Historical Novels Review, Issue 54 (November 2010)

A PUBLICATION OF THE HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY

HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW ISSUE 54, NOVEMBER 2010

Out of Ireland Have We Come...

The Irish Historical Novel godzilla versus hf when historians turn to fiction littered with fascinating people elizabeth chadwick on the US release of for the king’s favor

in memoriam judith merkle riley (1942-2010) seeing for yourself an interview with harry sidebottom young writer, bygone age charles finch’s cozy mysteries

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 <alanfisk@yahoo.com>

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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The

Historical Novels R eview

I ssue 5 4 , N o ve mbe r 2010 | I SSN 1471-7492

| columns |

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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 on c e upon some time | 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 si mo n a cla n d, a . l. be r r idg e, g ar y corby, bruce ma cba i n & a n n e -ma r ie v ukelic | m y f anw y cook

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how no t to. . . e xer c i se br e v it y | s us an hig g in botham

| features & interviews |

9 OU T OF I R ELAND HAVE W E COM E t he ir ish h istor ical n ovel | b y g ordon o’ su l l i va n 12 g odzilla versu s hf w he n h istor ia ns turn to his torical f icti o n | by ken k reckel 15 littered with f as cin atin g peo pl e e liz a be th c hadwick’s for the king’s fa vor | by s uzan n e mcgee 17

in m emo ri a m jud ith merkle riley | b y c.w. go rtner

MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR ow many of you have difficulty judging what size Gladware container to use for a certain amount of leftovers? Any of you ever look at a pile of stuff, look at the suitcase you’re taking, and think: sure, it’ ll fit—only to be proven horribly wrong when you attempt to actually pack it?

Well, welcome to how I felt when I tried to sandwich in the plethora of pieces we have for you in this issue of HNR. Susan Higginbotham, appropriately, takes a look at length and its relationship to historical fiction. Myfanwy Cook has five debut historical fiction authors to which she’d like to introduce you, as well as an interview with Harry Sidebottom, author of the best-selling Warrior of Rome series. Gordon O’Sullivan takes an in-depth and unique look at the Irish historical novel for our cover story, while Ken Kreckel tackles the thorny question of how and why historians are crossing the divide to write historical fiction, as well as interviewing the young and (in my opinion) quite adorable Charles Finch about his cozy mysteries. Elizabeth Chadwick chats with us about the American release of her novel, For the King’s Favor, and we also have a banner crop of reviews, with some Editors’ Choice titles I know you’ ll be wanting to add to your ever-expanding To-Read List.

We also have some sad news, however. Judith Merkle Riley, a long-time member of the Historical Novel Society, speaker at past conferences, and author of the best-selling Margaret of Ashbury trilogy, passed away in September. Her friend and fellow author, C.W. Gortner, looks back at the work and life of this remarkable woman, a friend to many of you in the Society. She will be greatly missed.

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20 youn g writer, bygo ne a ge ch a r le s finc h ’s coz y m ys teries | by ken k reckel | reviews |

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

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s eein g f or yo u rsel f a h a r r y sidebottom inter view | b y my f anw y co o k 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 54, November 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.

It’s renewal time All HNS memberships expire at the end of 2010. Rates are the same as last year, and we’ve included a form within this mailing. Please renew by January 1, 2011, to ensure you’re on the mailing list for the Feb 2011 issue of the Review. For questions, contact an HNS membership secretary, details on page at left.

Other HNS Updates 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 special guest Susan Vreeland. Jennifer Weltz of the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency will give our Saturday lunch keynote. Registration will open in November.

For complete details, see the conference website at http://www. hns-conference.org.

Curious what books were covered in past issues of HNR, or which authors were profiled in past Solander issues? Try out our new search engine, on the main page of the HNS website.

Special thanks to Nanette Donohue for copy editing this issue.

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

Kate Kerrigan’s Ellis Island, women’s fiction set in 1920s Ireland and NYC, sold to Wendy Lee at Harper US, for publication in July 2011, by Marianne Gunn O’Connor at Marianne Gunn O’Connor Literary Agency. It appeared from Pan in July.

Grove/Atlantic UK has purchased all publishing rights for the UK/Commonwealth for Tony Hays’ The Killing Way and The Divine Sacrifice, including hardcover, paperback, and audio.

Robert Lyndon’s debut Hawk Quest, an epic adventure story set in 11th-century Europe, sold to Dan Mallory at Little Brown UK for publication in fall 2011, by Anthony Goff at David Higham Associates.

Douglas Jacobson’s next World War II espionage thriller The Katyn Order, about two Resistance fighters in post-World War II Poland who struggle to find the Russian document ordering the massacre of 20,000 Polish officers in the Katyn Forest, in an effort to reveal the crime to the Allies in time, sold to Jackie Swift at McBooks Press for publication in May 2011.

Australian and New Zealand rights to Richard Wright’s Mr Shakespeare’s Bastard (pub by HarperCollins Canada in Sept) sold to Jo Butler at Fourth Estate, by Suzanne Brandreth of 2 | Columns | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

Cooke Agency International on behalf of Dean Cooke.

The Italian Affairs by Juliana Thomas, a debut historical romance trilogy pitched as Love’s Labour’s Lost in Tuscany in the Victorian era, sold to Kate Seaver at Berkley, in a three-book deal, by Alexandra Machinist at the Linda Chester Literary Agency.

Simon Scarrow turns to the children’s market with Gladiator: Fight for Freedom, an epic series for boys of 10+, set in the wake of Spartacus’s revolt against the Roman army. It sold to Amanda Punter at Puffin UK, in a two-book deal, for publication in February 2011, by Meg Davies at MBA Literary Agents.

Scottsboro author Ellen Feldman’s Next to Love, set during and following World War II, and about war, loss and the scars they leave, sold to Cindy Spiegel at Spiegel & Grau, in a preempt, for publication in 2012, by Emma Sweeney at Emma Sweeney Agency.

Venetia Butterfield of Viking UK has bought Anna Funder’s All That I Am, a novel about four extraordinary people who risked their lives to alert the world to Hitler, from Sarah Chalfant at the Wylie Agency.

Marina Fiorato moves to John Murray for her next two Italian-set historicals. The first, Daughter of Siena, set against the background of the city’s Palio horse race, will be released next summer.

Marly Rusoff of Marly Rusoff & Associates sold Jonathan Odell’s The Healing, in which a young girl in 1930s Mississippi is abandoned to the care of an ancient midwife and plantation healer who teaches her how to heal with the power of story, to Nan Talese at Nan A. Talese Books (Random House).

English short story writer and playwright Katy Darby’s The Whore’s Asylum, about a gothic Victorian love triangle, sold to Juliet Annan at Figtree, by Arabella Stein of Abner Stein, on behalf of Vicky Bijur of the Vicky Bijur Literary Agency.

Russell Whitfield’s Roma Victrix and Imperatrix, the sequels to Gladiatrix continuing the adventures of Lysandra of Sparta, sold to Ed Handyside at Myrmidon Books for publication in March 2011, by Robin Wade at Wade & Doherty Literary Agency (World).

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, telling the story of two young magicians at the turn of the 19th century who become pawns in an age-old rivalry between their illusionist fathers, sold to Alison Callahan at Doubleday US by Richard Pine at Inkwell Management.

Gioconda by Lucille Turner, described as the first literary evocation of Leonardo da Vinci’s life, sold to Bella Lacey at Granta, in a pre-empt, for July 2011 publication, by Anna Webber at United Agents.

Calling Me through Thunder by Governor General’s Award winner Peter Behrens, which follows a man and his family during the first half of the 20th century, sold to Deb Garrison at Pantheon by Sarah Burnes at The Gernert Company (US).

Canadian rights to Sarah MacLachlan at House of Anansi.

Persia Walker’s Black Orchid Blues, in which a 1920s Harlem society columnist witnesses the brutal nightclub kidnapping of

New transatlantic editions Alastair Sim’s The Unbelievers, a mystery of Victorian Edinburgh described as “quite a good read” by Marilyn Sherlock (HNR, Nov ’09), appeared in Sept 2010 from Minotaur ($23.99/C$27.50, hb, 335pp).

Linda Porter’s Katherine the Queen, a biography of Katherine Parr described by Jasmina Svenne as “for fans of strong Tudor women everywhere” (HNR, May ’10) is published in the US by St. Martin’s this Nov. ($27.99, hb, 464 pp).

The Waxman Murders by P.C. Doherty, part of his Hugh Corbett medieval mystery series, was called “a book to curl up with by the fire and thoroughly enjoy” by Marilyn Sherlock (HNR, Feb ’09). Minotaur is the US publisher (Dec 2010, $25.99, hb, 320pp).

Raiders from the North: Empire of the Moghul by Alex Rutherford, which “brings the period and the history of the

region alive” per Mike Ashworth (HNR, Nov ’09), appeared in May from St. Martin’s ($24.99, hb, 436pp).

In stores soon Pale Rose of England by Sandra Worth, a look at the mystery of Richard, one of the mysterious Princes in the Tower, and his famous love affair with Lady Catherine Gordon, will be published by Berkley (Penguin) in Feb 2011.

Historian Adrian Goldsworthy’s debut novel True Soldier Gentleman, military adventure during the Peninsular War, will appear in January from Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Donna Russo Morin’s To Serve a King (Kensington, Feb. 2011) is the story of a woman raised to be a spy and an assassin for Henry VIII at the court of François I. A Royal Likeness by Christine Trent, the story of an apprentice to the great waxworker Madame Tussaud, will be released January 2010 by Kensington Books.

Sarita Mandanna’s Tiger Hills, a literary epic set on a coffee plantation in southern India at the turn of the 20th c, will appear in March from Grand Central (US).

Kate Taylor’s A Man in Uniform, a historical thriller set in 19th-century Paris, told against the backdrop of a country struggling to redefine itself after the Dreyfus Affair scandal, appears from Crown/Harmony in Dec. Erratum In August’s HNR, the word “stories” was inadvertently deleted from the review of Michelle Hoover’s The Quickening. Apologies to reviewer Susan Zabolotny for the error.

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

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the “Black Orchid,” a sultry, seductive singer with a mysterious past, sold to Johnny Temple at Akashic for publication in 2011,

by Lukas Ortiz at the Philip Spitzer Literary Agency.

Taylor Polites’s untitled Southern Gothic novel, about a young widow in Reconstruction Alabama whose desire for independence may cost her her life, sold to Touchstone’s Trish Todd via Trena Keating of Keating Literary.

Oliver Johnson of Hodder & Stoughton acquired three novels in Nick Brown’s Corbulo series, historical military adventure set in the Syrian Desert in AD 270 and beginning with Agent of Rome: The Siege, from agent David Grossman.

Bernadette Pajer’s A Spark of Death, first in a series of historical mysteries set in Seattle at the turn of the 20th century, sold to Annette Rogers at Poisoned Pen Press, for publication in July 2011, by Jill Grosjean at the Jill Grosjean Literary Agency.

Wildflower Hill by Kimberley Freeman (pseudonym for Kim Wilkins), intertwining the lives of a young woman and her grandmother, in the 1920s and present-day Britain and Australia, who discover that happiness may be where they least expect it, sold to Trish Todd at Simon & Schuster for publication in summer 2011, by Airlie Lawson at Hachette Australia.

Tessa Harris’s debut The Anatomist’s Apprentice, featuring Dr. Thomas Silkstone, an American who solves mysteries using unique scientific methods in 1790s London, sold to John Scognamiglio at Kensington, in a three-book deal, by Melissa Jeglinski at The Knight Agency.

InStyle magazine deputy and books editor Nancy Bilyeau’s historical thriller The Last Nun, about a novice imprisoned in the Tower who is charged with finding a hidden legendary relic that could save her way of life from Cromwell’s army, sold to Trish Todd at Touchstone Fireside by Josh Getzler at Russell & Volkening.

Christine Trent’s The Prince’s Pavilion, a sequel to The Queen’s Dollmaker, sold to Audrey LaFehr at Kensington, along with another historical novel, by Helen Breitwieser at Cornerstone Literary.

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.

LETTER TO THE EDITORS I endorse Ken Kreckel’s call in “So Much Owed to So Few” in the August 2010 issue for those who fought in the Battle of Britain to be remembered. His article, though, inadvertently illustrates one of the characteristics of historical memory.

In the Battle of Britain, 515 pilots were lost over the three and a half months of the battle. In the Nuremberg raid of 30 March 1944, Bomber Command lost 670 aircrew; that is, nearly one-third more than in the entire Battle of Britain, and in only one night. The Nuremberg Raid has often been described as the greatest air battle in history, and yet comparatively little has been written about it.

Alan Fisk HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Columns | 3

aHISTORY & FILMe ONCE UP ON SOME TIME

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astiche has followed historical fiction around for about as long as people have told stories about the times that came before. Elements of the storyteller’s current culture and attitudes inevitably permeate even the most scrupulously researched tale. But also interesting to observe is the way that most of our classic fantasy stories have dwelt in the past, carrying back in time with them modern views and ideas.

In the 2007 fantasy movie Stardust, awkward teenager Tristan lives with his single father in a twee English village in the middle of the nineteenth century. But Tristan’s daily life consciously resembles that of a twentieth-century American teenager: though he appears to be a part of the emerging middle class, he shares a home and kitchen with his father without the visible help of servants, and in an early scene when he pounds down the steps to snatch a quick breakfast, the viewer can easily imagine his dad has fixed it for him. He works at the local grocery store to make his pocket money (his dad doesn’t seem all that anxious when he’s fired early on) and he sneaks out at night for “dates” with his unrequited crush, Victoria (the writers seem to want to remind us, with this name, of what era we’re in, in case we become confused and forget). He has big dreams of one day getting out of his little nowhere town and making his fortune in the big world outside – with study and hard work. The costumes are about the only historical thing about the setting of Stardust’s frame story, but the viewer and the writers alike are in on the joke, and Tristan’s fumbles and foibles with recognizable problems are all a wink at the audience.

In Stardust, a little English village called Wall turns out to be the portal between the “real” world – Tristan’s world of twentieth-century American teenagers in corsets and waistcoats, or the movie’s version of “Victorian” society – and the magical kingdom of Stormhope, teeming with witches and 4 | Columns | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

ghosts, where the traveler in need could find a unicorn in the woods (given that traveler is pure of heart). Separating the two worlds is the wall, a seemingly prosaic ancient wall only a few feet high, with one small crumbled opening traditionally guarded by a curmudgeonly old man. In his youth, Tristan’s father had sneaked past the guard and into the magical realm beyond, where he had a fling with a girl in the marketplace, but then grew frightened of the strangeness of the place and ran back to his home. Nine months later, baby Tristan was left by the wall with a note for his father. For seventeen years, Tristan was raised in as normal a fashion as conceivably possible, with no clue about his supernatural origins.

But then the teenaged Tristan is presented with a challenge by his coquettish but beguiling crush, Victoria. She knows that Tristan’s much-richer rival is going to propose to her on her birthday, so one night, after Tristan has surprised Victoria with a lavish picnic using most of his savings, she tells him that she’ll marry him instead if he can bring her the star they had just watched falling from the sky into the land beyond the wall. Tristan determines to cross the wall to win Victoria’s heart and bring back the star, inspiring his father to reveal his true origin, and launching the adventure of the film.

It might seem silly at first to look too closely at the historical accuracy of a fantasy film, especially one based on a story by Neil Gaiman, a wizard of pastiche and a masterful storyteller before all things (when he chooses to be). But one of the things that made some of Gaiman’s other works so popular and notable was that they were part of an emerging genre of “urban fantasy” – fantasy set in the current day, unlike Stardust. And the reason urban fantasy was new and exciting was that it was so different from the traditional forms of fantasy, which, even when they take place in a world and a time totally removed from our own history, tend to wear the clothes of the recognizable past. Think of classic fantasy movies like Willow or The Princess Bride, or books like the Narnia series, all of which Stardust has been compared to, which take place in remote fantasy kingdoms that look an awful lot like renaissance Europe. Reflect for a moment on the wide availability of Lord of the Rings memorabilia at supposedly “renaissance” fairs.

certain, but these elements can increase their power to transport a reader by tapping into the worlds she already carries with her inside her mind.

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But what can the historical novelist learn from fantasy movies? As I’ve written in past columns, knowing what a reader will identify as historical is just as important in many cases as knowing the history of an era itself. And fantasy films can be a good barometer for what looks and feels historical to a particular audience, even if it isn’t really historical. Just as usefully, they can sometimes let a writer know how far is too far into the realm of twee-ification, as anyone can tell you who’s had that uncomfortably awkward feeling around the guy in tights eating a corndog on a stick at the local Renaissance Fair.

Stardust flirts with that line between adorable genre-mixing and the realm of the tights-wearing-corndog-eating-guy. And like a good tightrope walker, its most successful parts make the balancing act look graceful and effortless, little flourishes becoming winks at the audience, like Tristan’s modern adolescence mentioned above. It settles on the audience like a well-worn sweater: its strangeness is familiar, but that’s what makes it such a successful fantasy. The worlds of many of our English-language fantasy classics share so many features that they could conceivably blend together into one world in the avid viewer’s imagination; and that has become a comfortable, familiar and recognizable world which audiences walk into the movie theater expecting to find. Historical settings have a similar power over audiences: when they go to a movie set in Victorian England, they expect it to fit neatly into the Victorian England they carry in their imaginations – with room for embellishment, inside jokes and even corrective accuracy, to be

HANNAH STERNBERG, HNR’s Film Editor, is a writer and filmmaker living in Washington, DC. Her first novel, Queens of All the Earth, will be released by Bancroft Press this year. To learn more about her and her work, visit www.hannahsternberg.com.

HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Columns | 5

NEW VOICES Myfanwy Cook examines the debut historical fiction of Simon Acland, A.L. Berridge, Gary Corby, Bruce Macbain, and Anne-Marie Vukelic.

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his issue’s debut novelists all share a love of storytelling as well as a deep, personal interest in the periods about which they have chosen to write. A.L. Berridge’s novel, Honour and the Sword, published by Penguin, is the first in a series of books set in 17th-century France that follows the adventures of André de Roland. Berridge explains, “I never set out to write a historical novel. My storytelling experience has been largely confined to contemporary drama for British television, while historical fiction seemed to me the highest form of the novel, to be attempted only by experts. But I had no choice. I wanted to write about the difficulty of being both honourable and humane in a ruthless world, and soon realized the only way to dramatise that story into spectacular action was to set it in the Age of Honour itself. I’d loved 17th-century France since reading The Three Musketeers as a child, and watching a nostalgic DVD of the classic 60s serial ‘The Flashing Blade’ reminded me again of the glamour and excitement of a world where a man’s reputation and the fate of his country could be decided by the use of the sword.” Berridge adds, “I think it’s the complexity of the period that fascinates me most. It’s a time of enormous transition and contradictions.”

Anne-Marie Vukelic recalls that, since childhood, she was, “repeatedly drawn to images of 19th-century living and, as I grew into adulthood, I subsequently became fascinated by Victorian social history. Synonymous with the Victorian period is the name Charles Dickens: the period in which he lived, and indeed some of his own biography, is revealed to us through his novels, enlightening and entertaining us almost 200 years after his birth. A visit to Rochester in 2005 motivated me to begin examining Dickens’ life in greater detail, but pouring over the endless pages that are written about him, I surprisingly found my attention being drawn repeatedly to the shy, clumsy, somewhat disorganised wife who lived her life at the side of this hugely talented, impatient, and restless man.” Vukelic discovered that very little had been recorded about Catherine Dickens.“Yet within the numerous pages that have been written about her famous husband, I found her coming to life; and so began the random jottings which formed Catherine’s fictional journal and eventually became the novel, Far Above Rubies.” Vukelic, a social 6 | Columns | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

care manager, never expected to become a published author.

She shares, “At the end of a stressful day working in the field of mental health, I never imagined that my writing, which was nothing more than a relaxing hobby, would ever be read by anyone else.”

Gary Corby also found unexpected inspiration to write his book, The Pericles Commission, “Strange as it may sound, the inspiration comes from a 2,400 year old book called The Athenian Constitution, written by Aristotle. It might not sound like the most inspirational work, but there is one amazing fact in it. In a single short section of only three paragraphs, Aristotle describes how the world’s first democracy began: an Athenian politician named Ephialtes pushed through a series of radical reforms. Then Aristotle mentions, right at the end, that within days, Ephialtes was murdered. I read this and thought, ‘Wow, this was the world’s first political assassination in a democracy. And the victim was the man who created it.

There has to be a story in this.’ The men behind the plot were never discovered.

It remains a mystery to this day. Athens must have gone into shock. But Ephialtes had a lieutenant, a rising young politician by the name of Pericles. Pericles held the radical new form of government together, somehow. I wrote The Pericles Commission to describe my version of the ‘somehow’. So the story really happened, though not, perhaps, precisely as it appears in the book!”

The consequence of Corby’s fascination with the period and subject spawned a series. “Because the more I wrote,” he says, “the more I realized what an exciting period this was. Aeschylus was writing his plays; two young men called Sophocles and Euripides were beginning to write their own. A young kid called Socrates was outside somewhere, playing in the street, and on the island of Kos, a baby called Hippocrates was born to a doctor and his wife. So I created Nicolaos, the elder brother of Socrates, who finds himself working as an agent for Pericles.

Then I gave him a girlfriend: Diotima, who is mentioned in Plato’s Symposium as one of the teachers of Socrates, and was one of the three most brilliant women of that century.”

Bruce Macbain, a former Assistant Professor of Classics at Boston University, has taught English as a second language in places such as Borneo. But he decided, as his website mentions, “to stop writing scholarly articles which almost no one read and turn his expertise to fiction—a much more congenial medium.” Roman Games is his first published novel, and is set in Rome in 96AD, “When the body of Sextus Verpa, a notorious senatorial informer and libertine, is found stabbed to death in his bedroom, suspicion falls on his household slaves—a

potential death sentence for them all. The emperor Domitian orders Vice-Prefect Pliny to investigate. However, the Roman Games have just begun and for the next fifteen days the law courts are in recess. If Pliny can’t identify the murderer in that time, Verpa’s entire slave household will be burned alive in the arena. Plinius teams up with Martial, a starving author of bawdy verses and hanger-on to the city’s glitterati.” The novel capitalises on Macbain’s academic knowledge of the Classics and Ancient History, but its inspiration dates back to when he was a child growing up in Chicago, Illinois where “as a child, he had an overactive imagination, squandering whole days (when

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

MYFANWY COOK is currently an HNR Features editor. She is working on a project with Bernard Knight and other writers on Historical Fiction Writing — A Practical Guide and Tool Kit, with the aim of helping those who aspire to write historical fiction.

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Clockwise from top to bottom: Gary Corby, Anne-Marie Vukelic and Bruce Macbain

other boys were at the playground working on their jump shot) in reading science fiction and history. Greek and Roman history held a special fascination for him.”

Macbain and Simon Acland’s novels share a common bond: that of poetry. The title of Acland’s novel The Waste Land “crept in” because he loves T.S. Eliot’s poem. He shares, “I thought that its themes and imagery fitted perfectly with my story, and he brought Ovid along (there is as much from Metamorphoses as from the grail stories in Eliot’s ‘Waste Land’)…or was it the other way round?”. In Macbain’s novel a less than “great” poet, Martial, is one of the main characters. Macbain and Acland’s interest in the period about which they’ve chosen to write also grew through their academic studies and childhood experiences.

Acland notes, “I’ve been interested in the legends surrounding the Holy Grail since studying the 12th and 13th-century French Grail romances (as part of my ‘Modern’ Languages degree!) at Oxford in the 1970s. I thought that it would be fun to write a book that linked back to the original Roman de Perceval written

by Chretien de Troyes around 1180. Grail scholars argue ceaselessly about the origin of the legend, and from that came the conceit of my hero’s autobiographical manuscript forming the source for the Roman de Perceval. The chronology was then perfect to set my story in the First Crusade, which is, of course, a most extraordinary historical episode, and an exciting backdrop.”

Acland explains that his main objective was “to write an exciting adventure story – one with a lot of humour, and definitely not to be taken too seriously, but a gripping story all the same. If it is a little old-fashioned that is because it harks back on occasion to the stories I loved as a boy – The Prisoner of Zenda, Greenmantle, and King Solomon’s Mines. And there is a touch of Monty Python too!”

Acland and his fellow featured debut novelists combine a profound fascination with the period in which they have set their novels with a love of storytelling. Berridge explains, “I’m just a storyteller who came to history through fiction and am simply loving what I’m learning on the way.” All these authors use their passion for history and fiction to provide their readers with a way to escape from everyday routines. However, the experience of becoming so involved in a past time may have unexpected consequences for the author as well. “I’m now so dissatisfied with just being ‘me,’” writes Berridge, “ that I’ve taken up re-enactment as a hobby, because nothing is better for the ‘feeling it’ experience than firing a matchlock musket for real, or making butter with little more than a jug and stick.”

HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Columns | 7

HOW NOT TO...

BE THE SOUL OF WIT. OR LINGERIE.

Brevity. It’s beautiful in its simplicity, its very...briefness.

But so many people have a problem with it. Are you one of them? Admitting said problem is the first step, so review these twelve signs to see if the historical novel you’re reading (or writing) might just be too darn long.

1. During the publication process, the book required not only an acquisitions editor, a line editor, and a copy editor, but a continuity editor.

2. Not only are none of the characters in the first chapter alive by the time you reach the last chapter, but no one, including you and the surviving characters, remembers who they were.

3. You begin to notice a distinct correlation between your reading of the novel and your visits to the chiropractor.

4. Airlines insist that the novel be treated as its own piece of carry-on luggage.

5. A reader tells a bookstore clerk, “I don’t know the title or the author, and I can’t remember exactly who it’s about, but it’s a really long book,” and the clerk knows exactly what book he means.

Did you bring the hand truck and come-along?

6. Readers bewail not the lack of a genealogical chart or a list of characters, but the lack of an index.

7. On a book discussion website, your status shows you as “currently reading” the same book for over six months. It isn’t because you haven’t updated your status.

8. In conversation, you begin to refer to benchmarks in your life with the phrase, “Back before I started to read _______.”

9. Your handy-around-the-house loved one, always a fan of the flying buttress, offers to reinforce the bookshelf assigned to this novel.

11. Your book club, having finally finished reading this novel, decides to pick War and Peace for its next selection as a change of pace.

12. You add “finishing this book” to your bucket list.

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10. When you finish the novel, you find it necessary to take up a hobby to fill your empty hours.

SUSAN HIGGINBOTHAM is determined that she’s soon going to read that 1,000-page epic that’s been sitting on her shelf for five years. Well, one of these days. Well, maybe next year. Well, maybe when she reaches retirement age.

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The Irish Historical Novel

Great Hatred, Little Room1 When writing about Irish historical fiction, you could start with the Irish writers who have written expertly about Ireland’s past — authors like Frank Delaney, Walter Macken, Colm Tóibín and Roddy Doyle. You could include foreign writers who have brought an outside eye and tender heart to Irish history, writers such as Morgan Llywelyn and J G Farrell, or indeed Mario Vargas Llosa, who will shortly release a novel about Irish politician Roger Casement. That doesn’t include my personal favourites like Eugene McCabe’s Death and Nightingales, The Year of the French by Thomas Flanagan, or the wonderful and tragic Strumpet City by James Plunkett.

James Cahalan, in his essay Great Hatred, Little Room, characterises Irish historical fiction as focusing on “periods of political crisis in Ireland prior to the author’s experience, that concerns itself with a public political focus and that depicts at least one real historical personage.”2 While this definition is allencompassing, for the purposes of this article, I’m going to concentrate on three newer writers who have brought something fresh to Irish historical fiction.

Sebastian Barry, Joseph O’Connor, and Cora Harrison have each, in their own way, sought less to explain than to understand, attempting to tackle Irish historical events in an even-handed manner. They have questioned shibboleths of Irish nationalism and identity as well as seeking out historical periods and events that had previously lain neglected or been hidden entirely. They have written confidently but with subtlety to uncover Ireland’s present from its past.

Cora Harrison | Late Medieval

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OUT OF IRELAND HAVE WE COME

Others have written about the late medieval period in Ireland, notably Peter Tremayne with his Sister Fidelma series, but Cora Harrison has made 16th-century Ireland her own. While her books are influenced by Ellis Peters and the Cadfael series, Harrison’s books have a distinctive Irish presence. Drawing energy from the coterie of successful Irish crime writers, Harrison brings a striking vividness to late medieval Ireland through her superb use of small but pertinent details.

The language she uses is, at first glance, simple, reflecting the straight-dealing purity her main character, Mara, has as a judge in the Brehon Law, Ireland’s ancient legal system. But just like her character, the language she uses has depth of meaning, subtlety, and shows genuine understanding of human foibles.

As Sara Wilson adroitly put it in her review of The Sting of Justice, “Mara is up there with the great fictional detectives.

Her formidable intellect is beautifully balanced by her humanity and ability to empathise even with those she dislikes.”3 Harrison uses Irish or Gaelic words without apologising or anglicising them, while interspersing her dialogue with Hiberno-English phrases and syntax to give the full flavour of a Gaelic-speaking people.

The landscape of the Burren in County Clare is also an integral part of her books; indeed, it is a fullyfledged character. Harrison was attracted to this period, finding it “a fascinating time in the history of the west of Ireland as it was a time of transition – the ending of the old Gaelic, clanbased society and the beginning of the new, uneasy relationship with the feudal culture from England. The fact that there were no prisons under the Brehon system of laws shows how effective these community and family-based laws were. People conformed to the law because the respect of their family and

by Gordon O’Sullivan

They have... written confidently but with subtlety to uncover Ireland’s present from its past.”

HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Features | 9

their neighbours was important for them.”4 This feeling of halcyon days before the colonial experience adds a poignancy and tender sweetness to her stories.

Most importantly, Cora Harrison writes about this period in Irish history with a confidence that all three writers in this article share. Rather than peering inwardly, she looks outward. Her books have a strong sense of Irishness, but not to the detriment of other cultures. They convey the sense of an Irish community where everybody knows each other and knows intimately their strengths and weaknesses.

Joseph O’Connor | The Great Famine The Great Famine, which lasted from 1845 to 1848, is a seminal event in Irish history, one which left a psychological mark on its survivors and lead to a mass Irish emigration around the world. Joseph O’Connor’s Star of the Sea marks a definitive change in how the Famine has been perceived in Ireland and abroad.

There have been many novels set in this period; two of the best examples are Famine by Liam O’Flaherty and Brendan Graham’s Whitest Flower trilogy. O’Connor takes a new tack, however—his book omits the traditional blame game from the historical episode. In that sense, Star of the Sea is not a political book, but rather an examination of the human condition. It’s based on history but not dominated by politics or political memory.

Star of the Sea is set in 1847 and tells the story of the people who set sail on an emigrant ship from Cobh for New York, fleeing the famine. Tellingly, while one of the main characters is a landlord, traditionally the man in the black hat, Lord Kingscourt is presented as a figure of flawed complexity, but a human one all the same. O’Connor set out to write something that was new, “I suppose I wrote it because I thought there hadn’t been a novel like that. Right up until my childhood, which wasn’t that long ago, I think the famine was taught in schools through a prism of Anglophobia.”5 This book also saw O’Connor experiment with the use of invented documentation and playful footnotes, adding authentic texture to the writing but never letting us forget that this story is historical fiction, not history. O’Connor reminds us that, “We don’t go to fiction for fact: it’s supposed to touch us and reveal something about our own lives.”6 This book is not historical in the sense of its predecessors, as O’Connor explains, “to me Star of the Sea is a book about starving refugees, forced emigration and conditions under which the terrible becomes possible. Add the fact that its world is organised like a pyramid and the people at the top work the least and earn the most and the people at the bottom work the hardest and get the least, and the more I describe it, the more I’m describing a place called Now.”7 10 | Features | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

It was the first part of what has become a ten year project for O’Connor, “which is to write three books set in forgotten corners of the Irish past.”8

Sebastian Barry | Ireland and the First World War Sebastian Barry’s A Long Long Way treats an issue which was virtually airbrushed from Irish history for generations after it happened: Irishmen fighting in the British Army during the First World War. There have been other writers who have written movingly about this period, notably William Trevor, Roddy Doyle, Jennifer Johnston and, more recently, Alan Monaghan.

Sebastian Barry is unique, however, in breaking through a barrier that had prevented proper recognition of the experience of those Irish soldiers who had been written out of official Irish history in the birth of a newly independent country.

Barry’s A Long Long Way tells the story of Willie Dunne, the son of a Dublin policeman, who volunteers for action in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. It is unflinching in its depiction of the squalor of life at the front for soldiers and officers alike, portraying the physical danger and mental torture they endured in prose that is both brutal and poetic. But A Long Long Way is also the story of Ireland at a crossroads in its history. While the Royal Dublin Fusiliers suffer horrors abroad, their native city is in turmoil during the Easter Rising of 1916. Willie Dunne and his fellow Irishmen find themselves fighting in an army which is often disdainful of their service, while at home they are regarded as traitors, an entire generation caught on the wrong side of Irish history. Barry sought in this book as he has in his plays, “Not to expose, as much as to try and recover. The story of Ireland is like a series of incredible tapestries, many of them stitched with a lot of red, and plentiful reels of black thread. But they’re damaged pictures. Most of the damage came after independence, when a new narrative had to be established in order to assist the birth of a country.”9 The way in which Barry tapped into a new seam in Irish history was seen in the readings he did in Ireland, which were compared to revivalist meetings. Relatives of Irishmen who had fought in the First World War were able for the first time to celebrate and commemorate. “I was down in Kilkenny and this woman in her 70s stood up and said in a trembling voice how her grandfather was the chaplain in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.

It was probably the first room she had ever been in where she could stand up and say that.”10

Shining a Light These three writers come from very different backgrounds.

The popularity of the periods about which they’ve written varies considerably, but what they all have in common is a nuanced view of Irish history. Their historical fiction leaves behind political slants and nationalistic viewpoints in an attempt to gain

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References 1. Yeats, William Butler, Remorse For Intemperate Speech, Out of Ireland have we come./Great hatred, little room,/Maimed us at the start.

2. Kreilkamp, Vera, The Anglo-Irish Novel and the Big House, Syracuse University Press, (1998), p. 15.

3. Wilson, Sara, Historical Novels Review, August 2009.

4. An Interview with Cora Harrison, panmacmillan.com, http:// tinyurl.com/3368nro.

5. Dwyer, Ciara, Joseph Follows a Dream, The Irish Independent, 6 June 2010, http://tinyurl.com/2c9q6kj.

6. Robinson, David, Interview: Joseph O’Connor, writer, The Scotsman, http://tinyurl.com/336b3r9.

7. Ibid.

8. McCann, Fiona, “I admire people who only write masterpieces.

I’m not one of them,” The Irish Times, 22 May 2010, http://tinyurl. com/2frvp7j.

9. Barry, Sebastian, Recovering Ireland’s Hidden History, http:// tinyurl.com/3556rjt.

10. Wroe, Nicholas, “As our ancestors hide in our DNA, so do their stories,” The Guardian, 11 October 2008, http://tinyurl. com/36pbnn3.

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a more rounded picture of those political events that impacted Ireland and influenced how the Irish think of themselves. Their books mark a move away from black and white views to a place where Irish history is no longer such a contested country. Barry says, much to his surprise, “the way we think about ourselves in Ireland means there is no longer a necessity for those secrets. We can now marvel at them. It’s as if the signal has been given that we can drop the purely nationalistic, DeValera history.”

Barry, Harrison and O’Connor are not making political points, but shining a light into troubled interpretations of the Irish past, drawing no conclusions, simply writing eloquently of the past.

GORDON O’SULLIVAN is a Reviews Editor for the Historical Novels Review and co-editor of the HNS Newsletter. He is also finishing a MA in Professional Writing at University College Falmouth and writing a historical novel set in Ireland in 1690.

HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Features | 11

when historians turn to fiction

o some, especially the more academically inclined, the phrase T“historical fiction” has always been something of an oxymoron.

While this might derive from historians simply defending their turf, there is, for many, an underlying discomfort with the linking of fiction and history. As author Thomas Mallon observes: “Nouns always trump adjectives, and in the phrase ‘historical fiction’, it is important to remember which of the two words is which.” 1 Indeed, what seems to get the goat of many historians is the quality of the history. For one Ph.D. historian and failed historical novelist, the problem is anachronisms, both in dialogue and social attitudes. When modern speech or thoughts creep into a historical novel, the historian bristles. Noting that in Mel Gibson’s film, The Patriot, “Egregious errors appear in every scene,” historian David Hackett Fisher commented, “The Patriot is to history as Godzilla was to biology”. 2 Sure, nothing is easier than poking holes in Mel Gibson flicks, but many historians criticize even good historical fiction as if it were their favorite indoor sport. To Jan Golinski, of the University of New Hampshire’s history department, this is understandable: “Of course, history is not the same as creative writing, and the latter is always liable to be criticized for historical inaccuracy or incompleteness.”3 That criticism can even be entertaining. Take a peek at the humorous History Spork (http://history-spork.livejournal.com), a blog where historians can vent about the silliness that often passes for history in the popular media. More seriously, UCLA historian Paul E. Chevedden wonders, “Or could the convergence of history and fiction be itself a fiction—another postmodernist construct—with no claim to objective reality?” 4 The situation has become so bad that the New York Times apparently does not allow historians to review historical novels. 5 This is what makes it all the more remarkable that more than a few historians actually write historical fiction, and what’s more, they’re willing to admit it.

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Godzilla versus HF

One recent effort was Blindspot, a collaboration between Jane Kamensky, from the Department of History at Brandeis University, and Jill Lepore, who chairs Harvard’s History and Literature Program. These authors call it a “twenty-first century novel in eighteenth-century garb.” Set in Boston on the eve of the American Revolution, it weaves together the fictional stories of Scottish artist and notorious libertine Stewart Jameson, and that of Fanny Easton, who disguises herself as a boy to be his apprentice. The authors promise the book “turns topsy-turvy everything you thought you knew about the Founding Fathers.” Sounds rather good, doesn’t it? An interesting story rooted in a great historical time. Yet the authors, certainly due to their academic credentials, take particular pains to point out the soundness of their history, devoting an entire section of the book’s website to answering the question “Is Anything in Blindspot True?” Asserting that they are “sticklers for accuracy,” the authors go on to admit much of the book is fiction, and that is “more than half the fun.” 6 That eternal tension in historical fiction between fiction and fact may be worse for historians writing in the genre. According to Kamensky, “they find themselves itching to write footnotes.” The need to scratch that itch resulted in the webpages and articles pointing out the history within Blindspot.

But is there a need for this? Cannot the story stand on its own?

Does anyone miss the footnotes?

Historians do. When Australian Kate Grenville released her award-winning work, The Secret River, it was widely criticized by historians, even though the author readily admitted her works are “sometimes inspired by historical events, but they are imaginative constructs, not an attempt to write history.”

Nevertheless, historians were upset with her use of literary license to move some episodes around in geography and time.

Melbourne historian Dr. Inga Clendinnen was particularly incensed: “The book’s shape is made completely different by that kind of casual transposition. It makes the novel not only not

by Ken Kreckel

Could the convergence... of history and fiction be itself a fiction — another postmodernist construct — with no claim to objective reality?”

12 | Features | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

history but, in my admittedly very austere view, anti-history.” 7 Despite this, some historians do not hesitate to write in the genre, if only more to illuminate history than to fictionalize it.

When British historian and Columbia professor Simon Schama began writing historical fiction, he commented, “I suppose that when one writes history, one is always on the verge of imagining and supposing, so I guess I wanted to walk through the mirror a bit.” For Schama, this first step through the looking glass was encouraged by a long-dead historian. While researching the death of General Wolfe, Schama discovered that the popularized Wolfe was very different from the actual Wolfe. Much of the mythology surrounding the man stemmed from the historian Francis Parkman, who according to Schama “was actually a tormented person stranded on the border of sanity.” Schama’s book, Dead Certainties, attempted to bring some balance to the history. Indeed, balance seems to be Mr. Schama’s hallmark.

“What I’m resistant to is the notion that all history is fiction and fiction is history. I don’t want to say that at all. I want to say that there is a kind of event that did happen, but it can’t be very clearly determined, even with the resources we have available.

Historians are left forever chasing shadows.” 8 Balance is one key in this shadow-chase, truth is another.

Michael Oren, historian and Senior Fellow at Jerusalem’s Shalem Center, ventured into the realm of fiction with the publication of Reunion in 2004. Reunion brings to life one small aspect of the Battle of Bulge in 1944 through a reuniting of the participants sixty years later. The book was not only a success, but it made the author a better writer of nonfiction. “The most important lesson I’ve taken with me from fiction writing to history writing is the need to keep your reader riveted,” he says.

“Readers, being human beings, like to be entertained, and they like vivid language, and they like fully drawn characters, and they like plots that move. When I write a history book … I’m asking myself on every page, if not every paragraph, ‘How am I keeping my reader interested?’ Now, you have to balance that consideration over the consideration of the truth. Not all truths are equally interesting. They may be equally true but they’re not equally interesting. And one has to balance that as well.”

Historians are obsessed with the truth. Oren states, “That’s it. You said the ‘T’ word. I have one very basic philosophy, and that is a relentless and uncompromising search for the truth.

Sometimes I’ll drive my family crazy, drive my assistants crazy, drive myself crazy looking for one fact.” Yet often that one fact proves to be illusive. Oren relates doing research into the slang term “hubba-hubba,” which sprang into the American vernacular with US soldiers serving in North Africa. Suspecting the phrase derived from the Arabic word for love, “hubba,” he nevertheless took two full days to find the origin of the phrase was actually Chinese. 9 This search for the truth has long led educators into the realm of historical fiction. Terry Lindquist, a fifth-grade teacher who was recognized by the National Council for the Social Studies as National Elementary Teacher of the Year, “integrates historical novels into her curriculum to illuminate time periods, and enrich

social studies.” As former teacher and author Sarah Herz points out, “Very often, in the classroom, mere facts become a body of information that seems irrelevant and dull to students. Textbook historical figures often become so heroic and extraordinary or so flat and lifeless that students cannot conceive of these people as ordinary men and women endowed with normal human characteristics.”10 But does historical fiction actually overcome this problem? Ms. Lindquist lets one of her students answer that one. Making a journal after a unit on the western expansion of the U.S., this student wrote: “Dear Diary, July 30, 1852: This journey has been heart-wrenching, thirst-quenching, and most of all, an adventure I will never forget.”11 What works in the classroom should work for the general public, so it’s no surprise that some historians have been in the game for some time, alternating between fiction and nonfiction with aplomb. Distinguished historian Carolly Erickson has authored many prize-winning works of fiction and nonfiction, among them The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette, The First Elizabeth, Great Catherine, and Alexandra. Harry Sidebottom put his Oxford Doctorate of Ancient History to use penning his fine Warrior of Rome series. Simon Sebag Montefiore, a Cambridge-educated historian perhaps best known for his award-winning works on Stalin, recently released Sashenka, a novel set in 1916 St. Petersburg. Ian Mortimer, award-winning historian and successful historical novelist (writing as James Forrester), likewise is acclaimed for both his writings on serious history and his novels. He is so successful that he essentially makes his living from his works, which brings us to perhaps the prime motivation for historians turning to fiction – profit.

Ironically, this is because nonfiction history is not as profitable as it once was. Tristram Hunt, a University of London lecturer who reportedly received an advance of £100,000 for his biography of Friedrich Engels, has stated he knew of several colleagues who have turned to writing fiction because it paid relatively more. Lisa Jardine, author of Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland’s Glory, which has been awarded the Cundill International Prize in History (described as the world’s largest historical literature award for nonfiction), reportedly is avoiding a new contract because of the uncertain state of the market. Although she pocketed a prize of $75,000 for her latest work, she confesses that, “A few years ago we got really handsome advances to write books that did indeed become quite good bestsellers, but never earned out their advances.” Jonny Geller, a managing director at Curtis Brown agency, was quoted by the London Times as being “aware of several authors whose advances had dwindled from £70,000 to £25,000.” He states: “It is crippling them. Publishing has become quite reactive. It is sales led. We need publishers to start taking risks again.” 12 Risk taking? I thought that went out with Bear Stearns and AIG. However unwittingly, Jardine may have hit the proverbial nail when she admitted that her books, among many others, never made back their advances. I may not be an economist, but it seems to me that when the outgoing dollars exceed the incoming, something needs to change.

But of course, things are not all rosy on the fiction front either.

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Thankfully, many others have as well. I’ve presented a few of those historians who have made the jump into historical fiction. Ideally, they are well prepared to create memorable and accurate histories people actually want to read. The best of these seamlessly blend history and fiction, creating for me, at their best, what that fifth grader voiced, an adventure I will never forget. Feel free to add your own favorites, or better yet, discover a new one.

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Endnotes: 1. Mallon, Thomas. “An Essay: History, Fiction, and the Burden of Truth.” Writing History / Writing Fiction webpage; University of Albany.

2. Fisher, David Hackett. “Hubris, But No History.” New York Times; July 1, 2000.

3. Golinski, Jan. “Focus: History of Science and Historical Novels.” Isis, The History of Science Society; 2007, pp 755-759.

4. Chevedden, Paul E. “Letter to the Editor.” The American Historical Review; vol. 104, no. 3; June, 1999.

5. Carp, Benjamin. “Historians Read Fiction Too.” Publik Occurrences; Common-place The Interactive Journal of Early American Life, Inc [Blog]; Feb. 9, 2009.

6. Kamensky, Jane and Jill Lepore. “Footnotes to Fiction.”

Organization of American Historians Newsletter 37; Feb. 2009.

7. Sullivan, Jane. “Making a Fiction of History…” The Age; Oct 21, 2006.

8. Berstein, Richard. “A Historian Enters Fiction’s Shadowy Domain.” New York Times; May 15, 1991.

9. Kreisler, Harry. “Michael B. Oren Interview: Conversations with History.” Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley, 2005.

10. Herz, Sarah K. “Using Historical Fiction in the History Classroom.” Curriculum Unit 81, Ch.10; Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute; 1981.

11. Lindquist, Terry. “Why and How I Teach with Historical Fiction.” Teachers’ webpage; Scholastic; 2010.

12. Malvern, Jack. “Authors Feel the Pinch as Recession-hit Publishers Cut Advances”; London Times; July 11, 2009.

13. Ibid.

14. Wagner, Erica. “Writers Have Always Struggled to Earn a Living, but Now It’s Even Worse.” London Times; July 11, 2009.

15. Ibid.

16. Taylor, Laurie. “Come On, Get (Moderately) Happy.” The Poppletonian, Times Higher Education webpage; July 23, 2009.

17. Ibid.

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One agent recently pointed out that authors writing fiction for women are also suffering. “It has polarised, so that the bestselling authors and the ones who may become the next big thing are doing well, but everyone else is suffering. About 90 percent of women’s fiction advances are dropping dramatically. The other 10 percent are rising dramatically.” 13 That sounds very familiar. Anyone interested in professional sports has heard that one before, as salaries for the top players reach escape velocity while other talented players are getting cut.

Wall Street, too, famously suffers from the same syndrome. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It seems almost trite.

Jardine sees another culprit: “Print-on-demand is a huge issue. Accountants cannot do the sums on it yet, so publishers are being incredibly cautious.” No doubt. This fractionalization of the market likewise rings familiar. As the public’s range of choices in entertainment increases, quality seems inevitably to decrease. Anyone who has mindlessly thumbed the remote through an endless parade of “reality” TV shows can attest to it.

Look at the state of movie-making these days as well.

On the other hand, historical fiction seems to be doing quite well. Most of the finalists for the Booker prize in 2009 were historical novels, as was the winner, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, about Henry VIII’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell.

In addition, as author Erica Wagner points out, “Authors and publishers have been squealing about hard times since the days of vellum: this isn’t about to change any time soon.” 14 Sounds like farmers and weather. When are they ever happy?

She goes on, “Why is the publishing industry in trouble?

For the same reason it’s always in trouble, the difference this time being that the trouble in question is pretty heavy-duty now, thanks to a global downturn that’s affecting many other industries as well.” And the reason? She explains it is William Goldman’s famous rule of Hollywood, “Nobody knows anything.” The proof to Wagner lies in the industry’s notorious unpredictability: “Dava Sobel’s Longitude: never meant to be a hit. Sebastian Faulks’s Birdsong: same story. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin: ditto. Historians may turn themselves into historical novelists in the hope that historical novels will rocket to the top of the bestseller lists in a way that history books generally won’t: but there are no guarantees.” 15 Besides the money, the old tension between fiction and history remains. On a recent BBC radio discussion, a prominent historian seemed bored and appalled by the rise of historical fiction and the relentless focus on detail which provides the authenticity. “There is a dangerous tendency among historians to slide into historical fiction, which must be avoided at all costs,” he lamented. 16 At least one of his colleagues took exception to this. “Tristram Hunt can speak for himself,” Professor D.W. Kloss replied to Hunt’s use of the word “dangerous.” The business history professor insisted that his forthcoming work on the 17th century, Buy My Lovely Oranges, would “as far as possible stick to the known facts.” He objected to the word “slide” as well. “I very much jumped in feet first,” he attests. 17

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.

an interview with Elizabeth Chadwick

is one certainty in Elizabeth Chadwick’s professional T here life: she will never run out of characters around whom to construct her historical novels. “The period from 1066 to 1250 is just littered with fascinating people I’d like to write about,” she exclaims, running through a list that starts with one of the best known, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and includes some very littleknown personalities such as the women who lived through and were affected by the Norman Conquest of 1066.

One of the least-known figures of Chadwick’s chosen period features as a key character in her latest novel to be released in the United States by Sourcebooks.

Originally dubbed A Time of Singing when it was first published in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, it’s now titled For the King’s Favor and recounts the life of Ida de Tosney, first ward and then mistress of Henry II. Aware that she is no longer the very young girl who first appealed to the king, when Ida realizes the young Roger Bigod wishes to marry her, she finds not only the man himself attractive but also the idea of escaping an increasingly difficult role as royal mistress.

The young couple marry only to find that they still must exert themselves to maintain the royal favor – especially since Ida’s infant son by Henry remains in the king’s custody.

“I wanted to bring Ida to life as a threedimensional persona; who she was as a person, how she reacted to being placed in these impossible situations of being seduced by the king while still very young and then being forced to leave her child behind when she married, when he still would only have been two or three years old,” Chadwick explains. There’s a lot of raw material for narrative tension in the historic story – between Ida and Henry; Roger and Henry; between Ida’s son, William, and his mother and the latter’s new family, to name only a few.

“It’s all about control and power, for Henry,” Chadwick says.

Royal mistresses, she argues, have a tough deal all around. “They certainly weren’t all good-time girls on the make,” she adds, and

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Littered with Fascinating People

one purpose of the book is to debunk that notion.

Chadwick’s first published book, The Wild Hunt, hit British bookstores in 1989; it wasn’t until 2009 that Sourcebooks began releasing some of the most popular. Readers who have already devoured the story of William Marshal in The Greatest Knight and The Scarlet Lion will find an overlap in the time period in which those novels are set and the era of For the King’s Favor; Marshal himself makes an appearance throughout the latter; they have similar “career paths”.

“But the two men emerged as quite different personalities,” Chadwick says.

“For instance, William Marshal was an accomplished military leader while Roger Bigod fought when he had to but was a more natural lawyer, an administrator and diplomat.” William is also a womanizer, not marrying until relatively late in life. In contrast, Chadwick says she deliberately chose to portray Roger Bigod as still a virgin on his marriage to Ida. “Some scholars recently have said that our modern century doesn’t give people of the medieval era enough credit for being voluntarily celibate,” Chadwick notes.

Before her fourth birthday, Chadwick was spinning stories; by the time she was in elementary school in Scotland and a teacher provided her class with a dressingup box to help them act out vignettes from the period they were studying, she had become fascinated with historical stories. In her teens, she fell in love with the television show “Desert Crusader”, whose hero has all kinds of adventures in the Holy Land, and is set in the period Chadwick has made her own as a novelist. Indeed, her first attempts to commit the stories in her mind to writing were a kind of “fan fiction” featuring the show’s hero. “The problem was that I realized I didn’t know all that much about the Holy Land in the Middle Ages…” Chadwick says, chuckling. So she set out to study the period and hone her writing simultaneously, leading up to the publication of her first book. “I still have several manuscripts tucked away somewhere from that time, most of

by Suzanne McGee

They certainly weren ’ t ... all good-time girls on the make.”

HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Features | 15

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which are probably dreadful and unpublishable!”

Not that researching the 12th century is now simple, even though Chadwick has devoted decades of her life to it. William Marshal, she says, was the exception that proves the rule. “He had had a chronicle written about his life that served as a fairly comprehensive starting point.” In contrast, almost nothing is known about Ida de Tosney. For centuries, the connection between her and William Longspée was obscure. “We knew that his mother was called Ida, because of charters and gifts that have him mentioning ‘my mother, countess Ida’, but there was no reference that would have made it possible to decide which Ida she was!” Finally, Chadwick stumbled over a reference to a Ralph Bigod on a list of prisoners, in which Ralph was mentioned as a brother of William Longspée. Following that clue, she was able to establish that Roger Bigod, the future hero of the book, was indeed Ralph’s father. In all probability, his wife Ida was probably the same Ida who had been Henry II’s mistress and given birth to William, a royal bastard.

Still, nailing down the genealogical details isn’t enough to bring a 750-year-old love story and family saga to life for contemporary readers. “As a writer, I have to find a way to experience all the senses and the emotions through the eyes of my characters,” Chadwick says. “I want to see what they see; eat what they eat. I get to the point where I can almost taste the food in their mouths in my imagination, and hear them say ‘Oh God, not eels for dinner again!’”

To get those details right, Chadwick is an avid historical reenactor. She has cooked “pottage”, a medieval dish, over a fire and scrutinized a historical battlefield through the narrow eye-slits of a medieval helm, allowing her to share – vicariously – what it must have been like for her heroes on the verge of riding into battle. After devouring both primary and secondary sources, many historical novelists might call a halt to their research at that stage and let their imaginations take over. Instead, Chadwick turns to the “Akashic Record”, defined as the impact left on the world around us by events and personalities who have long since vanished. She asks longtime friend and alternative therapies practitioner Alison King to help her nail down how a particular character reacted at a certain time in their life to particularly dramatic or stressful events. While admitting that this is “slightly unorthodox””, Chadwick says that some of the specifics produced in the sessions open up new research avenues and that it’s in tune with the historical record and the medieval mindset. “That’s where I got the detail in For the King’s Favor about Roger having a bit of a thing for hats, being a bit of a dandy,” Chadwick says, laughing. That kind of detail, she adds, makes a character come alive to readers as an individual in a way that no other research can do.

Next spring, Sourcebooks will publish a sequel to the lives of both William Marshal and Roger Bigod entitled To Defy a King. It’s a story that revolves around the marriage of Roger Bigod to the eldest daughter of William Marshal, Mahelt, and it’s told through Mahelt’s eyes. “A very different view of Roger emerges; he’s more stern, more aware that any member of his family who puts a foot wrong could imperil the whole family,” Chadwick says of the evolution of her historical hero. “Readers who loved Roger in For the King’s Favor may be disappointed by his grumpiness in the next book, but then people aren’t the same at 65 as they were at 25.”

Spending years researching the lives and loves of the characters who served the Angevin monarchs such as Henry II has ended up whetting Chadwick’s curiosity about those rulers as people.

She has just finished the first draft of Lady of the English, a novel that features the Empress Matilda (mother to Henry II) and King Stephen’s queen, Adeliza. She also admits she’d love to write about Eleanor of Aquitaine, although she believes it would take two books to do justice to Eleanor’s long and eventful life.

“Henry II is still quite a peripheral character in the books that I have written, but I’d like to know more about him,” she muses aloud. “My perspective on him keeps changing as I see him through the eyes of my different characters. Maybe one day…”

SUZANNE MCGEE is a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist and an avid reader of historical fiction in her spare time. She is the author of Chasing Goldman Sachs, published by Crown in June 2010.

remembering Judith Merkle Riley

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In Memoriam

J

udith Merkle Riley loved to laugh. Whether on the plunged into a lethal gambit involving the infamous La Voisin, phone with her or reading one of her deliciously inventive known as the Shadow Queen, and true-life vengeance of the historical novels, she liked a good belly-laugh, often at her own king himself. expense. Though she took research and writing very seriously, In her third novel, The Serpent Garden, we met Susanna Judith was that rare breed of author: she did not take herself Dallet, who throws over her philandering husband to indulge seriously. We often joked with each other that we wrote books; her secret ambition to become a miniaturist painter and expert we were storytellers, not scientists seeking a cure for an incurable forger, until she is sent by Cardinal Wolsey to France, where she disease. I wish we’d been the latter. Maybe we’d have gotten lucky must rely on her wit, talent, and the quixotic help of the elusive and Judith would still be with us today.

Angel of Art to forge a new life.

Judith lost her gallant, seven-year fight Judith’s last novel, and my personal on September 12, 2010. In her career as a favorite, is The Master of All Desires — writer, she published six historical novels a madcap story set in France, 1556. full of wit, details of the era in which the Catherine de Medici seeks the legendary book is set, and headlined by indomitable weapon called the Master of All Desires but often fallible and flawed women out in order to do away with her husband’s to prove they could fend for themselves mistress. But the Master — a mummified in a male-dominated world. With her head that lives in a box — is the very effortless talent for blending the absurdity quintessence of malice, twisting every and joy of everyday life with a hint of the wish he grants into destruction. Enter supernatural, and while never forgetting Sibille de la Roque, brimming with her to underpin her tales with an impeccable, own forbidden desires, which include a unsentimental exploration of the past, dashing cavalier; the battle that ensues Judith’s novels are unlike anyone else’s — offers a perfect amalgam of a world where unique reflections of the parallels between pageantry conceals a nation teetering on the worlds of today and yesterday. the brink of chaos.

In her bestselling Margaret of Ashbury Judith had a wonderful idea for her trilogy, A Vision of Light, In Pursuit of next novel, which she unfortunately Judith Merkle Riley (1942-2010) the Green Lion, and The Water Devil, was never able to start. However, this Judith introduced us to Margaret, an significant loss to us as readers is offset by illiterate faith healer whose quest to set down her thoughts in the works she left behind — true and lasting testaments to her writing sends her on a series of dangerous but always humorous own amazing, indomitable spirit. escapades. She falls in love with an ill-tempered monk, chases She will be greatly missed. And wherever she is, I hope she’s after an evil alchemist, and helps exorcise a demon from a spring laughing. near the haunted manor house where her in-laws reside. In the midst of all this, we get a panoramic view of an ordinary woman’s C.W. GORTNER is the author of The Last Queen and existence in 14th-century England, and the travails imposed on The Confessions of Catherine de Medici. He first met Judith Merkle Riley at the HNS Conference in Salt Lake City, those of her gender. where she was a special guest; due in part to her referral, he Judith’s next novel, The Oracle Glass, leapt ahead to 17thwas offered representation by Jennifer Weltz of the Jean V. century France and the poisonous intrigue of the court of Naggar Literary Agency, who subsequently sold his books at auction.

Louis XIV, where a crippled young woman, cast aside by her family, disguises herself as a hundred-year-old soothsayer and is

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by C.W. Gortner

Judith... was that rare breed of author: she did not take herself seriously.”

HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Features | 17

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an interview with Harry Sidebottom

r. Harry Sidebottom teaches classical History at Oxford D University and was one of the speakers at the UK Historical Novel Society conference in Manchester this year. Myfanwy Cook talks with him about his novels, works noted for achieving a balance between telling captivating adventure stories and creating a vividly accurate picture of the historical period in all its gruesome gore and glittering glory.

MC: Were you inspired to write your novels because of your academic interest in the Roman Empire or in ancient warfare?

HS: Ancient warfare; I was writing a book called Fields of Mars: A Cultural History of Greek and Roman Battle, and had just done the chapter on siege fighting when I decided to plan the Warrior of Rome series, so I decided to centre the first novel, Fire in the East, on a siege.

One day I will go back and finish the big history book; after all, I had spent two years researching and writing about a third of it!

MC: Have you always wanted to write fiction?

HS: Ever since I was a child I have written bits and bobs of fiction, in lots of different genres (historical, fantasy, at one point I wanted to be the next-generation Martin Amis). It just took me a long time to get the courage to try to get a novel published.

MC: Did you grow up reading historical fiction or was it a taste that you developed later on?

HS: I grew up reading Alfred Duggan, Graham Shelby, Mary Renault and John James.

MC: Have you any favourite historical authors that you read to relax or any novels that you’ve read, which stand out for you?

HS: Among the historical novelists I read to relax are Cecelia Holland, Robert Low, Tim Severin, Robert Harris, and Allan Mallinson. My all-time favourite historical novelists are Patrick O’Brian, Mary Renault, and J.G. Farrell.

MC: In Fire in the East, the first of your series, where did the inspiration for Ballista come from?

HS: One of my favourite classical texts is a series of (semifictional) lives of Roman emperors and pretenders which we call the “Augustan History”. There is a biography of Ballista among them. What little we know about the historical Ballista is all in the third novel Lion of the Sun. MC: When you are writing, is it the characters or the theme (e.g. treachery, courage etc.) that is the most important to you?

HS: On balance, I think the novels are character-driven. I always wanted to write a long series, so the characters had time to change, grow up, get disillusioned, etc. But having said that, each novel is very deliberately constructed around a different big theme.

MC: Coming from an academic background, do you find it difficult to decide which historical facts and details to include and which to leave out?

HS: The sources for the period in which the novels are set, the mid-third century AD, are so bad, and thus so little is known, that there is next to nothing to leave out!

MC: In King of Kings you focus on the intrigue at the imperial court and religious fanaticism as well as the threat from Persia. Do you find it easier to write about the intrigues or the action-packed battle scenes?

HS: The intrigues need careful plotting. For the action sequences,

by Myfanwy Cook

There is... no substitute for going and seeing for yourself.”

18 | Features | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

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Seeing for Yourself

it is more a case of immersing myself in it and writing quickly.

MC: Lion of the Sun, which is the third part of the Warrior of Rome series, is set in Mesopotamia in AD 260. How difficult is it for you to write about a period, place and civilization that is so far removed for our own and yet to bring it alive in the mind of the reader?

HS: I think the important thing is to bring out the differences between us and the ancients as well as the similarities. Far too many bad historical novelists just dress up modern people as Roman Centurions, Napoleonic soldiers or whatever.

MC: What are you working on at the moment?

HS: Two books. I am writing the fourth Warrior novel, The Caspian Gates, and co-editing a two-volume scholarly book, The Encyclopaedia of Ancient Battles, with Prof. Michael Whitby.

MC: How has your interest in classical art influenced your writing?

HS: My interest in classical art helps me understand what the ancient world looked like, but also acts as a great way into the

thought world of people under the Roman Empire.

MC: Have you visited the sites that you write about and is so what impact has that had on your writing?

HS: I try to visit almost all the sites I write about; after all, I did start out as an archaeologist. There is no substitute for going and seeing for yourself. For example, there are endless photos looking in at the famous Library of Celsus at Ephesus. But only by standing in front of it can you look out and see what is to be seen — its relationship to the other buildings, the mountains etc. Having said all of that, for The Caspian Gates, one area of the Caucasus is just too dangerous to visit!

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MYFANWY COOK is a prize-winning writer of short fiction and has had numerous short stories published.

Her particular historical interest lies in examining local history within the larger context of international history.

She runs regular workshops on how to write fiction, with the aim of enabling aspiring writers to fulfil their potential.

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For further details of Harry Sidebottom’s latest novel, Lion of the Sun, please see http://www.harrysidebottom.co.uk.

HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Features | 19

Charles Finch’s cozy mysteries

uthor Charles Finch takes the venerable cozy in a new A direction.

If you’re tired of the mean streets of rough-hewn cities and sick of the alcoholic, hard-bitten anti-hero protagonist, I invite you into the world of Charles Finch. His character, Charles Lenox, inhabits an England where Queen Victoria rules and the British Empire never knows the night. With the marvelous young Lady Jane Grey at his side, life is good indeed. A genuinely nice guy, a gentleman in the best sense, he is the sort of man with whom you want to spend time. And when crime intrudes into his life, this young man takes it in stride, using his intellect and innate good sense to set it all right.

HNR recently interviewed the creator of this character, who seems as apart from one’s expectations as his books are from the usual mysteries that fill our shelves. Charlie, as his agent calls him, is just now reaching his thirtieth birthday.

Born in New York and raised in various northeastern locales, he graduated from Phillips Academy and Yale, majoring in English and History. He obtained a master’s degree in Renaissance English Literature from the University of Oxford.

In his publicity shot, he seems a spare, intent young man, possibly not unlike Lenox himself. Unusual for one just flirting with thirty, he seems somewhat shy of modern media, with no large presence on the Internet. The domain of his author web page has even expired.

He explains, “…I’m not a very good marketer. It runs counter to my personality, which is, I think, outgoing but a little bit selfeffacing. I could never grab someone and say, ‘You have to read my books!’ I say to every friend who expresses an interest in my books ‘Don’t read them.’”

But many have. With the release of A Stranger in Mayfair this month, his mystery series is now four books strong. The first, A Beautiful Blue Death, introduced a young Charles Lenox, an

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amateur sleuth who sets out to investigate the murder of his girlfriend’s servant. It was named one of Library Journal’s Best Books of 2007 and was nominated for the Agatha Award for best new mystery of 2007. The September Society in 2008 and The Fleet Street Murders in 2009, two books that further fleshed out the gentleman crimesolver, followed. The latter was one of three books nominated for a Nero Award, which will be awarded at the end of the year. Think of this series as a sort of masculine cozy, perhaps Agatha Christie meets Sherlock Holmes, possibly reminiscent of John Creasey’s Toff.

Escapist literature perhaps, but a series that appeals to the intellect as much as it does to our better natures.

Sherlock Holmes is often mentioned in comments about Finch’s work, a comparison the author feels is a largely undeserved: “I grew up obsessively in love with the Sherlock Holmes stories, so the comparison is an honor – but I agree that it’s a little glib. Lenox works more by intuition and the study of character than pure deduction, in part because I’m not clever enough (and I don’t say that out of false modesty) to write the kind of deep deductive stories Conan Doyle did. Lenox is also much more conventional, of course, partly because I wanted to have satellite characters – a brother, wife, friends – who I could bring into his world. Holmes was very alone. Where they’re similar, I think, is that both venture into any level of society without regard for rank, but rather a pure regard for the truth. And I think they also both clash with Scotland Yard, which is an important similarity.”

The very ordinariness of Lenox is one of the books’ virtues.

Creating a character one can genuinely like was very much intentional. “Lenox is a quiet Victorian householder whose problems – love, self-doubt – are less histrionic than, say, alcoholism or a past haunted by violence, the sort of thing many current writers choose to burden their detectives with. He’s a normal man who just happens to love his work. And I think that helps me have it both ways, in that the books can have the two

by Ken Kreckel

Lenox is... a quiet Victorian householder whose problems — love, self-doubt — are less histrionic than, say, alcoholism or a past haunted by violence, the sort of thing many current writers choose to burden their detectives with.”

20 | Features | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

sold my first two books to St. Martin ’s, just because I wanted to study more and the books didn’t take all my time. I’m back again in fact, doing a DPhil here at Oxford.”

So just how does someone study at Oxford and still write fiction? “I write quickly, but only after the ideas have gestated in my mind. So I’ll spend the morning doing chores or spacing out and then write a chapter or two relatively quickly because I’ll have spent the previous hours working out what was going to happen, little turns of phrase I might use, plot devices, new characters, etc. I work a great deal here in the library of Merton College (where I’m writing this right now). Also I think someone like Jonathan Franzen said ‘Nobody is producing firstrate fiction at a desk with an internet connection’ or something to that effect, and that seems absolutely right to me.” There’s that departure from many of his generation again.

With his fourth in the Charles Lenox series just released, the author seems intent on spreading his wings. “I’m working on a couple of non-mystery projects actually, including a contemporary novel and possibly a work for young adults. I’m also thinking about a stand-alone mystery.” But he is not about to abandon Charles Lenox completely, adding, “And I’m actually at work on the fifth Lenox book, too.”

So what does the future have in store for this still-young writer? “I think to keep being published as long as I live. To keep having readers.” But he keeps two feet firmly planted on the ground as well: “Like everyone, I cultivate secret fantasies of success, but I tend to step back from them and think: You sold your first book at 25, you’ve published a book a year since then; just remember how lucky that is.”

For the self-effacing Charlie, it is more than luck, I think – but to have him say it just makes him so darn likeable.

Just like his books.

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KEN KRECKEL, another unabashed Anglophile who has lived in London, is a features editor for HNR.

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sides of Victorian life confront each other: the staid Hyde Park club world and the darker margins that someone like Conan Doyle described, the gin houses and rough docks and so forth.”

“What I do think I can do, though, is create atmosphere and characters. So I think just as much during the planning stages about my characters’ lives as I do about the facts and nature of the mystery involved. Often Lenox’s personal and professional lives will overlap, but I hope in a way that’s not too clunky or silly.

I don’t like mysteries where a huge number of personal demons come out for the detective. It’s too self-consciously ‘literary’ for me.”

He admits the character and the creator share a bond: “Parts of him are definitely based on me – the preference for home and hearth, the interests in books and politics – but many parts of his character are invention. As for his niceness, I think it was a decorous age! But he certainly has an active conscience, which I hope I do, too.”

By now the reader may be wondering, why should this American set his books in England during the Victorian age? An unabashedly admitted Anglophile, it reflects his love for authors such as Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Elizabeth Gaskell. Finch tries to “hew closer to traditional Victorian fiction than to contemporary historical detective fiction.” His first book was set in familiar territory for both himself and many readers of the genre.“For The September Society I combined a great deal of real life experience – being a graduate student at Oxford and therefore understanding the traditions there, from the colleges to the porters to the formal halls – with a good deal of book-research into what Oxford would have been like around 1868, i.e. which pubs were there then, what student life might have been like, and so forth. I also love to read about hard historical fact in historical mysteries, so I tend to put in a lot of information. I think it makes a nice change of pace from the softer elements of the books. It’s not to everyone’s tastes, and I think Colin Dexter and/or the television writers behind Morse probably prefer to let Oxford stay as background rather than foregrounding it the way I occasionally like to.”

The sense of the Victorian age that pervades Finch’s work seems effortless. “Some of the research I do for my books finds its way directly into the text, for instance a mini-history of a real person or building or whatever, but other research I let seep into the work without directly using it. That’s the best kind I think – less lazy.” One particular example is his depiction of Lenox standing election for the House of Commons. “In terms of the election, it was really my history of reading Victorian fiction that enabled me to (I hope) capture the tone and reality of what Lenox’s by-election would have been like. A mixture of invention and research.”

Remarkably, the author himself really doesn’t know where all this comes from. “Coming out of college I wanted to be a writer, and one of the first projects I began on was the first book in the Lenox series, what eventually became A Beautiful Blue Death.

In retrospect it’s a mystery to me why I wrote it…I don’t really remember the genesis in my mind of the idea or why I wanted to do it, I just remember being hard at work for a few months and having a manuscript. It’s strange. I went to Oxford after I

HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Features | 21

Reviews |

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QUEST FOR HONOUR Sam Barone, Arrow, 2010, £7.99, pb, 616pp, 9780099536765 3154 B.C. Mesopotamia. The rapacious King Shulgi of Sumer is planning to extend his empire northwards and capture the small city-state of Akkad. Victory is certain: King Eskkar of Akkad has a few thousand men; Sumer has a mighty army.

For Eskkar, the choice is simple: either see his city destroyed and his people enslaved, or find a way to outwit the enemy.

This is a ‘band of brothers’ fast-paced, actionpacked book. The first 350 pages follow Eskkar as he trains horsemen, archers, javelin throwers, lancers, swordsmen and slingsmen in new ways of fighting. They must be disciplined, tough and stand by each other. The last 250 pages follow the final twelve-day campaign. Will Eskkar’s innovative tactics will be enough to save Akkad? The Akkadians are Bronze Age prototype Americans, with men who work hard and rise by their own merits, and women who are strong and stand by their men. The Akkadian ethos is democratic.

‘Everyone knew the king and queen of Akkad ruled for all their subjects, not just those who possessed wealth.’

Queen Trella, like many Akkadian women, is feisty and intelligent. Not only do they command respect in their own right, they are also terrific at sex. They have to be. Akkadian men are, naturally, rampant and insatiable, and expect a high level of sexual expertise.

Eskkar’s battle tactics usually go according to plan A, but if they don’t, plan B is equally brilliant, innovative and works splendidly. Even Eskkar’s spies, who face a horrible death if discovered, are fine. I didn’t have to worry about anybody when I wanted to be on tenterhooks. I enjoyed it but it was somewhat predictable. Strangely, religion, which according to the written and archaeological evidence, was of major importance, is largely missing.

Elizabeth Hawksley

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IN THE GRIP OF THE MINOTAUR Farnham Bishop and Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, Black Dog Books, $19.95, pb, 194pp, 9781928619987 The story is set in the Bronze Age Mediterranean, where King Minos rules the sea with his fleet and terrorizes his enemies with the threat of feeding them to the Minotaur. Troy, 22 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

ruled by the pusillanimous King Dardanus, is a tributary state on the edge of the Cretan empire.

Into this world sails Ragnarr, prince of the Swedish Goths, on a trading mission to Troy. Ragnarr is big, blond, handsome, chivalrous, and fearless in battle — a precursor to Conan the Barbarian with a dash of Sir Galahad. As the story progresses, he is loved by two beautiful princesses — the winsome Ilia of Troy and the proud, headstrong Ariadne of Knossos. Entanglements ensue, with Ragnarr always struggling to do the right thing by both ladies. The story culminates with the Goths burning Knossos to the ground (while being careful not to “dishonor” the women).

The book is a charming antique. Written by two young Americans who were Harvard roommates, and first serialized in 1916 in the pulp magazine Adventure, it belongs to the same era of perfervid prose as the Mars books of Edgar Rice Burroughs and the African adventures of H. Rider Haggard.

A quote will give the flavor (Valgerd, Ragnarr’s second in command speaks): “I will endure it no more!” he cried fiercely. “For two days our lord has not been with us, and here we bide shut in like salmon in a weir, unknowing what they do to him.

Mayhap these dogs have slain him and even now shout in triumph over his corpse! Force the door!

Snatch up whatso ye find! We will avenge our master or die, taking some of these devils with us!”

They don’t write them like that anymore. I smiled all the way through.

Bruce Macbain THE PERICLES COMMISSION Gary Corby, Minotaur, 2010, $24.99/C$29.99, hb, 304pp, 9780312599027 “A dead man fell from the sky, landing at my feet with a thud.” With this opening line, Corby promises an entertaining read, a promise that he more than adequately fulfills.

The setting is Athens, 461 B.C., in the midst of the years of peace that lie between the Persian and the Peloponnesian wars. The victim is Ephialtes, the beloved statesman who only days earlier defeated the Council of the Aeropagus and brought democracy to Athens. The witness is 20-year-old Nicolaos, who is subsequently hired by the upand-coming politician Pericles to investigate the murder. A beautiful virgin-priestess, Diotima, and Nicolaos’s own pesky younger brother, Socrates, both frustrate him with their attempts to help him in his investigation. Although the assassination catapults Nicolaos from the mundane life of an apprentice sculptor into the thrilling world of Athenian politics, he is acutely aware that if he fails to find the murderer before the council members reclaim control of the government, then the fledgling democracy will collapse and he will be forced to return to his previous way of life.

One does not need knowledge of classical history to enjoy this mystery, because details of culture, politics and history are so deftly woven into the threads of the story that life in ancient Athens comes vividly alive. As for myself, I love this period of history and look forward to the reading more about Nicolaos and the Athenian Golden Age. Nancy J. Attwell PENELOPE’S DAUGHTER Laurel Corona, Berkley, 2010, $15.00, pb, 352pp, 9780425236628 Born soon after her father Odysseus sails for Troy, Xanthe is left behind to grow up on the rocky isle of Ithaca, hearing stories of the parent she never knew. Everyone in the palace waits and hopes for Odysseus’s return – but when the other heroes of the Trojan War come home and Odysseus remains absent, Ithaca falls into unrest. With Xanthe’s brother Telemachus too young and weak to take his father’s place, the young men of Ithaca see marriage to Xanthe as the surest way to claim the vacant throne. To save herself from abduction, Xanthe must fake her own death and escape to Sparta, where the beautiful Helen has returned to keep court alongside Menelaus. Growing up in Sparta, Xanthe comes to know the troubled woman who caused the Trojan War, while experiencing a spiritual and sexual awakening beyond anything she has known in Ithaca. But will it ever be safe to return to her homeland? And will Xanthe’s destiny always be tied to the father she has never seen?

Laurel Corona brings Homeric Greece vividly to life, offering new perspectives on Helen, Penelope, and other female figures of the Odyssey. Her portrayal of ancient Greek religion is insightful, and Xanthe is a brave but refreshingly vulnerable heroine. Nonetheless, the framework Corona chooses for her tale – Xanthe weaving the story of her life in hindsight as she is locked upstairs during Odysseus’s final battle with the suitors – is often confusing, and robs the narrative of its immediacy. Xanthe’s romance with Peisistratus is too convenient and orderly to be believable or engaging, and the final scenes seem rushed as Xanthe sits back and watches her fate decided for her. While beautifully told, this novel leaves the reader craving a more satisfying conclusion to all of Xanthe’s struggles.

Ann Pedtke NERO, A NOVEL Vincent Cronin, Stacey International, 2010, £14.95/$25.00, hb, 399pp, 9781906768140 This novel is written in the form of a memoir by Mela, the younger brother of Lucius Seneca, who is invited by Agrippina, Claudius Caesar’s second wife, to teach her nine-year-old son, Domitius.

This is no easy task for Mela, because the boy is Ancient — Classical

lazy and uninterested, and Agrippina dictates what can and can’t be taught. Lucius falls in love and marries Paula, and her insightful comments bring the boy and tutor to a new understanding.

As their relationship develops, Lucius sees Domitius’s dysfunctional family at first hand and begins to understand Domitius’s complex nature.

Claudius had little time for the boy, favouring his own son, Britannicus, and Agrippina had an unnatural preference for Domitius. Paula dissuades Lucius from antagonising Agrippina and suggests ways of gaining her approval. With this achieved, Lucius sees a transformation in the boy when he befriends him and becomes his closest adviser.

Claudius dies in suspicious circumstances, and Britannicus dies prematurely. At the age of sixteen, Domitius is crowned Emperor, and takes the name of Nero. He marries Octavia, who has been trained in household tasks by his mother, but comes into direct opposition from Agrippina who has become intrusive in his affairs and dislikes Poppaea, his mistress.

Agrippina’s fate is sealed and Nero becomes progressively more powerful, alienating Lucius and his other advisers, and eliminating rivals. He cannot live with the guilt he feels over his mother’s death, until the captive Cilician‑born Roman, Paul, tells him he has already been forgiven by Jesus. Still discontented, he blames the burning of Rome on the Christians and scandalises Lucius, the Senate, and the Roman people with other outrages, little realising there is a consequence for his actions.

Based on facts, this is an absorbing, didactic and informative read.

Janet Williamson THE ARMOUR OF ACHILLES Glyn Iliffe, Macmillan, 2010, £12.99, hb, 538pp, 9780230529304 The Armour of Achilles is the third in what I assume is to be a quartet of books retelling the story of the Trojan Wars and the quarrels between the Greek heroes of Iliad fame – Menelaus, Helen, Paris, Odysseus, Achilles et. al.

The story started when Helen left Menelaus and ran away to Troy with Paris, and by this book the war has reached the stage where the Greeks are encamped outside the walls of Troy some ten years later. Now we have reached the point where the Greeks sack Lyrnessus, and the book largely follows the events portrayed in the Iliad culminating in the death of Hector and the killing of Achilles by an arrow in his heel, thus fulfilling his mother’s prophesy that he would die near Troy but that his name would be remembered forever. The romantic element provided is between Eperitus and Astynome, although the author himself admits that this didn’t actually happen and there is no evidence of the bitter feud between Eperitus and his father. But it all adds to the story and makes the central characters more human rather than simply icons of myth, legend and history.

As I knew the Iliad, I was able to pick up on the events portrayed in this book fairly easily, but the modern reader who may not have had even a Classical — 1st Century

smattering of a classical education could well be a little mystified. A short resumé of what had gone before would have been helpful, although the map at the beginning of the book put the places in some perspective.

I enjoyed this book. The characters were wellportrayed and came across as human beings, and I look forward to reading the end of the story in the next installment.

Marilyn Sherlock SOLDIER OF ROME Ben Kane, Preface, 2010, £12.99, hb, 404pp, 9781848090156 This is the last novel in the Forgotten Legion series. In it, Romulus and Tarquinius finally return to Rome. Romulus is reunited with his twin sister Fabiola, the mystery of who their father really is – which has run through the whole series – is revealed, and the threads of the story are finally brought together.

All this is cleverly interwoven with the plot to kill Caesar. Tarquinius, of course, being a haruspex (a soothsayer who can foretell the future), has intimations of this, though nothing is clear. We know of course that Caesar was warned to beware the Ides of March and ignored the warning, so this fits in well with the received story. Tarquinius’s ability to see the future will require a suspension of disbelief for modern rationalists, but it is very much in keeping with the thought of the period and therefore adds to the authenticity. The religious beliefs of the time are convincingly evoked.

The answer to the question about Romulus’s and Fabiola’s paternity is kept secret until the very end, although we have long suspected who it is. The fact that this is the man who raped their mother has provided a tension which has run through the whole book. The resolution is both tragic and satisfying, although I confess to being disappointed that this is the last book in the series. I would really like to hear about the further adventures of Romulus and Tarquinius. However, for those of us who have been enthralled by the series, there is good news: Ben Kane is embarking on another trilogy, the first book in the series being Soldier of Carthage, set as the title suggests against the background of the struggle between Carthage and Rome.

Neville Firman EMPIRE Steven Saylor, St. Martin’s, 2010, $25.99, hb, 608pp, 9780312381011 / Corsair, 2010, £16.99, hb, 576pp, 9781845298586 In Empire, the sequel to his New York Times bestseller Roma, Steven Saylor returns to the multigenerational saga, this time depicting the fortunes and tragedies of his fictional Pinarius family during the ostentatious reigns of the emperors — an era of incredible wealth, intrigue, and corruption. Saylor’s encyclopedic knowledge and sense of detail are on ample display, as is his impressive ability to weave centuries of history into an entertaining narrative. From the follies of Nero and Caligula

to the oddities of Claudius and paranoiac tyranny of Domitian, Saylor brings to vivid life the swift, often lethal changes in imperial power, as well as the upheaval caused for those who, upon serving one emperor, found themselves subjected to the proclivities or vengeance of his successor.

Because Saylor mines a richly documented time in Rome’s history, there is ample grandeur and brutality, even if the sheer volume of information can prove overwhelming. Empire has some intense set-pieces, such as the horrific mass execution of Christians under Nero; a day-long bloody event at the newly completed Coliseum; a banquet of death in which Domitian decides one man’s fate based on a whim; and a transcendent encounter with a lion.

Yet because so much of interest happens, the reader is often whisked through momentous events, such as the eruption of Vesuvius, while left to linger at erudite philosophical discussions. At times, the fictional protagonists fail to engage as much as their historical counterparts, and Saylor’s female characters are mere sketches, though many Roman women had significant power. Nevertheless, these are minor quibbles in an otherwise magnificent feat of storytelling; for despite his unwieldy canvas, Saylor has once again managed to capture the indomitable spirit and enduring legend of Rome herself.

C.W. Gortner STILL WATERS Marilyn Todd, Severn House, 2010, $28.95/£19.99, hb, 220pp, 9780727868992 The head of the Krypteia (Spartan secret police) enlists the high priestess Iliona, ostensibly to bless a crossroads tavern and posting station, part of a communications network designed to unify Greece. Iliona wants to protect Spartan influence against the growing hegemony of the Athenians and their suppression of women. Before long she is investigating the theft of a gold shipment, an Olympic champion’s chariot accident, and the hanging of a popular tavern hostess. Iliona has to drink quite a bit while she is snooping around at various festivals, resulting in a hangover described in a way that brings to mind Lucky Jim. On occasion she resorts to what we might call fraud to establish her powers as a priestess, but always in service of a higher good.

Todd’s best writing involves close observation of nature, such as when the helot physician Jocasta takes advantage of the upcoming autumn equinox to gather medicinal herbs, such as “horehound, whose flowery stems were excellent in combating digestive disorders.” Strong independent women struggle against male dominance in many guises throughout this book.

James Hawking

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1st century

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TIBERIUS JULIUS ALEXANDER Daniel M. Friedenberg, Prometheus, 2010, HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 23

$22.00/C$27.50, hb, 214pp, 9781616141752 Tiberius Julius Alexander was a real historical figure, born a Jew in the city of Alexandria in the first century A.D. In this fictional memoir, he tells the story of his life, including his break with his Jewish heritage, his rise in the Roman army, and his participation, on the Roman side, in the siege of Jerusalem. In the novel, he personally allows a Roman soldier to burn down the Second Temple where his family has worshipped, the holiest place to believing Jews. In the context of the novel, this act becomes understandable. The author succeeds in making Alexander seem like a flawed human being rather than a monster, which takes some doing. He rapes his true love and then runs from the suggestion that he marry her. He watches crucifixions with pleasure. He never becomes likable, though at times the reader may pity him.

I have a serious interest in Roman history and am awed by the author’s learning. We get insightful thumbnail sketches of many historical figures. Even the brief, throwaway comments on individuals as varied as the Gracchi, Augustus, and Ovid are striking and astute. I sense that the author’s knowledge of ancient Jewish, Greek, and Egyptian, as well as Roman, history is profound. There are interesting reflections on politics, philosophy and religion. But the novel is long on exposition and has few fully developed scenes between the characters.

It abounds in lengthy, convoluted sentences densely packed with information, which can be laborious reading. Just the same, if you are entranced by the history of the ancient world, you will find this book extremely rewarding.

Phyllis T. Smith CLAUDIUS Douglas Jackson, Corgi, 2010, £6.99, pb, 460pp, 9780552162494 A.D. 43-51. Emperor Claudius desperately needs a resounding military victory and Britain is his target. Only a union of the island’s warlike tribes will have a chance of repelling an invasion by the mighty army of Rome. Caratacus is the only tribal leader capable of creating a union solid enough to face the terror of Roman warfare.

Between these two men, Rufus, a valiant but frequently terrified young slave, has charge of the Emperor’s secret weapon, the loyal and intelligent elephant Bersheba. Caratacus, beset by disloyalty and ultimately betrayed by Cartimandua, the woman he once rejected, pays the price demanded of a man holding outdated notions of honour against the iron pragmatism of Rome.

The author has been justly praised for his superb recounting of the vital battles that went to shape Britain; they are vivid, detailed and precise, horrific and bloody. The dreadful aftermath is given its full place in the reality of war. Tiny details remain in the memory: the corpse who died crosseyed; a slaughtered woman whose features retain only mild irritation. Hopefully Rufus’s beloved son, Gaius, a silent and docile three year old, will not have been traumatised after living through such horrors.

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This is an ambitious, praiseworthy novel but in spite of plenty of back-story, it would be best read after the prequel Caligula. The sequel Boudicca will be worth waiting for when the powerful woman, so far very much in the background, will take full and formidable part in the story of Britain.

Nancy Henshaw HERO OF ROME Douglas Jackson, Bantam, 2010, £12.99, hb, 322pp, 9780593065129 September, A.D. 59. In order to obtain the necessary military experience to make a career in politics, Tribune Gaius Valerius Verrens has a place on the staff of Marcus Livinius Drusus. Although only a temporary attachment, Gaius finds that he has a liking and aptitude for military life, and he hopes to become involved in the forthcoming campaign being organised by Paulinus, the Governor of Roman Britain, against the Druids.

However, his hopes are dashed when he is sent to Colonia (Camulodunum) in the winter to oversee necessary road and building maintenance. Gwylm, a Druid, is sent by Aymer the Druid High Priest to encourage and prepare the tribes for rebellion against the Roman invader. The assault on Boudicca and the rape of her daughters provides the spark, and the combined British tribes march on Colonia, where Drusus and a small band of regular soldiers who backed up two thousand retired veterans must face their fury.

This is the first in a trilogy featuring Valerius Verrens. The characters, both Roman and British, are well drawn and the descriptions are clear and concise, giving the reader a credible picture of what life must have been like in Roman Britain. The battle scenes are superb, exciting, and nail-biting.

I haven’t read Douglas Jackson’s previous offerings, but I certainly will now. If you like Simon Scarrow’s Roman novels, you will like this. Recommended.

Mike Ashworth Tribune Gaius Valerius Verrens is sent to Colonia to keep his cohort battle-ready over the winter of A.D. 59. There he meets a community of veteran Roman soldiers, money-grabbing officials, and proud native Britons, one of whom is Maeve, who he promptly falls in love with. However docile the natives appear, unrest is brewing; a travelling druid tells eager listeners to wait for a sign that the time is right for rebellion. On the death of King Prasutagus, the Romans claim his kingdom for Emperor Nero. This is the match that ignites the Britons, led by the wronged wife of Prasutagus, Boudicca. The British army surround and attack Colonia on their rampage towards Londinium.

Valerius must defend the town and attempt to halt the Britons. The description of the ensuing fighting and killing is technical, detailed and gory.

There is a tension between the setting up of Valerius as the hero and an inclination to side with the downtrodden British natives. Certainly, part of me wanted to Boudicca to win and Valerius, therefore, to lose. I would also have liked to learn more of Boudicca and see her painted more three-

dimensionally.

Where this book is most successful is in its descriptions of army life and Roman warfare and its evocation of the pride and affection felt by and between Roman soldiers, which was believable, fascinating and touching.

Victoria Lyle

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2nd century

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REQUIEM FOR A SLAVE: A Libertus Mystery of Roman Britain Rosemary Rowe, Severn House, 2010, $28.95/£19.99, 240pp, 9780727868770 Citizen Libertus is a designer of decorative tiles for wealthy Romans living in the westernmost outpost of the Empire’s lands: Britain in A.D. 170, and specifically, the town of Glevum (modern Gloucester). And of course, he’s a detective! This is a cozy village mystery in a time long before Miss Marple peered through her cottage windows in St. Mary Mead, but the elements are pretty much the same: eccentric villagers, a couple of dead bodies, the local careful observer who uses his or her wits, experience and happenstance to solve the crime, usually at some personal risk. The plot for this tenth Libertus mystery is convoluted if a bit thin, but the characters are likeable, and one hopes they will not come to harm as they track down the murderer. Rowe’s introduction to the story provides a solid context for these early RomanoBritish times, which is helpful, and the book itself has plenty of historical information (possibly too much) about the daily lives and work of the people from slaves to tradesmen to government officials.

Although this is the first of these mysteries which I have read, I discerned a touch of “series fatigue” in the writing: some repetitive diction, a less-thanclear plotline, and a hastily drawn conclusion that left me wondering if I had missed a chapter at the end. Overall though, it’s a light, enjoyable read that made me think it might be worth trying some of the earlier novels in the series.

Mary F. Burns

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3rd century

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WARRIOR OF ROME: Lion of the Sun Harry Sidebottom, Michael Joseph, 2010, £14.99, hb, 381pp, 9780718153328 In the eastern empire of Rome, the frail Valerian has been betrayed and captured by the Persian Sassanid King of Kings. This same year, 260 A.D., his son in the West, Gallienus, has defeated the barbarians who attacked unarmed northern Italy.

It is four years since the siege and fall of Arete, and General Ballista remains in Mesopotamia. Seized with his Emperor, he can only look on helplessly, vowing to avenge the treachery and to destroy all those who have brought about this humiliation.

Thus, seamlessly, Harry Sidebottom continues 1st Century — 3rd Century

his Warrior of Rome series with this third part, Lion of the Sun, returning to firmer ground in a brutal and gripping account of the attempt to destroy Rome from the very edges of empire.

Family interest in the shape of Ballista’s wife Julia and his sons makes for a softer edge to the story, but this does not lessen the impact of bloody ancient warfare, the carnage and human debris left to moulder on battlefields and in city streets.

There is a degree of historical obscurity in the events which are depicted here, and the author demonstrates a depth of research which introduces a new dimension to this genre. Facts garnered from obscure ancient documents and literature provide a convincing portrait of the ancient past.

As in the previous novels of the series, it is necessary to appreciate the Latin and other terms used in the text. Constant reference to the various appendices slows the flow of the story and footnotes would have been easier to use for key words.

The novel draws to a close with Queen Zenobia of Palmyra whispering nuggets of treason into willing ears. Harry Sidebottom writes with imaginative flair and undoubtedly has more engrossing scholarship to share with his readers.

Gwen Sly

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4th century

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VALERIA’S CROSS Kathi Macias & Susan Wales, Abingdon, 2010, $14.99, pb, 382pp, 9781426702150 Emperor Diocletian (r. 284-305 A.D.) is a brilliant leader whose innovative reforms reinvigorate the Roman Empire, but when his power starts to slip, he lashes out with a ferocious persecution of the Christians. During the latter years of his reign, thousands of men, women and children are brutally murdered because they refuse to worship him as a god. Diocletian’s wife Prisca and daughter Valeria convert to Christianity after studying the faith with a Coptic monk in Egypt.

Valeria’s fiancé, the commander of the Emperor’s elite Theban Legion, is martyred before their wedding, and Valeria is forced to marry the man responsible for his death (General Galerius).

Although Valeria struggles to understand how God could allow such horrific events, by His grace she eventually learns to love her husband.

The lack of period details leaves the reader’s imagination adrift: When Valeria goes “downstairs for dinner” it is easier to picture her in an English country home than in a Roman palace. There are also some major anachronistic flaws (Valeria learns French!). The book’s strength lies in its gentle depiction of the political tensions that play themselves out as a struggle-to-the-death between the old and the new religions of the Roman Empire.

Nancy J. Attwell

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5th century

4th Century — 6th Century

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ATTILA: The Judgment William Napier, St. Martin’s, 2010, $15.99, pb, 464pp, 9780312599003 / Orion, 2008, £6.99, pb, 592pp, 9780752893907 It is 449 A.D., and the Roman Empire is in danger of being overrun by barbarians. An army of Huns, led by their leader Attila, is assembled on the banks of the Danube River. This army of thousands had swept through Eastern and Western Europe, sacking, raping and killing Roman citizens in small towns and communities along its path.

There is only one man in the Empire who can stop this madman – General Aetius.

This is the third novel in Napier’s trilogy based upon the life of Attila. It tells the story of how a barbarian leader became ruthless and insane with revenge against the largest empire the world had known up to that time. As a young boy in Rome (held as hostage along with other barbarian leaders’ children), he learned the methods of the Roman way of living and hated the lifestyle of the Roman people. General Aetius had fallen in disfavor with the current Roman emperor, who was jealous of his popularity with the army. Faced with the imminent attack from the barbarian horde, the Emperor is forced to order Aetius to stop Attila from reaching Rome.

I have read all three books in the trilogy and have enjoyed the series. The author may have stretched the truth at times and added fictional characters to serve his story, but this wasn’t problematic. Since this installment featured more of the Roman response to the gathering Hun army and the final battle between the two forces in a country known as present-day France, Attila played a lesser role in this book. The battle scenes are gripping and chaotic. I especially enjoyed reading about the Knuckles, the fictional Roman soldiers who would play a key role in defeating Attila.

Highly recommended for those who enjoy books written about this time period. You don’t have to read the first two books in the series to enjoy this novel, but if you like well-developed characters, I would recommend reading the series from the beginning.

Jeff Westerhoff

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6th century

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THEODORA: Actress, Empress, Whore Stella Duffy, Virago, 2010, £15.99, hb, 344pp, 9781944082155 What a great subject! There can be few figures as controversial as Theodora, saint to some, sinner to others, whore to most. Stella Duffy has chosen well with the story of the rise of the actressprostitute to Empress of the 6th-century Roman Empire. Theodora’s course hardly seemed set fair for sovereignty, and Duffy does a great job of realising her secular transition. Brutally trained to perform lewd acts on and off stage, the most Theodora could have hoped for was a safe berth as someone’s mistress. As everyone knows, that’s what

happened, only the man was Emperor Justinian and he married her.

Duffy is not so strong on Theodora’s spiritual development. Her simplification of the complex controversy concerning Christ’s human and divine natures is adequate for the purposes of the story.

The events that place Theodora in the situation where conversion is possible are plausible enough.

It is the personal aspects of the experience that are muddled. Theodora’s acceptance of Christianity is accompanied by a vision of the pagan deity Isis.

Fortified by her new faith, she proceeds to Antioch where she gets so drunk she passes out, takes a lesbian lover, and turns to “necessary whoring” on behalf of her teacher Timothy. An odd conversion indeed. I don’t know if the church fathers really were pimps in the cause of Christ, but if they were, I hope the church is properly ashamed of it.

Set largely in a Constantinople teeming with life, much of it low, Duffy’s is a vivid romp through Byzantine bedrooms. It’s also a sympathetic representation of a woman doing her best in a man’s world, and a valiant attempt to rescue her from the malice of male historians like Procopius. Be warned, though: if you are offended by obscenities this is not the book for you.

Lucienne Boyce CHILD OF THE NORTHERN SPRING Persia Woolley, Sourcebooks Landmark, 2010, $16.99, pb, 576pp, 9781402245220 The story of Arthur and Guinevere has been told and retold numerous times, but this first volume of Woolley’s Guinevere trilogy, originally published in 1987, was one of the first to tell the tale from the Queen’s perspective. As the daughter of Leodegrance, King of Rheged, Guinevere is raised in relative comfort and luxury, and is educated in both the Old and the New Ways.

As Gwen comes of age, suitors begin calling, and among them is the new High King of Britain, Arthur. Guinevere is in no hurry to marry, and even considers fleeing to avoid marriage, but once she meets her prospective husband she recognizes that theirs will be a marriage between equals – and, quite possibly, a love match.

Readers who avoid Arthurian stories because of the preponderance of magic and mysticism will find Woolley’s realistic approach refreshing.

She captures the struggles that plagued Arthurian Britain – the conflict between the followers of the old Pagan ways and the early Christians; the battles over the borders of the small kingdoms that made up early Britain; and the feuds between warring factions looking to gain a foothold.

Guinevere is presented realistically as a young woman raised to the crown and well aware of all that comes with the life of a 6th-century British queen. Well-educated and wise beyond her years, she comes to Arthur prepared to help him rule, and unconcerned with the fripperies that wealth can bring. Her relationships with the women around her, including Brigit, her friend and foster sister, as well as her various servants, illuminate the oftenhidden lives of women of this era. This is quality HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 25

storytelling that has stood the test of time, and I look forward to seeing the other two volumes in this trilogy back in print.

Nanette Donohue

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7th century

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THE BLOOD OF ALEXANDRIA Richard Blake, Hodder & Stoughton, 2010, £19.99, hb, 501pp, 9780340951163 For a writer’s publicity machine to claim that his creation is ‘the most compelling anti-hero since Flashman’ is dangerous indeed. Instantly, this Flashman buff bridled at the very suggestion.

I have said before that it is difficult coming into a series several volumes in – what I really wanted to know is what Aelric, an Anglo-Saxon of modest origins, has done to be a leading figure in Byzantine administration at the age of 22. We hear that he nailed his colours to the mast when Heraclius deposed the tyrannical Emperor Phocas in AD 610, but how did he get to Constantinople in the first place?

Be that as it may, Aelric is in Alexandria to give effect to a land reform, but soon finds himself caught up in a scheme to find that previously overlooked holy relic, the chamber pot used by the infant Christ, becoming embroiled in riots and disputes between Christians of different hues and followers of the now-suppressed Old Faith of Egypt and surviving various assassination attempts. There is gore aplenty, and a suitably sickmaking depiction of impaling. Aelric, however, comes nowhere near Flashman in the anti-hero stakes, lacking the great man’s unquenchable joie de vivre, and also his creator’s ability to render complex events and motivations intelligible to a non-specialist (many moons ago I did a Byzantine option as part of my history degree, but still had to hasten to my books to sort out what was going on).

Ann Lyon THE DOVE OF DEATH Peter Tremayne, Minotaur, 2010, $25.99, hb, 384pp, 9780312551209 / Headline, 2010, £7.99, pb, 448pp, 9780755357628 It’s A.D. 670, and a pirate ship comes upon an Irish merchant vessel carrying Fidelma of Cashel and her husband Brother Eadulf. After the ship’s captain and Fidelma’s cousin Prince Bressal are brutally killed, Fidelma and her husband jump overboard and, through fate or fortune, are saved by a local monk who witnessed the pirate attack.

Once ashore, Fidelma refuses to continue their journey home. She is determined to learn the identity of the pirates, and will demand justice for her cousin’s death. Although a foreigner and not familiar with the local language, Fidelma disregards the danger to herself and her husband and persists in her investigations. Much is amiss in these coastal villages and all recent crimes appear to be related to the pirate raids of the Dove of Death.

This novel is part of an ongoing mystery series 26 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

featuring the sleuths Fidelma and Eadulf. Both are religieux but unlike the church at Rome, the Hibernian church at this time does not require celibacy. Fidelma is also a woman of substantial status, being a sister to the King of Muman and an advocate of the Breton law courts. This insures the couple hospitality and protection at the manor of the local Breton nobility.

Within this entertaining story are bits of Celtic language and lore and hints that conflicts with the church at Rome are coming. True to the requirements of a good mystery, the character’s motives are hidden until the end. For those who want to read the series in order, The Dove of Death follows the events of the Council of the Cursed.

Veronika Pelka

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11th century

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LANDWASTER Michael Burr, Quaestor2000, 2009, £9.99, pb, 222pp, 9781906836191 This is the story of Harald Hardraada, halfbrother to the King of Norway, who leads his Viking mercenaries on a brutal raid on the convent of Les Trois Etoiles in Brittany. The nuns are raped and murdered, among them Clothilde, who had acted as a foster‑mother to the noble‑born but unwanted cripple child, Ranulf de Lannion. Ranulf kills Clothilde’s attacker, which impresses Harald.

C

THE FOREVER QUEEN

The boy is abducted and renamed the Scraeling (native) and as they journey across land and sea he learns their language. He can also read, write, and speak the German and Greek languages fluently, so he is used as a secretary and interpreter – roles that erase his fear of the Vikings and give him a sense of purpose. His other purpose is to avenge Clothilde’s death, however long it takes.

Harald is renowned for combining fearlessness, ferocity and ruthlessness as he lays waste to all the territories he overcomes. He fights battles, topples kings, ravages lands, and masters the seas. When they journey to Byzantium, he becomes the King of Norway by using the Kievan Rus, the Emperor of Constantinople’s Royal Guard. He becomes romantically embroiled with the 56-year-old Empress Zoë, who sees him as a prospective father for her future progeny. The Scraeling assists her niece Eudokia, and is then seduced by her, unaware that she has a plot of her own to please Zoë.

When King Edward dies, Harald returns to England with his sights on the throne. Harold Godwinson and his son, Tostig, contest his right and confront him on a battlefield outside of York, watched by the cunning Scraeling.

This is intricately plotted and informative, but not for those readers who are sensitive or easily offended.

Janet Williamson MUSIC OF THE DISTANT STARS Alys Clare, Severn House, 2010, $28.95/£19.99,

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Helen Hollick, Sourcebooks, 2010, $16.99/C$19.99, pb, 656pp, 978140224068 The Forever Queen follows the career of Norman lady Emma from the time she is married at thirteen to Anglo-Saxon Aethelred “the Unready” in 1002 to the death of her son Harthacnut, king of Denmark and England in 1042. Upon the death of Aethelred, as unsuccessful a husband as he was a king, she marries the Danish invader Cnut, a much happier liaison, and between the two, births three sons and two daughters among whom are found two kings, one would-be king, and the wives of the Holy Roman Emperor and lords of Mantes and Boulogne. Plenty of material here for the door-stop length of what was called in its original UK publication The Hollow Crown (this is a revised edition) and what is poised to continue into at least a trilogy leading up to Hastings. As a minor character in The Forever Queen, we do get to meet a young bastard Duke of Normandy, Emma’s great-nephew, named William.

“Emma… looked at the man who was to be her husband, and knew, instantly, that she disliked him.”

How’s that for an opening hook to the first chapter? Though given a cast of scores, if not hundreds, of characters, the storytelling rarely misses a beat. Hollick is a master at making each historic scene come alive in the mind of a character with the most to lose. Short chapters, too, are an aid to pacing. They keep the reader moving rapidly, always wanting more, keeping the light on for just another page. Even the point-of-view hopping – allowed in UK novels although rarely in the US – works to her favor. We’re down in the rich, tasty, sugary sludge of historical fiction here, to my mind, the best the genre has to offer.

Ann Chamberlin 7th Century — 11th Century

hb, 256 pp, 9780727869418 Alys Clare’s Aelf Fen novels are set in East Anglia during the reign of William II (1087-1100).

It’s a land that still believes in the thin and porous veils between the worlds, although in process of the loss of the ancient, magical England upon which the Romans superimposed their civilization and which went underground with the Norman Conquest.

The animistic faith of healer apprentice Lassair sees life and spiritual meaning in everything from stones to the flight of birds. She has come to honor her recently departed grandmother when she finds another body in her grave, and the mystery is afoot.

Lassair soon wonders why a sweet-natured seamstress of visiting gentry had to die. Suspicion creeps uncomfortably towards the woman her brother intends to marry and her simple-minded sibling, newcomers to the community. Another body is found, compounding the mystery and adding suspects, until the killer traps Lassair herself.

This midsummer murder mystery set in the brooding fenland of half-water, half-earth is infused with a wonderful dynamic time period, engaging characters, and great dialogue from the gentry, the Fenland village’s inhabitants, and the more mysticminded sorcerers. The young heroine Lassair is not only a practical healer under her aunt’s tutelage, but is being singled out by a wizard for a spirit quest.

She is endearing, exasperating and true to both her age and Age—a wonder of creative construction!

Highly recommended.

Eileen Charbonneau THE MASUDA AFFAIR I. J. Parker, Severn House, 2010, $28.95/£19.99, hb, 304pp, 9780727869258 Sugawara Akitada, a Senior Secretary in the Ministry of Justice in 11th-century Japan, is very depressed as he has lost his only son in an epidemic the previous year. As typical in such cases, he and his wife suffer from the “darkness of the heart” following the loss of a child and their relationship is more than cool at this point. Traveling throughout the region, Akitada runs into a little boy who is obviously malnourished and bearing obvious bruises all over his body. Very quickly, Akitada finds himself caring about this mute boy but is quickly shocked when the boy’s supposed parents show up and demand both the return of the boy and financial compensation for trying to kidnap him. Leaving gold behind to use for care of the boy, Akitada backtracks to find the boy and assure his well-being when he is plunged into a deeper mystery: the death of a former dancer in the Kyoto district, and two potential suspects who fear his investigation will go too far. A story within a story concerns Akitada’s servant, Tora, who is involved in another mystery: the disappearance of his pregnant wife, a scenario that may eventually lead Akitada to the real killer of Peony and reveal the true identity of the boy Yori and perhaps an even larger transformation.

This wonderful historical mystery novel reveals so much of the history and culture of the Kyoto 11th Century — 12th Century

region, as well as containing a very informative section at the end of the book about the facts behind this fictional account. Whether you love great historical fiction or mysteries, The Masuda Affair is a tightly plotted, emotional yet logical murder mystery sure to grip a reader’s interest, leaving all highly satisfied!

Viviane Crystal

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12th century

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THE DE LACY INHERITANCE Elizabeth Ashworth, Myrmidon, 2010, £7.99/$12.95, pb, 280pp, 9781905802364 Nobleman Richard FitzEustace returns from the Holy Land suffering from leprosy and, according to the law of the land, must bid farewell to his home and family. Before he enters a nearby leper community, his grandmother asks him to bear a letter to her kinsman Robert de Lacy at Cliderhou Castle, requesting that he grant her his lands in his will, as she believes they are her entitlement. Richard agrees to do this, and when he arrives, discovers a place of solitude, with a cave and a healing spring, that better suit him than the leper hospice. Robert is amenable to granting the old lady’s request, but others have their eyes on his lands too, and conflict swiftly arises. Meanwhile, Richard’s headstrong young sister Johanna has been left at the mercy of her other brother, Roger, who wants her to marry a much older landowner.

Johanna refuses, and sets out to find Richard, hoping that he will intercede. In the process, she too becomes involved in the inheritance dispute at Cliderhou.

This is an appealing tale of daily life in the 12th century. The subject of lepers and their place in the community is fascinating. Richard FitzEustace is a complex hero, filled with guilt and self-doubt, but nevertheless striving to rise above his demons and do his best as he sees fit. Johanna is a sparky heroine with whom readers will readily engage.

Richard and Johanna’s dilemmas concerning lands, marriage, and their place in society are very much of their time. Although not billed as a young adult novel, I feel The de Lacy Inheritance would especially suit this particular market.

Susan Hicks THE TEMPLAR P.C. Doherty, Minotaur, 2010, $24.99, hb, 304pp, 9780312576837 / Headline, 2008, £7.99, pb, 384pp, 9780755338504 The astonishing events of the First Crusade are the subject of P.C. Doherty’s newest novel The Templar, which is slightly misnamed since Hugh de Payens and Godefroi de St Omer are only minor characters. As befits a story about a great mass movement, even Hugh’s fictional sister Eleanor, the heroine, seems to take up only incidental space in Doherty’s narrative.

The main character of The Templar is the Crusade itself, gruesome and terrible, heroic

and desperate, beginning on the hillside at Clermont and ending thousands of miles away at the massacre in Jerusalem. Eyewitness accounts abound of this extraordinary rampage for Christ, and Doherty has made intensive use of them. The result is a vivid and passionate account that makes much overcooked material seem raw and new. The faith and courage of the cross-bearers somehow exalts even their vicious violence; you get a glimpse, here, of how some Muslims must view jihad.

Doherty’s habit of breaking into long stretches of generalized description and bursts of passive voice – “Comets scored the sky. Summers burned white hot. Winter came in sheets of ice. Satan was seen everywhere” – actually sustains the feeling of an event out of control, which sweeps people along in its flood. After a while the hacking off of heads gets a little old. Nonetheless The Templar is an excellent example of reliving history; surely there is more to come, with perhaps more evidence of human agency in all this.

Cecelia Holland HOLY WARRIOR Angus Donald, Sphere, 2010, £6.99, pb, 500pp, 9780751542097 It is 1190 and King Richard is preparing to launch a crusade to seize Jerusalem from the Saracens. Amongst his great army will be a man whose reputation is sung about throughout the land, the Earl of Locksley – Robin Hood. The earl has assembled his own fighting force, with his band of erstwhile outlaws at its core – Little John, Will Scarlet, Brother Tuck and his song-maker and storyteller, Alan of Westbury.

Following on from Robin and Alan’s previous exploits in Outlaw, Holy Warrior is again told by an elderly Alan and paints a picture of a Robin who can be cruel and vengeful as well as loyal and steadfast.

This is a man who will happily shed Saracen blood, without even sharing the Christian faith of his comrades. From the atrocities against the Jews in York to the bloody battlefields of the Holy Land, Robin and Alan stand together, but this time they also face an enemy from within - an unknown killer who has infiltrated their numbers and dogs their steps. The true danger may not come from the Saracen swords but from the assassin’s knife.

This is a cracking adventure story, both visceral and exciting. There is rich detail to be found and heroics aplenty. The characters are mostly earthy, frequently bawdy and always larger-than-life.

Although the main plot twist is signalled from early on, that did not detract from the constant sense of danger or from the frequent high-paced thrills. It was also great to have a hero with flaws.

Gone is the Kevin Costner-style saccharin Robin Hood, and in his place is a brutal warrior warlord and, in many ways, a much more believable man of his time.

Sara Wilson THE LION OF CAIRO Scott Oden, St. Martin’s, 2010, $24.99/C$29.99, hb, 352 pp, 9780312372934 / Bantam, 2010, HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 27

£18.99, hb, 416pp, 9780593061251 Ruling Cairo as a figurehead in 12th-century Egypt, a young Caliph is manipulated by his grand vizier, who uses drugs to keep him in a state of sedation. The vizier wants to take control of Egypt while planning the early demise of the young ruler.

The Old Man of the Mountain, who has the power of life or death over the Muslim world, sends Emir the Knife, an Assassin, to help the Caliph regain power and eliminate his enemies. The Assassin is known throughout the Muslim world for his methods of killing his adversaries, many times assassinating powerful men and sometimes taking months to plan and exterminate his victims. In Cairo, he receives assistance from an underground network of spies and criminals, including two women – one who is in the harem of the Caliph, and the other, known as the Gazelle, with a spy network within the Palace – who help the Assassin accomplish his mission.

This is the first novel in a trilogy exploring the adventures of Emir the Knife. Really an anti-hero, he believes that the cult, led by the Old Man of the Mountain, is to maintain peace between the warring factions within the Muslim world.

This novel was a fun read. The author occasionally killed off key players in the story, especially those whom I grew to like. Certain scenes set the reader up for an anticipated resolution, but then the reader is surprised. This is definitely not a novel containing predictable events, and it is well-researched, accurately describing many Muslim customs and historical references. Highly recommended for readers who enjoy political intrigue, suspense and fascinating characters in a time period filled with drama and the enchantment of the Arabian Nights.

Jeff Westerhoff

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13th century

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SHROUD OF DISHONOUR Maureen Ash, Berkley Prime Crime, 2010, $14.00/C$17.50, pb, 272pp, 9780425237908 Shroud of Dishonour is the fifth of Maureen Ash’s Bascot de Marin Knights Templar mysteries. At this point Bascot, blinded in one eye while captive in Outremer, has returned to the Templar enclave in Lincoln after recovering at Lincoln castle where he was guest of Nicolaa de la Haye, castellan, and her husband, Gerard Camville, sheriff of Lincoln.

It is May of 1202 and Bascot is set to depart for Portugal with a contingency of Templar forces.

Departure is delayed when the body of a local prostitute is found stuffed into a chest in the Templar chapel – along with 30 pieces of silver.

One way or another, the Templars are involved. No sooner has Bascot agreed to work with the sheriff in tracking down the blasphemous murderer than another prostitute, a courtesan, is similarly garroted and left with another 30 pieces of silver.

But this time a Templar cross is carved into the harlot’s breast. The honor of the Templar order 28 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

is now at stake. Bascot and the sheriff ’s sergeant, Roget, doggedly follow lead after lead to finally corner the killer in a violent and tragic climax.

As in her earlier books, the author has constructed a classic mystery with clues, red herrings, and a steady pace leading to a satisfying conclusion. The story displays an excellent sense of place and has plenty of interesting historical detail. Now and again the sense of time is broken by the use of modern terms like “post-mortem” and “on active duty.” But this doesn’t take away from the overall enjoyment of another fine medieval whodunit.

Lucille Cormier THE TAPESTRY SHOP Joyce Elson Moore, Five Star, 2010, $25.95, hb, 328pp, 97815948996 A medieval love story, The Tapestry Shop weaves the growing devotion between Adam de la Halle, a trouvere (troubadour), and shopkeeper’s daughter Catherine. After his political exile, Adam returns to Arras only to find his wife Maroie inhabiting another man’s bed. In the meantime, Adam encounters Catherine, who is soon to marry her father’s choice, the farmer Guillame. Adam and Catherine find mutual attraction in each other’s company, yet they are parted as Catherine must marry Guillame. Fighting his desire for Catherine, Adam heads for the university as a protégé of King Louis’s nephew.

Catherine finds herself married to the cruel Guillame, and she ends up killing him as he assaults her with a knife in a drunken rage. Adam and the now single Catherine encounter each other, yet Catherine desires to join the king’s last crusade.

Adam must watch her leave him again, as yet still unsatisfied until the last unexpected encounter with his true love.

Rich in historical references and detail, this novel reflects tremendous research and familiarity with medieval France. Joyce Elson Moore delights the reader through her use of the sights, smells, and sounds of the 13th century. The novel’s pacing never wavers – the reader chases through every scene in hopes the lovers will be united once again and forever. Basing her main character on the historical figure Adam de la Halle, the author’s meticulous research of Arras and the medieval ruins shines through in this detailed and compelling tale.

Liz Allenby A KNIGHT’S ENCHANTMENT Lindsay Townsend, Zebra, 2010, $5.99, pb, 352pp, 9781420106978 It’s spring of 1210 in England, and plucky alchemist Joanna of Glastonbury faces a desperate situation. With her father as prisoner, unscrupulous Bishop Thomas is demanding she create an elixir for eternal life in exchange for her father’s freedom. Meanwhile, Sir Hugh Manhill’s brother, Knight Templar David Manhill, is the bishop’s prisoner, as well. And so Hugh takes Joanna captive, hoping he can use her release as a bargaining chip with the bishop – Joanna for

his brother. Will Joanna and “hot and dangerous” Hugh fall in love in this 13th-century romance?

Certainly, but only after an entertaining round of fights, sassy dialogue, and smoldering sex scenes drawing to a satisfying conclusion as the pair join forces to thwart the bishop and rescue their loved ones. Author Lindsay Townsend handles the book’s historical details with skill. Particularly well-done are the secondary characters who round out this tale of love and desire in medieval England.

Alana White

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14th century

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THE DEMON’S PARCHMENT Jeri Westerson, Minotaur, 2010, 304pp, pb, $14.95, 9780312580124 London, 1384. Crispin Guest, a.k.a. “The Tracker,” returns in the third of Jeri Westerson’s medieval noir mysteries.

The story opens with Crispin being hired to recover sacred parchments that have been stolen from the queen’s physician, Master Jacob. But the gig is not as straightforward as it seems, as the physician is a Jewish physician, invited by King Richard to treat his queen’s infertility and housed in the king’s apartments in the Tower of London, in spite of the expulsion of Jews from England.

Finding the parchments takes on new urgency when Master Jacob reveals that they may hold the key to the deaths of several of London’s poor boys – deaths that Crispin is already investigating.

But Crispin is not the only one hunting for the parchments; he is stalked by another with motives of his own. The layers of intrigue multiply.

Though there are some truly funny scenes, especially those with Crispin’s gay transvestite friend, John Rykener, and some tender moments, the book fully merits its noir designation.

Westerson paints stark scenes of medieval poverty and the helplessness of the poor at the hands of the rich. Darker still is Crispin’s pursuit of the serial killer, one who does not just kill but who sodomizes the boys and guts them while still alive. The pursuit’s end is harrowing, surreal, and sobering.

All told, The Demon’s Parchment is a very good historical mystery. It is multilayered and historically accurate. The story also moves at an excellent pace, with lots of action, suspense, and great dialogue. In an afterword the author describes the actual sorry events around which she built her story. If noir is your genre, this is a book to reach for.

Lucille Cormier

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15th century

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THE VIRGIN WIDOW Anne O’Brien, New American Library, 2010, $15.00, pb, 448pp, 9780451231291 / MIRA UK, 2010, £6.99, pb, 624pp, 9780778303756 13th Century — 15th Century

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SIEGE

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Jack Hight, John Murray, 2010, £12.99, pb, 408pp, 9781848542952 Hight’s first novel is a tightly plotted page-turner which follows the events leading up to the well-known siege of Constantinople in 1453, adding fictional characters who introduce a variety of new plot twists and motives for historical circumstances that are still unclear. The book certainly lives up to its claim: this is historical fiction written to entertain. However, detail is not lacking, and Hight has a knack for describing places and bringing them alive, whether Genoa or the famed city of Constantinople itself.

There is a solid cast of true historical figures in the book – including Longo Giustiniani, the heroic Italian mercenary commander – but one of Hight’s most successful fictional characters is Isa, a shady Chinese dealer specialised in the use of poisons, whose own personal tragedy is particularly moving. The addition of a romantic subplot between Longo and Princess Sofia at times feels rather strained, not to say unlikely.

Hight is most successful in his descriptions of intrigue at the Ottoman court, whether inside the harem or in the devious plots hatched by the old emperor’s advisors against his successor, the hot-headed but brilliant Mehmed. The cover blurb compares Hight’s depictions of the siege to the classic Tolkien set pieces (Helm’s Deep and Minas Tirith), hype that I found unnecessary and belittling to the reader: the harsh reality of medieval warfare does not need to be sold as fantasy or background reading for computer games. This book will appeal to readers curious to discover more about a fascinating turning point in history: depth of character was secondary to an actionpacked plot, but in the end this does not detract from a rollicking read.

Lucinda Byatt During the War of the Roses, Anne Neville, daughter of Warwick the Kingmaker, is a young woman from one of the most powerful and wealthy families in England. She has very few choices and lives much of her life in turmoil. The Virgin Widow tells Anne’s story beginning with her childhood until the year 1472. When Anne is a child, Richard, duke of Gloucester, brother of King Edward IV, is sent to live with the Nevilles at Middleham Castle to be tutored and trained. During this time, Anne and Richard develop a friendship which turns into love. Eventually the pair is betrothed.

The ambition of her father puts everyone in the Neville family in jeopardy time after time as he uses his two daughters as political pawns. His oldest daughter, Isabel, is married to George, Duke of Clarence, another of Edward IV’s brothers.

Warwick has a falling-out with the king and fails in his plot to crown Clarence. The Nevilles are labeled as traitors and flee to France for refuge.

While in France, Anne is betrothed to and later marries Prince Edward, the son of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou, in order to create another political alliance, this time to restore Henry VI to the throne. She quickly discovers that the Prince is a cruel and manipulative person who is essentially controlled by his overbearing mother, who humiliates Anne. As the battle for England continues, Anne finds herself trapped in a loveless marriage, longing for her true love, Richard, and worrying about his safety back in England.

O’Brien has created realistic, multifaceted 15th Century — 16th Century

characters in both Richard and Anne. Using Anne as the narrator gives the events a unique perspective.

Filled with political intrigue and romance, I highly recommend this title.

Troy Reed A BLOODY FIELD BY SHREWSBURY Edith Pargeter, Sourcebooks Landmark, 2010, $14.99/C$17.99, pb, 384pp, 9781402239915 Edith Pargeter is perhaps better known as the author of the Cadfael mysteries (under her pen name of Ellis Peters), which this novel predates— it’s a reprint of a work first published in 1972. The cover blurbs give the erroneous impression that this is the familiar blood and thunder battle story of the three Henrys—Henry IV, Prince Henry (“Hal”), and Henry “Hotspur” Percy. In actuality, it’s more of a careful character study of all three, with the end result a focus on how their personalities shape their interactions, and subsequently the fate of all England. Hotspur is painted as intelligent, kind, noble, but too forthright for his own good; Henry IV is inflexible, suspicious, resentful of any who would eclipse his achievements; and Prince Hal, wise beyond his young years, chooses to keep his true feelings always veiled, torn between his loyalty to Hotspur, duty to an unloved but domineering parent, and belief in his own right to rule. The result is a parting of ways that ends with the battle of Shrewsbury.

Pargeter spends a great deal of time describing characters and their inner lives, providing a

background for the ebb and flow of loyalties, but giving the battle itself relatively short shrift. She also introduces fictional characters, such as the beautiful young widow Julian, whose devotion to Hotspur helps set events in motion and speeds the path to Shrewsbury. Overall, this is a more introspective work than one might expect, and Hotspur is certainly the moral focus of the piece.

Those hoping for an action-packed battle story may find this off-putting, but it adds a depth which helps to flesh out the traditional, familiar story.

Bethany Latham

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16th century

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RIVAL TO THE QUEEN Carolly Erickson, St. Martin’s, 2010, $25.99/ C$31.00, hb, 320pp, 9780312379742 Not since Victoria Holt’s My Enemy the Queen (1978) have I encountered another novel about the complex rivalry between Queen Elizabeth I and her younger, more attractive Boleyn cousin, Lettice Knollys. Lively and intelligent, the teenaged Lettice arrived at the Queen’s court and quickly adapted and flourished in her surroundings, eventually inserting herself into the longstanding relationship between Sir Robert Dudley and Elizabeth. While Elizabeth deeply loved Dudley and appreciated his service to the Crown, her reasons not to marry him were solidified after his wife’s mysterious death; Lettice, however, had no such qualms. Attracted to each other but with marital entanglements, she and Dudley were later married in secret, enraging Elizabeth once they were exposed at court.

Bitter conflicts ensued over the years, culminating with the Earl of Essex’s (Lettice’s handsome, hot-headed son) disastrous involvement with the aging queen. Erickson does a fine job with period details, but many of her characterizations seem rather flat and uninspired. Some of her dialogue sounds jarringly modern, and some events seem contrived beyond belief. It seems implausible that Elizabeth would covet the dead Amy Dudley’s bed hangings, send Lettice to retrieve them, and that while there, Lettice uncovers the “truth” about Amy’s death. Her inaccuracies regarding some characters’ relationships seem needless when the facts are well-known: e.g., the marital choices of Dorothy Devereux and of Lettice’s brother Francis.

There is an inconsistency when Elizabeth speaks to Cecil at Kenilworth at the end of Chapter 28, even though Cecil is just arriving at Kenilworth at the start of Chapter 29.

Overall, while Erickson’s account is entertaining and highly readable, ultimately I found it rather unsatisfying. Holt’s version is still the better by a “long English mile.”

Michael I. Shoop SACRED TREASON James Forrester, Headline Review, 2010, £12.99, hb, 408pp, 9780755356010 At first glance this looks like yet another HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 29

Tudor whodunnit, the new sleuth being an actual historical figure, one of the senior officers in Queen Elizabeth’s College of Heraldry, the Clarenceaux King of Arms, who died in 1567. However, the story quickly becomes a chase thriller, for Clarenceaux is also the chief suspect and is on the run from the law until almost the last page. Before he can clear his name he has to kill a least four law officers, including Walsingham’s chief enforcer.

James Forrester is the pen name of Dr Ian James Forrester Mortimer, an historian perhaps best known for his biography of his 14th century namesake, Edmund Mortimer. One can rely on his historical accuracy and he can spin an exciting yarn. He certainly spares us none of the squalor and violence of Elizabethan London.

This is a fast paced, intricately plotted thriller.

My only problem with it is that the Catholic conspiracy that Clarenceaux unravels is so complicated and improbable that it is no surprise that it turns out to exist only in the fevered imagination of Elizabeth’s spy hunters. There was no Sacred Treason.

Edward James THE PRINCELING Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, Sourcebooks, 2010, $14.99/$17.99, pb, 424pp, 9781402240584 / Sphere, 1993, £9.99, pb, 410pp, 9780751506402 This is book 3 of the Morland Dynasty series, in which Cynthia Harrod-Eagles traces 500 years of British history from the point of view of the fictional Morland family. The series starts in 1434 with the War of the Roses and will finish with World War II. This volume begins in the summer of 1558 as the family gathers to dedicate a new chapel which they only dared rebuild once the Catholic Queen Mary was on the throne. The family has lost several members to the plague in recent years. Queen Mary dies in November, and her half-sister Elizabeth, a Protestant, ascends to the throne. The Morlands are Catholic, but now some in the family find they have Protestant leanings. The matriarch, Nanette, served Queen Elizabeth’s mother and is called back to court to serve again. Strategic marriages are arranged for some of the younger generation, and one son runs away to join a group of traveling players. With very few young people left at home, the older generation worries about who will be heir to Morland Place and safeguard the family’s position.

This series is one of my all-time favorites, and I wish I owned the complete set. It’s well-written and researched, yet highly entertaining. History textbook authors should take a lesson from Harrod-Eagles. This is much more than dry facts and dates. This is, as Harrod-Eagles says, “how people lived, what they wore and ate, how they gave birth and died, how they built their houses and related to their servants, how they travelled, what they believed in.” Fascinating stuff, all woven into a story populated with well-developed characters.

To keep it all straight, a family tree and a map of Morland Place are included. If you’ve never tried 30 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

this series, get the first book and start reading.

You’ll be glad you did.

Jane Kessler THE RELUCTANT QUEEN Freda Lightfoot, Severn House, 2010, $28.95/£19.99, hb, 251pp, 9781847512826 In 1578, Henry, King of Navarre, is reunited with his bride, Queen Margot, daughter of Catherine de Medici. Their political marriage, marked by open infidelity on both sides, is the backdrop to this novel, which after some meandering comes to center around Henry’s relationship with his mistress Gabrielle d’Estreés.

Set in a France teeming with religious tensions, political intrigue, and sexual liaisons, this novel has a wide cast of characters and spans over twenty years. Such material has great promise — and yet this book never took off for me. Early on in The Reluctant Queen, Margot is described as having a “slender, swanlike neck,” and although the prose had some bright spots, they were outweighed by hackneyed phrases such as this (in the course of a single page, two different women are described as being entrancingly beautiful). There was a great deal of telling instead of showing, and I felt no interest in or liking for any of the characters, whose appearances are described in great detail but who are lacking in depth. Even the occasional murder failed to bring this novel to life.

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THE ELEPHANT’S JOURNEY

Susan Higginbotham THE NINE LIVES OF KIT MARLOWE Jay Margrave, Goldenford, 2010, £8.99, pb, 282pp, 9780955941511 Christopher Marlowe, scholar, playwright, roustabout, and spy for the Queen, is considered a traitor by her spymaster William Cecil. To save him from imprisonment, his friends, led by Thomas Priedeux, stage his death at Mistress Bull’s house in Deptford by substituting a stranger’s body for his. Under cover of darkness, Priedeux steals Kit away by rowing him downriver to an inn, where Kit conceals his identity by dressing as a woman.

Pretending to be brother and sister, they sail to the Netherlands and arrive at the home of Tom’s cousin, Bridget, who immediately sees through the disguise. Kit, now Christabel, is made miserable when Bridget teaches him how to cook, clean, and adopt the feminine mannerisms needed to make his role convincing.

Tom believes that Kit has left his old life far behind as their travels take them across Europe, but Kit has a propensity for absconding from their rooms in the dead of night and leaving death in his wake. His thirst for learning and his curiosity are boundless, and his enthusiasm draws much unwarranted attention, which is the one thing Tom wanted to avoid. At every available opportunity, Christabel writes sonnets and plays, which are

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

José Saramago, Harvill Secker, 2010, £12.99, pb, 200pp, 9781846553608 / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010, $25.00, hb, 224pp, 9780547352589 It is hard to know which sentiment dominated my reading of this book: sadness at the passing of such a great author, or delight in this whimsical but wise novella, his last work. The circumstances that led Saramago to write the book are serendipitous: he chanced to eat at a restaurant called “The Elephant” in Salzburg, where he noticed small wooden carvings depicting the real journey made by an Indian elephant in 1551 from Lisbon to Vienna. Saramago’s realisation that “there could be a story in this” is pure understatement: he offers us not only a story but an entire philosophy.

When King Joao III decides to give Solomon to the Hapsburg archduke, Maximilian, life for the elephant and his mahout Subhro changes forever. The Austrian Archduke decrees that Subhro be known as Fritz, and Solomon becomes Suleiman, although to his mahout he could just as well as be the god Ganesh. Saramago’s prose flows steadily, with a minimum of punctuation, echoing the ambling pace of the elephant across the plains of Castille, and then north from Genoa and over the Alps.

The story reveals flashes of comedy, the warmth of Subhro’s compassion and a profound understanding of human frailty and fate. Theology was ever present in Reformation Europe, and when Solomon obligingly performs a “miracle” in Padua by kneeling before the cathedral to please the delegates at the Council of Trent, the protestant archduke is less than impressed, especially when he finds that “Fritz” has made a small fortune on the side. However, even the archduke is eventually won over by the gentle pachyderm and the total dedication of the man who cares for him. This is a delightful book that will become a classic.

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heavily coded messages sent to his compatriot, William Shakespeare, in England.

When Christabel completes the quest assigned to him by the ‘magician’ Doctor Dee, he and Tom separate. Older and wiser, Kit returns to London to live out the rest of his nine lives – but for how long?

This is the third and final book involving the adventures of Thomas Priedeux, which is a pity because it is a page turner from start to finish, with its rich descriptions, lively dialogue and meticulous attention to plot details that all fans of Shakespeare will recognise.

Janet Williamson HEARTSTONE C. J. Sansom, Macmillan, 2010, £18.99, hb, 635pp, 9781405092739 1545, and England is at war with France; the war is going badly wrong for both king and country.

A French fleet waits to sail across the Channel to invade, the largest militia the country has ever seen has been raised, and legal tender to pay for it has been debased by the king.

Into this febrile environment, Matthew Shardlake and his trusty servant Barak are drawn into an intriguing law case involving an old servant of Queen Catherine Parr that could earn them high-ranking enemies and put their lives in danger. A seemingly unconnected case involving the mysterious past of Ellen Fettipace, a young woman in Bedlam that Shardlake has befriended, causes Shardlake emotional turmoil. As the two cases converge, Shardlake is forced to travel to Portsmouth as military tension reaches its height and he soon finds himself in the toughest of spots.

This is the fifth adventure of Matthew Shardlake, the intelligent, principled, stubborn, hunchbacked Tudor lawyer, and C. J. Sansom continues to mine wonderfully this seam of history. The narrative is complex and ever-twisting and contains some wonderful large-scale scenes, including the sinking of the ship Mary Rose, Henry VIII’s pride and joy.

As with his previous books, while the authentic and detailed background is impressive and wholly convincing, it is the rich characterisation that is the core of Heartstone. Here, the reader is drawn further into the inner world of Shardlake, a man who usually tries to do the right thing but doesn’t always succeed.

I look forward with impatience to the next adventure.

Gordon O’Sullivan

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TRAITOR’S BLOOD Michael Arnold, John Murray, 2010, £12.99, hb, 362pp, 9781848544024 The beginning of the English Civil War in 1642 and the Battle of Edgehill. Captain Stryker of the Royalist army is a battle-hardened veteran of many a continental skirmish and has a badly scarred 16th Century — 17th Century

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E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Susan Fletcher, Norton, 2010, $24.95, hb, 384 pp, 9780393080001 / Fourth Estate, 2010, £14.99, hb, 368pp, 9780007321599 Sometimes you start reading a book, and while you know it’s good, suddenly it will dawn on you that it’s so much more than that; you can’t turn the pages fast enough, but you’re also forcing yourself to slow down because you want to luxuriate in the beauty of the words and the flow of the story. Corrag is that sort of book.

Set against the background of the Glencoe Massacre of 1692, Corrag weaves fact and myth around the betrayal of King William’s troops against the Jacobite Scots who signed the Oath of Allegiance six days too late. Corrag has spent her young life running from the stigma of being branded a witch, but when she arrives in Glencoe, she finds acceptance and peace among the clan. Her healing knowledge and her innocent connection to nature endear her to the chieftain and his people, and it’s there that she finds love, albeit forbidden, with the MacIain’s younger son.

When the danger of impending massacre is revealed to Corrag, she desperately tries to warn clan members; her subsequent capture finds her condemned to burn in retribution. Thus her tale comes to light as a Jacobite preacher, Charles Leslie, arrives to learn about the massacre; alone in her cell, Corrag shares her memories, her dreams, and her soul as her death draws nigh.

This beautifully written story is told through flashbacks by Corrag herself and through letters written by Leslie as he comes to know the details of what occurred. As the story progresses, you can feel Leslie’s perspective changing, and Corrag’s desperate longing for someone to acknowledge her existence after her death is gut-wrenching. Vivid, well-researched and gripping, Corrag is simply an assault on the senses. Highly recommended.

Tamela McCann face to prove it. Following the battle a satchel is recovered from the Parliamentary baggage train, containing a large amount of information concerning the movements of the Royalist army.

This leads to the discovery of a network of spies led

by Sir Randolf Moxcroft, a former Royalist now Spy Master to the Roundhead camp. Captain Stryker is commissioned to go to his estate in Hampshire and capture him before he can do further damage. Meanwhile Queen Henrietta Maria has gone to the continent to raise funds for the Royalists. One of her ladies, Lisette Gaillard, remains behind. Her lover, Colonel John Kelsey, reveals that the Roundheads have managed to acquire a particularly valuable ruby belonging to the Queen which has been hidden away until it can be sold to benefit them. The story follows these two threads and culminates in the Battle of Brentford.

The tale is well told. There is a mix of those who really took part in the events portrayed and fictitious characters who weave in and out. Captain Stryker is one the latter and has been likened to Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe of the Peninsular wars. He is certainly a colourful and resourceful character who has earned the respect of those who serve with him.

Lisette, too, is fictitious, but the whole tale comes together in a smooth fusing of fact and fiction around the real events and battles of the day.

I loved Sharpe. I think I am going to be equally

at home with Captain Stryker.

Marilyn Sherlock CUPIDS Paul Butler, Brazen Books, 2010, $16.95/C$16.95, pb, 183pp, 9781897317624 In 1610, the Englishman John Guy established a colony at Cupers Cove, Newfoundland (now known as Cupids) at the behest of King James I, and with funding from several Bristol merchants.

An ambitious, able leader, Guy was responsible for the success of the colony, in spite of deprivation, infighting, and a lack of ongoing fiscal support.

Butler doesn’t depart from the known facts in this intriguing short novel; he gives us instead a fascinating tale of what men will do in order to reach their lofty goals.

Guy returns to Bristol in 1611 to seek more funding, and to woo Eliza Egret, the principal stockholder’s haughty daughter. He is accompanied by a colony prisoner, Bartholomew, who is to be tried for burning the stores of grain. Bartholomew is a master of words and manipulation, and he worms his way into Guy’s trust, making himself indispensable in Guy’s quest to win money and a wife. Guy and other characters—namely Helen, the Egret’s servant—seem helpless under Bartholomew’s spell, performing acts of treachery and connivance they would never have the ability to achieve individually. With each chapter narrated HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 31

from a different character’s perspective, we get a multifaceted look at the machinations behind decisions and actions. Guy, Bartholomew, and Helen provide most of the story, but the occasional chapter from the point of view of Matilda Egret, the ancient sister of the stockholder, lends a macabre touch to the tale.

Butler provides solid descriptions of both the coast of Newfoundland and Bristol, England; where he excels is in his depictions of the human psyche: the servant who rebels against her station, the aunt who never forgets past wrongs, the willful daughter of a rich man. He has created memorable characters who could all easily be historical figures rather than imaginative figments.

Helene Williams DECEPTIONS: A Jamestown Novel Marilyn J. Clay, Five Star, 2010, $25.95, hb, 415pp, 9781594148781 Catherine Parke is the central character in Ms. Clay’s latest historical novel. Catherine does not intend to deceive anyone, but only wishes to escape an arranged marriage and travel to the New World to reunite with her brother, Adam, her father, and her dearest friend from childhood, Noah Colton.

But in her effort to succeed, she is forced to take part in many deceptions along the way.

This story begins in London in 1617 and ends two years later in Jamestown, Virginia. Through a series of pretty remarkable happenstances she succeeds in getting to the New World. Many of her dreams of a new beginning are shattered when she arrives in Jamestown to find her father has died and Noah has married another. When Noah begins to act on his old feelings for Catherine, she marries a

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man she does not love in order to stop herself from giving in to Noah’s advances. When her lifelong dream to marry Noah becomes reality, she soon learns that he is not the man she has known and loved since childhood. In spite of the mores and standards of colonial life, she eventually breaks free and finds her place in the new world. I wasn’t wild about this book, but there are many readers of the romance genre who will love it.

Susan Zabolotny THE COUNTESS Rebecca Johns, Crown, 2010, $25.00/C$28.95, hb, 304pp, 9780307588456 Erzsébet Báthory is sent to marry Hungarian nobleman Ferenc Nádasdy in the 16th century.

She suffers her husband’s indifference toward their arranged marriage, but pours her passion into running his estates. When he discovers her brutal punishment of a difficult servant, he admires her technique and their love affair begins. Ferenc is absent for long periods, fighting in the wars to save Hungary from the Turks. Erzsébet takes in destitute girls and poor relations on the pretext of helping them find husbands. In her severe punishment of these girls for stealing or consorting with soldiers, many die. The local minister refuses to bury them, so Erzsébet has her trusted servants dig shallow graves in the woods. So many complaints arise over these missing girls that the local authorities investigate. Now a widow, with a son too young to protect her, Erzsébet is vulnerable to the men who scheme to ruin her and claim her vast estates.

In this novel based on true events, Countess Nádasdy is known in more modern history as

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Katie Hickman, Bloomsbury, 2010, £11.99, pb, 279pp, 9780747599951/ Bloomsbury USA, 2010, $16, pb, 288pp, 9781608192137 In 1604, a travelling band of entertainers arrive at an almost deserted village in southern Italy. A dissolute man offers them the prospect of making a fortune if only they will take a young woman, mute and crippled, along with her newborn child, off his hands. The child is deformed, in the fashion of a mermaid. Compassion for their pitiable situation leads the troupe to take the pair on their travels.

The action shifts to Venice where Paul Pindar, recently returned from Constantinople, mourns the loss of his sweetheart, Celia Lamprey. An inveterate gambler, Paul is seduced by the promise of a unique diamond, the Sultan’s Blue. All he has to do is win at the gaming table. Pindar is convinced there is a connection between the diamond and his lost love, and the gamble is irresistible. Mysterious forces are at play here, and it seems more than likely that this will not be a fair contest but a ruse to lead Pindar to ultimate ruin.

This novel is the follow up to The Aviary Gate, and it is a fast-paced tale of passion, avarice and loss and restitution. It is historical fiction at its best and I look forward to more from this accomplished author.

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Lady Dracula or the Blood Countess, a woman who bathed in virgins’ blood to preserve her youth.

The story is told from Erzsébet’s point of view, and she insists that what she does is her right to maintain discipline. The author portrays the countess as a complicated woman you almost pity.

Were the charges against her trumped up for greed and political reasons? I kept turning the pages to find out.

I hope the published novel has a map of Hungary during this time period, because that would have helped me in following events.

Diane Scott Lewis THE GENTLEMAN POET: A Novel of Love, Danger, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest Kathryn Johnson, Avon, 2010, $13.99, pb, 336pp, 9780061965319 After a violent storm separates their battered ship from a fleet carrying settlers and provisions to Jamestown Colony, the one hundred and fifty passengers of the Sea Venture take refuge on the island of Bermuda. Among them are Elizabeth Persons, a lady’s maid with a gift for cooking, and Will Strachey, a gentleman who claims to be the ship’s historian but who does little more than sit on the beach scribbling in his journal while the other men labor to build a new ship from the wreckage of the old one. Despite the difference in their station, Elizabeth and Will become friends, and Elizabeth discovers that they share a dangerous secret, one that drove Will from England and ruined Elizabeth’s family. But, with Will’s encouragement, Elizabeth begins to build a new life in Bermuda with the ship’s cook. However, now there are new dangers such as mutinous sailors and, when they finally arrive there, life in Jamestown, which has been decimated by Indian attacks and starvation.

Based on the true story of the shipwreck of the Sea Venture and theories that William Shakespeare was one of her passengers, The Gentleman Poet is a delightful novel full of surprising twists.

Johnson does a splendid job incorporating the events and personalities that may have inspired Shakespeare’s writing of The Tempest and even includes, in Shakespearian style, the play within the story. However, my favorite parts of the novel were the Dinner Impossible-like scenes in which Elizabeth must prepare full-course meals for over one hundred people using only ingredients found on the island and cooking them over a fire pit on the beach. This lively and well-written narrative skillfully combines religion, literature, history, and culinary craft into an action-packed story.

Patricia O’Sullivan PIRATES OF THE LEVANT Arturo Pérez-Reverte (trans. Margaret Jull Costa), Putnam, 2010, $25.95/C$32.50, hb, 384pp, 9780399156649 / Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2010, £14.99, hb, 288pp, 9780297852490 The sixth novel in the Captain Alatriste series is a rousing sea adventure that takes place in the Mediterranean and the Levant. Seventeenyear-old Íñigo Balboa is serving two years in the 17th Century

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E D I TORS’ C H OI C E THE WOLVES OF ANDOVER (US) / THE TRAITOR’S WIFE (UK)

Kathleen Kent, Little, Brown, 2010, $24.99, hb, 320pp, 9780316068628 / Macmillan, Jan. 2011, £12.99, hb, 420pp, 9780230750579 Kathleen Kent’s debut book, The Heretic’s Daughter, was one of the most memorable novels I read last year. Kent’s second novel revisits that novel’s heroine, Martha Carrier, during her youth, providing additional backstory on both Martha and her husband, Thomas.

Unmarried at age nineteen, Martha is sent to her cousin Patience’s home to assist her during her pregnancy.

Martha bears her troubles with the sort of toughness that is often associated with New Englanders, whether colonial or contemporary, rather than rebelling against her spoiled, pampered cousin. The village is plagued by wolves, and one of the family’s servants, a strapping Welshman named Thomas Carrier, devises a plan to trap them. Martha becomes fascinated with the wolves and with Thomas as well, and she quickly learns the dark secret that Thomas fled England to forget. But while Thomas is hunting the wolves, paid assassins have been sent from England to hunt Thomas with the intention of punishing him for his role in the death of Charles I during the English Civil War. The titular wolves are a metaphor for a variety of characters in the novel, and it’s a successful metaphor indeed. Some are hunters, some are hunted, and survival at any cost is first in everyone’s mind. I quickly realized how suited Martha and Thomas were to one another — both dignified adults trying to live an independent life. The narrative is vivid yet spare, and Kent does not hold back in her descriptions of cruel 17th-century justice. Like The Heretic’s Daughter, The Wolves of Andover is an extraordinary novel that will stay with readers long after the final page has been read. Enthusiastically recommended.

Nanette Donohue Spanish infantry prior to being put forward by Don Francisco de Quevado for the royal couriers.

Accompanied by Captain Alatriste – Spain and his love interest have grown too hot for him – Íñigo serves aboard a Spanish galley. In pursuit of enemy merchant ships and a religious war against the Moors, Íñigo gains experience in warfare on land and sea, and in matters of life and love.

Arturo Pérez-Reverte delivers a climactic battle in Pirates of the Levant that is not to be missed, but the novel is more than an excellent swashbuckler.

It is also a coming of age story as Íñigo Balboa begins to see cracks in 45-year-old Captain Diego Alatriste’s armor. “I trust that Íñigo remains in good health by your side, prudently accepts your counsel, and bows to your authority,” wit de Quevado writes to the Captain. Pérez-Reverte looks seriously at aging and the plight of the career soldier in Pirates of the Levant, particularly in the Spain of 1627, where “for a Spanish soldier, his profession was his honor.”

Eva Ulett

Its central characters, Christa Henning, daughter of a Protestant printer in the city, and Lukas Weinsburg, a sergeant in the besieging army are, however, far from being the leading players in a predictable Romeo and Juliet-style plot. The novel is an accomplished debut by a writer who has worked hard to embrace the tough, bleak and uncompromising atmosphere of the times, and perhaps it is no accident that a writer based in Belfast has chosen to recreate one of Europe’s great wars of religion. The characters are well drawn and the scene-setting shows evidence of thorough and careful research. This is a fiendishly complicated piece of history, yet Richardson leads the reader through its twists and turns with assurance.

Ultimately, however, this novel will not stay with me. It is good, but not great. For all the author’s obvious hard work, while there is nothing to fault exactly, there is no real spark to set the pulse racing and keep you awake at night. Enjoyable, but I won’t be going back to it.

Sarah Bower

MAGDEBURG Heather Richardson, Lagan Press, 2010, £9.99, pb, 349pp, 9781904652731 Richardson’s first novel takes as its backdrop the Siege of Magdeburg in 1631, one of the more brutal passages of play in the Thirty Years’ War.

THE COUNTESS AND THE KING Susan Holloway Scott, NAL, 2010, $15.00/ C$18.50, pb, 400pp, 9780451231154 Scott’s latest foray into the realm of royal mistresses features an unlikely candidate: Katherine Sedley, blessed with little beauty but

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with a sharp wit. The Countess and the King follows Katherine’s unconventional girlhood under the tutelage of her libertine father, her life at the court of Charles II, and her progress into the bed of the Duke of York. When Charles II’s death brings Katherine’s lover to the throne as King James II, can their relationship survive?

I’ve had difficulty liking some of Scott’s previous heroines, but I’m happy to report I had no such problem with Katherine, whose wit and intelligence, coupled with a certain vulnerability, made her an appealing and memorable narrator.

As in her other novels, Scott vividly evokes the atmosphere at the Restoration court, and it’s a measure of her skill that characters who are familiar from her other novels appear without giving a sense of repetitiveness. The characters are fully fleshed out, and Katherine’s relationships with the important men in her life are well drawn, particularly that with her father. A detailed author’s note wraps up this royal package very nicely.

Susan Higginbotham THE LADY’S SLIPPER Deborah Swift, Macmillan New Writing, 2010, £12.99, hb, 439pp, 9780230746862 / St. Martin’s Griffin, 2010, $14.99, pb, 464pp, 9780312638337 The Civil War and its aftermath have finished and the King is back on his throne, but the memories of the awful conflict are never far from people’s minds. In Westmoreland, Alice Ibbetson mourns the death of her young sister and takes solace only in the painting and propagating of wild plants. To this end she steals the almost mystical orchid known as the lady’s slipper from land belonging to Richard Wheeler.

Wheeler, an ex-soldier and Quaker, is drawn to Alice, but longs for the return of his orchid as a token of his faith. At the same time he is being drawn into the political maelstrom again when the Quakers start to make a stand against oppression.

But Alice and Richard are not the only ones with their eyes on the prize. Sir Geoffrey Fisk believes that the lady’s slipper will restore his fortune and his health. Wise woman Margaret Poulter is also drawn to its reputed medicinal powers.

Then a murder takes place and Alice finds herself fighting for her freedom and her life. With so many people turning against her, Alice finds that the one person she can trust is the one she has been lying to all along.

The Lady’s Slipper is a fabulous debut novel from Deborah Swift. Using prose that is remarkable for its simplicity, clarity and beauty – her attention to detail is commendable – she effortlessly evokes the early years of the Restoration and the beginnings of the Quaker movement. The novel grips from the opening lines and carries the interest throughout.

The several plot strands are seamlessly blended and come together in a wholly satisfying conclusion.

Her characters are so real that they linger in the mind long after the book is back on the shelf.

Highly recommended.

Sara Wilson HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 33

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THE RHETORIC OF DEATH

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Judith Rock, Berkley, 2010, $15/C$18.50, pb, 372pp, 9780425236642 Rock’s impressive debut takes place in a Paris monastery school in 1686, one with close connections to the court of Louis XIV and various courtiers in the glittering monarch’s orbit. When young Jesuit Charles du Lac removes his beloved cousin Pernelle from antiHuguenot atrocities, for his own safety he is swiftly transferred from his southern province to Paris by a compliant and concerned relative, who happens to be a powerful bishop.

At the prestigious Louis le Grand School, Charles not only instructs his pupils in rhetoric but is assigned a crucial role in staging an important ballet. The sudden disappearance of the most promising young dancer, the subsequent discovery of his body, and attempts on the life of his young brother plunge the school into dread and uncertainty. As Charles seeks clues that could solve the crime, he falls under suspicion himself and makes an enemy of a colleague – the King’s confessor, who may have unraveled the perilous truth of Charles’ close connection to a Huguenot fugitive. As the date of the ballet performance draws near, he is forced to confront the object of his secret affection, a woman whose presence jeopardizes his vocation as a Jesuit and his very life.

Rock skillfully builds her suspense plot, all the while incorporating splendid detail of 17thcentury Parisian monastic and street life and the relationship between church and Crown, along with the intricate political and religious conflicts of the era. She proves herself a promising new talent by creating this powerful, absorbing, complex, and thoroughly satisfying novel.

Margaret Barr

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TRENTON John P. Calu and David A. Hart, Plexus, 2010, $24.95, hb, 307pp, 9780937548660 1770s Trenton, New Jersey: Penny Scott has been raised by future Declaration-signer John Hart’s family since she was orphaned as a child in an Indian raid. She and Hart’s younger son Edward are in love, but John has forbidden them to court while under his roof. When the battle of Trenton brings British troops to the Hart farm, John’s status makes him a marked man, so he hides in the woods to avoid capture. Penny, left at the farm with servants, meets with tragedy when the soldiers seek vengeance. After a devastated Edward returns from the Continental Army, he decides to make a living by opening a tavern.

Part two is set in present-day Trenton.

Landscaper Luis Alma, head of a Cuban-American family, becomes a local hero and mayoral candidate after he helps arrest a man who shot a policeman.

Daughter Tina is the girlfriend of Darius Hudson, an African-American college student who’s interested in history. In the boarded-up Eagle Tavern, Darius finds what may be a first printing of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, with an inscription “To E.H….Love, Penny.” Will they discover the connection to the Harts and Trenton’s past? Will the Almas and Darius survive the violence of a 21stcentury inner city?

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This book has potential. The characters become interesting at times, and the authors work hard to include local historical detail. However, they seem to have crammed every bit of Trenton travelogue they could into the story, and the result is overkill.

Also, more editing is needed. The book abounds with information dumps and suffers from too many clichés: “Bang! A shot rang out!” “various and sundry,” and “Herculean task” are just a few I spotted. Nice try on a historical era that could use more exposure, but I have to vote this one a miss.

B.J. Sedlock DEBT OF DISHONOUR Mary Andrea Clarke, Crème de la Crime, 2010, £7.99, pb, 278pp, 9780955056641 This lively and engaging read opens when Georgiana Grey, otherwise known as the highwayman the Crimson Cavalier, is robbed at pistol‑point whilst travelling in a carriage to a party in the company of Louisa Winterton and Selina Knatchbull. The highway robber relieves them of valuables including a string of pearls belonging to Louisa’s mother, Lady Winterton.

The circumstances of their late arrival at the party cause a stir, which is superseded by an even greater disturbance when a richly‑dressed man is dragged into the room with a knife protruding from his abdomen. His name is Boyce Polp, an affable, charming man known to London society.

Before he dies he tells the assembled onlookers his pocket-watch has been stolen.

The assembly assume that the highwayman who

robbed Georgiana also attacked Polp. Georgiana knows the identity of the highwayman, and believes him incapable of murder. She resolves to restore the jewels to their rightful owners and to solve the mystery of the missing watch and Polp’s murder. Her pageboy, Tom, is sent to the Tavern to retrieve the valuables, but Georgiana is astonished when he tells her that Lady Winterton’s pearls have been returned.

Whilst straining to be polite to Selina, who actively dislikes Tom, and outwardly obeying the conventions of polite society, she masquerades as the Crimson Cavalier and uses her wits and keen observations, stealth, and her servants in her investigations. She and a Bow Street Runner exchange mutually‑beneficial information, and she discovers that Lady Winterton once knew the highwayman, and that Polp was suspected of deceit by his society gambling friends.

Though there was not much descriptive detail, I liked the characters, pace, atmosphere and sense of satisfaction it left me with.

Janet Williamson THE FORT Bernard Cornwell, HarperCollins UK, 2010, £18.99, hb, 464pp, 978000733172 / Harper, 2010, $25.99, hb, 480pp, 9780061969638 The Fort is the story of a battle in the American War of Independence. It took place in the summer of 1779 when a British force of 750 Scottish infantry was dispatched to build a garrison in what is now the State of Maine. The Americans sailed with a fleet of 40 ships and over 2000 men in order to “capture, kill and destroy.” The rebels underestimated their British opponents and, after three weeks of skirmish and attack, the Battle of Penobscot Bay was eventually decided.

This is told from both sides of the battle and all the main characters were real people. As always, Cornwall is meticulous in his research and describes the events in vivid detail. The Fort is a well-written, accurate account of an unfamiliar historical event. It was interesting to learn more about John Moore and the truth behind the legend that surrounds Paul Revere.

However, it is not a riveting read, unless you are an aficionado of obscure battles and prefer a history book to a novel. It lacks a main character that a reader can identify with and it will disappoint many Cornwell fans who will buy it hoping for a compelling adventure story. They could well be misled by the very Sharpe‑like cover. This is faction, not fiction, and is the first book of Bernard Cornwell’s I’ve not read in one sitting.

Fenella Miller TRADE WINDS Christina Courtenay, Choc Lit, 2010, £7.99, pb, 363pp, 9781906931230 Trade Winds is this author’s first novel. Set in 1732, the story begins in Scotland, moves to Gothenburg, Sweden, and then to the Far East.

Killian Kinross, a Scotsman estranged from his family, makes a living by gambling. When he 18th Century

wins a ship, he hopes to make an honest living by trade, and sails to Sweden where he meets Jess van Sandt, still mourning the recent death of her father.

Jess is convinced she has been cheated out of her inheritance by her ruthless stepfather, but cannot prove her claim. Her stepfather threatens to send her to the isolation of their country house deep in the forests, and Kinross is the man he selects to drive her there. Clutching at straws, Jess suggests a marriage of convenience, and Kinross agrees, swearing that they will discover her father’s will and prove her right to inherit his business.

Kinross is offered a chance of sailing to China.

He cannot resist its promise of huge rewards and leaves Jess to face her stepfather’s anger over her marriage. When Kinross sails, he doesn’t know that Jess has taken action and landed them both in a great deal of trouble.

The story starts slowly, but from a third of way through the tension builds to a surprising ending.

The author’s personal knowledge allows rich detail in the description of the locations, which gives a solid base to the novel. Clichés abound and the stepfather is little more than a stereotype, but Jess’s mother is totally believable in her fixation on her two younger children. I enjoyed the story and recommend it to those who like novels set in far‑flung, exotic places.

Jen Black VALLEY FORGE Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen, St. Martin’s, 2010, $27.99/C$33.99, hb, 352pp, 9780312591076 In the winter of 1777, the Continental Army, under the command of General George Washington, established winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. After losing the battles of Brandywine and Paoli, Washington and his army were demoralized and lacked discipline. Desertion and disease were rampant. The British under General Howe had captured Philadelphia earlier in the year, and the Continental Congress was forced to leave the city, finally establishing headquarters in York, Pa. This novel is not only about the trials of the Continental Army under difficult conditions, but it also tells the story of fictional characters Peter Wellsley, a Continental soldier from New Jersey, and Allen van Dorn, Peter’s neighbor, who served as a Loyalist with the British Army stationed in Philadelphia.

The second in the George Washington series, this novel mixes fiction with fact, introducing Baron von Steuben, who provided the leadership necessary to train the ragged soldiers into an army, along with General Anthony Wayne who supplied the troops with the much-needed food, clothing and building materials. On the British side, a key character is Captain John Andre, who befriends van Dorn in Philadelphia.

I have enjoyed the series and found the books to be factual in content and representative of how actual characters may have talked and thought, based upon historical evidence about the American Revolution. The authors’ writing style even helped 18th Century

me to feel the cold winds, sleet and snow the soldiers encountered during those harsh winter months of 1777 through 1778.

Jeff Westerhoff A MARKED MAN: An Abigail Adams Mystery Barbara Hamilton, Berkeley, $14.00/C$17.50, pb, 322pp, 9780425237083 Second in a new series, A Marked Man begins at breakfast on a cold Sabbath morning in 1774 as Abigail Adams and her husband John note an article in the Boston Gazette: a Negro woman has run away, leaving behind a child of two and a baby of six months. Shortly thereafter, the couple receives news of the arrest of one of their own Sons of Liberty, Harry Knox, for the murder of Sir Jonathan Cottrell, the King’s Special Commissioner, sent from England to collect evidence about sources of funding going to “Rebels and Traitors.” At that morning’s church service, Abigail reflects upon the mark of the Beast in the Old Testament, the conviction that one’s own cause is sufficiently righteous to justify crimes against the innocent. The Provost Marshal finds in Harry Knox a likely suspect – Knox is responsible for printing and distributing seditious broadsides penned by the Sons of Liberty. Knox would be an easy suspect to convict, providing a quick closure to the case, and a cover-up for the true murderer.

Once again Barbara Hamilton fashions an intriguing, detailed novel using a historical figure as a sleuth who undergoes political risk as she takes on the arduous task of divining the identity of Cottrell’s true killer against the tense background of 1774 Boston. The setting is rich in period detail – everyday clothing, manners, and furniture are wellresearched. The author unveils the true murderer only in the final pages, weaving a satisfying series of clues through the tale. A successful novel appealing to those who enjoy Revolutionary War historical mystery.

Liz Allenby THE PRICE OF GLORY Seth Hunter, Headline, 2010, £19.99, hb, 375pp, 9780755343119 This is the third book in a series following the career of Nathaniel Peake, officer of the Royal Navy in the wars against Revolutionary and Imperial France. Hunter follows closely in the path pioneered by C S Forester in the Hornblower series and broadened into a highway by Patrick O’Brian in the Aubrey/Maturin series. There are now so many fictional British naval officers criss-crossing the ocean in pursuit of the French in the same wars that surely they must run into each other?

Indeed The Price of Glory starts with the raid on Brittany in 1795 at Quiberon Bay. I remember this from the first Hornblower novel I read as a child. Hornblower and Peake must have been on the same beach together, although Hunter does not mention if they met.

True to the genre Hunter fills out the story with graphic sea fights and lots of technical detail about

square rigged fighting vessels. His are, however, somewhat different from other maritime novels in that they have more of a landside. The Price of Glory is actually three separate stories, the second of which is set entirely in Paris, where Peake is serving as a secret agent. This echoes the first book in the series, Time of Terror, which is also set in Paris, although the second book has him at sea in the West Indies.

Peake has another 20 years of war ahead of him, so we can expect several more maritime adventures and episodes of French intrigue. If you like ‘maritimes’ this will not disappoint.

Edward James THE TIDE OF WAR Seth Hunter, McBooks, 2010, $24.95, hb, 352pp, 9781590135099 / Headline, 2010, £7.99, pb, 448pp, 9780755357611 Sailors are a superstitious lot. Firm believers in an unlucky ship, the officers assigned to them face innumerable problems in dealing with an alarmed and suspicious crew. Such is the plight of Captain Nathan Peake, RN as he assumes command of HMS Unicorn in 1794. His predecessor had his command time abruptly terminated by a slit throat and the mutineers responsible have not only disappeared, but left the Unicorn in a perilous state. Peake’s problems only begin here as he must also deal with an American spy, the alluring and dangerous “Witch Queen of the Army of Lucumi,” and a French warship charged with creating unrest in England’s Caribbean colonies. All in all, Captain Peake faces a troubled 1794. Seth Hunter (a pseudonym) has a talent for describing sea life, command decisions, politics, and intelligence operations in wartime, and, thankfully, the interplay between our hero and the captivating “Prencesa Negra.” Neither Horatio Nelson nor Horatio Hornblower faced problems quite like this.

John R. Vallely THE SILENT DUCHESS Dacia Maraini, Arcadia, 2010, £8.99, pb, 319pp, 7891906413729 In 18th-century Sicily, Marianna is born to a life of extravagant luxury, daughter of charming, affectionate Duke Signoretto Ucria. She is a lovely and intelligent descendant of an ancient aristocratic family, but she has what was then a fixed, untreatable handicap: she is a deaf-mute.

Her only possibility of marriage is a union with her own uncle, the eccentric Duke Petro. Her bleak life with a deeply flawed and cold man might have been wretched indeed but for her own extraordinary qualities of determination, compassion and an outstanding ability for organisation, making use of the qualities of others. Reading and writing are her only means of communication in a society given over to pleasure: even a nun may wear a designer habit and a sapphire crucifix. But Marianna’s passion is studying the new philosophical works of French and English writers and, especially, the Scotsman David Hume. After years of duty to

HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 35

her pitiable uncle/husband and their family, this unique woman discovers the power of physical passion and its joys. With Duke Petro dead, she has three choices: a placid union with a man who admires her intellect – but admires his own even more; to remain with her handsome young lover; or to follow an entirely different path. At the conclusion of this remarkable novel, she has made her decision.

Beautifully written, vividly detailed The Silent Duchess offers a rich treat.

Nancy Henshaw FALSE PATRIOTS Charles O’Brien, Severn House, 2010, $28.95/£19.99, hb, 212pp, 9780727868985 Anne Cartier, an Englishwoman living in revolutionary Paris, continues to solve crimes in the ninth of this series of mysteries. In June of 1791, anti-clerical feeling has resulted in the murder of an Irish priest, setting off still more killings. Anne uses her sign language skills, learned in the institution established by l’Abbé de l’Épée, to protect an unjustly accused deaf suspect and the abused deaf wife of an anti-clerical radical. Anne’s husband, the head of the gendarmes, is suspected of having ties to the old regime, but he does his best to see that justice is done in spite of political interference.

Anne uncovers revolutionary rivalries, municipal corruption and caddish behavior as she searches for suspects and motives. The best feature of the book comes from Anne’s interaction with her deaf friend, a lady artist, whose observations and sketches help to solve the series of crimes as they unfold. O’Brien captures the chaos of the French Revolution while telling the story of the birth of sign language education for the deaf.

Highly recommended.

James Hawking RUTHLESS Anne Stuart, MIRA, 2010, $7.99US/C$9.99, pb, 416pp, 9780778328483 / Mills & Boon, 2010, £3.99, pb, 416pp, 9780263883091 Paris 1765: Elinor Harriman and her sister are reduced to selling the family heirlooms and burning the furniture because their titled mother has gambled away everything of value. When her mother disappears, Elinor’s anger flares and she follows, though her destination is the Viscount Rohan’s notoriously degenerate estate. Once there, Elinor strikes a deal with Rohan, who is intrigued by this young woman who has intruded into his assembled patrons’ den of iniquity. In fact, the jaded Viscount finds that he cannot get Elinor out of his head, and he not only improves her circumstances, he finds himself falling in love despite himself. But will Elinor allow herself to return his feelings?

I had high hopes for Ruthless because I’ve read other books by Stuart which were quite good; unfortunately, while well-written, Ruthless falls short in characterization. The Viscount is overly decadent and weary; his manner of dress and speaking never made him intriguing in any 36 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

way. Elinor is spunky and determined but too willing to allow herself to be used. The sexual escapades are prurient and repelling. The romance is overshadowed by characters I cared little about and a plot that was predictable. Even though Ms. Stuart’s writing flows, nothing could overcome a tired and distasteful plot.

Tamela McCann THE ANATOMY OF GHOSTS Andrew Taylor, Penguin, 2010, £18.99, hb, 469pp, 9780718147518 / Hyperion, Jan. 2011, $24.99, hb, 432pp, 9781401302870 1786. John Holdsworth, a small-time bookseller, was faced with near bankruptcy following several unfortunate incidents: the drowning in the Thames of his small son, Georgie, followed by reversals of fortune with his business culminating in a fire at his bookshop and the suicide of his wife, Maria.

Following the deaths of his wife and son, he had written a book, The Anatomy of Ghosts, which had come to the attention of Lady Anne Oldershaw.

Lady Anne has problems of her own. Her son, Frank Oldershaw, a student at Jerusalem College, Cambridge, has been confined to a local mental hospital following his reaction to two deaths at the college. She employs John Holdsworth on two counts: to find out the reason behind her son’s illness and to assess the College Library before she decides whether or not to donate her late husband’s library to the College.

From there the story deepens, gathers pace and twists and turns in many directions. I found it a compelling read, the need to know what happens next being very strong. The characterisation was good, but I felt that the author had tried just a little too hard to reconstruct mid-18th-century English so that it got very ‘wordy’ at times. I found a couple of the solutions were a little woolly, and translate it to Oxford in the 20th century and I am not sure that Morse would have altogether approved of the final solutions. However, I enjoyed the story and would recommend it.

Marilyn Sherlock WICKED COMPANY Ciji Ware, Sourcebooks Landmark, 2010 (c1992), $16.99/C$19.99/£9.99, pb, 624pp, 9781402222719 Spanning the years 1761 to 1774, Wicked Company follows the adventures of Sophie McGann from her adolescent management of her father’s bookshop in Edinburgh to her work as a playbill printer for Drury Lane Theatre in London to her daring successes as a petticoat playwright.

The path to her ambition is thwarted at nearly every step, as is her passionate relationship with the dashing actor and fellow Scot Hunter Robertson.

Ware has artfully blended the historical players of 18th-century London theater (David Garrick, Edward Capell, Kitty Clive, Elizabeth Griffith, and many others) into her fictional story. Her details of time and place are extraordinary, allowing readers to experience the cold, the smells, the scenery, and the costumes of the time. This is a must- read for

romance readers interested in the history of British theater.

Sophie is a spunky heroine, and Hunter the tastiest Scotsman since Jamie Fraser. As the story progresses, the conflicts keeping the two apart seem sometimes forced and sometimes overly drawn out.

Still, readers will be applauding their hard-foughtfor theatrical successes and eagerly turning the pages until the two can be together at last.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt

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THROUGH ROSE-COLOURED GLASSES Anne Baker, Headline, 2010, £6.99, pb, 504pp, 9780755356652 Dinah shares a contented existence with her mother, Sarah. They don’t have much money to spend on the finer things of life, but the Radcliffes have always made the best of things. When Dinah meets widowed businessman Richard Haldane at the races, her life changes beyond recognition; dazzled by him she marries in a matter of weeks.

However, all is not as it appears and she soon finds Richard is not the man she thought he was.

Trapped in a claustrophobic marriage she realises Richard has dangerous secrets.

This is an entertaining and well-put-together story. It keeps you guessing as Richard has more skeletons in the closet than he wants her to know.

All along there is that hint of something suspicious and the many twists and turns of the story make this a regular page turner. Worth reading.

Karen Wintle SPOILED Ann Barker, Robert Hale, 2010, £18.99, hb, 223pp, 9780709089681 Evangeline Granby is the heroine, a well-off, indulged young woman who has a mild flirtation with Michael Buckleigh while visiting Sheffield.

Little does she know that she is to meet Buckleigh in her own village of Illingham soon after, for he has recently been appointed to the curacy of the parish, while the vicar toadies to the bishop elsewhere.

The usual tug of war between heroine and hero occurs, complicated by the fact that Michael is the illegitimate son of Lord Ashbourne, the local landowner. Michael’s arrival in the village flutters a few female hearts, but he is more occupied in coming to terms with his father, Lord Ashbourne, whom he meets for the first time and from whom he eventually hears about the circumstances of his birth.

This is not the usual Regency froth but a more complex narrative, mostly told through Michael’s eyes. While Evangeline is of some interest, her character is less finely drawn than Michael’s. Her contradictory behaviour tends to be more irritating than enchanting. There is also some fine detail on the well-dressings of Derbyshire which may be of interest to readers.

Geraldine Perriam 18th Century — 19th Century

THE PRINCESS OF NOWHERE Prince Lorenzo Borghese, Avon A, 2010, $13.99, pb, 320pp, 9780061721618 Pauline Bonaparte, younger sister of Napoleon, loses her first husband to yellow fever. She returns to Paris from Saint Dominique, spends lavishly and embarrasses her brother with her affairs. Napoleon secures a second marriage for her to Prince Camillo Borghese, heir of an ancient Italian family. Camillo is reluctant to marry this notorious young woman until he meets her and succumbs to her beauty and charm.

The couple returns to Italy where Pauline is soon bored by her husband’s reserve, especially in the bedroom. She attracts other male attention, flaunting herself at the parties she hosts. Camillo is humiliated. His family already resents the French occupation of Italy, and relations all around are strained. The prince sends Pauline to one of his lesser estates, and they remain estranged for many years. Pauline’s health fails, and she finally realizes what her husband meant to her, but will he discard his mistress and return to her arms?

The story is lively and reads at a quick pace. The sex scenes are erotic. Many of the observations of the couple are seen through the eyes of a fictional character, Sophie. She is Napoleon’s ward, and he sends her to Pauline when still a child to be his sister’s companion, and later a lady-in-waiting.

Sophie resents Camillo at first—to the point where she grows annoying. Time is wasted on her subplots. The story would be more compelling if it had concentrated on the central characters and their tumultuous relationship. The author is a descendant of Camillo Borghese.

Diane Scott Lewis THE HEIR Grace Burrowes, Sourcebooks, 2010, $6.99/ C$8.99, pb, 480pp, 9781402244346 The Earl of Westhaven is not a Regency rake, but Anna Seaton, his most unusual housekeeper, does not know that when she surprises him in a compromising position with the parlor maid.

In defense of her staff, she hits him on the head, rendering him unconscious. When Westhaven learns that Anna is literate not only in English but also in Latin, German, French, Gaelic, Welsh and Italian, he is intrigued with discovering who she is. The more he discovers about her, the more he wants to know. Anna is not immune to the handsome Earl’s charms, and they soon become lovers. The Earl’s father is a duke and desperate to have his son marry and produce an heir. Tired of his father’s machinations to get him wed, the Earl proposes to Anna. She refuses repeatedly for reasons she doesn’t divulge, which only cements the Earl’s determination to make her his bride. Ms. Burrowes’s characters are well developed, and the plot is interesting, but it takes too long to get to the point and would benefit from some tightening.

That said, this debut novel has much else to recommend it.

Audrey Braver 19th Century

IMPATIENT WITH DESIRE Gabrielle Burton, Voice, 2010, $22.99, hb, 248pp, 9781401341015 It is hard to visit the Sierra Nevada Mountains and not think of the historic Donner Party. As your car climbs those twisted mountain roads, you can’t help think of the pioneers who became trapped for a winter so close to their destination and resorted to cannibalism. These people have also fascinated author Gabrielle Burton. She spent years researching them, and her previous book, Searching for Tamsen Donner, tells the story of her research travels. But rather than write a nonfiction work this time, she has turned to fiction to tell their story.

Impatient with Desire tells the tale of the tragic group who set out in the spring of 1846 for California, a land rich with opportunity. The Donners, like the others in the party, were bringing their children with them. They were to be some of the first families in California, an exciting proposition. Unfortunately, 87 of them became trapped in the mountains during the winter of 1846-1847. The handful of survivors of that winter ultimately had to turn to their dead for sustenance, spawning a host of legends.

Burton focuses on the tale from Tamsen’s perspective. She poetically weaves stories of life on the trail with the hardships Tamsen is experiencing as she attempts to keep her family alive. It is both heartbreaking and engrossing. Tamsen’s voice is rich and believable, and readers will hear it long after they put the book down.

Nancy Castaldo ONE TOUCH OF SCANDAL Liz Carlyle, Avon, 2010, $7.99/C$10.99, pb, 384pp, 9780061965753 1856, Victorian England. Governess Grace Gautier is accused of murdering her fiancé, a man who offers her security and a home, who just happens to also be her employer. The devilishly handsome Lord Ruthven, an aristocrat of mixed English and Indian parentage, is a member of the mysterious Guardians with a gift for seeing into people’s hearts. He keeps both emotional and physical distance from people, for if he touches someone, he can see his or her secrets, a skill that gives him nothing but pain. Ruthven is determined to find the killer, for he suspects Grace is innocent, though he is unable to read her heart. Grace and Ruthven work together to solve the murder, which forces them to investigate their own ancestry and the history of the Guardians. The story mixes a murder mystery with Eastern and Western mysticism, a secret society, and a dash of history.

One Touch of Scandal is the perfect read for a cool fall evening by the fireplace.

Monica E. Spence LAST NIGHT’S SCANDAL Loretta Chase, Avon, 2010, $7.99/C$10.99, pb, 384pp, 9780061632679 Regency England. Peregrine Dalmay, Earl of Lisle, has returned from studying in Egypt only to

be ordered to Scotland by his family. The idea of trading his digs at the pyramids for the proposed renovation and repair of the family castle makes him miserable and rebellious. Olivia WingateCarston, Lisle’s dearest childhood friend, volunteers to accompany the Earl to Scotland. After all, how is a girl to have adventures? Unwilling to face the immediate future filled with a boring and family life, Olivia proposes to help Lisle with the organization and outfitting of the antiquated family seat. He accepts. Arriving in Scotland, Lisle and Olivia face ghosts, murderers and, worse yet, unruly servants.

As they rebuild the castle to its former glory, they realize that they could be building a life together.

Written with humor and a light touch, Last Night’s Scandal will entertain and amuse the reader with a good story and enjoyable characters. It’s a fun read.

Monica E. Spence WHAT ALICE KNEW: A Most Curious Tale of Henry James and Jack the Ripper Paula Marantz Cohen, Sourcebooks Landmark, 2010, $14.99, pb, 341pp, 9781402243554 For anyone who reads and loves Henry James (as I do), the very title of this elegant mystery by Paula Cohen evokes contrasting emotions: gratified recognition ( James’ novella “What Maisie Knew”) and skepticism (really, Jack the Ripper?). Against my initial reaction of an inward ladylike snort, I almost immediately found myself absolutely captivated by the James siblings — Henry, his philosopher brother William, and their invalid sister Alice — as they come to life in Cohen’s pages.

William is invited by Scotland Yard as an early prototype of the modern psychological profiler to help investigate the infamous Whitechapel Murders. With Henry and Alice already resident in London, the three join forces to uncover the identity of the brutal killer. What could have been a preposterous fictional undertaking is from the first a deeply touching story about three very complex human beings, struggling to overcome and somehow resolve their individual pain, longings and life choices through work, love and attention to life’s psychological details.

Various other fin-de-siècle characters drift in and out: Oscar Wilde, John Singer Sargent and his sister Emily, Mark Twain, to name a few, adding wit and verve to the bright and brittle conversations over the sumptuous dinner tables of the Bloomsbury crowd of 1888 London. Cohen deftly weaves in references to various stories by Henry James and quotations from the somewhat dense philosophical studies of William, and decorates the plot twists with characters from paintings by Singer Sargent — a delight to the informed reader, and an incentive to discovery by those who wish to find out more. The novel is literary, philosophical, witty and thoroughly entertaining. Cohen, who has written novels treating both Austenian and Shakespearean themes in modern settings, has presented us with a new standard for the historical mystery story.

Mary F. Burns HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 37

HER ABUNDANT JOY Lyn Cote, Avon Inspire, 2010, $12.99, pb, 294pp, 9780061373428 Book 3 of the Texas Star of Destiny series opens in 1846, when Ranger Carson Quinn arrives in Galveston and encounters a party of stranded German immigrants. Quinn agrees to lead them inland as far as his home. On the journey, he intervenes to protect widowed servant Mariel Wolffe from her employer’s abuse. As the parties separate, Mariel accepts an offer from Quinn’s mother to stay with the family and become a companion for her youngest daughter. A growing attraction between Mariel and Quinn is interrupted when he is called to fight in the Mexican-American War, where he must battle his aversion to violence as well as the enemy. Mariel follows Quinn to be near him and help nurse the wounded. Will they return from war whole in body and mind?

Cote does a good job of acknowledging both modern and historical attitudes, by having the Quinn family be free of Anglo prejudice against foreigners and Mexican-descended Texians, while others are not. The book’s religious content is light. The characters are interesting and believable, although I likely would have appreciated the story more if I had had background knowledge from the prior volumes in the series.

B.J. Sedlock HEARTBROKE BAY Lynn D’Urso, Berkley, 2010, $15.00/C$18.50, pb, 320pp, 9780425236802 In 1898, Lady Hamilton, recently arrived from England, is traveling by rail on a tour of the West. During the trip Hannah Butler, one of her servants, meets Hans Nelson, a fellow traveler bound for the Pacific. Their courtship is brief and they soon marry. Nelson has visions of striking it rich as he plans to make a fortune mining gold.

Along the way they encounter three other goldseekers: Harky, Dutch and Michael Severts.

Their journey seeking riches is not an easy one, as countless others discover. Undaunted by the climate and horror stories, they manage to make a tenuous landing after a ferocious storm in Lituya Bay, Alaska. For months they work tirelessly with meager results. Their promise of wealth eludes them. When they lose their only means of transportation back to civilization, their despair is lifted when Negook, a local Tlingit shaman, agrees to take them back home. As they enter his village, abundant food and wealth are everywhere, and a plan to stay is agreed upon by all. Negook is convinced the white people are causing bad luck to his people. He knows that the only way for him to rid himself of their presence is to give them what they want. He sees that greed is driving their destiny and is sure they won’t survive, so Negook leads them to gold, lots of gold.

Heartbroke Bay is based on the true story of Hans and Hannah Nelson. With D’Urso’s research and some imagination, it is easy to picture the despair and isolation felt by the four men who, along with Hannah Nelson, battled the harsh and 38 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

hostile climate of Alaska.

a firm hold on her own destiny.

Wisteria Leigh

Ann Pedtke

HART OF EMPIRE Saul David, Hodder & Stoughton, 2010, £12.99, hb, 342pp, 9780340953655 London 1879. Having survived the catastrophe at Isandlwana, Captain Hart has returned to London for rest and recuperation. On his last day in London before returning to South Africa he is summoned to a secret meeting where he is tasked by the Prime Minister to go to Afghanistan. There an extremist cleric is trying to rouse the country into a war against the British who are seen as oppressors. Hart is given the mission of stealing the Prophet’s Cloak – an important religious relic – before the cleric can find it and use it to unite the country in a holy war. Captain Hart finds himself a small, but significant player in a deadly game of politics with HM government trying desperately to avoid conflict, while the Indian government is actively looking for an excuse to send troops into the country in order to protect their interests.

This is David’s second book in the series, and while it helps to have read the first (Zulu Hart), this can be read by itself. Well researched, the politics and the military campaigning are well portrayed. Hart, who occupies an ambivalent position in the British class system because of his parentage, is believable. Put together a dashing hero, a courageous and resourceful Pathan guide and an alluring Afghan princess, mix with action scenes, self serving cads and fanatical enemies and you have an exciting story which will keep you enthralled. Recommended.

Mike Ashworth

VOICES IN OUR SOULS Gene Erb and Ann DeWolf Erb, Sunstone, 2010, $19.95, pb, 195pp, 9780865347588 In November 1875, James DeWolf, Army surgeon, along with his wife, Frances, arrives in Dakota Territory to join Colonel George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry. James DeWolf was to become the surgeon on the march into the Black Hills against the Sioux Indian nation. The purpose was to force the Sioux, led by Chief Sitting Bull, onto a reservation.

Based on fact, this novel tells the story of how James and Frances DeWolf dealt with living on a frontier army post (they were from “back east”).

The couple befriended the Native Americans while living at Fort Totten, treating many for illnesses suffered from malnutrition. Stories of the Battle at Little Big Horn are numerous, yet this book was based upon the diary kept by James DeWolf as the 7th Cavalry moved towards the Indian encampment along the Little Big Horn River.

The novel is well researched, illustrating the close relationship between James and Frances and their plans for the future after James left the Army, and describing in detail the anxiety felt by Frances while James marched to the Indian encampment.

This is a love story of two individuals caught up in a tragic battle. The authors, with the use of diaries and excerpts from letters, tell a poignant story. I recommend it to those who wish to learn more about this major American battle and to understand its effect on those who actually lived and died during Custer’s Last Stand.

Jeff Westerhoff

GOLD FEVER: A Klondike Mystery Vicki Delany, Napoleon & Company, 2010, $18.95, pb, 328pp, 9781926607023 The Klondike Gold Rush of 1898 is in full swing, and Fiona MacGillivray is making the most of it. While miners’ fortunes rise and fall, Fiona attracts a steady stream of customers to her dance hall, the Savoy. The business brings Fiona prosperity, independence, and a host of adoring suitors. Life is good – until a string of murders casts suspicion on the Savoy and threatens to reveal unsettling details of Fiona’s past. Can Fiona uncover the murderer before her reputation – and her life – are laid on the line? In the Yukon, where gold fever all too often overrides the law, almost anything can happen.

In this sequel to Gold Digger, Vicki Delany merges the frontier novel, the murder mystery, and the traditional western into a fast-paced read.

Although readers unfamiliar with Gold Digger may find that Gold Fever leaves frustrating gaps in Fiona’s history, Fiona is nonetheless a precocious and appealing heroine, and the sections narrated in her voice stand out against the less-engaging chapters told by her son and by the local constable.

If Fiona’s haughty self-confidence betrays a rather modern sensibility, it is nonetheless heartening to see a woman taking advantage of her times to gain

DRACULA IN LOVE Karen Essex, Doubleday, 2010, $25.95/C$29.00, hb, 384pp, 9780385528917 In the opening pages of Dracula in Love, Mina Murray Harker states that the documents and letters used in Bram Stoker’s Dracula were forgeries created to hide the “dark deeds” of a “cabal of murderers.” Wanting to explain the truth of what happened between herself and the Count, Mina begins her story.

The original Dracula storyline is followed, but the changed viewpoint illuminates the repression, cruelty and madness of Drs. Seward, Von Helsinger and Lord Godalming. The doctors’ “understanding” of the female psyche is terrifying.

The changed viewpoint also shows us the Count in a new light. He has loved Mina for more than 700 years, his passion, power and vibration singing to her from afar and through the ages. He is a most delicious character, but that creates a problem because Mina’s fiancé, Jonathan, is a most likeable character. Jonathan is kindness and innocence; the Count is pleasure and power. I found the middle part of the book uncomfortable, unsure where the story was heading and if I wanted to go there.

Without telling you the ending, I will say that I liked where I went and I want to go back.

19th Century

Essex’s twisting of the original ending, weaving it with folklore, magic and passion, is pure ecstasy.

Additionally, there is a complicated irony to Mina and the Count’s relationship which is, in a literary sense, deeply satisfying.

If Essex hasn’t thought of it, she should consider a sequel. I want more.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt A STRANGER IN MAYFAIR Charles Finch, Minotaur, 2010, $24.99/C$28.99, hb, 320pp, 9780312625061 Changes are intruding fast and furious into Charles Lenox’s formerly well-ordered life. First there is his marriage to Lady Jane Grey, followed by a wonderful honeymoon in Paris, which seems almost a dream when they return to London. There is the task of joining their two homes — literally, in this case, as their side-by-side townhouses are being remodeled into one large home. Their good friends’ new baby brings a whole set of unanswered questions for the uncertain newlyweds. Then there is the unfamiliar business of Parliament, convening for the first time for the newly elected MP. All this makes for an uncharacteristically unsettled Charles. Fortunately, his old life intervenes, as a footman from a Mayfair house is found murdered.

But just days after Charles is asked to investigate the matter by the servant’s master, he is warned off by the very same man. This, of course, only piques his interest, as does the realization that the young footman was leading a secret life.

This fourth novel is a fine addition to the series.

As ever, the plain appeal of the characters, especially Charles Lenox himself, shines throughout the work. If the mystery is somewhat simple for the reader to solve, it is easily forgiven, as one loses one’s self in another more genial time and place.

In this regard, the author continues his uncanny ability to bring 19th-century London alive. This time, it is the workings of Parliament that comprise the fascinating subplot. These are revealed to the reader in much the same way as they are discovered by the neophyte Charles, sometimes surprising, always interesting. However, take this work not as an intellectual exercise but one of pure enjoyment.

This is a mystery that captivates rather than challenges, but does so completely.

Ken Kreckel THE SEEKER Ann H. Gabhart, Revell, 2010, $14.99, pb, 416pp, 9780800733636 Charlotte Vance has a plan for her future, but in April 1861, her plan seems to be falling apart.

The neighbor she is engaged to marry (in order that they can join their vast estates) has decided to join a Shaker community, where marriage is forbidden. Her father, a Kentucky state senator, returns from Lexington with a new wife, who takes over the running of Charlotte’s beloved Grayson, including selling many of their slaves. Adam Wade, a visiting artist, steals a kiss from Charlotte in her family garden, and she can’t stop thinking about him. And worst of all, the United States is on the 19th Century

brink of civil war, making any plan for the future seem impossible.

Estranged from her father, Charlotte decides to join the Shaker community. This decision will allow her black maid, Mellie, freedom, and it will give Charlotte a chance to try to win back her fiancé. As her plans slowly unravel, Charlotte learns to give the planning of her future to God. Gabhart deftly weaves the Civil War, the Vance family traumas, Shaker theology, and Charlotte’s romance with Adam Wade into a true-to-history, heartfelt story. The Seeker is sure to please all readers of Christian romance.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt THE DRESSMAKER Posie Graeme-Evans, Atria, 2010, $16.00/ C$18.99, pb, 443pp, 9780743294423 “But I have changed… I do not have to be who I was.” In Victorian England, life is not kind to Ellen Gowan. Her father, a vicar, is killed in his church during a lightning storm when the roof caves in and buries him. Bereft and penniless, Ellen and her mother Connie must move to Shene House in Richmond to live with her mother’s sister Daisy and her cousin Oriana. There, both Connie and Ellen witness spousal abuse as Daisy’s cold husband Isidore controls his family through hostility and intimidation. As Connie grows weak from tuberculosis, she and Ellen leave the abusive home and find lodging at the house of Madame Angelique, a dressmaker in Richmond.

There they work as dressmakers, successfully contributing to the household of Madame and her son Raoul. Ellen’s mother is determined to go to London to open a dressmaker’s shop. They go to London, where Connie dies, and that is when life really gets hard for 15-year-old Ellen. Tricked into a fake marriage by Raoul, young Ellen finds herself penniless and pregnant, abandoned by her so-called husband. Determined to make a life for herself and her baby daughter in London, Ellen’s strong will overcomes even more obstacles in her fight for survival.

The novel engages from the first page with lush description and vivid period detail. The reader gets a sense of the styles of clothing and life in both rural England and the streets of Victorian London.

Ellen Gowan is an engaging character whose strength and wit grow as she finds her place as a strong, independent woman — the dressmaker — in a time when women were often pawns of men.

Well-researched with many a twist and turn, this novel is hard to put down.

Liz Allenby A DARCY CHRISTMAS Amanda Grange, Sharon Lathan, and Carolyn Eberhart, Sourcebooks Landmark, 2010, $14.99/ C$17.99, pb, 292 pp, 9781402243394 These three Christmas novellas featuring Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy are a delight for fans of Pride and Prejudice. Debut author Carolyn Eberhart offers us a clever retelling of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, in which the Ghosts of Christmas

Past, Present, and Future visit Darcy on Christmas Eve to warn him of the consequences if his pride keeps him from marrying Elizabeth. Amanda Grange, author of Mr. Darcy’s Diary, gives us a heartwarming story of the Darcys’ first Christmas together. Darcy and a pregnant Elizabeth visit her sister Jane and her husband Bingley, who have a baby of their own. Unexpected visitors, including Elizabeth’s mother Mrs. Bennet and Darcy’s overbearing aunt Lady Catherine, arrive, but do not prevent the Darcys from celebrating a joyous Christmas. In Sharon Lathan’s “A Darcy Christmas,” the arrival of a portrait of the Darcys and their children inspire the couple, after more than twenty years of marriage, to recall past Christmases with their joys and tragedies, including the birth of a daughter and the death of one of the older generation from Pride and Prejudice. Lathan shows us an affectionate couple, clearly very much in love, but without the explicit sex which she gives us in her series of novels about the Darcys.

All three novellas are a pleasure to read, although some of the language, particularly in Lathan’s novella, sounds too modern. I have never especially cared for attempts to imitate Jane Austen’s style; they never come close to the real thing. But it is jarring to read of a girl in Jane Austen’s time having a “crush” on a young man, for example. And there are a few minor inaccuracies: in Eberhart’s novella, Georgiana Darcy plays Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” which was written much later. But these stories are still absolutely delightful.

Vicki Kondelik THE ABANDONED RAKE Emily Harland, Robert Hale, 2010, £18.99, hb, 224pp, 9780709090069 Joanna Winterton is in mourning for a fiancé for whom she had no particular affection. She and her aunt decide to visit the Lake District to evade the sympathy shown by Society in London. Unknown to Joanna, Sir Lucas Montfort heads to the Lakes in order to escape the prying eyes of Society after his betrothed jilts him for a half-pay officer.

Joanna and Lucas end up across the road from each other, a source of irritation and attraction as they spar with one another. Someone, it seems, is trying to harm one of them and the two, assisted by Joanna’s aunt and Lord Osborn, a friend of Lucas, try to solve the mystery. This is pretty much the standard Regency structure with a tad too much Heyeresque vocabulary and slightly stilted dialogue.

Some of the Wordsworthian background may be of interest but the plot is undemanding, with few surprises and the narrative tends to wander a bit without really adding much of any depth.

Geraldine Perriam LORD WARE’S WIDOW Emily Harland, Hale, 2010, £18.99, hb, 224pp, 9780709090076 This Regency-set novel is so full of errors they get in the way of the story. For instance, ‘mauve’ was not named until 1856, decades after the book is set.

And I don’t think women wore evening hats with HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 39

plumes in this period – not that I know exactly when it is set, as no clues to the date are given by the author.

But more serious are the errors in the plotting.

Twice the heroine’s widowhood is referred to as of several years’ duration, during which she has not been seen in society. But, later, she has been ‘away from our company’ for only a year. The heroine has a ‘last argument’ with the ‘late lordship’, but he actually died on their wedding night, and there was no argument.

The main problem I had with this novel, however, is that there are various plots trying to get out. The hero sets out to seduce the ‘beautiful Georgiana’, who is disillusioned by marriage due to her experiences. When she realises he doesn’t love her and is not proposing marriage, she flees; he follows in order to try and put things right, and suddenly we are in the middle of a smuggler plot.

It is made clear from the beginning that Georgiana dislikes, and is afraid of, her stepson, yet she seems to have total freedom of movement, despite the fact he controls her finances. It is as if the author had so many thoughts whirling in her head she had to get them all down, regardless of the plot and the editor does not seem to have set her right. jay Dixon

British Library by day and by night looks after her ill and querulous father. After contact with Brippoki (in circumstances that slightly stretch credibility), Sarah begins to research the life of Joseph Druce/William Bruce, an English convict.

Bripokki’s life descends into a spiritual nightmare as he explores his Dreaming along the banks of the Thames. Sarah, trying to eke out a small allowance to cover food and rent while caring for her father, becomes absorbed in the life of Druce/Bruce.

Outside Sarah’s house, some of the action takes place in the stews of East London, Greenwich and along the river bank.

It is an intriguing tale that, subject to judicious editing, would have been a good, literary pageturner. Sadly, it is too long and too confused for that, as if a good non-fiction history collided with a novel. The research may be impeccable, and the handling of Aboriginal spirituality sensitive and lyrical, but the result is a long, often rambling and directionless narrative with too much ‘telling’ and not enough ‘showing’, as if the author could not bear to exclude any of his research material. This novel could have been astonishing, especially since the handling of Brippoki’s life is so well observed.

It is a great pity that it is not.

Geraldine Perriam

COUNTERFEIT KISSES Sandra Heath, Robert Hale, 2010, £18.99, hb, 223pp, 9780709089964 When Stephen Holland is cheated out of his family’s famous tiara by the odious Duke of Exton, his sister Susannah swears to claim it back and get revenge on the Duke. A misunderstanding means that she also wants to punish Sir Gareth Carew for his role in the affair. Marriage and subsequent life in India intervene, and it is a few years later that the widowed and wealthy Mrs Leighton returns to England to carry out her plot.

A chance meeting with the Duke’s wife, Jane, takes her one step closer to her goal, but also brings her into contact with the handsome Sir Gareth.

Although sworn to destroy him, Susannah finds herself falling in love instead. Perhaps Gareth can help her in her mission if she can bring herself to be honest with him. The waters are muddied further when it transpires that at least two other people are also trying to steal the Holland tiara.

Sandra Heath specialises in these light-hearted romps through the early 19th century. She spins an enjoyable tale with just the right balance between romance, history and plot. It is not a taxing read, but it is an enjoyable one.

Sara Wilson

THE EDEN HUNTER Skip Horack, Counterpoint, 2010, $15.95, pb, 356pp, 9781582436098 Kau is a pygmy, sold into slavery after a vengeful attack upon his village by the neighboring Kesa tribe. The Eden Hunter begins in 1816, with his escape from the American innkeeper to whom he’s been sold. Kau heads into a series of violent wilderness adventures as he travels from Mississippi to Florida, hoping to find freedom in a land similar to his lost African home. Though he was once passed off as a child by the slavers, Kau is a ferocious adult who can kill as proficiently as any “ordinary” sized man. Kau means “Leopard” in his native tongue, and like the leopard, this tortured runaway prefers his own company. His travels through the south take him among various warring groups – white, black, and red men. Though eschewing friendship, Kau unwillingly becomes caught up in their struggles, eventually taking part in the last stand of a garrison manned by escaped slaves. These slaves, recruited by the British for the War of 1812, have been abandoned in a fort along the Apalachicola River. Allowing runaway slaves to remain free is not an intolerable state of affairs to the Americans who have begun to invade Florida.

The Eden Hunter is a literary novel, frequently bloody and disturbing, occasionally intercut with flashes of great beauty. These lyrical moments are almost invariably descriptions of the untouched natural world through which Kau journeys as he searches for a land which might at last bring healing to his broken heart.

Juliet Waldron

THE CLAY DREAMING Ed Hillyer, Myriad Editions, 2010, £11.99, hb, 541pp, 9780956 251503 This novel is set in London in May 1868 during the tour by the first Australian cricket team ever to come to England. The team members were all Aboriginal. A member of the team, Brippoki, also known as King Cole, comes into contact with Sarah Larkin, a woman who spends time at the 40 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

LOVE ON A DIME Cara Lynn James, Thomas Nelson, 2010, $14.99,

pb, 310pp, 9781595546791 Six years ago, Lilly Westbrook and Jackson Grail were in love, or so she thought until he left without even saying goodbye. Now it’s 1899, in Newport, Rhode Island, where the wealthy and privileged gather to spend the summer gossiping.

On the surface, Lilly appears to be a well-bred society girl dutifully husband-hunting. However, she surreptitiously writes dime novels, which her family and fiancé would find intolerable if her disgraceful secret were revealed. When, predictably, Jack returns, he brings back old feelings, trouble, and quite possibly scandal. This cozy romance creeps along at a slow, even pace. And while the story is predictable and formulaic, the underlying theme of female empowerment will appeal to modern-day readers, while the gentle plot will delight romance fans. Recommended as a light Christian romance read.

Rebecca Roberts DRACULA, MY LOVE: The Secret Journals of Mina Harker Syrie James, Avon, 2010, $14.99, pb, 457pp, 9780061923036 James explores the story of Dracula, in 1890 England and Transylvania, from the viewpoint of Mina Harker, bringing an old story hauntingly back to life. In this retelling, the story begins with Mina and her friend Lucy holidaying on the coast where they each individually meet and fall under the spell of the mysterious stranger, Mr. Wagner.

James recounts Lucy’s sleepwalking and decline in health with fresh details and insight, and provides readers with a new look on both women’s actions.

The revelation that Mr. Wagner is really Dracula works well through the eyes of Mina, and the story easily comes together through her diary entries.

As Mina falls in love with Dracula, she struggles with her loyalty to her husband, Jonathan, and her friends. All the characters from the original story appear, although each is slightly different.

For example, Van Helsing is portrayed as an oldfashioned, arrogant, but scientifically inept man.

While some readers might find this off-putting, I found it interesting and enjoyed the fresh twist and new theories.

James recreates an incredible depiction of Dracula that is both attractive and chilling; I became so intrigued with Dracula that I wasn’t sure which man I wanted Mina to end up with, and often found myself secretly rooting for him. The original storyline is followed quite well, and while James does take some writer’s liberties, the overall impact is a riveting, detailed, fascinating look at the story of Dracula. Recommended for all vampire lore lovers.

Rebecca Roberts THE TAKEN Mike Kearby, Dorchester, 2010, $6.99, pb, 225pp, 9780843963793 In 1864 Texas, two young brothers are surprised by Comanches. William, the younger brother, is taken by the Indians and raised as a 19th Century

Comanche warrior, while the elder brother James, wracked with guilt about not protecting William, learns to seek revenge on all Comanches. On his part, William, now known as Runs Horses, kills the White invaders wherever he can find them.

James is obsessed with finding his brother, and William is fixated on killing the mysterious slayer of Comanches; it is inevitable that the brothers will meet.

There are interesting Comanche legends and lore in this novel for adults and young adults, and graphic, but realistic, combat scenes. The writing is marred, though, by irritating repetition; almost every character “snarls” his dialogue, or wears a “snarl” upon his face, and James’ personal tic of “tapping two fingers” on his Colt revolvers is overblown. Also, the fact that the boys’ mother teaches James his tracking, shooting, and survival skills does not seem credible since the sickly Sarah never demonstrated those talents herself. Finally, the inevitable meeting of the two brothers is unsurprising and predictable.

This novel might be acceptable to the younger reader, but most adults will find it unremarkable.

John Kachuba SCARLET SASH Garry Douglas Kilworth, Severn House, 2010, $28.95/£19.99, hb, 248pp, 9780727868909 In the British Army, the Scarlet Sash is the insignia of the Provost Marshal, a glorified policeman. In this case, the PM is Ensign Sebastian Early. He begins to investigate an officer’s death.

The body was found in a room, locked from the inside, with two fatal gunshot wounds to his chest.

His own gun, a rifle, was found near his body.

Since there was no way for an assailant to escape the room, the death was ruled a suicide. However, Seb is puzzled by the fact that it would have been physically impossible to shoot oneself fatally, twice, with a rifle and leave no powder burns on the body.

It is January 1879, the beginning of the Zulu wars.

Seb’s investigation takes him to Lord Chelmsford’s camp at Isandlwana. Major Reynolds, the surgeon who’d signed the death certificate, is now at the hospital station at Rorke’s Drift, so Seb goes there to question him. The Zulu army attacks Isandlwana shortly after Seb and his assistants leave the camp.

It is a horrible massacre; almost 1,500 British soldiers are killed. Seb arrives at Rorke’s Drift to find approximately 116 soldiers there preparing for an attack from 4,000 Zulus. Seb and his assistant join the defenders of Rorke’s Drift. After that historic victory, Reynold’s confirms Seb’s suspicions that the officer was murdered, and his investigation continues to an unusual, surprising conclusion.

Mr. Kilworth has an interesting way of mixing historical fact with fiction. The mystery is well concocted, and it holds the reader’s interest. The blending of the Zulu War with the developing mystery sets a fast pace.

Audrey Braver A ROGUE OF MY OWN Johanna Lindsey, Corgi, 2010, £6.99, pb, 448pp, 19th Century

9780552160827/ Pocket, 2010, $7.99, pb, 416pp, 9781416599036 Lady Rebecca Marshall has been appointed a Maid of Honour at Queen Victoria’s court. For a young woman of eighteen, this was comparable to attending the most elite finishing school in the world. However, Rebecca soon finds herself in the murky world of court politics when she is asked to spy on other members of court. Reluctantly she agrees. Her life is made more complicated when she becomes involved with Rupert St John, a handsome guest at the palace with a reputation as a womanizer. Rebecca allows herself, despite her best intentions, to be seduced by the handsome rogue, with the calamitous result of her falling pregnant.

St John initially refuses to believe that she is pregnant, seeing it as a ruse to persuade him to marry her. Eventually he agrees to marry her on the condition that the marriage is in name only, until it is proven that she is not pregnant – at which time he will have the marriage annulled and she will be disgraced. Will hate turn to love? Will the rogue change his ways and accept his responsibilities?

The book captures the spirit and times of the Victorian era, and life at court. The main characters are well drawn and believable. The plot and subplots are well written. This is a romantic historical novel from a writer at her best. Johanna Lindsey’s many fans will enjoy this, while those new to the genre or author will find this book a good place to start.

Mike Ashworth DARCY’S VOYAGE: A Tale of Uncharted Love on the Open Seas Kara Louise, Sourcebooks Landmark, 2010, $14.99, pb, 505pp, 9781402241024 Janeites: Rejoice! Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy come alive again in this imaginative retelling of Pride and Prejudice.

Kara Louise revisits the star-crossed romance of Elizabeth and Darcy, but with a chance first meeting where no names are exchanged, and followed two years later by a second meeting on a cross-Atlantic voyage. Romance blooms onboard without the interfering prejudices of Darcy’s family and the embarrassing presence of Elizabeth’s silly mother. However, a misunderstanding separates them in America, and Darcy devotes much of his time to finding Elizabeth in the new world and back home in England.

Familiar characters return as well. Charles Bingley falls in love with Elizabeth’s kind sister, Jane, but Bingley’s sister, Caroline, returns as even more conniving and vicious in her attempt to win the hand of Darcy and turn his attention away from Elizabeth. The bounder Wickham this time pursues Elizabeth’s youngest sister (with Darcy taking a decidedly physical resolution to his scheme), and Elizabeth’s family overall remains as embarrassing as ever, but Darcy is more steadfast in his love for Elizabeth in this distinct rendition.

Kara Louise captures the style and language of Regency England with a few slip-ups (would Elizabeth really refer to “ethnic neighborhoods” in

New York?). Probably not, but it’s a very creative and witty read for those who can’t get enough Elizabeth and Darcy.

Pamela Ortega RAILWAY TO THE GRAVE Edward Marston, Allison & Busby, 2010, £19.99, hb, 350pp, 9780749007720 When a retired Army officer throws himself under a train, leaving a note for his old friend, Superintendent Tallis of Scotland Yard, Inspector Colbeck, the celebrated Railways Detective, finds himself despatched to rural Yorkshire to unravel the tangle of what soon proves to be something more than an ordinary suicide. The dead colonel’s missing wife, a spate of particularly hateful anonymous letters, and the feuds and gossip of a less-than-idyllic village will keep Colbeck fully occupied while he strives to solve a murder, clear a deceased’s name – and broach the news of his engagement to his misogynist chief. This is the seventh offering in the Railways Detective series; without concerning himself overly with characterization or subtlety, Marston provides a nice whodunit in the classic tradition, with plenty of likely suspects, red herrings, trains, and guessing work. Still, I would have enjoyed the ride much more without the frequent stops for not terribly relevant conversation, in which characters feed each other bits of Railways lore, discuss the merits of Cranford, and rhapsodize (repeatedly) on the joys of holy matrimony.

Chiara Prezzavento DEVOURED D.E. Meredith, Minotaur, 2010, 24.99, hb, 336pp, 9780312557683 This debut novel by Denise Meredith is an entertaining read. It reminded me of Masterpiece Mystery with the many characters introduced at the beginning of her story. I wondered where they were all going and how they would fit, but she ties it all up neatly at the end.

The book opens with the murder of Lady Bessingham, a wealthy patron of the scientific community, and missing letters sent to her from the field. Benjamin Broderig, explorer and author of the letters, is desperate to find them as their publication could cause an upheaval in the religious and scientific communities. Dr, Adolphus Hatton, a professor of forensics, and his assistant, Albert Roumonde, are hard at work using the only tools available in 1856 London. As the “botanicals” fall – one by one and none of the deaths are easy ones – Dr. Hatton teams up with Inspector Adams of Scotland Yard in a race to stop the killer and find the letters.

We see the dark side of London society as young girls are found brutally murdered and left in back alleys unknown and unloved. Roumonde is desperate to find their killer, but Inspector Adams feels they are not worth the effort when more “important” people are being killed. When another young girl is found murdered and holding a book, they are led to the gruesome body of a reclusive HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 41

C

THE PASSAGES OF H.M.

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Jay Parini, Doubleday, 2010, $26.95, hb, 464pp, 9780385522779 Even readers unacquainted with much of Early American literature recognize the name of literary giant Herman Melville and connect him with Moby Dick, the novel for which he remains best known. But few have any inkling of H.M.’s personal life, or the demons that drove him.

Jay Parini has accomplished what no scholarly biography of Melville has been able to do. He breathes life into this shadowy character, making Melville human — for better or worse, because he was a complex and troubled man and isn’t always a pleasant companion, even at this distance. Moreover, he introduces us to key players in his subject’s life in a very personal way. Melville’s friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne was intimate, intense, and puzzling. When Hawthorne announced he was moving away from the Berkshires where both families lived, Melville tearfully begged his friend not to leave him, a reaction that only made Hawthorne all the more uncomfortable. Earlier, when Melville wed his Lizzie, she thought she was saying “I do” to a man of creativity and deep thoughts, a world traveler and best-selling author.

But most of their life together he worked as a lowly customs agent and struggled with an alcohol addiction, his volatile moods, and a failing writing career.

Parini alternates vivid narrative episodes throughout Melville’s life, from his earliest shipboard travels to tense domestic scenes, with glimpses into Lizzie’s letters and observations of her husband. He handles Melville’s difficult character with compassion and realism. And when stepping into Lizzie’s perspective he shows remarkable sensitivity, portraying a woman in love who discovers too late she has signed on to a life with a man as possessed by his own tragic writing career as Ahab was by his elusive white whale. This is a stunning novel, full of surprises, beautifully imagined and written.

Kathryn Johnson book dealer. As more bodies are found and more clues come to light, Dr. Hatton feels the connection may go beyond the scientific community to include a member of parliament and possibly Inspector Adams, who “moonlights” in the employ of several of the upper class.

The author does a good job of bringing the wintry streets of Victorian London and the steamy jungles of Borneo to life as she tells her story.

Susan Zabolotny GRETNA LEGACY Marina Oliver, Robert Hale, 2010, £18.99, hb, 223pp, 9780709090946 Abigail Barton has been brought up in Bath by Lady Jordon. Her origins are shady, her parents dead, but she has money, beauty and vivacity. Her trustee organises for her to have a London Season, sponsored by Lady Padmore, with the intention of securing her in a loving marriage. An ambition not shared by the irrepressible Miss Barton. However when she comes into the society of Julian Keighley, Earl of Wantock, she finds herself drawn to him.

When her childhood friend Hartley arrives in Town and immediately falls in love with her hostess’s daughter, Abigail never hesitates to support the star-crossed lovers. Her very unconventionality attracts Julian all the more, 42 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

but Abigail is certain that he will never marry someone without a family or background. Then all is revealed about her mysterious past and her fate is sealed for certain.

Marina Oliver has created a really sparky heroine in Abigail Barton. She is no milksop young lady and is all the more likeable for it. Through her lens the reader sees the London Season as glittering, fun, but ultimately frivolous and insubstantial. A fine read that will definitely appeal to the romantic in us all.

Sara Wilson A CHRISTMAS ODYSSEY Anne Perry, Ballantine, 2010, $18.00, hb, 208pp, 9780345518583 / Headline, 2010, £16.99, hb, 160pp, 9780755376889 Anne Perry’s Christmas novellas have quickly become a tradition for her legion of fans. A Christmas Odyssey is her eighth book in the series featuring characters from her Monk and Pitt mysteries. This story opens a few days before Christmas in Victorian London. The wealthy James Wentworth has asked his old friend, Henry Rathbone, for help. James’s son, Lucien, has slipped from a life of wealth and privilege to the dark world of dangerous drugs, deviate sexual behavior, and murder. Henry knows nothing of the workings of

this world and goes to Hester Monk for advice. It is here that he meets Squeaky Robinson, a reformed brothel owner, who now takes care of Hester’s books at the Portpool Lane Clinic. Squeaky knows too much about this terrible place to ever want to return, but can’t bring himself to send Henry there alone. Through association with Squeaky, a compassionate slum doctor known as Crow joins them. The three of them take on this world of dark characters and ruined lives, and it is here that they find Bessie, a young girl who has not yet been destroyed by the vices of this underworld. She leads them to Lucien, but getting him to leave this place is another matter. Throughout the story we are given glimpses of the good in people who are thought to be beyond redemption. I recommend this book to anyone who likes to curl up with a good read on a quiet afternoon.

Susan Zabolotny MR. DARCY’S LITTLE SISTER C. Allyn Pierson, Sourcebooks, 2010, $14.99/£7.99, pb, 448pp, 9781402240386 Miss Georgiana Darcy is preparing for her first season, and she’s terrified. Most of us can relate to teenage angst, but during the Regency when you’re seventeen and unsure whether your personal charms make you as attractive to prospective suitors as your dowry of thirty thousand pounds, the social landscape becomes much more complicated.

In debut novelist C. Allyn Pierson’s Pride and Prejudice sequel, we see Mr. Darcy’s little sister develop from a painfully shy and insecure teenager to a young woman of confidence and determination.

Piqued by the condescending attitude of her cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam, who shares guardianship of Georgiana with her protective brother, Georgiana acts in predictable churlish teenage fashion – to the consternation of her family. One of the charms of this book is Georgiana’s transformation, which is triggered by the conniving fortune hunter Jonathan Walker.

Ms. Pierson picks up Georgiana’s story just before the marriage of her brother to Elizabeth Bennet, who proves a kind and sympathetic friend to her self-doubting young sister-in-law. The new Mrs. Darcy is one of a cast of characters we first met in Pride and Prejudice, and it was enjoyable to see them interwoven into Georgiana’s story.

While the first half of the book provides a wealth of interesting detail on the customs and fashions of the Regency period which will appeal to Jane Austen fans, I felt the book really benefited from the increase in pace and conflict which occurs about halfway through with Georgiana’s kidnapping and its ramifications. When Georgiana at last learns her own heart, she acts with conviction and determination. It’s a sweet romance.

Mr. Darcy’s Little Sister is written with elegance and a faithfulness to the Regency era that will appeal to lovers of Austenesque sequels.

Beverley Eikli THE BLOOD OF LORRAINE Barbara Corrado Pope, Pegasus, 2010, $25.00/ 19th Century

C$31.00, hb, 367pp, 9781605980980 Pope continues her story of French magistrate Bernard Martin, begun in Cezanne’s Quarry.

Martin is now living in Nancy, where he is a judge at the Palais de Justice. Anti-Semitic sentiment is running high in France with the arrest and trial for treason of Captain Alfred Dreyfus in Paris.

In the midst of this tension, Martin is given the murder investigation of a baby who has been found killed and gutted. His wet nurse and parents claim it was done by a Jewish tinker as part of a religious ritual. Evidence points in a different direction, and Martin needs to solve this crime quickly before the public can be worked into a Jew-hating frenzy.

Unfortunately, the babe’s death is followed by the murder of two Jewish citizens. Martin must balance this crisis at work with an evolving crisis at home: his wife Clarie, pregnant with their first child, goes into an early labor. The babe is born weak and sickly.

The stories of Martin’s work life and home life run side-by-side, following similar themes.

The murder investigation is a tangle of exotic characters, overt and elusive motives and confused philosophies. The case forces Martin to consider what it means to be a Jew and what it means to be a French citizen. In the home story, Clarie’s response to her crisis is not what one hopes from a strong, rational person. The alteration of her personality is engaging, but the way this subplot is resolved seems rushed.

In The Blood of Lorraine, Pope captures the setting of France and the thinking of the French people at the end of the 19th century. The pages bleed with the frustration rational people feel when faced with religious fanaticism and hatred.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt NEVER LESS THAN A LADY Mary Jo Putney, Zebra, 2010, $6.99/C$8.99, pb, 335pp, 9781420103298 Regency England. Widowed Lady Julia Raines’ soul and body bear scars given to her by her abusive late husband – the worst being the fact she can now never bear a child. She knows she could not bear the touch of another man after what she has experienced. She hides in the guise of a midwife in a small town, well away from London and Society, under the name of Julia Bancroft. When she is captured and accused of the murder of her husband by his cronies, Julia abandons hope. But unexpected rescue appears in the form of her husband’s cousin, Major Alexander Randall. The Earl of Daventry is not only Julia’s vindictive father-in-law, but the uncle of Major Randall. When the Major proposes to protect her from the Earl by marrying her, Julia reluctantly agrees, with a request: she can set limits on their intimacy, based on her emotional and physical scars. Randall agrees, knowing he will never have Julia if he does not.

This is one of the few romance novels I have read that deals with the emotional scars of abuse. Not only was it well written, but the characters were well-developed and the story had depth. This is the third book of the trilogy. I have just purchased the 19th Century

first two, and I’m looking forward to reading them.

Monica E. Spence DARK ROAD TO DARJEELING Deanna Raybourn, Mira, 2010, $14.95/C$17.95, pb, 393pp, 9780778328209 It is 1889, and Lady Julia Grey and her husband Lord Brisbane are on their honeymoon in Cairo when her sister Portia and brother Plum catch up with them in order to request that the newlyweds accompany them to India, where Portia’s dearest friend, Jane, is newly widowed and expecting a baby. Jane has written to Portia, expressing fears that her husband Harry has been murdered.

Lady Julia views this as an opportunity to help her husband, once again, in his profession of private enquiry agent. However, this is a point of contention with Lord Brisbane, and it seems the blissful honeymoon is at an end.

Jane lives on a tea plantation inherited by her ne’er-do-well husband, along with her husband’s cousin, who manages the plantation very well, and the husband’s aunt. The valley where it is located is populated by a small number of Westerners who all have their own peculiarities, as well as a local family whose various members serve a number of the Western households. Lady Julia and Lord Brisbane find plenty of suspects as they attempt to determine whether Freddie was murdered, and by whom.

This is a most enjoyable entry in the series, and the setting outside of Darjeeling provides some additional spice. There is a quite a surprise in this book, which, along with several other situations, will take on added depth for readers who have read the books in order. The first is Silent in the Grave, and it is the perfect place for new readers to begin.

Fans of the series won’t want to miss this newest entry.

Trudi E. Jacobson DARK IN THE CITY OF LIGHT Paul Robertson, Bethany House, 2010, $14.99, pb, 416pp, 9780764205699 Set during the Franco-Prussian war, largely in Paris, Paul Robertson’s latest novel weaves an exciting tale of deception and war-time intrigue involving three members of a titled family: Baron Ferdinand Harsanyi, his daughter Therese, and his son Rudolph.

The strengths of this writer and his novel are many: a vivid depiction of a desperate Paris in the 1870s; a talent for imagining the political atmosphere and characters’ wanderings through both city and countryside of 140 years ago, supported by solid research; and a workmanlike concentration on development and maintenance of suspense that will draw readers through the novel to the end. In addition, his ability to explain the science behind one of the characters’ explosive concoctions is fascinating, possibly a result of firsthand knowledge and teaching high-school science, as mentioned in his bio. We can smell the chemicals and see the mysterious reactions as they take place, one frame at a time, as if in a slow motion sequence

of a movie.

However, some of the reactions between characters are less effective, mostly as a result of forced or unlikely dialogue. For instance, a scene between lovers Therese and Auguste sounds clichéd and rather as if written for a tired soap opera. Therese tells her Auguste that she is so happy, and he responds: “How could it be otherwise? To be together, that is everything. For you to have me, so close, could only be happiness for you.” How full of himself Auguste sounds! And yet Therese simply agrees with him. But dialogue lapses aside, this is a solid effort at depicting an era that deserves more coverage. Readers interested in the Franco-Prussian war may want to add this book to their collection.

Kathryn Johnson THE OPPOSITE OF FALLING Jennie Rooney, Chatto & Windus, 2010, £12.99, pb, 266pp, 9780701182687 In 1862, Ursula Bridgewater of Liverpool is jilted without explanation by her fiancé. Independent of mind, means and now of marriage ties, she shrugs off her misfortune and takes herself away on some of the newfangled tours of Britain and Europe organised by Mr. Thomas Cook. In another part of Liverpool, illegitimate Sally Walker is growing up in the bleak, loveless atmosphere of a Catholic orphanage. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, young Toby O’Hara, having inherited his late father’s obsession with flying machines, is busy trying to build one, financing his project by giving balloon rides over Niagara Falls. So it is that in 1872, when Ursula decides to embark on Mr. Cook’s latest venture, a tour to the USA, all three come together and the story takes off, so to speak.

Although (with one exception) nothing heartstopping happens until the end, we’re treated, as in all good novels, to the pleasure of following characters who grow and blossom as their tale unfolds, surprising themselves as well as us with what they learn from each other’s lives.

This is a wise and delightful read enriched by Jennie Rooney’s gift for character, language and observation, and leavened with a dose of quirky humour that manages to be both light and sharp.

Sarah Cuthbertson A HOPEFUL HEART Kim Vogel Sawyer, Bethany House, 2010, $14.00, pb, 347pp, 9780764205095 In 1888 New York, Tressa is a well-bred young woman without means. Her aunt and uncle have given her a home since her parents died, but they cannot (or will not) provide the dowry required for her to marry. When Tressa’s would-be-fiancé decamps, they send her to school to find a husband — out West. As a student at the Wyatt Herdsman School in faraway Kansas, Tressa gives it her best.

The days are long, the work is hard (and so are the other girls), but she loves riding, learning to cook, and Abel, a wary young rancher. Jilted by a squeamish Yankee woman once, Abel stays away from Tressa at first. She’s no tenderfoot, however, as HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 43

Abel soon discovers. When raiders, horse thieves, and false friends threaten Abel’s livelihood, he and Tressa overcome all odds together. A Hopeful Heart has winsome characters, an interesting premise, and a heavenly match made on earth. This will not satisfy readers looking for depth and complexity, but fans of inspirational romance novels will not be disappointed.

Jeanne Greene THE FIELDS OF DEATH Simon Scarrow, Headline, 2010, £17.99, hb, 597pp, 9780755324392 This is the last in the Simon Scarrow’s excellent series following the lives of Napoleon and Wellington. The book begins in the year 1809 with Napoleon on the Danube chasing the Austrian army; meanwhile Wellington is at Abrantes in Portugal, planning to destroy the various French armies deployed against him in Spain. The story then moves on to Napoleon’s disastrous invasion of Russia and Wellington’s successful invasion of Spain, before culminating in the Battle of Waterloo and Napoleon’s exile to the island of Saint Helena.

As with the previous books in the series, this has been well researched and well written. The characters of both Napoleon and Wellington are vivid and totally believable, while the battle scenes

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THE SECRET MANDARIN

are crisp and exciting, putting the reader directly into the action, while at the same time giving insight into the reasons behind the military decisions, both tactical and strategic. The whole series has been a pleasure to read, with quality writing from an author at the top of his game. This book can be read independently of the others in the series, but to get the full enjoyment I would recommend they be read chronologically. This is definitely a set to be kept and read again. Recommended.

Mike Ashworth DESIREE Annemarie Selinko, Sourcebooks, 2010, $16.99/ C$19.99, pb, 596pp, 9781402244025 Fourteen-year-old Desiree, a merchant’s daughter living at the time of the French Revolution, meets a dashing young military officer, Napoleon Bonaparte. They become engaged and, though they part, the emotional bond between them never completely breaks. This book, first published in the 1950s and made into a movie, combines romance with a look at a colorful period of history.

The novel is written in the form of Desiree’s diary from 1794 to 1829. The author paints a vivid picture of France during the later years of the Revolution as well as Napoleon’s reign and its aftermath. The heroine is likable and we see her

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Sara Sheridan, HarperCollins, 2009, £6.99, pb, 375 pp, 9781847561893 In London, 1842, actress Mary Penny has brought disgrace on her respectable family. Mary’s brother-inlaw, botanist Robert Fortune, forces her to accompany him on a mission to China to steal tea plants for the East India Company. However, Robert conceals a secret – he is a spy for the British forces, newly victorious in the recent Opium War. The British are still regarded as enemies by the Chinese, and exporting tea bushes carries the death sentence. Mary loathes Robert for his high‑handedness and interference. She is unhappy and desperately wants to return to London and the baby she has been obliged to leave behind.

Foreigners are not allowed into the interior of China, so Robert and Mary disguise themselves as a Mandarin and manservant. Mary is by this time proficient in Cantonese and has found a place herself in Robert’s quest. She uses her skill as an artist to record the specimens he finds before they are sent back to London.

Being able to dress as a man, and therefore free from the restrictions of Victorian life, is a revelation for Mary, and she vows never to return to her previous life. Her feelings for Robert gradually change over the course of the novel, and this is sensitively portrayed.

Although Mary Penny is a creation of the author’s imagination, Robert Fortune is not.

The combination of fact and fiction is seamless. The book is told through Mary’s eyes, vividly portraying the position of women in Victorian society and also how the needs of the Empire and Queen supersede ethics and morality. Robert has no compunction in stealing their livelihood from the Chinese, although Mary is conflicted.

This is a brilliant book, a perfect combination of romance and history. I would recommend it to anyone; they will never drink a cup of tea without thinking of Robert Fortune.

Fenella Miller 44 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

evolve from girl to woman. Her naïve idealism, including her belief that the Rights of Man will shortly be society’s guidepost and her uncritical love for Napoleon, give way to a more realistic and mature take on the world. We get to meet Napoleon’s family, for the most part a fascinating bunch of avaricious parasites. We see Napoleon plunge Europe into war, and, on the home front, dump Josephine. Meanwhile, Desiree comes to see the true merit of a man who loves her, Bernadotte, the future king of Sweden.

Annemarie Selinko could write a touching romantic scene. She also had a sharp eye for political reality, which makes this book more interesting than most historical romances. To me, the best part of this novel was the portrait of Napoleon, a ruthless and tragic figure, who at the same time is charismatic and in some ways likable, a fully rounded fictional character. The style is clear and straightforward, and fairly modern. It takes a leap of faith to imagine you are reading a diary written in the Napoleonic period, but I highly recommend this novel for its well drawn characters and absorbing story.

Phyllis T. Smith COUNTERPOINT: Dylan’s Story Ruth Sims, Dreamspinner Press, 2010, $17.99, pb, 315pp, 9781615815333 Spanning the late 19th century, this historical romance centers on composer Dylan Rutledge and the two great loves of his life: Laurence, his young history master who becomes a popular novelist, and later Geoffrey, a gypsy violinist of extraordinary talent who takes Dylan’s compositions to new heights. Willful and wild, 18-year-old Dylan’s stolen kiss from his teacher toward the end of his term sends the high-minded Laurence fleeing to Paris, where he reignites an old dream to become a novelist. But fate and their mutual belief in Dylan’s raw talent brings them together again once Dylan has finished his studies and is on his familyfinanced Grand Tour. The two men start a life in Paris together, surrounded by patrons and gifted artists. Laurence’s star rises as his novels achieve success, but Dylan struggles for acceptance in the music world. When Laurence is killed in a carriage accident, Dylan plunges into despair that cuts him off, even from his music.

But with the help of friends he re-connects with life and meets the protégé of a former teacher, the gypsy violinist Geoffrey. Soon after they become lovers, the young man becomes victim of his patron’s scheming relatives and is thrown into prison. Dylan calls on all his resources and even the help of a family who disinherited him years before.

His lover is freed in time to recover and play at a triumphant concert featuring Dylan’s music. Wellpaced and told with great tenderness, this story of long term love, creative lives and adventures adds yet another wonderful subgenre to historical romance.

Eileen Charbonneau A CURABLE ROMANTIC 19th Century

Joseph Skibell, Algonquin, 2010, $24.95, hb, 608pp, 9781565129290 A Curable Romantic follows Dr. Jakob Sammelsohn, seeker, intellectual, lover, as he wanders Europe trailing the ghost of Jewish history. In 1895 Vienna, Jakob meets Sigmund Freud and his patient Emma, who begins channeling Jakob’s dead wife Ita. Ghosts (angels?) appear. Psychoanalysis fails. Will Jakob be haunted forever? Or is it love that follows him? In this fantasy, he looks for Ita everywhere.

Jakob abandons Freud to join the movement for a new language, Esperanto. But while chasing a simulacrum of Ita, Jakob fails to cast an important vote, and the movement splinters. Jakob loses his academic reputation, his second wife, and his optimism. Having witnessed “excellent men devouring themselves in the service of a benevolent idea,” even war does not surprise him. Jakob is drafted, captured, escapes; he leaves Vienna for the ghetto in Warsaw.

Years pass. Jakob reaches the one-way train, he lands upon the carnal heap, and is rescued by a woman who may be Ita. Because Jacob once expressed a simple love for Ita, the angels tell him, she made a bargain — to do whatever Heaven commanded in return for Jakob’s life. He is set free on the path to Palestine, where he can live in peace as a Jew. But the farther Jakob gets from the ghetto, the more he looks to the future, and the harder it is to believe in the past.

Those familiar with Jewish culture may better appreciate some of its intricacies, but that should deter no one from reading this fine novel. The plot is intelligent and the characters, memorable.

A Curable Romantic is recommended to anyone interested in the troubled history of Europe in the 20th century.

Jeanne Greene HEARTS PERSUADED Joanne Sundell, Five Star, 2010, $25.95, hb, 290pp, 9781594148835 In the second and final book in her Quaker and the Confederate series, Sundell continues the tale of Willa Mae Tyler, a young Southern woman who disguises herself as a man in order to fight for the Confederate army, and her love, Levi Clement, a young Quaker living in Virginia.

Willa’s affair with Levi has left her pregnant, which makes fighting for the Confederacy difficult, to say the least. Levi has married his childhood sweetheart, who has gone from mild, gentle Quakeress to scheming villain because Levi doesn’t love her as he should. Meanwhile, escaped slave Surry Lion, Willa’s bosom buddy from childhood, is pining for a man she met during her journey on the Underground Railroad.

If this sounds convoluted and melodramatic, it is. All of the old chestnuts are here: the woman dressing as a man so she can fight in the war, the unplanned/unexpected pregnancy, the bizarre and implausible coincidences. A bit of melodrama doesn’t hurt a book, but Sundell throws everything she can at her characters, then resolves the whole 19th Century

mess a little too neatly. Recommended only if you enjoyed the first book in the series.

Nanette Donohue THE PLAYER’S CURSE Brian Thompson, Chatto & Windus, 2010, £12.99, pb, 256pp, 9780701184124 This is the third in the Bella Wallis series, set in a feisty Victorian England. Bella, who is a successful writer of exciting potboilers, is once again on the trail of plots for her novels. On this occasion, her desire to track down the highly eccentric Lady Ursula Gollinge in Yorkshire and learn how her curse directed at the famous cricketer W.G. Grace has so upset Philip Westland – Bella’s lover – involves her in more danger and ripping adventures. Meanwhile, Philip, who is busy with espionage work for the British government, finds himself in a rare and very near lethal pickle in Germany. The usual cast of support characters play their respective roles and, as once expects, all comes good in the end.

This book, like the two others in the series are easy reading and decidedly lacking in realism.

Depending upon one’s perspective or mood, they are either great fun, or just plain silly and bizarre.

Doug Kemp CHARLES DICKENS: His Journal Vincent Torre, George Braziller, 2010, $24.95, hb, 134pp, 9780807616048 This book takes the form of an imaginary journal by an 18-year-old Charles Dickens, who at a low point in his life in 1830 decides to go on a pilgrimage from London to Canterbury to find himself. The journal comprises extracts from Dickens’s novels, bridged by Torre’s own words and edited so that the extracts form a coherent story.

I have to admit that I would have preferred unadulterated Dickens extracts to the story Torre creates here, as some of the passages from different novels sit uneasily together. Still, Torre’s book makes for an enjoyable read. For Dickensians, there’s the pleasure of recognizing familiar passages and characters and seeing how Torre incorporates them into his narrative; for those new to Dickens, there’s the pleasure of being introduced to his writings. The journal also contains numerous contemporary illustrations, many from Dickens’s novels, which make it a visual treat. On the whole, I would enjoy finding this book under my Christmas tree.

Susan Higginbotham STILL HOUSE POND Jan Watson, Tyndale, 2010, $12.99, pb, 377pp, 9781414323862 Jan Watson excels at creating flawed yet engaging characters who rely on their faith and strong family ties while facing life’s difficult situations. Her natural storytelling talent is on full display in her fifth novel, which can be read either as a standalone work or as part of the continuing story that began with Troublesome Creek. It’s 1896 in the mountains of Kentucky, where Copper Pelfrey lives with her

second husband, John, and their growing family.

Copper’s skills in medicine and baby-catching are in high demand, and while most of her efforts result in successful outcomes for mother and child, poverty does take its toll on the health of some of the women. The viewpoint revolves among Copper; her eleven-year-old daughter, Lilly, an intelligent girl who enjoys exploring the natural world; and Copper’s hired girl, Manda, a naïve teenager who dreams of finding adventure and romance, just like her favorite heroine from Woman’s Home Companion magazine, and makes some bad choices in the process.

It was so easy to get drawn into the happenings of the characters’ day-to-day lives – kicking up their heels at a country dance, caring for women during childbirth, shopping for buttons and fabric for dresses – that half the novel went by without my caring that there was no central conflict. The remainder of the book deals with the aftermath of a devastating railway accident; without giving anything away, I’ll say that Copper’s heartwrenching reaction to the news felt especially realistic. The homespun setting and uplifting tone of Still House Pond have tremendous appeal.

Sarah Johnson THE MISCHIEF OF THE MISTLETOE: A Pink Carnation Christmas Lauren Willig, Dutton, 2010, $24.95/C$31, hb, 352pp, 9870525951872 The Mischief of the Mistletoe is Willig’s seventh in the Pink Carnation series featuring turn-ofthe-19th-century spies, whose tales are framed by the 21st-century scholar, Eloise Kelly, researching them for her dissertation. This latest is somewhat of a departure, as it foregoes Kelly’s presentday narrative and focuses on two 19th-century characters with only minor roles in the series up until now.

Miss Arabella Dempsey, feeling decidedly fifth wheel-ish when her elderly aunt marries a fortune hunter, takes a post as a teacher at a young ladies’ school in Bath. There she encounters Turnip Fitzhugh, visiting his savvier younger sister, and in Pink Carnation fashion, both get drawn into an investigation of spies.

Willig daringly rewrites her own history by making Turnip, previously a figure of fun in the series, into a leading man here. His cartoonish features have been softened by some self-awareness, and Arabella, described as a “wallflower” in her brief appearance in The Temptation of the Night Jasmine, finds that she and Turnip are made for each other.

Of course, with Jane Austen as her confidante, the reader knows that Arabella must have something going for her. As with all the books in this series, Willig knows how to entertain while touching on 19th-century truths — a single woman dependent on making a living cannot be caught with a man in her room. While I enjoy Eloise’s narratives, I was so caught up in Arabella’s and Turnip’s story that I confess I forgot she was missing.

Ellen Keith HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 45

A TAILOR-MADE BRIDE Karen Witemeyer, Bethany House, 2010, $14.99, pb, 348pp, 9780764207556 Deeded property to use as a dress shop by a grateful client, Hannah Richards moves to the small town of Coventry, Texas, in 1881 to start her new business. There she soon encounters Jericho “J.T.” Tucker, a liveryman who is none too pleased with the new arrival. Not only did J.T. want to buy the property that Hannah now occupies, he thoroughly disapproves of what he considers to be her frivolous occupation of gratifying female vanity.

J.T. can’t seem to stay very far from Hannah’s store, though, and naturally, these seeming opposites soon find themselves attracted to each other.

A Tailor-Made Bride tells a familiar story, but it tells it well, and with considerable charm and humor. Hannah and J. T. are appealing, threedimensional romantic leads, surrounded by an equally well-drawn cast of townspeople. The dialogue is crisp and believable, and the plot moves along at a nice pace. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.

Susan Higginbotham STRAW IN THE WIND Janet Woods, Severn House, 2010, $28.95/£19.99, hb, 248pp, 9780727868930 In this mid-Victorian novel, detective Adam Chapman is hired by Dorset sea captain Erasmus Thornton to discover whether his lover’s child, whom he thought dead at birth along with her mother, is actually alive. Chapman tracks Serafina Finn to her new post in Somerset as housekeeper with the blind Finch Leighton, but finds himself falling in love with this young woman with an uncertain past. For her part, Serafina has only blurred memories of her unhappy childhood as an orphan. She has made a new life for herself at Leighton Manor; can she risk leaving it for a man she hardly knows and a family at odds over whether to accept a half-sister whose birth tore them apart?

Although this is intended as a stand-alone sequel to Salting the Wound, I felt I would have understood the minor characters better had I read the previous novel. That aside, Straw in the Wind offers a cozy read with plenty of subplots and happy endings.

Susan Cook

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20th century

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BITTER EDEN Tatamkhulu Afrika, Arcadia/Trafalgar Square, 2010 (c2008), $11.95/C$12.95/£7.99, pb, 340pp, 9781905147945 This work is based on the author’s experience of being captured in the North African campaign and landing in an Italian, then German, prisoner of war camp. It focuses on how three men who consider themselves straight deal with this life of uncomfortable physical closeness coupled with the extreme psychological stress of their captivity. No Hogan’s Heroes or even Stalag 17, this frank and often startling tale relates the complex realities of 46 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

life in such a camp, from the unrelenting boredom to the incredible pettiness of both guards and fellow inmates. The results are perhaps predictable but seldom considered, except in Tatumkhulu’s remarkable story.

Reading about World War II is one thing; experiencing its depravity and misery is something else entirely. This novel is that something else. An intensely personal tale, it is told entirely from the perspective of the author’s thoughts. But this is the mind of an award-winning poet who had only written two books, this one in the last decade of his life. Part deathbed confession and part lyrical remembrance, the book is a psychological odyssey, searching through a time in his life when the normal conventions were turned upside down, and the need for emotional closeness with another human had the most unexpected results. One could consider it a male version of A Woman in Berlin.

Not exactly an entertaining book, it nevertheless stands as an interesting and important work, if one cares to join the author in confronting the most uncomfortable reality of his life.

Ken Kreckel THE VIOLIN OF AUSCHWITZ (US) / THE AUSCHWITZ VIOLIN (UK) Maria Ángels Anglada (trans. Martha Tennent), Bantam, 2010, $20.00/C$24.00, hb, 128pp, 9780553807783 / Corsair, 2010, £9.99, pb, 128pp, 9781849016438 This is the story of Daniel, a Jewish violin maker who describes himself as a “carpenter, cabinetmaker” when placed in Auschwitz. This declaration spares him from more difficult manual labor and eventually leads to the camp’s commandant ordering Daniel to make a violin.

Daniel is a master craftsman and his work creating this musical art piece becomes, for him, a reason to live.

In places the writing is painfully beautiful; Tennent has translated Anglada’s Catalan into quiet poetry. The details surrounding the building of the violin are delicately relayed, and we can feel Daniel’s focus, patience and love.

The rest of the story falls flat in comparison.

Anglada has chosen not to develop Daniel’s relationship with his fiancée Eva, so when he mentions he misses her, we don’t feel his anguish.

Daniel despises the commandant, but we aren’t given a story to go with his feelings and so we cannot share Daniel’s emotions. Even the horrors of the concentration camp are relayed from afar, keeping the reader at a distance.

Perhaps Anglada’s lack of development is intentional. At 128 pages, The Violin of Auschwitz is a skeleton of a story, as Daniel, being slowly starved by the Nazis, is a skeleton of a man. Nevertheless, I was left wanting more.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt THE CROCODILE’S LAST EMBRACE Suzanne Arruda, NAL, 2010, $15/C$18.50, pb, 400pp, 9780451231178 American Jade del Cameron returns in her sixth

mystery set in Africa in the 1920s. She misses Sam Featherstone, who believed that she loved her freedom more than she loved him and returned to the States. Now Jade is receiving letters from the fiancé who died in the Great War and imagining she sees him as well. Nairobi Police Inspector Finch can only shake his head when Jade finds two dead men, in two separate instances. Their common bond was that they both held shares in a gold mine, so Jade suspects death is to come for other shareholders until one man is left with all the gold. As if Jade did not have enough on her plate, her nemesis — her dead fiancé’s mother — has escaped from jail. And yes, there is also a crocodile that is seemingly invincible.

The plot is stuffed to the brim with incident, so much so that I lost the threads of the story at times, but Jade is an appealing a heroine as ever. In past outings, I sometimes found her too good to be true but her vulnerability here has humanized her, and her native friends and fellow expatriates have made Africa a home. No spoilers here, but I look forward to Jade’s next mystery.

Ellen Keith

NASHVILLE CHROME Rick Bass, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010, $24/C$29.95, hb, 256pp, 9780547317267 Author Rick Bass has told the remarkable story of the Browns, a country music trio with a brother and two sisters. Bass takes the reader into the world of Maxine, Jim Ed, Bonnie, and their family — alcoholic father and hard-working, selfless mother, younger brother tragically killed in an accident. Maxine, the oldest, is the one with the drive, while Jim Ed and Bonnie are swept along in her wake. The heyday of their success takes place in the 1950s when Elvis Presley was a contemporary and dated Bonnie, and an unscrupulous manager kept them in indentured servitude until they bought their freedom. Their glory days are interspersed with Maxine in the present day — a recovering alcoholic and almost legally blind, she dreams that they’ll be rediscovered and posts an ad in her local Piggly-Wiggly, looking for a filmmaker to document her life. She gets a response, but from an unusual source.

Nashville Chrome is an absorbing if slightly uneven read. Maxine is center stage, where she wishes to be; Bonnie, in her relationship with Elvis, gets some narrative of her own; and Jim Ed places a distant third in the story. And yet this works, as Maxine’s appetites drove their success and as that was her world, despite husband and children, she had more to lose when they ceased touring and recording. Bass is as adept at creating the Browns’ always-moving world in the 1950s as he is contrasting it with Maxine’s painfully constricted life in the present day. She is often not the most sympathetic of characters, but she is very real.

Much to my surprise, the acknowledgments at the end of the book reveal she was real — the Browns were an actual country act, although Bass notes that his book is “a work of the imagination.”

Ellen Keith 19th Century — 20th Century

POPPY’S WAR Lily Baxter, Arrow, 2010, £5.99, pb, 423pp, 9780099550983 It is 1939 when fate and an air of cleanliness bring Poppy Brown, a thirteen-year-old evacuee from East London, to the country house of the Carrol family. The reception is rather cold, but Poppy soon makes friends with Guy, the charming son of the house, and his fiancée Amy, who undertakes to pay for her education. Then the Blitz starts and tragedy strikes: a now-orphaned Poppy is sent back to London with what her brother’s unpleasant in-laws describe as “ideas above her station.” Still, our girl is not above “doing her bit,” and she sets out as a hospital cleaner and nurse-intraining, only to find that she cannot forget either Guy (now an RAF fighter pilot) or the place she has grown to call home.

This is a gentle, heart-warming, slightly repetitive coming-of-age story cum romance, in which nothing much happens. Everyday life detail of the era is served in large dollops, and war plays off in the background, mostly through news on the wireless and rationing strictures, while Poppy grows from little Cockney to lady – in more ways than one.

Chiara Prezzavento ’NADA Daniel Boyd, Casperian, 2010, $13.50, pb, 169pp, 9781934081242 1936 Mexico is the setting for this hard-boiled tale of greed and promises to keep. Vernon Culley, a bookish engineer from Kansas City, is caretaker of an abandoned silver mine. An old ambulance and two desperate men soon invade his solitude, chased by local outlaws headed by Paco Serrano. Culley and one of the men, Ray, listen to the story of the other as he’s dying and decide to deliver a fortune in gold bars for the sake of his widow…or do they?

The lure of the gold infects, leading even Culley to contemplate murder of a man who becomes his friend. Ray and Culley travel across the desert to a town called Quenada (the ’Nada of the title) philosophizing about greed, gold and honor. Ray’s got the brother of a man he’s killed after him there, and the outsized lawman forms a squad of village men to go a take the gold from Paco and his men back at the mine. ’Nada’s components of bandits, murder, Jewish refugee rescue, harrowing desert treks, and actionpacked gun fights (in one, both bullets and pages of Emily Dickinson fly) make for a great tale.

The colloquial voice of the narrator Culley adds much to the you-are-there storytelling, but the Dutchman with a mission to make his wife proud and Ray, looking for a way into heaven, are the characters who compel.

Eileen Charbonneau APHRODITE’S WAR Andrea Busfield, Doubleday, 2010, £11.99, pb, 432pp, 9780385618229 Growing up half-wild in a village outside Keryneia in northern Cyprus, Loukis Economidou 20th Century

cares more about his mother Dhespina and his childhood sweetheart Praxi than he does about the outside world. But it is 1955, and the British presence in Cyprus is causing increasing tensions between Greek and Turkish Cypriots – tensions that will erupt into violence. Shaken by the death of one of his four brothers and stung by Praxi’s apparent rejection of him, Loukis runs away to join a terrorist cell, with consequences that will last for decades.

Aphrodite’s War is by no means a badly written book, but occasionally it felt as if two very different stories had been bolted together – one a downto-earth family saga, the other a passionate love story. Both halves are equally well-written but somehow don’t quite gel to form a coherent whole. Clearly, we are meant to draw parallels between Loukis and Praxi and Heathcliff and Cathy Earnshaw, but because Busfield’s characters are less feral than Brontë’s, the novel loses some of its power and narrative thrust in the central section, where attention veers away from the lovers and is dissipated between rather a large cast of secondary characters. Once or twice, it even felt as if some scenes had been inserted to illustrate the author’s research into Cypriot history rather than contributing to the overall shaping of the plot.

Nevertheless, I would still recommend this book for its unusual setting and strong characterisation.

Jasmina Svenne THE POSTMISTRESS Sarah Blake, Viking, 2010, £12.99, pb, 326pp, 9780670918683/ Amy Einhorn/Putnam, 2010, $25.95, hb, 336pp, 9780399156199 In 1940, the American radio reporter Frankie Bard is in London, broadcasting to America on the devastation caused by bombing raids during the Blitz. She is convinced that her moving descriptions of the horror will encourage America to join with the British in defeating Hitler.

Across the Atlantic in Franklin, Cape Cod postmistress Iris James hears Frankie’s appeals and is convinced that it is only a matter of time before her peaceful little town is invaded. Her duty is to safeguard and deliver the letters entrusted to her.

She is the keeper of secrets, the bearer of news both joyful and tragic. Just before Doctor William Fitch leaves Franklin to join the fighting, he entrusts Iris with a letter to be delivered to his wife if he fails to return. Emma Fitch, the doctor’s wife, also listens to Frankie’s broadcasts and worries about her husband when his letters cease to arrive.

After travelling though war-torn Europe recording the plight of refugees, Frankie returns to Cape Cod; she also has a letter. It is here that the three women’s stories converge and a dilemma arises: whether or not to deliver a certain letter.

This is a well-researched book but somehow it failed to involve me in the lives and fates of the central characters.

Ann Oughton CITY OF TRANQUIL LIGHT Bo Caldwell, Henry Holt, 2010, $25.00, hb,

304pp, 9780805092288 This novel is a far cry from the breathlessly paced, predictably plotted commercial fiction churned out today. It is a gentle, intelligent, and highly readable tribute to the author’s grandparents, who met as missionaries in China in the early 20th century. One needs to read the story with patience, letting the quiet but compelling drama play itself out, savoring the moments as the author hands them to us.

Will Kiehn has never pictured himself as anything other than a Midwest farm boy destined to become a farmer himself. But somehow, he feels compelled to take up the challenge of missionary work. Among the Americans traveling with him is 21-year-old Katherine Friesen, who has never seen “the edge of this continent” and wonders at her own unexpected bravery at leaving her cozy living room on this adventure. The two fall in love and share lives of hardship and joy, sacrifice and grace as they fall ever more deeply in love, learning about each other as they learn to cherish the people they’ve come to serve and teach about their God. The landscape and culture of pre-Revolutionary China, as painted by Caldwell, are particularly well drawn — from treacherous gambling bandits and wild countryside, to a dangerous civil war and faceoff with the encroaching armies of the South.

Caldwell displays dignified sensitivity to a littleunderstood culture and weaves a story of dedication and an enduring love amidst a crumbling dynasty on the verge of extinction.

Kathryn Johnson PERIL AT SOMNER HOUSE Joanna Challis, Minotaur, 2010, $25.99, hb, 295pp, 9780312367169 In this charming mystery, the young, yet-to-bepublished Daphne du Maurier is cast in the role of younger sister to her more authoritative and socially forward elder sister Angela, who drags her along to a wintry retreat on an isolated Cornish island. Naturally, there’s a murder, and no one can leave the island for days due to the stormy weather — the classic British “drawing room” mystery set-up. I could hear the plummy tones of the compatriots of Lord Peter Wimsey, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, among others of the same ilk, as we are led in and out of the library, the dining room, the conservatory, and of course the dramatic half-ruined tower overlooking the sea.

Despite the well-worn, familiar setting, we are drawn to the feisty Daphne as she becomes aware of and tries to solve the many secrets of Somner House, one including her own sister.

She is struggling to be a writer, and for those of us who have attempted the same, her fears and doubts are indeed all too familiar, and we can easily sympathize. There are a few twists and turns in the plot which are well worth the suspense, and even the romantic sub-plots have enough of reality as well as ingenuity to them to render this a fun and engaging book.

Mary Burns YOUR PRESENCE IS REQUESTED AT HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 47

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A DIFFERENT SKY

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Meira Chand, Harvill Secker, 2010, £12.99, pb, 488pp, 9781846553431 This great sprawl of a novel is set in Singapore from 1927 to 1956. It follows the fortunes of three children who first meet when stranded on a bus during a riot – poor Indian immigrant Raj, proud Eurasian Howard, and Mei Lan, daughter of a great Chinese mercantile house. We follow them through the last years of British imperialism, the Japanese occupation, to the verge of independence. This makes for a long, complex novel, but one whose tension never lets up until the very last page. Chand is a skilled storyteller and a conscientious researcher who weaves gripping adventure, magnificent romance and well-informed history into the sort of book it’s difficult to put down and impossible to read in bed if you want a good night’s sleep!

The author is no great stylist, but this does not matter given the richness of her material and the breathtaking pace of her narrative. When your eightyear-old heroine is preparing opium pipes for her grandmother to relieve the pain of her bound feet, or your hero is undergoing a mock execution by Maoist rebels, you are prepared to forgive the odd cliché or mundane image. Conditions in Changi Gaol or on the Burmese railway in 1943 can speak for themselves. That said, the lush and oppressive tropicality of Singapore is drawn with great assurance and authenticity. You really can feel the heat as crowds gather and armies march.

A wonderful tale of the birth pangs of a nation distilled into the lives of these three central characters and their families. A highly recommended read; informative, thought-provoking and, above all, a story which utterly engages the heart.

Sarah Bower SUVANTO Maile Chapman, Jonathan Cape, 2010, £12.99, pb, 272pp, 9780224090421 / Graywolf, 2010, $23.00, hb, 256pp, 9781555975531 Suvanto is a sanatorium/hospital in Finland, set sometime in the 1920s. The story is focused on Suvanto’s upper floor patients – mostly bored middle-aged women with no major illnesses, who see Suvanto as more of a holiday resort and spa than a place of convalescence. Sunny Taylor, an unmarried American in her early 40s, is the nurse in charge of their floor and it is through her that most of the story is seen. Sunny fled to Suvanto following the death of her mother, whom she nursed through her protracted illness, and to enjoy a measure of independence and self-containment.

The story moves at a slow pace – the quotidian life at Suvanto, with the flow of petty issues, is narrated in a vague, impressionistic way. Until the end of the novel, nothing very much happens apart from the slow moving of the seasons from late summer through to the harsh, dark winter and spring again. And then one of the “patients” dies following routine surgery, and this opens up a vein of grief and resentment. There are more deaths, but at the conclusion, which is macabre and rather disturbing, the reader is not fully aware of just what has happened.

Chapman narrates a spare, poetical description of life at Suvanto and the lack of essential meaning and pattern of the lives of the women. The story 48 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

does not have, or indeed requires, a strong historical focus, but it is a highly impressive and delicate novel, observing the minutiae of institutional life and the thoughts and emotions of the women there.

Doug Kemp THE HOUSE ON SALT HAY ROAD Carin Clevidence, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010, $25.00/C$18.50, hb, 304pp, 9780374173142 Clayton and his sister Nancy lost both parents and have moved in with their mother’s family on Salt Hay Road on Long Island. In the spring of 1937, a fireworks factory explosion rocks the community, and you soon get a sense of the family dynamics. Nancy takes on the role of mother to Clayton, causing some resentment on his part. She never quite accepts her circumstances or the love of her aunt, uncle, or grandfather. When Nancy meets Robert, a visitor from Boston, she is swept away by his charm and with impulsivity agrees to marry him. Nancy assumes that Clayton will move with her, but when he refuses she is forced to leave her only family and move to Boston.

After her departure, Grandfather Scudder is filled with sorrow, and his health deteriorates as he grieves her absence. Aunt Mavis questions her own marriage, left abandoned by her husband.

Uncle Roy, never married, becomes interested in a newcomer to the island. Clay finds a job and avoids school whenever possible. Nancy feels isolated and

unhappy. When the hurricane of 1938 slams the eastern seaboard, all are caught off guard. This is not a story about this devastating hurricane, but more about the choices made, consequences, and ultimate forgiveness.

The first half sets the tone and the rhythm of daily life for the Poole family. The setting is vivid and charming, as anyone who lives or visits the shore will embrace. Each character touches you with compassionate familiarity. Readers may find the pace at the beginning slow; however, the second half is much more engaging as the family struggles through the hurricane and its aftermath. The House on Salt Hay Road is a pensive and memorable achievement with a timeless message.

Wisteria Leigh EVIL ON THE WIND Diney Costeloe, Castlehaven, 2009, £9.99, pb, 312pp, 9780954038342 This novel starts in 1937. When Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, he set about establishing a pure Aryan race, wiping out other races, most especially the Jews. Persecution of the Jews quickly became a national way of life, and as a result of the terrifying persecution and hatred, many Jews fled from Germany and sought refuge in other countries. Ruth Friedmann and her four children, their home and small shop burned down, and her husband Kurt, arrested by the SS following a terrifying an anti‑Jewish riot, are forced to flee.

Ruth seeks aid from relatives and friends, but they too are terrified and refuse to help.

With the help of the Jewish Affairs Office, Ruth is able to make contact with other Jews and with a rabbi who arranges for her and the family to cross into Austria, but once again they find themselves fleeing for their lives as German troops march into Austria.

This is compelling fiction based on historical fact. Those of us who lived through World War II and were able to provide work for the many Jews who had escaped the tyranny of Nazi Germany will recognise the truth in this unique account of Hitler’s Final Solution.

Jane Hill CLARA AND MERRITT Peter Donahue, Wordcraft of Oregon, 2010, $15.00, 290pp, pb, 9781877655661 Seattle of the 1930s and 1940s is the setting of the coming-of-age love story of Clara Hamilton and Merritt Driscoll, who are loosely modeled after Donahue’s parents, both of whom died when he was young. Clara works at the Christian Science Reading Room, though she’d rather be sketching and painting; that’s how she meets Merritt, in fact — one day she abandons the Reading Room temporarily to go buy more art supplies, only to run into Merritt, a recent naval recruit, coming out of the Reading Room upon her return. He’d come in to take shelter from Seattle’s never-ending drizzle, and once he discovers this lively young woman, he plans his downtown sojourns around her location.

Their friendship and love grow in fits and starts, 20th Century

as they are separated by misunderstandings, World War II, and family obstacles.

Chapters alternate between their perspectives, allowing the reader to know both characters better, and providing historical context for the art world and the labor union struggles of the time. The Seattle history is spot-on, with scenes set in the Frederick & Nelson department store, at the docks, and in other local haunts. The subplots, however, of the rival longshoremen’s unions, blackmail, and illness make for a complex narrative and reliance at times on stereotypes. Some of Donahue’s chapters from Clara’s point of view also ring false, especially in his skipping over any internal struggle with the sexual mores and customs of the time. This reader was more enamored of the places than the people in the novel, and would recommend this book for exactly that: fifteen years of vivid, accurate description of Seattle landmarks, politics, and local events, which happen to be surrounded by a middling love story.

Helene Williams

individuals who have, at one time or another, made this house their home. These individuals, some of whom are identified by a name, are for the most part identified by their occupation: The Gardener, The Architect, The Red Army Officer, The Visitor, The Writer, and so on. They do not interact so much as they observe and are observed without any emotional engagement, although we surmise their joy and pain through a cold detached description of their actions.

Jenny Erpenbeck has been hailed as “the rising star of the German literary scene,” (Cosmopolitan); “Wonderful German prose” (Playboy). She has won various awards. However, if this translation is literal and faithful to the original, the author’s style is heavy, pedantic and pretentious, and the underlying story is buried in it. This may be the new wave in Germanic literary style. However, it doesn’t flow easily; several persons speak within the same paragraph, and the dialogue is written without the benefit of quotation marks.

Audrey Braver

VISITATION Jenny Erpenbeck, trans. Susan Bernofsky, New Directions, 2010, $14.95, pb, 192pp, 9780811218351 / Portobello, 2010, £10.99, hb, 176pp, 9781846271892 The central character of Visitation is a house on the forested bank of a Brandenburg Lake. The story stretches throughout the 20th century and unfolds in episodes through glimpses in the lives of twelve

WAR AND MUSIC: A Medley of Love Max Evans, Univ. of New Mexico, 2010, $24.95, hb, 180pp, 9780826349088 Ty Hale, a young soldier from New Mexico, is left by his unit in a grain field in Normandy after being knocked unconscious. As he grasps the situation, a hellish scene of bloody bodies surrounds him. Confused and battered, he gathers himself together to search for his unit.

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BLISS REMEMBERED

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Frank Deford, Overlook, 2010, $25.95, hb, 351pp, 9781590203590 This novel begins with Sydney Stringfellow, a young American swimming hopeful at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, meeting her soul mate, a very German dreamboat named Horst Gerhardt. After their whirlwind romance, which includes an unforgettable party given by Joseph Goebbels, the lovers part, pledging their allegiance to one another in spite of the ocean that will soon be between them, and the larger gulf of the disparate politics of their home countries.

During the ensuing years, it all becomes too much of a void to bridge, and a letter arrives from Horst ending their love. Sydney, heartbroken, finds herself the object of a local New York boy’s pursuit. Although she is slowly falling for him, the ghost of Horst still lingers.

Unsuspected, their fate will turn on the invitation to that party by Goebbels received so long ago.

Award-winning sportswriter, author, and commentator Frank Deford takes his love of sport in an entirely new direction with this skillfully-written historical novel. Told in memoir form, it falls on the ear of the reader like a conversation with a cherished old family member. Taking one in with its aw-shucks charm, it then turns and hits you like a well-crafted spy novel. This is good stuff, this Depression-era yarn with the punch of a war story. Although we meet many of the characters central to that Olympics, such as the American swimmer Eleanor Holm, Hitler’s movie director Leni Riefenstahl, and the dictator himself, the work is first a love story, and a lovely memory of a youth well-lived.

This is an unforgettable book by a top-drawer author. Recommended without reservation.

Ken Kreckel 20th Century

At a country estate he meets Philippe Gaston, a music teacher, and his attractive daughter, Renee.

Also there is Hans, a talented musical prodigy and German deserter. The four become quick friends and their love of music is shared. Renee and Ty fall in love. All four have a passion for music as it provides a cocoon of comfort while the grim gore of battle continues around them.

Max Evans describes the grisly stage of war as a symphony of sounds: the pleading painful cries of the wounded become a “serenade of devastation.”

“The loudest sound amid the medleys of war is that rarest of moments when all is quiet, impossibly quiet.”

The book contains excessive, intrusive forced metaphors; with sometimes little sense, they interrupt what otherwise would be beautiful writing. For example: “He was drawn to the house as he must have been drawn to his mother’s breast soon after birth” and “The three males were as dead as childhood dreams.”

War and Music is a contrast, the horrific and gruesome vision of battlefield carnage with the haunting sounds of a soldiers suffering. This is not a book for those with a weak stomach for gore, but if you can persist, his message of hope is shared with those who have a love of music that transcends the reality of the moment.

Wisteria Leigh SNOW HALL Elizabeth Gill, Severn House, 2010, $28.95/£19.99, hb, 224pp, 9780727869425 In 1907 County Durham, Lorna Robson lives in poverty, selling hats. Then Aidan Hedley, handsome solicitor for the Carlyle family, delivers a letter addressed to her as Lorna Carlyle. Lorna receives a stunning bequest — the run-down Carlyle manor Snow Hall — from a grandfather she never knew. Lorna leaves the shop, borrows heavily, stays with Adam’s family for a while, and then moves in with spendthrift Carlyle relatives.

Lorna enjoys the more exciting life — until Ralph Carlyle insists she marry him. Lorna sees Ralph for what he is, but too late. He tries to kill Aidan.

In spite of her foolish decisions, her marriage to Ralph, and her fruitless search for her mother’s family, Aidan Hedley stands by Lorna’s — but how much can one man take?

Elizabeth Gill lives in Durham. Fans of her many popular novels (Paradise Lane, 2010) will be pleased with this touching story of folly, family, and love.

Jeanne Greene DEATH BY WATER: A Phryne Fisher Mystery Kerry Greenwood, Poisoned Pen Press, 2010, $14.95, pb, 250pp, 9781590587348 Phryne Fisher finds herself rather bored with the state of affairs at her home, so she’s thrilled when P&O Lines offers her an investigative opportunity and a free luxury cruise all rolled into one. Along with Dot, her companion/maid, Phryne sets sail for New Zealand on the SS Hinemoa. Her mission is to discover the identity of the person relieving HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 49

select first class passengers of their most expensive jewelry.

Death by Water is Kerry Greenwood’s 15th of the Phryne Fisher mystery series. Set in 1928, this shipboard adventure allows Fisher to hobnob among the upper crust suspects, and who better?

She has a cunning social sense that puts strangers at ease and enables her to slide into her undercover role. But all the formal dressing for dinner made this reader long for a video version of the whole elegant company, along with Phryne in her finery and the luring Maharani jewel, the Great Queen of Sapphires. Those on the “suspicious” list are quite the cast of characters, each with a guilty secret to hide...but whose holds the secret that’s key to the Phryne’s case? The jealous husband, his wife, her lover? The professor, or maybe the photographer with an eye for the ladies? Or someone else? Like the rest of the Phryne Fisher series, this novel is a light, breezy mystery that doesn’t fail to entertain.

A treat to read.

Janette King THREADS OF SILK Roberta Grieve, Robert Hale, 2010, £18.99, hb, 224pp, 9780709090564 Set in post-war London’s East End, the book follows the fortunes of Ellie, a bright and artistically talented schoolgirl whose dream of going to Art College is shattered by her abusive and evil father.

He is a tyrannical villain unredeemed by any spark

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of humanity and conversely the heroine is pretty nearly perfect: making cups of tea for her tired mother, helping out whenever required, visiting her grandmother and so on. Ellie runs away and makes good on her own in the silk industry, which gives the book its title. It is also a metaphor about the links and chains that bind us together as people and as a society.

She is now able to use her artistic talents and make her own money but this is frowned upon by the man she mistakenly marries. He does not think wives should work. The novel touches on some interesting themes such as housing after the war, the position of women, particularly after marrying, and gives a reasonably convincing picture of postwar conditions. The plot is somewhat predictable, and half of it hinges upon a misunderstanding which could have been cleared up very easily with one simple and innocuous question, but then the book would be a lot shorter. Fans of Catherine Cookson and other historical romance writers would probably enjoy the book.

Ann Northfield THE SLEEPWALKERS Paul Grossman, St. Martin’s, 2010, $24.99/ C$29.99, hb, 320pp, 9780312601904 In 1932, during the final weeks of the Weimar Republic, Jewish Detective Willi Kraus pursues the evildoers responsible for luring foreign women with beautiful legs to horrific medical experimentation

EVERY HOUSE NEEDS A BALCONY

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Rina Frank, trans. Ora Cummings, Harper, 2010, $24.99, hb, 320pp, 9780061714238 / Fourth Estate, 2010, £14.99, hb, 300pp, 9780007353668 Young Rina lives in a crowded neighborhood in Haifa with her extended family, comprised mainly of Eastern Europeans who immigrated to Israel in the 1950s. Though her childhood is hardscrabble, the tight bonds she has with her family make every day an adventure. Years later, a mature Rina meets and falls in love with a wealthy Spanish architect who visits Israel for the summer. Her passionate relationship takes her from the rough streets of Haifa to a luxurious apartment in Barcelona, but she finds that a life of luxury is nothing without the love, friendship, and support of her family, friends, and neighbors.

As her marriage begins to disintegrate, Rina gives birth to a chronically-ill daughter, underscoring her need for a support system like the one she had as a girl.

Told in chapters that alternate between Rina’s childhood and adulthood, the parallel narrative juxtaposes Rina’s poverty-stricken childhood with her glamorous adulthood. In less-skilled hands, such a conceit could be ineffective or distracting, but in this case, it works beautifully, with each chapter introducing the reader to new childhood influences on the mature Rina’s character. Sometimes, literature in translation can be clunky or difficult to read, but Ora Cummings’s poetic translation of Frank’s first novel, a bestseller in her native Israel, reads like a combination of folklore and fine literary fiction. I hope that she will be translating some of Frank’s other fiction for English-speaking readers, as this is one of the finest novels I have read in some time.

Nanette Donohue 50 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

and their deaths, all the while seeking to smuggle his motherless sons, other family members and finally himself to safety beyond the rising Nazi tide. Such historic figures as Marlene Dietrich, Albert Einstein and Josef Mengele put in cameo appearances.

This is the world of the musical Cabaret without music and drawn out to three hundred pages, more time for my suspension of disbelief to be shaken loose on a number of occasions. We are reminded in a concluding note that medical experimentation on human guinea pigs did not become a Nazi sin until after the period covered in this book, and I could not get over my sure prior knowledge of this fact. The drive for a page turner left loose ends and a sometimes-clumsy handling of time, searches that seem to have no other purpose than to reveal the squalor and corruption of Berlin at this period.

Often, our characters could have worked harder to reach their goals. The world the author paints is so like ours, I found it frustrating to be given the impression that, no, the Germans who saw the rise of the Nazis were nothing like us at all, but a bunch of inhuman monsters. The detached characters seem to be living in test tubes, but perhaps that is the message. Still, I have no doubt that the subject matter and thriller format will find a wide audience.

Ann Chamberlin ANTHROPOLOGY OF AN AMERICAN GIRL Hilary Thayer Hamann, Spiegel & Grau, 2010, $26.00, hb, 606pp, 9780385527149 Literature is riddled with coming-of-age stories. The drama of adolescence lends itself to gripping narrative – first love, first heartbreak, self-discovery. One of the latest additions to the coming-of-age canon is Hamann’s debut, originally self-published in 2003 but re-edited in a new edition. Eveline Auerbach is seventeen years old, lovely and fragile, with the soul of an artist. Raised by her indifferent mother in East Hampton, New York, she grows up with a rotating cast of strays brought home by her mother. The sprawling plot is difficult to summarize effectively, but it involves Eveline’s passionate love affair with an older (and slightly sinister) man, her recovery (or lack thereof ) from a sexual assault, and her transition from adolescence to adulthood. Much of the novel focuses on Eveline’s internal monologue, recording her innermost feelings about the goings-on in her life, most of which involve relationships with men.

There are moments of exquisiteness hidden in this novel, lines that I wrote down because they resonated with me, or because they presented an idea in a way that was perfect. Eveline’s supposed self-knowledge is difficult to swallow at times, since her ways of thinking about herself and about relationships are far more sophisticated than expected, and her constant navel-gazing becomes tiresome. The highlights are the times when there’s action to break up the self-conscious self-analysis, when there’s action rather than layer upon layer of feeling. Hamann does capture the time (late 1970s/early 1980s) nicely, but there’s a lot to wade 20th Century

through to get to the hidden gems of this novel.

Nanette Donohue WHISPERS OF LOVE Rosie Harris, Arrow, 2010, £5.99, pb, 421pp, 9780099527428 Set in Liverpool, this novel follows the fortunes of Christabel Montgomery. The year is 1914, and not only does she receive the devastating news that her fiancé is dead, killed in the war, but she also discovers she is pregnant with his child. Afraid to tell her parents, she leaves home to become a nurse and has the child in secret, then handing it over for adoption – a decision that never fails to haunt her. The story moves from Switzerland to Argentina to Hollywood, and there are plenty of plot twists on the way. The settings and historical aspect do not really impinge on the story much as the driving force is the plot, and this is certainly entertaining enough to keep the reader turning the pages interested to find out what happens next. It is a human saga that fans of Catherine Cookson and Nora Roberts would very probably enjoy. A light read which would be perfect for a train journey or a day on the beach, this has enough variety and surprises to pass the time quite contentedly. This is the 21st novel from this author, and she knows how to tell a tale. You will not be marvelling over the precise luminous prose, but for a light read, it does the job of keeping the reader’s attention.

Ann Northfield AN HEIR FOR BURRACOMBE Lilian Harry, Orion, 2010, £16.99, hb, 311pp, 9780752898865 Lilian hits the jackpot again with her Coronation Street look-alike romp in Devon, starting the day after the 1953 Coronation. I have reviewed a number of her Burracombe novels for the HNS, all of which take the reader rapidly into English country life of a period I know well.

The start of the book says so much in just two pages, bringing tears with the line ‘I scarcely had time to be a wife before I became a widow...’

It is a real woman’s saga with many emotional and family questions posed. It nevertheless, with some strong male characters, has intense male interest. And some questions to be answered. Was the boy born to inherit, as a war baby? Family arguments develop over the possible heir, opposed by a son and daughter. And therein lies the key to the book, as their curmudgeonly father sees in the boy the future of his estate of tenant farms.

With scant attributions, it is sometimes difficult to follow dialogue, but the excellent characterisation and Devonian speech are both subtle and endearing as Lilian brings a stranger to a tight-knit village. If there is anything missing for me, after the masterful landscape descriptions, it is the luscious cattle and fields of sheep in Devon. There are farmsteads, true, but with such a gorgeous county to enthuse over (I live just over the border in Somerset) why not tell it?

With endless cups of tea in farmhouse kitchens, the ending brings a sensitive falling in love of 20th Century

a brother-in-law with his brother’s widow and an exciting climax when the hoped‑for French grandson is trapped in a tin mine. But all ends happily with a wedding and at the same time a birth, making all right with the world of Burracombe.

Geoffrey Harfield BURNING HORSES: A Hungarian Life Turned Upside Down Agatha Hoff, Sweet Earth Flying Press, 2010, $24.95, hb, 204pp, 9780979098710 Based on the memories of a World War II survivor, Burning Horses is the true story of Éva Leopold, a girl who enjoys the privileged life of the upper class in early 20th-century Hungary. Éva has an English governess, she plays piano, she paints, and she attends dances. And when she is older, she marries the handsome Jóska Badics, whose family hails from the minor nobility of Hungary. It is a perfect life until the war begins. Then Éva must find the strength to keep her Jewish parents and her two young daughters safe against the Germans, and later, the Russians.

While at sometimes a compelling narrative of survival during wartime, Burning Horses is not a good novel. Story must come first in any novel, even if it is based on real events and real people.

But story does not come first in Burning Horses.

The novel reads too much like a family history, with very little dialogue and too much telling about characters, rather than letting the story reveal their personalities. Many details and vignettes do nothing to move the story along, such as detailed descriptions of Éva’s dresses and the inclusion of various family members who play minor roles in Éva’s wartime experiences. The author’s admitted hesitation to write in her mother’s voice and her unwillingness to fill in the gaps in her mother’s memories diminish the power of the story and make it seem choppy. It really is a shame, because this could have been a great novel.

Patricia O’Sullivan FIREFLIES IN THE MIST Qurratulain Hyder, New Directions, 2010, $16.95, pb, 304pp, 97810811218658 Author Qurratulain Hyder, who died in 2007, is, according to the cover, the “grande dame of Urdu literature.” Her story begins with a group of young people: Rosie, the daughter of a native Christian pastor, Deepali, the popular Hindu singer, Jehan Ara, the more obedient Muslim girl, her cousin Rehan, the firebrand who wanders the radical underground dressed as a Hindu holy man, and the Barlow family expats. These people interact on various sides of the radical left attempting to oust the British when Calcutta was “the second largest city in the British Empire and a kind of poor man’s London.” In a narrative that becomes more and more poetical, more and more sketchy as it progresses, we follow these interwoven lives through Indian independence, the partition along religious lines into Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India, then the violent separation of Pakistan from Bangladesh. No life ends up as we thought it might

at the outset, fortune raises some, crushes others.

As a reader, I have some acquaintance with the literature of this region. I would have appreciated more help from the translator with foreign words. Familiarity with the broader historical events hinted at is a definite prerequisite, because if you are looking for immediate Hollywood-esque scenes of this nation birthing, you will not find them. The slaughter of a whole family lingers as only the nightmares of the mad maid. But surely this is required reading for those interested in the history of the subcontinent.

Ann Chamberlin THE SISTERS FROM HARDSCRABBLE BAY Beverly Jensen, Viking, 2010, $25.95, hb, 320pp, 9780670021666 The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay is a series of short stories featuring Idella and Avis Hillock and the people who enter their lives through seventy years. It’s hard to say which story is a favorite, as each one is filled with rich characters and lasting impressions.

The first story opens in 1916 on a rocky cliff in New Brunswick at the Hillock family home and lays the groundwork for the next several decades.

Mrs. Hillock dies in childbirth, and the father, a son, and the two daughters try to make some sense of everything. Bill Hillock drinks too much and makes too many mistakes with his children, but they never really cut familial ties with him.

The children manage to flee the hardscrabble life of Canada and move to New England, where life can still be trying, but they’re strong. Idella ever remains the capable older sister through the stresses of a trying mother-in-law, a philandering husband, and always Avis, who seems to make so many bad choices through her life. Brother Dalton finally flees the farm, but his life is a pointless compass stemming from years of living with the abuses of his father and alcohol. Avis has several ups and downs in her life with so many useless men that she readily admits in old age that she only ever loved her father, her brother, and her Uncle Stan.

But you’ll love her in spite of her transgressions.

Beverly Jensen was such a great writer that even what seem to be the least desirable characters have some redeeming quality that makes you care about them. I’m sorry she will not be writing more stories, as she truly had a gift for it.

Susan Zabolotny MAPS AND SHADOWS Krysia Jopek, Aquila Polonica, 2010, $14.95, pb, 151pp, 9781607720089 In early 1940, Russia invaded and occupied eastern Poland. One and a half million Polish citizens, many of them veterans of the previous war, were declared enemies of Russia and torn from their homes. Deported first to forced labor camps in Siberia, they were eventually offered amnesty if they agreed to fight for the Russian Army. As the men fought, the women struggled to keep the rest of the family together, despite starvation, disease, HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 51

and further displacement. With no home — or citizenship — left in Poland, they sought safe haven across the globe.

Reading at times like a wartime memoir, Maps and Shadows follows one family as they are sent first to Siberia and then to Uzbekistan, Iran, Palestine, Africa, England and finally the United States, in an effort to remake their home. Separated for much of the war, they each have their part to tell in the story: the father, Andrezej, ashamed of not being able to protect his family and first in line to volunteer for the Army; thirteen-year-old Henryk, who joins the Young Soldiers’ Battalion to get extra rations for his mother; Helcia, who hides a dictionary under her dress when they are taken, so that she’ll never forget how to say “hope” in Polish; and Zofia, the mother doing her best to hold everything together.

Peppered with poetry from the margins of Helcia’s dictionary, this haunting book tells of a tragic and little-known chapter of history. It’s a slim volume, with more emphasis on characters than story, but well-researched. Heavily based on her own family’s experience, Jopek’s book is recommended to those who like their historical fiction autobiographical and real.

Jessica Brockmole RUSSIAN WINTER Daphne Kalotay, Harper, 2010, $25.99, hc, 480pp,

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THE FLOWERS OF EDO

9780061962165 / Arrow, Feb. 2011, £12.99, hb, 416pp, 9780099553243 Nina Revskaya was one of the Bolshoi Ballet’s great dancers, a prima ballerina beyond compare during her heyday. She was discovered as a child and rigorously trained and groomed for a life as a dancer.

Fifty years later, when the novel begins, Nina is in Boston, where she has lived since she defected as a young dancer, and she is preparing to auction off her exquisite collection of jewelry, including a rare Baltic amber set. The provenance of the amber is the backbone of Kalotay’s debut novel, which alternates between modern-day Boston and Stalinist Moscow.

When news of the auction is made public, Grigori Solodin, a professor of Russian who has never met Nina, anonymously adds one item to the collection: an amber necklace that is a perfect match to Nina’s other pieces. Solodin has had the necklace since he was an orphan, and he assumed that it belonged to his mother. Though he has made attempts to talk to Nina Revskaya, she has never allowed him an audience. As Drew Brooks, the researcher at the auction house handling Nina’s jewelry, delves further into Nina’s past, she also grows closer to Solodin, whose search for his heritage has consumed his adult life.

Though Nina hasn’t danced in years, she still

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Michael Dana Kennedy, Vertical, 2010, $26.95/£19.99, hb, 542pp, 9781934287804 Lieutenant Ken Kobayashi, one of the noblest fictional characters, narrates this heroic World War II adventure, which moves between America and Japan during the very end of what was a devastating war to both nations. This is one of the most balanced narratives of this difficult historical period this reviewer has ever read.

The Americans, under General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Halsey, are determined to defeat Japan during one of the most daring military offensives ever devised. Ken, as a bright interpreter, realizes during one of the final briefings before the invasion of the Japanese mainland that both sides are about to lose literally hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors, and civilians despite the brilliance of the planned attack. So he agrees to infiltrate the meeting of Japanese military, who are planning their defensive and offensive response to the American attack known to soon take place. As Ken, formerly locked up with his family in a JapaneseAmerican internment camp, proceeds to carry out his approved mission, scorn and racial prejudice evolve into respect and friendship. But returning to Japan becomes a brutally painful experience, as he realizes that this once-proud nation is already defeated and naively forging ahead despite the horrific destruction they have already endured.

Ken also realizes he would love to locate his brother, Tom, and his long-lost love, Kyoko.

Military weapons and campaign plans are specifically detailed in this novel, and nothing about this most infamous war is left unexplained or without reflection by all sides, including the poignant meaning of the title – which is sure to move even the hardest of hearts. Finally, after what seems a satisfying, albeit sad ending, a startling epilogue follows, which appears so intensely that the reader realizes there may be a sequel in the running for this superb historical novel.

Viviane Crystal 52 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

carries herself with the dignity of a ballerina; though she escaped Stalin’s oppressive regime fifty years prior, she still keeps secrets. Nina is occasionally difficult to fathom, but she’s easy to believe. The alternating storylines add to the suspense, leading to the slow reveal at the ending.

I appreciate that Kalotay doesn’t take the easy way out – the resolution is unexpected, yet you can easily see how she arrived there. This is a grand, sweeping novel, but the focus is always squarely on the characters, their motivations, and how they have been shaped by experience. Russian Winter was thoroughly enjoyable and difficult to put down.

Nanette Donohue THE HOUSE ON MALCOLM STREET Leisha Kelly, Revell, 2010, $14.99, pb, 345pp, 9780800733285 It is 1920. Leah Breckenridge and her daughter, Eliza, are boarding a train from St. Louis to Andersonville on their way to what they hope will be a fresh start. Within a short amount of time, Leah had lost her husband to a freak accident and infant son to illness. Grief-stricken and newly homeless, Leah has accepted an invitation from her husband’s aunt, Marigold, to come stay at her boardinghouse in Georgia in the hopes of rebuilding her life and, just maybe, rediscovering the faith she has lost.

Six-year-old Eliza senses Providence at every turn, from the kindly old woman on the train who gives them an orange to the mysterious stranger who offers her a helping hand at the depot when they arrive. Leah is not so convinced and doubts everyone.

This novel offers a variety of memorable characters, not the least of which is the kindhearted, God-fearing Aunt Marigold. The prose style is simple and direct. This is a tenderly written novel sure to lift the spirit. It is, however, lacking much by way of historical reference; one does not get much flavor of the period by reading this book.

Recommended nonetheless.

Michael DiSchiavi COLD SNAP Francis King, Arcadia/Trafalgar Square, 2010 (c2009), $15.95/C$17.95, pb, 272pp, 9781906413590 Set in the aftermath of World War II Britain, Cold Snap is an evocative, moody, almost depressing novel about living life within the confines of strict societal protocol and the secrecy it brings out in human nature. Michael, a former RAF pilot and current fellow at an Oxford College, and his cousin Christine, former Special Operations Executive, befriend four German prisoners settled in an encampment on the outskirts of town. Inevitably tangled relationships develop between Christine and Thomas and Michael and Klaus. Christine and Thomas bond over a shared love of music, though from the start their relationship seems tired and cold, fraught with the prejudices of the time; initially you wonder, except for the thrill of secrecy, what exactly they are seeking from each 20th Century

other. Michael yearns for the once-robust Klaus, making this affair lonely and one-sided; had it been explored more fully, it would have been far more interesting than the whiny Christine’s.

King has taken this opportunity to examine this period in history from a unique perspective using deft, dark language and symbolism to create a rather lovely though depressing novel. Each of King’s characters has a purpose, partakes of the story, and adds to the details, building to a satisfying closure for this unpolished little gem.

Wendy Zollo THE BEEKEEPER’S APPRENTICE Laurie R. King, Allison & Busby, 2010 (c1994), pb, £7.99, 440pp, 9780749008529 / Picador, 2007, $14.00, pb, 384pp, 9780312427368 This is the first book in Laurie R. King’s highly popular Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series, relaunched by the publisher, along with a number of others in the series. It tells of how the young orphan Mary Russell literally stumbles across Holmes in 1915 on the Sussex Downs.

He is impressed with her intelligence and poise and they forge a friendship which develops into a close working partnership as they embark on a number of adventures and solve some mysteries – culminating in a very real threat to both of them from an old enemy of many years ago. This series are bestselling books because Laurie R. King captures the voice and character of Holmes as well as any of the thousand and more pastiches that have been written in imitation of Conan Doyle. But this is more than a mere copy. The narrative, in the voice of a now-old Mary, is completely absorbing and motivates the reader to want to read the rest of the series.

Doug Kemp PHANTOMS OF BRESLAU Marek Krajewski, trans. Danusia Stok, MacLehose Press (Quercus), 2010, £18.99, pb, 275pp, 9781906694739 This is the third of Krajewski’s Eberhard Mock crime novels to be translated into English

by Danusia Stok. It is September 1919, and the hideously mutilated bodies of four sailors are discovered on an island in the River Oder. Criminal Assistant Mock of the Breslau Police begins an investigation which will lead him not only into the dark heart of the city, but also back into his own wartime trauma.

This is a wonderful work of gothic crime fiction, so drenched in the fatalism and debauchery of the inter-war years, so stuffed with unforgettably grotesque characters, that the plot almost doesn’t matter. It is also beautifully packaged

by MacLehose, a thing of beauty concealing ghastlinesses to relish. Krajewski’s writing is erudite yet mordantly hilarious. He can describe a hangover in a way which could put the fainthearted off drinking for life. The plot is a clever one, full of the twists and turns and red herrings one would expect of good crime fiction, yet a step up from that because the real mystery lies not 20th Century

so much in solving the murders but in revealing Mock’s personal connection with them. If I have any criticism, it is that this finale feels somewhat rushed, but maybe that’s just because I didn’t want the book to end.

A small caveat. The writing style is quite complex and convoluted, and takes a little getting used to. At one or two points I felt the translator had been too literal and that the text might have flowed more smoothly if she had used an English idiom instead. That said, I am not myself a Polish speaker and Ms. Stok is a very eminent translator, so I would urge readers to judge for themselves.

Sarah Bower THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HOMER SINCERE, Whose Amazing Adventures Are Documented by his True and Trusted Friend Rigby Canfield Nathaniel Lande, Overlook, 2010, $25.95, hb, 169pp, 9781934081242 This picturesque novel set in the 1950s and 60s tells the story of the friendship between two boys of the South, downtrodden in everything but hope and wisdom. Homer and his more privileged partner and friend, Rigby Canfield, share a love of words, adventure, a girl named Daisy, and most of all, the movies. Fans of cowboy star Billy Sunshine, they become moviemakers themselves as children in New Orleans. Their lives diverge with their circumstances as they work as reporters for the Time/Life Company. Homer then takes a job writing in Hollywood, while Rigby sails off on a true-life adventure at sea. Finally, they join together on journalistic assignment in Vietnam. Along the way, charismatic characters influence — a vegetable cart man full of wisdom, an orphanage director with a shady past, and the cowboy hero and his screenwriter. The story travels from Louisiana to California and New York City and London as Daisy heads off to further her acting career.

A ripping boys’ yarn written in Technicolor, the bright spots of Homer Sincere become dimmed by a story as overwritten and under-edited as its title, the wooden dialogue, and tendency toward the sentimental. The world of the movies ends up seeming more real than the shades that inhabit this novel.

Eileen Charbonneau BUTTERFLY’S SHADOW Lee Langley, Chatto & Windus, 2010, £12.99, pb, 337pp, 9780701184681 This novel is a rich, engrossing blend of love, deceit and two diverse countries and cultures.

Although woven around two main characters, Cho-Cho and Joey, the impact of others on their lives and personality throughout the book is skilfully and beautifully captured. Cho-Cho is a young Japanese teahouse girl purchased by her first client, American Lt. Pinkerton. She falls in love with him, and when he sails away she waits for his return. When he does come back, their small son, Joey, is taken to the USA and raised as an American. The Depression takes its toll on

the Pinkerton household, as does the internment of American-Japanese following Pearl Harbour.

Joey refuses to accept his Japanese descent and determines to isolate himself from other internees.

Following his war service, and because of his ability to speak Japanese, Joey returns to Japan as one of the occupying forces. It is here where he comes to wonder at what to make of this land of his birth as he stands among the ruins and the smell of burning and gutted factories. He sets out to find his roots. As the book closes, the simple title becomes clear; there is almost sadness as you turn the final page. This was a truly evocative and imaginatively written novel.

Vivien Cringle TELL THEM I’LL BE THERE Gerard Mac, Robert Hale, 2010, 304pp, hb, £18.99, 9780709090717 The story begins in Ireland in the 1920s when there is little work, much poverty and America is the promised land. The three Dolan brothers, Dan, Michael and Tim decide to leave Ireland and seek their fortune across the Atlantic. Originally Tim was destined to go to a Seminary in England and become a priest, but circumstances force him to go with his brothers to America, where he gets taken in by Father Pat. The story follows the boys’ fortunes as they seek to make their mark in their new homeland amid the politics and social mores of the day.

I found this book to be a real page-turner from page one and couldn’t put it down. The characters were well drawn and wholly believable, and the gangsters were menacing without being ‘over the top’. Life in America at that time was very well described and with the culmination in the Wall Street Crash, has some parallels with our own time.

An excellent book to take on a long-haul flight.

The time will seem to pass very quickly.

Marilyn Sherlock DEATH ON THE MARAIS Adrian Magson, Allison & Busby, 2010, £19.99, hb, 382pp, 9780749008345 This is the first in a series of crime mysteries set in northern France in the 1960s. Inspector Lucas Rocco, a noir hero in the best tradition, solitary, hard-bitten and haunted by the horrors of his past, in this case the French colonial wars in Indochina.

His posting to a quiet village in Picardie during a reorganisation of the police service is the signal for mayhem to break out, beginning with a dead girl dressed in a Gestapo uniform in the local military cemetery and ending with spectacular fireworks in a wood still full of ordnance from both World Wars.

Magson is an experienced writer in this genre, which shows in the sheer, slick enjoyability of the read. From the opening, I was happy to place myself in his hands and allow him to manipulate my imagination. I can already see this series translated to Saturday night TV in the run-up to the summer holiday season, and perhaps the citizens of Picardie should brace themselves for an HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 53

onslaught. Twinning with the county of Midsomer might be a sensible move.

As this review is aimed at lovers of historical fiction, I must offer one caveat and this is that Magson does little more than pay lip service to his historical period. The plot, and Rocco’s personal history, requires an early sixties setting but this is perfunctory. There are passing references to Johnny Halliday, the Beatles (really, in France, in the early summer of ’63?), long hair (ditto) and, clumsiest of all, hippies. Hippies come several years later, especially in socially conservative France. But I am prepared to forgive and forget because this book is so much fun.

Sarah Bower HEART OF LIES M.L. Malcolm, HarperCollins, 2010, $13.99, pb, 309 pp, 9780061962189 Leo Hoffman, the central character in this fascinating and deftly-written novel set during the years between the two World Wars, is a likeable guy. Yes, he’s a charmer capable of manipulating people. And as it turns out, he is willing to throw in his lot with criminals if it will help him make his fortune and get him out of his job as concierge for a posh Budapest hotel following World War I. But he has an amazing talent for languages, a sweet personality, and when he falls in love, he’s so sincerely smitten we can’t help but want good things for the man. Unfortunately, by the time Leo meets the love of his life, Martha, he’s unwittingly gotten himself into an ocean’s worth of hot water.

His minor role in an international counterfeiting scheme results in his being wanted throughout Europe, and he’s forced to flee to Shanghai. Once there, he has local gangsters and the invading Japanese to deal with.

But a summary of the plot of Heart of Lies can’t possibly do it justice. The writing is exquisite, wrapping the reader in another time and place.

We go along for the ride because of the characters, simply yet poignantly shaped by Malcolm. Her style is crisp, clean, without forced embellishments, a pleasure to read. She builds suspense and describes dramatic, sometimes violent events convincingly and naturally. This novel was previously published as Silent Lies in 2005 and 2008. It’s easy to see why Harper picked it up for its own list. A splendid addition to the shelf of any reader who enjoys intelligent, sensitive narratives with a strong thread of intrigue.

Kathryn Johnson SHADOW COUNTRY Peter Matthiessen, MacLehose Press (Quercus), 2008, £20.00, hb, 892pp, 9780857050151 / Modern Library, 2008, $16.00, 912pp, 9780812980622 Originally written as one enormous 1500‑page novel, Shadow Country was released as three separate volumes in the 1990s. This version is a rewrite.

The author tells me so in the foreword, culminating in the strange assertion that the book 54 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

has no message, immediately followed by a diatribe about how it exposes the evils of: inherent racism; trying to make our lives better (?); destruction of the environment; and the powerlessness of the irrelevant (?) people in the story. Presumably their “irrelevance” doesn’t extend to their story not being worth telling.

The protagonist is E. J. Watson, a plantation owner in the south Florida Everglades at the turn of the 20th century. An incomer to a closed community, his unaccounted‑for prosperity led to much gossip, as did his (alleged) involvement in several murders. In 1910 he was murdered by a local mob. That, baldly, is all that is known about him.

Matthiessen tells the story three times, each from a different person’s viewpoint. This accounts for every possible permutation of what happened, but it also means the novel never comes to any conclusion. The author has a passion for this tale, but his success in similarly enthusing the reader is more questionable. The detail, the hundreds of minor characters, and the extensive use of local slang make this hard to follow. Even the vaunted social exploration is flawed. As there are so few hard facts about Watson’s life and times, the author is effectively commenting on his own suppositions, which frankly is a bit of a nerve.

As I was wading through this, I came to the conclusion that Mr. Matthiessen would have been better advised to spend his time and considerable writing skills on a more substantial story.

Martin Bourne C Tom McCarthy, Jonathan Cape, 2010, £16.99, hb, 310pp, 9780224090209 / Knopf, 2010, $26.95, hb, 310pp, 9780307593337 Set in the opening quarter of the 20th century, this is not a novel easy to summarise or capture in a few words. The central figure is one Serge Carrefax, born at the end of the 19th century, and who, after an unconventional childhood that seems to be set in an almost alternate, gently surreal England, becomes an observer in the Great War. Having survived this ordeal and incarceration in a German prison camp, Serge has various adventures which takes him to the London of the Roaring Twenties and then to Egypt.

But this is not a conventional narrative. The story is completely enmeshed in the developing technologies of the times and Carrefax seems to act as a kind of symbolic receiver and transmitter for the newly-utilised radio waves and emerging science as it affects mankind. His life is interleaved with advances in science and he sees his world through the prism of emerging technologies. An early bereavement seems to dislocate his perspective of the world, which is manifested in singular and eccentric behaviour, leading up to a cocaine and heroin habit during the War and afterwards.

It is all rather clever and intellectual, with threads linking up into an organic whole (the “C” of the title refers to the element carbon as being the building block of life), but it is not a very absorbing

book to read. At times, the prose style reminded me of JG Ballard or Will Self. I like literary fiction, but this did not really engage me. Shortlisted for the Man Booker prize, this is yet another novel narrated in the present tense.

Doug Kemp DECEPTION Michael Meehan, Allen & Unwin, 2010, $16.95/ C$18.95, 300pp, pb, 9781742372648 In this many-layered story, Meehan (The Salt of Broken Tears) takes the reader from the Paris of the French Revolution to the protests in those same streets in the summer of 1968, with stops in New Caledonia and Australia as well. Nicholas Lethbridge, a young lawyer from Australia, comes to Paris in 1968 in search of answers to his puzzling family history. He clutches a parcel of manuscripts that belonged to his grandmother, Agnes; the author, Sebastien Rouvel, was deeply involved in the Paris Commune of the 1870s, but he died in the Australian desert near his grandmother’s childhood home, on the inhospitable Mount Deception.

The writings make little sense, and could well be the ravings of a lunatic, but Nicholas senses a deeper story. His investigations reveal that not only does he have living relatives near Paris, but also that he may be holding a valuable, history-changing manuscript. Nicholas has assistance in his quest: Lucien, the ragged, reeking exile of Paris libraries; Julia, the romantic, manic researcher and relation of Rouvel; his great aunts Colette and Clementine; and their long-time friend and advisor, Monsieur Jalabert.

As he learns more about each of his new acquaintances and about his family’s past, Nicholas becomes confused, rather than enlightened. Each character has reasons to withhold or obscure the truth (or the truth as they believe it), leading only to more questions: why did Agnes get left behind when her mother and sisters left Australia?

What was the role of Agnes’s father in the Paris Commune? What relationship was there between Rouvel and Nicholas’s family? The untangling of a century’s worth of history is a remarkable journey for both the reader and Nicholas. For those who loved A.S. Byatt’s Possession, this is a must-read.

Helene Williams SOLDIER GIRL Annie Murray, Pan Macmillan, 2010, £5.99, pb, 444pp, 9780330458207 Molly Fox has grown up in the backstreets of Birmingham at the mercy of a cruel grandfather and her drunken mother. To escape from terrible family secrets, she decides to join the army as an ATS girl when the war starts. It is not an easy existence, but she is a gutsy heroine, and the army gives her the encouragement to carry on, becoming the family she did not have as a child. However, the past has a way of catching up with you.

A story of tragedy and triumph, this is the sequel to The Hopscotch Summer, but I didn’t realise this when I read it, and it makes an enjoyable enough 20th Century

story without reading its predecessor.

I found it interesting enough to want to explore Murray’s other novels, as I liked her style of writing and enjoyed reading the snippets of social history that form the backdrop of her stories. It must have been a difficult period to live through, and while at times what we learn is harrowing, it helps us to understand what people must have endured. Well told.

Karen Wintle BEAUTIFUL DREAMER Joan Naper, Allium Press of Chicago, 2010, $14.99/C$17.99, pb, 314pp, 9780984067640 Kitty Coakley is a beautiful young daughter of an Irish-Catholic working class family. As the youngest and last daughter at home, she helps her mother with cooking, washing and cleaning up for her father and five older brothers in their cottage on Chicago’s west side. Her family expects her to marry a nice man from the parish, settle near her parents, and have lots of babies, a life like her mother’s, her older sister’s and all the other women in the parish. But it is 1900, Chicago is a booming city of opportunity and 20-year-old Kitty has ambitions. She studies voice until her teacher tells Kitty that she will never be good enough for an operatic career. Kitty decides to enter a new field and studies to be a kindergarten teacher. Kitty also has choices in husbands as well as careers. There is Brian from the parish, her parents’ choice, whom Kitty has known since childhood, and upper-class Protestant Henry, a young architect, who is not favored by her parents, but offers Kitty the life to which she aspires.

Joan Naper has written a charming and engrossing coming-of-age story. The heroine is well-grounded in who she is, but knows she can be more. She wants a life of self-determination, but is conflicted by family loyalty, religion, and fears the price she will have to pay for this freedom.

Ms. Naper develops her heroine and the plot with intelligence and sensitivity.

Audrey Braver THE MISTRESS OF ABHA William Newton, Bloomsbury USA, 2010, $16.00, pb, 9781608193219 / Bloomsbury, £16.99, hb, 320pp, 9780747598978 Ivor Willoughby was a boy when the British military posted his father to Arabia, and for reasons that are revealed only at the story’s end, Robert Willoughby returns home only once after that. Unsure of his father’s fate, young Ivor is determined to search for his father and prepares himself by studying classical Arabic, Farsi and Urdu. Then, with help from an Oxford professor, he gains a position at the Locust Research Bureau in Cairo.

Detailing his travels in the first person, Ivor quickly captures the reader as he navigates the strife that dominates the desert tribes. Nasranys (Christians) are not welcome in this land, and Ivor’s life is in constant danger as he searches for the people who knew his father. Almost imperceptibly, 20th Century

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THE GENDARME

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Mark T. Mustian, Putnam, 2010, hb, $25.95/$C32.50, hb, 304pp, 9780399156342 / Oneworld, Jan. 2011, £12.99, pb, 304pp, 9781851688265 During World War I, Ahmet Kahn, a Turkish soldier, suffers an injury that destroys his memory of the past. He starts over in the United States with a new name and, as Emmett Conn, leads a long and unremarkable life. We meet Emmett in 1990; he is (probably) 92, perhaps senile, and certainly very ill. He has a brain tumor, seizures, dreams, and nightmares.

As Emmet is losing his hold on the present, his past is, cruelly, returned to him.

The Gendarme alternates between 1990 and 1915, when 17-year-old­­Ahmet Kahn, a gendarme (paramilitary police), is assigned to escort Armenian deportees from Turkey to Syria. The trek, based on real events, is ill-conceived, poorly planned, and inhumane.

Supplies of water and food are insufficient. Guards use and mistreat deportees. Thousands who sicken and die, or are killed, are left along the trail. Ahmed tries to maintain order; he fears his own potential for brutality. Then he falls in love with Arexi, one of the prisoners. Love makes him vulnerable but preserves his humanity. Then Arexi disappears.

The determination to find Arexi again is reborn in the old man. We follow Emmett’s reawakening with mixed emotions. If he finds Arexi, will she remember him? Does she hate him and, if so, why? Is Arexi dead? The answers to Emmett’s questions will satisfy readers.

Culpability for the death of thousands of Armenians through forced deportation is still debated in Europe. Mustian draws readers into an ugly part of history — but in a way that makes human actions understandable without condoning them. The Gendarme is highly recommended.

Jeanne Greene the adventure shifts from the son to the father.

Through interviews and eventually a set of unsent letters, we learn the details of Robert Willoughby’s life as the Bedouin Ullobi. It was a life he freely chose at the expense of the family he left behind in England.

William Newton has given this story an interesting set of woman characters both in and out of the harem. No matter the restrictions on their public sphere of influence, these women played very credible roles in their societies.

This is an enjoyable, well-told adventure story with lots of action. It also manages to impart insights to the unsettled politics of Arabia in the 1930s. For anyone interested in an even more detailed account of Bedouin life and culture, Doughty’s Travels in Arabia Deserta is a classic text although not without controversy. Doughty never hid that he was English or Christian and yet managed to travel and live among the Arab tribes from 1876 to 1878. The other classic text is of course, T. E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which also has its critics.

Veronika Pelka THE FOUNTAIN Mary Nichols, Allison and Busby, 2010, £7.99, pb, 416pp, 9780749008628 Set in the 1920s, this novel is a cross between a family saga and a romance. Comfortably middle-

class farmer’s daughter Barbara Bosgrove lives in Norfolk and is studying to be a teacher at a Cambridge teacher’s college. Boating on the Cam after the May ball with her friend Penny and Penny’s brother, Simon, she is spotted by a young builder, George Kennett. He comes from the same town as Barbara, and decides she is the woman for him, pursuing her relentlessly. Finally, she agrees to marry him and soon begins to regret it. So does Simon who realises, too late, that he loves Barbara.

George is far from the reliable man Barbara believed him to be and she struggles to hold onto a marriage with an unfaithful husband. Simon offers escape, or does he?

The plot is quite convoluted but the book is an easy read, nothing demanding, and all ends well, which is how it should be in this genre. Having known spunky, suffragette and feminist great aunts who were at Oxford in the ‘20s I did find Barbara a bit wet and indecisive, but the aunts were exceptions. Barbara was very much a product of her background and time. pdr lindsay-salmon GHOST LIGHT Joseph O’Connor, Harvill Secker, 2010, £16.99, hb, 246pp, 9780436205712 / Farrar Straus & Giroux, Feb. 2011, $24.00, hb, 256pp, 9780374161873 An elderly woman, living alone in rented accommodation in a dilapidated tenement, would HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 55

seem an unlikely character to engage the reader for the length of this book, especially when the story emerges over the course of only one day. She is no ordinary lady, as her name is Molly Allgood (aka Miss O’Neill), former leading light on the stages of Dublin, London, New York and San Francisco. Her past contains links with the eminent playwright, J.M. Synge, with whom she had an intense and turbulent affair in the last year of his life.

Through the course of the day, Molly revisits in her thoughts the many scenes of her life which hold significance for her. The reader becomes absorbed as the tale unfolds, though the compassion felt for our heroine is tempered by frustration at her actions at times. The encounters of the day around a variety of her beloved haunts expose unfortunate attachments to drugs and alcohol during her lifetime, which has kept her distanced from current circumstances and disrupted close attachments.

Her liaison with John Synge at the tender age of 19 appears to have unbalanced her outlook and left a void of regrets which no-one subsequently breached.

Note: Page 97 indicates that ripening barley and masses of wet bluebells appear at the same time of year!

Cathy Kemp FAR BRIGHT STAR Robert Olmstead, Algonquin, 2010, $13.95, pb, 236 pp, 9781565129801 In 1916, an U.S. Army patrol led by Napoleon Childs is ambushed by Mexican guerrillas when they try to locate Pancho Villa. Tortured and left to die in the heat of the desert, Napoleon survives and then tries to make sense of his life as he walks through the desert attempting to return to camp. A career soldier, Childs is tired of fighting senseless wars against an enemy that is difficult to defeat, and cares even less about their reason for fighting this war in such a God-forsaken place.

The scene in which Childs and his companion Preston are tortured is intense. The author has written a thinking reader’s Western, not a stereotypical Western novel. The protagonist has weaknesses that make him human, which results in a captivating story. An award-winning writer, Olmstead has presented a tragic event that caused a life-changing effect on the major character.

This spellbinding story, difficult to put down, comes highly recommended; it contains elements of human emotion that far exceed that in any previous Western I have read. If you have never read a Western before, let this book become your first.

Jeff Westerhoff I CURSE THE RIVER OF TIME Per Pettersen, Harvill Secker, 2010, £16.99, 256pp, hb, 9781846553004 / Graywolf, 2010, $25.00, hb, 224pp, 9781555975562 I am sure some people will enjoy and find much to admire about this novel. These are probably the kind of people who enjoy black and white Scandinavian films of the ilk satirised by French 56 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

and Saunders; lots of staring into the distance and deep meaning extracted from a look or how long a hand is held or something like that. The reader will probably fall into one of two camps, the first seeing it as profound with precise luminous prose and the second will see it as self-indulgent and pretentious tedium. Sadly, I am in the second. The plot, such as it is, follows 37-year-old Norwegian Arvid Jansen, who is getting divorced and also trying to come to terms with the fact that his mother has been diagnosed with cancer. He thinks a lot and reviews moments earlier in his life such as holidays on the beach and giving up his studies to go and work on a production line because he is a communist. A lot of the focus is also about his relationship with his mother, and we have many meaningful interludes when they drink coffee or calvados together and lots of roundabout things are said. Pettersen’s previous novel, Out Stealing Horses, has won many prizes, so perhaps I am missing something here, but I found it dull in the extreme. I curse the river of time I spent reading it.

Ann Northfield THE MAN WHO NEVER RETURNED Peter Quinn, Overlook, 2010, $24.95, hb, 336pp, 9781590203880 Fintan Dunne’s retirement life in sunny Florida has not proven very satisfying to the veteran of the NYPD and wartime service in the OSS. Bored with his leisure time, and with his wife, Dunne is enticed back into his profession by an old colleague and an enigmatic media mogul. His assignment is to solve the riddle of the disappearance of the New York State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Crater. The time is 1955, and the 1930 case is seemingly so cold as to make any investigation hopeless. Yet Dunne willingly plunges into New York City’s winter, corrupt city and state politics, and untrustworthy colleagues to get to the bottom of the famous judge’s life and the mystery surrounding his sudden disappearance. Peter Quinn has an encyclopedic knowledge of the New York of the time, and his treatment of Dunne and his challenges in finding truth in the murky waters of media and city politics are as intriguing as the Crater saga itself.

John R. Vallely GIRL BY THE ROAD AT NIGHT David Rabe, Simon & Schuster, 2010, $23.00, hb, 228pp, 9781439163337 In Girl by the Road at Night, two unlikely souls come together for a short time, simply because they both need the connection so badly. Whitaker is a new arrival to the Vietnam War, angry and confused by his last girlfriend’s rejection, terrified that he will die during the war, and unable to express his emotions. Lan is a prostitute, a former farmer’s daughter, surviving in the only way left to her while watching her country explode. They are fascinated by the differences in each other.

Whitaker describes Lan, “She’s a complete fucking mystery, like the weather in some far-off part of the world changing the weather where he is.”

Their time together — so short and

commercially-based it can’t really be called a relationship — is not particularly tender. This is a love story in which love is never mentioned.

As a novelist and playwright, David Rabe doesn’t tell pretty stories. He does, however, convincingly evoke a violent and surreal world in which no one really seems to be in charge. There are plenty of ways to die in Vietnam, from sniper fire to a snake in the latrine, and readers are left with the impression that death waits around every corner.

Lan and Whitaker are terribly flawed people, tempered by the anarchy around them. Lan is jealous and manipulative, thrilled when she can make Whitaker buy her things, and Whitaker is mostly dead inside. He performs one act of decency, rescuing Lan from unwanted clients, but instead of saving her, his noble gesture dooms her.

Lan’s story is sad and grisly, and Whitaker himself never understands it.

Colleen Quinn THE HOUSE OF DUST AND DREAMS Brenda Reid, Orion, 2010, £9.99, pb, 373 pp, 9781409114710 (tpb), 9781409114703 (hb) Evadne Timberlake first sees her husband Hugh’s dilapidated family house in the Cretan village of Panagia Sta Perivola in the summer of 1936, and persuades him to let her stay to oversee its renovation once he returns from his diplomatic duties in Athens. The locals cannot quite pronounce her name, so she becomes known as “Heavenly.” As she adapts to the local way of life, Evadne finds a new identity and a new self, along with the new name – away from the trivial social whirl of life on the diplomatic circuit. She befriends a young village woman, Anthi, whose voice provides an alternative narrative, and then there is Cristo, a would-be student of architecture employed as a mason on the renovation project.

It is predictable that Evadne and Cristo should fall in love, but this is more than just a love story – it is a complex novel of friendship, motherhood, marriage and conflict, both personal and political.

Her characters, particularly Anthi, are well drawn, and Evadne’s transformation from naïve, wellmeaning visitor to a true island woman is believable.

The author clearly has a great affection for Crete herself and writes vividly of village life in all its harshness. Neither does she shy away from brutal realities when war finally comes to the island and the Cretans take a stand against the German and Italian invaders.

Mary Seeley BANANA REPUBLICAN Eric Rauchway, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010, $25.00, hb, 237pp, 9780374298944 Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby was a suave but crass braggart who considered others less intelligent to threaten his social and financial status. In Banana Republican, Professor Eric Rauchway presents Tom Buchanan’s diary of his unintelligent, egocentric escapades in Nicaragua.

All of Tom’s money is held and controlled by his Aunt Gertrude. She is removing him from 20th Century

an uncomfortable legal problem, owing to his wife Daisy having driven the car that struck and killed another woman. Daisy has since packed on the weight and booze and gone shrill on poor Tom. So he welcomes the opportunity to possibly make some independent money and escape the increasingly depressing home atmosphere. But Tom never learns, and then again why should he?

Tom is the perfect caricature of white businessmen and politicians who believe they can control finance, government, war, peace, race, sex, in all, everything. So off to Managua goes Tom in 1924, a time when presidential coups are constantly in flux, whether that be orchestrated by Solorzano, Sacasa, Chamorro, or their supporting armies versus the National Guard whose loyalties fluctuate accordingly. While he claims to mentally eschew the use of military power to back a particular political party and president, Tom’s own bribery and negotiating skills backfire, forcing him to run guns, participate in a brutal fight, observe a horrific bombing based on wrong information he was possibly responsible for, and generally back ever-changing politicians who never really permanently go away. It’s a familiar cyclical story of Nicaraguan, even Central American history, which Americans like Tom have attempted to control but wound up being totally ineffectual in more ways than one. Banana Republican is frustrating, accurate, and realistic fiction about one slice of American history full of good intentions but gone totally awry!

Viviane Crystal HER DAUGHTER’S DREAM Francine Rivers, Tyndale House, 2010, $24.99, hb, 439pp, 9781414334097.

This generational saga continues after the bestseller, Her Mother’s Hope, with Carolyn now married but bitter after struggling with physical illness and family turmoil. A common trait continues in this novel: mothers see weakness in their daughters and treat them toughly in order that they will survive what is often a challenging world. History proves that reality to be true, but the question arises as to where the line is between instilling toughness to live realistically and that which wounds and scars the emotions and soul.

The story spans from the 1950s to the present day, covering the Vietnam War, 9/11, the Afghanistan War and the Iraqi wars. Caroline’s family suffers losses, and family members have to live with the memories of these historical realities.

It is May Flower Dawn, Caroline’s daughter, who grows up being pulled between her mother and grandmother. Education, travel, jobs, living arrangements, and marriage become battlegrounds for possessive love. Dawn decides the bitter, divisive contest must stop, not an easy task by any means.

Francine Rivers is an author who knows how to not only hold but hook a reader’s interest as the various parts of the conflict unfold and characters are forced to develop and move into and even beyond unconditional love. This is a unique presentation about relationships between mothers 20th Century

and daughters, but oh so much more in the fleshing out of hopes and dreams achieved through amazing tenacity and drive. This second novel, as well as the first, makes for great reading, a story to get lost in and ponder long afterward.

Viviane Crystal AN AMERICAN TYPE Henry Roth, W.W. Norton, $24.95/C$32.50, hb, 283pp, 9780393077759 The Great Depression was no help to poor, New York Jewish ghetto novelist Ira Stigman, who loathed his current dependence on his bossy, wealthy mentor and lover, Edith. Then, at Yaddo artists’ colony, he meets M., a musician, and feels a connection of love he never found with Edith or anyone else, but both relationships raise enough fear and determination in him to run away to “prove himself.” Accompanied by an injured, outof-work Communist called Bill, he heads to Los Angeles in his Model A car to try screenwriting for the money and independence. Upon arrival, his contact in L.A. has vanished, so he and Bill are on their own, on the road, penniless.

The raw adventures, some not without humor, of this life with society’s indigents, hopping boxcars with hobos, and sleeping in fleabag hotels, went into Ira’s writing and reemphasized his love for M., who, despite her social status and “calm, AngloSaxon radiance,” marries him and they live for fifty years in a house trailer in Albuquerque. The environment hardly matters as their artistic lives and the understanding between them satisfy the

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THE DEATH INSTINCT

creative spirit in these united souls.

As bleak as the story may sound, there is depth and much richness in the story of the author and his real-life wife Muriel, as told through the eyes of Ira, Roth’s alter-ego. Despite the sixty-year gap between Roth’s first novel and his last in a series, this novel has a fitting finality, gleaned from the writer’s manuscript by fortuitously named editor Willing Davidson. There’s not a dull moment in this story.

Tess Heckel THE INSANE TRAIN Sheldon Russell, Minotaur, 2010, $25.99, hb, 304pp, 9780312566715 Like an old Humphrey Bogart movie, this second Hook Runyon mystery features wisecracking tough guys making their way through a gritty, mid-1940s West. A California asylum for the criminally insane has suspiciously burned in a deadly fire. Hook, a one-armed railroad cop, is in charge of security for patients and staff as they travel to a new facility in Oklahoma. Hook is an appealing character who loves his dog, rare books, moonshine, and Nurse Andrea. Inexplicably, he must not only talk his bosses into providing the train for the trip but also provide staffing, something he accomplishes by hiring homeless vets and a prostitute. Hook is also juggling a disciplinary charge for having disastrously left his truck on a track while chasing down a hobo. Although the plot offers no surprises, the stylized corniness (“Who knew better than a railroad dog that crime respected neither time

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Jed Rubenfeld, Headline, 2010, £18.99, hb, 464pp, 9780755343997 A real rollercoaster of a novel, this literally starts with a bang and does not slacken in pace until the final page. Some of the events in the novel seem to require the reader to suspend their disbelief, but in fact it is the strangest and most unlikely elements that turn out to have been based on true events, as is clarified in the Afterword.

This is an intelligent, well-researched and vividly imagined novel that will remain in the mind. Set in 1920, ten years after the author`s previous novel The Interpretation of Murder, it has the same principal characters, including Sigmund Freud, although it is not necessary to have read the earlier book. The novel serves as a poignant reminder that terrorism has been around longer than we like to think; it also examines unsparingly the political in-fighting and power struggles linked to crime and how it can be in the interests of some in power that crime is covered up. It highlights the willingness to find and blame convenient scapegoats such as Italian Anarchists and Russian Bolsheviks.

The novel follows Stratham Younger as he, in conjunction with Captain Littlemore of the NYPD and the beautiful scientist Colette Rousseau, attempts to sift through the lies, corruption and confusion to find the real culprits who set off the bomb in Wall Street on 16th September 1920. In real life the culprits were never identified, but Rubenfeld offers his own solution. As befits a murder/mystery, there are many and varied strands of plot to follow, which keep the reader eagerly turning the pages. An exciting and well-crafted read.

Ann Northfield HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 57

nor place, that evil thrived on complacency and overconfidence and sought out weakness like a pack wolf?”), provides a fun read about how bad those good ol’ days could be.

Kristen Hannum A SMALL DEATH IN THE GREAT GLEN A. D. Scott, Atria, 2010, $15.00/C$19.99, 416pp, pb, 9781439154939 There’s a lot going on in a small Scottish town in 1956. The local paper, the Highland Gazette, is struggling to define itself as a bona-fide news source rather than just a local gossip rag. John McAllister, the new editor-in-chief, has his own internal demons to fight. Joanne Ross is the only woman on staff, and she yearns to define herself as something other than someone’s wife and mother.

She fights both the boys’ club feeling that women don’t work outside the home, and her husband, who returned from World War II a virtual stranger. Both the local gypsies and the European immigrants are mistrusted. Oh, and a young boy has been found dead in the canal — murdered.

Thus begins the first in A.D. Scott’s mystery series.

The scenery is definitely mid-century Highland, as are the attitudes. There’s some late 20th-century foreshadowing, but overall the tone is authentic and the action intriguing. The family scenes are touching and show a real interest in the characters, and Scott ties up the many ends of her introductory tale with aplomb.

Helene Williams THE SILENCE OF GOD Gale Sears, Deseret Book, 2010, $24.99, hb, 376pp, 9781606416556 A family with eight children and the neighbor girl Natasha struggle through the violent events of the early part of the 20th century as the only Mormon family in Russia. They desert from the tsar’s army on the western front; some become avid Bolsheviks, some are sent to Siberia for clinging to their faith throughout an atheistic revolution. We even get an almost first-hand view of the death of the tsar and his family.

Under the Mormon Church’s signature publishing house, this is definitely a book geared to the Latter-Day Saint audience. For the first couple of chapters, I doubted whether it would appeal to any other readers. The sensitive drawing of Natasha’s character, however, saves the day from the distant writing that sometimes keeps us from involvement with the family. Now, having reached the conclusion, I can recommend this to anyone with an interest in the time and place. I only wish the footnotes which accompany nearly every chapter had not told me of the family’s real fate.

Thank heaven for fiction.

Ann Chamberlin INHERITANCE Nicholas Shakespeare, Harvill Secker, 2010, £12.99, hb, 257pp, 9781846553158 Andy Larkham, in his late 20s, impoverished and working for a small London publishing firm, 58 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

attends the funeral of a former schoolteacher. Or rather, he mistakenly goes to the wrong service and is instead present at the sparsely attended final rites of Christopher Madigan, a complete stranger. Events become bizarre when he shortly afterwards receives a letter from Madigan’s legal representatives, which states that under the terms of their client’s will, the estate is to be divided up between those present for the funeral service. In short, Andy receives a windfall of £17 million from the stranger. This takes place in 2005, and most of the rest of the narrative is devoted to the events that lead up to this: Madigan, of Armenian descent, grows up in post-WWII Australia, where the source of his immense wealth is the discovery of a rich iron-ore mine.

Following a period of unsatisfactory high spending, Larkham becomes absorbed in uncovering Madigan’s story, wanting to find out the truth both about the man and Janine, Madigan’s estranged daughter. It is a tale of betrayal and deception, of love and tragic misunderstanding.

Unlikely though the plot is, it is a story that possesses a power and drive that fully engages the reader, following the life of Madigan and the misrepresentations made by others so that his reputation as a selfish miser are shown to be just fiction.

Doug Kemp TATIANA AND ALEXANDER: A Love Story Paullina Simons, Avon, 2010, $15.99, pb, 559pp, 9780061987465 / Harper, 2008, £8.99, pb, 640pp, 9780007118892 Eighteen-year-old Tatiana has escaped from the Soviet Union, but the fate of her husband, Alexander, is unknown. Alexander, born in the United States but raised in the Soviet Union by his communist parents, is an officer in the Red Army – but if his superiors find out about his past or his secret marriage to Tatiana, he will be killed as a spy.

Tatiana and her newborn son arrive in New York, where she finds work as a nurse at Ellis Island and begins to assimilate into American culture, while Alexander struggles to survive life in the Red Army during the dismal and desperate final days of World War II. The star-crossed lovers have only memories of one other to sustain them, and little hope of a reunion, but they both persist in trying to find each other.

While Tatiana and Alexander could stand as an independent novel, reading The Bronze Horseman, the first novel in the trilogy, provides some muchneeded background information on both of the main characters’ pasts. Like The Bronze Horseman, Tatiana and Alexander is at its best when Tatiana and Alexander are separated from each other, whether by distance or by circumstance. When they’re together, they’re either fighting or they’re having sex, which becomes tiresome. I was happy to see Tatiana come into her own as a capable, intelligent young woman who uses her knowledge and empathy to heal the sick and wounded.

While there are a few too many tidy coincidences leading to a happy ending, I still couldn’t stop

reading this engaging melodrama. I look forward to the 2011 U.S. release of the final book in the trilogy.

Nanette Donohue THE CAILIFFS OF BAGHDAD, GEORGIA Mary Helen Stefaniak, Norton, 2010, $24.95/ C$31.00. hb, 342pp, 9780393063103 The inhabitants of Threestep, Georgia didn’t just gain a schoolteacher when Miss Grace Spivey arrives in town in August 1938. Miss Spivey has all sorts of ideas that are new to the town and to the children in her classroom, from field trips to putting on a Halloween ball, many of which sure don’t sit well with some of Threestep’s residents.

Miss Spivey also brings a whiff of the exotic, with her trunks of Arabic clothing, her mammoth set of the Thousand and One Nights, and the stories she has to tell about her time in the Middle East. Miss Spivey has almost nothing in common with the previous teacher, Miss Chandler, and the 11-yearold narrator, Gladys Cailiff, rejoices at that. Some of Miss Spivey’s actions have to be concealed, particularly those concerning the education of African American children, but things get quite uncomfortable at times. After all, Threestep has its own batch of “Ku Kluks.” Miss Spivey’s conceives of staging a production from the Thousand and One Nights right on the main street, as a part of a Baghdad Bazaar. This engages the attention of all, and the unlikely participation of some. This is also where the camels come in.

Gladys, her family, and their friends and acquaintances come vividly to life. One of the most memorable characters is young Theo Boykin, who lives next door and who is a genius. Theo is responsible for so much that helps Miss Spivey’s grand scheme succeed, despite all the difficulties he faces because of his skin color. Mary Helen Stefaniak spins her tale just as magically as did Shahrazad her 1,001.

Trudi E. Jacobson NATASHA’S DREAM Mary Jane Staples, Corgi, 2010, £6.99, pb, 367pp, 978055215092 This is a thriller and romance set in Berlin during 1925, when the Nazi party is gathering strength and Berlin is home to many Russian refugees, the wealthy and the poverty-stricken. Natasha is one of the latter. Living in Ekaterinburg/Sverdlovsk, she knows something about the murder of the Tsar and his family that the Bolsheviks need to know, and if possible suppress. Philip Gibson is an Englishman in Berlin because of the mystery surrounding a very sick woman claiming to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia. He saves Natasha from an attack on her life, and helps her.

The Berlin background is excellently portrayed, with the decadence of the Russian elite and the grey misery of the homeless and workless.

Threading through the novel is the mystery of the identity of the woman who may be Anastasia, and the rejection by those who ought to be closest to her. There is the menace of Natasha’s enemies, 20th Century

and her growing love for Philip. A sense of danger is ever-present. Written before the mystery of Anastasia’s death was finally resolved, the story and the projected solution is credible. This novel is an easy, good read, though readers looking for a novel in the style of the Adams Family series will find something rather different.

Marina Oliver SLOANE HALL Libby Sternberg, Five Star, 2010, $25.95, hb, 388pp, 9781594149177 Sternberg’s dubious decision to set the plot of Jane Eyre in the US in the 1920s, with a gender switch, is hard to understand. Upon meeting the testy hero of Sloane Hall, Jack Doyle, you may forget his alter ego, but only for a while. Jack’s past includes a reformatory but he has intelligence and ambition. He’s in Hollywood to find work as a cameraman. Advised to let the uproar over “talkies” settle down first, he takes a job as chauffeur for Pauline Sloane, a glamorous but neurotic actress.

Once Jack becomes involved with Ellie (Pauline’s real name), the antique plot structure begins to show beneath the 20th-century fabric. The staff at the Hall seems familiar; when the housekeeper’s mask slips, we think of another faithful retainer.

Ellie’s agent and stepbrother, Morgan, comes and goes, running Ellie’s life. Why does she attack him with a knife? Strange cries emanating from the attic at night disturb Jack’s sleep. There is a fire…

The author says there’s no “madman” in the attic; but something’s up there. We guess what before Jack does. What else would explain Ellie’s erratic behavior and her thralldom to Morgan?

The familiar plot unrolls downhill from here — Jack leaves, comes back, finds Ellie and the Hall drastically changed but, perhaps, more accessible to Jack.

Brontë fans may try to ignore the provenance of Sloane Hall, but that quickly becomes impossible.

Ultimately, the translation of a 19th-century melodrama into the argot of the jazz age is simply too jarring. Sternberg should have trusted her own creativity and imagination to give Jack a better book.

Jeanne Greene AN IMPARTIAL WITNESS Charles Todd, Morrow, 2010, $24.99, hb 352pp, 9780061791789 / HarperCollins, 2010, £12.99, pb, 352pp, 9780062015563 World War I nurse Bess Crawford returns in her second outing in this new series by Charles Todd, pseudonym for a mother-son writing team who pen the Inspector Ian Rutledge series. While Rutledge deals with the aftermath of the Great War, Bess is in its midst. On leave in England to shepherd injured soldiers to a convalescent home, she recognizes the wife of one of her patients at the railway station — with a man who is not her husband. When the woman is murdered, Bess realizes she was one of the last people to see her alive. As in her first outing, Bess feels compelled to seek the truth, on behalf of her patient, who dies of 20th Century

grief, and his dead wife.

Todd’s mysteries are far from British cozies.

Bess sees death in her field hospital in France, and home in England, on precious leave, she sacrifices time with her family to prevent an innocent man from being unjustly hung. What I appreciate about the Rutledge mysteries holds equally true in this new series — war touches everyone, not just those serving at the front. By the same token, Bess’s investigations reveal that life goes on during wartime; jealousies and fears still exist, and shared sacrifices do not confer sainthood.

Ellen Keith COME AGAIN NO MORE Jack Todd, Touchstone, 2010, $25.00/C$28.99, hb, 368pp, 9781416598497 The second volume in Todd’s planned memoirturned-fiction trilogy (after Sun Going Down), Come Again No More can also easily stand on its own as a memorable story of the hardscrabble life on the dusty Nebraska plains during the Great Depression. Emaline Hughes knows what hard times are: she’s moved a lot in her young life, seen her brother sent off to live with her estranged grandfather, and now, watched her mother die of TB. Her grandfather, Eli Paint, arrives in a big Cadillac to make amends, but Emaline is having none of it. She sends him back to Wyoming and sets about surviving these horrible times by herself.

When boxer Jake McCloskey comes to town, though, her plans for saving to buy a local farm go awry, as Jake woos her away from the tiny piece of stability she’d gained.

The chronicle of Emaline and Jake’s life together intermingles with Eli’s more successful, at least in Great Depression terms, life at his Wyoming ranch.

The despair Emaline feels as the wind howls day after day, season after season, as the grit and dirt of the Dust Bowl make their way through even the tightest of sealed windows, is palpable. Her desire to settle down, to be part of a family, is strong, yet her sense of impending disaster so ingrained that she has difficulty accepting any assistance or luck that comes her way. There’s not a lot of either in this story, which makes it all the sweeter on the occasions when it does occur.

There are obvious parallels with other Dust Bowl novels such as The Grapes of Wrath, but the perspectives and stories are different enough that Come Again No More is a worthy entry in the genre, and a fine salute to Todd’s family history.

Helene Williams TWO FOR SORROW Nicola Upson, Faber, 2010, £12.99, pb, 488pp, 9780571246335 This is the second in Upson’s planned series of crime novels featuring Josephine Tey, one of the doyennes of the so-called Golden Age of British crime writing in the 1930s. My first inclination was to describe it as a curate’s egg of a book but actually, it’s more of a club sandwich, one of those unwieldy constructions which tend to fall apart when you remove the skewer holding it together.

The novel is, on one level, a splendid crime caper, though I have to admit I’d identified the murderer less than halfway through and discerned her motive about a hundred pages from the end.

This doesn’t matter, however, if, like me, you enjoy classic crime novels as much for their fidelity to the style and tropes of the genre as for the mystery to be solved.

The novel is a faultless homage to the Golden Age. It is, however, spoilt for me by an awkwardly bolted-on love story and by Upson’s inclusion at sporadic intervals of ‘extracts’ from a novel being written by Josephine herself about a turn of the century crime which turns out to have a bearing on the 1930s investigation. This was a real crime, but, as Josephine is fictionalising it, I fail to see what it adds to the uber-fiction of the main narrative.

The love story is, in itself, complex and fascinating, and offers an insight into the status of lesbian relationships at this period when sexuality was determined as much by the loss of a generation of young men to the First World War as by personal preference or sexual hard-wiring. When, however, Upson repeatedly breaks off as the hunt for the murderer reaches its climax and switches to Josephine’s emotional turmoil as she drifts between two interconnected love triangles, it just becomes plain frustrating.

Some delicious bits but unwieldy – just like a club sandwich.

Sarah Bower THE SECRET HISTORY OF COSTAGUANA Juan Gabriel Vásquez, trans. Anne McLean, Bloomsbury, 2010, £16.99, hb, 301pp, 9781408800188 In 1904, Joseph Conrad published Nostromo, set in the fictitious South American republic of Costaguana, claiming that his information came from an equally fictitious character called José Altamirano who, at the end of the story, claimed that he had been ‘written out of history’ by Conrad.

The Secret History takes José Altamirano as the central character and tells the story from his point of view, which includes his father’s activities in the various civil wars and conflicts of the fictitious state and the building of the Panama Canal (in Conrad’s story this was a silver mine).

The idea was good, very different, and Vasquez tells it as if Altamirano was re-telling it from his point of view in a court of law and the readers are the jury. However, I regret that I cannot agree with the general consensus on the inside of the dust cover which states – ‘It is a superb, joyful, boisterous and thoughtful novel.’ As it is told in the one voice, there is little room for characterization, and I am afraid that I found it slow to the point of tediousness and became rather irritated by his constant use of ‘Readers of the Jury.’ Originally written in Spanish, this is a translation into English, and, as is the case with others I have read, I find that the translator appears to be more concerned with faithfully translating every word than putting it into everyday English. For me this resulted in a HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 59

very stilted style of prose.

I am afraid that this is not one for my bookcase.

Marilyn Sherlock FORBIDDEN PLACES Penny Vincenzi, Overlook, 2010, $26.95, hb, 512pp, 9781590203569 / Headline Review, 2006, £7.99, pb, 640pp, 9780755332649 Originally published in 1995 in the UK, Forbidden Places is another exhilarating, addictive read from England’s prolific doyenne of commercial women’s fiction. As Places makes its American debut only now, fans of Vincenzi’s delicious novels may be upset by what they have been missing all this time! This hefty historical family drama is the story of three marriages — and three women who struggle through all the perils wartime could possibly throw at them. Grace, Florence, and Clarissa, related through marriage and friendship, each struggle with their own intensely personal moral battles, dilemmas, and secrets as well as relationships issues, ranging from the merely annoying to the disturbingly violent.

The choices these women confront are not simple and their decisions are not always easy to live with, making this book much more than lighthearted entertainment.

Cleverly plotted, rich in characterization, this World War II family drama is an enjoyable take on an already heavily tread topic: the home front. What makes this book unique, in my opinion, is the plot’s interplay among the different social classes within the wartime setting. The plot of Forbidden Places is not as single-mindedly focused on the privileged upper classes as some of Vincenzi’s other books, and a touching undercurrent of sympathy for the difficulties that this stratified English society posed for individuals permeates the story, adding a great deal of depth and substance.

Readers will find themselves flying through the pages of this book, utterly captivated and being drawn toward a heart-thumping climax. Highly recommended for those who enjoy historical family dramas.

Andrea Connell THE HOMECOMING Dan Walsh, Revell, 2010, $14.99, pb, 310pp, 9780800733896 This is a sequel to The Unfinished Gift. In 1944, pilot Shawn Collins has escaped capture after his plane was shot down in Europe, and is now home in the States. The Army wants to send their newest hero on a war bond tour, but he’s reluctant to go. His wife recently died in a car crash, and his relationship with his father is strained. Who will take care of his young son Patrick? Katherine Townsend, Patrick’s former social worker, agrees to act as nanny. A romance begins to form between Shawn and Katherine, but the shadow of Shawn’s wife stands between them. Will their attraction to each other overcome war’s obstacles?

This is a gentle Christian romance, with the religious content on the moderate to heavy side.

I felt I missed some character development from 60 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

not having read the first book. The protagonists are likeable people, and the interactions with the child Patrick aren’t icky sweet like in some other books in the genre. The only small problem is that the author allows some 21st century expressions and sensibilities to slip into a tale that’s set 65plus years ago. Inspirational fiction fans will love it nevertheless.

B.J. Sedlock THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF RACHEL DUPREE Ann Weisgarber, Viking, 2010, $25.95, hb, 321pp, 9780670022014 / Pan, 2009, £7.99, pb, 304pp, 9780330458559 In 1917, in the isolated and drought-stricken Badlands of South Dakota, Isaac and Rachel DuPree are struggling to keep their family and their cattle alive. No sign of rain, and provisions are dwindling, but Isaac, a former Buffalo Soldier, is too proud to give up his ranch and return to their native Chicago. After all, being a landowner gives him a measure of equality with his white neighbors.

Pregnant with her eighth child, Rachel’s misgivings about Isaac’s ambitions grow. While he schemes about buying the adjoining ranchland, Rachel’s only concern is how she will feed her children. Isaac decides to leave her and the children alone at the ranch during the winter while he seeks work elsewhere. Her children hungry and cold, Rachel knows she is desperate; she must decide between staying with Isaac and returning to Chicago with her children and she must decide quickly in order to survive.

There have been a fair number of books written in recent years about the contributions of AfricanAmericans in building the West, most of them about Buffalo Soldiers and black cowboys. This novel is a worthy addition to that body of work, and it breaks new ground as it deals with black ranchers. More than a “woman’s book,” the novel is a moving story about strength, perseverance, and maternal love in the face of dire adversity.

Strong characterization along with evocative and hauntingly beautiful imagery fully engages the reader in this highly recommended debut novel.

John Kachuba CARRY ME HOME Terri Wiltshire, Pan/Trafalgar Square, 2010, $12.95/£7.99, pb, 304pp, 9780230743397 In the early-to-mid-20th century, the American South is suffering economically, and hope lies in finding enough work to barely survive or dreams of a better life elsewhere. Terri Wiltshire has written a story about a sub-culture of people who work in small-town jobs or “ride the rails” seeking a dream never realized because of their inability to surmount brutality and small-mindedness.

Within such a negative world, and indeed surmounting it, are characters like Canaan Phillips and her grandmother’s brother, Luke. Canaan initially left Alabama, spurred on by a high school teacher who saw talent matching aspirations

of a better existence. Reaching New York City, Canaan marries but quickly returns to her home, a physically and emotionally battered, scarred woman. Attempting to shut out her grandmother’s “I told you so” harassment and attempts to pin her down to accepting who she is and where she belongs, Canaan begins to find some consolation in visiting Luke. Considered “simple,” Luke has an interesting history on the rails that leads to discovery of the secret behind his birth and his actual abilities. Luke is a very, very special character indeed, one who enables the beginning of Canaan’s healing.

There is so much pain and tragedy, so much misunderstanding and abuse in this novel. Yet the dignity and respect Terri Wiltshire confers on these characters is so noble and endearing that the reader is compelled to rapidly turn the pages to discover what happens next. Historical events are absent for most of this novel that offers a social and psychological portrait of Southern living, defying labels and commemorating pride, endurance, and love of life.

Viviane Crystal PRISONERS Burt Zollo, Academy Chicago, 2010 (c2003), $16.95, pb, 312pp, 0897336000 Burt Zollo’s debut novel is set in Le Mans, France in 1945. It is the story of a 19-year-old Jewish American POW camp guard, Sandy Delman. Delman, a college football star with poor eyesight, draws the unenviable assignment of guarding an ever-increasing number of German POWs. Taunted by ethnic slurs, Delman punches a POW. He loses his sergeant’s stripes and is reassigned to Sgt. Mueller, a German-American with strong German sympathies. Mueller torments Delman, but Delman holds himself in check as he devises a plan to get himself out from under Mueller’s thumb.The camp is seriously low on supplies, and the POWs are taking the brunt of the deprivation. Supply depots are unresponsive to the CO’s requests. Delman proposes to lead a convoy directly to the depots hoping that will get them what they need. POWs must drive the trucks with only Delman, two guards, and a mechanic to supervise them. The CO, Colonel Nelson, agrees and puts Delman in charge, returning him to the rank of sergeant. Mueller’s last attempt to sabotage Delman’s military career almost succeeds as he attaches a dangerous POW, Josef Heinrich, to the convoy. The action picks up as the convoy is first challenged by French partisans then threatened

by Heinrich’s escape. The ending is fast-paced and satisfying.

In spite of its setting, Prisoners is a quiet book, most of the narrative taking place in the characters’ minds as each tries to figure out what the other is thinking and tries to make sense of his situation.

Prisoners is also a coming of age story – where an idealistic and rather self-righteous young man learns that “everyone’s fighting his own small war plus the larger one.” Recommended as an honest 20th Century

look at life in the military.

Lucille Cormier

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multi-period

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THE SHADOW WAR Glen Scott Allen, St. Martin’s, 2010, $25.99/ C$31.00, hb, 336pp, 9780312576554 This novel is a modern-day thriller with flashbacks to 1675 and 1968. A Colonial historian, Benjamin Wainwright, is summoned by a friend to a Massachusetts think-tank called the American Heritage Foundation, only to discover that his young friend has died of an unexpected heart attack prior to his arrival. Samuel Wolfe, a security analyst with the Foundation, asks for Wainwright’s aid in examining the clues left by his deceased friend to determine the actual cause of death and to check out an unusual program in his friend’s computer.

Advertised as an historical thriller that will do for American history what The Da Vinci Code did for religion, the story is filled with secret codes, forged documents and family conspiracies that evolved since the American Revolution. The main mystery to be solved by the protagonist explores the nuclear buildup between the Soviet Union and the United States after World War II. Was there really a Cold War, or was it a ruse perpetuated by government officials? As Wainwright attempts to discover the truth and find the killer of his friend, he becomes involved in an international conspiracy.

He needs the help of certain Russian diplomats, including a young Russian woman who eventually becomes a love interest, to solve the mystery.

This novel was well-written with intriguing characters. The author knows his American history, especially the early Colonial period. I still am not sure how this time period had an effect on the relations between America and the Soviet Union, therefore, the plot became confusing at times. The reader must pay attention, as clues from conversations, paintings and documents lead Wainwright in his attempts to solve the mystery. I wouldn’t put this story in the same class as The Da Vinci Code, but if you enjoy thrillers with intrigue and international suspense, this novel may be for you.

Jeff Westerhoff CITY OF DREAMS William Martin, Forge, 2010, $25.99/C$31.00, hb, 447pp, 9780765321978 Boston book dealer and treasure hunter Peter Fallon makes a reappearance in this, the most recent of Martin’s suspense novels that incorporate historic and seminal events in American history with just plain good storytelling. Here, Peter and his fiancée, Evangeline Carrington, find themselves in the middle of a mystery of Revolutionary War vintage – to discover the hiding place of a box of 1780s New Emission Bonds, minted by Alexander Hamilton and his Treasury in order to compensate those who helped fund America’s war against the Multi-period

British. Peter and Evangeline must locate the bonds before notorious and dangerous forces find them and before they lose their own lives in the bargain. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is determining whether the bonds still have value, a decision that will either make some people very, very rich or not.

Martin deftly carries us along on a centurieslong narrative, weaving together past and present events, piecing together the origins of the bonds in Revolutionary War New York City with a terrific story about the young city and its inhabitants; to Hell’s Kitchen from the late 1890s to the early 1900s, with its tenements, brutality and political corruption; to present-day, post 9/11 New York City. As a New York City native, I found Martin’s take on the City and its very foundations – social, political and financial – fascinating. The characters that people his interlacing stories, even historical figures, are multidimensional.

Even the modern story is entertaining, full of twists and turns. What is obvious is how the City is a composite of all those who came before us, how we are all intertwined and how our histories are, at the most basic level, about commonality more than differences.

This is a solid story, well-told, fast paced and interesting.

Ilysa Magnus THE BUTTERFLY CABINET Bernie McGill, Headline Review, 2010, £19.99, hb, 312pp, 9780755370689 This first novel by Irish playwright and shortstory author Bernie McGill is written in the voices of two women decades apart, set against the struggle for Home Rule in the 19th century and the civil rights unrest of 1968/9. The plot revolves around the death of Charlotte, the daughter of Harriet Ormond, who is in prison for her manslaughter. Writing secretly, she records in her diary the events leading up to her daughter’s death, and this is set, in alternating chapters, against the dying testimony of Maddie, the maid who became nanny to Charlotte’s sister’s child, and to whom she tells her own version of those events.

Full of secrets and lies and, most of all, death, this is a melancholy novel that meanders through two women’s lives, each with her distinctive voice, and each trapped, in her own way, in a life she did not want, with the dust of what is left of the butterflies in the cabinet symbolic of what we all come to in the end.

A deeply moving story, brilliantly written, with the two women’s voices exactly suited to their characters, this is a gripping novel which I can thoroughly recommend. jay Dixon OUT OF THE SHADOWS Joanne Rendell, NAL Accent, 2010, $15, pb, 336pp, 9780451231123 Clara Fitzgerald is a professor specializing in the history of science at Manhattan U. Her mother died suddenly a few months ago, and the only family she

has left is her sister, Maxie. Her long-time fiancé is totally absorbed in his work to create a new drug for cancer and the couple has drifted apart. Clara’s mother, a librarian, had always maintained that the family was related to Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. When a DNA test confirms this, and Clara meets Kay McNally, a noted Shelley scholar, she begins a search for Mary Shelley’s lost journals and letters. At the same time, Clara becomes increasingly concerned that her ambitious fiancé may be resorting to unethical methods of testing his new drug. To further complicate things, Clara is attracted to Kay’s friend, Daniel.

The contemporary story alternates with Mary Shelley’s fictionalized journals covering her romance with Percy Bysshe Shelley, from the time she first meets him at her father’s home until they run away together when Mary is seventeen. The author weaves the themes of mother loss and the danger of scientific experimentation on humans through both stories.

One word of caution for historical fiction readers: most of the novel does take place in the present. One minor quibble: I found it implausible that the New York Public Library would allow a piece of Mary Shelley’s hair to be taken from their collection to be used for a DNA test. Rendell writes well about relationships and academic life, and I found this to be an entertaining and enjoyable story.

Jane Kessler DANCING WITH MR. DARCY Sarah Waters, editor, Harper, 2010, $13.99, pb, 256 pp, 9780061999062 / Honno, 2009, £7.99, pb, 280pp, 9781906784089 Collected in Dancing with Mr. Darcy are the winner of the Jane Austen Short Story Award and nineteen other selections. The stories are introduced by judges Sarah Waters (The Little Stranger, Fingersmith) and Rebecca Smith, novelist and five-times great niece of Jane Austen. Though the tales vary in setting from contemporary to historical, the winning story “Jane Austen over the Styx” by Victoria Owens is set in Hades, they share a connection to Jane Austen, her fiction, or the home where Austen produced the majority of her work, Chawton House. All of the stories are fine examples of the civil art of prose, honoring one of its greatest practitioners.

My favorite in the collection is the runner-up “Jayne” by Kirsty Mitchell. This story concerns a nude model whose grasp of the economic challenges presented contemporary young women echoes Jane Austen’s shrewd social consciousness.

Characters in “Jayne” and “The Delaford Ladies’ Detective Agency” by Elizabeth Hopkinson recognize that “A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.” Some of the stories, runnerup “Second Thoughts” by Elsa A. Solender and “Cleverclogs” by Hilary Spiers, are quite obviously linked to Austen. Other selections, “The Oxfam Dress” by Penelope Randall and “Second Fruits”

by Stephanie Tillotson, have less accessible ties HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 61

to Austen. Any puzzlement is cleared up by brief authors’ notes following each selection describing the authors’ inspirations. The whole is rounded out with biographies of judges and writers. Dancing with Mr. Darcy is a comfortable set of twenty tales to add to the Austen anthology.

Eva Ulett

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timeslip

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MY NAME IS MEMORY Ann Brashares, Riverhead, 2010, hb, 325 pp, $25.95/C$32.50, 9781594487583 / Hodder & Stoughton, 2010, £12.99, hb, 416pp, 9780340953495 My Name Is Memory is the story of Daniel, a soul who has lived many lives for over a thousand years. As Brashares tells it, most souls do not remember their former lives when they move on to the next one; Daniel, however, not only remembers all he’s experienced, he recognizes other souls as they reappear in the lives that follow. Though he has a different body each time, Daniel’s spurred on by the love he feels for Sophia, a girl he briefly meets in his first life and doggedly pursues as he passes through the ages. My Name Is Memory finds Daniel and Sophia (now known as Lucy) in the present day and in dire trouble as Daniel’s evil older brother from a former life stalks Sophia for ancient revenge.

To say I was let down by this novel is an understatement. The premise is fantastic and filled with potential, but the execution is slow and unwieldy. Interspersed throughout the present-day narrative are tales of Daniel’s lives and his pursuit of the elusive Sophia, but none of it is very interesting. Sophia, as Lucy, is spooked yet intrigued by Daniel, but her gullibility in believing Daniel’s brother strains even paranormal sensibilities. Lucy doesn’t even seem to know her own mind, let alone be capable of believing in a love that has crossed centuries. The whole story seems padded with unnecessary confusion, and the ending does not make a lick of sense. There was no tension, no careful unveiling of plot, no likeable characters. It’s obvious there will be a sequel, but I’ll be giving it a pass.

Tamela McCann LADY OF HAY Barbara Erskine, Sourcebooks, 2010, $16.99, pb, 592pp, 9781402241185 In 1970, when Jo Clifford is a university student in Edinburgh, she is hypnotized as part of a study on regression to past lives. Jo is such a good subject that her hands begin to bleed and she cries out “William!” and dies. Fortunately, Sam Franklyn, the professor’s assistant, is able to resuscitate her.

Fifteen years later, Jo allows herself to be regressed again. In the hypnotized state, she is Lady Matilda de Braose, young, pregnant, married to the boorish William, and in love with Richard, the handsome Earl of Clare. When Jo wakes she remembers everything, including the horror of a massacre she witnessed but could not prevent.

Confused, and doubting the veracity of her experience, she heads to the library where research reveals that in 1210, by order of King John of England, Matilda de Braose and her eldest son, 62 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

William, were starved to death in a dungeon. Sam Franklyn and his brother, Nick, fear for Jo as she becomes more and more enmeshed in her 13thcentury life, but the present holds more dangers for Jo than the past. William, Richard, and John have also been awakened to knowledge of their previous lives, and the more Jo is drawn to re-experience her life as Matilda, the more they threaten her life as Jo. Erskine is a master storyteller. Even though the manner of Matilda’s death is revealed early in the novel, I raced through this book, desperate to learn more of the connection between the past and present and the fate of Jo and her friends. The plethora of modern characters seemed a slight flaw, but it was more than amply compensated for by the gothic tension as Jo searched the Welsh borderlands in her quest for Matilda. Kudos to Sourcebooks for reprinting this very entertaining novel.

Nancy J. Attwell THE WINTER SEA (US) / SOPHIA’S SECRET (UK) Susanna Kearsley, Sourcebooks Landmark, 2010, $16.99, pb, 544pp, 9781402241376 / Allison & Busby, 2008, £7.99, pb, 288pp, 9780749080785 Historical subjects come to life for a modern novelist in Kearsley’s fascinating The Winter Sea. To explain how and why her 18th century and 21st-century love stories become interleaved, she uses a concept 21st-century readers will find more plausible than time travel: genetic memory.

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ALL CLEAR

Author Carrie McClelland, a stickler for historical accuracy, is drawn to a Scottish village near Slains castle, now a ruin, to complete her 18th-century novel. There, sentences appear on her computer screen, almost without her volition.

Carrie’s thrilled. But when the content surpasses her knowledge of people and events — and facts check out — Carrie begins to realize she’s taking dictation from the past.

Just as one inherits an ancestor’s talent, Carrie has inherited her ancestor Sophia Peterson’s memories. In alternate chapters, Carrie puts Sophia’s life at Slains into historical context — the ouster of the last Stewart king, the Scottish Union, French-English rivalry, and the failed Jacobite uprising of 1708. Carrie, who is falling in love with a local professor, “remembers” Sophia’s dangerous love for a Jacobite officer.

Suddenly Sophia leaves Slains, and her lover disappears from the history books, leaving Carrie lost without an ending for Sophia’s love story.

Readers will know better, however, and be very satisfied with the real conclusion.

Kearsley handles modern Scots dialects adroitly; but, while the frequent use of “do” as an auxiliary in 18th-century speech might be accurate, it is distracting. Or so, I do believe. Overall, skillful writing and research make The Winter Sea more historical novel than romance. Although Cassie’s choices are at times predictable, readers will not be disappointed in Sophia’s enthralling story. Highly recommended.

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Connie Willis, Spectra, 2010, $26.00, hb, 641pp, 9780553807677 / To be pub. by Gollancz in Oct 2011 The delights of Blackout and All Clear – which are, despite appearances, one novel – are hard to describe in a small space. The revivified history is beautiful.

Connie Willis has always loved England and especially London during the Blitz, and she delivers here as rich and wide a picture of the time as anything I’ve ever read. She doesn’t merely do research, she inhabits it. In a hundred small vignettes she captures the terrors and the wonders of a range of characters across English society – Dunkirk, the bomb shelters, evacuated children, firewatchers, the packed trains, Agatha Christie, Saint Paul’s dome rising indomitable above the clouds and flames, the terrible food and the bad jokes, the glorious celebration in Trafalgar Square on V-E Day. She makes the V1s audible and the bombings immediate, and especially she celebrates the desperate heroism of ordinary people enduring the unbearable.

Beyond that, Willis’s trademark approach, time travel, lets her stack all this together with a minimum of fill that conveys the emotional density of the event. Also, it allows her to pursue dazzling games with time. People die before they’re born, remember events before they happen; there’s an astonishing temporal knot at the end that resolves the story that only Willis could bring off. Throughout the novel images and themes and scenes recur in startling juxtaposition, meanings change and loop. Blackout / All Clear is as big a book as there’s been all year, encompassing one of the greatest events in history, paying homage to the human spirit, and demonstrating Connie Willis’s mastery in a fabulous read.

For inexplicable reasons Spectra decided to publish this lengthy work as two books, and months apart. The novel deserved better, and should be read as one.

Cecelia Holland Timeslip

Jeanne Greene BLACKOUT Connie Willis, Spectra, 2010, $26.00/C$32.00, hb, 512pp, 9780345519832 To the staff of the Oxford time travel lab in 2060, visiting the past is as routine as taking the tube. Historians can go back to observe and report on behavior at critical junctures without becoming involved. Interfering with the past is anathema; but little is left up to chance. Participants are trained, outfitted, and programmed for drop sites that are safe. Transport back to 21st century is readily available — except when it isn’t.

Because something goes awry in the Oxford lab, three experienced travelers, sent back to observe wartime behavior in the 1940s, arrive at the wrong place or on the wrong date. Little goes according to plan and, worst of all, the return sites are closed.

Unprotected by the lab, unprepared for danger, burdened by knowledge of the past, the three link up in London — just in time to experience the horrors of a city under bombardment.

Reading Blackout is not a restful experience.

Willis uses a stream of conversation to show what war was like on the ground, virtually hour by hour. Dialogue, spoken and internal, carries the plot and, as the point of view shifts between protagonists, gives their perspective on events.

When contemporary characters fail to act in accordance with preconceptions, this is fascinating.

At other times, the protagonists (and readers) are battered with quotidian details.

The author is to be congratulated on her painstaking research and her characterization of individual Londoners, but verisimilitude comes with a price. Blackout is long, skewed by shifting viewpoints, slowed by the volume of detail, and yet incomplete. The story stops short, to resume in a second volume, All Clear. None of this will deter the many fans of Connie Willis, however, or readers with an avid interest in wartime England.

Jeanne Greene

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paranormal & | historical fantasy

STEALING FIRE Jo Graham, Orbit, 2010, $14.99, pb, 293pp, 9780316076395 Alexander the Great lies dead, his empire disintegrating into battle zones. Moreover, the sudden death of the Great King has loosed the furies of the supernatural into the world. The young commander Lydias of Melitus joins with Ptolemy (Alexander’s officer and perhaps half-brother) and the beautiful eunuch Bagaos (Alexander’s lover) to steal the conqueror’s embalmed body and take it to Egypt for the rites that will send the evil spirits back to the underworld — and make Ptolemy Pharaoh of the Two Lands.

In her third novel, Stealing Fire, Jo Graham weaves this promising plot in between scenes from the conquest in a bold and ambitious attempt to encompass Alexander’s whole brilliant career.

Graham is a good writer, and she loves the ancient world, especially Egypt, which figures centrally in both her previous novels. Unfortunately, Timeslip — Children & YA

the research overwhelms her; trying to include everything she knows about her period, she loses her story and its human values. The same problem thwarts her use of fantasy, whose spooky edge goes dull when she tries to explain Isis as a quantum effect.

Cecelia Holland THE NATIVE STAR M.K. Hobson, Spectra, 2010, $7.99, pb, 400pp, 9780553592658 Emily Edwards, the town witch in a small Sierra Nevada settlement in 1876, accidentally makes a magical mistake and winds up with a strange glowing artifact embedded in her palm.

Dreadnought Stanton, a warlock, comes to her aid and they soon find themselves on a quest to find Professor Mirabilis, who is the only hope for helping Emily. Their quest takes them across country as villainous warlocks chase Emily and Dreadnought. They are also faced with bizarre circumstances, magical elements and a dangerous adventure.

This story is a mix of both fantasy and romance, but it is a bit on the odd side. I wasn’t sure exactly what to make of it, but kept reading to find an interesting tale. Suspension of belief is definitely required to get through the story, which includes everything from zombie miners and huge rabid animals that have been changed by magic. Hobson’s characters are a bit too modern for 1876, and the language used is certainly not 19th century. Despite these slight flaws, the novel still reads smoothly and contains lots of lore, romance, and intrigue.

Rebecca Roberts WOLF’S CROSS S.A. Swann, Spectra, 2010, $15, pb, 336pp, 9780553807394 In the second book set in the medieval world of werewolves created in his first novel, Wolfbreed, S.A. Swann tells the story of Maria, a servant girl who finds herself torn between two destinies. On one side is Josef, the brave knight she nurses back to health, a Wolfjäger sworn to destroy all wolfbreed; on the other is Darien, a dangerous werewolf bent on revenge, who tempts Maria with dark desires. For, unbeknownst to her, she herself is wolfbreed, the beast inside her kept at bay by the silver cross around her neck; and when her true nature is revealed, Maria finds her heart, her courage, and her very soul put to the test.

Part romance, part horror, part medieval adventure, Wolf ’s Cross is a tighter and more intense novel than Wolfbreed; the world of dark forests and torch-lit castles feels historically authentic, yet also as fantastical as a dark fairy tale. With charismatic characters who are easy to root for, lush settings to draw the reader in, and plenty of exciting, gory action, fans of Wolfbreed will be thrilled with this second offering, and new readers will find lots of great supernatural storytelling to savor.

Heather Domin

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children & young adult

RONNIE’S WAR

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Bernard Ashley, Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 2010, £6.99, pb, 190pp, 9781847800541 Ronnie Warren is a boy when the Second World War breaks out. By the time VE day comes around, he’s a young man. Bernard Ashley’s novel gives us four snapshots of Ronnie’s life at various points throughout the war. In “Blitzkrieg,” he and his family face danger in the bombing. In “The Bunk Boy,” he’s an evacuee trying to adjust to a new environment. In “The American Captain,” he struggles with first love and his mother’s new friendships. Finally, in “Man of the House,” Ronnie celebrates VE day.

Ashley is an excellent writer, and this is an interesting portrait of a young man in his formative years, which happen to occur against the backdrop of war. Due to the style of the novel, essentially four short stories with time lapses in between, it’s slightly difficult to become emotionally involved.

At times, just as you’re becoming engrossed, the story jumps forward in time. It feels more like a portrait of a time, place, and person. As such, it will be interesting to any child wanting to learn more about the time period and to get a sense of what it was like to grow up then. My only real criticism would be that Ronnie often resolves his problems by fighting, and it would have been nice if there had been more emphasis on peaceful resolution.

However, this is a novel about war and Ronnie only fights for justice, so essentially he is representing the stance of Great Britain in the war; it makes sense to have his personal battles resolved in a way that reflects the wider theme.

Julie Nicol CRISPIN: The End of Time Avi, HarperCollins, 2010, $16.99, hb, 223pp, 9780061740800 The writer known as Avi has written more than 70 books for children, and is a master of historical narrative. Crispin: The End of Time is the third volume of Avi’s medieval trilogy, following its young hero’s quest for a better life through England and northern France in 1377. Starving and alone, Crispin falls in with a family of thieving musicians, who take him to the great port city of Calais. From this seaport he hopes to find a ship to Iceland, where, his old mentor Bear told him, he would find a free life. But Iceland is a thousand miles away, and many people around him mean him evil.

Avi has done a lot of research, often rather dutifully laid down as stage dressing, but it never slows the story. Young Crispin grows into a braver, more confident boy as he outwits the thieves and plans his way to Iceland. This tale is timeless, a child’s delight, and the book is a pleasure to read aloud for adult and child.

Cecelia Holland THE TIME PIRATE Ted Bell, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2010, $17.99/ C$19.99, hb, 464pp, 0312578105 The Time Pirate is Bell’s sequel to Nick of Time, featuring a time traveling, 12-year-old bundle of action and energy, Nick McIer. Nick’s newest adventure takes place in 1940, just as the Nazis begin to invade the small islands off the English Channel where he lives.

Nick and a rousing cast of characters come together to defend his home and safeguard his HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 63

country with fast-paced antics, exciting escapades and fun. He finds his father’s old Sopwith Camel plane and restores it with the help of this friend Gunner and is quickly on reconnaissance/bombing missions sending the information to Winston Churchill’s government. And when Nick’s sister Katie is kidnapped by his arch-enemy, the evil pirate Capt. Billy Blood, Nick and Gunner must go back in time (1781) using a time machine invented by Leonardo da Vinci to rescue her. There he discovers Blood’s plot to interfere with key battles of the American Revolution, putting Nick in the awkward situation of betraying his country to George Washington so America will be there to assist his England during their time of need.

The Time Pirate is an old-fashioned romp of an adventure that never gets too hung up in detail to slow the story’s pace, yet there is a huge emphasis on the history and the characters to keep it both real and genuinely fun.

A note also on the colorful, vintage inspired cover art. It was aces!

Wendy Zollo ZORA AND ME Victoria Bond and T.R. Simon, Candlewick, 2010, $16.99, hb, 192pp, 9780763643003 Zora Neale Hurston was one of the most important African American writers in our literary history. She was an integral part of the Harlem Renaissance and became the only black student at Barnard College. Most of her childhood was spent in Eatonville, Florida, the first all-black township in the United States. Victoria Bond and T. R. Simon have imagined what Hurston’s childhood must have been like in their historical novel Zora and Me. Readers of Hurston’s famous novel Their Eyes Were Watching God will recognize the young Zora’s imagination and spirit. Even readers not familiar with the real Zora will be captivated by the early storytelling abilities of this girl as she weaves a tale of shape-shifting gators and gator kings for her friends. The authors have deftly managed to craft a story that feels as if Zora herself could have told it. The voice is engaging and believable.

The pacing keeps readers turning the page. Most importantly, Zora and Me is a wonderful read with likeable characters and provides readers with an accurate depiction of life in Eatonville at the turn of the century.

Back matter includes a biography, timeline, and bibliography. Although these were extremely informative, I would have liked an author’s note telling the readers what was imagined in the text and what episodes were historical.

Nancy Castaldo KALEIDOSCOPE EYES Jen Bryant, Random House, 2010, $15.99, hb, 257pp, 9780375840487 Although this is a young adult book, I found the novel completely engaging on an adult level. The story takes place primarily during the spring and summer of 1968, and is presented in the laconic, offhand voice of 13-year-old Lyza as she trudges her way through her little town in New Jersey, dealing with a fractured household consisting of her overworked single father and her 17-year-old hippie sister. The death of her beloved grandfather 64 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

brings with it new trials, but also a challenging quest: the puzzle he has left behind for her to solve.

Lyza enlists her two best friends and they pursue the solution against great odds, taking risks and becoming even better friends along the way.

For me, this book was especially interesting for having been written entirely in blank verse. Not only is it well done as poetry, but it also works remarkably well in sectioning off the flow of the narrative into bite-size portions. “Chapters” are sometimes only half a page, and all are titled like individual poems, with interesting headings such as “Unwritten Rules,” “Road Trip,” and “Not Exactly a Joyride.” Lyza’s wry humor comes across excellently, and the blank verse makes the reader slow down a little and savor both the words and the thoughts.

Bryant is to be congratulated for presenting this touching and fun story to young adults and older ones alike in this bravura literary form.

Mary Burns WINTER SHADOWS Margaret Buffie, Tundra, 2010, $19.95, hb, 327pp, 9780887769689 Margaret Buffie tells parallel stories of two girls who are kindred spirits in situation, if not in time or culture. In present-day Manitoba, teenage Cass is grieving for her mother. Her father’s new wife is distant, comes with a bratty new stepsister in tow, and spouts clichés with every breath. Meanwhile, in 1856, the same stone house is home to Beatrice, just returned from teaching in Upper Canada to another beloved father, and another stepmother who neglects Beatrice and her Cree grandmother.

Expected to marry, Beatrice soon faces a choice between two very different men.

Connected by Beatrice’s diary, the two young women become ghosts to one another. Cass wonders if her “shadows” are signs of clinical depression and insanity, while Beatrice, raised in the Metis culture with a strong belief in the powers of dreaming, accepts Cass as a spirit girl. Over the coming Christmastime, the worlds converge in decision and ultimate harmony.

Lyrically told, with compelling characters, Winter Shadows illuminates the stigma of mixed ancestry in 1856, as well as the stigma of depression today. Great storytelling.

Eileen Charbonneau A MOST IMPROPER MAGIC Stephanie Burgis, Templar, 2010, £6.99, pb, 298pp, 9781848770072 A lively, fast-moving story with a high-spirited, adventurous heroine makes Stephanie Burgis’s book historical fiction’s answer to the everpopular chick lit. The story is set in Jane Austen’s Regency England, and describes the adventures of three sisters and their romantic entanglements.

Kat Stephenson lives at home with her father, stepmamma, and two sisters. Her spendthrift gambling brother lives away from home and is the bane of her father’s life. Kat’s mother has died, and her clergyman father remarried, not to his daughters’ liking, but they manage to get along most of the time. But now their stepmother has decided to find a suitable (rich) match for Kat’s eldest sister, Elissa. At the beginning of the book, Kat discovers her mother’s notebooks hidden in her other sister, Angeline’s, wardrobe. From it, she

discovers that their beloved mother was a secret witch and, seemingly, concocted a love potion to entrap their father. She soon realises that Angelina has inherited her mother’s unearthly talents but, as she turns twelve, also realises that she herself has some strange, as yet undefined, powers. Upon finding her mother’s golden pocket mirror, life takes a strange turn. She meets the ‘Guardians’ in another dimension but also meets one of them, Mr Gregson, in her day-to-day life, as he is determined to become her tutor to help shape her uncanny abilities.

A delightful romp through Regency England; girls of 10+ should love it.

Julie Parker THE MUSEUM’S SECRET Henry Chancellor, Oxford, 2008, £6.99, pb, 455pp, 9780192720849 Eleven-year-old Tom Scatterhorn has problems.

His mother has gone to Mongolia to find his missing entomologist father, and Tom must stay with his eccentric uncle and aunt. They run the Sir Henry Scatterhorn Museum, founded in 1906, which displays animals stuffed by the famous taxidermist, August Catcher. The exhibits are moth-eaten and shabby now, but they hold an incredible secret – and one which the sinister Don Gervase Askary and his daughter Lotus would dearly like to know.

When Askary offers to buy the museum and its contents, Uncle Jos is delighted, but there’s something about Askary and Lotus that Tom doesn’t trust. Then an accidental discovery propels him back in time a hundred years. He meets August Catcher and gets taken on as his assistant.

He also meets Sir Henry himself, and is appalled to realize that Sir Henry’s young friend, Mina Quilt, is none other than Lotus in disguise – which must mean that Askary can time travel, too. Tom realizes that Askary and Lotus will stop at nothing to get their hands on August’s secret…

Quite what all this has to do with historical novels is debatable. Having said that, the book has a definite whiff of late 19th/early 20th-century adventure stories for boys: the sort of books which often have central roles for plucky chaps with titles (Rider Haggard’s Sir Henry Curtis; John Buchan’s Sir Edward Leithen, etc.). The time travel sections really do have a period flavour – Jules Verne meets Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger, perhaps. It’s exciting: the adults are splendidly eccentric, the villains truly horrible, and the pace is tremendous.

It’s a terrific read. It grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and didn’t let me go until I’d finished it.

Children of 9 plus, particularly boys, should love it.

Elizabeth Hawksley GREEK BEASTS AND HEROES: The Fire Breather Lucy Coats, illus. Anthony Lewis, Orion, 2010, £4.99, pb, 78pp, 9781444000702 This is the sixth volume in the series, giving us nine more tales from ancient Greece. First of all, we meet the three Furies – fierce women with snakes in their hair who fly around punishing people with their whips and torches. Then we discover how the original Olympic Games came to be held. Most of the volume – seven stories in all – Children & YA

is devoted to Heracles and his labours. Every year Heracles is set another seemingly impossible task and during these he encounters a three-headed giant, a boar the size of a house, a fire-breathing bull and man-eating horses. But perhaps his most unappealing task was to have to clear up twenty years’ worth of cow dung!

These simply-told stories provide an ideal introduction to Greek myths and legends for 5-8 year olds. Each tale is just the right length for a bedtime story, or for more confident readers to read alone. For the enthusiast, the book can be read as a whole, as each tale is cleverly linked by Atticus, a storyteller who is travelling across ancient Greece to attend the storytelling festival near Troy.

Beautifully illustrated in colour, this volume will fire the imagination and transport the reader, or listener, to a magical world of monsters and superhuman powers.

Susan Leahy GREEK BEASTS AND HEROES: The Flying Horse Lucy Coats, illus. Anthony Lewis, Orion, 2010, £4.99, pb, 9781444000719 These little story books for ages 7-9 are very visual with bright colourful pictures and largish print. As the storyteller, Atticus, journeys to Sikyan, Nemea, Argos, Lerna, Stymphalus and Corinth in central Greece, he stops to recount a tale of the Greek gods and goddesses which has some relevance to his situation. A map of Greece and the Aegean shows the reader Atticus’ journey. He tells stories from the heavens, the magic skin (Heracles and the lion), the golden apples (Hera), the Queen’s belt (Hippolyta), the swamp monster (the Hydra), bronze feathers (Stymphalian Birds), the Guardian of the Underworld (Cerberus), the flying horse (Pegasus), and the cunning thief (Autolycus).

Many of the stories are about Heracles (Hercules), one is about Bellerophon and one about Autolycus.

My favourite was the story of the bronze feathers which Heracles collected after he had frightened the Stymphalian Birds away with a giant rattle.

Julie Parker GREEK BEASTS AND HEROES: The Silver Chariot Lucy Coats, illus. Anthony Lewis, Orion, 2010, £4.99, pb, 9781444000696 This is the seventh in the series, keeping the same format as before. The reader is told the story of Leda and the swan (the more graphic details of the story are omitted and Leda produces two eggs nine months later); Ares, the god of war and Eris, the spirit of strife; Hermes and the fifty cows; Sisyphus and the boulder; the love triangle of Zeus, Hera and Io and the peacock feathers; Echo and Narcissus and the story of Artemis and Actaeon whom she turns into a stag to be torn to pieces by his own hounds. The last two stories are that of Pan and Syrinx the nymph whom he turns into a lyre and Nyx, the goddess of Night, and her three starry daughters. An appendix explains which other stories your favourite characters appear in, in the other books in the series.

Julie Parker GREEK BEASTS AND HEROES: The Harp of Death Children & YA

Lucy Coats, illus. Anthony Lewis, Orion, 2010, £4.99, pb, 78pp, 9781444000726 The eighth volume of this series contains tales of devotion and tragedy, trickery and punishment in seven more Greek myths.

The first two tell how Heracles dies after his wife is tricked by a centaur. In heaven, he then saves the gods from an attack by the monstrous snake giants. Next are two stories about Atalanta, who was abandoned as a baby because she was a girl.

Raised by bears, she becomes faster than any man.

Reluctant to lose her freedom, she doesn’t want to marry, but is eventually tricked by Melanion.

Alcestis loves her husband so much she is prepared to die for him. Orpheus is so heartbroken when his bride dies he ventures into the underworld find her. Ixion and Thamyris both discover they cannot outwit the gods.

Written for 5-8 year olds, these tales are simply narrated and beautifully illustrated. This volume would probably appeal more to the upper end of the age range, because it is more about emotion than action, and includes several lesser known myths. A very useful feature at the end guides readers to related tales in other volumes.

Susan Leahy DAUGHTER OF WINTER Pat Lowery Collins, Candlewick, 2010, $16.99/ C$20.00, pb, 288pp, 9780763745007 Twelve-year-old Addie is alone. Her father has gone off to California with the Forty-Niners and her mother and brother have just died of the flux.

And while the silence of the house disturbs Addie, she can’t bear the thought of being sent to live with another family in town, possibly to be treated as a servant. But then an old native woman keeps appearing in the yard, and Addie is scared. Fleeing to the woods, Addie does her best to survive the New England winter, but she is always cold, always hungry. In the end, it is the old native woman who helps Addie to survive while helping the young girl to understand who she truly is.

While there are some strong moments in this novel, particularly the poetic bookends, overall I found it lacked the direction and tension to keep me interested. The opening is very strong, but then very little happens – even though there is often the potential for interesting plot twists that the author dose not pursue, such as a bully’s pursuit of Addie, the bigotry to Addie’s best friend, and the return of Addie’s father.

Patricia O’Sullivan REVOLUTION Jennifer Donnelly, Delacorte, 2010, $18.99, hb, 496pp, 9780385737630 / Bloomsbury, 2010, £10.99, hb, 496pp, 9781408801529 The antics of Andi Alpers and her circle of frenemies would make the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette blush. Sex, drugs, and partying are their lifeblood, parents are largely absent, and entitlement is a way of life. For Andi, however, it’s all just a cover-up for the guilt she feels over the death of her beloved younger brother. The only things that bring Andi any semblance of solace are her guitar and the prescription medication that she takes to dull the pain of living. Frightened by Andi’s downward spiral and determined to get Andi to write her senior thesis proposal, her geneticist

father brings her to Paris for winter break. He’s performing DNA testing on a 200-year-old heart that purportedly belongs to Louis-Charles, the illfated son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

On her first day in Paris, Andi is given an antique guitar, and she finds a journal in a hidden compartment in the guitar’s case. The journal, written by Alex, a young woman around Andi’s age, details her extraordinary acts of heroism during the French Revolution. Alex was hired as a caretaker to Louis-Charles because she was the only person who could make him smile amid the misery surrounding him, and she stops at nothing to protect and care for him. The story of Alex’s love for Louis-Charles helps Andi accept the loss of her own brother.

Donnelly draws interesting parallels between the excesses of wealthy teens and the royal excesses that lead to the French Revolution. Adults may find Andi a little overwrought, but teens will likely identify. The plot is complex, and the history (which is very well-researched) is fast-paced and interesting. Recommended for older teens (15 and up).

Nanette Donohue CABINET OF CURIOUSITIES Paul Dowswell, Bloomsbury, 2010, £10.99, hb, 268pp, 9781408800461 Lukas DeClerq is travelling to Prague to become an apprentice to his Uncle Anselmus, court physician to the Emperor Rudolph II. His journey, which will take him into the presence of the eccentric, depressive and reclusive Rudolph, is a very dangerous and troubled one.

The Emperor has collected artifacts in four amazing rooms known as The Cabinet of Curiosities. His first encounter is with robbers, which leads him to a close escape with Etienne, a streetwise youth who helps him to survive the journey to the safety of Prague. However, once parted from his friend, he immediately falls into deeper and darker trouble as he tries to find his uncle. Rudolph encourages learning and religious debate with tolerance and philosophy.

His kingdom is unique amongst the shadow of the Catholic Church’s Inquisition in Europe by encouraging the greatest alchemists to experiment in relative safety. Lukas has his reasons to hate the Inquisition. Prague harbours this sadistic shadow.

When a sinister plot threatens the Emperor, Lukas again faces danger.

Lukas’s story highlights the horror intolerance brings, and how torture was heartlessly carried out against those who followed different beliefs. It exposes the weaknesses in human nature, yet also the amazing strength of resistance within some individuals. The characters are vivid, whether good or evil, the pace swift and the plot skilled, and I have deliberately been vague as to the details of the latter so as not to spoil the twists and turns of this fascinating novel for the reader. The book is both educational and interesting. It is one that confident readers should enjoy.

Val Loh WHISPER MY NAME Jane Eagland, Macmillan, 2010, £6.99, pb, 395pp, 9780330511391 A tantalising tale of Victorian England. Meriel, HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 65

the heroine, is a young girl sent back to live with her grandfather in London after having been brought up in India with her parents. Her mother has died of rabies so her father, unable to look after her, sends her to his father-in-law. Meriel’s grandfather is a stern and eccentric but well-known scientist.

As soon as she arrives her grandfather begins to submit Meriel to various mental and physical tests.

He measures the size of her cranium and keeps records of her intelligence and progress in school work.

The main narrative of the story begins in 1885, on Meriel’s 16th birthday. Trying to assert her independence, she asks her grandfather if she can have her mother’s old bedroom, and asks for an allowance. To her surprise, he agrees, but refuses permission for walks alone. He also tells her that she will not be allowed to return to India when she is seventeen as she had hoped. Angry and upset, Meriel decides to assert her independence and begins to go out alone anyway. On one expedition to Whiteley’s, a superior store, she bumps into Mrs. Jolly, an acquaintance of her parents from India, and is invited to her house. On her second visit she meets Mrs. Quinn and Sophie Casson who are, it soon turns out, spiritualists. Her uncanny experiences at a séance and in her mother’s old bedroom lead her to believe that her mother is trying to contact her.

This is an enjoyable, if conventional, story about a young girl’s feelings, of loss and isolation, and her struggle for freedom which, coupled with some unexpected twists and turns, make this a gripping read.

Julie Parker THE DUMPY PRINCESS Karin Fernald, Frances Lincoln, 2010, £9.99, hb, 106pp, 9781847800831 This is a light-hearted look at Queen Victoria’s childhood, from her birth to her coronation, and it includes all the well-known facts: the young princess’s love of dolls, her dog Dash and her German governess, Lehzen; her disreputable royal uncles; the quarrels between her mother, who was Duchess of Kent, and the King, etc.

It’s an easy read, and I enjoyed Sophie Foster’s lively illustrations, but I was worried by Karin Fernald’s over-joky approach. It’s like looking through a kaleidoscope: events are thoroughly shaken and then turned into something different.

Take Victoria’s christening. According to Fernald, the Duchess of Kent stormed off to see King George IV and demanded that Victoria be given more names. He vetoed her choices, Elizabeth and Georgina, and insisted she be named plain Victoria, ‘after Victory.’

This is author’s licence, not reality. Victoria’s christening is well documented. Royal protocol dictated that the king be the one to name the princess. She was christened Alexandrina Victoria, after her godfather, Tsar Alexander, and her mother, Victoria, Duchess of Kent. ‘Victory’ had nothing to do with it.

Likewise, Victoria’s joky letters on becoming queen to the newly-widowed Queen Adelaide, her Uncle Leopold and half-sister, Feodore, are nothing like what she actually wrote. The problem with this cavalier approach towards the facts is that once you’ve spotted one inaccuracy, you are reluctant to credit anything else – even if it’s true.

Take the wicked Sir John Conroy, the duchess’s Comptroller, who was determined to establish his domination over both the duchess and the 66 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

princess. I found myself double checking with the Dictionary of National Biography. In fact, Fernald’s account is pretty accurate, though highly-coloured.

All the same, it’s a dangerous strategy – too close to ‘Crying ‘Wolf!’’ for comfort.

A lively read – but believe about half of it. For girls of 8 plus.

Elizabeth Hawksley THE BLACKHOPE ENIGMA Teresa Flavin, Templar, 2010, £6.99, pb, 304pp, 9781848770348 This gripping adventure story will have you turning the page for the next twist in this fantastic tale. Teresa Flavin explains at the end of the book how she came upon the idea and about her interest in Renaissance painting and magic. This is her first novel; she is a trained artist with paintings exhibited all over the world. In 1993, she began to illustrate picture books and then to illustrate her own stories. Originally from Boston, she moved to Glasgow in 1995 where she has her own artist’s studio.

Just about in the category of time-slip story, The Blackhope Enigma has three modern-day children finding the secret entrance into a Renaissance painting, The Merchant’s Return to Arcadia. They are preparing a school assignment on the artist, Fausto Corvo (the Raven), and have visited the painting’s home, The Blackhope Tower, to get inspiration. Various strange legends about the room in which it hangs are explained when the youngest boy accidentally discovers the password of the labyrinth on the floor of the room.

Combing ancient and Renaissance beliefs about the earth and its place in the solar system with celestial magic, the author entices the reader into the story. Descriptions of 16th-century artists’ methods combining with possible rides in a 19thcentury theme park keep the reader engrossed!

Aimed at 9-14 year olds.

Julie Parker THE POISONED HOUSE Michael Ford, Bloomsbury, 2010, £6.99, pb, 283pp, 9781408804506 The story begins in 1855, with the attempted escape of Abigail Tamper, scullery maid, from the house of her employment just off Pall Mall, London. She manages to get as far as Charing Cross before she is recaptured by a constable and returned into the care of the housekeeper, Mrs. Cotton. We soon learn of the cruel and spiteful nature of Mrs. Cotton, sister to the deceased lady of the house. The only friends Abigail has are Rob, the footman, Adam, the coal boy and Lizzie, fellow drudge in the house, Greave Hall. Abigail has no possessions except for a watch left her by her father. Mrs. Cotton keeps her wages, a fact that no one in the book finds strange – in fact, she is a virtual prisoner. Soon after her recapture, Abigail begins to witness strange supernatural happenings in the house: visions of her mother (former governess recently deceased) calling her by her pet name ‘Snowdrop’; random movement of inanimate objects and mysterious handprints. One other member of the household is not present, his lordship’s son, Samuel, who is fighting in the Crimea. Soon, we learn that Samuel has been injured and will be returning home. Abigail is both pleased and apprehensive; Samuel has always been on her side, since her mother was his nurse from a small baby, but she concerned for his injuries. The household prepares for his return ...

The story is well-written and constructed, being a mystery with a little dash of ghost, and with a surprising twist at the end. Most suited to girls, who will like the resilient heroine, from 8-12.

Julie Parker SPHINX’S QUEEN Esther Friesner, Random House, 2010, $17.99, hb, 368pp, 978037585657 Nefertiti, the famous Queen of Egypt, is a young girl forced to escape the Crown Prince, a man she was to have married. He has accused her of killing a sacred animal, a deed which mandates a death sentence. Along with her brother and a Hebrew slave girl, Nefertiti travels through Egypt, risking death by wild animals and manipulative bandits.

However, it seems Nefertiti has divine protection, as innocent, honest characters miraculously appear to help her reach Pharaoh to present her side of the story. A battle of wills follows, forcing the Queen and Pharaoh to reconsider their trust. Is the Crown Prince so misguided and evil that their decision to pass the rule of Egypt to him is inappropriate? Is Nefertiti truly honest, or actually a threat to the Crown Prince and thus to the country?

Nefertiti is portrayed as an intelligent young woman who repeatedly demonstrates her ability to confront the most lethal dangers. Readers will delight in how she displays the wisdom, courage, and unique religious perspective that will be Egypt’s boon for years to come under her rule.

Viviane Crystal STORYTELLER Patricia Reilly Giff, Wendy Lamb, 2010, $15.99, hb, 176pp, 9780375838880 Elizabeth’s father has left for Australia, leaving her with an aunt she barely knows. But her aunt’s home feels oddly welcoming, especially the portrait of Elizabeth’s ancestor, Zee, hanging on the wall. Elizabeth resembles Zee, and she becomes fascinated with Zee’s story. Elizabeth’s presentday story alternates with Zee’s, which takes place in upstate New York on the eve of the American Revolution. Zee’s family and community are torn apart by conflicting loyalties. She is left to survive on her own and even follows her father and brother into battle. As Elizabeth learns more about Zee and follows in her footsteps, the past becomes real.

The chapters alternate between Zee’s story (past tense and first person) and Elizabeth’s (present tense, third person). The elegant structure clearly signals to readers which time period they are in, although the shift can feel abrupt at times. Both girls are interesting characters who feel as though they fail at everything. Elizabeth is told that everyone has at least one special talent. As she learns more about Zee, Elizabeth discovers that her talent is storytelling. For her part, Zee finds herself to be brave and patriotic. Both these girls were very appealing, and Zee’s adventure sweeps you along through historic, sometimes horrific, events.

Elizabeth’s story did not feel as fully developed (in particular her relationship with her aunt felt underwritten). The author’s note is very brief and I would have liked to see suggestions for future reading. Overall, however, this is a fine addition to historical fiction about the American Revolution, particularly because Giff writes about battles that are less familiar to readers. Highly recommended for readers who like strong female protagonists and American history.

Michaela MacColl Children & YA

WOLF CRY Julia Golding, Oxford, 2009, £6.99, pb, 334pp, 9780192727619 In a village in Norway 880 A.D., Toki, son of Jarl Ohthere, is left in charge of his village and is caring for his younger sister, the spirited Freydis.

Their father is away with his Viking warriors, trading. Amongst his previous purchases is a ‘Blue Man,’ Enno, a headstrong African slave, who is a gift for his daughter. Unbeknown to him, and totally unexpected by his children, his enemy Sulke the Pirate destroys his village, Bjarkoy, destroying his home, killing or enslaving his people and kidnapping his son.

Because of the quick thinking of Toki, Freydis is hidden and she survives, but not unscathed. Her life, fortunes and destiny are changed forever. She is brave, despite being injured, but Freydis and Toki are separated; neither knowing if the other has survived – and so their journeys begin. This novel is filled with action. The characters of Freydis, Toki, Enno, Annui and Tuoni are spirited, believable and engaging. They are all young, making mistakes, whilst proving themselves and discovering the joy of love, in its many forms, but also the destruction which hatred causes. The wisdom of the Sami characters, Tapiola and Pekka, add maturity and depth which adds balance against the violence and anger of the senior Vikings, Ohthere and Sulke. The brutality of this era of history is woven into this complex yet riveting story of love, hurt and loss. The various characters develop as their individual trials

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ONCE, THEN and NOW

eventually blend to bring the reader to a satisfactorily surprising and very touching ending.

Val Loh THE BLUE-EYED ABORIGINE Rosemary Hayes, Frances Lincoln, 2010, £6.00, pb, 239pp, 9781847800787 Jan Pelgrom is a cabin boy on the ill-fated Dutch ship, Batavia. When Batavia runs aground on a reef, passengers and crew are transferred to an island off the coast of what is now called Western Australia. Here Corneliez takes over, killing and raping innocent passengers and any of the crew that dare defy him. To survive, Jan finds himself taking Corneliez’s side, committing atrocities that both shame and excite him. When a rescue ship arrives, the mutineers are captured and executed.

Only Jan and a solider named Wouter are spared.

They are set ashore on the great South Continent, to live out the remainder of their days.

The first part of the novel is written from the third person viewpoint of Jan. Penetration of his thoughts and emotions is, however, quite sketchy, and I found it hard to develop any empathy for him.

The final part of the narrative is written in shifting first person point-of-view, between Wouter and Jan. This part of the narrative is more immediate and compelling, as it is also written in the present tense, and Jan’s emotional arc is more fully realised.

It may have been better to write this way from the beginning.

Historically, the novel utilises the diaries of the ships commander to reconstruct the details of the mutiny, which were detailed and horrifying. The

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Morris Gleitzman, Penguin, 2009-2010, £5.99, £6.00, £6.99, pbs, 150pp, 183pp, 167pp, 9780141320632, 9780141324821 A trilogy told from a child’s viewpoint about the Holocaust and the Nazi domination. With Felix, a 14-year-old Polish Jewish boy, the reader witnesses terrifying, incomprehensible incidents, but as Felix grows in understanding he realizes the truth behind the events. The reader knows the probable truth from the beginning, but has to wait until Felix has experienced both hope and despair before he achieves comprehension and acceptance.

The first book starts in a children’s orphanage run

by Catholic nuns, where Felix waits for his parents to return for him. Gradually, the truth dawns that they will not be coming back for him. He leaves the orphanage and, whilst hiding out from the Nazis, saves a six-year-old girl, Zelda, from a burning house. The relationship between Felix and Zelda is expanded in the second book Then. Zelda’s prize possession is her parents’ photo in a locket, but she realizes that he is wearing a Nazi uniform. She reacts with horror and hatred for her parents. Her journey is to realize that not all Nazis had a choice and that there were good memories, too.

In the third story, Now, Felix is eighty years old living in Australia, and grandfather to Zelda, aged ten. Zelda is being bullied at a new school, staying with Felix whilst her parents are doing charity work in Africa. Various themes are developed: a child’s love and understanding for an older person, new relationships for both the characters and coping with a traumatic bush fire which stirs up old memories for Felix. A recommended trilogy which deals with a difficult subject in a matter-of-fact and sensitive way.

Julie Parker Children & YA

aspects of indigenous culture touched upon in the novel seem less well-researched. I found the spontaneous sexual relationship between Jan and the young aboriginal girl, Heni, most unbelievable, as girl of this age would very likely have already been given in marriage. Nevertheless, it makes a nice story, building on the legend that some of the indigenous tribes in Hutt River area had European ancestry, long before the 19th-century settlers arrived.

Elizabeth Jane WICKED GIRLS: A Novel of the Salem Witch Trials Stephanie Hemphill, HarperCollins, 2010, $16.99, hb, 416pp, 9780061853289 Mercy Lewis is an orphan of the French and Indian War, beautiful but doomed to servitude in the Putnams’ Puritan household. Margaret Walcott is a cousin of the Putnams, desperate with love for Isaac Farrar and fearful that Mercy’s beauty will tempt him away. Ann Putnam Jr. is the privileged daughter of the household, anxious to win approval and importance among her older peers. When two younger girls in Salem Village are seized with fits and begin to denounce members of the community as witches, Ann, Margaret, and Mercy see the growing witch hunt as their chance to gain status in a male community that has always disregarded them. But as jealousy and pettiness divide the group, the so-called Purge of Salem spirals toward disaster. Have the girls begun something more horrible than they imagined? And if the accusers fail to stay unified, will they face ostracism even worse than before?

Stephanie Hemphill uses verse to construct a beautiful – if grim – portrait of the Salem Witch Trials, and to examine the timeless dynamic of teenage girls jostling for social place. Hemphill’s spare poetry captures the austerity of Puritan Massachusetts, and the hopelessness of being a young girl hemmed in by community censure and strict religious limitations. The Salem dialect fits seamlessly into each poem, and Hemphill’s characters come across as complex and believable people. Ann, Margaret, and Mercy are each capable of great cruelty, but also of great kindness. In the end, Hemphill portrays them not as petty teenagers but as victims of their time, with little way out once they have started, and little alternative but to grasp at every chance they are given.

Ann Pedtke THE TIME-TRAVELLING CAT AND THE GREAT VICTORIAN STINK Julia Jarman, Andersen Press, 2010, £4.99, pb, 147pp, 9781849390194 The sixth adventure about Topher and his time-travelling cat, Ka, takes them back to the Victorian London of 1858. This book should be as successful as the rest of the series, as it uses the same ingredients of adventure, historical fact, animals and fast action. Topher lives in present-day London, but when Ka turns into a stone statue he knows that she has gone travelling; sometimes an owl is sent to carry him to her. In this story, Topher succumbs to a mystery illness and finds himself in hospital, where the owl finds him. He is transported back to Victorian London, where he becomes a boy just escaped from the workhouse, having lost his parents to the deadly disease cholera. Ka has become one of Signor Cappelli’s cruelly treated performing cats. Topher meets her escaping under the dress of the wife of Joseph Bazalgette, famous HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 67

for building London’s sewers. Mr. Bazalgette offers him a job, but shortly after this Topher is captured

by Snoop, a fellow workhouse inmate now working for a gang of underworld thieves. Just like Oliver in Oliver Twist, Topher is forced to become a pickpocket to earn his keep. The details of London life are very accurate and the important, but little known, story of Joseph Bazalgette’s engineering achievements are revealed. The year 1858 was the year of the Great Victorian stink, when London’s sewage was so out-of-control that even Queen Victoria was affected. Highly entertaining read for 8-12 year olds.

Julie Parker A MILLION SHADES OF GRAY Cynthia Kadohata, Atheneum, 2010, $16.99, hb, 216pp, 9781416918837 Thirteen-year-old Y’Tin is interested in one thing: elephants. His goal is to be his village’s youngest elephant handler and to someday open up an elephant trainer school. But the Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops keep harassing Dega villages, and life for both the villagers and the elephants is becoming increasingly dangerous.

When Y’Tin’s village is attacked by North Vietnamese soldiers, he must make a choice between staying with his family and saving the elephants. As an elephant handler, his duty is clear, but will he ever see his family again?

Though the setting might be unfamiliar to young readers, Kadohata does a good job describing it without overloading her narrative with political details. Y’Tin’s inner monologues make it easy to sympathize with his character and to understand the events in his life. At its heart, A Million Shades of Gray is a story about family and friendship, themes any young reader can relate to. However, though the publisher suggests this novel for ages 10+, some of the more violent scenes and allusions to war crimes might be difficult for readers that young. This is a great story, but parental discretion is advised.

Patricia O’Sullivan

There is a war between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and Y’Tin is worried about his family and his best friend, a pregnant elephant named Lady. After escaping from the North Vietnamese soldiers, Y’Tin and two other village boys, Y’Jeun and Tomas, herd the village elephants to safety in the jungle. But as Y’Tin’s father always says, “The jungle changes a man” and Y’Tin finds that after many days, all the boys do is argue and complain while trying to find the rest of the escaped villagers.

I thought the story was sad because so many people died. It was also violent, especially the parts with the soldiers. I liked the first half of the story best because this is when Y’Tin was happy living in his village and taking care of Lady. I learned a lot about the war in Vietnam and about elephants from reading this story.

Colm O’Sullivan, age 10 THE KEENING A. LaFaye, Milkweed, 2010, $8.00, pb, 165pp, 9781571316943 Lyza’s father is not like other fathers. He doesn’t speak much, and he has to be coaxed to eat when he is in the throes of sculpting and carving. He doesn’t seem terribly attached to the workaday world. Lyza’s mother is conventional enough to teach Lyza household basics, but she also teaches 68 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

Lyza so much more. She does so when the other pupils at school tease Lyza cruelly about her father, and Lyza decides that she won’t return. The family lives happily, though unconventionally, on a bluff outside a small coastal Maine village. Lyza notes the funeral processions of influenza victims that pass by her house, and soon the illness tragically strikes her family. Lyza has to try and save her father from being committed to an asylum, and along the way, she learns much more about him, and about the most unusual abilities they share.

Although the story is set in 1918, and contains elements central to that time, it almost feels as if the story exists in its own world. Some of this is due to the remote setting and the tightly bound nuclear family, but it is more than that. The author has created an ethereal atmosphere that envelops the characters, and the reader with them.

Trudi E. Jacobson NISSA’S PLACE A. LaFaye, Milkweed Editions, 2010, $8.00, pb, 230pp, 9781571316974 Both rural and city life of the Great Depression come alive in Nissa’s Place. Two years after her free-spirited mother left her family and their bigoted small Louisiana town, 13-year-old Nissa is contending with a new stepmother, catty neighbors, and the changes happening in her own body. When a visit from her mother sets both family and town to new levels of combustion, Nissa accepts her mother’s invitation to come to Chicago, her new home.

There, Nissa is overwhelmed by both the city

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and her mother’s new life in a down-on-its-heels grand hotel trying to stay afloat by turning its ballroom into a theater. But she helps create set pieces, costumes, props, and a roof garden. After a visit to the Chicago library, she heads home with a mission, one not without complications in her segregated town.

The strong, willful Nissa is both a great companion to her mother and a wonderful counterpoint to her steady immigrant father and genteel stepmother. The world of Depression-era theater is refreshingly centered not on actors, but rather on those seldom-sung magicians behind the scenes. Nissa’s finding of her place in family and town is lyrically told, with tolerance and understanding that only the great-hearted achieve.

Highly recommended.

Eileen Charbonneau NATHANIEL FLUDD, BEASTOLOGIST: The Basilisk’s Lair R. L. LaFevers, illus. Kelly Murphy, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010, $15.00, hb, 160pp, 9780547238678 This is the second book in the Beastologist series, geared for emerging readers, and it’s just as charming as the first. In this new adventure, set in the fall of 1928, young Nathaniel, a Beastologist in training, is faced with challenges he’s none too sure he’ll be able to handle. He has been recruited by his camel-riding Aunt Phil (and provided with his own personal camel) to assist in her dangerous desert missions, but only by watching and learning, or so she says. Although the story is gently told, and

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Lisa Klein, Bloomsbury USA, 2010, $16.99, hb, 336pp, 9781599905075 When her father is killed fighting in the Netherlands, young Catherine Archer is left alone and penniless – until Queen Elizabeth invites her to become a lady’s maid at the royal court in London. Catherine is mesmerized by the splendor of the court, especially the handsome Sir Walter Ralegh, who entertains her with tales of the colony he has founded in the New World.

Catherine dreams of traveling to Virginia at Ralegh’s side. But when the jealous queen discovers their secret romance, she banishes Catherine to the colony of Roanoke, never to see England or Ralegh again.

The New World is far from the paradise Catherine expects – food is scarce, dissension divides the colonists, and war breaks out between the English and the native tribes. As Catherine waits for Ralegh to come to her rescue, she does her best to keep the peace, learning the Algonkian language and befriending the native people. But as her comfort with the Indians grows – along with her attraction to Manteo, the young Croatan ambassador – Catherine must decide where her true loyalties lie. Is she Lady Catherine Archer of England? Or is she Cate of Virginia, ready to leave her old life behind?

In this latest novel, Lisa Klein moves away from her previous derivative fiction (Ophelia, Lady Macbeth’s Daughter) to tell the story of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. Expertly negotiating the challenges of 16th-century research, Klein works firmly within the historical record while crafting an engaging narrative of how the first English settlers in the Americas met their fate.

Catherine’s transformation is honest and believable, and the shifts in setting – from the Tower of London to the thick forests of Virginia – are seamless. This is Klein’s best novel yet – and hopefully a harbinger of many more to come.

Ann Pedtke Children & YA

therefore appropriate to the readers’ age, suspense and thrills are not lacking, and the pacing is brisk.

This time, the mission Aunt Phil and Nathan set out to perform involves saving a Dhughani village from the dreaded Basilisk, king of serpents, whose poisonous gaze spells instant death. But that’s not all, for they are also trying to piece together the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Nate’s parents while protecting the precious Fludd Book of Beasts, of which only copy exists.

Complicating their work is Nathan’s pet gremlin Greasle, who has a taste for engine oil and things mechanical, and often requires a firm hand from Nathan to keep her under control and not munching on things like their boat motor.

(This poor misunderstood gremlin is condemned to frequent times out in her master’s backpack!)

The clever black-and-white illustrations sprinkled throughout (count the bones at the opening of each chapter) add just enough visual detail to spark young imaginations. This is a series that will entice reluctant readers to try out more challenging words, while a sympathetic connection with Nathan’s plight will hold the attention of more experience readers. A wonderfully entertaining and humorous addition to literature available for 6- to 9-year-old readers.

Kathryn Johnson THEODOSIA AND THE EYES OF HORUS R.L. LaFevers, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010, $16.00, hb, 384pp, 9780547225920 According to Theodosia’s grandmother, an Edwardian girl of eleven should be learning to be a young lady under the tutelage of a respectable governess. This, however, is somewhat difficult if your parents are eccentric and distracted Egyptologists who run London’s Museum of Legends and Antiquities, and you happen to possess the ability to detect ancient Egyptian magic.

Theodosia Throckmorton is back in her third mystery, and this time her ongoing task of detecting and removing curses from artifacts is interrupted by her discovery of the Emerald Tablet among her parents’ latest finds. Legends about the tablet are varied and dubious, but one thing is certain: too many people interested in Egyptian magic, for good and bad, are determined to get their hands on it. Theodosia is catapulted into an adventure where the worlds of Edwardian London and Ancient Egypt meet, and learns along the way that even stuffy grandmamas are sometimes not what they seem.

R.L. LaFevers’s prose nicely evokes a tone of the period, the measured tempo providing a refreshing change to the mile-a-minute pace of so many other middle grade books. As both an English teacher and mother of (voracious) readers, I also appreciated the challenge that the subject matter, vocabulary and ongoing plotlines provide readers of this age. With the latter point in mind, I would add that while Theodosia fans will no doubt be happy with this new adventure, those unfamiliar with the series but intrigued by the premise might do best to begin with Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos.

Susan Cook I really enjoyed reading Theodosia and the Eyes of Horus. Even though technically a children’s novel, it is a good read for people of any age group.

Theodosia comes across as extremely intelligent and competent but still unmistakably a child, and Children & YA

having the book in first person makes it even better to read. The history is very accurate — I could completely imagine myself in Victorian London while I was reading it, and the plot is well-drawnout. Even the magic seems believable and practical for the setting and time-period, and I would recommend the book to anyone over eight.

Magdalen Dobson, 13 SONS OF LIBERTY Alexander and Joseph Lagos, illus. Steve Walker, Random House, 2010, $18.99/C$23.99, hb, ($12.99/C$15.99 pb), unpaged, 9780375856679 To quote one of the authors, the concept of this graphic novel for ages 10 and up is “two runaway slaves become masked vigilantes during the American Revolution.” Graham, the elder of the two, strikes his master’s son when the latter threatens to whip young Brody for singing a song against slaveowners. The other slaves help the boys run away, and they try to find hermit abolitionist Benjamin Lay to get help. Instead, they encounter William Franklin, Benjamin’s son, who half kills the boys with his electrical experiments.

Graham and Brody recover to find that they now have extraordinary powers, including super strength and intelligence. Benjamin Franklin helps the boys, and Lay teaches them an African martial art he learned from a slave in Barbados. When their master’s son attacks Lay, Graham and Brody’s attempts at revenge have unexpected consequences.

What a great concept to hook young people into learning about the Revolution and slavery! There’s plenty of action and sneering bad guys to excite reluctant readers. It should make history seem cool, though young readers will need guidance. Teachers who use it as supplemental reading will want to have a class discussion on fact vs. fiction. The authors did research the era, but admit to taking extensive liberties with history. They provide a website which will discuss the fact vs. fiction issue, but at this writing that page was still “coming soon.”

The artwork is exciting yet frustrating. There are some beautifully-drawn panels, with facial expressions conveying strong emotions without words. But others seem less carefully drawn; I had trouble telling some of the secondary characters apart. I hope the other three planned volumes in the series will make the differences clearer, and provide more guidance on fact vs. fiction. It’s an idea worth developing.

B.J. Sedlock YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES: Death Cloud Andrew Lane, Macmillan, 2010, £6.99, pb, 312pp, 9780330511988 Compelling and gripping story about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes as a fourteen-yearold boy. One of those unputdownable books that you have to finish in one sitting. Andrew Lane has, with the permission of the Conan Doyle Estate, come up with a surefire winner here. Everybody loves Sherlock Holmes stories, so everyone will love the stories of the young Sherlock Holmes.

It is 1868 and, not yet having met Watson, Sherlock takes up with young street urchin Matty Arnatt. His closest relationship is with his brother, Mycroft, who works for the government in London.

Their army officer father has been sent to India and their mother is ill, so Sherlock is removed from school and relocated to the estate of his aunt and uncle in Hampshire. It is here that he is assigned a tutor, Amyus Crowe, who begins to teach him the

workings of logic and reason. The mystery begins with two unusual deaths and a black cloud that is seen nearby. A cast of heroes and villains follows, and the young Sherlock has to decide which is which. A convincing picture is painted of Victorian London, and the author cites some books some books he found useful in the final pages. In an afterword he indicates his inspiration for the story.

The author has taken the merest hints of an early life from the extant Conan Doyle stories and created a possible, and believable, scenario. Starting with an ordinary schoolboy, we see how his experiences mould the character he later becomes.

This promises to become an addictive series. For boys and girls of 10+. Highly recommended.

Julie Parker MERCURY Hope Larson, Atheneum, 2010, $19.99, hb, 234pp, 9781416935889 Hope Larson is already a veteran at producing graphic novels. Her 2008 title, Chiggers, won the Eisner Award for Special Recognition. In this book, she has again created a girl-centered graphic novel that teens will enjoy. Mercury tells the story of two girls, one living in 1859 Nova Scotia, the other her descendant living in 2009. Larson interweaves the two coming of age stories with skill and a sense of magical realism.

Present-day Tara searches for legendary gold, said to be buried on the site, while Josie’s tale unfolds the secrets of how the gold was initially hidden. Larson’s illustrations on black or white pages for each time period deftly help the stories unfold and provide a host of historical details. This novel will interest both readers of historical fiction and fantasy.

Nancy Castaldo THE AGENCY: The Body at the Tower Y. S. Lee, Candlewick, 2010, $16.99/C$20.00, hb, 337pp, 9780763649685 In 1859, Mary Quinn takes on her second assignment for the Agency, a secret organization of female detectives operating out of a girls’ school in London. A bricklayer has fallen to his death from the bell tower of the House of Parliament, which is under construction, and Mary, disguised as a boy, accepts a job at the site in order to determine whether or not the man was murdered. She soon discovers a series of thefts from the site. Were these related to the suspicious death? And was Harkness, the engineer in charge, involved in any of the crimes? In the process of her investigation, Mary also encounters James Easton, her nemesis-turnedlove-interest from the first volume of the series, who is inspecting the site for safety violations. Will Mary be able to solve the crime without revealing the Agency’s existence to James?

This is just as delightful as the first volume, A Spy in the House, and can be read on its own, even though it helps to have read the first book. Lee makes the sights and sounds of Victorian London come alive for the reader, and the banter between Mary and James is a delight to read.

Vicki Kondelik YEAR OF THE TIGER Alison Lloyd, Holiday House, 2010, $16.95, hb, 199pp, 9780823422777 In 2nd-century China, the Great Wall is crumbling in parts, leaving the country open to barbarian invasion. Chinese soldiers have arrived to repair the wall, but are forbidden to attack or HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 69

even to respond to attack without informing the Emperor of the Han Dynasty. Hu, whose peasant father has been conscripted for labor on the Great Wall, sees a chance to participate in an archery contest declared by Commander Zheng. Hu meets Ren, the son of the Commander’s second wife, who sees the contest as a way to win the love and respect of his father, and perhaps even to change the meanspirited way he is treated by the Commander’s first wife and children back in Beicheng.

What begins as a relationship of animosity quickly becomes a great friendship as each boy helps the other out of precarious situations. When their troubles escalate to life-threatening status, they must work together to save China from a secret, deadly threat. Highly recommended for readers of all ages.

Viviane Crystal PRISONERS IN THE PALACE Michaela MacColl, Chronicle, 2010, $16.95, hb, 304pp, 9780811873000 MacColl’s fictional romp through Kensington Palace takes place in the months before Victoria becomes Queen in 1837. When Liza Hastings, 17, a young woman of good family, is impoverished by her parents’ sudden deaths, she gratefully accepts a royal sinecure. She reports to the Palace as maid to Victoria, who is also 17, but, alas, nothing is as Liza expected. The Palace is shabby, and Victoria, who has been both spoiled and deprived, is a pawn in her mother’s political games. This gives Liza a chance to involve Victoria in her own schemes, by leaking information to the press (in the person of a handsome young broadsheet publisher) while investigating a suspicious death.

Prisoners in the Palace was written for young readers who may not be well schooled in British history. The setting is accurately portrayed, and the fictional characters are true to type. The underworld slang “flash patter” is part of the plot (sort of ), which is fun, but the attempts to mimic local dialects throughout (‘”God ‘elp her if ‘e gets his ‘ans on ‘er…”) are distracting. More important, real people, including the teenage Victoria, are characterized in one-dimensional, often misleading ways. Young readers who eat up these fictional shenanigans should be given a dose of nonfiction as an antidote.

Jeanne Greene THE ROCK AND THE RIVER Kekla Magoon, Aladdin, 2009, $6.99, pb, 283pp, 9781416978039 There is an old story about a man who wanted immortality. The gods were willing to grant his request and gave him a choice: he could be the rock planted firmly in the riverbed, or he could be the river that tumbled about without ceasing. Sam Childs and his brother, Stick, grew up with this story, understanding their father, a Civil Rights activist, to be the rock, and anyone who let himself be swept away in anger at the injustices suffered by African Americans as the river. But Stick has had it with protest marches that seem to accomplish nothing. Dr. King has just been murdered, and cops in their Chicago neighborhood are harassing people daily. So Stick joins the Black Panthers.

Sam also wants to work for change, but should he join his father or the Panthers? Caught between the rock and the river, Sam discovers that neither choice is without sacrifice.

This is an excellent story. Magoon writes with wonderful imagery, but also the urgent pacing of 70 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

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E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Kathryn Lasky, Candlewick, 2010, $17.99/C$23.00, hb, 362pp, 9780763639822 In the summer of 1952, 11-year-old Georgie Mason’s family has just moved into a new neighborhood.

Georgie feels forgotten by her old friends, bored, and, worst of all, frightened. They are in the midst of a polio epidemic. Obsessed with disease statistics reported in the daily newspaper, she is naturally fascinated to discover that her new neighbor is a victim of the disease.

The beautiful 17-year-old Phyllis is being kept alive by an iron lung. Georgie and her older brother Emmett, a sweet, shy, basketball star and junior astronomer, befriend the lonely girl. At first, Georgie is thrilled to find that such a sophisticated older girl could treat her as an equal. But when Emmett becomes Phyllis’s boyfriend, Georgie grows increasingly concerned by the changes she sees in him – and by the way he does Phyllis’s bidding. The girl is playing a game, and no one else is able – or wants – to see it. Despite the empathy Georgie feels for Phyllis, she is terrified for the brother she loves. But what can she do to help when everyone else pretends nothing is wrong?

Chasing Orion is a beautifully written story with well-developed, sympathetic characters.

It provides interesting historical information about polio and also approaches difficult ethical questions in an age-appropriate manner. Highly recommended.

Sue Asher a youth caught up in confusing and dangerous events. More importantly, Magoon’s treatment of the Black Panthers, who are either dismissed or just a footnote in the history of the Civil Rights Movement, is complex. She does not simply contrast the Panthers against Dr. King’s nonviolent marches, but shows how they both worked to change African American attitudes about themselves as well as the culture of white oppression in America.

Patricia O’Sullivan KNIGHTS OF THE SEA: A Grim Tale of Murder, Politics, and Spoon Addiction Paul Marlowe, Sybertooth, 2010, pb, $14.95, 260pp, 9780973950595 Elliot Graven has been planning to spend the summer of 1887 with his friend Paisley DeLoup in the small town of Baddeck on Cape Breton Island. The 16-year-olds are looking forward to the quiet since they’re veterans of misadventure, having thwarted and survived the nefarious intentions of Professor Strange the previous year in Spohrville.

Since all seemed successfully concluded, they weren’t on the lookout for more trouble, so when Elliot barely survives two murder attempts before reaching Baddeck to join Paisley (who, as it happens, had just been shot), they can only conclude that trouble is looking for them.

History collides with fantasy in Knights of the Sea, author Paul Marlowe’s second installment of the Wellborn Conspiracy series – I’ll have to find a copy of the first book! The quirkiness reminds me of Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole series, only with a lot more at stake, say, than the embarrassment of a trip to the ER following unsuccessful gluesniffing. This is not to say Marlowe doesn’t land Elliot in embarrassing situations. At least Adrian didn’t also need to diffuse bombs, or associate with suffragettes, German submarine pilots, werewolves, and the Canadian Minister of Justice.

The characters are all spot on, from one improbable moment to the next. Marlowe’s offbeat humor can even be found in parts of the book where it’s least expected…a few remaining drops to lick when the story bowl is empty. Roll on book three! Young Adult.

Janette King STORIES FROM THE BILLABONG James Vance Marshall, illus. Francis Firebrace, Frances Lincoln, 2010, £8.95, pb, 61pp, 9781847801241 Stories from the Billabong is a collection of aboriginal myths and legends inspired by the dreaming of the Yorta Yorta people, whose traditional lands occupy the northeastern part of the present day Australian state of Victoria. The tales range in topic from The Rainbow Serpent and the Story of Creation, to The Lizard-Man and the Creation of Uluru, and The Butterflies and the Mystery of Death. Others tales simply explain various natural phenomena, such as Why Brolgas Dance and How the Kangaroo got her Pouch. Each tale is beautifully illustrated with traditional symbols woven throughout each page.

There are also explanation sections, in which the various animals, moths, rocks and flowers are set in their contemporary context. The story comes with a glossary and a chart of aboriginal symbols.

Although this is not an extended narrative, it is a must have for any library collection of folk tales — a book that will be enjoyed for its educational value and for the delightful retelling of its age-old tales.

Elizabeth Jane SHADOW OF THE NINJA Andrew Matthews, Usborne, 2010, £5.99, pb, 204pp, 9781409806201 Japan in 1575 is a country ruled by feuding warlords. In his second adventure, the young Samurai Jimmu finds his old master, Lord Ankan, Children & YA

in trouble. Ankan’s ally, Lord Nabunago, has called on him for military aid – help Ankan is bound in honour to give. But Ankan’s daughter, Takeko, has been captured by the ruthless Lord Sabura, ally of Lord Nabunago’s enemy. If Ankan goes to Lord Nabunago’s aid, then Takeko will die. Ankan, to whom honour means everything, has reconciled himself to his beloved daughter’s death.

A samurai’s duty is to obey his lord. But Jimmu loves Takeko; he must try to save her, even if that means disobeying Lord Ankan. He takes unauthorized leave. Then he meets a band of ninja warriors disguised as travelling puppeteers.

Traditionally, samurai see ninjas as men without honour; cold-blooded killers, only out for financial gain. But is this pre-conception wrong? Goro, the blind master ninja, agrees a plan for getting inside Sabura’s castle and rescuing Takeko. But should Jimmu trust him?

I enjoyed this. In The Way of the Warrior, Jimmu’s first adventure, Jimmu learnt to judge people for himself and make his own decisions. Here he has more to learn. Whereas, a samurai should follow his lord’s judgement, a ninja is free to make his own decisions – a concept which Jimmu initially finds alien. Furthermore, he finds himself deeply drawn towards a young female ninja – something he finds difficult to reconcile with his love for Takeko.

Jimmu has a lot of growing up to do.

As before, this is a thrilling read, but it also offers something deeper. It looks at moral choice.

Jimmu must face moral dilemmas which, by their very nature, may be difficult to judge. And he must accept the consequences of his decisions. For 12 plus, especially boys.

Elizabeth Hawksley MY BROTHER ABE Harry Mazer, Simon & Schuster, 2009, $5.99/ C$7.99, pb, 202pp, 9781416938941 Despite the title, this novel for ages 8-12 concentrates on Lincoln’s sister Sally. Little is known of her historically, leaving the author free to invent a lively personality. The Lincolns are forced to leave Kentucky after a land title dispute.

They walk to a new home in Indiana, where Sally has trouble fitting into the role expected of a girl on the frontier. She is suddenly thrust into adulthood after her mother dies of the “trembles.”

Tom Lincoln leaves Abe and Sally behind while he travels back to Kentucky to marry a widow and bring her to Indiana. But how can this stranger replace Sally and Abe’s beloved mother?

Facts about Abe Lincoln’s childhood are woven into the story subtly, so readers won’t realize they are learning history. Sally is a likeable girl, feisty and getting into trouble when she speaks her mind in an era when children are expected to be silent unless spoken to. Tom Lincoln is severe with Abe, giving insights into the future president’s character. An afterword explains more about the Lincoln family’s background, where the reader will also discover Sally’s fate. The book would be an excellent supplement to a Lincoln curriculum.

B.J. Sedlock WISHING FOR TOMORROW Hilary McKay, McElderry, 2010, $16.99, hb, 274pp, 9781442401693 / Hodder, 2009, £10.99, hb, 336pp, 9780340956533 This sequel to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess tells readers what happened to Sara Crewe’s friends at Miss Minchin’s Select Seminary for Young Ladies rather than focusing on Sara Children & YA

herself. Sara had her happy ending, but what happened to those she left behind? Her departure has left her best friend Ermengarde lonely once more although charged by Sara to look out for the incorrigible Lottie. Snooty Lavinia, whom Sara had displaced, regains her status as head girl but has inherited some of Sara’s fortitude, determined to get the education that Miss Minchin isn’t giving her. And Alice, replacing Becky as scullery maid, defies Miss Minchin and turns the girls into the younger sisters she left behind, somehow pulling the Tom Sawyer trick of getting them to do her household chores.

Sequels to beloved classics can be hard to pull off, but McKay succeeds, in part because she takes the focus off of Sara, still a memorable character to me, even after more years than I care to count have passed since I first encountered her. The hothouse world of Miss Minchin’s — girls confined together in school whether they like each other or not — is ripe for storytelling, and Ermengarde, Lottie, and Lavinia each take on more three-dimensional characteristics than they did in Burnett’s original.

Even Miss Minchin herself becomes human.

Nothing can displace A Little Princess for me, but Wishing for Tomorrow is one I’ll give my niece after she’s read the original. Ages 8-12.

Ellen Keith BLACK RADISHES Susan Lynn Meyer, Delacorte, 2010, $16.99, hb, 240pp, 9780385738811 The challenge when writing a novel inspired by the experiences of one’s own family – in this case, the experience of the author’s father as a Jewish child living in France during World War II – is to find a balance between fact and fiction that delivers an appealing story. Leaning too much on the facts, or too much on the imagination, creates a tale either too stiff or too unrealistic. But Susan Lynn Meyer performs this feat in masterful fashion. In Black Radishes, she has found the perfect balance.

Meyer’s young character comes alive for the reader when, in the spring of 1940, Nazi Germany invades France and takes over Paris. Through Gustave’s eyes we witness – and actually feel – the terror of those dark days, as his family attempts to flee to safer ground. Tragically, many Jews in France will not survive. This is a poignant and, for some, difficult story to read, because it is so well-written and therefore so believable. The day-to-day life of a child placed in such an authentic and terrifying setting pulls at the heartstrings. Not a book for every young reader, but certainly one that will move both young and old to tears.

Kathryn Johnson AN ELEPHANT IN THE GARDEN Michael Morpurgo, illus. Michael Foreman, Harper Collins, 2010, £12.99, hb, 336pp, 9780007339570 This latest book by previous Children’s Laureate, Michael Morpurgo, is mainly about the infamous bombing of the German city Dresden by the Allies in the closing years of the Second World War. Through the eyes of a German family — Karli, his sister, Elizabeth, and his mother — we experience the events of that time in 1944 when the people of Dresden had to flee for their lives. What makes this story slightly unusual is that Karli and his family have an elephant with them.

The book begins in the present day, narrated

by Karl’s mother, who is a nurse in an old people’s home. Karl makes friends with one of the residents, Lizzie, who is reminded of her brother when he

was a boy. The narrative is taken over by Lizzie, who begins to tell Karl the story of the elephant, Marlene, explaining that their mother worked at Dresden Zoo during the war and was given the task of looking after a baby elephant. After the bombs begin to fall, the zoo’s director warns that the animals may have to be destroyed should they escape and be a danger to the public, even Marlene.

Karli’s mother decides to keep Marlene in their garden so, with the director’s permission, this is what happens. But when the bombing becomes intense, the family and elephant have to leave their home.

The hardships suffered by the people at that time are described convincingly as are their worries about whether the Russians approaching from the east, or the Americans and British approaching from the west, would be the severest enemy. I think that this book would be enjoyed by boys or girls from 8 to 12.

Julie Parker THE ALCHEMIST AND THE ANGEL Joanne Owen, Orion, 2010, £8.99, pb, 224pp, 9781444000313 Jan is apprentice to his uncle, an alchemist, living in Venice in 1583. After losing his parents to the plague, Aunt Greta and Uncle Gustav take him in. His world develops purpose when he helps his uncle in his Cellar of Science to further develop a serum to create life from death. An untimely demise results in Jan moving to the plague-ridden city of Prague, where he learns about Emperor Rudolph’s court and Cabinet of Curiosities. Here he meets Zuzanna ‘The Angel of the Ghetto’ who holds a secret.

Jan learns a great deal in Prague, including how the lure of power and riches can drive the hand of betrayal.This is an atmospheric book for confident readers who want to be enthralled by a story which delves into the dark side of life and desire. The search for the alchemist’s dream for the ability to change states, whether it is to turn metal to gold or death into life, is an all consuming aim to the scientists of the day. The power such a discovery would bring can be seen as good: healing the sick, creating new life from death or preventing illness. Alternatively, in the hands of the greedy and corrupt, it could bring riches, power and domination. The search goes on.

Gothic illustrations and folktales break up the narrative, but add to the complex nature and delight of the book. Whilst following Jan we acquire historic detail and have an insight into the alchemist’s worldview, set against a very graphic account of Prague at the time. The research and detail never detract from the plot, but add to it an extra dimension of fascinating facts. The characters of Jan and Zuzanna are charismatic and believable.

Greta is powerful, and Rudolph a tortured, troubled soul. I found this a uniquely appealing read.

Val Loh HEART OF A SAMURAI Margi Preus, Amulet, 2010, $15.95, hb, 304pp, 9780810989818 Son of a fisherman, 14-year-old Manjiro dreams of being a samurai. But after being rescued from a shipwreck by an American whaling vessel, Manjiro is not sure he can ever return home to Japan, which is closed to foreigners and citizens who have had contact with foreigners. So Manjiro learns the ways of the Americans, even going to Fairhaven to live HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 71

with them for a time. But, after years of satisfying his curiosity about this strange new land where progress is valued over tradition, Manjiro grows homesick and hatches a daring plan to get home.

I really enjoyed this story, which is based on the 1852 memoirs of John Mung, who is thought to be the first Japanese person to live in America.

The combination of swift pacing and interesting details made it hard for me to put the book down.

However, towards the end the story moves very quickly, skipping over years of Manjiro’s life in just a few sentences. While I understand that the author wanted to cover a particular time period without making the book too long, the end felt rushed. The most interesting aspect of the novel is the view of American culture from the Japanese perspective.

Manjiro’s learning about America allowed me to reflect on aspects of American culture that I don’t often consider.

Patricia O’Sullivan In the year 1841, Manjiro, the 14-year-old son of a fisherman, sets off with four others to find food for their families. What starts as a fishing trip turns into a challenge of life and death. The five fishermen are stuck on Bird Island for months until an American whaling ship comes and rescues them. Traveling for almost a year on the sea, Manjiro decides to learn American ways by going to Fairhaven, Massachusetts with Captain Whitfield, who has become his dearest friend.

Manjiro attends school, works as an apprentice, and even has his own horse! However, as much as Manjiro loves America, he longs for his mother and siblings back in Japan. He fears he will never be able to return. Years later, Manjiro finds an opportunity to go back to Japan, but he must leave his family in America behind. Caught between two wonderful worlds, which will Manjiro chose?

Heart of a Samurai has to be one of my favorite books of all time. The story is touching and funny in the right parts and will keep a reader’s interest as well. It moves quickly without skipping over vital parts and tells the story perfectly without dragging it out. During the middle of the book, I could hardly stop reading because it was so enjoyable. I fully advise readers of all ages to pick up Heart of a Samurai because they will not be disappointed.

Marion O’Sullivan, age 12 THE RED PYRAMID Rick Riordan, Puffin, 2010, £12.99, hb, 516pp, 9780141384948 / Hyperion, 2010, $17.99, hb, 528pp, 9781423113386 Brother and sister Carter and Sadie Kane scarcely know each other. Carter lives with their Egyptologist father, based in America, whilst Sadie lives in London with their maternal grandparents.

Sadie envies Carter’s exciting life travelling with their father; Carter, who feels he lives out of a suitcase, envies Sadie’s stable home and friends.

Then, on a rare visit to the British Museum with his children, Dr. Kane inadvertently blows up the Rosetta Stone in a dangerous experiment and unleashes the evil Set, the Ancient Egyptian god of chaos. Set imprisons Dr. Kane, and Carter and Sadie run for their lives.

Once, Set’s evil power was kept under control by his fellow gods: Isis, Osiris, Horus and Nephthys.

Now free, he begins to unleash the forces of evil and sets out to destroy the world. What follows is an action-packed, roller-coaster of a story as Carter and Sadie try to rescue their father and restore order in the cosmos before Set takes over 72 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

the world. And time is running out…

I enjoyed this. It’s certainly page-turning but, for my taste, the pace is just too relentlessly frenetic.

The quest element, where the hero has things to learn, is largely missing from the action. Carter and Sadie rarely stop to think; they seem to overcome the various obstacles with a half hour lesson in magic and by the seat of their pants. Having said that, I like the way their relationship gradually changes from barely-concealed resentment to guarded affection.

This book centres on ancient Egyptian myths, their belief systems, their artefacts etc, and Rick Riordan certainly knows his stuff. One thing is clear, any child who has read this book will get a lot more enjoyment out of a visit to the British Museum. For confident readers of 10 plus.

Elizabeth Hawksley CROSSING THE TRACKS Barbara Stuber, McElderry, 2010, $16.99, hb, 258pp, 978141699703 In this debut novel, Barbara Stuber explores the meaning of family in Missouri in the summer of 1926. Fifteen-year-old Iris Baldwin has lost her mother at an early age, and her relationship with her father is distant. He seems more interested in expanding his shoe business and his new girlfriend than spending time with his daughter. Iris feels betrayed when she discovers that her father has hired her out as a companion to a country doctor’s invalid mother for the summer. But she soon develops an affection for the quirky Mrs. Nesbitt, who is as wise as she is odd. Dr. Nesbitt has his own secrets but quickly reveals himself as a caring man who fills the paternal void for Iris. Iris finds her new life to her liking except for a menacing tenant farmer who has the community terrorized. Iris has left a friend behind, Leroy, and her correspondence with him provides a lovely counterpoint to the unfolding narrative. Even more effective are the letter she writes, but doesn’t send.

Stuber’s imagery is exquisite and her voices, particularly Iris’s and Mrs. Nesbitt’s, are distinctive.

We are in Iris’s mind throughout, and we fall in love with the Nesbitts just as quickly as she does.

The plot at times felt contrived, and there were elements to the ending that did not feel supported by the earlier text. However, these issues did not detract from my enjoyment of this fine novel.

Recommended for young adult readers who enjoy character-driven novels.

Michaela MacColl THE EAGLE OF THE NINTH CHRONICLES Rosemary Sutcliff, Oxford, 2010, £9.99, pb, 607pp, 9780192789983 It is pleasing to be able to report the re-issue of Rosemary Sutcliff ’s trilogy, The Eagle of the Ninth, The Silver Branch and The Lantern Bearers in one volume, largely due to a new film. The books, important in the canon of children’s historical writing, were originally published in the 1950s and were seminal in telling the story of Roman Britain through the eyes of three young heroes from different generations, linked by the Aquila family dolphin ring.

In the first book, a young Roman officer, Marcus Flavius Aquila, wants to know why his father and his legion disappeared in the outpost of northern Britain, near Hadrian’s Wall. In the 2nd century A.D., the young boy discovers that the Roman legion suffered a catastrophic, but not ignominious,

defeat and is able to return bearing their symbolic bronze eagle. In the second part of the trilogy, two young Roman cousins find themselves caught in the power struggle between Carausius, self-proclaimed emperor in England, his treasurer, Allectus, and the Emperor Constantine back in Rome. Finally in the third volume, set in the 5th century, Sutcliff describes the story of a Romano-Britain after the Roman legionaries pull out of Britain. Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Literature, this volume deals with more complex emotional themes and will appeal to older readers.

Julie Parker GREEK MYTHS Ann Turnbull, illus. Sarah Young, Walker, 2010, £15.00, hb, 167pp, 978140630833 This is a fresh take on some of the most important Greek myths, illustrated in a very modern way in tones of grey and green with occasional flashes of colour and the glow of gold.

We are entertained by tales of the Greek gods and heroes, the relationship between which is clearly set out in the foreword, where we are told of the history of the Titans, the twelve Olympians and the Muses. The book is divided into three sections: the earth, the heavens, and the underworld; monsters and heroes and, finally, gods and mortals.

It is empowering to find the story of Atalanta, raised as a boy on the hillsides and expert with a bow as described in The Kalydonian Boar Hunt.

The story Atalanta’s Race, however, tells of her ‘downfall’ when she is distracted by Hippomenes’s golden apples. In Pandora, we learn of the frailty of woman and her insatiable curiosity. Arachne is the story of the greatest weaver in the homeland of Lydia who, denying that her gifts came from the goddess Athena, was challenged to a competition with her. Inevitably, the woman failed and was about to end her life when the goddess turned her into a spider, spinning to all eternity.

Many stories deal with human frailties: arrogance, conceit, curiosity, greed, and the inevitable way that these humans anger the gods.

The book includes two stories about King Midas, famed for his legendary golden touch, but also known for King Midas and the Music Contest in which the king sits on the panel to judge the best contestant. A delightful book which would make an excellent gift for story lovers of all ages.

Julie Parker DREAM THIEF: An Extraordinary Horatio Lyle Mystery Catherine Webb, Atom, 2010, £6.99, pb, 342pp, 9781905654253 This is the fourth book in the successful Horatio Lyle series which began with The Unusual Adventures of Horatio Lyle in 2006 and continued with The Obsidian Dagger and The Doomsday Machine. In the first book, inventor and scientist Horatio Lyle meets up with two important characters who are to be his companions in further adventures: Tess, a waif-like child from the streets of East London and an expert pickpocket, and Thomas Eldwick, the young teenage son of one of the most noble families in the country, usually referred to by Tess as the “Bigwig.” Another important character is Horatio’s mother, widow of the late Harry Lyle, inventor, who has a trick or two up her sleeve.

The setting of the fourth book is London, 1865.

Horatio and his team have been combatting the Tsequin, an otherwordly group of individuals Children & YA

with emerald-green eyes, mostly set on evil intent, and with an affinity for all things organic but an intense aversion for anything made of iron. In The Dream Thief, the adventurers have to find one of the Tsequin, Greybags, who has mutated into something even more evil and who is infiltrating the community of London’s poorest children. He is administering a strong, and seemingly irreversible, narcotic which sends them into an eternal sleep.

One of the central features of The Dream Thief is Mr. Majestic’s Marvellous Electric Circus and its array of unusual inhabitants, which attracts the children like a magnet. But here, the team finds that Greybags is also poisoning the adults.

The only quibble that I would have with this book is with the stream-of-consciousness, or free indirect narrative episodes, which are intended to highlight the hallucinatory, dream-like quality of the scene, but can be rather distracting. Altogether an enjoyable romp, and addition to the series, for children 8-12.

Julie Parker MY HAVANA, MEMORIES OF A CUBAN BOYHOOD Rosemary Wells and Secundino Fernandez, Candlewick, 2010, $17.99, hb, 62pp, 9780763643058 “We live in a city built by angels,” Secundino’s father tells him, and Secundino understands why. Each day as he walks home from school he marvels at Havana’s magnificent architecture and bright colors. When he is old enough to hold a pencil, he begins to draw Havana. But then when he is six, his family travels to Spain, and homesick Secundino no longer feels the urge to draw. When they return to Cuba, Secundino promises he will never leave Havana again. But there is trouble in

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Cuba, and Secundino’s family must flee to New York before they get caught up in the Revolution.

Again Secundino has no wish to draw, describing his new home as a “black and gray city.” But come summer, Secundino has learned English and made friends and he is ready to draw again.

This is a bittersweet story with breathtaking illustrations by Peter Ferguson. Secundino’s descriptions of Havana, along with Ferguson’s images, made me want to go there. I also enjoyed how Secundino overcame homesickness with his art.

Patricia O’Sullivan Secundino Fernandez, nicknamed Dino, is lost in the world of his wonderful city, Havana. With every chance he can get, Dino picks up a pencil and carefully sketches the bright buildings aligning the road, the streets filled with friendly neighbors who play dominos with each other every night, and children and women dancing joyfully to upbeat music. Where would he want to be more? When Dino is six, he reluctantly leaves Havana to go to Spain with his parents. Dino thinks Madrid is a dreadful city, ruled by Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Dino has to get used to this new Spanish and his new school. Throughout the story, Dino moves from Cuba to Spain to Cuba again, and then to New York. Will he ever see his beloved Havana again?

My Havana was a really fun novel to read. It is perfect for children of all ages and has wonderful illustrations. The story of Secundino Fernandez will touch any reader with its inspiring characters and spirit. It really expresses Dino’s love for Havana. One of the best things about reading My Havana was that it is based on a true story.

Marion O’Sullivan, age 12

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Mary Ann Rodman, Usborne, 2009, £5.99, pb, 278pp, 9781409501237 / Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2008, $16.95, hb, 272pp, 9780374337032 Ellie doesn’t want her brother Jimmy to go to war.

He’s her favourite person in the whole world. Smug Victoria Gandeck is proud to have her four brothers in the Marines, but Ellie would rather have Jimmy at home. When the time comes for him to leave, she is left to hope and pray for his safe return with only his letters to raise her spirits.

At first I wasn’t sure if I would like this novel as it is written in quite a jokey style with a lot of American slang, and I didn’t take to the main character. The more I read, however, the more engrossing and emotionally involving it became, and I warmed to Ellie as she struggled to cope with both the war and being a teenager. The book deals with quite complex emotions and doesn’t shy away from them. As the novel is set in America, the experience of the Second World War is quite different to novels set in Britain – there are no evacuees or bombing raids. Flags hang in the windows of homes displaying a blue star if they have a family member in the military. If the person dies, then the star is changed from blue to gold. Ellie hates the stars because they are a constant reminder of the danger Jimmy is in.

The novel charts the history of the war through Ellie’s eyes as she gets older and her relationships change with friends, enemies and family members as they experience excitement, pride, loss, shame and fear together. It is an engaging novel that would appeal to girls of 10+.

Julie Nicol Children & YA

ARCHIE’S WAR Marcia Williams, Walker, 2009, £7.99, pb, 47pp, 9781406310023 1914. Archie Albright lives with his family in London’s East End. He loves comics and is thrilled when he is given a scrapbook. Now he can create his own comic book.

A child’s scrapbook proves to be a brilliant format for getting across what life was like for ordinary people during the First World War. Archie collects whatever he can get his hands on: newspaper cuttings, cigarette cards of the period, picture post cards from the front, his Dad’s letters from the trenches, and his own diary and drawings.

We see his family’s enthusiastic patriotism at the beginning (apart from his 16-year-old pacifist sister); his Uncle Ted joins up amid great enthusiasm; the innocent Schoenfeld family who ‘might be spies’ are ostracised. Gradually, the tone changes as Archie realizes that the war won’t be over by Christmas.

The news gets darker. Wartime shortages begin to bite; then Uncle Ted is killed. Archie’s father joins up, and his 15-year-old brother, Ron, who feels ashamed when people shout ‘conchy’ and ‘coward’ at him. Sometimes, Archie’s scrapbook records local news: the explosion in the dangerous munitions factory where his mother works.

Sometimes it has more general news, such as the story of Edith Cavell.

The arrival of the first Zeppelin brings a new threat. The Zeppelins are slow and not too dangerous, but then come the first German bombers. Archie is excited by the exploits of the Red Baron, but horrified by what bombing actually does to people when the street behind them is bombed and his friend Tom is made homeless.

I give Marcia Williams top marks for the intelligent, funny, sad and thoughtful way she charts the First World War through the eyes of one ten-year-old boy. A triumph. Every children’s library should have a copy. For eight plus, particularly boys.

Elizabeth Hawksley WHEN MOLLY WAS A HARVEY GIRL Frances M. Wood, Kane Miller, $15.99, hb, 226pp, 9781935279518 Molly Gerry loses her father at age thirteen.

She and her 19-year-old sister are left without a roof over their heads. Colleen has a plan to find them jobs at the famous Harvey Eating Houses, restaurants that serve the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. A Harvey girl must be “of good character, attractive and intelligent.” They must also be eighteen. Desperate, Colleen dresses her sister in women’s clothes and coaches her on how to act like an adult. To Molly’s dismay, she is soon waiting a busy counter in the heart of the Wild West, surrounded by cowboys, prospectors, train men, and desperados.

The novel is exceptionally well-researched, and Wood has a knack for making the train and restaurant scenes come alive. The behind-thescenes of running a restaurant in the Wild West, serving haute cuisine, were fascinating. The main character, however, was not as fully developed as the menus. She often complains that everyone in town thinks they know her from behind the counter.

“Hello Miss Molly” is a constant refrain when she goes out. But as a reader, I felt the same way. I liked her, sympathized with her, would like to get my coffee from her, but did not really know her. I was unconvinced by the initial motivation for the sisters HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 73

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E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Clare Vanderpool, Delacorte, 2010, $16.99/C$19.99, pb, 368pp, 9780385738835 Abilene Tucker is used to living on the road with her father Gideon. But one summer during the Depression, Gideon sends Abilene to stay in Manifest, Kansas with a friend. In Manifest, Abilene finds mementoes Gideon left behind as a boy and realizes that he is not coming back for her. As she digs deeper into Gideon’s past, Abilene comes to understand that her father’s story is woven into Manifest’s own troubled history.

Filled with lively characters and narrated in several different voices, Moon over Manifest is a gem of a story for young readers. Abilene is a spunky, likeable girl who befriends a heavy-drinking preacher named Shady, a Hungarian fortune-teller, the town’s midwife (who is also the school mistress and a nun), a gossip columnist, and affable cousins Ruthanne and Lettie. These new friends help Abilene uncover the secrets and tragedies of her father’s past through storytelling, divination, old newspaper articles and letters, and a good deal of snooping.

Patricia O’Sullivan to leave their town to find work – they are wellborn, well-educated – I found it difficult to believe that no one in their town helped them find other options than to go out west to be a Harvey Girl.

However, this did not detract from an enjoyable and informative read. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in seeing a different side of the Wild West.

Michaela MacColl

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D-DAY: The Battle for Normandy Antony Beevor, Penguin, 2010, £16.99, pb, 591pp, 9780141048130 / Penguin, 2010, $18, pb, 608pp, 9780143118183 Although D-Day has already been written about many times, notably by Max Hastings, Antony Beevor has used new and overlooked letters and diaries from archives around the world, and German ones in particular, to produce a vivid narrative. This is not just a book about D-Day but also includes the breakout from Normandy, the bomb plot against Hitler and leads the reader through to the liberation of Paris.

Narrative is what Beevor excels at. He uses the personal stories of thousands of ordinary servicemen as well as generals to expertly blend the strategic view with the telling anecdote. He tells of the British officers eating breakfast on deck before the landing on June 6, with a steward asking: “Porridge or cereal this morning, sir?” and the German soldiers cutting themselves silk scarves from discarded American parachutes.

Beevor highlights the high death toll of French civilians and the strength of German resistance and thoroughly debunks the idea that success on D-Day was a foregone conclusion. He also controversially points out the high moral toll on Allied servicemen during the battle for Normandy.

Everything he highlights he backs up with extensive and convincing research.

This is highly recommended.

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Gordon O’Sullivan ELIZABETH’S WOMEN: Friends, Rivals, and Foes Who Shaped the Virgin Queen Tracy Borman, Bantam, 2010, $28.00, hb, 512pp, 9780553806984 / Vintage, 2010, £8.99, pb, 352pp, 9780099548621 Tracy Borman, chief executive of the Heritage Education Trust and a frequent contributor to BBC History Magazine, has taken on a monumental task — writing something new about a woman who has already been explored, analyzed, vilified, and applauded in countless academic papers and biographies, as well as spirited off to play dramatic roles in popular novels. And yet, here we have a most remarkable and surprisingly fresh study of the Virgin Queen that does nothing less than take the breath away.

Borman has elected to focus on Elizabeth solely in her relationships with 30 of the women who accompanied her through life. Her premise is that Elizabeth’s personal life, and true character, are most clearly revealed through the intimate, often troubling but always intriguing, associations with the females in her world — family members, loyal friends, dangerous rivals. Included are profoundly revealing glimpses of the most influential women in her life: her mother, Anne Boleyn; Mary Tudor; the Grey sisters; and even the “flouting wenches” such as Lettice Knollys. In addition, the author explores the riddle of Elizabeth’s sexuality through rumors and evidence. All of this is handled in an elegantly readable style that places this book on the shelf among the best biographical works being published today. Most highly recommended.

Kathryn Johnson PAPA SPY Jimmy Burns, Bloomsbury, 2010, £9.99, pb, 395pp, 9781408803097 / Walker, 2009, $26.00, hb, 416pp, 9780802717962 The Spanish Civil War is perhaps best known to readers through the works of writers like George Orwell and Ernest Hemingway. The Francoists are characterised as the villains of the piece who

invited Hitler in to practice total war on hapless Spanish peasants. Of course, it wasn’t as simple as this, as Burns’s memoir of his father, Tom, makes clear. Tom Burns, a devout Catholic and English patriot, thought Franco the lesser of two evils when compared with the Communists. His support for Franco led to a posting in Madrid in 1940 to the British Embassy with a covert brief to keep Spain neutral during the Second World War. MI6’s head of station in Madrid at the time was Kim Philby.

The girlfriend Burns left behind him was Ann Bowes-Lyon, cousin of the Queen.

Burns life should read like a John Le Carré novel, but this memoir is marred by a somewhat pedantic and repetitive style. I was left with a sense of diffidence, as though Burns junior felt slightly squeamish about digging too deeply into his father’s life. The book is worth reading for the angle of the light it sheds on this period of history, but is ultimately a disappointing reading experience.

Sarah Bower THE SIEGE OF DERRY 1689: The Military History Richard Doherty, The History Press, 2010, £12.99, pb, 274pp, 9780752455365 / The History Press, 2010, $24.95, pb, 288pp, 9780752455365 This is a study of one of the most iconic episodes in Irish history, the Siege of Derry. The war cry of ‘No Surrender!’ was first used in 1689 by the inhabitants of Londonderry as James II’s army laid siege to the city for 105 days, during which almost half the city’s population died.

Although the Siege of Derry has been written about recently by Carlo Gébler, Doherty, who wrote the excellent The Williamite War in Ireland 1688−1691, concentrates on the military situation. He uses contemporary accounts and official records superbly, often to discredit many of the myths that have grown up around the siege and in the process underlines his deep knowledge of seventeenth century warfare in general and siegecraft in particular.

He attempts to rehabilitate Robert Lundy, commemorated as a traitor to the city, as a soldier who acted according to the military conventions of the day. He also contends that the siege was the turning point of the Williamite war, effectively ending James’s best chance of being restored to his thrones and examines how the besieging army might have achieved success.

This is an excellent addition to our understanding of this period.

Gordon O’Sullivan FUR, FORTUNE, AND EMPIRE: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America Eric Jay Dolin, Norton, 2010, $29.95/C$37.50, £22.95, hb, 442pp, 97803930067101 Eric Jay Dolin offers an exciting saga of ambition, passion, violence, and greed concerning the role that the fur from the sea otter, bison, and beaver played in the history of America. Much of this story remains relatively unknown to even the better of the most qualified historians, as economic history in general is chronically missing in writings in historical accounts of nation’s founding periods. The disappearance of European fur-bearing animals at the time of the settling of America provided entrepreneurs with multiple opportunities for enrichment. Dolin follows French, Russian, American, Spanish, English, and Swedish businessmen as they compete for the riches furs provide. John Jacob Astor and his Children & YA — Nonfiction

American Fur Company are the most recognizable for most readers, but even the least well known provide breathtaking examples of the ruthless behavior essential in the reach for wealth and power.

John R. Vallely THE FIRST LADIES OF ROME Annelise Freisenbruch, Jonathan Cape, 2010, £25.00, hb, 350pp, 9780224085298 Six hundred years of the Roman Empire from Augustus to its long-drawn-out end: this is the serious work of an author who does not hesitate in asserting the conclusions of her own impressive research, if necessary, in opposition to other – male – writers, ancient and modern. Against the weight and daunting complexity of this history, First Ladies is enormously enjoyable. Rome’s First Ladies were by no means necessarily Emperors’ wives; they could be grandmothers, daughters, aunts or mistresses. The Julio-Claudian dynasty alone takes readers from Livia – workaholic but not a serial poisoner – to Agrippina “Minor” – deplorable but gutsy. From a comprehensive parade of imperial ladies, the truest romance must be the doomed affair of Titus and a non-Roman, his Jewish Princess Berenice.

The coming of Christianity, which might have been expected to bring a more repressive regime for women, starts with Helena the Emperor’s mother setting out, aged eighty, for the Holy Land.

Chastity became an acceptable alternative for women who rejected marriage and childbearing.

From amongst the charismatic females of late empire, the lives of Galla Placidia and Pulcheria, enterprising and energetic, are worth waiting for.

The illustrations are delightfully diverse and the family trees essential.

Nancy Henshaw THE LIFE OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS: An Accidental Tragedy Roderick Graham, Pegasus, 2009, $35.00/ C$17.70, hb, 476pp, 9781605980492 / Birlinn, 2008, £25.00, hb, 476pp, 9781841585512 Mary Queen of Scots was put to death by her cousin, Elizabeth I, in 1587. Why does Roderick Graham call her death “an accidental tragedy”?

Well, because she blundered into it. In this biography, he paints a portrait of her as a passive woman of only ordinary intellectual gifts who was brought up to adorn the court of her first husband, the king of France. When her husband died, it became necessary for her to act as a queen regnant in Scotland. She fumbled, married badly — twice — and had to flee her kingdom. After taking refuge in England, she trusted the wrong people, became embroiled in assassination plots against Elizabeth, and ultimately got sent to the block.

I found myself wondering why Graham chose to write about Mary. Especially in the early part of the book, he seems to lack empathy for her.

He portrays her marriage to Darnley as silly willfulness. But in dynastic terms, didn’t a Catholic of royal English descent seem like a reasonable choice for her husband? This is a readable, wellwritten biography, and certainly a warts-and-all portrait of Mary.

Phyllis T. Smith QUEENS CONSORT: England’s Medieval Queens, from Eleanor of Aquitaine to Elizabeth of York Lisa Hilton, Pegasus, 2010, $18.95, pb, 426pp, Nonfiction

9781605981055 / Phoenix, 2009, £9.99, pb, 592pp, 9780753826119 From the 11th to the 15th centuries, twenty women became queens consort of England. In her new book, Lisa Hilton, author of Athenais: The Life of Louis XIV’s Mistress, tells the story of what she calls an “exceptional confederacy.” Detailing the queens’ lives with the enthusiasm and compassion of an advocate, Hilton sifts through the ashbins of history, separating legends and facts and identifying partisan innuendo. The queens consort comprise a magnificent collection, some foolish and reckless, others extraordinarily courageous. “They were not passive or powerless,” Hilton writes, but they each had to manipulate the stereotypes of femininity and cope with societal anxieties about sexuality and power. Hilton gives the same consideration to Eleanor of Aquitaine as to less well-known names, such as Matilda of Boulogne or Joanna of Navarre.

The result is a series of compelling portraits, a spectacle of sometimes surprising love matches, dynastic marriages, and even sexless unions.

But how this grand league of women endured war, constant preoccupations with finances, the Crusades, adultery, the envies of courtiers, and, often, peripatetic lives, is endlessly fascinating.

Adelaida Lower THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN James Holland, Bantam, 2010, £25, hb, 677pp, 9780593059135 / St. Martin’s, March 2011, $40.00, hb, 740pp, 9780312675004 James Holland has chosen May 1939 as the start of the Battle of Britain for this excellent study of a crucial time in British (and arguably world) history.

This is a comprehensive piece of work which not only presents the historical facts and dates in a readable and interesting way, but portrays intimate human portraits of the men and women on both sides of the war. Both sides made many mistakes during the air battle over Britain, as Holland notes in his excellent technical analysis. British tactics were poor, senior RAF thinking unimaginative.

Dowding’s fighters were undergunned, and carried only a quarter of the ammunition of German Messerschmitt 109s. While, on the German side, an obsession with dive-bombing caused the Luftwaffe to focus on Stukas, only to discover over England that they were fatally vulnerable to fighters.

Holland is excellent on the telling detail, which without being pedantic provides a unique insight.

Well-researched with extensive maps and figures, this is a notable account of epic human experience, told in an informal and enthusiastic way which brings alive a familiar story. This is historical nonfiction at its best and is a fitting tribute to all those who were involved. Recommended.

Mike Ashworth REVOLUTIONARY SPIRITS: The Enlightened Faith of America’s Founding Fathers Gary Kowalski, Bluebridge, 2010, $13.95, pb, 224pp, 9781933346304 The Founding Fathers of the United States (or The Founders, to use a more contemporary term) and their religious values continue to play a central role in an America currently engaged in a fractious and seemingly endless self-definition.

Recent debate has the Founders serving as staunch advocates of a Christian-based belief system, while opponents argue they believed in vastly more nuanced religious principles. Kowalski, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and a

Unitarian minister, provides a brief analysis of these Enlightenment figures by probing the religious views of Franklin, Washington, Paine, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison. He concludes they strove to create a republic of virtue in a government built firmly on the separation of church and state.

A short glimpse such as this into Kowalski’s essay does it a disservice. Pick it up and be prepared for a reminder of the brilliance of these individuals.

John R. Vallely ZULU RISING: The Epic Story of iSandlwana and Rorke’s Drift Ian Knight, Sidgwick & Jackson, 2010, £20, hb, 698pp, 9781405091855 At iSandlwana in 1879, 20,000 Zulus defeated 1,800 men of the British Army in a battle so bloody and devastating that it was the media sensation of the day. It also marked the beginning of decades of strife as the British took revenge on the entire Zulu people.

Zulu Rising tells the story of this battle and the subsequent ones, Rorke’s Drift in particular, through the eyewitness accounts of the people who fought on both sides. This is war, up close and personal. The author also tackles some of the legends that have arisen around the battles and seeks to distinguish between verifiable fact and probable fiction.

Ian Knight obviously lives and breathes the Anglo-Zulu War and his 30-odd years of research have culminated in this masterful piece of nonfiction, which includes a quantity of previously unpublished material. As well as being erudite, well-balanced and comprehensive, Zulu Rising is above all readable and gripping. Before reading Zulu Rising, the only things I ‘knew’ about the battles of iSandlwana and Rorke’s Drift were gleaned from the Stanley Baker/Michael Caine film, Zulu; I feel much better informed now.

Sara Wilson TWILIGHT AT THE WORLD OF TOMORROW James Mauro, Ballantine, 2010, $28.00, hb, 432pp, 9780345512147 The 1939 New York World’s Fair transformed the dumps of Flushing Meadows into a wonderland of science, architecture, and cultural achievement.

Marketed as the “World of Tomorrow,” the Fair highlighted futuristic innovations from dishwashers to nylon to television. Great figures of the age, including President Roosevelt and Albert Einstein, contributed to its spectacle. But with bomb threats, financial crises, and a second World War on the horizon, the Fair’s image of a peaceful future seemed little more than a mirage.

James Mauro takes us back to a world teetering between Depression and World War, and a city striving to prove itself. Mauro has a wonderful eye for detail, and unearths some of the Fair’s funniest oddities and idiosyncrasies. But with so many personalities jostling for center stage, the flow of the narrative suffers. Although this work has clear similarities to Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, Mauro’s organization and characterization fall short. Characters are built up only to disappear abruptly from the narrative, and the anticipated satisfying conclusion never comes. Twilight at the World of Tomorrow is an engaging portrait of an oft-neglected era, but one that, like the 1939 World’s Fair, never quite delivers on its promised splendor.

Ann Pedtke HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 75

THE BURMA CAMPAIGN: Disaster into Triumph 1942-45 Frank McLynn, The Bodley Head, 2010, £20.00, hb, 456 pp, 9780224072915 Until I read this book, the allied operations in Burma were but a postscript to the American island-hopping war in the Pacific. When I finished reading this biographic and insightful account of the four main allied commanders directing this component of the Asian theatre, it was no longer a ‘forgotten war.’ The brilliant portrayal of the four allied commanders – Orde Wingate, Joseph Stilwell, William Slim, and Louis Mountbatten – reveals so much of their individual designs and strategies and significant impact on the gruesome, protracted jungle campaigns. For military history readers preoccupied with World War II European and Pacific theatres, this book is a real eye-opener into the mindless and irrational support given to Chiang Kai-shek. The personal feuding and the often inappropriate vaulting ambitions are graphically and enthrallingly captured in what is undoubtedly a brilliant portrayal, leaving this reviewer stunned that what could so easily have been a devastating defeat turned into victory. Read it.

Vivien Cringle HANCOX: A House and a Family Charlotte Moore, Viking, 2010, £20, hb, 484pp, 9780670915866 The author grew up and still lives in a house that has been in her family since 1888. Yet Hancox is no ordinary family home: it “seems to house the dead as well as the living.” It is stuffed with family letters and portraits, diaries, sketchbooks, photos – not to mention prescriptions, school reports, and even the pots and pans “that came with the (new!) Aga in 1934.” Milicent Ludlow bought the house as a young unmarried woman and moved in with her sister and husband; it was, Moore acknowledges, a “brave, foolhardy decision” that shaped hers and many other’s lives, “for Hancox is a place that shapes lives.” Later, Milicent married Norman Moore, eminent naturalist and antiquarian.

An extraordinary picture of Victorian society is drawn from this unique archive – as Moore comments, “there will never be another one like it.” At one end of the scale, it offers glimpses of Darwin, M.R. James, Kipling, and others, and at the other personal tragedy, insanity, and tuberculosis. Hancox is still a living entity, but Moore has brilliantly succeeded in reviving five generations of her family using the “little bits of driftwood washed up on the beach of the present time from the vast illimitable ocean of the past.”

Lucinda Byatt BERLIN AT WAR: Life and Death in Hitler’s Capital 1939-45 Roger Moorhouse, The Bodley Head, 2010, £25, hb, 448pp, 9780224080712 This is an absorbing account of what life was like for the ordinary Berliner during the six years of the Second World War in the capital of the Nazi Party-controlled state. Current history trends are for bottom-up approaches to historical narratives, rather than the more traditional study of key actors and strategic decision making. And this book utilises oral and contemporary written sources mostly from ordinary Berliners. The material is organised by topic, in approximate chronological order. It reveals, in accessible prose and fascinating detail, how the people of Berlin viewed the War and how their attitudes changed throughout the course of the conflict, focusing on the severe deterioration of quality of life for most of them. It is a broad topic, and Moorhouse occasionally skates over complex issues. His analysis 76 | Reviews | HNR Issue 54, November 2010

of the degree to which Berliners approved of Nazism and were aware of the genocide of the deported Jews and other “undesirable” groups is a little superficial and does not sufficiently acknowledge the more recent research.

Nevertheless, this is a thoroughly enjoying and informative account of the descent into an urban hell that Berliners had visited upon them. Whether they deserved it or not is open to debate.

Doug Kemp MEDIC John Nicol & Tony Rennell, Penguin, 2010, £8.99, pb, 390pp, 9780141024202 The Royal Army Medical Corp has as their motto ‘In Arduis Fideles’; John Nicol and Tony Rennell show in Medic how these men and women armed with bandages and stretchers are indeed ‘Faithful in Adversity.’

Soldiers have traditionally been regarded as ‘cannon fodder’ and left to die on battlefields.

Although Julius Caesar had surgeons with his armies, Wellington was contemptuous of doctors; Napoleon, however, had innovators in medicine. The Great War had ‘butchers shops’ in dugouts amidst the carnage. It was disease that killed, more than arrows and bullets, until antiseptics were developed. By World War II, advanced technology had created war zones with huge levels of destruction, the horrors suffered by our troops bordering on the unimaginable.

Here is an account of warfare with true stories of valour and human endurance centered on those whose role is vital to saving lives. Mostly unarmed, medical personnel are placed with the front-line troops in the middle of the fighting, for if the injured can be treated immediately, the survival rate is greatly increased.

Compelling, incredibly moving and extremely well told, I defy anyone to come from the experience dryeyed. Medics are often unsung heroes until the going gets tough and the battle gets bloody.

Gwen Sly LAST CALL: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition Daniel Okrent, Scribner, 2010, $30/C$34.99, hb, 468pp, 9780743277020 When Wayne B. Wheeler died in 1927, an obituary in the Washington Post stated, “No other private citizen of the United States has left such an impress upon national history.” Wayne who? Well, Mr. Willard was for a decade the chief lobbyist for the Anti-Saloon League and, indeed, politicians quaked whenever this small, unprepossessing man entered the room.

But Wheeler is not the only Prohibition-era titan to have utterly vanished from our national memory.

There was Frances Willard, “immortal founder” of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union; there was Mabel Willebrandt, Assistant Attorney General for Prohibition Enforcement, whom Daniel Okrent in this fascinating new history calls “without question the most powerful woman in the nation.” And there was Izzy Einstein, star prohibition agent who made over four thousand bootlegger arrests. (Eliot Ness of Untouchables fame was a pipsqueak.)

Okrent, in lively ironic prose, presents a detailed analysis of the interplay of class, ethnicity, and religion that made, and then unmade, the 18th amendment to Constitution. The reader will learn why German brewers and Jewish distillers failed to unite against the forces of temperance, and why prohibition was supported simultaneously by northern progressives and the Ku Klux Klan. The book is filled with jawdropping facts. How, for example, the loophole which allowed for the production and sale of sacramental wine to Catholic bishops and Jewish rabbis was turned into a gigantic swindle. And one could go on and on.

For anyone with an interest in American history, Last Call is a must-read.

Bruce Macbain THE EMPIRE STOPS HERE Philip Parker, Pimlico, 2010, £14.99, pb, 649pp, 9781845950033 This fascinating book follows the frontiers of the Roman Empire, and Philip Parker is an excellent guide: knowledgeable, accessible and with a dry wit.

He argues that the frontier was rarely fixed – even Hadrian’s Wall had Roman outposts beyond it. It was more a sphere of influence than the modern definition of a frontier. Major rivers like the Rhine or Danube separated the empire from the barbarians, but the Romans had no hesitation in settling the other side if those barbarians were troublesome.

As well as examining the history, he takes us there physically. We follow him through dreary Eastern European housing estates and behind dodgy cafés to track down bits of crumbling Roman wall. He is also interested in the various countries’ responses to their Roman heritage. Germany looks after its ruins meticulously. Others, like Romania, although officially interested, often neglect them in practice.

Algeria now allows foreign visitors to visit its splendid sites, but Parker is still met with occasional suspicion and obstruction.

I learned a lot from this most interesting and enjoyable book. I’m ashamed to say I had no idea that parts of Austria and Switzerland ever belonged to the Roman Empire. I recommend it.

Elizabeth Hawksley THE WOMEN JEFFERSON LOVED Virginia Scharff, Harper, 2010, $27.99, hb, 448pp, 9780061227073 A fresh look at our nation’s third President through the women in his life. Scharff, incorporating recent research, provides a series of informative portraits of women related to Jefferson and their importance in his life and career. They include his mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson; his wife, Martha Wayles Skelton; his daughters Patsy and Polly; his granddaughters; and the controversial slave, Sally Hemings. Setting each woman firmly within her own milieu, the author makes excellent use of available documentation (almost nonexistent in several instances, particularly concerning his mother and his wife), capably distills what information there is, and focuses clearly on each figure and her place in Jefferson’s life. She skillfully navigates the entangled relationships within their Virginia family network, and fleshes out her narrative with a wealth of historical details concerning the era in which her subjects lived. In the process of profiling each of these women, the author presents the reader with a fuller picture of Jefferson’s life.

Readable, accessible, and as compelling as fiction, the text includes notes, bibliography, and family tree.

Illustrations and index not seen.

Michael I. Shoop CLEOPATRA: A Life Stacy Schiff, Little, Brown, 2010, $29.99, hb, 384pp, 9780316001922 / Virgin, 2010, £20.00, hb, 416pp, 9780753539552 Myths and legends abound about Cleopatra.

Historian Stacy Schiff carefully prepares readers for what a difficult task her biography entailed, as there is such a paucity of accurate, unbiased references about Cleopatra’s life. Schiff offers a clear depiction of the skewed relationships and political realities of Ptolemaic life: siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents intermarried and proceeded to assassinate each other. Cleopatra’s survival is Nonfiction

accomplished by wielding power while knowing that a relative or the fickle Egyptian populace could end her rule in a moment’s whim. She proves to be not only a seductress but also an educated woman who was financially and politically savvy. Her reign endures because she knows how to please her people, encouraging their love of beauty through drama, excellent cuisine and architecture, as well as knowing exactly when to impose and withdraw burdensome taxes. Schiff suggests that Cleopatra’s supposed affairs with Caesar and Marc Antony arose out of keeping control over the Romans; we learn much about Julius Caesar, who risked Roman wrath by staying in Egypt far too long. We also see Cleopatra’s role in the brutal contest for power between Marc Antony and Octavius Caesar. This biography is interesting, informative, and a welcome addition to the panoply of rumor and fact existing about this formidable, enchanting leader.

Viviane Crystal THE TIME TEAM GUIDE TO THE HISTORY OF BRITAIN Tim Taylor, editor, Channel Four Books, 2010, £14.99, pb, 320 pp, 9781905026708 Now this is a history book. Well written, without being too abstruse or talking down to the reader, it is an easy and entertaining book to read. Stretching from Palaeolithic to modern times with the aim to ‘see ourselves as part of a grand continuum of events,’ the book is illustrated lavishly with photographs and drawings. It is a visual feast of things historical which adds to the book’s charms.

Events from each era have been chosen as key events so the book takes the reader steadily through the growth and development of the human race as well as a country. There’s a time line, photos and detailed explanations of the major technology of each period and why it was so important. Of course, as a Time Team book, much is made of archaeological evidence and the Team digs feature in each era.

It is a good general history book which fills in the gaps left by the school syllabus, and makes a solid and reliable starting point for further research. I would recommend it for the family reference library, and particularly for boys who need a resource for some basic historical facts, but can’t face the ordinary history text. pdr lindsay-salmon EGYPTIAN DAWN Robert Temple, Century, 2010, £25, hb, 514pp, 9780712684149 The author is well known for his television documentaries, which challenge various widely accepted views on early Egyptian history. Here, he argues that the Great Pyramid is of too early a date to have been built by Cheops. He discusses the mathematics and astronomical thinking behind the layout of the buildings on the Giza plateau, and predicts the exact locations of seven royal Old Kingdom tombs. He explores the rarely entered ‘Tomb of Osiris’ and re-dates it. He discovers previously unreported passages and chambers in the Valley Temple of Giza. And he looks at the spread of megalithic stone circles, including our own Stonehenge, which spread from North Africa up the Atlantic coast, and makes a possible connection with the pyramids.

What I like about this book is that he has plainly done his research. He has tracked down 19th century excavation reports in obscure publications, checked them out and then posed awkward questions about possible fakes and why some important early discoveries are ignored. I think he’s right about the power of ‘consensual blindness,’ which fears rocking Nonfiction

the academic boat by allowing other academic disciplines to challenge its ideas. Fascinating and thought-provoking.

Elizabeth Hawksley SISTERS OF FORTUNE Jehanne Wake, Chatto & Windus, 2010, £25, hb, 394pp, 9780701173081 / Touchstone, Apr. 2011, $27.50, hb, 416pp, 9781451607611 Three rich and beautiful sisters from Maryland descend on Regency London, while sister Emily stays at home, marries and has children. The three are a sensation, in Paris and England, and ultimately marry into titled English families. All are interested in politics, and control their own fortunes with knowledge and flair.

Marianne, the eldest, already married, falls in love with the Duke of Wellington, and he with her, though she marries, as her second husband, Wellington’s older brother, Arthur Wellesley. The Duke is a good friend to all the sisters. English Society is more reluctant to embrace American republican ‘savages,’ particularly if they are Catholics, than they are when povertystricken dukes deliberately sought American heiresses.

Using a vast array of material, much in private archives, Wake’s book is a brilliant and very readable description of the sisters’ lives. She quotes extensively from the letters the sisters exchange with Emily and other family members in America, and from diaries, newspapers and journals. In both Maryland and England, they mix with senior politicians, and in England with royalty. To have distilled these many elements from such a mass of material and made it all so fascinating is a tour de force.

Marina Oliver HUNTING EVIL Guy Walters, Bantam, 2010, £7.99, pb, 578pp, 9780553819397 / Broadway, 2010, $26.99, hb, 528pp, 9780767928731 Guy Walters in Hunting Evil deals with the Nazi war criminals who escaped, and the hunt to bring them to account. Many of those who had been involved in the genocide programme were assisted in their flight from justice. They were provided with false documents by diverse people and organizations: an Argentinian dictator who wanted their expertise, German and Austrian Nazi sympathizers, and the Vatican.

Those involved in the official pursuit of the Nazis divided into factions; some wanted to bring the murderers to account, others to use them as spies against the Russians to prevent a third world war.

Eventually, the Nazis were stalked by self-appointed hunters, the most prominent being Simon Wiesenthal, although here there is doubt cast on his veracity.

Walters has written a powerful, horrific, and true story that makes for compulsive reading. The monstrosity of the crimes committed, the hunt to bring them to answer for their deeds, and the inadequacy of the war crimes investigation which allowed so many to escape without censure are graphically described. The depth of the author’s research is impressive, with over a hundred pages of notes and bibliography.

Gwen Sly MARY TUDOR: Princess, Bastard, Queen Anna Whitelock, Random House, 2010, $28.00, hb, 383pp, 9781400066094 / Bloomsbury, 2010, £8.99, pb, 384pp, 9781408800782 Mary Tudor, known almost indelibly to history as “Bloody Mary” for her religious persecutions, has had the good fortune to be the subject of several intelligent studies lately, including this one. Her journey from pampered princess to rejected bastard to popular

queen to hated queen is a familiar one, but Whitelock makes it fresh. She also makes Mary’s story highly accessible for the general reader: her prose is readable and free of academic jargon, and her short chapters can be read at a sitting. Whitelock’s admiration for her subject’s courage and tenacity is palpable, though she does not gloss over the more unpleasant aspects of Mary’s reign.

My one complaint is that I would have liked some more analysis. I thought too little attention was given to Mary’s motivations for her religious persecutions and too little time was spent discussing her posthumous reputation. Nonetheless, this is a solid biography that will have a permanent place on my reference shelf.

Susan Higginbotham THE FIGHTING TEMERAIRE: The Battle of Trafalgar and the Ship that Inspired J. M. W. Turner’s Most Beloved Painting Sam Willis, Pegasus, 2010, $28.95, hb, 416pp, 9781605981246 / Quercus, 2010, £14.99, pb, 416pp, 9781849162616 Sam Willis is no stranger to the world of the wooden walls of England and the Jack Tars who manned them. He effectively brings his passion for sailing ships to the fore in narrating the life and times of two Royal Navy warships christened H.M.S. Temeraire — the first a vessel captured from the French in the Seven Years’ War, and the more famous 98-gun ship of the line that played a critical role at Trafalgar in destroying Napoleon’s hopes of invading England. Temeraire’s saga is not simply the story of two ships, but is the analysis of the role the Royal Navy played in British life and memory as well as a listing of the extraordinary difficulties naval service in the age of Fighting Sail represented. Willis’s epilogue “On Iconic Warships” deserves mention as a fine piece of writing. Turner’s sadly touching of Temeraire’s final moments reminds us of the passing of an era that remains so popular with readers of historical fiction.

John R. Vallely EUROPE’S TRAGEDY: A New History of the Thirty Years’ War Peter H. Wilson, Penguin, 2010, £14.99, pb, 997pp, 9780141006147 / Belknap, 2010, $35.00, hb, 1040pp, 9780674036345 The Thirty Years’ War ravaged Europe from 1618 to 1648, splitting the Holy Roman Empire into opposing confessional camps and drawing almost every major power into conflict. With Europe’s Tragedy, the first major English-language history of the war for seventy years, Peter H. Wilson has produced a magisterial work that eloquently covers the causes, the main events and the consequences of this conflagration, perhaps the most terrible period in European history between the Black Death and the Second World War. Wilson shows there was nothing inevitable about the war that broke out in 1618, and argues that there were many opportunities for peace throughout the period. The longer the war continued, however, the harder it became to stop, with none of the numerous participants able to muster enough strength to force a conclusion, leading to atrocities like the sack of Magdeburg and to a loss of life from plague and famine on an unimaginable scale.

The quality and plenitude of maps and illustrations are a great aid in following the often highly complex narrative. While at nearly 1,000 pages this book is a significant investment of time, it is one that repays that investment tenfold. Recommended.

Gordon O’Sullivan HNR Issue 54, November 2010 | Reviews | 77

© 2010, The Historical Novel Society ISSN: 1471-7492 | Issue 54, November 2010