopling it with characters, real and imaginary, from 1596. There are echoes of Lucy Boston’s “Green Knowe” stories, and perhaps Lucy Jago will write again about the house. Events are described

by Cecily, a 13-year-old illegitimate girl who looks after the poultry. The narrative begins on May Day 1596; Elizabeth I is on the throne. The action starts with the discovery of a young boy’s body, blackened and disfigured with blisters. It seems that several young boys have disappeared from nearby Somerset villages, and other bodies start to turn up in a similar state. When Cecily’s friend, William, disappears she feels she has to investigate. On the day she turns thirteen, Cecily finds a valuable locket secreted in a hen’s nest at Montacute. The picture of the woman seems familiar and Cecily takes the jewel, knowing the great trouble she would be in should she be discovered. Cecily also senses the beginnings of strange powers within herself, second sight and visions. Part of the mystery

deals with Cecily’s parentage and part with a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth and the two plots turn out to be connected.

The novel is packed with well-researched historical detail pertaining to the geography and topography of Montacute, the social history of the Elizabethan Age and the relationships between Catholics and Protestants. Cecily’s voice is strong and distinctive and carries the story along. The magical realism elements may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but may encourage young readers who enjoy the fantasy genre to crossover to that of historical fiction.

Julie Parker BEOWULF Retold by Rob Lloyd Jones, illus. Victor Tavares, Usborne, 2009, £4.99, hb, 63pp, 9780746096864 Anglo-Saxon Denmark. In this re-telling of Beowulf, Rob Lloyd Jones’s story and Victor Tavares’s illustrations make the perfect match. The story has all the colour, vigour and blood-thirstiness of the original and it’s told vividly and clearly: Hrothgar’s magnificent hall; the monster Grendel; the arrival of the hero, Beowulf; Beowulf ’s fight with Grendel and then his underwater battle with Grendel’s fearsome mother and, lastly, Beowulf ’s final battle against the dragon. I’m sorry we don’t have the dragon being disturbed by a human intruder wanting to steal the treasure he’s guarding but, apart from that, I have nothing but admiration for the way the tale is told.

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The pictures, too, are terrific. They can only be described as Arthur Rackham on speed meets manga – with a nod towards the Anglo-Saxon setting en route. Though, I have to say that Beowulf ’s first appearance looks as if he’s just stumbled off the set of Gladiator, complete with Roman armour and tunic. However, the slight comic picture-book exaggeration serves the story well, for Beowulf is a larger than life-sized hero.

I love the unusual angle shots of the pictures, particularly the shot looking down on Hrothgar’s hall, all browns and slaty blues but with a scarlet trail of blood leaking out of the door.

I also liked the cast list plus illustrations at the beginning with instructions as to how the names should be pronounced – very important if children are not to be put off reading.

Aimed at children of seven plus who can read alone and are ready for longer stories; blood-thirsty small boys in particular will love it.

Elizabeth Hawksley THE STORY OF ROBIN HOOD Rob Lloyd Jones, illus. Alan Marks, Usborne, 2010, £7.99, hb, 22pp, 9781409520072 This simple tale has the bare bones of the Robin Hood story: Robin Hood, Sherwood Forest, the outlaw band who rob the rich to give to the poor, the dastardly Sheriff of Nottingham, the absent king and Maid Marion, now transformed into the king’s cousin, Lady Marian. Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet and Little John are introduced briefly but have little part in the tale.

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DAUGHTER OF FIRE AND ICE

The main protagonist, however, is young Jack Fletcher, a village boy, who, infuriated by the sheriff ’s demands that the villagers hand over their money, hurls horse dung at him and then flees into Sherwood Forest where, naturally, he meets Robin Hood. Meanwhile, his father is captured and thrown into the castle dungeon…

When I first read this, I thought what a shame not to tell one of the traditional Robin Hood stories but, on reflection, I can see that having a young protagonist gives it boy appeal. A child can always come to the traditional stories later.

Special praise must go to the illustrator, Alan Marks, who has done a terrific job with his atmospheric, smudgy night-time pictures, lively fight scenes, and authentic mediaeval village, costumes and castle. I particularly admired the different angles the pictures are painted from: for example, looking down on the outlaw’s hideout, as if the artist is in the treetops. The illustrations add hugely to the book’s appeal. For children of 5 plus.

Elizabeth Hawksley I think it was very good, I would like more books the same. I liked it very much because I thought it was good that Jack got to meet Robin Hood in the end. It was different from Robin Hood stories I’ve read before because there wasn’t a Jack in the other ones. All the others start in a forest and end in a forest, this one starts in a village and ends in a village. I like the drawings very much.

My best page was the one where all the gang are in the trees, when Jack first meets them. I like the

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Marie-Louise Jensen, OUP, 2010, £5.99, pb, 336pp, 9780192728814 This story begins in Viking Norway where Thora, a young girl skilled in healing, is taken from her family

by Bjorn Svanson, a local Viking chieftain who has angered the king with his demands and intends fleeing to Iceland. Thora’s father owes tribute to Svanson but he takes Thora instead with her box of dried herbs and medicinal plants. Thora provides a strong narrative viewpoint. She is taken, along with a slave, to Svanson’s boats at the fjord. The slave kills Svanson and takes his identity along with his boats and the other slaves on board, and they set off to Iceland.

Thora possesses a useful ability in seeing people’s auras which manifest themselves in varying colours. As well as a healer, she is a seer and has visions of what is to come. By these means she knows who to trust and is a useful person to have around.

Some of the chapters bear the name of seasons, such as Chapter One which is Midsummer or Midsumar, in the Viking fashion. An introductory historical note explains the naming of seasons from the old Icelandic calendar and that the names of the characters are taken from the oral genealogies handed down through the generations. The author spent two months in Iceland researching the book and the convincing topographical and historical detail is evidence of this.

The use of language is appropriate for the contemporary reader, with appropriate references to the Viking gods and belief in blood sacrifice. The plot is excellently constructed, giving the reader a true sense of strangeness as the travellers encounter earthquakes and volcanoes. I think this book would appeal especially to teenage girls and readers will look forward to the author’s next Viking story.

Julie Parker 66 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

one they call Little John, but Little John should be called Big John. I like the pictures so much because some of the faces are smiling, and I liked the way Jack’s father kept the guards away from him.

Louis McNulty, age 7 TIME TRAIN TO THE BLITZ Sophie Mackenzie, Usborne, 2010, £4.99, pb, 142pp, 9780746097533 Using the device of time travel via a train that appears from nowhere Joe, Scarlett and Pippy the dog go where fate sends them on a mission to help others. In this instance they are transported back to the London of the Blitz where their task is to help a young boy and his nan whilst bombs are falling all around. The story moves along briskly using straightforward vocabulary and a no-nonsense approach to the problems they have to solve.

The story would suit an upper primary age group and would prove a useful adjunct to teaching this period along with visual teaching resources, such as photographs from the time; film clips; artefacts and so on. The author was inspired to write of this era by her mother’s family’s experiences and did much of her research in the Imperial War Museum and from first-hand accounts from veterans of the war.

This may be the first of a series of books for seven to ten year old boys and girls.

Julie Parker THE KING AND THE SEED Eric Maddern, Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 2009, £11.99, hb, 24pp, 9781845079260 In this imaginatively retold story from a traditional Chinese Mandarin fairy tale, King Karnak is old and childless and worried about an heir. He sends out a proclamation inviting anyone who would like to be king to enter a competition.

All the knights and nobles come to the castle and prepare themselves for a war-like tournament.

Among the crowd is Jack, a farmer’s son. He’s not interested in fighting, he just enjoys the excitement.

But the competition isn’t a tournament. Instead, the king gives everyone a seed and asks him to return in a year with what he’s grown and then he’ll decide on the winner. Jack tries everything: compost, manure, sun, water, shade – but nothing works. When the year is up he returns sadly to the castle. Everyone else has wonderful flowers to show. Jack has to tell the king that, although he’s tried everything, nothing has grown.

But the king has a secret. He boiled the seeds so that they wouldn’t grow. All the other competitors have cheated and Jack is the only person to tell the truth. The king is looking for somebody with the courage and honesty to tell the truth to succeed him, and he chooses Jack.

This comes under the umbrella of ‘historical’ in that it originates in an ancient tale and Eric Maddern sets it in an all-purpose long ago, vaguely medieval setting. And why not? Such things are expected of fairy tales which travel across countries and time. It is a simple story, engagingly told and splendidly illustrated by Paul Hess.

I thought that William, age five, would enjoy it. I assumed that fairy tales had a timeless appeal and I thought that he would like the pictures.

Interestingly, I was wrong on both counts.

Elizabeth Hawksley Children & YA

This isn’t my favourite book. I do like stories, but this one was very sad. I also really like flowers, but this flower never grew. I thought that Jack was tricked into being made King, and he didn’t want to be King. Nobody in the story was very happy and I didn’t understand why they wrote it into a story at all as nothing really happened. The pictures were colourful, but everyone looked a bit frightening like a bad dream; their heads were too big, no one smiled very much and when they did smile, they still looked all sad in the rest of their bodies. Mummy thought that this was the sort of book I ought to like, but it was a bit sad and dreamy for me.

William Stockton, age 5 I SPY – THE CONSTANTINOPLE CAPER Graham Marks, Usborne, 2009, £5.99, pb, 282pp, 9780746097106 1927, Italy and Turkey. Trey, son of American engineering magnate, T. Drummond MacIntyre II, is on a special ‘quality time’ tour of Europe with his father. Unfortunately, his father is either interrupted by business affairs or else he drags the reluctant Trey to experience Culture with a capital C. Trey would much rather be reading his favourite Black Ace magazine about the super sleuth Trent ‘Pistol’ Gripp.

Then, unexpectedly, the schedule changes. Trey finds himself on board the Orient Express bound for Constantinople. And he’s sure they’re being followed by a sinister man with a pencil moustache.

Constantinople is a city with many secrets and soon Trey has a real life mystery to solve. He longs to emulate his hero, Trent Gripp and find out who the villains are and what they want. But then events take a dangerous turn….

I enjoyed this. It’s Damon Runyon meets Agatha Christie with a large dollop of Just William. Trey meets all sorts of interesting characters, from Baba Duan, a Constantinople journalist with his fingers in a number of murky pies; via Ahmet, his father’s driver, who knows Constantinople like the back of his hand; to Arthur Stanhope-Leigh, an upper class English schoolboy who Trey fears will be a complete pill, but who turns out to be a mean shot with a catapult. Trey is soon plunged into a roller-coaster of an adventure and there isn’t a dull moment.

Graham Marks captures not only the savvy yet naïve enthusiasm of young Trey but also the febrile quality of the period. Underneath the fun of a spoof 1920s mystery, lie the threats inherent in the rise of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. In the melting pot of Constantinople, that’s an explosive mixture. For boys, 10 plus.

Elizabeth Hawksley TAKE ME WITH YOU Carolyn Marsden, Candlewick, 2010, $14.99/ C$19.00, 160pp, 9780763637392 Marsden used reminiscences of an Italian friend who grew up in similar circumstances to lend authenticity to this story of two girls being raised in a Catholic orphanage in postwar Naples, Italy. Susanna and Pina long to be adopted, but are passed over by visiting couples looking for children. Pretty, blonde Pina is sure that the nuns tell prospective families that she is a troublemaker.

And Susanna believes that her dark skin, legacy Children & YA

of an African American sailor father, is the reason she’s never chosen.

Then both girls learn that neither are truly orphans. Why won’t Pina’s mother, who lives in Naples, ever come to see her? If her mother doesn’t want her, why won’t she allow Pina to be adopted? When Susanna’s father finally visits, she is unsure how to respond. She’s never been touched by a man, let alone a Black man, before. When he doesn’t visit again as promised, Susanna is afraid that her actions have turned him away. Both girls ultimately find ways to take fate into their own hands and come a step closer to acquiring a family.

Little details of Italian postwar life make the story memorable: scarce food, ragged clothing, having to earn money for their keep by crocheting items to be sold and singing at funerals. Susanna’s situation, being brought up isolated from others of her race, is especially poignant. The ending is ambiguous but leaves the reader with hope. An Italian glossary is included, but most meanings are evident from the context. Young readers will be fascinated by the unusual setting and identify with the girls’ proactiveness in not waiting for rescue, but bringing it about themselves.

B.J. Sedlock THE MADMAN OF VENICE Sophie Masson, Delacorte, 2010, $17.99/C$22.99, hb, 288pp, 9780385738439 Ned Fletcher is excited to learn that his employer, London merchant Matthew Ashby, will set out for Venice in the spring of 1602 to inquire into pirate attacks on his ships. To Ned, this journey offers opportunities for adventure in an exotic city and increased proximity to his employer’s daughter, Celia. But when a mysterious woman approaches Ashby to help her find Sarah Tedeschi, a Jewish girl who vanished after being accused of witchcraft by the Countess Montemoro, the journey takes on a deeper – and darker – significance. Soon after they arrive in Venice, Ashby disappears. In order to find him, Ned and Celia must figure out why the Countess is so desperate to forever silence Sarah.

Masson delights the reader with her characterization of Venice as a seductive and treacherous beauty, brimming with color, vitality and romance, but also full of secrets and danger.

Ned Fletcher – verging on manhood, full of dreams and plans, but socially awkward and suffering the pangs of a seemingly unrequited crush – makes a sympathetic protagonist. Celia Ashby, indulged by her father and more headstrong than sensible, is less sympathetic at first. Fortunately, Masson explores her perspective later in the book, thus helping the reader connect to her. Celia undergoes a transformation that makes the romantic conclusion satisfying. Sill, I wished the young lovers had actually spent more time together, actively experiencing their physical and emotional attraction rather than just thinking about it.

Readers should find the historical background on Jews in 17th-century Venice illuminating, and will note how the story’s mysterious atmosphere is enhanced by allusions to Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice and Romeo and Juliet. The actual mystery plot is complex and somewhat convoluted, but readers who are attentive and patient will find this a rewarding read.

Sonia Gensler

SOURCES OF LIGHT Margaret McMullan, Houghton Mifflin, 2010, $15.00, hb, 240pp, 9780547076591 It takes courage to face injustice in life. It takes no less courage to write about the many ways people hurt each other and bleed all the goodness out of a community. Margaret McMullan in her Sources of Light has the courage to tell a story that’s all too real, all too terrifying, and one that took place in many variations throughout the South of the 1960s. Adults reading this story will remember the newspaper headlines: beatings, lynchings, cruel exclusions. But for young readers, this is history, not part of their life story. It will be no less challenging for children to read and understand the violence than it has been for adults who lived through those times. The story of how a young girl named Sam takes up a camera and learns to use it to reveal the black-and-white truth is poignant, mesmerizing, intense. McMullan’s pristine prose and clear vision of those days brings the times into focus, even if we still can’t comprehend the destructive power of hate. When Sam moves with her mother from Pennsylvania to Jackson, Mississippi, she witnesses violence at a black voter registration drive. After that, the violence seeps into her personal life in a way neither she, nor her mother or grandmother can ignore. This is a powerful novel, one worth adding to any shelf.

Kathryn Johnson SPIRIT HUNTER Katy Moran, Walker, 2010, £6.99, pb, 288pp, 97814063172782 China, AD 665: The T’ang Dynasty and the Horse Tribes are at war. Asena is a young girl from the Horse Tribe, but she is also a shaman with a wolf spirit guide. She sees the souls of others as a horse galloping beside them, giving away their secret thoughts and feelings. Swiftarrow is half T’ang, half Horse Tribe, raised amongst the T’ang and trained as a Shaolin spy. The Empress tasks him with finding a ‘barbarian’ from the Horse Tribe to train as a Shaolin. Amongst the bloodshed of the battlefield he captures Asena.

Asena finds herself in Chang’an, starting a new life and without her spirit guide. Her powers have deserted her since she failed to alert her people to the warnings she received in a dream. Now she is training to be a swift and silent warrior, alongside the man she holds responsible for the deaths of her family. Swiftarrow is sorry for what he has done.

Asena wants to hate him, but instead finds herself falling in love. Around them political intrigue and battle still rage, but can they influence the outcome? Asena has to decide how to take control of her future and whether she can trust a spy.

This is a fast-moving and gripping action adventure story that boys and girls of 10+ would enjoy. The Silk Road is vividly brought to life and the fantasy elements of the shamans and the Shaolin add an extra dimension. Although the story involves battle and warriors, the Shaolin strive to follow the Buddhist Middle Way. This is at odds with their work for the Empress, which is explored within the story. The emphasis in the novel is always that revenge does not change what has already happened.

Julie Nicol HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 67

NOT BAD FOR A BAD LAD Michael Morpurgo, illus. Michael Foreman, Templar, 2010, £9.99, hb, 79+xii pp, 781848773080 This is a lovely, gentle, nostalgic life story of a grandfather told to his grandson and beautifully illustrated by Michael Foreman. In the form of a fable, the moral of this story is not to judge by appearances. The narrator, the grandfather, is never named though most of the other characters are, but we, as readers, feel we know him well by the end of the book. I suppose he could be anybody’s grandfather. He does not get on well at school and in the 1940s, when he was a boy, schools were much harsher places with corporal punishment a regular thing. He gets in with a bad crowd and takes to driving cars without permission, petty theft and so on. Eventually he is caught, comes up before the courts and is sent to a Borstal in Suffolk for a year. The regime is harsh but he struggles on – his experiences have caused a rift with his family, so he feels very alone. He goes for a daily jog which takes him past some stables in the Borstal grounds where he finds a small stud dedicated to breeding Suffolk Punches – the heavy horses which were still used as work horses in those days. An older man is often in the stable yard and one day they get into a conversation. His involvement with the “gentle giants” is the turning point in the “bad lad’s” life.

The wonderfully subtle tones of the illustrations depict accurately the relationship of the boy with the horses and the local landscape.

Due to his good work with the horses he gets out of the Borstal three months early, but with no friends he ends up sleeping on a park bench... but another surprise is just around the corner.

There is a factual appendix consisting of: “Young criminals in prison; Hollesley Bay Suffolk Punch horses; Horses in the military” and several black and white photographs from the 1940s. Highly recommended, and a useful resource for teachers of the upper primary age group.

Julie Parker DAY OF DELIVERANCE: A Jack Christie Adventure Johnny O’Brien, Templar, 2010, £9.99, hb, 203pp, 9781848772779 The second in the series of time slip adventures featuring schoolboys Jack Christie and Angus Jud. (The first, Day of the Assassins is reviewed below.)

They return to 1587 London where their mission is to save Queen Elizabeth I from an assassination plot conceived by the Revisionists, a time travelling group from the future which includes Jack’s history teacher, Mr Pendleshape, and Jack’s own father.

This time, however, Mr Christie has split with the group and is on the run. Like VIGIL, an antiRevisionist group, he believes the future would be in jeopardy should the past be changed. If Queen Elizabeth and her navy lost against the Spanish Armada the history of the British Empire would be different. There are difficult decisions to be made, particularly by Jack.

This story contains more humour, particularly in the episodes concerning the Fanshawe Players and William Shakespeare. It turns out that Shakespeare bought the idea for Macbeth from Harry Fanshawe, altering the title from Macgregor and changing a few other key points! Slightly 68 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

darker resonances are introduced in the scenes with Christopher Marlowe, playwright but also spy.

A recommended fast-moving series.

Julie Parker DAY OF THE ASSASSINS: A Jack Christie Adventure Johnny O’Brien, Templar, 2009, £5.99, pb, 222pp, 9781848770911 Intended to encourage reluctant boy readers of 9 years and over, Day of the Assassins is the first in a new series featuring Jack Christie and his friend Angus, ordinary schoolboys who are forever playing on their video games. It turns out that Jack isn’t quite such an ordinary schoolboy as the reader believes. Jack thinks that his parents split up, in the way that many parents do these days, but he discovers that his father is the brains behind a time machine called Taurus (not Tardis). The hope of Mr Christie and his associates is that, by returning to key moments in time, they will be able to avert disasters of history. In this case it is the outbreak of World War One. The Revisionists, as they call themselves, aim to change history by stopping the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo back in 1914. Other individuals, who are members of a group called VIGIL, believe this is wrong and are trying to find them and stop them.

Using the popular time slip device, this story should appeal to fans of Dr Who, but provide an introduction to history – in this case much information is given about the First World War – the reader is provided with a map of Europe and a Time line on the endpapers. There are six pages of background information and some grainy black and white pictures of the key players: Franz Ferdinand; the Serbian Black Hand gang assassin, Gavrilo Princip; the royal party leaving the town hall and the defendants in the courtroom. Recommended to all who enjoy a good time slip story and those interested in the First World War. Julie Parker MAGIC TREE HOUSE: Voyage of the Vikings Mary Pope Osborne, Red Fox, 2009, £3.99, pb, 71pp, 9781862309159 1st century AD, Ireland. Eight-year-old Jack and his seven-year-old sister, Annie, are off on their adventures again, this time to Ireland . They are on a quest to track down the story of the Great Serpent, the Serpus Magna, for their friend, the magic librarian Morgan le Fay who lives in the Magic Tree House. They find themselves on a rocky coast with huge cliffs rearing up out of the sea. There they meet Brother Patrick, who lives in a monastery nearby and he shows them round.

Jack loves the library where the monks are busy writing and illuminating beautiful books. One of the monks, Brother Michael, is at work on the Serpus Magna, the very book they have come to find.

But when they go outside, the children spot four Viking long ships sailing towards them. It is a Viking raid! Horrified, they race back to the monastery to warn the monks. Brother Michael gives them the Serpus Magna to take to safety. And then a storm whips up out of nowhere. Will Jack and Annie reach safety before the Vikings catch them?

This is a simple story, excitingly told and cleverly

intertwined with bite-size chunks of historical information about Celtic monasteries and Viking raids. Philippe Masson’s illustrations add greatly to the story’s appeal – I particularly liked the Viking longboat in the storm, with jagged lightning on the horizon and the ship’s dragon prow rising up over a huge wave. For five plus.

Elizabeth Hawksley I loved this story about Ireland and the Vikings.

Jack and Annie are really brave and clever and their adventures are extremely interesting. I read the story with Mummy. I read a bit, and then she read a bit. There are lots of words that were exciting to read like ‘sea serpent’ and ‘jewels’. Brother Patrick was friendly and the monastery was not like anywhere I had been. The Vikings were a bit scary.

Mummy thinks that they would be less frightening if you got to know them, but I am still glad that Jack and Annie got away. When we finished the book, I asked if we could go to Ireland to see where Brother Patrick came from. I wanted to know what happened to the monks after the Vikings landed.

Did they escape? I hope there are still sea serpents in Ireland.

William Stockton, age 5 MAGIC TREE HOUSE: Olympic Challenge Mary Pope Osborne, Red Fox, 2010, £3.99, pb, 72pp, 9781862309166 4th century BC. Greece. In Jack and Annie’s new adventure, the Magic Tree House takes them to Olympus, where the Olympic games are about to open. Their quest is to find the story of Pegasus, the winged horse. They meet the philosopher, Plato, and a young woman who has written the story down – but anonymously. She gives the Pegasus scroll to Jack.

Annie asks Plato why the story’s author is anonymous. He explains that women’s lives are very restricted in ancient Greece – most women are illiterate and they are forbidden to attend the games. Annie is outraged. Plato and Jack go off to the games, leaving Annie behind. They stop off to admire the huge statue of Zeus in the temple and then go to the race track to watch the opening procession and the chariot race.

Jack notices a very small soldier in the crowd who waves to him. It’s Annie in disguise – but then her hood falls off and the next thing he sees are angry soldiers marching towards her. Jack fights his way to her side and calls on the Pegasus scroll to save them. Suddenly, Pegasus himself appears pulling a chariot. Annie and Jack are whooshed into the air by the beautiful white horse with huge feathery wings.

As always, I enjoyed Philippe Masson’s wellresearched illustrations, particularly of the twostorey high chryselephantine statue of Zeus – one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

The story itself is simple and exciting and I’m sure that children of five plus will enjoy it as well as learning some interesting facts about ancient Greece.

Elizabeth Hawksley If I could go somewhere in the Magic Tree House I would want to go and see the Olympics like Jack and Annie. The chariot racing was fantastic and I liked the bit when the winged horse from the lost story came and rescued Jack and Children & YA

Annie. The pictures in the book were good and helped me imagine what it would have been like in ancient Greece; they dressed in long robes and some of the people wore armour for the Olympic Games. I didn’t like it that girls couldn’t play in the Games because my friend Nieve is a girl and she is a very speedy runner, much faster than me.

I liked the ending when Jack and Annie see all the creatures from the lost stories in the stars, but I was a bit sad that they might not go in the Magic Tree House again.

William Stockton, aged 5 MAGIC TREE HOUSE: Palace of the Dragon King Mary Pope Osborne, Red Fox, 2009, £3.99, pb, 73pp, 9781862309142 200 B.C. China during the Han Dynasty. In this Magic Tree House adventure, Jack and Annie visit ancient China at the time of the Dragon King, the first emperor. This trip has rather more substance to it than the usual three or four facts that Jack notes down about his visits – a tribute to the superiority of Chinese civilization at that period.

Amongst other things, the children learn about the forced labour used to build the Great Wall of China, silk weaving, something of the Chinese way of life and are nearly trapped inside the emperor’s newly constructed tomb with the famous terracotta army.

Philippe Masson’s illustrations, always good, are particularly evocative here. He has plainly done his homework. He gives us realistic scenes of Chinese rural life, with peasants ploughing fields with oxen; conscripts being rounded up and marched off to build the Great Wall; street market scenes; and some terrific pictures of what’s inside the imperial tomb. For 5 plus.

Elizabeth Hawksley I thought the book was very good because everyone helps Jack and Annie to find what they need, which is the old Chinese book. In this story, they are in China where the Dragon King lives. I thought, when I was looking at the pictures with Dad, that the silk weaver was trying to catch Jack and Annie but she was actually trying to help them. I found it really freaky when they got into the Dragon King’s tomb – because I thought there were going to be loads of skeletons instead of knights. But I thought it was very clever that the knights weren’t real, and were painted. I thought it was weird when the silk went out of the bag by itself and showed the children the way to the stairs.

I preferred this book to the others because it had knights in it and I liked all the crickets.

Louis McNulty, age 6 THE FAMILY GREENE Ann Rinaldi, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010, $17.00, hb, 256pp, 9780547260679 The year is 1764, and young Caty Littlefield has just arrived at the home of her aunt Catharine, ready to be schooled as lady. What Caty actually learns, however, is the fine art of flirting to get what she wants, as she soon discovers the power her aunt wields over men such as Benjamin Franklin simply by using her womanly charms. It’s a lesson well learned, and Caty finds herself using those same flirtatious tricks when she catches the eye of Children & YA

Nathanael Greene. As a young wife to the second in command under George Washington, Caty discovers quickly that she enjoys the attention of the men around her, but she gives little care to appearances and gossip about her actions.

Ann Rinaldi’s take on the story of Caty Littlefield Greene shifts perspectives midway through to focus on Cornelia Greene, Caty’s daughter, who idolizes her father and is wary of her spirited mother. Having caught her mother in a few compromising situations, her loyalty is tested with the suggestion that Cornelia may not be the actual daughter of Nathanael. When her father’s health deteriorates, Cornelia must decide if her paternity is important enough to risk her mother’s reputation for her own peace of mind.

Rinaldi is one of my favorite young adult historical authors, and this spin on the family of Nathanael Greene is no exceptionally well written.

While I enjoyed reading about Caty’s life, the story really came alive when the viewpoint shifted to Cornelia. Cornelia’s angst and her determination to understand her mother’s actions makes her actions entirely understandable. Rinaldi admits to playing with the known facts to pad her tale, but it’s not inconceivable that events may have taken place as she writes. Well done and certainly entertaining for all ages.

Tamela McCann GET ALONG, LITTLE DOGIES: The Chisholm Trail Diary of Hattie Lou Wells Lisa Waller Rogers, Texas Tech Univ. Press, 2010 (c2001), $14.95, pb, 174pp, 9780896726703 Hallie, a rancher’s daughter in 1878 Texas, thinks it’s unfair that only boys are allowed to go on cattle drives. But a family emergency means Hallie’s father changes his mind and sends her in his place.

Hallie and her maid and friend, Dovey Mae, experience rattlesnakes in their bedrolls, dust, heat, and illness. Romance enlivens the journey, when it becomes clear that a young cowboy seems to like Hallie. But when Jeb gets bitten by a rattlesnake, will the end of the trail be reached in safety?

Supplemental material explains the history of the Chisholm Trail and women’s experiences on cattle drives, and presents several pages of interesting photographs. But I question whether a frontier family would own a Siamese cat at a time when they were only just being introduced into the U.S. via a gift to the President’s family. I found it hard to care about the main characters or the cardboard villain. The ending is abrupt, and the book feels unfinished as a result. This first volume of the Lone Star Journals series is not a bad introduction for young readers to the setting and period, but the characters aren’t very compelling.

B.J. Sedlock THE FOOL’S GIRL Celia Rees, Bloomsbury, 2010, £10.99, hb, 307pp, 9780747597322 / Bloomsbury USA, 2010, $16.99, hb, 304pp, 9781599904863 In London, in the year 1601, Violetta,‘The Fool’s Girl’, is a determined young woman who strives to restore a stolen relic to her sacked country of Illyria.

She has help with her quest in the person of Feste, the fool, who is her devoted servant, dedicated to protecting her. Malvolio is the evil force behind the relic’s abduction. However, they need further help

to stop him achieve his wicked plan for power.

William Shakespeare is enjoying success at The Globe. He leaves one night and is mesmerized by a fool and his assistant as they perform for the crowd. Violetta and Feste spin him their tale and hook his curiosity. He becomes their friend and aids them in their quest.

The fate of Illyria and Viola, Violetta’s mother, is told in flashback through the characters’ own viewpoints. William is drawn to the story and soon finds himself summoned by Queen Elizabeth’s Secretary of State, Robert Cecil. The adventure to find the relic and bring down Malvolio gains pace, becoming a chase of life and death for those involved.

Violetta’s love, Stephano, also from Illyria, provides an element of romance in this cleverly woven adventure. The character Feste adds his own sense of mystery and is an intriguing character.

The Elizabethan period is presented to the reader through and around the plot in a clearly visible manner. The story moves apace and the mixture of fictional and actual characters are totally believable.

Those who are not familiar with the era or Shakespeare’s work, especially Twelfth Night, may miss some of the book’s subtleties, but will still enjoy a really original and entertaining novel.

Val Loh THE BRIDE’S FAREWELL Meg Rosoff, Penguin, 2009, £10.99, hb, 186pp, 9780141383934 / Viking, 2009, $24.95, 214pp, 9780670020997 Pell escapes from the poverty of her family and the poorly built home which is dominated by her self-righteous, drunken and violent father.

She slips away in the early hours of her wedding day with her horse Jack and, reluctantly, her mute brother Bean.

Although she is fond of her betrothed, Birdie, she does not see herself filling his ideal role of mother to a ‘house full of children’. She has watched her own mother’s premature aging due to the endless, draining experience of repeated childbirth and trying to raise an ever-growing brood in poverty. In her naivety, she fails to consider the impact her sudden departure will have on Birdie and the family she is leaving behind. Her only plan is to go to the Salisbury horse fair and seek work.

Pell loses her horse and her brother. She meets a gypsy family, a man named Harris and another of few words called ‘Dogman’. The drama, heartache, occasional tenderness, harshness and disappointments that greet her show her character’s resilience and acceptance of life, as it is, as she strives to find those she has lost. Pell’s character has an affinity with horses and the love and understanding of them features throughout the book.

The day to day life and attitudes of people in the 19th century are shown through the careful detail included around the plot. Pell’s story is one of quiet determination, to work your way through life’s hardship, yet never losing sight of your goal.

She learns to love and let go, as Pell matures and discovers her own destiny.

This is a beautifully written, engaging and captivating book for older children and adults alike.

Val Loh HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 69

CORVUS: Oath of Vengeance James Thomson, Boxer Books, 2010, £5.99, pb, 309pp, 9781907152412 Aimed at reluctant boy readers, this is a fastmoving tale of Viking warlords and is the first in a series featuring the hero, Corvus Gunnarson. At the beginning is a “cast of characters” which helps us to link the name with the personality, whilst at the end of the book is a glossary of old Norse and Saxon words. Stories set in Viking times are popular at the moment and this one starts with our hero, Corvus, storming into a Viking chieftain’s hall only to find that the master is not at home; but only after he has decimated the security guards left behind. Wulfric, the chieftain in question, has taken Corvus’ two sisters as slaves after killing their parents so, when he finds out that Wulfric has gone to England, Corvus is determined to follow.

Superstitions, curses, oaths, sea monsters, Norse gods and notions of honour are all woven into an action-packed tale. The graphic descriptions of decapitation, limb removal and spilled brains are not for the squeamish as Corvus is an, almost, superhuman warrior and is, almost, invincible with his trusty double-headed axe. The female characters are limited to an old crone and a young Amazonian girl, but this is Corvus’s story. In order to find out what has happened to his sisters Corvus has to infiltrate Wulfric’s group and swear an oath of allegiance as a blood brother, thus breaking his oath to avenge his parents and placing him on the horns of a dilemma. Such issues involve deeper consideration than mere bloodthirsty revenge making the hero more than a comic book character.

The writing is spare and direct making this an appealing read for its intended audience. The next in the series will be “Fury of the Vikings”.

Julie Parker THE LARK AND THE LAUREL Barbara Willard, Jane Nissan Books, 2009, £7.99, pb, 170pp, 9781903252345 1485. The Wars of the Roses are over and Henry Tudor is on the throne. The defeated Yorkist, Sir Thomas Jolland, on his way to exile in France, dumps his 15-year-old pampered daughter, Cecily, on his estranged sister at Mantlemass Manor in the Sussex Weald. The formidable Dame Elizabeth FitzEdmund runs her manor with energy and efficiency – and she has plans for Cecily.

Life for a 15th century lady was bleak. Cecily has no independent legal status; she can be married off or sent to a nunnery at her father’s whim. She has been brought up to be a useless ornament, never allowed out without a maid and expected to do nothing for herself.

Life at Mantlemass comes as a shock. At first, Cecily is furious at being expected to dress herself and help with various homely tasks such as churning butter, but gradually, she toughens up, learns a host of new skills, and relishes her new freedom. She meets Lewis Mallory, who lives in the nearby grange, and a new future beckons. But Lewis has his own family secrets and his future is uncertain. When Sir Thomas returns, Cecily realizes that she is simply a pawn in her father’s ruthless ambition for social advancement. Her personal happiness is of no account at all…

First published in 1970, this book is about growing up and becoming your own person, about 70 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

identity, secrets and betrayal. Cecily’s problems are very real and we feel both with her and for her. Life in the Sussex Weald is vividly drawn and genuinely 15th century. There are no anachronisms here. I’d have loved it as a child. A modern child, however, might feel there’s too much narrative and description and not enough action. It would be their loss. Thoroughly recommended.

Elizabeth Hawksley

know you’re in the hands of the most artful and cunning story-teller who gives you little or no time to recover from one situation before plunging you into another, some of them spirited, some heart-breaking, some a matter of life and death, many revealing the pains of ‘the mid-way years’ of adolescence.’

Highly recommended.

Elizabeth Hawksley

I immediately liked this book because it plunges straight into the main character, Cecily, being abandoned at her aunt’s house, and horrified by it, so the reader is involved and caught up in Cecily’s emotions from the first paragraph. The setting, the defeat of Richard III by Henry Tudor, is explained easily and in an interesting way which relates to the characters and explains the urgency of the first scene. This event, for Cecily, also has the effect of showing people close to her in a new light, as selfish, even threatening. This theme of betrayal, repeated through out the book, is very interesting.

The thing that I couldn’t really get to grips with were some of the characters. I liked Cecily’s aunt, a very strong, clever character, and it was effective to show her as strong at the same time as showing her loneliness and her need for other people, like Cecily. This made her a more sympathetic character. However, I found Cecily uninteresting, which made some parts of the book, such as the love story between her and Lewis, boring. Overall, however, I thought that much of the book was enjoyable, and the historical details and setting were engrossing.

Ella McNulty, age 15

HETTY FEATHER Jacqueline Wilson, Doubleday, 2009, £12.99, hb, 309pp, 9780385614443 Inspired by the London Foundling Museum, this is the first historical novel by the hugely popular Jacqueline Wilson. It tells the story of Hetty Feather, who, as a baby in 1876, is placed in the care of the London Foundling Hospital, a home for abandoned children. Hetty spends her early childhood with a loving foster family but longs to know her natural mother. One day she becomes entranced by Madame Adeline, a circus performer, and is convinced this must be her mother. But then Hetty has to go and live at the Hospital and train to be a servant.

As headstrong Hetty adjusts to life under a strict, institutional regime she often finds herself at odds with the staff and other girls. She survives with the help of some good friends and never forgets her mission to find her mother.

This is an absorbing read, combining historical detail and modern themes. Primarily for girls aged 8-12, it is the story of one child’s search for belonging. Sad in places, the book deals with some of the hardships of Victorian life without being overly sentimental or too graphic. Though the first section of the book is rather long at over 100 pages, it is worth sticking with to reach the moving depiction of life for a small child in a Victorian institution.

Susan Leahy

THE SPRIG OF BROOM Barbara Willard, Jane Nissan Books, 2010, £7.99, pb, 185pp, 9781903252352 This book, the second in the Mantlemass series, was runner-up for the Guardian Award in 1972. It opens in 1506, in the reign of Henry VII, and ends as the young Henry VIII ascends the throne. The Tudors’ claim to the throne is not unassailable and treason is in the air...

Life in the Sussex Weald, however, is uneventful – or is it? Young Medley Plashet’s life is full of riddles. Why is his stonemason father Richard so secretive about his past? Why did he refuse to marry Medley’s mother? And who are the three men whose visit causes his father such distress?

Medley knows that he’s been educated above his station and that his friendship with the squire’s son, Roger, will probably be dropped when they are older. Worse, his love for Roger’s sister, Catherine, can come to nothing. As Medley begins to unravel his father’s past he finds more dangers than he ever supposed.

Barbara Willard has the gift of illuminating the problems of adolescence; the highs and lows, the dawning understanding and the moments of rebellion. She also deals with class, ambition, honour and self-sacrifice. We see Medley change from a boy, painfully conscious of his bastardy, to a man who knows who he is. She is not afraid to write about emotion – I found myself in tears several times – but there are also the joys of friendship and love.

I was absolutely gripped by this book. As Kevin Crossley-Holland says in his introduction, ‘You

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CATHERINE OF SIENA: A Passionate Life Don Brophy, BlueBridge, 2010, $24.95, hb, 304pp, 9781933346281 I have long been intrigued by what little I know of Catherine of Siena, one of only three women Doctors of the Church (the others, by the way, are Teresa of Avila and Thérèse of Lisieux). In this new biography, aimed at a general audience, Don Brophy more than sated my curiosity.

Catherine presents an enigma to our postmedieval minds. We applaud the young dyer’s daughter who rebukes popes, acts as a peace envoy for families and states, and preaches with confidence to crowds of noblemen and commoners alike. Yet we shift uneasily at the mention of the ecstatic mystic who starves and tortures herself, burning herself out for God like her compatriot, Saint Francis of Assisi. Brophy does an excellent job of bridging this cultural gap between the 14th and 21st centuries, presenting Catherine in the context of her times, and often through her own words (she was a voluminous letter-writer). His biography left me infected with a little of Catherine’s own fire and eager to explore her writings.

Children & YA — Nonfiction

Recommended for those interested in the young saint, or the lives of the great medieval mystics.

Susan Cook MAKING HASTE FROM BABYLON Nick Bunker, Bodley Head, 2010, £25, hb, 489pp, 9780224081382 Why did the Pilgrims set sail in the Mayflower, and what has been their influence on both American and English history? This copiously researched book delves into hitherto ignored archives as well as consulting archaeology, linguistics and landscape.

Bunker constructs a detailed, wide-ranging account, not just of the voyage and settlement, which takes up a relatively small proportion of the whole, but of the circumstances which drove the Pilgrims to Holland, then New England. The scope of the research can be judged by thirty-four closely printed pages of references.

Starting with a description of the land the Pilgrims would encounter, then conditions in Europe and especially Plymouth, England, just before 1620, and the Mayflower voyage, the author then steps back to describe the religious, economic and social problems faced by men and women who rejected the established church and its rules. The Pilgrims were by then discovering the disadvantages of life in Holland, where war threatened.

This is more than the story of physical survival and religious freedom. There is relatively little about domestic events, far more about the land and its natural resources. The project, financed by merchants hoping for profit from the fashionable and prized beaver pelts, was commercial as well as religious. They set up their own system of government, their first act being to sign their ‘Compact’, a document the importance of which the author suggests has been ignored. After the first decade of barely surviving, the colony becomes established, the nucleus of Puritan New England just as conditions back in England encouraged further massive emigration.

This is a scholarly, highly detailed account. I would have appreciated a few more maps, and did not like the jump in chronology, but nevertheless found it absorbing and informative of many things in addition to the Pilgrims.

Marina Oliver SACRED TIES: From West Point Brothers to Battlefield Rivals: A True Story of the Civil War Tom Carhart, Berkley Caliber, 2010, $25.95, hb, 373pp, 9780425234211 Six young West Point graduates were both friends at the Academy and destined to serve as exceptional officers and warriors for both sides in the U.S. Civil War. Pre-war friendship challenged by this most cruel of American wars has long been a staple of Civil War writing. Sacred Ties takes it into uncharted territory by studying six cadets who go on to brilliant war service: the well-known George Custer and John Pelham, and the less widelyknown Dodson Ramseur, Henry DuPont, Tom Rosser, and Wesley Merritt. The reader follows these six fascinating personalities through their cadet years at West Point and then into the cockpit of war in some of the most savage combat between Union and Confederate armies in the East. The Union’s Wesley Merritt and Henry DuPont would Nonfiction

enjoy distinguished postwar lives, while “Audie” Custer would die at Little Big Horn in 1876. For the Confederates, Tom Rosser would survive and go on to serve in Union blue as a general in the Spanish-American War. Both Dodson Ramseur and “The Gallant” Pelham would be killed in action. Carhart, a West Point graduate, reminds us of the human side of war.

John R. Vallely A NATION RISING: Untold Tales of Flawed Founders, Fallen Heroes, and Forgotten Fighters from America’s Hidden History Kenneth C. Davis, Harper, 2010, $26.99, hb, 320pp, 9780061118203 Kenneth Davis has made a career of writing popular history dealing with “lost” or “forgotten” aspects of the American past. Best known for his nine “Don’t Know Much About…” books (history, the U.S. Civil War, mythology, etc.), Davis’s writing style is well suited for those who wish to indulge in historical reading in a brief and easily digestible manner. His most recent offering treats six events in the 1800-1850 time frame: Aaron Burr’s trial, the Seminole Indian War, a Louisiana slave rebellion (Madison’s Mutiny), anti-Catholic riots in Philadelphia, Andrew Jackson’s Indian campaigns, and the Mexican War. Davis’s style tends to be charmingly idiosyncratic, but his frequent forays into contemporary American political and social movements detract from this particular example of his writing.

John R. Vallely THE SUNDANCE KID: The Life of Harry Alonzo Longabaugh Donna B. Ernst, Univ. of Oklahoma, 2010, $19.95, pb, 233pp, 9780806141152 The Sundance Kid, an alias derived from a Wyoming town, was born Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, one of five children in a dysfunctional family from a blue-collar town in Pennsylvania. He stood six feet tall, a handsome young rustler with a reputation as a member of the Wild Bunch Gang riding alongside Butch Cassidy. Myth and legend surround this outlaw who was surprisingly well read.

Donna Ernst, who is married to a relative of Longabaugh, has spent over 25 years researching this man. She has based his biography on photos, Pinkerton files, historical archives, family correspondence and her husband’s family history.

His outlaw years began in Colorado, and to this day controversy continues as to which robberies were actually his responsibility. The author disputes the records on file and provides arguments to support her claim. Exhausted from his constant flight from detectives, he and his wife, Ethel, sailed to South America where he had trouble with authorities again. His life ended by gunshot in San Vincente, Bolivia in 1908.

This is an interesting and well-written story about the Sundance Kid. You would think a story about the infamous outlaw would be exciting and dramatic; it’s not. But what make this book fun are the occasional anecdotes about his travels and exploits. These opportunities are embraceable and, with the numerous period photos, save it from being a laborious read.

Wisteria Leigh

THE GREAT MEDIEVAL HERETICS: Five Centuries of Religious Dissent Michael Frassetto, BlueBridge, 2010, $15.95, hb, 256pp, 9781933346120 In a period of history when the Catholic Church ruled supreme, religious dissenters challenged the boundaries not only of belief but also of culture and society. In this meticulous series of case studies, Michael Frassetto covers ten heretical movements of the Middle Ages – from Pop Bogomil in 10th-century Bulgaria, to the Cathars of early 13th-century France, to John Wyclif and 14th-century English reform. Frassetto pays close attention to primary resources, analyzing each source not just for the facts it contains but for the biases it conveys. He acknowledges that the study of heresy must often be done through the lens of the condemners, but digs deeper to reach beyond this one-sided perspective. An extensive index, bibliography, and chronology help the reader to fit the pieces together. While those new to the subject might appreciate a little more context to frame the medieval period – more background on the rise of Christianity in late antiquity, more follow-up on how medieval heresy influenced the Reformation and other later movements – this focused account offers a fascinating glimpse into the lives and beliefs of dissidents who changed the face of medieval society.

Ann Pedtke JANE’S FAME: How Jane Austen Conquered the World Claire Harman, Henry Holt, 2010, $26.00/ C$31.00, hb, 304pp, 9780805082586 / Canongate, 2010, £8.99, pb, 384pp, 978-1847675330 In the last year I’ve reviewed three derivative works of Jane Austen, and in the same period the HNS published upwards of a dozen. Jane’s Fame analyzes the perennial appeal of Austen’s fiction, and the phenomenon of her fame. The book is also an excellent biography rife with detail, from the author’s writing habits – her novels were written on small, homemade booklets that could be easily covered over – to the opinions of Austen held by generations of novelists. Her contemporary Sir Walter Scott praised her exquisite characterizations as opposed to his own ‘big bow-wow strain’ of fiction; Emerson and Twain expressed strong antipathy to her; and Katherine Mansfield explained her appeal as stemming from the reader’s perception that “he alone … has become the secret friend of their author.”

Not much remarked in her lifetime, Jane Austen has grown into an industry. Claire Harman examines Austen’s fame from all angles, concluding it impossible to imagine a time when “her works could have delighted us long enough.” What we now call fan fiction is not new; the first Austen spin-off was published in 1913. In Jane’s Fame Claire Harman has contributed a fascinating study of all things Jane Austen.

Eva Ulett BEST OF COVERED WAGON WOMEN VOLUME 2 Kenneth L. Holmes, ed., Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2010, $19.95, pb, 256pp, 9780806141046 These are letters and diary entries written by various young women and girls detailing their HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 71

journeys overland by covered wagons between 1846 and 1865. The last entry written in 1898 tells of a short journey from Tecoma, Nevada, to Sweet Home, Oregon. Also included are three letters from two women of the ill-fated Donner Party that was trapped by snowstorms in a mountain pass between Nevada and California in 1846. For the most part the authors, none of whom had the responsibilities of a wife or mother, concentrated on the uniqueness of the landscapes, flora, fauna, and the few “Indians” of various tribes they encountered, and the hospitality they enjoyed along the way. Often the reader runs across familiar names of American folk heroes like Jim Bridger, whose Native American wife is described.

Holmes (1914-1995) edited and annotated this volume, part of his eleven-volume compilation, Covered Wagon Women. These letters contain improvised grammar and spelling, but are easy to understand and relate rare firsthand observations and personal experiences that are invaluable to the historian, particularly writers of historical fiction.

Audrey Braver GEORGE CLINTON: Master Builder of the Empire State John K. Lee, Syracuse University Press, 2010, $19.95, hb, 62pp, 9780815681533 George Clinton (1739-1812) is one of those people who performed long and valued public service in their times but remain largely unknown in the modern world. A combat veteran of the French and Indian War, Clinton would go on to be a leader of New York’s patriots and to serve as governor of the state from 1777 to 1795. An opponent of the U.S. Constitution, Clinton became an advocate after the Bill of Rights was added. Following retirement from his long tenure as New York’s governor, he went on to serve as Vice-President under both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

The longest serving governor in American history, Clinton is also the first Vice-President to die in office. This brief and heavily illustrated volume is a handy introduction to a figure critical to both his state’s and his country’s formative decades. Still, the question remains: How could such an individual disappear so completely from modern eyes?

John R. Vallely THE ROYAL STUARTS: A History of the Family that Shaped Britain Allan Massie, Jonathan Cape, 2010, £20, hb, 370pp, 9780224080644 Everyone knows the Stuarts – Mary, Queen of Scots, James IV and I, and his descendants. And the early Stuarts who reigned in Scotland, kings often murdered by disgruntled noblemen. Yet the family managed to remain in power for some three centuries, first by forging a single nation out of the disparate kingdoms of Scotland, and then by merging that nation with England. But who were these kings and queens, and where did they come from? In this book, Allan Massie sets out to answer this question, by giving biographical sketches of the people involved.

By the time Shakespeare came to write Macbeth it was an established ‘fact’ that the Stuart line was descended from Banquo, but this is a myth. It appears that the Stewarts came from Brittany, first 72 | Reviews | HNR Issue 53, August 2010

emerging into the light of history in the eleventh century, when they are recorded as being stewards to the Counts of Dol on the south shore of the Gulf of St Malo. A member of the family, Alan, crossed to England in the service of Henry I and became Sheriff of Shropshire in 1101. One of his sons was at the Anglo-Norman Court when David, the youngest son of Malcolm III, was living there, and travelled back to Scotland with him when he became king in 1124. Obviously trusted, he was appointed High Steward of Scotland. It was his descendant, Walter, who married Marjorie Bruce (daughter of King Robert I), whose son eventually became the first Stuart king of Scotland, Robert II, in 1371.

Covering both the well-known and lesserknown members of the family, Massie has written a biography of a dynasty which reads with fluid ease, and which is a useful introduction to the various members of that family, and the broad outline of the politics that affected their lives. jay Dixon BONHOEFFER: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy Eric Metaxas, Thomas Nelson, 2010, $29.99 / £19.99, hb, 591pp, 9781595551382 Histories and biographies of the 1933-1945 period are replete with stories of criminal actions by the government, Holocaust savagery, and the unrelenting tragedy of wholesale destruction and death in the Second World War. The eminent Christian theologian Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of the few Germans, regrettably, who actively spoke against the Nazis and their policies.

An accomplished intellectual and cosmopolitan man open to discussing and championing unpopular ideas, Bonhoeffer went so far as to join anti-Hitler conspiracies during the war. Arrested for his actions after the July 20, 1944 bomb plot against Hitler, Bonhoeffer and several others would be executed on April 9, 1945 at Flossenburg concentration camp. Eric Metaxas’s previous book on the British anti-slave trade reformer William Wilberforce joins with this study to present outstanding case studies of people acting as their consciences lead them.

John R. Vallely CARTHAGE MUST BE DESTROYED Richard Miles, Penguin, 2010, £30, hb, 421pp, 9780713997934 In the 3rd and 4th centuries before Christ, Carthage was a powerful city state on the North African coast. The author begins by setting the Carthaginians in a broad historical context, recreating the late Bronze Age world in which Greeks, Phoenicians and Etruscans vied for mercantile supremacy in the Mediterranean.

The date of Carthage’s traditional foundation is 814 bc, after which more than three centuries of trading and expansion follow before the first treaty with Rome in 509 bc. This part of the story includes several vignettes, such as that of the Carthaginian general Himilco, who starved himself to death in penance for the loss of the city of Syracuse. The second half of the book deals with the Punic wars.

The narrative here is well-paced and compelling, describing critical aspects of the story of Carthage.

The surprising failures of Carthage – often seen

as the era’s maritime power – in the naval battles of the first Punic war are ably detailed. The rise of the Barcids – the family of Hannibal – is given due prominence, as is their construction of a semiautonomous empire in Spain. The descriptions of Hannibal’s campaign against Rome, his victories at Lake Trasimene and Cannae, his defeats, ultimate failure, and suicide in Bithynia are skilfully portrayed. Finally, there is the tragic denouement of the third Punic war – the destruction of the city’s fortifications and the cursing of the site – a conflict engineered by Carthage-haters such as the Roman orator Cato, who ended all his speeches with the demand that Carthage must be destroyed (‘delenda est Carthago’).

Drawing on a wealth of new archaeological research, Richard Miles brings the story of the rise and fall of Carthage alive in a form which will appeal to both scholars and general readers alike.

Recommended.

Mike Ashworth AMERICAN HEROES: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America Edmund S. Morgan, Norton, 2010, $16.95/ C$21.00, pb, 278pp, 9780393304541 Ninety-three-year-old Yale professor Edmund Morgan is one of the finest historians the United States has ever produced. A Colonial and Revolutionary War specialist, he has literally written the authoritative texts on aspects both large and small in his specialty. The present collection of essays include ones written from the 1930s to the 21st century (three of them are new).

Each of the seventeen are superb introductions to the colonial or Revolutionary era topics and offer compelling reasons to re-examine one’s views of frequently misunderstood period in American history. I particularly recommend “Dangerous Books,” a discussion of a 1721 revolt of Yale faculty members against the school’s Puritan foundations.

This collection should serve to introduce Professor Morgan to a new generation of readers.

John R. Vallely THE GREAT SILENCE, 1918-1920: Living in the Shadow of the Great War Juliet Nicolson, John Murray, 2009, £20, 302pp, hb, 9780719562563 This is the story of the pause between the Armistice in November 1918 and the interment of the unknown soldier in Westminster Abbey exactly two years later. A two-minute silence, first observed in November 1919 to remember those who died in the Great War, was underpinned by a more enduring silence born out of national grief, often made more unbearable because there were no bodies to bury. The author, granddaughter of Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West, describes in lucid detail how people coped with a changed society. The outbreak of war in 1914 had brought to Britain a healing unity, suppression of domestic problems, a new sense of community across the classes when all suffered bereavement.

After the Armistice, social discontent returned with new divides: men who had been to hell and women left behind to juggle jobs and family; those too young to have fought and those who would never get over it.

Children & YA — Nonfiction

There are charming vignettes of elite lives: Coco Chanel, Lady Diana Cooper, Tom Mitford,, Lady Ottoline Morrell; and of ordinary people, often attached to the upper classes: the chauffeur to the Portuguese ambassador, who became a Hackney meter reader; and a stonemason with whom Ottoline Morrell had an affair. Eight pages of bibliography offer further roads into this neglected period.

Janet Hancock THE HISTORY OF WHITE PEOPLE Nell Irvin Painter, Norton, 2010, $27.95/£19.99, hb, 496pp, 9780393049343 This ambitious non-fiction book could have been called “A History of the Idea of White People,” since that’s what it’s about. The interesting thesis is that the idea of whiteness has evolved steadily over the ages to justify the dominance of one class over others. It starts with a rocky overview of pre-modern history that is often too generalized to mean anything, and sometimes too breezy for accuracy (King John “an avid international adventurer”? What?). Sometimes it seems dangerously like a send-up of the “studies” school of historiography in which every detail is reduced to a narrow identity issue.

When Painter arrives in the 20th century the book becomes more coherent and the writing more pungent. The last four chapters, on race politics in our own time, are dense and rigorous, yielding interesting insights and even a hopeful sense that race prejudices can be overcome. These chapters, developed in more detail, would be a fascinating book on its own. The illustrations, fittingly, are black and white, plentiful, set close to the related text.

Cecelia Holland THE STORM OF WAR Andrew Roberts, Penguin 2010, £10.99, pb, 712pp, 9780141029283 This is the paperback edition of a book first published by Allen Lane last year. It has already been described as ‘the best one-volume history of the Second World War currently available’ (Laurence Rees), a status to which it lays claim by considering the war, not only from the viewpoint of the Allies, but also that of the Axis powers. Roberts is an engaging writer as well as a distinguished historian, and blends his accounts of grand strategy with stories of individual experiences of the conflict in a way which keeps in the forefront of the reader’s mind the fact that World War Two was not only a major historical event but also gave rise to all kinds of individual adventures, tragedies, acts of heroism and bizarre turns of events. It claimed over 50 million lives and displaced millions more, and laid the foundations of our modern world, which makes Roberts’ book an absorbing read for anyone, not merely the student of the period. With a good collection of maps and photographs, and extensive quotations from contemporary sources, including the private Ian Sayer Archive, to which Roberts is so far the only historian to have had access, this an excellent account for the historian and lay reader alike.

Sarah Bower Nonfiction

WILD ROMANCE Chloë Schama, Bloomsbury, 2010, £16.99, hb, 249pp, 9781408807026 / Walker & Company, 2010, $24.00, hb, 272pp, 9780802717368 Theresa Longworth met William Charles Yelverton on board a steamship in 1852. They embarked on a long romance, initially via correspondence, which culminated in two marriage ceremonies – one in Edinburgh and the other in Dublin. Neither marriage was properly registered and nor were any witnesses present. Shortly afterwards the couple separated and in time Yelverton married another woman. Theresa sought legal redress and so began a scandal that rocked the moral world they lived in and inspired Wilkie Collins to write Man and Wife.

The trials – carried out in both Scotland and Ireland – were sensational and made for frenzied reporting in the press. The verdicts, when they came, muddied the waters still further. The Irish court found for Theresa, the Scottish court found against her. Only an appeal to the House of Lords could settle the issue.

What became of the erstwhile lovers? Yelverton inherited the title of Viscount Avonmore and lived on with his second wife and their children. Theresa turned to writing and travelled the world.

Chloë Schama has a great storytelling skill and spins an intriguing tale out of this Victorian scandal. She really brings the characters to life and the trials themselves make for interesting reading.

A nicely put together historical biography and I look forward to seeing more of her work in future.

Sara Wilson BRITISH HISTORICAL FICTION BEFORE SCOTT Anne H. Stevens, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, £50/$80, hb, 201pp, 9780230246294 Anne Stevens examines eighty-five popular historical novels from 1762-1813 and looks in detail at how the genre developed during this period, fifty years before Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe.

She argues that Scott took something that was already an established genre with and made it his own rather than inventing it, as has been claimed.

Thomas Leland’s novel Longsword, Earl of Salisbury 1762 marks the starting point for this study. Leland was primarily an antiquary and here Stevens points out the important influence antiquarianism had on the development of historical fiction, helping to bring historical settings back into fashion after the ‘modern’ novels of Fielding and Richardson. These historical novels combined ‘the conventions of medieval romance with a new interest in psychological verisimilitude’.

Stevens also provides important detail on the decisive influence circulating libraries had in the popularity of the nascent genre and the linked role critical reviews had in shaping its future direction.

She discusses the importance of footnotes in the historical novel of the period which provided the instructional material required of novels of the time; a debate that has contemporary resonance.

Finally she discusses what Scott brought to the genre, particularly his use of simultaneous and more complex narratives.

This is a fascinating study of early historical fiction that offers insightful analysis on a period

has so far received little critical attention and the bibliography itself is a treasure trove of historical fiction’s past. Recommended.

Gordon O’Sullivan BECOMING QUEEN VICTORIA: The Tragic Death of Princess Charlotte and the Unexpected Rise of Britain’s Greatest Monarch Kate Williams, Ballantine, 2010, $30.00, hb, 429pp, 9780345461957 This is a fascinating and intimate picture of a girl becoming a queen, all because of a royal crisis before she was born. George III’s dissolute sons had produced only one legitimate heir, the Princess Charlotte. When she died in childbirth in 1817, the greedy dukes, none of them young, married quickly to correct the matter. Two years later, one succeeded; and Victoria was born. As a child, she lived apart from her father’s family and, except for a certain willfulness, showed none of the worst Hanover traits.

Victoria took the throne at age 18, inexperienced, naïve, and susceptible to bad advice, but, by the time she was thirty, she had developed (or been shaped) into the dutiful monarch who gave “Victorian” its meaning. With sources of national power changing rapidly, the Queen chose cooperation rather than competition with Parliament, the first English monarch to derive strength from being above politics. This perceptive analysis of Queen Victoria’s young years is highly recommended.

Jeanne Greene COURTIERS: Splendor and Intrigue in the Georgian Court at Kensington Palace Lucy Worsley, Walker & Co, 2010, $30.00, hb, 432pp, 9780802719874 / Faber & Faber, 2010, £20.00, hb, 432pp, 9780571238897 In 1725 up-and-coming artist William Kent was commissioned by George I to decorate the walls alongside the King’s Grand Staircase at Kensington Palace. The result was a mural consisting of the portraits of 45 members of the royal household, leaning over a painted balustrade and watching visitors with interest.

Chief Curator of the Historic Royal Palaces, Lucy Worsley, has taken her inspiration from this staircase, identifying some of these people and interweaving their life stories with those of more powerful members of the court, including the royal family.

The cast of characters includes arguably the cleverest queen consort ever to sit on the British throne, two Turkish valets, a reluctant royal mistress, a secretly married Maid of Honour, who hides her intelligence under a frivolous exterior, feral child Peter, who becomes the court pet, and his kindly tutor.

Courtiers is a highly readable, almost novelistic work of non-fiction. It takes a largely neglected period of history – the reigns of George I and George II – and brings it vividly to life. Worsley even succeeds in presenting the two misunderstood monarchs in a more human light and explains some of the intensity of the inter-generational feuds for which the Hanoverian kings were notorious.

Highly recommended.

Jasmina Svenne HNR Issue 53, August 2010 | Reviews | 73

© 2010, The Historical Novel Society ISSN: 1471-7492 | ISSUE 53, AUGUST 2010