Historical Novels Review, Issue 61 (August 2012)

A PUBLICATION OF THE HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY

HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW incorporating SOLANDER

ISSUE 61, AUGUST 2012

The Olympics An Elusive Event in Historical Fiction

to horse! horses & riding in hf lace, love & contraband iris anthony’s the ruins of lace judging the walter scott prize professor louise richardson the march of the legions an interview with nick brown & anthony riches smoke & mirrors clare clark on making fiction out of fact original eastenders jean fullerton’s novels ALSO IN THIS ISSUE editor’s message | historical fiction market news | history & film | new voices

Historical Novels R eview

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Jessica Brockmole 14413 Worthington Drive Granger, IN 46530 USA <jabrockmole@hotmail.com>

ISSN: 1471-7492 | © 2012 The Historical Novel Society

pub lis h er

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

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edit o r ial boa r d

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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 Coordinator: Lucinda Byatt 13 Park Road Edinburgh, EH6 4LE UK <mail@lucindabyatt.com>

review s edit o r s , u k

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Publisher Coverage: Amazon Publishing, Hachette Book Group, Hyperion, W.W. Norton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Kate Atherton 92 Wilsdon Way Kidlington, Oxfordshire OX5 1TX UK <kate.atherton@googlemail.com>

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

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

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; and Tor/Forge

Tamela McCann 5265 Village Terrace Nashville, TN 37211 USA <jjmmccann@aol.com>

Publisher Coverage: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Simon & Schuster, including children’s divisions of both

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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Publisher Coverage: Birlinn/Polygon; Bloomsbury; Constable & Robinson; Faber & Faber; The History Press; Macmillan (inc. Pan, Picador, Sidgwick & Jackson); Penguin (inc. Allen Lane, Hamish Hamilton, Michael Joseph, Viking); Short Books; Snowbooks; and Transworld (inc. Bantam Press, Black Swan, Corgi, Doubleday)

The Society organizes annual conferences in the UK and biennial conferences in the US. Contact Richard Lee (UK) or Ann Chamberlin <annchamberlin@annchamberlin.com> (USA).

Alan Fisk Flat 25, Lancaster Court, Lancaster Avenue London SE27 9HU UK <alanfisk@yahoo.com>

Membership in the Historical Novel Society entitles members to all the year’s publications: four issues of Historical Novels Review, as well as exclusive membership benefits through the Society website. Back issues of Society magazines are also available. For current rates, contact:

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

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

Lois Bennett 19, The Grange, Banbridge County Down BT32 3HW UK <lois@loisbennett.co.uk>

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

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Publisher Coverage: Arcadia; Atlantic Books; 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)

Rachel Summerson <sumquodsum@btinternet.com>

Publisher Coverage: All UK children’s historicals

e d i tori a l pol i cy

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Georgine Olson 400 Dark Star Court Fairbanks, AK 99709 USA <georgine@mosquitonet.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 Historical Novels Review.

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copy ri g h t

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

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

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

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Historical Novels R eview I s s u e 6 1 , A u g us t 2012 | I SSN 1471-7492

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ed itor ia l r ich a rd le e

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

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n ew voic e s p r of ile s of debut his torical f iction authors m o o n y e e n bla ke y , j am es hawkin g , reg in a o’m elve ny & je a n zimm erm an | m y f anw y co o k

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histor y & film s t r a n g e in fa c t bu t true in law: g a r ro w’s la w | be than y latham

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8 THE OLY MPI CS I N H F an elus ive event | b y ken k reckel

10 to ho rse! h or se s a nd r idin g in the his torical n ovel | by dun ca n no bl e 12

lace, love & contra ba nd ir is anth ony ’s th e ruins of lace | by elizabeth co l e

13 j udg in g the walter s cott pri z e louise r ic hards on s hares | b y lucin da bya tt 14 the march of the l egi o ns an inter view with n ick brow n & a nthon y riches | b y edward ja mes 15 s moke & mi rro rs clare clark on makin g f icti o n out of f act | by karen how l ett 16 the orig in al eas tenders t he nove ls of jean f ullteron | by my f anw y co o k | reviews |

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

THE SOCIETY ONLINE

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n this issue I specifically want to invite all of you who only look at the print magazines to look online. First, please look at the re-launched website (www.historicalnovelsociety.org). There are already new feature articles, guides and interviews that will never appear in the HNR – our take on the Walter Scott prize, for example, Diana Gabaldon and Margaret George on historic sites, Philippa Gregory on the challenges of writing for young adults, Lindsey Davis on the Society of Authors and on ‘testosterone Rome’ – all interactive, so you can add your comments.

We are posting ALL our reviews there – already 3500, searchable by author, title, genre, century, keyword etc. We are now also inviting reviews of ‘classic’ historical fiction to add to the brew. Members can log in and add themselves to our member directory (so far 320 out of 940 have done so) – and via the Directory you can connect with other authors and enthusiasts on Twitter, Facebook and Goodreads. We also have a distinct Facebook page, a Facebook group (1100 so far – open to non-members of the Society), a Twitter account, a daily web newspaper, a twice monthly email newsletter and even our own YouTube channel – where we hope to post Skype interviews and talks from our conferences and chapter meetings. In other words, a lot of our energy and dynamism is now online, freeto-view, and I would like ‘print only’ members to be aware of this community, and to know that you are very welcome to join in with this side of the Society whenever you wish.

If you encounter any problems – how to log in, how to join Facebook: really, any of it – please email me (richard@historicalnovelsociety.org) and I’ ll take you through it.

Finally, please remember the big dates looming at the end of September: on 29th and 30th September we have our London conference. At time of press there are still places available, though some talks and the banquet are already at capacity. 30th September is also the deadline for our HNS International Award £5,000 ($8,000 USD) for an unpublished novel. More details, as with everything, are online.

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HNR The

RICHARD LEE subverted a promising academic career by choosing to write a thesis about John Buchan when given a research bursary at Merton College, Oxford. Since then, he has spent many years as a bookseller, founded the HNS, and has established a successful property business near his home in Devon.

HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | 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.

HNS updates The HNR is seeing US and Canadian book reviewers.

Please send a statement of interest and sample book review to sljohnson2@eiu.edu if you’d like to join the reviewer team.

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

HNR reviews editor Jessica Brockmole sold There You Are, an epistolary love story spanning two world wars, which begins when an American college student sends a fan letter to a reclusive Scottish poet, striking up a correspondence that will change them both forever, to Jennifer Smith at Ballantine, via Courtney Miller-Callihan at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates, for Summer 2013 or Spring 2014 publication.

World rights to Hild by Nicola Griffith, past winner of the Nebula, Tiptree, World Fantasy, and Lambda Literary Awards, went to Sean McDonald of Farrar Straus & Giroux via Stephanie Cabot of The Gernert Company. Hild is literary biographical fiction about the woman who would become Saint Hilda of Whitby: counselor to kings, teacher of Bishops, leader of the folk, and a pivotal figure in the spread of Christianity.

Bruce Macbain’s Roman Games (Poisoned Pen Press, 2010), in which Pliny the Younger investigates the murder of a senatorial informer and stumbles on a plot to assassinate emperor Domitian, has been picked up for British distribution

by Head of Zeus publishers.

Lorissa Sengara, fiction editor at HarperCollins Canada, has acquired Gina Buonaguro and Janice Kirk’s The Wolves of St. Peter’s, a historical murder mystery set in Renaissance Rome, first in a trilogy, via John Pearce of Westwood Creative Artists.

Australian writer Hannah Kent’s debut Burial Rites, exploring the real-life case of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last woman to be publicly beheaded for murder in Iceland in 1830, sold to Judy Clain at Little, Brown, reportedly for a 7-figure sum, in a two-book deal, by Daniel Lazar at Writers House on behalf of Pippa Masson and Annabel Blay at Curtis Brown Australia. UK rights to Picador; Australian rights to Picador/ Pan Macmillan.

Sebastian Faulks’ Possible Life, about love, separations and missed opportunities across two centuries, including a 19thcentury French country servant girl, a World War II British soldier, and a 1970s American female singer-songwriter legend, sold to Steve Rubin and Barbara Jones at Holt, for publication beginning in fall 2012, by Andrew Kidd at Aitken Alexander.

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Ben Kane’s The Eagles of Rome and The Lost Eagles, a twovolume saga about Varus’ campaign to conquer Germany during the reign of Tiberius; and Crecy, about the Black Prince’s campaigns against France in the 14th century, sold to Rosie de Courcy at Preface for publication in 2014-2017, by Charlie Viney at The Viney Agency.

Sharon Biggs Waller’s YA historical A Mad, Wicked Folly, about an upper-class girl in Edwardian London who pursues her passion for art and for an attractive police constable, sold to Leila Sales at Viking Children’s, for publication in Winter 2014,

by John Cusick at Scott Treimel NY. Orders from Berlin by Simon Tolkien, a thriller set in September 1940 as bombs rain on London and the country braces for invasion, sold to Peter Wolverton at Thomas Dunne Books by Marly Rusoff at Marly Rusoff & Associates.

Farley Chase sold world English rights to Tim Brady’s A Death in San Pietro, in which the lives of journalist Ernie Pyle, filmmaker John Huston, and Capt. Henry Waskow converge in a small Italian town in 1943, to Robert Pigeon at Da Capo.

James Scott’s gothic debut The Kept, about a midwife at the turn of the 20th century who returns to her isolated farmstead to find her family murdered, and sets out with her one remaining son to seek retribution, sold to Barry Harbaugh at Harper, at auction, by PJ Mark at Janklow & Nesbit. UK rights to Sarah Norman at Hutchinson; Canadian rights to Iris Tupholme at Harper Canada.

Tessa Byrd’s Z, the story of Zelda Fitzgerald, wife and muse to F Scott, dealing with glamour and heartbreak in Jazz Age New York and Paris, sold to Lisa Highton at Two Roads (UK) and Hope Dellon at St. Martin’s (US), for publication in Spring 2013, by Jenny Meyer on behalf of Wendy Sherman.

Catherine Cobain of Transworld has picked up UK/ Commonwealth rights to Kathleen Grissom’s bestselling debut The Kitchen House, a US bestseller (HNR May ’10) about a white indentured servant on a tobacco plantation in late 18thcentury Virginia, for March 2013 publication.

Editorial director Francesca Main at Picador has acquired UK/Commonwealth rights to Naomi Wood’s second novel, Mrs Hemingway, about each of Ernest Hemingway’s four wives, via Cathryn Summerhayes at WME. Terry Goodman of Amazon Publishing acquired Helen Bryan’s The Sisterhood, which connects an unlikely present-day heroine to the events of the Spanish Inquisition, via Jane Dystel of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management.

Shona Patel’s Teatime for the Firefly, the story of a beautiful, reclusive teenage girl growing up in 1940s India, and her forbidden romance with a man amidst the sequestered world of colonial British tea plantations, sold to Susan Swinwood at Mira in a three-book deal, by April Eberhardt at April Eberhardt Literary.

Wolf Sword by David Gilman, the first in the 14th-century historical adventure series Master of War, about an epic journey through the violence and political intrigue of the 100 Years’ War, sold to Nic Cheetham at Head of Zeus, in a three-book

Robert Harris’ latest political thriller, D, based on the the Dreyfus Affair of late 19th-century France, sold to Susan Sandon at Cornerstone, with Jocasta Hamilton editing for Hutchinson, for publication in fall 2013, by Michael Carlisle at Inkwell Management.

Love and Lament by John Thompson, a family saga spanning the late 19th century through WWI, about a young North Carolina woman dealing with a diminished family, a mentally unstable father, a deaf and damaged brother, and a sweetheart off fighting in the Great War, sold to Judith Gurewich at Other Press by Ellen Levine at Trident Media Group.

In Darlene Beck-Jacobson’s The Carriage-Maker’s Daughter, children’s fiction set in the early 1900s in Washington, DC, a 12-year-old girl finds the strength to defend what she believes in when her comfortable way of life when threatened by racist neighbors. It sold to Marissa Moss at Creston Books for publication in Fall 2014, by Liza Fleissig at Liza Royce Agency.

New and upcoming releases Jean Burnett’s debut The Bad Miss Bennet (Pegasus, Sept.

2012), chronicling the further adventures of Lydia Bennet from Pride & Prejudice, has been titled Who Needs Mr. Darcy? in the UK (Little Brown, Oct. 2012).

V.E. Ulett’s Captain Blackwell’s Prize, a romantic adventure from the days of wooden ships and iron men, has been released

by Fireship Press, LLC. Captain Blackwell’s Prize features swordfights and sea battles alongside the manners, ideas, and prejudices of men and women from the time of Nelson and Napoleon.

Parlor Games by Maryka Biaggio (Doubleday US, Jan. 2013) tells the story of May Dugas, a beautiful con artist whose turnof-the-20th-century escapades take her around the world.

Rosemary Sutcliff’s classic Arthurian epic Sword at Sunset will be reprinted by Atlantic Books (UK) in December 2012.

Live by Night, Dennis Lehane’s latest historical epic, looks at America’s Prohibition years (Harper US/Little Brown UK, Oct.) In The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton (Mantle UK/Atria US, Oct. 2012), an elderly actress looks back on a 1959 English summer of love and an unspeakable crime.

Bestselling historical novelist Tracy Chevalier takes on her first US setting with The Last Runaway (Dutton, Jan. 2013; Harper UK, Mar. 2013), set along the Underground Railroad in rural Ohio during slavery’s final days.

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For additional forthcoming titles, see: http://historicalnovelsociety. org/guides/forthcoming-historical-novels.

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deal, for publication beginning in 2013, by Isobel Dixon at Blake Friedmann.

Adam Sawyer’s (a pseudonymous professor of medieval studies) A Burnable Book, about betrayal, murder and “very real realpolitik in 14th-century London,” sold to Julia Wisdom of Harper UK and Rachel Kahan at William Morrow, for publication in 2014, by Helen Heller at the Helen Heller Agency.

Durham University Lecturer John Henry Clay’s debut The Lion and the Lamb, a sweeping novel of early Britain at the time of the Great Barbarian Conspiracy, pitched as Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Stories meets Melvyn Bragg’s Credo, sold to Nick Sayers at Hodder & Stoughton, in a two-book deal, for publication in June 2013, by James Gill at United Agents.

Freud’s unmarried sister-in-law, Minna Bernays, who lived with Freud and his sister for almost fifty years, is the subject of Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman’s Freud’s Mistress, which sold to Amy Einhorn at Amy Einhorn Books via Molly Friedrich at the Friedrich Agency.

Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, literary fiction in which a woman repeatedly lives through 20th-century events via parallel lives, sold to Doubleday UK for March 2013 publication.

David Downing’s Jack of Spies, a projected four-book series set during and immediately after WWI, featuring British secret agent Jack McColl and Irish-American journalist Caitlin Hanley, sold to Juliet Grames at Soho Press for publication in 2013 in a two-book deal, by Charlie Viney at The Viney Agency Falling to Earth by Kate Southwood, about how a family’s lives are changed when their town of Marah, Illinois, is destroyed by the worst tornado in US history, the historic Tri-State Tornado of 1925, sold to Kent Carroll at Europa Editions, by Richard Parks at the Richard Parks Agency.

Nancy Miller, editorial director at Bloomsbury, acquired world English rights to three-time National Book Award nominee Gail Godwin’s Flora via Moses Cardona at John Hawkins & Associates. Flora, slated for May 2013, is set near the end of WWII and centers on a summer love affair.

Rebecca DeMarino’s A Love of Her Own, inspirational fiction based on the author’s ancestors Mary and Barnabas Horton, an Anglican bride and her Puritan husband who settle on Long Island, sold, in a three-book deal, to Vicki Crumpton at Revell for 2014 publication by Barbara Scott at WordServe Literary.

Author of The Harrowing and Three Miles Robert Dinsdale’s Little Exiles, about one boy’s struggle to get home, based on the forced child migration between Britain and Australia that took place post-WWII, shining a light on the appalling human cost of the Children’s Crusade, sold to Louisa Joyner of Harper Fiction (UK) and Shona Martyn of Harper Australia.

Esther Friesner’s YA biographical novels Kestrel’s Princess and Kestrel’s Flight, about the teenage girl grew up to become the legendary Warrior Queen of medieval Ireland, sold to Suzy Capozzi at Random House Children’s for publication in 2014 and 2015, by Russell Galen at Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency.

SARAH JOHNSON, Book Review Editor of HNR, is a librarian, readers’ advisor, and author of reference books. She reviews for Booklist, CHOICE and Canada’s Globe and Mail and blogs about historical novels at readingthepast.com. Her latest book is Historical Fiction II: A Guide to the Genre.

HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Columns | 3

NEW VOICES Debut novelists Moonyeen Blakey, James Hawking, Regina O’Melveny and Jean Zimmerman provide insight into the inspiration for their novels.

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ascination with a place and period are important to all the novelists featured in this issue’s New Voices.

However, for Moonyeen Blakey, author of The Assassin’s Wife (Fireship Press, 2012) and Regina O’Melveny, author of The Book of Madness and Cures (Little, Brown & John Murray, 2012), their childhood experiences and backgrounds also played a part in inspiring their writing.

O’Melveny explains that when she is asked what inspired her to write the novel “… several answers come to mind. I wasn’t captivated by a particular historical figure, but rather by an earlier period that’s been part of me since childhood, namely the Renaissance that I experienced through my Roman mother, an oil painter who also created triptychs of the Madonna in egg tempera. She collected beautiful books on Renaissance art in her studio that I was drawn to peruse again and again. We traveled to Rome, where as a six-year-old from California, I first understood that a city could be layers of civilizations. Truly, I could walk upon the ancient strata that preceded me. Mythic memory emerged in the stones themselves, such as the temple stones dedicated to Minerva that later formed the foundation for a Romanesque, then Renaissance church to Santa Maria. So the fascination with history has always been with me. Personal and cultural history intertwined. The small cloth journal decorated with red roses, sent me by my Italian grandmother when I was ten, recalled her own interest in poetry, though her husband forbade her to write. I bear a legacy of women in my family thwarted in what might’ve been their chosen vocation, by a narrow-minded husband or father. I can’t help but imagine my grandmother, a free light soul now, looking over my shoulder and taking joy in the support I have from my husband in this different generation, in the support my daughter has from her father and husband.”

For Blakey it was a different family legacy and an obsession which, when combined with years of research, finally grew into The Assassin’s Wife. Blakey describes how: “Like my heroine, Nan, who is driven to follow her visions, ‘The Wars of the Roses’ 4 | Columns | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

haunted me from childhood. Walking to and from school, I entertained friends with lurid tales of bloody warfare, peopled with dangerous men and daring women. These characters became constant companions, whose exploits I lived in vivid detail inside my head!

“Clairvoyance runs in my family, but unlike Nan, who lives in fear of being denounced as a witch, I was never afraid to speak out. Although Nan remains determined to save the boys in the Tower who stalk her dreams, her gift attracts powerful, unscrupulous people. One of these is Anne Neville, Richard III’s queen. My fascination for strong women led me to believe the Kingmaker’s daughter may well have inherited her father’s manipulative spirit. Drama school allowed me to indulge a penchant for playing feisty heroines and scheming villainesses. I thought my destiny lay in the theatre, but months of unemployment sent me into libraries to explore that 15th-century turmoil which fuelled my imagination. These notes lay fallow once I became a teacher.

“A life-threatening illness proved the catalyst for unearthing my research. Sir Thomas More’s condemnation of Miles Forrest - one of those accused of murdering the ‘Princes in the Tower’- as ‘a fellow fleshed in murder before time’ provided the spark to create a passionate foil for my defiant heroine. At last she emerged from her ‘chrysalis’ and I embarked on writing a saga of intrigue and betrayal.”

Zimmerman took her fascination with Manhattan, the place that she has lived in, or near for the whole of her life and was excited to be able “to write about my own backyard, albeit 350 years ago.” However, she says: “…my first inspiration for The Orphanmaster (Penguin, 2012) came when I wrote a nonfiction work on the subject of colonial New Amsterdam. It was a period of discovery and excitement. Beaver was king – people became millionaires because hats made from beaver felt were in fashion. Colonists had arrived in America from Holland and were carving out new lives. Incredible dangers existed, from shipwrecks to Indian wars.

“Something that fascinated me was the status of women at the time, that independent, strong Dutch women were encouraged to engage in commerce. I wanted to place a she-merchant at the center of a novel. That it was a love story and a murder mystery followed in time.

“There is a 1660 street plan of Manhattan that shows every home, garden, street and warehouse in the town. I wanted to

Photo credit: Maud Reavill

Left to right: Jean Zimmerman, Regina O’Melveny, Moonyeen Blakey, and James Hawking

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MYFANWY COOK is intrigued by the creativity of debut novelists in unearthing settings, plots, and characters to captivate readers of historical fiction. If you have information about a debut novelist of interest to feature, please email (myfanwyc@btinternet.com) or tweet (twitter.com/MyfanwyCook).

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base a piece of fiction on New Amsterdam’s real streets and properties. The map, along with scads of information from the period, came from an amazing compendium called The Iconography of Manhattan Island. To understand this world, I immersed myself in colonial goings on, and some of the real events I learned about found their way into The Orphanmaster.

I absorbed everything I could find about the period’s foodstuffs and textiles and weapons. I was even inspired by recipes, like the one for marzipan in the shape of a hedgehog, which requires two pounds of almonds crushed by hand in a mortar and pestle.”

James Hawking is a retired professor of politics from Chicago State University, and he was the director of the American Library Association’s Coalition for Literacy. He has also been an active member of the Historical Novel Society since it was founded in 1997, a fan of the Chicago White Sox and an active member of the Society for American Baseball Research. This cocktail of interests may have played a part in the inspiration for Strikeout (Sunstone Press, 2012). Hawking shares that history has always appealed to him “…more for the interaction of characters than the abstract interplay of dynamic forces. This interest naturally led me to historical fiction, and I formed the habit of reading books in pairs: I, Claudius and Twelve Caesars; Dead Man

in Deptford and The Reckoning.

One day the TLS had a snippet about Richard Lee’s founding the Historical Novel Society. I joined immediately, becoming the first American member. I had an article in the first Solander, and for the last fifteen years I have contributed to virtually every Historical Novels Review.

“Historical fiction is a legitimate part of the narrative of history, and the Society has contributed to my understanding of what history and historical fiction could do for each other. As historical fiction grows increasingly respectful of accurate history, it becomes a more important vehicle for telling the stories of the otherwise silent, such as women and slaves.

“In the 1970s the works of Harold and Dorothy Seymour introduced me to the idea that serious historians could treat baseball as something more than a compendium of statistics or stories for boys’ magazines. Baseball’s labor history intrigued me, particularly the story of John Montgomery Ward and the first players’ union. The more I read about him and his wife, the more I imagined a story that encompassed baseball, theatre, world travel and labor unrest. To the historical figures, I added a spectator who attends every game and shares his opinions with the person in the next seat.”

HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Columns | 5

aHISTORY & FILMe STRANGE I N FACT, BUT TRUE IN LAW: GARROW ’S LAW

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admit to being a fan of the original Law & Order television series, a police procedural/legal drama which ran for 20 years (1990-2010) and resulted in several spin-offs as well as a deluge of related genre offerings. The popularity of this type of programming as well as the rabid interest in highprofile trials shows how compelling the workings of the legal system can be. An American citizen’s rights within this system are enumerated in black-letter law — we have the right to a trial by our peers, the right to an attorney, the right to fully defend ourselves in court by calling witnesses and presenting evidence, appealing to the jury. Prosecutors are trained legal agents paid by the State, acting for the People in the interests of justice; they bring indictments on the People’s behalf and attempt to convict malefactors. The burden of proof lies with these prosecutors — the defendant is innocent until proven guilty. These are all concepts which are taken for granted under our current system, one born out of English judicial tradition. And yet, these basic legal rights, which seem so logical, actually took centuries to develop. A fascinating look at certain aspects of their development can be found in the BBC series Garrow’s Law. Sir William Garrow is a real historical person, a man who in his later career was a prosecutor, Solicitor General and a member of Parliament. He is even credited by many with first introducing the phrase “innocent until proven guilty.” He began his career, however, as a 23-year-old barrister, practicing criminal defense law at the Old Bailey in the early 1780s. It is this part of his life that is featured in Garrow’s Law (2009-2012). Throughout four series encompassing 16 episodes, this dramatization of the British legal system during the Georgian period has Garrow at its center and a focus on the ground-breaking developments that were taking place in courtroom procedure at this time.

These developments would eventually evolve into the current British judicial system and the outgrowths it spawned — the legal systems of its colonial children.

The 1780s saw the true implementation of legal counsel, 6 | Columns | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

for both the prosecution and the defense, in England. Before this point, the prosecutor (i.e., the victim) and the accused functioned without the benefit of lawyers — the victim brought his/her case before a magistrate, who decided if it were valid to go before a jury in court, and the accused spoke for themselves.

Indeed, until the 1730s, those accused of grievous crimes (felonies such as rape, arson, robbery, et al.) were not allowed to have counsel, though the victim could hire a lawyer to present his/her case if he/she wished. The majority of cases, however, featured no lawyers at all: the victim and the accused confronted each other in court, arbitrated by a judge. The judge and the jury asked questions of those in the witness box. Once victims began adopting legal counsel to present their cases, the system tipped precipitously in favor of the prosecution.

Garrow’s Law illustrates how balance came to be achieved through the implementation of an adversarial system with barristers at its heart.

The opening of the series provides brief back-story: Garrow (Andrew Buchan) is a headstrong and brash young barrister, articled (i.e., apprenticed) to the pragmatic older attorney Mr. Southouse (Alun Armstrong).

Though in the U.S. there has traditionally been no distinction, in the British system, a barrister, as opposed to an attorney (or solicitor), pled in court but did not directly solicit clients. Instead, clients would hire an attorney (who, at this point in time, was not allowed to speak in court) and the attorney could then instruct (or retain, in American parlance) a barrister on his client’s behalf. Southouse gives Garrow his first instruction — the case of a young man falsely accused of robbery. This case showcases some of the fascinatingly foreign elements of the British legal system during the Georgian period. Defense counsel was extremely limited in what he could do to help the accused. Essentially, all Garrow is allowed is to give his client advice on specific points of law, and in the courtroom, to cross-examine witnesses. Though he is not specifically barred from it, Garrow raises eyebrows when he opts to visit his client in Newgate Prison, since only attorneys visited clients to gain information and/or conduct legal transactions with them. In the courtroom, Garrow is not permitted to directly address the jury in an opening statement, closing statement or at any point during the trial. He is reprimanded by the judge for even looking in the jury’s direction, a jury which will not leave the courtroom for its split-second deliberations and verdict.

Garrow is not allowed to speak to or introduce evidence, and

Another attempt at character development comes in the person of Garrow’s love interest, Lady Sarah Hill (Lyndsey Marshall), wife of an MP (Rupert Graves) who has been asked by her husband to observe at the Old Bailey. This character is based on a historical woman who, though not married to him, gave birth to a child by Sir Arthur Hill, and with whom Garrow had an unusual relationship; they would eventually marry. While Sir Arthur represents the old guard who resent and oppose Garrow’s attempts to mitigate the vengeance of the Bloody Code, Lady Sarah does not share her husband’s views.

She acts as Garrow’s foil and conscience, as well as his partner in the pursuit of justice. Garrow is concerned with truth, and the series also examines how this can sometimes be at odds with the unsavory characters he defends. His is not conventional Georgian morality, but Garrow has a conscience and an individualistic sense of right and wrong — he is not the slimy ambulance chaser willing to take any case for money. While he is ambitious, Garrow is unconcerned with making highlyplaced enemies, Lady Sarah’s husband amongst them. Through Sir Arthur, the flip side of the squalor of Newgate and the Old Bailey is shown — the quiet elegance of the aristocracy. This is illustrated in the interiors of his home as contrasted by the dark Old Bailey sets, but those searching for textile or architectural porn won’t find it in this series. There is enough attention given to historicity to keep viewers from being pulled out of the period, but this series is, first and foremost, a courtroom drama.

And speaking of historicity, perhaps the most interesting element of Garrow’s Law is that the cases which appear in the series are drawn directly from history. The historical Garrow figured in some of them; in others, the series places him in the middle of cases which were presented by other barristers. The cases themselves are sometimes modified in verdict and other elements, but parts of the dialogue are drawn directly from the proceedings of the Old Bailey. These proceedings for the years 1674-1913 have been digitized and are available online. For those who wish to learn more about this ground-breaking period in legal history, be sure to check them out: www.oldbaileyonline. org. Some of them are tragic, others humorous, and many, as Garrow likes to say, are cases “strange in fact, but true in law.”

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References: Beattie, John. (February 1991). Garrow for the Defense. History Today, 41(2): 49-53.

Pallis, Mark. (November 2010). Garrow’s Law Draws from Real-life Court Dramas. The Guardian. Accessed from: www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2010/nov/12/ garrows-law-court-dramas

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while he may call witnesses, they are not bound to appear. One of the things this series does remarkably well is to show how Garrow’s attitude before the bar helped develop the adversarial system, and the resistance there was to that development by the establishment. Before the Georgian period, since defense counsel was so limited, many barristers hardly bothered when it came to the types of antics one often sees in the modern courtroom; they saw themselves strictly as legal advisers, rather than as responsible for taking the initiative to save their clients.

It has been said of the historical Garrow that he “adopted a stance of aggressive advocacy of his clients’ rights, and he helped bring a new tone, a new intention to the defence of prisoners in the criminal courts” (Beattie, 1991). To do this, he used sarcasm and belligerence, as well as humor, in his cross-examinations, to both expose ulterior motives and engage the jury. Buchan aptly demonstrates the charisma and wit the historical Garrow must have possessed to approach his clients’ defense in this way. This gained the ire of Garrow’s contemporaries for ungentleman-like behavior, which is also touched on in the series. Garrow taunts Silvester (Aidan McArdle), his prosecutorial adversary, by telling Silvester he will learn the law isn’t a game for gentlemen.

Silvester rebuffs him with, “And you shall learn to become a gentleman or there will be no law for you.” Both are partially right: Garrow must temper his impatience and anger as it harms rather than serves him in the courtroom, but after losing several times to Garrow, Silvester realizes he, too, must adapt his methods. Garrow irritates judges as well, who, in order to preserve their own power in the courtroom, take out their bias against Garrow on his clients.

The series also illustrates the harshness of sentencing — prime examples are given of England’s “Bloody Code,” a legal system that prescribed the death penalty for over 200 offenses, many of them quite minor. It also highlights the rampant selfinterest that could drive the prosecution of crimes, unjustly divesting the accused of their lives. The first episode introduces a thief-taker, Forrester (Steven Waddington), who faces down Garrow in court. The successful conviction of a robber brought with it a statutory £40 reward. The unsurprising result, as this episode adeptly illustrates, is that corrupt thief-takers would frame unsuspecting “robbers,” pay for the prosecution, then split the reward with the “victim,” or keep it entirely. In the historical case upon which this episode is based, Garrow managed to get the accused convicted only of minor theft, a lesser crime which resulted in transportation. This may seem like a disappointing consolation prize until one takes into account that a conviction for robbery brought with it a sentence of death. Unlike the historical Garrow, the series Garrow loses, his client is convicted and immediately sentenced to hang. This is done in furtherance of character development — to show that Garrow has much to learn, and lives hang in the balance. His education comes through these failures as well as through interaction with his attorney, Mr. Southouse, who tempers Garrow’s hot-headedness with experience and stresses the importance of combining Garrow’s courtroom theatrics with facts and knowledge of the law.

BETHANY LATHAM is a professor, librarian, and Managing Editor of HNR. She has written a book, Elizabeth I in Film and Television (2011), and she also publishes in various scholarly and popular journals, as well as writing for EBSCO’s NoveList database. She also serves as Internet Editor and a regular reviewer for Reference Reviews.

HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Columns | 7

T he mere mention of the London Olympics conjures up a raft

of superlatives. Over 10,000 athletes will compete in hundreds of events covering 26 sports. Some 10 million tickets have been bought by nearly two million people. The 2012 Olympics includes venues across the whole of London. Besides the newly constructed Olympic Park, the sites include such venerable haunts as Wembley Stadium, Earl’s Court, and my personal favorite, Lord’s Cricket Ground. It has a budget of over nine billion pounds, but critics decry the cost could exceed seventeen or even twenty-four billion. Transport experts promise chaos. By any measure, the Games are a giant behemoth unleashed on London.

If you think all this inevitably carries over into the world of historical fiction, you would be wrong, very wrong. The truth is there is a dearth of fiction about the Olympics, any Olympics. If you add ‘historical’ to fiction, the list gets even smaller. Superlative turns to barely noticeable, the behemoth a mere puppy.

Although the number of historical novels set during the Olympics is unremarkable, one particular Games stands out — 1936 Berlin. It’s hardly surprising. The contrasts are fascinating: games dedicated to peace set in an increasingly warlike nation; athletes of all races competing in a country endeavoring to ‘purify’ its own population; a xenophobic government welcoming the world. These circumstances proved irresistible to the historical novelist.

One of the first of Philip Kerr’s outstanding Bernie Gunther series, March Violets (Penguin, 1990), is set at this time and place. [The title refers to latecomers to the Nazi ideology.] As the Nazis endeavor to hide their repression of the Jews, detective Gunther is on the trail of stolen diamonds. As usual, Bernie buys himself nothing but grief, this time earning a trip to Dachau for his efforts.

In much the same vein, A Game of Lies by Rebecca Cantrell (Forge, 2011) involves her main character in espionage and

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an elusive event

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T h e O ly m p i c s in Histo r ica l F iction

murder during the ’36 Olympics. Posing as travel reporter Adelheid Zinsli, Hannah is busy wrestling secrets from her SS lover. After her mentor dies in front of her, this very same lover threatens to become her undoing as she searches for the murderer.

David John’s Flight from Berlin (Harper, 2012) is another thriller set during the 1936 Games. It features an English reporter who meets a night club singer in Berlin, at a reception hosted by none other than Goebbels himself. The protagonists end up being drawn into the dangerous sphere of pre-war intelligence, a secret contest between the British Secret Intelligence Service and the Nazis, both of whom are after a mysterious dossier.

Jeffery Deaver’s Garden of Beasts (Simon & Schuster, 2004) also covers thrilling territory during the ‘36 games. New York mafia hitman Paul Schumann has been caught by the Feds, and they give him a choice: prison or one more job...this time for the good ol’ U.S. of A. Schumann must assassinate one of the Nazi higher ups, which lands him in Berlin in the middle of the Games, relentlessly pursued by a German homicide detective.

Perhaps the finest of these novels is Frank Deford’s Bliss Remembered (Overlook Press, 2010). Penned by a giant among sports writers, it is unique in that the story is told through the eyes of an Olympic hopeful, swimmer Sydney Stringfellow. Deford manages to convey much of the psyche of an athlete, while at the same time telling a bigger story. Like Cantrell, Deford’s Sydney gets involved with a man, but this one is far from a committed Nazi. What follows is a multi-layered, complex story with a surprising, but satisfying plot twist at its end.

In what has to be one of the strangest of historical novels about the Olympics, Harry Turtledove penned an alternate history in American Empire: The Victorious Opposition (the seventh novel in his Southern Victory series, Hodder & Stoughton, 2003).

by Ken Kreckel

One particular... Games stands out — 1936 Berlin. It’s hardly surprising. The contrasts are fascinating...These circumstances proved irresistible to the historical novelist.

8 | Features | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

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Within its pages we have the 1936 Games being held in the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. President Jake Featherston fails to ban black athletes from the Games, and then is mortified when a black Haitian takes a medal in a running event. Sound familiar?

Not all historical novels are set in the run up to World War II. However, in The Olympian - An American Triumph, by Craig T. Williams (iUniverse, 2010), race still figures strongly in the story. This is a fictionalized account of John Baxter Taylor’s life. Taylor (1882–1908) was a pioneering black athlete who overcame incredible odds to become the first African American Gold Medalist in Olympic Game history at the London Games in 1908.

Western author Don Coldsmith tackled race as well in The Long Journey Home (Forge, 2001). His antagonist is John Buffalo, a Lakota Sioux. Raised in the white man’s world, John realizes he has an enormous talent for running, and sets his sights on the Olympics. During his journey to the Games, he meets several celebrities, including Jesse Owens, the African-American gold medal winner snubbed by Hitler at the 1936 Olympics. There’re those Berlin games once again!

Kristen den Hartog, in Origin of Haloes (McClelland & Stewart, 2005), uses the four-year Olympic cycle as the frame on which to construct her tale of her aspiring gymnast Kay Clancy. Beginning in the 1960s, her slightly offbeat tale of lies and suffering spans the next three decades.

Several works focus on the ancient Games. In The Seven Wonders (St. Martin’s Press, 2012) Steven Saylor’s prequel to his Roma Sub Rosa series, eighteen-year-old Gordianus embarks on a journey to see the Seven Wonders of the World. Beginning in 92 bc, he takes in the Olympic Games as well.

Helena Schrader told a fictionalized account of a true story in The Olympic Charioteer (2005). Based on ancient sources, the tale tells of Antyllus of Tegea and his quest for Olympic glory after the death of his son.

Patrick Hatten offers Champion of the Dead (Hilliard & Harris, 2010), a mystery centering on the death of an Athenian boxer during the original Games. In much the same vein is Michael B. Edwards’ Murder at the Panionic Games (Academy Chicago Publishers, 2002).

Some four decades ago, Rosemary Sutcliff released A Crown of Wild Olive [originally titled The Truce of the Games, and published in the collection Heather, Oak, and Olive (Dutton, 1972)]. Primarily a children’s book, the work features two athletes from different ways of life who learn the meaning of friendship through competing against each other in the ancient Olympic Games.

In Hour of the Olympics (Random House, 1998), Mary Pope Osborne’s children’s book utilizes a Magic Tree House to allow two children to travel back to ancient Greece to view the Games.

However, there is a problem — no girls allowed!

A very different account can be found in Tom Holt’s Olympiad (Little Brown, 2000), a comic look at the first Olympic Games.

Filling in what has been lost about the first Olympic Games, which is most everything, Holt comes to the rescue by supplying an innovative and entertaining description.

There you have it, a short list of historical novels featuring the Olympic Games. As it is hardly exhaustive, I invite others to add their favorites. Certainly there are more out there.

However, even with additional titles, the list of historical novels set at the Games is likely to remain rather paltry. The question is raised: why? What is it about the Olympics that fiction writers, especially historical novelists, tend to shy away from? Are we such bookworms that athletics are beyond us?

Or do the Games simply speak for themselves, the human story of competition sufficient unto itself with no need for fictionalization?

KEN KRECKEL, a former features editor for the HNR, has contributed numerous articles to the magazine. One of his favorite memories is attending a formal dinner at the Lord’s Cricket Grounds.

HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Features | 9

To Horse!

horses and riding in the historical novel Most historical novels that include riding give nothing very

much in the way of what it feels like to be on a horse. Until the advent of the car, horses were the fastest available means of land transport, with a top speed over two miles (the maximum duration of any flat-out gallop) of thirty miles an hour and an average speed of no more than seven miles an hour. However, contrary to modern attitudes to animal welfare, horses were often regarded as expendable. Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, with all the cruelties it describes, was a true-to-life plea for a more considerate attitude towards horses in the 19th century. This is yet another aspect of former ways of thinking that are unacceptable to a modern readership, and they represent a challenge for the writer who has to produce a character who is both sympathetic and yet of the period when it comes to the handling and treatment of horses.

One classic pitfall for the historical novelist is the length and speed of the rides described. Even considering that horses were occasionally ridden to death, a ride should not be beyond what any horse could manage. In Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda (Penguin Classics), Rassendyll’s epic fifty-mile ride from Strelsau to the hunting lodge at Zenda appears to have been taken at a constant gallop, but then Hope did admit that he had never actually ridden a horse. The ultimate long-distance ride was in 1920 when a Mongol courier, Tzeren, rode a relay of horses over the 1,740 miles from Ulias in Mongolia to Beijing in just 9 days, a total of 158 hours in the saddle at an average speed of 11 miles an hour. But he was a Mongol, riding Mongol horses, and he changed by jumping from one mount to the next without stopping. Only a fine athlete springs onto a horse. A young, reasonably weighted rider would regard 30 miles in 6 hours on a very fit horse to be a hard day’s riding. So let us not have incredible long journeys at unbelievable speeds.

Next comes the breed of horse your hero, or villain, should have. Medieval warhorses, destriers, were big stallions. But no

knight ever rode one except in battle. For transport he rode a lighter, more comfortable horse that was not continually looking for action, or a mare. Riding a mare in season in the company of even a gelding is quite exciting. Lack of attention to who is behind you could end up with you having a pair of steel-tipped hooves round your ears.

This is a matter of taste, but there is an unfortunate preference among dashing characters in novels for the English thoroughbred. This horse is certainly fast, on the short grass for which it was trained. However, it is not the safest mount on rough country, through heather or down steep hills. Most horses give you a split second’s notice that they are going to bolt. A thoroughbred gives you none at all, and it can take 500 yards to pull up from a flat gallop. A good cross-bred is much safer and not much slower.

What about the style of riding? In the Middle Ages, the rider, who had no heels on his shoes, sat back in the saddle with his legs out forwards and his toes down.

Ladies sat sideways in a man’s saddle with both legs on the same side and feet resting on a board. The horse was probably led in hand and the rider would have been insecure and uncomfortable. Side saddles were not invented till the 16th century, and the two leaping horns on the side saddle did not appear till the 1830s. The side saddle was invented because it was considered indelicate in upper class circles for a lady to open her legs so that one was on each side of the horse. Since the mid-20th century, riding side-saddle has been relegated to the pastime of a few enthusiasts. It is said to be much safer than riding astride but is harder on the human spine as the rider has not the same capacity to accommodate herself to the movement of the horse.

It is certainly more dangerous if the horse comes down, as the rider is not thrown clear and can end up crushed under half a ton of horse. A 19th-century lady would certainly have ridden side-saddle, although a poor tenant’s daughter would probably have scrambled barebacked onto a farm horse, though she would

by Duncan Noble

Most...historical novels that include riding give nothing very much in the way of what it feels like to be on a horse.

10 | Features | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

dressage horses are specifically bred for the sport and are not the cavalry chargers they were in 1912.

Show jumping in the early days was much more basic, with the jumps being lower, more natural and without the brightly coloured poles we have today.

Eventing at the Olympics started with endurance races of around 30 miles, and jumping and dressage tests of a lower standard than applied in the special events for those disciplines. The road ride section was gradually reduced in length until it was abolished at the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

The 1948 London Olympics were important for British riding, for through them dressage and show jumping, which had been regarded as foreign, came to be seen as interesting activities. While American Western riding, which is based on Spanish riding, is a style designed for herding and roping cattle from horseback, the English style of riding has its origins in fox hunting, which involves a lot of short fast gallops over rough farmland and ploughed fields, and jumping of fences and hedges three or more feet in height. On the Continent, on the contrary, half a metre (20 inches) was regarded in the 19th century as a large enough fence for even a cavalryman to attempt to jump.

But the harsh continental winters encouraged dressage in an indoor school as a suitable winter equestrian pursuit. If your historical novel is set in Britain or on the continent between the 18th century and 1945, your characters, unless they are enlightened 18th-century gentlemen skilled in dressage, will ride with the cavalry method, or something like it.

Historical novels with realistic accounts of riding include MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman at the Charge (1973) and, in complete contrast, Rosalind Belben’s Our Horses in Egypt (2007), but readers will no doubt have their own favourites.

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not have used it as a regular means of transport.

As late as the mid-20th century there was a saying in England that ‘There is a key to every horse’s mouth’: a mettlesome horse could be controlled by its bit and these were often severe and cruel. After WW2, this approach was replaced by reliance on gentle but thorough training through the introduction of continental dressage (a French term which roughly translates to “training”) into competitions. Classical dressage really started in France in 1733 with the methods of the horse trainer François Robichon de la Guérinière. In the 18th century it was the mark of a cultured gentleman that his academies, accomplishments, should include dressage.

La Guérinière’s method is based on balance and is very different from the old cavalry one which I first learned, as did everyone in Britain, in the 1960s. That was based on a scissor grip with the legs on the saddle, toes turned out, feet fully home in the stirrups, and the soles of the feet canted up to the outside, much more use of the reins, and a rougher approach to jumping, where one ‘lifted’ the horse over the jump, and leaned well back on landing, if necessary flinging one arm back up behind oneself as one ‘called a cab’ to balance oneself. I was taught this antique method by a tough guy who had been a sergeant-major in a cavalry charge in Syria in the Second World War. It does not have the sophistication of the classical method and is harder on the horse, but if things go badly wrong one does not fall off so readily — particularly if one takes a swipe with a sabre at someone and misses!

In the 20th century, as the automobile replaced the horse as the most convenient means of transport, horse riding became a sport. Dressage went from a continental European training activity to be a competitive sport. To this was added show jumping over artificial jumps in an enclosed arena and eventing, which combined dressage, show jumping and cross-country riding with jumps. When the first modern Olympic Games were held in 1896, there were no equestrian events in today’s sense.

These first appeared at the 1912 Games, although in that year there was a polo match and a mounted high-jump competition.

At the urging of Count Clarence von Rosen, Master of the Horse to the King of Sweden, eight countries entered horses for equestrian events in the Stockholm 1912 Games. There the events included jumping and an obedience test that involved riding the horses near frightening objects. Polo survived until the 1936 Games. Up to 1936, only commissioned officers of the competing countries’ armies were allowed to compete, and it was not till 1952 that a woman, Marjorie B. Hayes of the United States, was allowed to compete.

The three classes of equestrian events, dressage, show jumping and eventing, were very elementary by modern standards before the late 20th century, but with successive Games they became progressively more difficult. The requirements for the dressage changed dramatically after 1912, when the exercises featured small circles at a slow trot, although counter canter and flying changes were included. The jumping section was deleted in the 1920s and canter pirouette, piaffe and passage appeared in 1936. Half-pass and renvers were included in 1948. Nowadays

DUNCAN NOBLE is a writer who is passionately fond of horses, has ridden over a hundred, and shared his life and risked his neck with a good half dozen. He has now given up dangerous things and has a share in a patent safety heavy cob which he rides on the Welsh moors and is training for classical dressage.

HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Features | 11

Lace, Love & Contraband Iris Anthony discusses The Ruins of Lace

E C: What fascinates you about the forbidden lace trade in the 17

th

century?

IA: It was the whole idea of connecting the word ‘lace’ and the word ‘smuggling’. In our modern era, we forbid quite a few things from import: drugs, weapons, snakes, even sausages…but lace?

It seems so innocuous. And that’s where my fascination first started. What was it about lace that made people go to such great lengths to possess it? And what made kings so eager to control it?

EC: Why did King Louis XIII of France ban the lace trade? Was it simply a matter of economics?

IA: Louis XIII issued at least seven different sumptuary edicts which restricted or prohibited the wearing of lace. The reasons were several. Large amounts of money were being lost across the border in Flanders and in Italy at a time when the King desperately needed money to fill his treasury due to expenses from wars and other pet projects.

Another reason is more difficult for the modern mind to understand. Europeans had a great need at that time to keep everyone in their place. Most of the sumptuary edicts were very explicit about who could wear what. These edicts seem like quibbling to us, but they were an important tool for social control. Finally, the King himself was quite ascetic and didn’t approve of conspicuous consumption. Obviously, many of those at court did since he kept issuing sumptuary edicts!

EC: Have you ever made lace yourself? If so did it inspire you to write your novel?

IA: I have made lace! Although I’ve never learned how to make bobbin lace, my grandmother tried to teach me how to make tatted lace one summer. Unfortunately, that was not the year I actually learned how to do it. There’s a particular twist of the wrist that’s needed to tat; it took several more years and an infinite amount of patience on my grandmother’s part for me to acquire that knack.

EC: How did you research your novel?

IA: The first mention I found of lace smuggling was in a Frenchlanguage article I ran across while researching costuming for a different book. The idea of smuggling lace was so intriguing that even though the information didn’t fit my era, I kept it. When I determined to write the story, I used both English and French language sources. The Victorians had a fascination with lace and lace-making as well as a fascination with history, so many of the details about how lace was actually smuggled came from texts and articles written during the 19th century.

EC: What’s your fascination with Flemish lace in particular — was it the quality or the design?

IA: I love the way Flemish lace patterns are specific to a town or region and I am enchanted with the landscape of ancient Flanders. My real fascination with lace, however, and the spark that fired this story, was the use of dogs in smuggling lace. In one 15-year period over 40,000 dogs were killed as they tried to cross the border. That loss and that cruelty are staggering.

EC: What attracts you as a novelist to writing about 17th-century France?

IA: The 17th century saw the beginnings of the France that we recognize today.

The gorgeous French laces, tapestries, and textiles; the fabulous cuisine; the flowering of French literature, theatre, and the visual and decorative arts. But the 17th century also retained much of the savagery of earlier times. That juxtaposition of elegance with wanton cruelty, of elaborate court manners with abject poverty make that place at that time a historical novelist’s dream!

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For further details about The Ruins of Lace (Sourcebooks, 2012), please visit http://irisanthony.com.

Elizabeth Cole is intrigued by historical novels. She loves words and devises quizzes and sells them for charity. Her mother enjoyed learning lace making.

by Elizabeth Cole

In our modern era... we forbid quite a few things from import: drugs, weapons, snakes, even sausages...but lace?

12 | Features | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

Judging the Walter Scott Prize Professor Louise Richardson talks to Lucinda Byatt

t is not very usual for literary prizes to include academics on their Ijudging panels. Professor Louise Richardson, the Principal of St

Andrews University – now in its 600th year – is a leading political scientist, specialising in international security with an emphasis on terrorist movements. I asked her why she had joined the judging panel for this prestigious prize.

LR: I am a consumer of historical fiction. I read fiction to keep myself sane, it’s how I relax. I read a lot of historical fiction as a child and largely for this reason decided to read History at University. So, I accepted the invitation to serve as a judge because as I saw it as an excuse to make time to read fiction without feeling guilty about it.

LB: The books shortlisted for this Prize must be set (for the most part) “60 years hence”. Do you think that the current vogue for historical fiction can be partly attributed to the fact that readers appreciate its ability to shed light on the present?

LR: No, not really. I’m inclined to think it is driven more by curiosity about the past and a desire to learn about it while being entertained.

LB: Do you think that the Prize should also be extended to any historical fiction in English, including works in translation?

LR: In principle, of course, it would be fabulous to extend the prize to any historical fiction in English as great literature has always transcended national boundaries. As a practical manner, however, it might be difficult to manage. That said I expect this subject to engage the judging panel in the years to come.

LB: Sebastian Barry’s novel On Canaan’s Side was the prizewinner. Could you comment on the choice?

LR: I found Lilly Dunne’s voice to be completely authentic, compelling and deeply moving. She joins Colm Toibin’s Eilis Lacey as an incisive chronicler of the life of a young Irish immigrant girl.

The life of the first generation immigrant, especially in the US where the social network is not nearly as strong as in European

I accepted...

social democracies, is usually a very tough one. It’s more often subsequent generations who achieve the financial security to which their predecessors aspired.

LB: Do you object to the idea that historical fiction is sometimes included on course reading lists?

LR: I do worry about this. In my courses I always assign fiction and films as a way of trying to help my students understand the motives and worldview of terrorists and the societies that support them. For example, I assigned Camus’s Les Justes in the first week of my large undergraduate lecture course. While fiction can help with an understanding of broader themes, I worry that historical accuracy can get lost if fiction becomes a substitute for, rather than a supplement to, academic work.

One would hope that seeing the film Gandhi or Michael Collins or reading Andrew Miller’s novel Pure would cause a student to want to study the Irish or Indian Independence movements and the French Revolution. I would hate to think that having seen the film or read the book they would feel they didn’t need to.

LB: What is your favourite historical novel?

LR: It is very, very hard to choose a favourite historical novel but I do know that Sebastian Barry’s A Long Long Way would be up there among my handful of favourites. It movingly explores the whole question of identity in such a memorable way, and it gives a voice to a forgotten segment of Irish history, those ordinary people who remained loyal to England, and found themselves on the wrong side of history. The depiction of the horrors of the First World War and the survival of individual humanity in the midst of the massive humanitarian catastrophe haunted me for a long time afterwards.

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Further details about the books and authors can be found at www.bordersbookfestival.org The Historical Novel Society reviewed all the shortlisted books: http:// historicalnovelsociety.org/walter-scott-prize-what-is-literary-historical-fiction.

by Lucinda Byatt the invitation to serve as a judge because I saw it as an excuse to make time to read fiction without feeling guilty about it.

HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Features | 13

The M ar ch of the Legions an interview with Nick Brown & Anthony Riches

The camp fires of the Roman legions have long since died away, but they march on through historical fiction. In the last five years Historical Novels Review has covered over a dozen Roman ‘militaries’, all but two written from the Roman side.

Two of the latest authors in this genre are Anthony Riches and Nick Brown. Anthony is now well into his Empire series and Nick launched his Agent of Rome series last year. I asked if either had a military background.

AR: Not personally. Three generations of my family all served – a Boer War SNCO, an infantryman at Passchendaele and a tank crewman in Normandy. I was determined to be a Marine, but a stomach ulcer got in the way and then I found myself married with two kids. It’s impossible to come from that sort of family and not take an interest.

NB I’m not at all military, although I’ve always enjoyed Alistair Maclean and Tom Clancy.

takes charge of Alaurin [in The Siege] he uses diplomacy, organisation and wit to turn the fort around.

EJ: Do you find writing a series constricting?

AR: Publishers won’t take you for HF without a series. I originally envisaged 15 books – now it’s more likely 25. I’m writing Book 6 right now and the series is contracted to Book 9. The period 180-211 is crammed with battles, fantastic for a writer of HF. I’ll be writing Empire for the next ten years, if the readers keep buying the books.

NB: It’s far from constricting – quite the opposite. There are endless story opportunities.

Book 2, The Imperial Banner, is out in June. It’s more focussed on espionage and introduces a major new character. I’m working on Book 3 and have tons of new ideas.

EJ: How did you first get published?

AR: Having sat on the script for ten years I rewrote it one more time and sent it to six agents.

The last to reply picked it up and the last of six publishers went for it. It was very much the last throw of the dice. It’s a lottery, so keep buying the tickets by writing and submitting. Don’t stop!

NB: Over a couple of years I sent off lots of letters to agents and eventually got lucky. My agent then secured a deal from Hodder & Stoughton. It’s vital to research your subject as widely as possible. You might use only a fraction, but the gems you unearth will be invaluable.

EJ: What brought you to write about the Roman army?

AR: It wasn’t a conscious decision. I went to Hadrian’s Wall and the idea just came to me. The Wall had to be the Roman army’s equivalent of the Eastern Front, and it flowed from there. I carry no more of a candle for the Romans than for any other all-conquering civilisation.

NB: I’ve been writing since university, initially film scripts – but always with HF in mind. It was C J Sansom’s Dissolution that really inspired me – not that it has much in common with what I do now.

EJ: Tell me about your heroes.

AR: Marcus is based on a true story I found when looking for a period of Roman history that worked for me. Why Marcus? He needed a privileged but tough upbringing to be a centurion without serving ten years in the ranks and his quest to find his father’s killers provided plenty of variety for a series.

NB: I wanted a more cerebral type of hero – I may have had Lt Chard (the engineer officer in Zulu) in mind. When Cassius

I went...

Clearly the stamina and discipline of Roman legionaries serves HF authors equally well. Both these authors are in for the long march, although I’m sure that their stories will never plod.

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Nick Brown and Anthony Riches have a wealth of information on their websites at www.anthonyriches.com and www.nickbrownauthor.com.

Edward James is a HNR review editor. He has had a varied career as a university lecturer, official of the European Commission in Brussels and government consultant. He has also written three books, none of them historical fiction.

by Edward James to Hadrian’s Wall and the idea just came to me. The Wall had to be the Roman army’s equivalent of the Eastern Front, and it flowed from there.

14 | Features | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

Smoke & Mirrors

Clare Clark on making fiction out of fact Clark’s new novel Beautiful Lies is a book rich in texture.

Clare Beginning in London in Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee year of 1887 – a time of celebration but also of civil unrest, of high unemployment and poverty, strikes, riots and bomb plots – its events take place during a period of political upheaval and social change, but at its heart is a compelling story about an unusual and fascinating woman.

Maribel Campbell Lowe is the wife of a maverick politician and landowner. She is a complex character, beautiful, outspoken, determined, but she has a past and secrets which she cannot afford to have revealed for the damage that would inevitably do to her own reputation and to her husband’s career. A skilled amateur photographer, Maribel is moved to make her mark on the world, using her camera to present a true picture of subjects both personal and public.

But as her acquaintance with the ruthless newspaper editor Alfred Webster becomes ever more complicated and dangerous, the line between truth and lies is blurred and what appears to be fact may yet be illusion or even fabrication.

Choosing to set the book in late 1880s London meant Clare had a wealth of material to draw on; from spiritualism to the rise of the tabloid press, the position of women in society, the Aesthetic movement and Oscar Wilde to William Morris and, almost at the other extreme, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West – the huge and ambitious show which was then taking London by storm – all play their part in Maribel’s and her husband Edward’s story. I asked Clare about managing context and content in both background and foreground, something she has done to great effect in what is a satisfyingly lengthy and beautifully detailed narrative.

“It sounds absurd in a book that is 500 pages long, but there was heaps I had to leave out. You probably only get to put about 5% of what you know into a novel, otherwise it would quickly become unbearably dense and unwieldy. As a novelist, you are telling a story, and it is the drive of the story that must prevail,

As a novelist...

the development of characters rather than the sharing of facts, that draws readers in and makes them want to turn the pages.

What I have tried to do in Beautiful Lies is to take what was happening in 1887 and see how it affected the lives of a very few people in a very specific way.”

The novel’s central character, the exotic, chain-smoking Maribel Campbell Lowe, is inspired by a real person, Gabriela Cunninghame Graham, the wife of a Radical Liberal MP. This colourful personality must have been a gift to a novelist, but did Clare have to tone her down in any way to make Maribel a more believable or sympathetic fictional heroine?

“I took some of the facts of Gabriela’s life, mostly the more fantastic ones that might have seemed unlikely if I had made them up! After that, I allowed myself to create my own person. Maribel is therefore an entirely imaginary character, who rapidly became, in my mind, at least as real as anyone I know in my own life; she is very much a product of her time, and is, I hope, both sympathetic and credible.”

Maribel is so vivid and has such presence in the book that I wondered whether Clare had any plans to bring her back in a future novel.

“I have never wanted to return to my characters, but Maribel remains very real to me – I still dream about her,” Clare tells me.

“The novel ends at an interesting time, at the beginning of a new phase of life for her. So perhaps I will go back and find out what happens next.”

In addition to Beautiful Lies, Clare Clark is the author of three highly acclaimed historical novels: The Great Stink and Savage Lands, both of which were longlisted for the Orange Prize, and The Nature of Monsters.

Karen Howlett writes about books for various periodicals and at www.cornflowerbooks.co.uk.

by Karen Howlett

you are telling a story, and it is the drive of the story that must prevail, the development of the characters rather than the sharing of facts, that draws readers in and makes them want to turn the pages.

HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Features | 15

The Original EastEnders Jean Fullerton discusses her novels set in London’s East End ean Fullerton was born within the sound of Bow Bells and still JJlives in the East End of London – not far from the Olympic Park. Her third novel, Perhaps Tomorrow, was shortlisted for the 2012 RNA Historical Romantic Novel.

MC: Have you ever thought about writing about the 20th century in London’s East End and including links to the 1908 or 1948 games?

JF: The book I’m writing at the moment starts on 5th July 1948, the day the NHS came into being, and includes many references to the 1948 Olympics. The problem any author has writing real events in as background is deciding how much detail to include. In books dealing with immediate post-war period, such as Austerity Britain

by David Kynaston, the 1948 Olympics are mentioned at some length in regard to their social significance to the moral of the country. However, if you investigate how ordinary people viewed them in the MassObservation Diaries you see a very different opinion. One entry gave a line to the King opening the event and five to the problem of getting the washing on the line between showers. Most people only talk about national events if they impact on them directly. If you don’t believe me, listen to people chatting over a coffee. I doubt you’ll hear them talking about the Euro crisis unless they’ve booked a holiday in Greece.

MC: Do you think that competitive sports like football played a part in the lives of the characters that you write about, or even your own ancestors?

JF: Absolutely! Up the Hammers! West Ham United football club was synonymous with Saturday afternoons from my earliest memory as all my family supported the team. I certainly feature the club in my next book, Call Nurse Millie. My character, Queen’s Nurse Millie Sullivan, is always dodging through the crowds of claret and blue to reach her patients. When I was a district nurse in Newham, there was many a Saturday afternoon in Upton Park when, trying to get to a patient, I found myself

crawling behind coaches streaming away from the ground, so I know exactly how she felt. As West Ham wasn’t founded until 1895 it was too early to be included in my Victorian books, but as it, and the amateur league it played in, grew out of the Thames Ironworks Foundry, I imagine my character in my earlier stories kicked a ball about in the work’s yard.

MC: Your characters are all faced with a series of challenges; which is your favourite one and why?

JF: Although in A Glimpse at Happiness (Orion, 2009) Josie O’Casey had to battle with the odious Ma Tugman, I think the biggest challenge faced by any of my character was to Mattie Maguire in Perhaps Tomorrow. She had to face down the management board of the Wapping & Stratford Railway Company to expose the corrupt and depraved Amos Stebbins.

It’s difficult to imagine today, but in 1847, when the story took place, women weren’t able to manage their financial affairs or sign a legal document without having a man to act as their man-of-business. Their inferior brains couldn’t cope with the complexities of accounts and finance it was thought!

MC: Do you think the changes made to the East End of London for the 2012 Olympics will inspire future generations of historical

fiction writers?

JF: Well, as I wrote a story based amongst the filth and danger of building of the Thames Tunnel, I don’t see why in 100 years from now someone won’t use the building of the Olympic Park and the 2012 Games as the setting for a rip-roaring tale of adventure.

Details and background for Jean Fullerton’s novels are at www.jeanfullerton.com

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Myfanwy Cook runs historical and creative writing workshops.

Her father’s ancestors all came from the East End of London and she still has ties with the area.

by Myfanwy Cook

Most people... only talk about national events if they impact on them directly. If you don’t believe me, listen to people chatting over a coffee.

16 | Features | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

Reviews Due to an ever-increasing number of books being reviewed and space constraints within HNR, some reviews are now published as online exclusives. To view these reviews and much more, please visit http://www. historicalnovelsociety.org.

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biblical

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HARVEST OF RUBIES Tessa Afshar, Moody, 2012, $14.99, pb, 371pp, 9780802405586 A generation after Esther made her own entry into the Persian court (couldn’t Esther be around somewhere as a grandmotherly role model?), Nehemiah’s niece, Sarah, becomes scribe to Artaxerxes’ wife, Damaspia. Just getting good at this, and solving a mystery for her mistress, she is given in marriage by the queen to a Persian nobleman with Jewish connections. The rest of the book is given over to our socially inept heroine trying to gain enough self-confidence to win her husband’s trust and the perfect faith-guided match.

Tessa Afshar is an Iranian-born convert to evangelical Christianity. I chose this book hoping to learn more about Persia; in this I was disappointed.

The author admits that most of our information concerning Achaemenid Persia comes from their enemies the Greeks. This is no excuse to use the Greek term for courtesan, hetaera, nor to give this character the Greek name for Athens’ most famous woman of that calling – unless something were made of her Greek origins. I liked the recipes at the end material that will be of use to book clubs – but not the heavy use of rice, which the author admits was probably an anachronism. Jewish life here is not believable, not well drawn, no yearning for the return to Jerusalem Nehemiah may be expected to lead in volumes to follow. And Zoroastrianism, which surely one could research, gets nothing. Was our author afraid to convert us to fire worship if she did so? Otherwise, the tropes of lesser romance novels used here sometimes border on the silly.

Ann Chamberlin GARDEN OF MADNESS Tracy L. Higley, Thomas Nelson, 2012, $9.99, pb, 382pp, 9781401686802 This book is billed as Christian and historical. It is neither. There is not a single Christian in it, and the historical anachronisms and flat-out blunders are so numerous that maintaining any kind of suspension of disbelief for more than a page is impossible.

Of course, the protagonist is a stereotypical Biblical — 1st Century

21st-century liberated young female who just happens to have her own home gym complete with mats, pulley cables, weights, and a bull effigy right out of a 1970s country-western bar so she could practice “bull-leaping”—a sport that disappeared a thousand years previously, and a thousand miles away, and about which the Babylonians would have known nothing.

Since I could not call this novel either Christian, Biblical, or historical, I ended up reading it as if it were a fantasy novel—and then I began to actually enjoy it. The plot was superb, with lots of palace intrigue and twists and turns. Some of the characters, such as Daniel, were very well drawn, and I thought that the portrayal of the daughter’s (protagonist) love for her ailing “father” (Nebuchadnezzar) was very touching and made me like her and cheer for her—cliché though she was.

However, even as a fantasy, there were too many internal contradictions that kept jolting me out of the zone. The configuration of the palace, and the gardens, periodically shape-shifted, depending upon the author’s whims. Bottom line, I would say that this novel is an excellent first (and very rough) draft, but it needs some serious editing and revisions before it is ready for publication. With a little love—and respect for the work at hand—it could morph from being a parody of itself to being a bestseller in the inspirational market.

Barry Webb THIS SCARLET CORD: The Love Story of Rahab Joan Wolf, Thomas Nelson, 2012, $15.99, pb, 320pp, 9781595548771 History is often controversial whether sacred or secular. This Scarlet Cord will generate debates as well. In this biblical novel, Wolf adheres closely to the history of what is gleaned from the Old Testament and research into ancient manuscripts written in Canaanite. She uses five paragraphs from the Book of Joshua to cleverly create a memorable and adventurous historical novel.

Rahab arrives in Jericho with her father.

Alluringly beautiful, she captures the eye of the degenerate old king, who lusts to make her his ritual bride during the pagan New Year festivities. Rahab, being female, has no rights and must acquiesce to the offensive king’s will. Sala, a young Israelite accompanied by his father, is a spy for Joshua’s army. He is in love with Rahab. Rahab is portrayed as a devoted daughter and self-determined heroine who embraces the One True God theory. With brave confidence while at high risk of death, she aids Sala and Joshua in their mission to destroy Jericho.

Readers will discover a beautiful love story and

learn about Rahab, a brave heroine who will inspire all.

Wisteria Leigh

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1st century

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ROME’S EXECUTIONER: Vespasian II Robert Fabbri, Corvus, 2012, £12.99, hb, 367pp, 9780857896766 Rome’s Executioner, set in AD 30, is the second novel in a saga narrating the rise of Vespasian in the Roman world. Vespasian, very much a pawn in politics at this point, is tasked with extracting a witness to wrongdoings linked to Sejanus (prefect of the Praetorian Guard and a threat to Emperor Tiberius). He must take the witness on a dangerous voyage from Thracia to Rome, not knowing who is friend or foe.

Fabbri balances politics and action to make the novel truly historical fiction, rather than simply adventure. The action is tense and gripping, and there are moments when the author convinces us that Vespasian’s life is in danger, even though we know that he will survive. Another thing he does well is to make the distinction between equestrian (middle class) and patrician (upper class) by having his characters use the class distinctions of modern English.

Vespasian comes across as a likeable character, but not as a hero. He is just a pawn to Lady Antonia, an evil character who relishes the deaths of political rivals, threatens Vespasian’s uncle, and kills her own daughter (this is not essential to the plot), all of which is justified by the Roman feeling of dignitas. However, the relationship between Vespasian and his brother, Sabinus, comes across as jovial banter rather than hatred as is intended.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment is that the novel fails to live up to the standards of the first book in the series.

Nonetheless, I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed the first book, and to anyone who has not read it, I recommend that they do so. Meanwhile I am looking forward to the third instalment of the saga.

Chris James DANGER IN THE WIND Jane Finnis, Poisoned Pen Press, 2011, $14.95/ C$18.95, pb, 328pp, 9781590588925 This fourth Aurelia Marcella mystery set in Roman Britain opens with a birthday invitation sent to the innkeeper sleuth from her cousin with an alarming postscript, “Please help, Aurelia.

There’s danger in the wind, and I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts.” A murdered soldier at the inn adds trouble. Her twin, Lucius, forbids her HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Reviews | 17

going to Isurium to assist, but the strong-willed Aurelia ignores him and soon goes into the heart of danger, bringing along, to her disgust, her brother’s naive sweetheart, Vitellia. With alarming speed, Aurelia’s hopes wither that the danger is a figment of her melodramatic cousin’s imagination.

Finnis has found an excellent, historically accurate context for her determined female heroine.

Close to her brother and in love with Quintus, both imperial investigators, Aurelia has the male connections to make her inquiries believable. Finnis provides the details to bring Roman Britain alive without slowing her engaging plot. She’s skilled at developing villains who combine endearing and despicable qualities to make solving the mystery a rich delight. She adds resonance by showing the growth of spoiled young ladies into likeable strong women.

Judith Starkston UNHOLY NIGHT Seth Grahame-Smith, Grand Central, 2012, $24.99, hb, 307pp, 9780446563093 Balthazar, a notorious thief and murderer, escapes Herod’s prison along with two other criminals disguised as “wise men.” In their attempt to hide from Herod’s troops they stumble into a lowly manger in Bethlehem, where they impose themselves upon a carpenter, his wife, and their newly born son. Then, when they learn that Herod’s troops are killing all of the babies in Bethlehem, Balthazar leads his motley group of now six people on a wild series of adventures and close escapes as they try to find their way to Egypt and safety. Joining Herod’s forces in chasing them are 10,000 Romans led by a young Pontius Pilate.

This is a technically well written, typofree, and engaging story. My only complaints are the numerous anachronisms and blatant historical errors, which often kicked me out of the “suspending of disbelief ” mode. The silliness of the Magus and his 10,000-year-old religion is also difficult to stomach, and yet, in spite of those drawbacks, I found myself continually drawn into the story wanting to find out what happened next.

The characterizations are well-drawn, and the author’s depiction of Herod is so delicious that it alone is worth the price of the book and the time spent reading it. A recommended read if one can overlook the above-mentioned negatives.

Barry Webb THE EIGHTH VEIL Frederick Ramsay, Poisoned Pen Press, 2012, $14.95, pb, 286pp, 9780967759050 A girl is drowned and her throat cut in the baths of Herod’s palace in 28 CE. Her killer fails to retrieve her pendant, his primary goal, when interrupted by an elderly watchman. So opens Ramsay’s mystery, but the delight lies in his “sleuth,” Chief Rabbi Gamaliel, who applies Talmudic reasoning to the racy circumstances, mired in political intrigue, royal scandal, and power grabs in Jerusalem.

Ramsay’s impressive accomplishment is that he 18 | Reviews | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

gives us a thrilling tale with complex history and rabbinic thought without for a minute weighing down his story or letting up on the pace. He lets you into the rabbinic mind so that you understand why, for example, a simple detail like why she was killed in two ways—drowning and slitting— leads the traditional thinking sleuth toward the killer. Readers will enjoy some familiar peripheral characters: for example, a country rabbi from Nazareth whose preaching has the Temple’s high priest whining in Gamaliel’s ear to put an end to the rabbi’s rabble- rousing. Jesus inadvertently plays a role, yet another “veil” Gamaliel has to lift to uncover the killer.

Judith Starkston THE DIVINING Barbara Wood, Turner, 2012, $26.95/C$29.95, hb, 373pp, 9781596528581 Barbara Wood’s newest historical, about a woman’s spiritual journey through the 1st-century Roman world, is a mixed effort. The segmented approach impedes the story’s flow, but she succeeds in illuminating a time in which Christianity hasn’t yet taken root and populates it with dynamic characters.

The Divining stands alone yet also works as the sequel to Soul Flame (1987), which followed a Roman healer named Selene. In 54 CE, Ulrika, Selene’s 19-year-old daughter, begins seeing mysterious visions that draw her away from Rome.

She joins a caravan to Germania, her father’s homeland, in hopes of saving his people from a Roman ambush and learning more about her heritage. She falls in love with the caravan’s leader, Galician trader Sebastianus Gallus, although their romance must wait until their separate missions are

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ROME: The Eagle of the Twelfth

over. As Ulrika travels on to Antioch and Babylon on her quest to control her gift, Sebastianus obtains orders from the despotic new emperor, Nero, to open diplomatic ties with distant China, a trip marked by deception.

Oddly for a novel about a journey, little time is spent on the road; one would expect travel to be more complicated and arduous than it is here. Despite the narrative’s jumpiness, though, it provides a nice panoramic view of the era. “Deities, Ulrika realized, were as diverse and various as the people who worshipped them,” Wood writes, which captures the book’s greatest strength. The cultures Ulrika encounters are fascinating, and her openness to spiritual discovery means the reader approaches their beliefs – some ancient and others newly born – in a similar way at first. Everyone Ulrika meets has a tale worth hearing, and her story creatively intertwines with that of the earliest Christian saints.

For those who share the author’s wide-ranging interest in women’s lives through history, Turner has also reissued sixteen titles from her backlist, all with gorgeous covers.

Sarah Johnson

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2nd century

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THE LEOPARD SWORD Anthony Riches, Hodder & Stoughton, 2012, £12.99, hb, 379pp, 9781444711820 Marcus Valerius Aquila returns in this the fourth of the Empire series. Continuing to use the pseudonym of Marcus Tribulus Corvus, centurion of the second Tungrian auxiliary cohort, he leads

E D I TORS’ C H OICE

M.C. Scott, Transworld, 2012, £14.99, hb, 400pp, 9780593065440 This is the story of Demalion of Macedon, who joins the Twelfth Legion. The story opens in AD 57 in Hyrcania, where the young man finds himself under the command of Pantera, Nero’s and spy, in a complicated and deadly game of Roman politics. At the successful completion of the plan, Demalion finds himself sent to the Twelfth Legion in Judea. Disaster strikes as the Legion is decimated in a campaign against Hebrew rebels and the Legion’s Eagle is captured. To regain his and the Legion’s honour, Demalion must team up with Pantera, travel to Jerusalem and rescue the Eagle – or die in the attempt.

The Eagle of the Twelfth is the latest in the Rome series by Manda Scott. The book brings alive not only the characters, but the harsh uncompromising life of the Legion which makes brothers of seemingly disparate individuals. This is a story of cowardice, stupidity, courage and the overriding importance of honour. Fast-paced and exciting, this is a book which is difficult to put down. Superb writing from an author at the peak of her game. Highly recommended.

Mike Ashworth 1st Century — 2nd Century

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E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

THE LAST CAESAR

Henry Venmore-Rowland, Bantam, 2012, £12.99, hb, 317pp, 9780593068256 This story of the uprising against the emperor Nero in AD 68 is in the form of a memoir by Aulus Caecina Severus. At the opening of the novel, Severus is the new quaestor of Hispania Baetica. His post is his reward for his pivotal role in the recent rout of the Britons. But from the off, Severus is not portrayed as a gilt-edged hero. He is content in relative obscurity, ‘milking his province’, but is candid in his memoir that he is never one to turn down an opportunity. So when the governor and ex-consul Galba approaches Severus to join a revolt against Nero, Severus agrees. Severus is tasked on two fronts: one to secure a political ally in Agricola, the other to serve as military adviser to Vindex in Gaul.

Venmore-Rowland portrays the complex politics underpinning the revolt very well. Through Severus, we experience the intrigue and scheming first-hand, with the ever-constant threat of execution should his plans fail. But it is the portrayal of Severus in the role of military man where the author excels. The training of ordinary Gauls to become a fighting force and the battle in which they are fatefully engaged are superbly done, as is further conflict in Germania. Venmore-Rowland has a particular skill in conveying the sounds of an army, and there are times when it seems to echo from the page.

Severus is supported by a large cast of secondary characters. Of these, it is the slave Totavalas that most intrigues, though his introduction was, disappointingly, quite late in the novel.

It is to be hoped that this novel is the first of many for this talented debut author.

Elaine Powell his men from Britain to the Tungrians’ original home in Germania Inferior. Here he finds himself engaged in a deadly battle of wits against a bandit chieftain called Obduro, whose identity is always hidden behind an iron cavalry helmet. What starts as a simple case of banditry swiftly escalates into a campaign which could destabilise the whole of the northern frontier of the Roman Empire.

This is a fast-paced, action-packed read.

Anthony Riches brings alive the harsh reality of the Roman world – the period, people, and culture – in a frenetic and exciting novel which is well researched and tinged with humour. The battle sequences are vivid and expertly told without being graphically violent. Difficult to put down, this is a welcome addition to the genre. This book can be read independently of the others in the series, as the back story quickly fills in the events of the previous novel (Fortress of Spears). Recommended.

Mike Ashworth

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7th century

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THE GHOSTS OF ATHENS Richard Blake, Hodder, 2012, £13.99, hb, 438pp, 9781444709704 Athens of 612 AD is a decadent and vulnerable city, threatened by starving barbarian tribes.

Richard Blake’s protagonist, Aelric, a senator of the Roman Empire of British origin, is ordered to divert his galley to the threatened city. He 7th Century — 9th Century

finds an explosive religious dispute underway, an unexplained corpse and the possibility of pagan ritual killing. The Ghosts of Athens is steeped in horror, mystery, intrigue and suspicion in a place that is a ghost of its glorious former self. Set in a little-explored period of history which Blake knows thoroughly, he crafts a suspenseful and fascinating historical thriller, in which it is difficult to discern who the villains really are.

Blake delivers believable historical characters.

Aelric is intelligent, wary and sympathetic. Priscus, his travelling companion, is a scheming and dissolute Roman general, as disgusting as Aelric is likeable. When youths bait a stray dog, Priscus calls softly, ‘Such wasted effort when there are people here just calling out to be massacred.’ Even so, Priscus is depicted in complex shades of grey.

As for the novel’s romantic interest, Euphemia; is she good or evil, innocent or villain?

Complex mysteries are resolved, and en route, there is a fearsome glimpse of the Barbarian camp outside Athens’s walls; a decaying residency which serves up poisonous dishes such as fetid river frogs and un-gutted stuffed dormice; a library that matches descriptions to be found of the library in Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose; and terrifying tunnels, caves and tombs.

The Ghosts of Athens is an intelligent and atmospheric historical fiction, well-researched and executed and an intriguing read. It is the fifth in a series.

Carol McGrath

BEHOLD A PALE HORSE Peter Tremayne, Minotaur, 2012, $25.99, hb, 384pp, 9781250014832 / Headline, 2012, £7.99, pb, 416pp, 9780755377480 What do we like best about a Peter Tremayne novel? The historical settings, the complex blend of mystery and adventure… or the characters?

How can we not love Sister Fidelma of Cashel as she wends her way through 7th-century Europe— seeking truth, narrowly escaping danger? It’s impossible to choose; the clever mix of history, mystery and appealingly realistic characters is a perfect concoction. Tremayne, in real life Celtic/ Irish scholar Peter Berresford Ellis, has discovered the magic of perfectly balancing rich historic details and clever plot.

In this installment, she is on her way home from Rome when she learns of the failing health of her old teacher, Brother Ruadan. Determined to visit him, she sidetracks to a remote abbey where he breathes his last words, thus inspiring her risky efforts to resolve a series of murders that may foreshadow a bloody war. The conspiracy she seeks to unravel forms the satisfying basis of the plot, but what readers will enjoy—have always enjoyed of these stories—is presented in the person of Fidelma herself, picking her way through a hostile world, her only weapons being her intelligence and a little self-defense training, courtesy of her monk friends. A great read!

Kathryn Johnson

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9th century

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THE KHALIFAH’S MIRROR Andrew Killeen, Dedalus, 2012, £9.99, pb, 308pp, 9781903517970 This is a sequel to The Father of Locks (HNR 48 , p.24).

Abu Nuwas the poet, also known as Father of Locks for the way he wears his hair, is about to meet his end for the crimes of treason and murder.

But as is the custom, the Khalifah grants him one last wish, expecting him to pick something that other prisoners would, such as a final meal or a tumble with a woman – or a man. But the Father of Locks asks instead that his friend, the storyteller Ismail, tell the Khalifah how he came to be in front of him begging for his life.

Intrigued, the ruler agrees, and what follows is a beautifully written blend of history and fable.

It’s all here: adventure, murder, mystery, sex, death, treachery, spying and assassins, set against a very exotic, ancient backdrop. Reading The Khalifah’s Mirror is like taking a trip to a foreign country you’ve never been to before, immersing yourself in sights and smells and sounds that are utterly outside the everyday that you know. An absolutely marvellous book.

Katy O’Dowd

HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Reviews | 19

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11th century

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CRUSADE Stewart Binns, Penguin, 2012, £6.99, pb, 520pp, 9780241957578 After the death of Harold in 1066, Edgar the Atheling is proclaimed king by his Saxon supporters. When the various rebellions are ruthlessly put down by William, Edgar seeks refuge with Malcolm Canmore, King of Scots. It is from this precarious position that Edgar and his few allies form a secret brotherhood, pledging to fight for justice and freedom wherever they are denied. Edgar finds himself increasingly involved in the murderous, internecine warfare which passed for Norman politics as events lead Edgar to Normandy, Sicily, England and Scotland. When the Pope declares a Crusade to free Jerusalem and the Holy Land, Edgar finds himself with Hereward of Bourne fighting alongside many of the men who had devastated England.

Crusade is the sequel to the very popular Conquest and follows on directly. It is an interesting mix of fact, and “what might have been.” The brutality of the period is effectively portrayed, contrasting with the burgeoning idea of knighthood and courtly love. Well researched, the main characters are all rounded and believable, while the plot is credible and maintains its pace throughout. An interesting story, well told.

Mike Ashworth MACBETH: A Novel A. J. Hartley and David Hewson, Thomas and Mercer, 2012, $14.95/C$15.56, pb, 325pp, 9781612188096 Few readers will come to this novel without at least a sketchy memory of the Shakespeare play, whether it was read or seen in high school, college, or during graduate study (and, for some of us, all three): Macbeth, the great warrior, spurred on by his wife, connives to murder King Duncan in order to take the Scottish throne for himself, only to be wracked by guilt and an ever-widening web of lies and deceit, which destroys his vision of a unified country. Hartley and Hewson have maintained the original characters, setting and time of the tragedy.

Eleventh century? Check. Banquo in physical and spirit form? Check. Unstable wife? Check.

Witches? Oh, yes.

What the authors bring to this novelization is both context and subtext, ranging from Lady Macbeth’s first name (Skena), to a range of Scottish scenery, from the foreboding fortress at Inverness to the Hill of Credulity at Scone Palace, where kings are crowned. They also let the reader in on the history and lives of the witches, whose presence is felt on nearly every page. The added familiarity with characters both major and minor creates a deeper story that pulls the reader along even though the ending is always evident. Glimpsing the private lives of the Macbeths, in good times and 20 | Reviews | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

as events spiral out of control, provides believable background for the tragic clash between ambition, conscience, free will and the supernatural.

Macbeth could use a good editing, as the language is at times grating and repetitive; the few lines from Shakespeare are not well-incorporated.

The surfeit of sex (who knew!) may increase sales, but quickly becomes a detraction from the otherwise attention-keeping narrative.

Helene Williams

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12th century

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ILLUMINATIONS Mary Sharratt, HMH, 2012, $25.00, hb, 288pp, 9780547567846 I admit to knowing next to nothing about Hildegard von Bingen before I picked up Mary Sharratt’s novel, Illuminations; by the time I finished, I was in awe of the determination of the German nun. Hildegard, whose visions and persistent spirit led her to break free of her life as a forced anchorite and found her own abbey amid the male dominated church, is brought to life magnificently through a mixture of fact and conjecture that pulls you into her most unusual life.

Told from Hildegard’s point of view, Sharratt first introduces us to the eight-year-old who is sent into religious life as the protégée of Jutta von Sponheim, a mad young woman who encloses both herself and Hildegard inside an anchorage within a monastery. Hildegard chafes against her confinement, but it is there she remains for more than three decades. Once she emerges, she determines never to be shut away again, despite the machinations of the men (secular and non-secular) controlling her life. As time progresses, Hildegard’s visions gain her both notoriety and respect; she uses her intellect to not only obtain property for an abbey, but also to begin authoring books which survive today.

Sharratt weaves a solid story against the known facts about Hildegard, and she provides the reader with viable reasons for Hildegard’s actions. In a time when women were made to be silent or risked losing their homes or even lives, Hildegard followed her conscience and spoke what she believed. Even if I remain unsure whether Hildegard actually experienced divine visions, I am convinced that her life story is fascinating and that Sharratt has imbued her with characteristics that reflect the known facts. A very well written tale of a woman who deserves to be remembered.

Tamela McCann

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14th century

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EVERY NOBLE KNIGHT Maggie Bennett, Severn House, 2012, $28.95/£19.99, hb, 235pp, 9780727881663 In the mid-14th century, a young English

fighting man, Wulfstan Wynstede, joins the Black Prince in the wars with France. Wulfstan is almost too good to be true – noble, sweet, and innocent beyond belief. He fights bravely, is severely wounded, and receives a knighthood. As the years go by, he matures and advances as part of the Black Prince’s English household. He has more than one unfortunate experience with the opposite sex, but he remains fairly steadfast in his four-year betrothal to Beulah of Greneholt. The two are not allowed much time together, but they remain deeply in love.

By the end of this long, medieval pageant, Wulfstan has come of age and developed into an admirable man. He and Beulah are wed at last, overcoming many obstacles to their prosperous, happy future.

This story has strong elements of romance, but the themes are really coming of age and that of timeless love for family and the land. The author’s knowledge of England and its history comes through on every page. Anglophiles and medieval buffs will enjoy this sweet, slow-moving book by this multi-published English author.

Elizabeth Knowles MURDER BY THE BOOK Susanna Gregory, Sphere, 2012, £19.99, hb, 440pp, 9781847442963 Matthew Bartholomew has returned from his escapades in York to begin the final revisions with his students at his college in Cambridge. The academic community is divided, however, by the decision to create a Common Library, with book donators likely to ignore specific colleges in the future in favour of a central repository, open to all academia within the city. More worrying still are the increasing number of supporters of the library who are being found dead in suspicious circumstances.

The city Sheriff finds his castle stronghold under attack from a well-disciplined force, determined to wrest the King’s taxes for their own use. Suspicions abound regarding the possible leader of this group, and the French are likely to be involved, as they are under increasing pressure to raise funds following their defeat at Poitiers. Nowhere in the city appears immune in these worrying times, and with the feast of Corpus Christi approaching, the progress in solving these crimes is slow.

Gregory has cleverly incorporated historical facts and figures into her latest Bartholomew chronicle, giving rise to a more believable storyline, though the number of deaths per book is not very credible, even for the Middle Ages.

Cathy Kemp THE KING’S CONCUBINE Anne O’Brien, MIRA, 2012, £7.99, pb, 619pp, 9781848450998 / NAL, 2012, $15.00, pb, 464pp, 9780451236807 Set in England in 1362, The King’s Concubine is the story of Alice Perrers, the infamous mistress of King Edward the Third. She rose from humble beginnings to become rich and powerful especially after the death of Phillippa of Hainault, Edward’s beloved wife. Pride, of course, comes before a 11th Century — 14th Century

fall, and being a royal favourite has always been a precarious position. Her lack of family and even beauty, according to the story, were never going to help her appeal to the nobles and courtiers of the time. The accusation of “witch” is touched upon, a dangerously easy claim to make in those times against a woman who is successful on her own terms.

O’Brien does a great job of fleshing out one of history’s shadowy characters and giving her the benefit of the doubt. Perrers’ traditional reputation for being grasping and avaricious are here given a gloss of feminist desire for independence and an understandable yearning for security for herself and the children she has with the king. The parts where Perrers falls in love and marries secretly are perhaps the least convincing, and the reader is keen to return to the king and the court, perhaps as keen as Alice herself.

The cover claims that O’Brien is better than Phillippa Gregory, and on this evidence, the claim is not far wide of the mark. Certainly if you like the novels of the one, you are virtually guaranteed to enjoy the books of the other. A great addition to the growing list of excellent historical fiction writers who manage to combine meticulous research with

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imagination and storytelling verve.

Ann Northfield THE TINTERN TREASURE Kate Sedley, Severn House, 2012, $28.95/£19.99, hb, 9780727881649 Roger Chapman is a peddler who has, quite by accident, become an agent of King Richard III. His reputation as the king’s man has made Roger a minor celebrity in his home town of Bristol, but Roger feels his relationship with the controversial king is often more of a burden than a boon. In this, the 20th installment of Roger’s story, he must uncover a plot against the king before there is open rebellion in England and before the mutinous agents of Henry Tudor follow through on their threats against Roger’s family.

I’ve not read the earlier Roger Chapman novels, but given their reputation I’d like to. I like Roger as a character, and Sedley does a good job setting up a scene. However, sometimes the insertion of historical background is contrived, making dialogue seem unrealistic. Another fault, which may be my own misunderstanding, relates to the novel’s genre.

I’d read that Sedley was a mystery writer and that her Chapman novels were whodunits. However,

THE KINGMAKER’S DAUGHTER

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Philippa Gregory, Touchstone, 2012, $26.99/C$29.99, hb, 432 pp, 9781451626070 / Simon & Schuster, 2012, £18.99, hb, 448pp, 9780857207463 Philippa Gregory is one of historical fiction’s superstars, and The Kingmaker’s Daughter shows why.

There’s not a moment – not a sentence or paragraph – where she rests on her reputation and relaxes into mediocrity. Each page justifies the time spent reading it, providing intelligent escape, a trip through time to a dangerous past.

The “Kingmaker” of the title is Richard Neville, the wealthiest nobleman in 15th-century England and a powerful, ambitious, and crafty warlord. Neville originally backed the House of Lancaster and Henry VI in the War of the Roses, but switched sides and was key to victory for the House of York and Edward IV. Then Edward IV married the beautiful commoner Elizabeth Woodville against Neville’s counsel. The Woodvilles were a large family, and Elizabeth made sure her husband the king remembered all her suddenly rich, suddenly fortunate relatives.

That’s the backstory as The Kingmaker’s Daughter begins. Unless the Kingmaker manages to arrange even better matches for his girls, who are the only heirs to his enormous wealth, his older daughter, Isabel, will marry the king’s unfaithful brother George. The younger Neville daughter, Anne, will marry Edward’s loyal brother Richard. Neville intends to be the power behind the throne for a long time. As double-crosses multiply on every side, however, Anne, this book’s protagonist, realizes she’s nothing but a pawn in the era’s wars and political maneuverings; powerless herself and yet held responsible for the betrayals of those around her.

Gregory tells this story without judgment, an amazing feat. She leaves it to the reader to pass verdicts on these well-drawn figures; although if you follow her work you understand that this story’s antagonist may well be the understandable center to her next book. I loved Kingmaker’s Daughter, and would recommend it to anyone who loves history.

Kristen Hannum

14th Century — 16th Century

The Tintern Treasure offered very little in the way of mystery. Sedley gives up every murderer well before Roger figures it out for himself. Had I expected this to be a straightforward historical novel I might not have been looking for a mystery element. The Tintern Treasure is informative and enjoyable, but not quite a mystery novel.

Patricia O’Sullivan

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16th century

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THE SUMERTON WOMEN D.L. Bogdan, Kensington, 2012, $15, pb, 384pp, 9780758271372 When her parents die of the sweating sickness, eight-year-old Cecily becomes the ward of the family living at Sumerton Castle, including Lady Grace and the older daughter, Mirabella, a young woman seemingly destined for the convent life.

But this is the time of Henry VIII. The days of convents, let alone many another lodestones of ancient faith – including the callings of Father Alec Cahill, tutor to the Sumerton children, and Sister Julia in the near-by nunnery – are numbered.

The brutality of Henry’s grab for the riches of monasteries throughout England is often glossed over and left impersonal within the glitter of the Tudor court. I was glad this book doesn’t do so, leading to many disrupting, disturbing and engaging twists and turns of plot, treachery and love. Changing viewpoints weave a tapestry richer than the usual romance – which this isn’t.

Definitely a step above. Many anachronisms, however, proved distractions: a social life that seemed more Regency than Tudor, some rather modern American religious sensibilities, personal names. And the repetition of “teal orbs” for Cecily’s eyes was over the top for me.

Ann Chamberlin KEEPER OF THE KING’S SECRETS Michelle Diener, Gallery, 2012, $15.00/C$17.00, pb, 320pp, 9781439197097 In her first book, In a Treacherous Court, Michelle Diener introduced Susanna Horenbout, court artist, and John Parker, dangerous courtier, as sleuths who serve King Henry VIII. In her second book, Keeper of the King’s Secrets, this couple once again must match wits against deadly enemies of the state, this time French agents in London and the devious Duke of Norfolk.

Susanna and John have become engaged, and their love for one another adds a layer of suspense as each comes into harm’s way and must be rescued.

At the crux of the intrigue is the famous Mirror of Naples, a magnificent diamond that Henry’s sister, Mary, “borrowed” when she left France as a widow. Ever since, King Francis I has been itching to secure the jewel and return it to France.

As the mystery builds, layer upon layer, neither John nor Susanna can be sure whom to trust. They are treading in shifting sands, and danger lurks all HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Reviews | 21

around. From the thrill of “shooting the bridge” to the mysterious assassin who is an expert marksman with a crossbow, the pace of this book is exciting.

Diener recreates the world of London vividly and allows the reader to experience what life may have been like for those not born to wealth and glory. And you can’t help rooting for John and Susanna as they struggle to save the king and save themselves as well as their love.

Anne Clinard Barnhill THE KING’S DAMSEL Kate Emerson, Gallery, 2012, $16.00, pb, 346pp, 978145166149 The Tudor court during Henry VIII’s reign was a dangerous place to serve, as Thomasina (Tamsin) Lodge discovers when her father and brother die, leaving her a wealthy, underage heiress. She becomes the ward of the odious Sir Lionel, who sends her away from the only home she has ever known to serve the Princess Mary and to advance his own prospects at court. Though Tamsin has never lived amongst nobility, her gifts for storytelling and secret card playing soon make her a favorite with the Princess Mary and her other ladies. Tamsin and the others enjoy a few years of quiet happiness, interrupted only occasionally by the unwelcome Sir Lionel, who has in the meantime forced Tamsin’s gentle stepmother to marry him.

Tamsin’s loyalty to the Princess Mary knows no bounds, so when she hears from the silkwoman’s son that the King is planning to divorce Mary’s mother and marry the Lady Anne Boleyn, she takes

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I, IAGO

the news straight to Mary. Mary and her ladies are thrown into more and more turmoil as Lady Anne advances and Mary falls, until Sir Lionel yanks Tamsin from Princess Mary and thrusts her into service with the Lady Anne, suggesting that he would be a happy master indeed if Tamsin were to get to know the King a little better. But Tamsin has her own ideas about what she will be doing in Lady Anne’s service, and she and the silkwoman’s son set to work immediately.

This was an entertaining book. It was fast-paced and well written, and Tamsin was very likeable, as were most of the characters, save the irascible concubine. I would have liked to see the story tie up a few ends that seemed to be left loose. All in all, an enjoyable read.

Cynthia McArthur MISTRESS OF MOURNING (US) / THE QUEEN’S CONFIDANTE (UK) Karen Harper, NAL, 2012, $15.00, pb, 416pp, 9780451236906 / Ebury, 2012, £6.99, pb, 400pp, 9780091947330 It’s a daunting challenge: how to create a historical novel that accurately depicts a distant era without letting facts and details overwhelm the story or dehumanize the characters? It’s a balancing act, which few authors seem to perfectly achieve.

Karen Harper’s new novel, Mistress of Mourning, does a consummate job of seamlessly delivering the reader into the Tudor world while weaving a gripping story of intrigue and treachery.

Varina Westcott is a 26-year-old widow with a

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Nicole Galland, William Morrow, 2012, $14.99, pb, 370pp, 9780062026873 How do you take one of literature’s most vile villains and make your readers like him? Nicole Galland begins in his childhood and lets him tell the story.

Iago was a rarity because he always told the truth, earning him little acclaim among Venice’s duplicitous and superficial society. With friend Rodrigo, Iago sometimes developed schemes to embarrass and expose the lies of various Venetian noblemen. Iago’s father forced him into the military, where Iago was skillful and where his knack for honesty finally earned him respect. He fell deeply in love and married Emilia, a woman both beautiful and intelligent, and who knew how to help him advance in his career. Iago became an officer and, because of his hard work and honest ways, earned the respect of General Othello, becoming the moor’s best friend and right hand.

When Othello began to woo Desdemona, with the help of Emilia and new officer and interloper Cassio, I found myself wondering how Iago would be able to narrate and explain the tragic events that I knew must follow. Did Shakespeare misunderstand? Had Iago behaved well and gotten a bad rap? Or would this character I’d learned to love turn on his friends? How could that happen?

I won’t tell you here, because you must read this astonishing, insightful, fabulously conceived and gripping story. Galland gives a depth and richness to the characters that would make Shakespeare jealous. I, Iago is a tasty, meaty novel that will have you hoping there is a plan for Galland to write about all of Shakespeare’s villains—and heroes too. Highly recommended.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt 22 | Reviews | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

young son, in 1501. She has inherited her father’s talent for candle-making, but even more valuable is her ability to carve lifelike figures from wax.

Although she has a head for business, she must fight the control of both the wax chandlers’ guild and her would-be suitor, who order her to stop carving her sought-after angel figurines until the guild can determine the appropriate pricing and distribution of her products. Varina’s destiny seems fixed in a male-dominated world where she has no power of her own, until she’s summoned by Queen Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII, to create wax images of the queen’s two children, and her two brothers—who may or may not have been murdered.

Once the queen has learned to trust the young artisan, she further enlists Varina to carry out a clandestine investigation into the death of her eldest child, Prince Arthur. Accompanied by handsome Nicholas Sutton, royal aide, Varina ventures into the Welsh wilderness in search of the truth, despite her fears for her own life and the safety of her young son. The story is told through a dual perspective, in first person, alternating between the experiences of Varina and those of Queen Elizabeth of York. Well-paced, peopled with sympathetic and endearing characters, this is a lush and captivating novel not to be missed.

Kathryn Johnson THE QUEEN’S PLEASURE (US) / A COURT AFFAIR (UK) Brandy Purdy, Kensington, 2012, $15, pb, 474pp, 9780758265982 / Emily Purdy, Avon, 2012, £7.99, pb, 400pp, 9781847563446 This is the tale of the classic, often-imagined love triangle between Robert and Amy Dudley and Elizabeth Tudor. The story opens on the much-speculated-upon morning of Amy’s death.

The story alternates from Amy’s current point of view and her flashbacks and remembrances of her relationship with Robert and, of course, Elizabeth’s pragmatic point of view on the situation.

Throughout Amy’s story, I really sympathized with her as a cuckolded woman, unable to give up the cherished dreams she and Robert once shared, and possibly going mad. Robert is the ambitious villain blaming Amy for his perceived failures; Elizabeth is the Virgin Queen, finally free and living for the pleasure of the moment until she and Amy meet in the garden, Robert standing by.

This book was extremely well written: the author was meticulous in her descriptions of people, places, things, right up to and including the terror, shame and suffering women in Amy’s time would have gone through with her “malady of the breast.” Pay close attention to her meeting with the notorious Dr. Dee. I felt right at home in Elizabethan England. This story was a tragic learning experience from which no one could turn back. Highly recommended.

Cynthia McArthur HIGHLAND LOVER Amanda Scott, Forever, 2012, $7.99/C$8.99, pb, 16th Century

351pp, 9780446574327 In 1503, Alyson MacGillivray, recently married to her childhood friend, Niall, embarks on a sea voyage aboard the Maryenknyght. Alyson, left to her own devices a lot of the time, soon realizes that heir to the Scottish throne, Jamie Stewart, is also aboard with his friend, Will. The idyllic journey soon takes a twist when pirates attack, taking Jamie hostage. Alyson and Will are left alone on the sinking ship; Niall is nowhere to be seen. Captain Jake Maxwell, hired by the king to secretly keep an eye on the ship, swoops in to save Alyson and Will.

They work together to find out happened to her husband and Jamie.

Based on historical events, this swashbuckling quest has romance, danger, and plenty of drama.

The slowly budding romance mixes well with menacing intrigue and high seas adventure. Scott’s exaggerated dialect in the dialogue, however, is a bit of a distraction and clutters the storyline.

Overall, though, this is a satisfactory story and a fine installment of her Scottish Knights series.

Rebecca Cochran A DANGEROUS INHERITANCE Alison Weir, Hutchinson, 2012, £17.99, hb, 500pp, 9780091926236 / Ballantine, Oct. 2012, $27.00, hb, 505pp, 9780345511898 Being born with royal blood running through the veins can be a most significant disadvantage.

Alison Weir, getting into stride as a historical novelist, shows how such a tincture can destroy the lives of those with A Dangerous Inheritance.

Interweaving fact and fiction, she gives a portrait of two Katherines: kinswomen from different ages.

Katherine Plantagenet is the bastard daughter of Richard III who, when he fell at Bosworth Field in 1485, left his illegitimate children without a claim to the throne. Henry Tudor, with even less claim, became King Henry VII by conquest. Kate wishes to quell the rumours surrounding the loving father she no longer recognises, with the seeming implications of the disappearance of his brother’s sons.

Katherine Grey is tainted as the younger sister of Lady Jane Grey, whose brief reign as Queen ended in 1533. Being rightly heir to Elizabeth I through her Grandmother Suffolk, she marries without consent and is imprisoned when her pregnancy is discovered; a male child would be a challenge to Elizabeth’s already shaky throne. Consigned to the Tower, she hears voices calling for help.

Thus the Katherines are brought together across time to debate the fate of the Princes in the Tower.

Although the character of Katherine Grey is written in the first person and that of Kate Plantagenet in the third, the story tends to be slightly bewildering as the time-slips occur frequently and readjustment is required for place.

This detracts from the cohesion of the novel.

Each Katherine is worthy of a book to herself, and writings about the Princes are legion. By creating a story from all of these facets, the author introduces an imaginative narrative and clearly wishes to have the reader persuaded as to the 16th Century — 17th Century

plausibility of chronicled events. The mystery, however, remains, echoing down the centuries, the truth just out of reach.

Gwen Sly

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17th century

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THE RUINS OF LACE Iris Anthony, Sourcebooks Landmark, 2012, $14.99/£9.99, pb, 352pp, 9781402268038 If you’ve ever admired handmade lace and wondered how it was made, you’ll be intrigued by this book. In 17th-century France, King Louis XIII banned lace, whether foreign or domestic. Human nature being what it is, this made lace that much more desirable, and it became a lucrative source of income for smugglers. Sadly, many of the young girls who made lace in convents were forced to work in deplorable conditions until they were physically worn out and their eyesight gone, at which point they were turned out on the street.

The story is told from alternating points of view, beginning with that of Katharina, a young lacemaker in Flanders, and her sister Heilwich, housekeeper to a priest. Heilwich is in a desperate race to earn the money needed to buy Katharina’s freedom from the convent before she can no longer

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BRING UP THE BODIES

make lace and they turn her out. For Lisette, a young woman of noble birth, lace becomes her downfall as her family loses everything when she ruins a piece of lace belonging to the vicious Count of Montreau. Then there is Denis, a hapless soldier who is constantly outwitted by lace smugglers who use hollow loaves of bread, coffins, and even dogs to smuggle lace into France. And interestingly, we even hear from one of the dogs used in the smuggling.

Anthony has written a fascinating story not only about lace, but about obsession, corruption, and self-worth. The ending is tantalizingly ambiguous Jane Kessler THE MOUNTAIN OF GOLD J.D. Davies, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012, $25.00, hb, 353pp, 9780547580999 / Old Street, 2012, £12.99, pb, 368pp, 9781905847990 Young British naval captain Matthew Quinton is on his third mission, hunting down Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean when his ship sights a crippled galleon with a Maltese galley bearing down on her. Quinton and his crew pluck the prize from the galley only to learn the captain of the galleon, Omar Ibrahim, is actually an Irishman, Brian Doyle O’Dwyer, and that it is O’Dwyer, not his cargo, that the Maltese are after.

Quinton brings O’Dwyer back to England to

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Hilary Mantel, Henry Holt, 2012, $28.00, hb, 432pp, 9780805090031 / Fourth Estate, 2012, £20.00, hb, 411pp, 9780007315093 It is 1535, and Henry VIII has become bored with Anne Boleyn. After upheaving the country and the Church in his efforts to divorce Queen Catherine and marry Anne, Henry has found a new object of desire: the plain but pure Jane Seymour. Jane is everything Anne is not – quiet, humble, virtuous, obedient.

And so it falls to Thomas Cromwell – the man of low origins who has risen to become Henry’s chief minister – to procure the king’s desire, whatever the cost. After successfully arranging Henry’s divorce, Cromwell has gained wealth, influence, and the power to effect change. But all that he has rests on Henry – “How many men can say, as I must,” Cromwell remarks ruefully, “‘I am a man whose only friend is the King of England’?” Should Henry’s health fail, or should the king experience a change of temperament, all of Cromwell’s enemies will come crushing down upon him.

What is it that makes Hilary Mantel’s vision of the period so immensely compelling, despite the flood of Tudor novels on the market? Perhaps it is the immediacy of her present-tense narrative, the odd intimacy of her close third-person viewpoint, which sometimes slips into the first- or second-person as we read Cromwell’s thoughts. Perhaps it is the complexity of her characters – Henry the king, dangerous in his spontaneity yet sympathetic in his vulnerability; Cromwell himself, efficient but never heartless, eminently competent yet always struggling to keep his head above water.

Perhaps it is the perfection of her set pieces, where each line spoken has significance, and the weighty implications of history are always hanging invisibly just overhead. Whatever the reasons, this book was every bit as masterful as Mantel’s earlier novel Wolf Hall. Bring Up the Bodies will hold me in its grip for many months to come.

Ann Pedtke HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Reviews | 23

be tried for treason, but O’Dwyer tells the king of a mountain of gold deep inside the African coast, and Charles II, newly restored to his throne and desperate for money, decides to go after it. The king orders Quinton to escort O’Dwyer to Gambia to search for the mountain of gold. But Quinton does not believe in the mission, and he certainly does not believe O’Dwyer. In fact, when King Charles II orders Quinton’s older brother to marry a woman reputed to have killed her two previous husbands, Quinton begins to doubt his sovereign.

The Mountain of Gold is the second in Davies’s Gentleman Captain series. Readers of naval tales will definitely want to read it, but Davies is one of those writers who offers something for everyone.

This story has political intrigue, family drama, and an exotic setting that presents its own challenges to Captain Quinton and his crew. But this is no light read. Davies peppers his story with a rich dose of historical backstory that is sure to satisfy readers who enjoy learning as much as they enjoy a good story.

Patricia O’Sullivan BRIDE OF NEW FRANCE Suzanne Desrochers, Norton, 2012, $24.95, hb, 304pp, 9780393073379 / Penguin Canada, 2012, C$16.00, pb, 320pp, 9780143173397 In 1656 King Louis XIV declared, “We expressly prohibit and forbid all persons of either sex… able-bodied or invalid, sick or convalescent, curable or incurable, to beg in the city and suburbs of Paris.” To that end, Laure Beausejour is torn

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JOHN SATURNALL’S FEAST

from her parents’ arms as a young child and raised in an orphanage.

A decade later, Laure still lives in a Parisian institution. She has become one of the country’s most skilled lace-makers and hopes to be noticed by a nobleman in need of a wife. However, when a friend succumbs to scurvy, Laure dares to write to the king to complain about the squalid living conditions. She is punished by being sent to the wilds of Quebec. There she is required to wed a fur trapper, and to do her part to populate French Canada.

In Bride of New France, Suzanne Desrochers explores a heartless method used by some European countries to control urban overpopulation.

Criminals, orphans, and the destitute were swept up and sent to the colonies. Most of them were shockingly ill-prepared to live in the wilderness, and Laure Beausejour is no exception.

The novel also depicts the sharply limited choices of women in the 17th century. Despite her intelligence and striking appearance, Laure must make lace for the king or starve. She is dispatched to Quebec to marry the first stranger who wants her. When she finds love with an Iroquois man, it is forbidden. Yet Laure never surrenders to despair in Desrochers’ grim, yet thoroughly enjoyable tale.

Jo Ann Butler BITTER GREENS Kate Forsyth, Vintage Australia, 2012, AU$32.95, pb, 550pp, 9781741668452 Having long loved the Rapunzel fairy tale, I

ED I TORS’ C H OI C E

Lawrence Norfolk, Bloomsbury, 2012, £16.99, hb, 405pp, 9781408805961 / Grove, 2012, $25.00, hb, 416pp, 9780802120519 Let me not beat about the bush. Lawrence Norfolk’s The Pope’s Rhinoceros is one of the best books I have ever read. It has changed the way I write, and the way I teach writing. A new novel from Mr. Norfolk is unimaginably exciting.

And he has done it again. Twelve years in the making, John Saturnall’s Feast is another tour de force, entirely different in style and substance from his other novels, all of which are entirely different from one another.

What is great about Norfolk’s writing is that he does not merely superimpose fiction on history, he re-imagines history, giving us a world madly, truly and deeply other than our own.

The story begins in 1625, when John Saturnall is orphaned after a series of violent events in the village of his birth. He finds himself working in the kitchens of Buckland Manor, where his acute sense of smell serves him well, and where he encounters Lady Lucretia Fremantle, anorexic daughter of the house. As England slides towards the Civil War, John uses all his culinary skills to fulfil his mother’s dying command, to save the girl he loves and find the secrets at the heart of his own life.

Think Patrick Suskind’s Perfume grafted on to Gormenghast. Stir in elements from Hans Christian Andersen and Lewis Carroll, and The Name of the Rose. Still, you will hardly come close to the essence of this rich, beautiful, startling and entirely unputdownable new work from one of our most original living novelists.

Sarah Bower 24 | Reviews | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

couldn’t wait to start reading Kate Forsyth’s latest novel. Bitter Greens, not only retells the classic Rapunzel story, but also gives us the witch’s point of view, along with the story of Charlotte-Rose de la Force, the writer responsible for the French version of the tale.

In keeping with its historical origins, the stories of Rapunzel and the witch are set in 16thcentury Venice. Charlotte-Rose’s narrative is set in 17th-century France¾a world of superstition, religious persecution, and the sumptuous courts of Louis the Fourteenth. Having been banished to an impoverished rural abbey for slighting the notorious Sun King, Huguenot-born CharlotteRose must somehow endure the strictures of convent life, all the while waiting for friends on the outside to secure her release. But her life not been devoid of risk or scandal, and she soon realises freedom is unattainable. Through friendship with the mysterious infirmarian Sœur Seraphina, she is eventually able to mourn her loss of liberty and find meaning in the long narrow years of her confinement.

Bitter Greens is not a literary novel (though it is beautifully rendered). It is a fairy tale¾the story of a witch, an incarcerated maiden, and a reluctant French novice, an immensely enjoyable work in which fantasy and historical elements are skilfully interwoven. As an added bonus, Forsyth gives us a handsome prince who is young, devoid of cliché and altogether quite likeable. If at times the women’s first-person voices seem to blend a little, the writer can be forgiven, as each one is vividly brought to life, giving us a tale that is as long and lustrous as Rapunzel’s amber tresses.

This is a perfect book to curl up in a chair and forget the world with.

Elizabeth Jane EMPIRE OF THE MOGHUL: The Tainted Throne Alex Rutherford, Headline, 2012, £19.99, hb, 438pp, 9780755347612 1606. It is five months since the death of the Moghul emperor Akbar, and his son Jahangir is crowned as ruler of the empire. Within weeks his rule is challenged by his own son, Khusrau, who seeks to depose him. The rebellion is put down with ruthless efficiency, and Khusrau has his eyelids sewn together to prevent further attempts of rebellion. Faced with further challenges from Khurram, the most able of his warring sons, the struggle for the throne becomes even bloodier.

However, Jahangir finds that a bigger, more subtle threat to his rule comes not from rival kingdoms or sons but from his wife, Mehrunissa, who wishes to take up the reins of empire herself.

This is the fourth in the Moghul quintet. As with the previous books, it is well researched, while the deadly intrigues and the sight and socrunds of the Moghul court are colourfully and effectively portrayed. The battle scenes are exciting and well written. This can be read as a stand-alone, although reading the previous books will give you a wider perspective. Bloody battles, brutal killings, 17th Century

treachery, love and unswerving devotion – what more could you ask for? Recommended.

Mike Ashworth THIRST Mary Donnarumma Sharnick, Fireship, 2012, $18.95, pb, 272pp, 9781611792058 Venice in 1613 can be a brutal place. Captain Lorenzo Contarini witnesses a prime example when he sees a newborn infant deliberately tossed into a canal to drown. The baby’s mother soon joins it in death when she hangs herself.

The son of a nobleman, Captain Contarini is no novice to Venetian politics. He recognizes the Doge’s flag on one of the boats which took the mother and child to their doom. The other boat belongs to the convent overseen by his aunt, the Abbess of San Zaccaria. The unfortunate mother was Contarini’s niece. Contarini knows what he risks, but reports what he witnessed. When his fiancée is mutilated during the ghastly murder of a popular artist, is it actually a warning that Captain Contarini should hold his tongue? Instead, Contarini’s testimony strains familial, religious, and political loyalties across Venice.

Thus begins Thirst, by Mary Donnarumma Sharnick. It is catalogued as historical fiction, romance, and mystery. Of the three categories, historical mystery is the best fit. However, this was not clear on the cover’s description, so as the early part of Thirst unfolded, I was baffled by leaps between seemingly unrelated persons and occurrences. Soon I realized that an intricate puzzle was being presented to me, by no less than the Doge’s Inquisition.

Sharnick is clearly familiar with the ancient city and paints a sensuous picture of La Serenissima and her colorful inhabitants. Readers who enjoy figuring out not only whodunit, but why, will love Thirst.

Jo Ann Butler FOR KING OR COMMONWEALTH Richard Woodman, Severn House, 2012, £19.99/$28.95, hb, 224pp, 9780727881724 In A Ship for the King, Richard Woodman left his readers wondering which side Captain Kit Faulkner would choose at the start of the English Civil War. In For King or Commonwealth we learn how Kit chose to side with the king against Parliament for reasons that have little to do with his loyalty to the monarch. Kit’s mentor, Sir Henry Mainwaring, to whom he owes his life, and the beautiful Lady Katherine Villiers, for whom Kit left his Puritan wife, went into exile with the court. Kit felt he had no other choice but to join them and pledge his loyalty to King Charles II. But after years living with the impoverished court in the Netherlands, Sir Henry wants Kit to take him home to England. Kit is not keen to leave Katherine, especially when he discovers how much time she spends alone with the young king. But during a sea battle in the English Channel, Kit is captured by an unlikely foe: his own son, Captain Nathanial Faulkner. Imprisoned in the Tower, Kit 17th Century — 18th Century

wonders if he will survive Parliament’s charge of treason and, more importantly, if his family can ever forgive him for leaving.

This is a strong sequel, full of wonderful details of naval life during the English Civil War and the first Anglo-Dutch War. Kit’s personal narrative complements the historical narrative, providing a good balance between the action scenes and the interpersonal ones. I love how Woodman has developed Kit Faulkner from a self-centered exile to a man who learns to accept his faults and his place in the world.

Patricia O’Sullivan

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MOONLIT DESIRE Carolann Camillo, Camel Press, 2012, $14.95, pb, 272pp, 9781603818728 New York Colony, June 1759: The height of the French and Indian War. Recently wed Catherine Bradshaw and husband Jeremy Flint travel in a carriage on their way to their new home in Tarrytown. Rive St. Clair kidnaps Catherine and takes her to an Indian camp, where they stay in hiding until Flint tries to rescue her. Meanwhile we discover that Flint and St. Clair have a longstanding hatred relating to Flint’s prior involvement as a scout for the British militia involved in an Indian massacre. St. Clair finds Catherine ravishing, and she must fight her own passion for him in order to survive this ordeal. The characters travel to Quebec, where they endure the British attack on

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the city.

Moonlit Desire captures the reader from the moment of the initial kidnap and does not let up for a minute. Carolann Camillo provides tightly woven narration with just enough period detail to make the setting and circumstances come alive for the reader. She describes the forest surroundings of rural New York in a way reminiscent of James Fenimore Cooper. The dialogue is true to the time period, yet it has a freshness we can all relate to today. Very captivating.

Liz Allenby THE RED CHAMBER Pauline A. Chen, Knopf, 2012, $26.95, hb, 400pp, 9780307701572 / Virago, 2012, £12.99, hb, 496pp, 9781844087969 Pauline Chen brings new life to the Chinese classic work of literature, Dream of the Red Chamber or The Story of the Stone, the story of two noble families associated with the imperial government in 18th-century China. Although it tells a shorter version of the original tale, The Red Chamber also focuses on two central families.

The novel begins with Daiyu, who visits her extended family in the capital after losing her mother. Her reception is mixed, as the matriarch resented Daiyu’s mother for marrying for love and moving to the south. Daiyu, however, finds love in the most unexpected place but is soon betrayed by a jealous cousin. Then there is Xifeng, who knows the family is declining financially and takes a risky action that will have dire consequences at a time when the family is desperate. We also meet Baochai, who seems to be close to Daiyu until

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Jean Zimmerman, Viking, 2012, $27.95, hb, 418pp, 9780670023646 Jean Zimmerman has written a fascinating saga of early Manhattan Island – part mystery, part horror story, and part love story – in which every page is a pleasure to read. The characters are well-defined and hard to forget.

In 1663, Blandine van Couvering is a successful 22-year-old orphaned “she-merchant.” Manhattan is still a colony of the Netherlands, known as New Amsterdam, where women enjoy legal freedoms unheard of at that time. All that is soon to change, however, when neighboring English colonists conspire to claim it as England’s, all with the help of the dashing English spy Edward Drummond.

As political change roils about them, the colony is confronted with disappearances and mutilations of orphans under the care of its “orphan master,” Aet Visser, the same person who raised Blandine.

Hysteria grips the colony with rumors of Indian witches and supernatural monsters, endangering not only Blandine and Edward’s growing love but Blandine’s life, as she is accused of witchcraft while he is tried for espionage.

Fast-paced, filled with period detail and populated with multi-dimensional, conflicted characters, The Orphanmaster leaves you wanting more. It’s a great read, often very witty. Let’s hope Zimmerman has a sequel in store. Very highly recommended.

Pamela Ferrell Ortega HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Reviews | 25

jealousy raises its ugly head. The men in this novel are depicted in extremes, with the father solely fixed on his government service to the emperor and his sons partying or getting into trouble by fighting or dallying with whatever women they desire. When the emperor dies, what will happen to these noble and not so wise characters?

No matter how much one expects, the ultimate outcome for each character is poignantly described and fascinating to follow. History is no respecter of persons, as we see these universal characters forced to grow up in the real world beyond their cloistered, pampered lives. Passing the imperial exams is no guarantee of future preference and security. While the story is a wonderful panoramic view of the cultural and social life of this time in Chinese history, it could also be a story about contemporary life with its varied vicissitudes. Very nicely done!

Viviane Crystal ENEMIES AT EVERY TURN David Donachie, Allison & Busby, £19.99, hb, 348pp, 9780749009663 This is yet another instalment of the story of John Pierce, the radical son of a radical preacher and pamphleteer. Avid readers of the series will remember that he was illegally pressed into the Navy along with his three comrades, known collectively as the ‘Pelicans’, by the ongoing villain of the series, Ralph Barclay. Barclay continues to

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prosper, and two of the ‘Pelicans’ once again find themselves aboard his ship. But Pierce at last begins to find some happiness with Emily, Barclay’s estranged wife.

At times I found the unravelling of the various threads of the plot frustrating in that they tended to hold up the main story, but my interest in the central character did not flag. Pierce – originally a believer in the French Revolution, but alienated by its excesses – is given a command by Pitt and again sent on a mission, this time to contact the leaders of the rebellion in the Vendee, where the situation is complicated by the discovery of his ex-mistress among the rebels. But the rebellion is a disaster and Pierce must retreat, ex-mistress in tow. What will happen when she meets Emily? And what has happened to the two ‘Pelicans’ aboard Barclay’s ship, badly damaged in a great naval engagement, which the British have won? And these are not the only problems which await Pierce on his return.

Anyone unfamiliar with the earlier books might find themselves all at sea, though Donachie does insert the necessary explanations. But it might be best to start with the very first in the series. For myself, I can’t wait until the next episode.

Neville Firman DAYS OF SPLENDOR, DAYS OF SORROW Juliet Grey, Ballantine, 2012, $15.00/C$18.00, pb, 464pp, 9780345523884 In this novel, the second in a planned trilogy,

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

L.R. Fredericks, John Murray, 2012, £12.99, hb, 519pp, 9781848543317 In 1717, on his 17th birthday, Lord Francis Damory discovers a book linking him to his great-great grandfather, Tobias, an alchemist who may yet still be alive. Prompted by this he sets out to seek the elixir of immortality, from the gilded salons of London and Paris to brothels and debtors’ prisons, Venice and the pirate infested Mediterranean. He experiences love affairs and duels and encounters courtesans, castrati, anatomists, Rosicrucians, visionaries, monsters, charlatans, spies and assassins. Fredericks brilliantly absorbs the detail of 18th-century cities, country, clothes, food, theatre, music and architecture.

Fate is an intricate, Gothic novel in elegant style.

For example, Fredericks describes Damory’s approach to Alexandria: ‘At the first sight of that distant smudge on the horizon a strange shiver passed over me, as though I was shedding a skin.’ Damory is like a knight in a romance; his adventures test his nobility, resourcefulness and determination to find Tobias.

They reveal the marvels which 18th-century travellers discover in exotic locations and reproduce in their own lands. One character, Meryll, has ‘architectural ambitions and threw himself into producing detailed drawings of buildings with courtyards, wings and pavilions, Corinthian columns and ornamental pediments.’ This fastpaced fiction transcends the genre.

At the end of the novel, Damory and Meryll make a discovery on Damory’s estate. ‘My God, Damory, I think this is a temple - a Roman temple… How could such a place have remained hidden for so long? And why hide it?’ To find out, read Fate; discover its secrets; meet its characters; experience Damory’s quest, above all enjoy a deeper sense of what it is to be human.

Carol McGrath 26 | Reviews | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

Juliet Grey picks up Marie Antoinette’s story from the beginning of her husband’s reign to the eve of the French Revolution.

I enjoyed this installment. Marie Antoinette was a complex and flawed character, whose mistakes and blunders are not overlooked, and her narrative voice felt much more natural than it did in the previous volume. Grey also made good use of the letters between the characters.

Most of the novel is told in the first person by Marie Antoinette, but there are stretches of thirdperson narration, too, mainly for the purpose of giving the reader the details of the infamous Affair of the Necklace that Marie herself could not have known. While this was helpful to the reader, and the third-person narration was well written, its irregular appearances made the overall effect a little jarring.

Any novel about Marie Antoinette must address the question of the queen’s relationship with Axel Fersen. I won’t give away the approach Grey takes, but I thought her interpretation, which was discussed in depth in the author’s note, was a reasonable one.

Grey plainly is passionate about her subject and strongly involved in her story, and this shows to good effect. I’m looking forward—if that is the right phrase for a novel about the tragic last years of Marie Antoinette—to the final novel in the trilogy.

Susan Higginbotham THE QUEEN’S LOVER Francine du Plessix Gray, Penguin Press, 2012, $25.95, hb, 308pp, 9781594203374 Count Axel von Fersen is nineteen when he meets an effervescent girl his own age at the Paris Opera in 1774. She is masked, so Fersen does not know the identity of the charming blonde until she is leaving. She lifts her mask for a heartbeat, and he recognizes Marie Antoinette, the future Queen of France. Thus begins The Queen’s Lover, by Francine du Plessix Gray.

Gray’s book is a magnificent tale of silk-clad French courtiers, bloody-handed executioners, and the gay, doomed Marie Antoinette. We see the queen through the tender eyes of her lover, Fersen, and witness his anguish as the French Revolution rages toward its inexorable climax.

The Queen’s Lover is based on Fersen’s archives, especially his correspondence with Marie Antoinette. The letters were printed nearly 100 years after Fersen’s death though – sadly for historians – intimate sections were redacted by the puritanical publisher. Many other paragraphs are still unread because their invisible ink cannot be developed.

I wish that we had seen more of Fersen’s three years with French army in the American Revolution, but The Queen’s Lover is Marie Antoinette’s story, and not intended as a complete telling of Fersen’s life. It is, however, a thoroughly entertaining account of a courtier’s life in France and Sweden, and of the many tragedies which accompanied the French Revolution. It is also an eyewitness account of Marie Antoinette and the 18th Century

French royal family by a man who knew them well.

I heartily recommend The Queen’s Lover, both for its historic value and as a fresh depiction of the famed Queen of France by the man who loved her.

Jo Ann Butler THE PRODIGAL S.K. Keogh, Fireship, 2012, $18.95, pb, 255pp, 9781611792140 During the early 18th century on the Atlantic Ocean, primarily in the West Indies, pirates roam the high seas looking for plunder while causing misery and death wherever they sail. As a young boy, John Mallory and his mother are on board a merchant ship sailing to the English colonies in America. Attacked by pirates led by James Logan, his mother is kidnapped. John is then mistaken as one of the pirate crew by his rescuers and sent to Newgate Prison in England. After seven years in prison, upon reaching the age of twenty-one, the young man seeks revenge for his mother’s kidnapping. In his search for Logan, he changes his Christian name to Jack and meets a young woman named Maria Cordero, who also seeks revenge for the death of her father at the hands of Logan.

With the help of a former pirate and cell-mate, he assembles his own pirate crew, finds a ship, and sails the Caribbean to search for and rescue his mother.

This novel is the first in a series. Keogh has done an exceptional job in creating a character that has the potential to be an exciting, realistic hero of the 18th century. The story is fast paced, and her knowledge of maritime lingo during the Age of Sail is historically accurate. An excellent read and highly recommended.

Jeff Westerhoff ARMS OF LOVE Kelly Long, Thomas Nelson, 2012, $15.99, 320pp, 9781401684969 This story takes place in Central Pennsylvania in the late 18th century. The citizens are embroiled in the revolution for freedom and experiencing all the unrest that comes with war. The book opens with a death and a promise that impact the rest of the story. Lena Yoder and Adam Wyse have been in love since childhood, and the unspoken promise of a union has always been between them. As Lena’s mother, Mary, lies dying, she begs Adam to forego his idea of marriage to Lena because Mary feels there is darkness in his soul and that of his father, Joseph. She does not want Lena living in his home.

Adam reluctantly promises, and the plot is set.

There are many characters, some more interesting than others, but the story was lacking for me. The characters seem so weak, and when that weakness shows through, they turn to God. Lena and Adam are thrown together in all sorts of situations as we witness fervent kisses and discord over his promise. The story constantly waffles between Adam and Lena and their broken promise; the author spends so much time building sexual tension between them that the rest of her story suffers. Every crisis seems to have an intervention 18th Century

from somewhere, and it was just too unrealistic for me. When Lena suffers snakebite on her wedding night, someone shows up out of the blue to heal her. The novel feels contrived on every level, and each problem seems to have a solution. That just doesn’t happen in real life – long ago or now – be you Amish or not. Sometimes there is failure.

Susan Zabolotny THE MESSENGER Siri Mitchell, Bethany House, 2012, $14.99, pb, 384pp, 9780764207962 The Messenger tells the story of an unlikely pair: war veteran Jeremiah Jones and young Quaker Hannah Sunderland. With meticulous historical details of the turbulent times during the British occupation of Philadelphia circa 1778, its key themes are faith, familial loyalty, and deception.

As a Quaker, Hannah is forbidden to choose a political side, be it Loyalist or Rebel, but when her twin brother joins the Rebels, Hannah is torn between faith and justice. Hannah reluctantly decides to team up with Jeremiah Jones and his spy network, despite their many differences of opinion, in the effort to free prisoners and to expose war atrocities.

The alternating first-person narrative brings the emotions of the duo to the forefront, and the intrigues of the Colonials versus the Redcoats are well plotted as we learn of Jeremiah’s own story: he is maimed during one of the many battles. In an example of opposites attract, it seems that not everyone or everything will be as it appears. Hannah struggles with the pacifist ideals of her faith, and Jeremiah is not as rough as his appearance. With a convincing supporting cast, this is a compelling Christian historical set during a very important time for America.

Marie Burton SINS OF THE EMPRESS Paula Paul, Cool Well Press, 2012, $12.9, pb, 374pp, 9781618770752 “All that I have ever done, I have done for love.”

The opening line says it all: Paula Paul’s novel of the life of Catherine the Great is not only a story about the great loves and losses of its protagonist, but also an obvious work of love by its author. The novel follows Catherine from her early days as Princess Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst, to her ill-fated marriage to Peter III, then through various tragedies and triumphs culminating in her celebrated reign as Empress of Russia. Princess Sophia is used as a pawn by her scheming mother and finds herself in a foreign land surrounded by strangers, wed to the heir of Russia, a cruel and feeble boy who would become increasingly unbalanced over the years.

Now christened Catherine, the young duchess seeks the love she has been denied by mother and husband via her friends at court and, eventually, several intimate relationships. She would be judged by history for her suspected liaisons and accused of conspiring in her husband’s murder, but Catherine is destined to rise above her enemies and become Empress of Russia, ushering in a golden age for the

land she loves as her own.

Readers need no previous knowledge of Russian history to become absorbed in the story, and it’s likely that many will be inspired to learn more; the historical detail is meticulous and authentic, and the author’s passion for her subject is evident.

Paul’s writing is evocative without drowning the story in flowery prose; some of the characters are simply good or bad, but Catherine herself comes through as a sympathetic protagonist who lived a bittersweet but legendary life. Sins of the Empress is highly recommended.

Heather Domin A TAINTED DAWN: The Great War 17921815, Book 1 B.N. Peacock, Fireship, 2012, $19.95, pb, 339pp, 9781611792126 The beginning of an intended series spanning the Georgian/Regency period (or, si vous préférez, the Revolutionary/Napoleonic), A Tainted Dawn follows the fortunes of three young men: one an English aristocrat schooled at Eton, the second an impoverished fiddler, and lastly a well-born Frenchman with revolution in his heart. Of these three tales, two are told quite well. The story of Edward Deveare, cheated of his inheritance and escaping to a life at sea, is a perfectly serviceable naval yarn. Perhaps the author steers a course a point too close to the well-worn Hornblower formula—our young midshipman is abused by his mess-mates and a cruel captain, and stumbles his way from fo’c’sle to main t’gallant in battered stockings until rescued by a less flog-happy captain who becomes a father figure.

What’s unique to this book is the unifying theme of liberty. Edward’s rare respect for “the people” (that is, the common sailors) of a King’s Ship parallels Frenchman Louis’s devotion to Republican égalité. That these two are destined for bloody enmity is plain, and tension mounts as they run afoul of one another repeatedly in the early stage of their military careers. Much less clear are the chapters featuring the fiddler Jemmy, who ends the book on dry land thousands of miles from the other two lads and with no apparent connection between his story and theirs. Certainly the author intends a stronger link later in the series, but the debut would have held together better without the scamp.

Richard Bourgeois A SHIP OF WAR Sean Thomas Russell, Michael Joseph, 2012, £12.99, hb, 502pp, 9780718157494 The Terror is at its height. Charles Hayden, captain of HMS Themis, is on the point of setting sail for Le Havre to intercept a French frigate that is harassing British shipping, when new, secret orders arrive. He is to meet a French spy with information that must be conveyed to England at all costs.

But ill luck and heartache over his thwarted love for Henrietta Carthew threaten to undermine Hayden’s mission almost before it has begun.

It took me a while to get into this book. The HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Reviews | 27

naval jargon is quite technical, though I think I got the gist. It didn’t help that I haven’t read Russell’s first two books and therefore initially, apart from Hayden, Barthes and Ransome, the crew was an indistinguishable list of names to me. But there are some atmospheric set pieces later on. Descriptions of creeping through a fog bristling with enemy ships and braving a storm in a disintegrating ship particularly stick in my memory.

Russell is on less certain ground with Georgian etiquette. As someone who has read more than my fair share of obscure 18th-century novels, as well as non-fiction about the period, I’ve never come across a man suing a woman for breach of promise. (The law seems to have existed purely to protect women against slanders that might render them unmarriageable.) Nor would a gentleman declare his feelings without proposing, since that would imply his intentions were dishonourable. If Henrietta has been corresponding with Hayden without being engaged to him, she has already compromised herself.

Recommended mainly for existing fans of the series.

Jasmina Svenne

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MISS LIZZIE’S WAR Rosemary Agonito, Globe Pequot, 2012, $16.95/ C$18.95, pb, 300pp, 9780762780129 While Richmond, Virginia suffers through the American Civil War, the wealthy Elizabeth van Lew supports the war effort—for the Union.

Starting by bringing food and encouragement to Union prisoners in Richmond’s miserable prisons, Elizabeth soon is deeply involved in a spy network.

Again and again, her charm and quick wit save her from detection, even as the stakes grow higher.

I enjoyed this novel about one of the Civil War’s most famous female spies, although there were some long stretches of narrative which made me wonder at times if the author wouldn’t have been happier writing nonfiction. This improved as the novel progressed, however.

A running motif of the novel is Lizzie’s chats with the shade of her dead father. Once I got accustomed to these ghostly appearances, I rather enjoyed them. Agonito also invents a love story for the heroine (as she acknowledges in the author’s note), which is handled sensitively. Although most of the story is told from Lizzie’s point of view, we occasionally see the action through the eyes of soldiers, the Confederate first family, and assorted Richmonders as well, which adds depth to the story. (I did think that an unpleasant character named Edward Higginbotham was underutilized.)

All in all, this was an inspiring novel about a courageous woman.

Susan Higginbotham INVISIBLE COUNTRY 28 | Reviews | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

Annamaria Alfieri, Minotaur, 2012, $25.99/ C$29.99, hb, 304pp, 9781250004536 At the end of the Triple Alliance War, in 1868, Paraguay is a devastated country. Facing a congregation with only seven males, Padre Gregorio, the pastor of Santa Caterina, tells his parishioners that the “laws of marriage” and the “commandment against adultery” must be put aside. As the townspeople set out to do their duty, the padre finds a body in church. The victim is Ricardo Yotté, a favorite of Eliza Lynch, the glamorous mistress of Paraguay’s ruler. Yotté, however, had many enemies. In addition, the resident commander is ready to blame anyone. And so, Padre Gregorio and a few parishioners come together to find the killer and locate mysterious trunks connected to the murder. The would-be sleuths all have secrets. There are furtive comings and goings to the forest, forbidden attractions. And the Brazilian invaders are closing in.

A fast-paced, suspenseful thriller with a large cast of appealing characters, Invisible Country is a story about ordinary people struggling to survive.

Kudos for a fascinating setting and for the unusual historical period that make this novel a refreshing, enjoyable read.

Adelaida Lower WHEN A SCOT LOVES A LADY Katharine Ashe, Avon, 2012, $7.99, pb, 373pp, 9780062031662 The Falcon Club – a top-secret spy ring using an exclusive gentleman’s club as a front in 1816 London – is about to lose one of its longstanding agents. Lord Leam Blackwood is leaving the organization to return to a quieter life in his ancestral home of Scotland. On the way, he finds himself waylaid by a winter storm. The roads are impassable, so he’s stuck at a country inn, where he meets Kitty Savege, a tart-tongued noblewoman with a scandalous reputation and a taste for intrigue. The close quarters quickly turn their flirtation into something more, and Kitty is drawn into the danger that seems to follow Leam wherever he goes. The expectation is that the two will part once the roads are passable, but their developing relationship.

The novel gets off to a slow start, but picks up steam as the relationship between Leam and Kitty builds. There’s plenty of dialogue, including a lot of “Scots” coming from Leam – when he’s posing as a brawny Scotsman rather than an educated man of means. This is first in Ashe’s new series, and the ending gives readers a good idea of which Falcon Club agent’s story is coming next.

Nanette Donohue MISS FULLER April Bernard, Steerforth, 2012, $14.99/ C$16.99/£10.99, pb, 192pp, 9781586421953 Annie, the narrator of Miss Fuller, a fictitious adopted sister of Henry David Thoreau, explains, “All other destinations were known to be inferior to Boston—including New York, Washington,

and London—with the possible exception of Concord…” Margaret Fuller, a friend of Emerson, Hawthorne, and the other Transcendentalists of Concord, repudiated that parochialism to her great cost.

This short novel begins with the news of her death in a shipwreck and Thoreau traveling to Fire Island in 1850 in hopes of finding her last manuscript amidst the debris. Author April Bernard, a poet, tells the complicated story of Fuller’s life as an editor, teacher, feminist, and foreign reporter. Fuller shocked her peers when she traveled to Europe. They did not read her New York Tribune dispatches: Americans had no business abroad, and certainly had no business marrying a Catholic Italian revolutionary aristocrat (all four attributes damning in themselves) and bearing his child at age 38. Fuller’s death was greeted with relief. The book doesn’t dwell on her accomplishments and failures but rather contrasts her life with Annie’s, and shows Annie’s response to Fuller’s life story. Young Annie reads Fuller’s Women in the Nineteenth Century, mostly taking away this line: “What concerns me now is, that my life be a beautiful, powerful, in a word, a complete life of its kind.”

For Annie, “the awkward, herky-jerky force of the essay, rather like an electric eel, twisting, brilliant, sparking—that, and the heat-lightning flashing and filling the window-panes—kept her awake until the dawn.”

This is a perfect read for book clubs or humanities classes: spare, elegant, and with a wealth of potential material for discussion— including Annie’s own desire to see the world, the sooty canary rescued early on, and Henry’s reaction to what he discovers in the sand. Recommended.

Kristen Hannum WESTWARD HEARTS Melody Carlson, Harvest House, 2012, $13.99, pb, 304pp, 9780736948716 Since her husband’s death three years before, in 1851, Elizabeth Martin and her two children have continued running their farm in Selma, Kentucky with the help of Brady, a freed slave, but she dreams about resettling in Oregon. Once circumstances force the decision, Elizabeth and her parents begin planning for their cross-country journey. The first two weeks are spent on a riverboat, traveling from Kentucky to Kansas City. There, they join a train of fifty wagons moving west together under the authority of the wagon master, Captain Brownlee.

This first book in a series about a family’s journey on the Oregon Trail begins slowly, as introductions are made and preparations explained. But the story becomes more interesting once the train starts moving. It is fascinating to consider the logistics of moving this many wagons, when each family traveled as a unit and the entire line of wagons spread far apart. The friction between people from various backgrounds creates its own danger, in addition to those that are encountered on the trail, but the opportunities for romance also abound. I 18th Century — 19th Century

would recommend this book more heartily if the story were told as a whole, and not divided up into a series.

Nancy J. Attwell SHERLOCK HOLMES AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE L.F.E. Coombs, Robert Hale, 2012, £19.99, hb.

222pp, 9780709095934 Sherlock Holmes at the Breakfast Table is a new collection of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. The author, a self-confessed Holmesaphile, has written these stories in the style of the original Strand Magazine. Altogether there are 13 stories featuring Holmes and Watson and including Moriarty, Lestrade and Mycroft Holmes.

Personally I would have liked the stories to have been longer in order to develop the various plots, but putting that aside, this is an interesting collection of stories which are a fitting homage to a famous literary character. They are written by someone who is obviously a big fan and who has taken great care to keep to the essence of Sherlock Holmes. The duo find themselves once again solving baffling mysteries on behalf of the government or the police. The title of the book reflects the fact that many of the stories begin at the breakfast table – indeed, some of the stories involve quantities of marmalade. This is a very pleasant summer read, ideal for the beach or a long flight.

Mike Ashworth IN TOO DEEP Mary Connealy, Bethany House, 2012, $14.99, pb, 331pp, 9780764209123 1866 Colorado: Rather than return East, widowed Audra reluctantly agrees to an arranged marriage to her stepdaughter’s brother-in-law, Ethan. Both have issues that make the wedded path less than smooth: Audra’s hateful father sold her to her first husband to pay gambling debts, and Ethan built an emotionless shell to deal with guilt over his part in injuring his younger brother Seth.

There’s no time to gradually get to know each other, however: Audra’s first husband had stolen money and hidden it who-knows-where, and they must find it before the rightful owner’s hired henchmen arrive to seek revenge.

This Christian novel has lots of action: the characters career from caves to ranch and back again, with gunplay thrown in. Yet I would have liked less action and more characterization.

Connealy does give the main couple historical reasons for their actions, but I still didn’t especially care about them. Perhaps reading the first volume of the Kinkaid Brides series would have helped; this second one has many references to incidents in the first. I did appreciate some humorous passages: “Seth frowned at his plate as if his vegetables were misbehaving.” Inspirational fiction fans who prefer action to characterization will like it.

B.J. Sedlock

19th Century

THE HOUSE I LOVED Tatiana de Rosnay, St. Martin’s, 2012, $25.99, hb, 222pp, 9780312593308 / Pan, 2012, £7.99, pb, 400pp, 9780330531290 Paris is in a state of turmoil during the 1860s, but not because of war or famine –because of the improvement plan spearheaded by Napoleon III and enacted by Baron Haussmann. This improvement plan, intended to turn Paris into a modern city, requires the destruction of several neighborhoods and hundreds of buildings so wide boulevards can be constructed. Rose Bazelet lives in an old house on the rue Childebert, in one of the picturesque neighborhoods that Paris has always been known for. She grew up in the area, but the home belonged to her late husband’s family, and contains a lifetime worth of memories.

The narration alternates between the current day, where Rose’s home is slated for demolition, and flashbacks to two key times in Rose’s life: the early days of her marriage to Armand and the time immediately following his death. Readers are presented with the portrait of an affectionate marriage between two equals, but their lives are deeply affected by their tumultuous relationship with their daughter, Violette, and the death of their son, Baptiste. After Armand’s death, Rose builds a new family of neighbors and friends, but the destruction of their neighborhood tears them apart. When Rose realizes that she can no longer fight the destruction of her beloved home, she surrenders to the inevitable – but not in the way her friends or family expect.

De Rosnay brings these long-forgotten neighborhoods back to vivid life, reminding us

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of the connection between person and place and the memories held in the homes that we grow to love, and of what we lose when we destroy entire communities in the name of progress.

Nanette Donohue MALEFICIUM Martine Desjardins (trans. Fred A. Reed and David Homel), Talonbooks, 2012, $14.95, pb, 160pp, 9780889226807 Purported to be the scandalous confessional of Vicar Jerome Savoie, this novel tells the story of seven men as they travel through exotic Middle East locations in the late 19th century. Each of them samples the finest goods and hedonistic pleasures the world has to offer as they chase after some elusive and rare treasure. But their hearts’ desires do not come without a price; the men contract debilitating maladies and crippling deformities as they make their acquisitions. When the men unburden their souls to the Vicar, it becomes apparent that each of them has met up with a beautiful and bewitching young woman, whose beauty is marred by a singular scar upon her face.

Who is this enigmatic woman? Is she really brining her black arts to bear against the Vicar and the Catholic Church, as the men assert?

Translated from the French by Fred A. Reed and David Homel, Desjardins’ prose comes across lush and lyrical, as enchanting and compelling as the tales of Scheherazade. Her depictions of bazaars and mosques, caravansaries and oases, are jewel-like in their brilliance and precision. The reader is fully mesmerized by such prose and the surprise ending of the novel makes it all that much

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Clare Clark, Harvill Secker, 2012, £14.99, hb, 506pp, 9781846556050 / HMH, 2012, $26.00, hb, 500pp, 9780151014675 London, 1887. The country is absorbed by Queen Victoria’s Jubilee and Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show, with an economic recession causing poverty and disaffection amongst the poorer class of society.

The story centres on Maribel Campbell Lowe and her radical politician husband, Edward. Maribel, an intelligent and engaging woman in her late 20s, a photographer and aspiring poet, has a number of secrets concerning her background, which are revealed to the reader over the first half of the book; if uncovered in Victorian England, they would ruin both her and Edward socially. Her husband, however, is doing much to hasten their decline by his active support for the protesting and increasingly disaffected elements in society, and eventually he is imprisoned for rioting.

Throughout the story the reader waits for disaster to fall on the Campbell Lowe household – but it is an uplifting and ultimately optimistic tale, as well as being impressively narrated. The historical context is sound, and the plot thoroughly engages the reader. It is based on real figures and their circumstances, which are not widely known. This is a wonderful story; I have read Clare Clark’s previous three novels, all of which have been reviewed by the HNS, and this is by far the best.

Doug Kemp HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Reviews | 29

more of a rewarding experience.

John Kachuba THE EMERALD STORM William Dietrich, Harper, 2012, $25.99/C$33.99, hb, 368pp, 9780061989209 In 1803, American adventurer Ethan Gage becomes involved in Caribbean island intrigue when a renegade former French police officer and his henchmen kidnap him and his wife Astiza along with their young son. He escapes the clutches of the thugs and is forced to participate in the overthrow of the French on the island of Saint Domingue, led by the black revolutionary Jean-Jacques Dessalines. In Gage’s possession is a valuable emerald, part of the lost treasure of the Aztec Emperor Montezuma. He is coerced by the kidnappers to search for and retrieve the lost fortune.

This book is the fifth installment in the Ethan Gage series. Gage is a reluctant hero who wishes only to retire from diplomatic service. Prior to his marriage, he was a well-known womanizer who used his wit and charm to succeed. He comes in contact with famous people throughout the series, including Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon, and inventor Robert Fulton. Because he also has a desire for quick riches, he is thrust into adventures that complicate his life and cause pain and considerable anguish to himself and those he loves.

Based upon historical facts, this fast-paced novel engages the reader from one cliffhanger to another. After reading this novel, I definitely want to read the previous four books in the series. I enjoy following Ethan Gage as he tries to outwit his enemies and then manages to extricate himself from a number of difficult crises. He is an exciting yet complicated protagonist. This novel is highly recommended for the adventurer in all of us.

Jeff Westerhoff TOO TEMPTING TO RESIST Cara Elliott, Forever, 2012, $7.99/C$8.99, pb, 368pp, 9780446584562 This is the second novel in the Lords of Misrule trilogy. Lady Eliza Brentford is a young, impecunious widow whose brother is so profligate that Eliza has to beg the owner of a brothel/gambling den to forbid her brother credit. During her visit to the brothel, Eliza meets the notorious Marquess of Haddan, Gryffin Dwight. A Regency rake of the first order, Gryff is unexplainably attracted to Eliza. Gryff has an alternate life as a botanical essayist, so he accepts an invitation to a house party from Eliza’s brother so he can see Capability Brown’s landscaping.

There he encounters Eliza again, and they have an improbable amorous night. Although both are emphatic that it should not be repeated, their paths cross again and again in life’s unpredictable course.

In Eliza, Cara Elliott has created an unusual heroine. Not the beautiful, seductive widow one often finds in historical romance novels, she is too thin, plain, and honest, competent enough to earn her living as an illustrator, and happy to be a 30 | Reviews | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

country denizen. In the Marquess, she’s captured a man on the verge, resisting the transition he has already begun from London rake to settled country gentleman.

Audrey Braver AVON STREET Paul Emanuelli, The Mystery Press, 2012, £9.99, pb, 347pp, 9780752465548 The novel begins with a heartrending event as a man drowns his small daughter and then himself in the river. The reasons why become evident as the novel progresses. A gang led by the unpleasantly vicious villain Nathaniel Caine is oppressing and exploiting the poor of the city. He and his gang make loans to the desperate then set a high level of interest for repayments and demand the money with menaces.

The book follows James Daunton as he becomes unwittingly involved in a fight against the gang.

It escalates into an ongoing battle where only one can survive. Daunton must gather together allies in the worst districts of the city in order to stand any chance against Caine. There are also various subplots, involving the beautiful actress Belle and her heartbreak after being lied to and taken advantage of by the deceitful Harcourt, who also plays a vital yet unwitting part in the struggle against the Caine gang.

The story is reasonably tense with some interesting plot twists and turns, and the atmosphere of the times is well-conveyed with no jarring anachronisms, but sometimes the dialogue is not as convincing as it could be and there is a little more ‘tell’ rather than ‘show’. Perhaps this is due to the fact that this is a debut novel. A solid read, therefore, that offers a well-thought-out and organised plot based on real events and with some appealing characters. A new author whose next novel I await with interest.

Ann Northfield SYNCOPATION: A Memoir of Adèle Hugo Elizabeth Caulfield Felt, Cornerstone, 2012, pb, 235pp, 9780984673995 This novel is billed as Adèle Hugo’s personal memoir, written only as Adèle could write it: scattered, sometimes tortured, passionate and very much told from inside her own head. It begins with her early childhood, when her mother is banned by her jealous and overbearing husband – Adèle’s father, Victor – from visiting her best friend because they are in love, and continues through the joy of Adèle’s relationship with her older sister, Didine; the ambivalence she held for her brothers (who get away with anything because they are men); her somewhat extreme promiscuity from an early age; her antipathy for her on-again, off-again and angst-filled fiancé; and her middle-of-the night escape from her controlling father’s chains. Adèle tells us her story via anecdotes written in the third person, but from her personal point of view, as she was so introverted as to almost never see another person’s perspective. As she writes her memoir, Didine reminds her every few chapters that it

didn’t happen that way at all. Adèle’s response? She doesn’t want to bore the reader.

In her time, Adèle was considered mad, and as I read this book and became intimately attuned to Adèle’s story, I found myself constantly wavering between considering her sane but repressed and believing her completely out of touch with reality and those around her. The author does an excellent job of presenting Adèle to the world as a woman ahead of her time yet held back by the social conventions of the era. A very enjoyable read.

Cynthia McArthur FLOATS THE DARK SHADOW Yves Fey, BearCat, 2012, $16, pb, 341pp, 9781937356217 In 1897, painter and feminist Theodora Faraday has lived for a year in Paris. Encouraged by her poet cousin Averill Charron, Theo passes time with the Revenants, a group of poets and artists who focus on death and darkness. In other chapters, we see a character who believes himself to be the reincarnated soul of Gilles de Rais, Jeanne d’Arc’s knight who turned to the devil after her martyrdom and began to rape and murder innocent children.

Inspector Michel Devaux of the Sûreté is asked to investigate the kidnapping of children in Paris; often their disappearances are accompanied by the mark of a black cross with wings, which Devaux eventually learns is the mark of medieval murderer Gilles de Rais. Many of those being abducted are children Theo knows, and she works with and against Devaux: One of the inspector’s prime suspects is Averill, who Theo is in love with and cannot believe would harm children. We readers know the murderer could be Averill, but he could just as well be Averill’s father, or any of the Revenants, and suspicion cleverly moves among the group like a dark fog.

The mystery is gripping, the crimes loathsome, and the suspense intense. The sexual assault and torture of children are illustrated in detailed bits and scattered throughout the novel, hard to read, but effective in their psychological portrait of the villain. Fey’s writing is gorgeous: she evokes the sights and smells of Paris and poetically presents the darkness and horror that plague tormented souls.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt A HUMBLE COMPANION Laurie Graham, Quercus, 2012, £16.99, hb, 368pp, 9780875387813, also £12.99, pb, 9781780875484 Nellie Welche is twelve when, in 1788, she is selected to be a “humble companion” to the young Princess Sofia so that the princess may come to understand more of the world through association with someone from the “ordinary ranks” of life. So begins Nellie’s connection to “The Royalties”, which lasts over sixty years.

Nellie is a wry, witty observer of the foibles of those around her who quickly befriends the naïve and lonely Sofy. Her memoirs carry the reader on the tide of history through war, revolution and social change, and the various incumbents of 19th Century

the throne from gentle, mad King George to the imperious Alexandrina (better known as Victoria).

Her own life, married to a society confectioner, is full of small pleasures and some tragedy. But Sofy has secrets too, and it is only after the death of the princess in 1848 that Nellie feels the time is right to tell the truth.

In Nellie, Laurie Graham has given us a determined heroine whose vividly rendered voice can make the reader laugh, and then on the next sentence, catch a breath with emotion. Through her we get a true sense of the momentous changes taking place in society, and the strange world of the Royal Family, bound by protocol and convention, but living life by a different set of rules. I only have one cavil – the phonetic rendering of some of the characters’ German accents tended to slow the pace from time to time. Otherwise, thoroughly recommended.

Mary Seeley IMPERIAL SCANDAL Teresa Grant, Kensington, 2012, $15/C$16.95, pb, 482pp, 9780758254245 In Brussels fresh from the intrigues of the Congress of Vienna, British agent Malcolm Rannoch and his wife Suzanne investigate a young lady’s murder. There’s little time and much at stake: “Boney” is on the march to Waterloo, and the scandal they uncover implicates the princely head of an Allied army.

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The Rannochs make a talented and engaging team, he working the taverns and army camps while she covers the salons and ballrooms. I would follow these two and their complex relationship for many adventures – but unfortunately the complexity of their supporting cast is overwhelming. Every character seems linked to every other by overlapping webs of marriage and family ties, assignations and allegiances. I found myself referring frequently to the extensive list of “dramatis personae” in the front pages; midway through I found myself wanting a scorecard as well, to keep track of all the doubled agents and fickle lovers.

The period detail is as thick as it is correct, and I was impressed with the author’s even skill describing both ladies’ fashions and infantry tactics. The reader will learn much about each without feeling as though lectured. The solution of the mystery, however, left me unsatisfied: what’s really solved is a murder from the previous book in the series, requiring the introduction of a critical pair of characters some 300 pages into the present tome. This last, despite the author’s otherwise superb craftsmanship, made me sympathize with the unfortunate Général d’Erlon – rushing his illfated I Corps to and fro between Ligny and Quatre Bras, too confused to be of use in either fight.

Richard Bourgeois WHEN MAIDENS MOURN: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

T.D. Griggs, Orion, 2012, £12.99, pb, 453pp, 9781409101918 Towards the end of the 19th century the young Frank Gray sees his mother assaulted and killed. Though he and his father soon leave India, the scene of the crime, Frank is consumed with the need to return, to discover the truth of that half‑remembered night, to identify and punish the soldier he saw with her. His father is dismissed from the Dearborn trading company, and dies, but Frank, after having had his money stolen, finds his way to their country estate, where he and Grace Dearborn make friends, despite his being a lowly groom.

Grace has begun to question the morality of her father’s trading contacts with the Empire and is influenced by the socialist leaders, which results in her leaving home. Her passions are for Frank and against the Empire, and she is a most determined young woman unconstrained by the customs of the time.

Griggs is equally at home in India, an English country estate, London slums, and the Sudan. All are described in vivid detail, and the scenes of violence, whether on the North West Frontier or the deserts of Sudan, are related with stark reality. He portrays Victorian society, of whatever class, with ease and conviction.

Frank is single-minded in his desire for revenge, though has no such desire against the man who robbed him, an easier target. Grace deplores the manner in which her family wealth is obtained, yet has no hesitation in using it for her own ends. These minor quirks in characterisation do not detract from a gripping story. The times and locations have been wellresearched, and incorporated seamlessly into the plot. It’s a compelling read, far more than just a love story or a war novel.

Marina Oliver 19th Century

C.S. Harris, Obsidian, 2012, $24.95, hb, 341pp, 9780451235770 When Maidens Mourn is the seventh novel in the series by C.S. Harris featuring Sebastian St. Cyr, an aristocratic sleuth in Regency England who mingles effortlessly with all strata of society in order to solve crimes. It is the summer of 1812, and Sebastian and his bride, Hero, daughter of his archenemy Lord Jarvis, are awkwardly adjusting to married life when they hear the news that Hero’s friend Gabrielle Tennyson has been murdered.

Gabrielle, a beautiful but eccentric lady antiquary, excelled at making enemies right and left, especially in her exploration of the possible site of King Arthur’s Camelot. Sebastian and Hero’s search for the murderer lead them all over London, from glittering drawing rooms and fashionable garden parties to crimes-ridden alleys and sordid taverns.

Sebastian has a motley array of friends who help him out of the various predicaments in which he becomes entangled. In the meantime, he discovers that his young wife possesses wits that match his own in both audacity and determination.

Recommended for those who enjoy detailed and authentic historical fiction as well as an enthralling mystery.

Elena Maria Vidal STRIKEOUT: Baseball, Broadway, and the Brotherhood in the 19th Century James Hawking, Sunstone Press, 2012, $26.95, pb, 280pp, 9780865348646 Between 1888 and January 1891, professional baseball is in its infancy. Many professional players in the National League are becoming upset with the autocratic methods the owners use to control the game and their salaries. In forming a Brotherhood of Professional Baseball Players, John Montgomery Ward, the star shortstop for the New York Giants, attempts to organize a players’ union, which will eventually break away from the National League to form the new Players League in 1890. He is helped by his millionaire wife, the famous Broadway actress Helen Dauvray. The story involves the contentious marriage between Ward and Dauvray, ballgame conditions in which center field may include a miniature lake, and the many players who play a game while drunk or suffering from a hangover.

This novel reads as a docudrama detailing the lives and times of major league baseball players before the turn of the 20th century. For them, the bigotry and racism present in the game must be balanced against the job’s financial rewards and excitement. Baseball enthusiasts like myself will enjoy this book for its realistic depiction of the sport during its formative years. The characters themselves are not very well developed, but the lifestyles of the players are described and documented. My only major critical issue with the novel was the number of grammatical errors I encountered.

Jeff Westerhoff

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CONFESSIONS OF THE CREATURE Gary Inbinder, Fireship, 2012, $19.95, pb, 302pp, 9781611792096 Frankenstein’s creature is given a new voice and a fresh start in this continuation of Mary Shelley’s classic. Journeying from the Arctic, he happens upon a desolate cottage in the wilds of Russia and meets a pagan healer who turns his features from monstrous to handsome and foretells his rise to greatness. Styling himself Viktor Viktorovich—a strange tribute to his creator—he joins the ranks of a group of village laborers outside of Moscow.

Extremely strong, intelligent and cultured Viktor quickly rises from peasant to high-ranking officer during the Napoleonic Wars. He falls in love with the beautiful daughter of his commander and leads a life he never thought possible—but lurking within, with yellow eyes and sickly skin, the creature struggles to emerge. Plagued with frightful dreams and visions, there is a constant battle between the malicious monster and the honorable man, ultimately surfacing in a spellbinding and satisfying conclusion.

As a historical novel, it captures early 19thcentury Russian society from the perspective of several different classes, wisely expounding on the virtues and the vices of mankind through the eyes of a monster turned human. The Napoleonic Wars are detailed superbly, but not so thoroughly as to disinterest those not inclined toward war novels. There is a romantic theme and plenty of philosophical anecdotes to satiate lovers of those genres. Even readers unfamiliar with the classic will enjoy this novel for its well-developed characterizations, intricate plot, and imaginative and original prose.

Arleigh Johnson SIXTY ACRES AND A BRIDE Regina Jennings, Bethany House, 2012, $14.99, pb, 368pp, 9780764209901 This vibrant debut novel blends two cultures of the 1870s as two widows go back to family in Texas after tragedy befalls them in Mexico. The young and beautiful Rosa Garner accompanies her mother-in-law, both needing a fresh start, only to find that their old home has accumulated a huge sum of property taxes. Touching on biblical references, their relatives welcome the two widows with open arms and help them achieve financial security.

Weston Garner is intrigued by his new cousin Rosa, but he is not willing to let go of guilt over his wife’s death and believes he doesn’t deserve to love again. Rosa and Weston strike up an unorthodox agreement even as they each battle their own fears and wariness, yet the entire community support them in spite of their own resistance. The entertaining characters are fleshed out and convincing while the plot explores many themes such as heritage, honor, customs, abuse and insecurity. Rosa’s intelligent and witty character is easy to root for, as she is a stranger among friends and refuses to take anything for granted. A journey of faith, friendship and love, this historical romance 32 | Reviews | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

will please lovers of the Western-themed novel.

Marie Burton THE LAST OF LADY LANSDOWN Shirley Kennedy, Camel Press, 2012, $15.95, pb, 308pp, 9781603818186 This Regency novel is set in Northern England and begins with the death of the Earl of Lansdown.

His death was sudden and shocking, and the cause was quite unique. Since his widow, Jane, was childless, the estate will go to the next male in line, leaving Jane and her family penniless and homeless.

However, there is a ten-month waiting period before settling the estate just in case the Earl had spawned an heir before he died, although Jane knows this is not possible. Her mother suggests Jane take a lover and do her best to conceive immediately. Jane rejects this idea until she meets Douglas Cartland, a notorious rake with a tragic past. Jane is now faced with a Herculean decision. Shirley Kennedy has written a refreshing, entertaining novel and has created a likeable heroine and hero the reader will miss when the book is ended.

Audrey Braver DEADLY LEGACY Alanna Knight, Allison & Busby, 2012, £19.99, hb, 319pp, 9780749040734 This is the seventh novel featuring Inspector Faro’s daughter Rose McQuinn, who works as a private investigator. Rose agrees to help old Mrs Lawers by delivering a package containing a valuable family heirloom to her only living relative.

But the journey is fraught with danger and Rose is attacked on the train; when she finally returns home it is to find that Mrs Lawers and her maid are dead. Meanwhile, Jack Macmerry wants her to locate his daughter so he can get in touch with her, but this proves difficult too and then Jack gets shot…

These stories are always entertaining and exciting to read, Ms Knight being adept at penning a real page-turner. Told as usual in Rose’s own words which adds a sense of immediacy to the tale this one hits the ground running and doesn’t stop until the end, something I like in a mystery story. My only personal gripe is that I’m still not too keen on the vague hints about the supernatural, particularly pertaining to the hist-myst version of Lassie, faithful old Thane the mystery hound. I guess that this does add an aspect that Victorian readers might have themselves enjoyed but it tends to attract other supernatural elements and also suspicious “miracles”. Take all this out and you would have a better and more believable book, but even with it in this is still a fine entry in a continually impressive series.

Rachel A Hyde MAGIC WORDS Gerald Kolpan, Pegasus, 2012, $25.95, hb, 403pp, 9781605983691 I reached the end of this book expecting to find out that most of the story and characters were fictional, but Kolpan’s epilogue says that

many characters were real people. That drove me to search the internet in order to learn more: my favorite aspect of historical fiction.

In the 1860s, Julius Meyer immigrates to the United States with his magician cousin, Alex.

Julius is destined to work in his brother’s store in Omaha, Nebraska. But not long after he arrives, he is kidnapped by Ponca Indians and treated as their slave. Eventually he wins their respect, learns their language well enough to act as a trusted interpreter, and woos the chief ’s daughter. Meanwhile, Alex Herrmann establishes himself as the country’s most famous magician. He takes on a Ponca stage assistant, Lady-Jane Little Feather, billing her as the Egyptian Princess Noor. When they create a sensation in London, Alex invites Adelaide Scarsez to be a chaperone for Noor. But he’s unaware that Adelaide is acting as a spy for Alex’s fellowmagician brother Compars, who suspects Alex of stealing Compars’s special tricks.

Readers interested in Native American, show business, and Western history will find plenty of plot elements to hold their attention. Some degree of concentration is required, as the cast of characters is huge, and Kolpan doesn’t hesitate to introduce new ones as late as the final chapters. The author made me think, especially in the passages where parallels are drawn between the U.S. government’s treatment of the Native Americans, and many European governments’ conduct towards Jews. My bottom line: I liked the book, yet was ultimately disappointed in the deus ex machina ending.

B.J. Sedlock BEES IN THE BUTTERFLY GARDEN Maureen Lang, Tyndale House, 2012, $12.99, pb, 370pp, 9781414364469 The title of Bees in the Butterfly Garden gives a fresh, inviting, outdoorsy feel, especially with the girl on the cover lovingly smelling the flowers.

However, there are not many contented characters in this book, including the two protagonists, Meg and Ian. When Meg learns her deceased father was an expert thief, Meg’s upper-crust world at Madame Marisse’s boarding school falls apart.

Once Meg meets her father’s protégé, they develop an attraction for each other which they would never admit. When Ian has to prove his status as the next boss of his crime ring, Meg offers a golden opportunity to help Ian achieve his goals. With guilt plaguing their actions, Meg and Ian set out to emulate her father’s ways as they plot to steal the infamous Pemberton gold bricks from Meg’s friends on Fifth Avenue. With a few interesting characters and New York City setting, the entire story surrounds this deed of theft which Meg feels she absolutely must accomplish, against her father’s friends’ wishes.

Ignoring the values and the etiquette that her father had provided for her, Meg is intent on a life of crime. Without a commendable reason to choose this path, her actions do not make her a likable character. We can allow the same transgressions for Ian, as this was always his way of life during the Gilded Age, but Meg does not give any valid 19th Century

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Ami McKay, Harper, 2012, $25.99, hb, 336pp, 9780061140327 / Orion, 2012, £20.00, hb, 320pp, 9781409143482 Ami McKay’s second novel is set in the tenements of lower Manhattan about five years after the end of the Civil War, in the middle of what Mark Twain coined the “gilded age,” so called because beneath the veneer of wealth and civility lies the basest of human desires and behaviors. It is a time when men of all classes visit prostitutes and the spread of venereal disease is rampant. In that time, even educated people think that to deflower a virgin will cure the French pox; many young girls are sold into such service only to die of the illness themselves.

One such girl is Moth, the twelve-year-old narrator of the story. Her voice is irresistible as she tells how her mother sells her into the service of a cruel mistress who beats and abuses her; how she escapes into the clutches of a kind but mercenary madam; how she meets one of the earliest female doctors, Dr. Sadie, who shows Moth other possibilities; and how Moth somehow retains her innocence, though she is deflowered by a rich man who pays well for the privilege.

This is a powerful story told wonderfully well. The writing is rich and filled with period details, but it is the emotional truth of the story that haunts the reader long after the book is closed.

Moth’s longing for love, especially the love of her mother, rings true. Highly recommended.

Anne Clinard Barnhill reason to even leave her school or her teaching position behind. The subject matter of ignoring the law and wholeheartedly scheming to defraud your friends leaves a sour taste, especially since the plot surrounding this event tends to drag. But if the reader can get past Meg’s unhealthy desire for vindication through crime, then the outcome may just be worth it.

Marie Burton BEDDING LORD NED Sally MacKenzie, Kensington, 2012, $7.99/ C$8.99, pb, 426pp, 9781420123210 Venus Valentine, Duchess of Greycliffe, was born on St. Valentine’s Day, as were her three sons, and every year she throws a Valentine ball to celebrate. Venus is known among the Regency ton as the Duchess of Love because of her successful matchmaking abilities. Her one failure seems to be Miss Eleanor Bowman, whom Venus and her Duke think of as a daughter and would be happy to have as a daughter-in-law if their middle son, Ned, would only get past mourning his long-dead wife and stop thinking of Eleanor (Nell) as a sister.

MacKenzie has the knack of telling stories with amusing twists and turns. In Bedding Lord Ned, a horribly-indulged, thieving cat plays cupid to help Venus in her endeavors. Nell is a delightful heroine who remains true to herself while Ned remains obstinate in his denial. There is a special treat in store for readers of this novel. The author has included a delightful novella, “The Duchess of Love,” in this edition as a prequel that explains Venus’s history.

Audrey Braver 19th Century

BRILLIANCE Anthony McCarten, Alma, 2012, £14.99, hb, 219pp, 9781846881787 Brilliance is a fictionalised account of the life of Thomas Alva Edison. The author says this book is not intended to be another biography and that “he did no more than swirl a teacup and watch a story suggest itself ”. However, his research is meticulous and his sense of time and place perfect.

The story is not told in a linear manner but episodically, each flash forward or back indicated by a different title heading. At times this is rather confusing and makes the fascinating story more difficult to follow. McCarten is an excellent writer, and his portrayal of the central characters is well done. His literary style is well suited to this subject and a pleasure to read.

I knew that Edison invented the ticker tape machine still used in the stock market, the phonograph, and the electric light bulb, but his involvement in the electric chair – still used in America – was an unpleasant revelation. I think the book was not improved by the descriptions – in graphic detail – of the electrocution of first dogs, then horses and orang-utans and finally a human being. This, in my opinion, was both unnecessary and disgusting.

For that reason I would not recommend this book to anyone without a very strong stomach. A great shame because, in all other respects, it was a truly remarkable book.

Fenella Miller END OF THE TRAIL Vickie McDonough, River North, 2012, $14.99,

pb, 256pp, 9780802404084 For readers who enjoy a blend of Christian fiction with American history, this novel is a warm and comfortable fit. In End of the Trail, the latest addition to the Texas Trails/Morgan Family Series, Vickie McDonough presents two appealing young characters—Brooks Morgan and Keri Langston.

Even as they vie for ownership of her murdered uncle’s ranch, the two bond in their attempts to hold onto the property against devious forces.

Their friendship strengthens as the danger mounts throughout the story. Along the way, Vickie searches for the reasons behind her mother’s giving her up as a young child to be raised by her uncle— as unconventional a decision in the 1880s West as it would have been elsewhere in the country. What she discovers both shocks her and explains her mother’s desperation. A strong spiritual theme and solid family values—this book might be equally appropriate for adult and young-adult readers.

Kathryn Johnson DEATH AT WOODS HOLE Frances McNamara, Allium Press of Chicago, 2012, $14.99, pb, 220pp, 9780983193838 Chicagoan and scholar Emily Cabot has escaped the heat of her hometown to spend the summer of 1894 on Cape Cod, at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole. Any idea of a peaceful summer with her friends and her beau, Dr. Stephen Chapman, flies out the window when she discovers the drowned body of the disagreeable Lincoln McElroy in one of the lab’s tanks. This was no accident, and there is no shortage of suspects.

McElroy and his cronies wanted to sell the lab to Clark University while its scientists wanted to keep it independent. Emily’s best friend Clara Shea is keeping a secret from her, and Stephen is busy with the lab, so Emily attempts to salvage the remainder of the summer by investigating McElroy’s death.

McNamara, a librarian at the University of Chicago, proves, if anyone was asking, that librarians make great historical mystery writers.

She captures the tension of the times between the male and female scientists, both professionally and personally as an estimable female scientist is overlooked and Clara allows a “worthier” male to take credit for her discovery. Also so accurately portrayed is that small-town-in-summer feeling, when towns are overtaken by visitors, who coexist uneasily with locals. This was my first Emily Cabot mystery, and as a fellow Chicagoan, I was initially disappointed this was set outside the city, but that feeling didn’t last long. I’d follow Emily to any location.

Ellen Keith THE WHITE FOREST Adam McOmber, Touchstone, 2012, $25.00, hb, 320pp, 9781451664256 I almost thought this was going to be “just” a Gothic thriller, but it quickly became so much more—a dark, haunted and haunting parapsychological journey into a mysterious underworld of Victorian England.

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Jane Silverlake is a young woman with an uncanny ability to hear sounds made by the “souls” of man-made objects—furniture, candles, mementoes. She can only find peace in the realm of Nature, and seeks that solace frequently on the lonely, windswept stretches of Hampstead Heath, where her mother came to an untimely death.

Handsome Nathan Ashe is fascinated by her “gift,” which can be shared when she touches another person’s skin, and he pushes her to allow him to continue to experience the mythical world it opens to him. Then Nathan goes missing, seemingly a victim of a dangerous cult of “otherworldly” pleasure seekers, and Jane and her best friend Madeline court death and danger to find him and bring him back.

The story is told in the first person by Jane and moves at a fast pace. McOmber’s debut novel is well written, chilling and spooky, and the plot is highly original. The only technique I quibbled with is the use of Nathan’s journal, which is not only read by Jane to help solve a major puzzle (a little too convenient?) but is also printed in italics, which often goes on for a few pages and gets a little tiresome. But that is indeed a quibble and the story itself is dramatic and intriguing. Jane is a very sympathetic character, and we feel with and for her as she comes to the gravest of understandings of her true nature and the responsibilities that come with this knowledge.

Mary F. Burns SACRE BLEU: A Comedy d’Art Christopher Moore, William Morrow, 2012, $26.99, hb, 416pp, 9780061779749 Begun as a history of the color blue, this book evolves into a detective romp through Montmartre, Paris, historical haunt of artists. After Vincent van Gogh allegedly shot himself, he walked a mile to seek a doctor’s help. “Why would a suicide do that?” demands Toulouse Lautrec, who decides Vincent was murdered, and begins a vigorous hunt for the culprit.

Back to the precious color blue: it is extracted from the gem lapis lazuli, available only from the wilds of Afghanistan. It was so expensive that many religious paintings of the Virgin Mary commissioned by the Catholic Church were left partially unpainted. Montmartre artists paid a better price offered by “the Colorman,” a nasty gnome-like creature with even nastier habits. But what other “price” did these great artists pay? While Renoir, Monet, Manet and Whistler were painting the light, the dark, and their lady friends having lunch, Lautrec sets out to find his friend’s murderer if he has to thread himself through all the brothels to do it!

The author begins his story with a primary color but only dips into it occasionally as his characters wander through Impressionism to a weird surrealism at the finish. Readers who enjoy bawdy, colorfully irreverent art history with a meandering mystery will enjoy the ride. Art lovers will have to content themselves with small painting reproductions throughout the book with 34 | Reviews | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

the writer’s startling captions, and with a sober exposition in the afterword.

This book is colorful; it’s printed in blue, its language is “blue,” and the obsession with sex goes over-the-top even for Parisians of that era. There is also one egregious error with the misspelling of that time-honored English color company, Winsor & Newton. Although their art products carry the Royal Warrant (i.e., endorsed by the Royal Family), their name is not spelled “Windsor.”

Tess Heckel QUEEN OF GLORY Christopher Nicole, Severn House, 2012, $28.95/£19.99, hb, 224pp, 9780727881212 Nicole, in this sequel to Manu, continues the fascinating travelogue of Emma, a young and attractive English governess. She’s still in the employ of the Rani of Jhansi, although she has separated from her husband, an Indian officer, and is engaged to a British major who is serving elsewhere. Coincidentally, Jhansi is under the Governor General’s annexation orders that are being appealed by the Rani.

This continuance covers the events immediately prior to and during the Indian Mutiny/Rebellion of 1857. While Emma is there to tutor the Rani’s adopted son, she does much more, advising and assisting the rani in her cause. After the rejection of the appeal, the affairs at Jhansi take a turn for the worse. By 1857 the Rani is struggling to survive on a small pension. To make matters worse, the East India Company army’s Hindu/Muslim sepoys mutiny over the religious issue of needing to chew off the pig- and cow-fat- greased new cartridges required to load the superior Enfield Rifles. They persuade the Rani to join the rebellion, which she is reluctant to do initially. Ultimately, she has to take up arms since she’s implicated in the atrocities committed by the Jhansi rebels.

The love story thread is kept alive by Emma’s pining for her betrothed. In her discussions with both the Indian and British leaders, we hear both sides of the arguments about the treachery and carnage during the insurgence. Nicole lets the readers come to their own conclusions. He uses the tools of a historical novelist to good effect. The historical facts are only slightly adjusted without losing the overall picture, and he brings the events of the 1857 uprising to life in a treatment most readers will enjoy. Considering the severe impediments the Rani faced, the book’s title “Queen of Glory” (another name for the Virgin Mary) seems appropriate.

Waheed Rabbani THE WILD PRINCESS Mary Hart Perry, Morrow, 2012, $14.99, pb, 437pp, 9780062123466 Upon the death of her mother, Queen Victoria, in 1901, Princess Louise, the sixth child and fourth daughter of Victoria and Albert, writes to the son of her dearest friend. Louise encloses a manuscript describing a youthful indiscretion which she committed when she was a young

princess. The action now flashes back to 1871 and Louise’s strange and unhappy marriage to John Lorne, later Duke of Argyll. Princess Louise was a headstrong and extremely beautiful young woman.

She studied art at a London School and was more than a competent painter and sculptor. She was also an early feminist, hence her nickname of “wild princess.”

The plot of this fictional account deals with an attempt on the life of one or more members of the royal family. The hero is Stephen Byrne, an American in the employ of the British Secret Service. Byrne is convinced there is a plot afoot, but his investigation is hindered by protocol and the overly protective John Brown, Queen Victoria’s formidable Highland gillie. Although Byrne and Louise initially do not get along, they eventually become lovers, and together they investigate the possible assassination which is planned to take place during the Accession Day celebration.

In this first of a projected series of novels featuring the daughters of Victoria, Perry has done a superb job of blending real and fictional characters while weaving actual events with fictitious ones; for example, using the details of the Jubilee Plot of 1887 to describe the attempt on Accession Day. Her characterization of the “wild princess” is believable, as is her description of life in Victoria’s palaces.

Audrey Braver THE FACE OF HEAVEN Murray Pura, Harvest House, 2012, $13.99, pb, 352pp, 9780736949491 When two slaves seeking shelter on Lyndel’s farm are recovered by slave hunters, she and her Amish community are confronted with more than a crisis of conscience. Her Amish elders, her father included, want no part in the upcoming war. And even in this pacifist community slavery is hotly contested. Most would rather report runaway slaves and abide by the law rather than stir up trouble.

But Lyndel and her would-be suitor, Nathaniel, cannot stand by while others fight for the Union and abolition. Risking excommunication from their communities, Nathaniel enlists and Lyndel signs on as a nurse. They face ostracism and the loss of loved ones as they participate in some of the bloodiest battles of the American Civil War. The Face of Heaven is a touching inspirational novel. Pura pulls no punches in the horror he puts his characters through, and I found myself drawn into the drama. Though I was distracted by continual references to Lyndel’s hair and eyes, and though the characters had an understanding of the battles and succession of generals that bordered on clairvoyance (an understanding that only hindsight and reference to textbooks can give), I enjoyed the novel.

Justin M. Lindsay NO LONGER A GENTLEMAN Mary Jo Putney, Zebra, 2011, $7.99/C$8.99, pb, 373pp, 9781420117233 19th Century

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E D I TORS’ C H OI C E A BLAZE OF GLORY: A Novel of the Battle of Shiloh

Jeff Shaara, Ballantine, 2012, $28.00, hb, 464pp, 9780345527356 While Lee and McClellan spar in the Eastern theater of what has become a full-blown war, Union and Confederate forces are squaring off in the West.

Union forces are determined to drive Johnston and his Confederate troops out of Tennessee. Early in 1862, Grant’s men take Fort Henry and Fort Donelson.

Nashville becomes the first state capital to fall to Union forces. Johnston gathers his troops in secrecy close to where the Union troops are encamped near Shiloh church. On April 6th he launches a devastating surprise attack.

What follows is the Battle of Shiloh, by far the bloodiest battle to that date in the American Civil War, with 25,000 combined casualties over the course of two days of fighting.

Shaara, as in his other works, tells the story from the perspectives of the men who were actually there.

We see the battle from its prelude through its grisly conclusion, through the eyes of such men as Johnston, Sherman, and Governor Harris. This time, however, Shaara includes the perspective of some of the front line fighters, such as Seeley, who served with Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest’s cavalry, and Bauer, a private who serves in the Union infantry.

Shaara is a masterful storyteller, and I have never read such a gripping account of Civil War combat. He is able to convey the utter confusion and fog of war with tremendous power, along with both the fear and exhilaration that so many combat veterans experience. Despite its grand background, this is a character-driven novel.

A Blaze of Glory is book one of his new trilogy, which will focus primarily on the western theater of the war. I eagerly anticipate the next installment. Highly recommended.

Justin M. Lindsay Part of Putney’s Lost Lords series, Nowhere Near Respectable mixes romance and Regency history in equal measure and produces a riveting story. Politics and sex can cause complications far worse than imagined. The affair of casual spy Grey Sommers, Lord Wyndham, with a married Frenchwoman results in his 10-year imprisonment by her jealous, powerful husband. Cassie Fox is a British-born undercover agent whose life’s work is to bring down Napoleon’s empire. Her latest assignment: discover anything she can about Lord Wyndham and rescue him, if he is still alive.

But Lord Wyndham is not some aged patriot but a handsome, intelligent man with a wicked sense of humor and a smile to match. And Cassie, mistress of disguise, is not the elderly peasant who rescues him from the dungeon, but a woman of beauty. The agonies they have both endured causes trust, commitment, and love to hover out of reach. Wyndham and Cassie return to France on a mission to rescue a friend. If they fail, it is death for both. Success offers a chance for them to find happiness. What do the Fates hold in store for them? Read Nowhere Near Respectable and find out! A fun read.

Monica Spence THROUGH RUSHING WATER Catherine Richmond, Thomas Nelson, 2012, 19th Century

$15.99, pb, 349pp, 9781595549259 Richmond’s sophomore novel portrays life on an 1870s Native American reservation that the reader won’t soon forget. Russian immigrant Sophia Makinoff hopes to become a missionary in China, but instead is sent to teach school at the Ponca Indian Agency in Dakota Territory. Conditions are terrible: food and medicine are scarce, supplies that do arrive are shoddy, and government rules forbid Sophia to learn the Poncas’ language. The agency carpenter, Will Dunn, does his best to help the Poncas. He educates Sophia on their customs and explains the frustrations of dealing with the Indian Affairs department. Then a government decrees even more hardship for the Poncas: they must move to Indian Territory, in winter and without supplies.

I’ve read history books about how poorly the Native Americans on the early agencies were treated, but Richmond’s book really brings the details of that treatment to life. Even though I know one should be wary of judging the past by 21st-century standards, Richmond’s book still makes me ashamed of my country’s actions. This Christian novel is most alive while set at the agency. After the Poncas leave and Will and Sophia go to Omaha, the progress of their romance is comparatively anticlimactic.

B.J. Sedlock

THE CANDLE MAN Alex Scarrow, Orion, 2012, £20, hb, 320pp, 9781409108184 Few events in recent history hold such a fascination or resonance as the Whitechapel murders in 1888 and the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. To combine both in a novel could be considered a masterstroke, and The Candle Man begins with an old man unburdening himself of his darkest secret as Titanic begins its descent into the ice-cold sea.

As a long time Ripperologist, I was prepared to thoroughly enjoy The Candle Man, only to be rather disappointed by what turned out to be yet another retelling of the hoary Royal Conspiracy tale, and not a particularly well researched one at that.

What this book does possess in spades is an unrelenting sense of period gloom and unpleasantness. This is definitely a book to avoid if descriptions of infanticide are likely to cause upset. There is also a multitude of unappealing characters, which could be considered a plus when reading a novel about Jack the Ripper, when one knows that there’s a fair chance that at least some of them will eventually be offed so it’s best not to get too attached.

Don’t be fooled either by the cover or blurb into thinking this is a novel about the Titanic, because although it begins and ends on the doomed liner, it doesn’t actually make any other appearances, and he might just as well have been a passenger on any old sinking boat.

On the whole, although I really didn’t enjoy The Candle Man all that much, I could still appreciate the gaslit, wet-cobbled grimness of it all, so if you’re just looking for a rollicking read set in Victorian London with a bit of serial killer action to spice things up a bit, this will probably do the trick nicely.

Melanie Clegg ON THE TRAIL TO MOONLIGHT GULCH Shelter Somerset, Dreamspinner, 2012, $17.99, pb, 298pp, 9781613724460 After losing his lover in a tragic accident, 19-year-old Torsten Pilkvist fears he will never find true love again. Seeking a distraction from his mourning, he buys a copy of a matrimonial catalog, filled with advertisements from Western homesteaders looking for mail order brides from the East. Only intending to read it as a joke, Tory is drawn to one of the ads, from sensitive frontiersman and Civil War veteran Franklin Ausmus. He impulsively sends a letter, sparking a deep and touching correspondence. Desperate to keep the connection with Franklin, Tory conceals his true gender. But when Tory’s father puts an end to the correspondence, he strikes out on his own from Chicago for the Black Hills.

Franklin has no idea that the young man who wanders onto his homestead one day is the “girl” he’d fallen in love with, who broke off their correspondence with no explanation months ago. But Tory is hard-working and serves as a HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Reviews | 35

distraction, as Franklin pines for letters from Chicago. Not realizing that they already know one another, Franklin draws closer to Tory and begins to forget his “girl.” In the face of their burgeoning relationship, Tory worries that his secret could destroy everything.

Given the intriguing premise of a man masquerading as a mail order bride, I really wanted to enjoy this book. Unfortunately, the characterization and the writing didn’t carry this premise through for me. Though the setting was vivid and the action scenes were nicely paced, the romantic scenes fell a little flat. The author had good potential in pairing the earnest city boy with the older, reclusive frontiersman, yet their dialogue and actions lacked the realism necessary to convince me of their blossoming romance.

Jessica Brockmole LITTLE PEOPLE Jane Sullivan, Allen & Unwin, 2012, £7.99, pb, 350pp, 9781742378855 This is a Gothic novel set in Australia.

Unbelievable! – Australia must be the least Gothic country on earth, but here it is.

The story unfolds during the tour of Australia in 1870 by P T Barnum’s troupe of freaks and midgets, notably ‘General’ Tom Thumb, which had already toured America and Europe and even amused Queen Victoria. In Melbourne they take on a new wardrobe mistress, an English governess, Mary Ann, who has lost her job because she is pregnant. Her new contract of employment requires that she makes over the baby to the troupe (there is reason to believe it will be a midget). She thus becomes the sane outsider observing the increasingly insane rivalries within the troupe.

There is also a mad millionaire anthropologist who wants Mary’s baby for his private museum.

The story comes to a very Gothic climax in the museum. Yes, you can have Australian Gothic, and this is a very good novel of its type.

Edward James WARATAH HOUSE Ann Whitehead, Penguin Australia, 2012, AU$29.95, pb, 352pp, 9781921518744 On a ship to Australia in the 1880s, Marina is orphaned after a fever outbreak and is taken into the care of James and Sarah, who are headed for service positions in country west of Sydney.

When further tragedies strike, Sarah is convinced Marina is cursed, and her hatred of the girl has repercussions for the inhabitants of Waratah House for years to come.

The owners of the house are secondary figures, and this story is primarily about the servants, with the vile Sarah at its core. Marina and her daughter Emily are both attractive young women, but with an uncanny ability to predict sudden death. Their love lives are fraught with lies and jealousies, often manipulated by Sarah.

In spite of her nastiness, Sarah is a memorable creation. Hints about her grim childhood attempt to justify her behavior, but it’s difficult to find any 36 | Reviews | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

real sympathy for her. Her foil is the equally welldrawn and assertive cook, Joyce (“Cookie”). Sarah’s children, Esther and David, exhibit as much deviousness as their mother. Most of the other characters, including the leading males, tend to be stereotypes.

After a promising beginning, the narrative becomes repetitive and sluggish in places and, as little action occurs beyond the environs of Waratah House, it acquires a claustrophobic feel. There are some surprises that lift the tone, but the ending is inconclusive, so a sequel could be planned.

History is just a backdrop to this novel, but it should appeal to those who enjoy the drama of dark human relationships.

Marina Maxwell MR STEPHENSON’S REGRET David Williams, Wild Wolf, 2012, £9.99, pb, 280pp, 9781907954207 The hallmark of any historical novel must surely be that, primarily, it tells an entertaining story whilst at the same time arousing an interest in the period or subject matter so that the reader may be encouraged to carry out some later research. With this novel about the pioneers of the railway age, George and Robert Stephenson, David Williams has succeeded admirably on both counts.

My personal knowledge of the Stephensons was very basic, but after reading this I have now got an insight into their background, their early education and working lives, their relationships

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with family, friends and colleagues, and crucially how they developed the engines for which they would become famous, such as “The Rocket”, and the role they played in the Stockton-Darlington and Liverpool-Manchester lines. You don’t have to be a railway buff to enjoy the story, because it is told in an engaging manner with lots of incidents and episodes described, most of which will be unfamiliar to the general reader. Williams obviously knows his stuff, having come from a similar mining background and area to George Stephenson, and he frequently uses local slang and idioms in his dialogue which at first can be strange until you get used to them. I found the episodes describing Robert’s early education particularly entertaining.

Whilst concentrating on the often complex relationship between father and son, Williams has also painted a broad canvas of society with many famous historical figures appearing such as Wellington, Peel, Queen Victoria, William Huskisson and Dickens. One or two of these passages appear slightly contrived but do not really detract from the overall effect.

Williams must be congratulated for bringing to life what is challenging subject matter in an interesting and thought‑provoking way.

Ray Taylor

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E D I TORS’ CH OICE THE TWELVE ROOMS OF THE NILE

Enid Shomer, Simon and Schuster, 2012, $26.00, hb, 445pp, 9781451642964 Who could have imagined that Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert would be so good together?

Apparently, Enid Shomer did just that, and her debut novel is thoroughly engaging, witty, philosophical, sensual and intellectual. From the bare coincidence that both Nightingale and Flaubert spent a summer sailing up and down the Nile in 1850—but on separate boats, with no indication that they ever met at any point—Shomer has written an epic but personal tale of the meeting of two exquisitely intelligent people (much too smart for their own comfort, or those of their families as well).

Florence is desperately searching for a way out of her upper-middle-class prison, having disappointed her severe mother by refusing to marry; she feels a call to something higher but she’s not sure what it is.

Gustave struggles with the memory of past mistresses, a domineering but beloved mother, and his own desperate need to do nothing in life but write; and yet he falters, believing he has no talent and nothing to say. In the mostly “uncivilized” lands along the Nile, the two meet again and again as their parties track each other to sites of ancient ruins and across the desert. The effect of living unconventionally both releases their spirits and pulls them into a vortex of sensual discovery that opens the eyes of both these exceptional persons to a new understanding of their own experiences as well as empathy for another. This is a book to be savored and read with a calm spirit of openness and acceptance of the new and the strange.

Mary F. Burns 19th Century — 20th Century

THE HOUSE OF RUMOUR Jake Arnott, Sceptre, 2012, £17.99, hb, 403pp, 9780340922729 At first sight this is a conspiracy thriller, although more ‘literary’ than most, as one would expect from Sceptre. It has the usual ingredients: a multiplicity of characters and locations, an historic mystery and frequent shifts between present and past. However, unlike in many stories of this genre, the mystery is not in the Bible or ancient Egypt but in 1941, the Hess flight to Scotland when the Deputy Fuhrer of the Reich took off on his lone peace mission.

However, as the story unfolds, the Hess mission assumes less and less importance. There really isn’t a story, but a complex jigsaw which takes in most of the cultural and social history of the western world (or at least America, Germany, Britain and Cuba) since 1941. Almost every chapter – there are 21 – is told from the point of view of a different character, often in the first person, ranging from Hess himself to a British civil servant, a Cuban revolutionary, a Hollywood film director, a black Detroit car worker and others, beginning and ending with a pulp sci-fi author from LA. It is a virtuoso performance. Like a jigsaw, it is seldom obvious how these pieces fit together. And the Hess mystery is never resolved, nor is any other of the mysteries the novel throws up.

This is a very entertaining novel which raises intriguing and important questions and is not without excitement and romance, but don’t expect a tightly plotted thriller with a neat denouement.

Edward James THE GREEN SHORE Natalie Bakopoulos, Simon & Schuster, 2012, $25.00/C$28.99, hb, 368pp, 9781451633924 On April 21, 1967, a right-wing gang of colonels overthrew Greece’s elected government and installed a military dictatorship. On that April day forty-five years ago, the first to be arrested were the poets, artists, students, writers, and politicians.

Suddenly Athens was hushed as tanks converged on its central plazas. The radio carried only military music, and people rushed home, avoiding soldiers and checkpoints.

The Green Shore is a big, old-fashioned, and intelligent novel that tells a big, old-fashioned, intelligent story: that of this coup, from that day in 1967 to the student uprising at Athens Polytechnic in November 1973 and its aftermath. Bakopoulos, in this, her debut novel, shows the junta’s effect on individual lives and families by focusing on one particular family. The characters include the older daughter, brave, rebellious Sophie; the younger daughter, quiet, fearful, and to begin with apolitical Anna; the conservative son who only wants to go to America; Eleni, their widowed mother, a physician who is keeping company with a conservative friend (is he to be trusted?); and Mihalis, Eleni’s radical and irresponsible poet brother, who remembers prison from the suppression of communists after World War II. The important elements of people’s personal 20th Century

lives – love, marriage, children, careers – typically go on despite politics, whether the government is totalitarian or progressive. That’s true in The Green Shore, but Bakopoulos also shows how authoritarian governments insidiously deform lives.

Politics aside, these characters come to life; they won my affection. I also loved the settings – Athens, of course, but also the island of Hydra, Athens’ far suburb of Kifissia, and Paris, a cold and rainy counterpoint. I was satisfied too with the slightly open ending. I hope Bakopoulos is writing a sequel. Recommended.

Kristen Hannum GLAMOROUS ILLUSIONS (Grand Tour Series) Lisa T. Bergren, David C. Cook, 2012, $14.99, pb, 416pp, 9781434764300 This novel’s conflict builds from the start as 20-year-old Cora arrives from school to spend the holidays at home. She’s shocked to find Papa unconscious with Mama at his side. Although he partially recovers, Cora has to help him run the farm. It’s the summer of 1913 in a Montana farming community, and crop failures are inevitable. Cora works diligently, but, desperate for money to buy seeds, she pawns an exquisite necklace she had received from a nameless benefactor. Matters take a dire turn when her Papa suffers a second incapacitating stroke and needs to be hospitalized in Minnesota. With Mama accompanying him, Cora will have to work the farm and give up her dream of becoming a teacher.

A stranger arrives unexpectedly. Her mother reveals that he’s her biological father, Kensington, the famous ex-senator and copper king. Bergren handles the narrative skillfully. We can hear Cora’s anguish and rage at his showing up after 20 years. Kensington offers to purchase the farm, provide for Mama and Papa, and send Cora with her half-siblings on the Grand Tour. Cora refuses the proposition at first, although pressed by Kensington. She thinks of saying, “You can keep your money and your promises, Mr. Kensington— we need nothing but the Lord, the land and each other. We’ll find a way.”

The story promises a thrilling encounter between the underprivileged and the prosperous, but when Cora accepts Kensington’s offer, the plot takes a different turn. However, the young tour guide’s romantic interest in Cora keeps the story moving along, as do the evocative descriptions and interesting historical backgrounds of the European sights. Due to the rather inconclusive ending to this first book in a trilogy, readers will want to read the next.

Waheed Rabbani KALTENBURG Marcel Beyer (trans. Alan Bance), Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012, $26/C$29.95, hb, 346pp, 9780151013975 There are some people who dominate the lives of others. Ludwig Kaltenburg is such a person. His

tale is narrated by his protégé, Hermann Funk.

Kaltenburg met Funk when the latter was a young boy in Posen in the 1930s. Kaltenburg is a noted ornithologist, and Funk’s parents share his interest if not his obsession. In the way of the memory of young boys, Funk remembers that Kaltenburg stops coming around but does not know why. His parents are killed in the bombing of Dresden, and Funk reconnects with Kaltenburg, who takes him under his wing. Funk becomes an ornithologist at Kaltenburg’s Dresden Institute, and while he seems less motivated to discover the secrets of birds than Kaltenburg is, he cannot envision any other path, so firm is his mentor’s hold on his life.

Funk’s narrative alternates between his memories of postwar Dresden and his youth and his later years, recounting tales of Kaltenburg to a young interpreter. Other characters – an artist, a documentarian, and Funk’s very serious wife – enter the story, each of them with more intensity than Funk has. This is the challenge of this book; its narrator seems to exist primarily to showcase Kaltenburg’s strengths and weaknesses, rather than be a character in his own right.

Kaltenburg is subject to academic jealousies at the Institute, and doubt is continually cast on his activities during the war, aided by his own obfuscation of his past. I had the sense I should have found that narrative thread more interesting than I did. Instead, I was fascinated by the ornithologist’s career: Kaltenburg’s obsession with birds, the menagerie he assembled, and the fragility of their lives. This is a beautifully written book, less an account of postwar East Germany than the story of people who have difficulty connecting with each other.

Ellen Keith HHhH Laurent Binet (trans. Sam Taylor), Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012, $26/C$28.95, hb, 327pp, 9780374169916 / Harvill Secker, 2012, £16.99, hb, 336pp, 9781846554797 HHhH (“Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich,” that is, “Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich”) tells the thrilling story of Slovak Jozef Gabćik and Czech Jan Kubiš, who assassinated the “Butcher of Prague” Reinhardt Heydrich. The two parachuted into the assignment, knowing it would cost them their lives.

It’s written in the voice of a friend, witty, irreverent, and slightly pretentious (French, of course), telling you about the historical novel he’s researching. Most centers on Heydrich (married, by the way, to a minor aristocrat and fervent Nazi), a man who was hugely responsible for putting the Holocaust into motion. The narrator shares the best bits of his research and also his concerns over how to tell the story. He despises, for instance, the fictional deceit of pretending to show readers what’s going on inside historical figures’ heads, or even imagined dialogue. He agonizes over whether Heydrich’s Mercedes was dark green or black: a meaningless detail that historical novelists know can consume days of research. It is exactly the HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Reviews | 37

type of detail that readers (including the book’s narrator) love to pounce upon as proof that the writer has or hasn’t done their homework. The narrator watches a television documentary on Hitler and his minions at Eagles Nest and tells us, “This is a real treat for me. I like to delve as deeply as possible into the private lives of my characters.”

The book, winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman in 2010, is distressingly entertaining considering its subject matter. Recommended.

Kristen Hannum THE SANDCASTLE GIRLS Chris Bohjalian, Doubleday, 2012, $25.95/ C$28.95, hb, 320pp, 9780385534796 / Simon & Schuster UK, 2012, £19.99, hb, 400pp, 9781471110702 The title is deceptive, as this is no lightweight beach read but a serious novel set against the background of the “Slaughter You Know Next to Nothing About,” i.e., the Turkish genocide of Armenians during World War 1. Even today only a handful of countries officially acknowledge this event, and many Turks remain in denial that it ever happened.

Author Chris Bohjalian was inspired by his own family history, and he does not spare the reader with descriptions of inhumanity and dispossession as the story weaves between present-day America and the twilight years of the Ottoman Empire.

Through photographs and documents, Laura Petrosian begins to discover the mysterious past of her grandparents. In 1915, Elizabeth Endicott travels with her father from Boston to Aleppo on behalf of the Friends of Armenia to bring relief to the suffering refugees. She experiences much sadness and frustration but finds hope in a better future when she falls in love with Armen, a widower with his own cross to bear.

Sub-plots involve the smuggling-out of Syria of photographic images of refugees taken by sympathetic German soldiers, and protection of a woman and child, Nevart and Hatoun, rescued

by Elizabeth from starvation, or worse. Another lesser-known aspect of military history is explored when Armen joins with the ANZAC forces fighting at Gallipoli.

The romance struggles a bit against the overall content, and there is a coincidental encounter towards the end that feels contrived. Readers who prefer linear narrative could be distracted by the jump-cut literary devices, e.g., the past is written in present tense, the present in the past, but it is worth persevering with for the vivid imagery and power of the prose.

This is an important and salient novel that casts new light on a shocking and tragic history.

Marina Maxwell THE TINSMITH Tom Bowling, Brindle & Glass, 2012, C$21.95/$19.95, pb, 311pp, 9781926972435 At the battle of Antietam Creek, the bloodiest single-day battle of the American Civil War, 38 | Reviews | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

Union surgeon Anson Baird gratefully accepts the unsolicited help of a mysterious, long-limbed soldier in dealing with the unrelenting carnage.

Before the battle is over, Baird has not only saved the life of the young soldier, John, but has unwittingly preserved his astonishing secret.

When the pair meets again nearly 20 years later, John needs Baird’s assistance to survive in the harsh world of the Canadian salmon canneries of Fraser River, British Columbia. Try as he might, he has been unable to shake his past completely, and his rivals are willing to use any information, real or fabricated, This is a thoughtful novel, raising many questions about the political, humanitarian and interracial complexities surrounding the Civil War and the reliability of a friendship forged and tested only in crisis. Bowling, an award-winning poet, novelist and Fraser River native, clearly loves language, and his use of detail also shows his love of the historical periods he covers. I particularly enjoyed his depiction of the ‘war tourists’ who gathered in their Sunday best to watch the Rebels fighting with lace hankies over their noses to block out the smell of the dead and dying. With graphic depictions of the war and the brutalities of slavery, however, this novel may not be for the fainthearted.

Janice Parker WAITING FOR SUNRISE William Boyd, Harper, 2012, $26.95, hb, 368pp, 9780061876769 / Bloomsbury, 2012, £12.99, hb, 368pp, 9781408835937 In Boyd’s latest literary adventure (after Ordinary Thunderstorms, 2010), a young English actor begins a life of deception off-stage, mostly for good ends, just as war breaks out in Europe.

In the summer of 1914, young Lysander Rief is in Vienna to undergo psychoanalysis (for a sexual problem soon cured) when a passionate affair with a female patient gets him into serious trouble with the local police. Liberated with the help of a British attaché and a Royal naval officer, Rief sneaks out of Austria in disguise.

Back in London, Rief, now in debt to his liberators, is tapped for undercover work. Leaving his real identity behind on the Western front, where is he supposedly killed, Rief reappears in the guise of a lieutenant assigned to the War Office.

His mission: to uncover a traitor providing the Germans with information on British war plans.

Rief comes from a good family; he has the look and manner of a gentleman. Along with his acting skills, fluent German, and an instinct for self-protection, this should make him the perfect spy. For one who seeks clarity or, in other words, the sunrise, Rief doesn’t ask enough questions.

Operating in dangerous territory, he has to improvise or learn the hard way, which is far more exciting for the reader, albeit risky for a spy.

Waiting for Sunrise is a wartime spy story and, to a lesser degree, a love story. Told from Rief ’s point of view, sometimes in third, sometimes in first person, it is also a story of self-discovery.

Even at the dénouement, Lysander Rief is still learning, which makes Waiting for Sunrise, like all

William Boyd’s novels, a Darn Good Story. Highly recommended.

Jeanne Greene THE PERFUME GARDEN Kate Lord Brown, Corvus, 2012, £14.99, pb, 477pp, 9781848879331 Fluctuating between the Spanish Civil War and the present day, this book tells the story of three generations of a family torn apart by war. It begins in 1936 with thousands of young men flocking to Spain to support the International Brigades in their fight against fascism, including two young students from Cambridge. War photography is in its infancy, and Charles, a student of lepidoptery, decides to suspend his studies and join the fight as a war photographer. His fellow student, Hugo, goes with him. Charles’ sister, Freya, a nurse, also heads for Spain to help the women, children and the inevitable wounded. Back in the 21st century, Emma has inherited a bundle of letters and the key to a house in Valencia from her mother. A leading perfumer, she decides to give up her business and restore the dilapidated house with its perfume garden.

I found this a fascinating story. The characters who criss-cross over years are well drawn and wholly believable. The story has pace, and despite the changing of the era in alternate chapters, it becomes more and more intriguing right through to the final dramatic chapter. I would recommend this book.

Marilyn Sherlock TITANIC ASHES Paul Butler, Pennywell, 2012, $17.95/C$17.95 pb, 14 pp, 9781926881522 Titanic Ashes is a slim novel that takes place entirely over the course of a dinner at a fine restaurant in 1925, but don’t let that fool you into thinking there’s not much depth to it. Righteous anger, remorse, embarrassment, entitlement… it’s all there in force as Butler’s characters continue to struggle over the tragic night when 1500 souls died.

Ten-year-old Miranda Grimsden and her mother were lucky; the two first-class ladies made it off the Titanic to safety and arrived unscathed in New York. Now, years later, the emotions of that time come rushing back when Miranda spies J. Bruce Ismay, the Titanic owner who escaped the sinking liner when so many others lost their lives.

The young Miranda once wrote an angry letter to Ismay, accusing him of cowardice; the grown up Miranda still wrestles with the aftermath of both the letter and the sinking. Ismay’s daughter, Evelyn, is dining with her father when she sees the Grimsdens, and their appearance forces all the pent up anger she’s held toward those who have berated her father to come to a head. Clashes, both large and small, ensue as both parties finally realize just what was lost that fateful night, and just where the blame lies.

Titanic Ashes is a fast read filled with elegant expression and surprising emotion. Butler makes it easy to see inside the turmoil both sides felt when 20th Century

split second decisions made the difference between life or death. With surprising conclusions for all, this gem of a novel is sure to please those looking to expand on what came after.

Tamela McCann CORAL GLYNN Peter Cameron, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012, $24, hb, 210pp, 9780374299019 In 1950, Coral Glynn is a young nurse who comes to aid a woman dying of cancer at remote Hart House in rural England. She meets the woman’s son, Major Hart, who is a recluse injured in the war. He asks her perfunctory questions about his mother’s health, but never visits her himself. When the old woman dies, Major Hart, who has found out that Coral has no family, asks her to marry him to assuage his loneliness. His only friend is Robin, with whom he had an illadvised homosexual encounter in school. Robin still loves him, but the major wants a wife.

Coral has no place to go, so she accepts the major’s proposal. But she has a secret stemming from an assault at her previous place of employment. Walking in the woods near Hart House, Coral interrupts a pair of children playing a rough game called Prisoner. She orders them to stop, but they refuse. After one of the children is found dead, Coral is the first suspect because she never reported the cruel game they’d played.

Major Hart sends her away on their wedding night to protect her, and they lose touch through the deviousness of another person.

This is a sparsely told story of repressed feelings, unfulfilled longing, and old grudges. Problems and stunning observations unfold slowly, and the characters remain enigmatic but intriguing. I read it in three days and wished it had been longer.

Coral’s ultimate choice seems selfish and cold.

Diane Scott Lewis THE LAURELS OF LAKE CONSTANCE Marie Chaix (trans. Harry Mathews), Dalkey Archive, 2012, $14.95, pb, 272pp, 9781564787231 Nazi sympathizers – especially Nazi sympathizers in war-torn France – are atypical protagonists in historical novels. Albert B. is a chemical engineer whose anti-Communist fervor pulls him into the inner circle of French fascist leader Jacques Doriot, whose support for the German occupation of France made him an enemy of the Resistance. In the beginning, Albert’s support for the Nazis is couched as a backup, “just in case” the Allies lose the war. But as Albert rises through the ranks of the Parti Populaire Française, he begins to believe more strongly in the cause.

Life is good for a Nazi sympathizer in occupied France – he has access to resources that others can only wish for – but his family is shunned by their neighbors, who know why Albert’s family has food and an automobile.

We see Albert’s rise and fall as the novel progresses, and it’s a far different view of wartime France than most readers are used to. Chaix does not present Albert as a sympathetic character or 20th Century

as a typically brutal Nazi; he’s just a man whose beliefs, encouraged by a charismatic leader, take over his life.

The translation is excellent, and the novel does not suffer from the clunkiness that can plague literature in translation. Some knowledge of the political climate of France before and during World War II will increase readers’ understanding of the events of the novel, but it is easy enough to catch on as you read. Chaix offers a different perspective on occupied France, and readers interested in literary novels of World War II may enjoy this nuanced and fascinating character study.

Nanette Donohue THE ORCHARDIST Amanda Coplin, Harper, 2012, $25.99, hb, 400pp, 978006218850 / Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Dec. 2012, £12.99, hb, 448pp, 978-0297867906 At the turn of the 20th century, eastern Washington is largely rural and sparsely populated.

Lives are bounded by family; those without, live alone. A man may be without companionship for so long that he loses the talent for it; he gets used to silence. The orchardist had a sister who disappeared; he blames himself. Now he lives primarily in his head.

Talmadge is not young, but he’s capable of managing his orchards alone. He lives by selling fruit in town, where he goes by wagon, but when two young pregnant girls steal his apples, Talmadge lets them get away. Sizing him up as a decent man, the girls follow Talmadge home. In time, he takes them in.

Jane and Della are runaways, terrified of the man who kept them. Although Talmadge is helpless to prevent tragedy when the man arrives with guns, he knows he should have been a better man.

Talmadge becomes a loving father to Jane’s daughter, Angeline (although love is not a word they use), but he is haunted by his failures. When long-absent Della gets in trouble, Talmadge tries to bring her back, to Angeline’s dismay. He lacks the words to explain but, by risking his life, Talmadge finally puts his ghosts to rest.

The author’s simple narrative style, which incorporates a minimum of dialogue, perfectly conveys the man’s isolation, his regrets, and, above all, his humanity. Coplin has a gift for the human touches that make each scene recognizable: women shell beans or hold a baby on a hip. And like the landscape lovingly described, the complicated men and women who grace our family trees come to life.

The Orchardist is highly recommended.

Jeanne Greene A VIOLET SEASON Kathy Leonard Czepiel, Simon & Schuster, 2012, $15.00, pb, 272pp, 9781451669503 The Hudson Valley violet growing business is thriving in 1898, but not everyone is reaping rewards. The two older Fletcher brothers and their families live in comfort while prodigal brother Frank, his wife and children are made to suffer and struggle as tenant farmers. The beauty of the

flowers stands in sharp contrast to the grit it takes to produce and market them.

Obsessed with paying his debt to his siblings, Frank’s large family suffers, none more so than its women – wife Ida has taken on wet-nursing duties for mysterious babies her husband brings home, and daughter Alice is abruptly left employed in New York City after a family outing. Ida knows with a mother’s heart that something is dreadfully wrong, and Alice’s beau confirms her fears as they travel together to investigate. Meanwhile, the brothers continue to humiliate the menfolk with more hardships in store for all.

Perhaps this novel could have started at a better juncture, but once Ida’s character and situation take hold, A Violet Season becomes fiercely compelling, from its flawed but sympathetic central character and her struggles and limited choices. Details bring the rural Hudson Valley setting alive, from the trials of laundry day, to keeping greenhouses warm through the winter, to the agonies of mastitis. The mysteries of the babies and of Alice’s disappearance are well played and suspenseful, as is the novel’s depiction of the power of love and forgiveness.

Eileen Charbonneau THE SHADOW QUEEN (US) / WALLIS (UK) Rebecca Dean, Broadway, 2012, $15.00/C$18.00, pb, 432pp, 9780767930574 / Harper, 2012, £7.99, pb, 464pp, 9780007315734 Most of us know Wallis Simpson for what she is most famous: Edward VIII’s love for the twicedivorced woman was the precipitating factor for his abdication of the English throne in 1936. Despite what one thinks of that situation and her role in it, very few of us know much about Mrs. Simpson’s early years. In The Shadow Queen, author Rebecca Dean traces Wallis’s life from a young girl through her first meetings with the future king, shedding light on possible motivations and actions of the much-reviled woman.

Dean follows Wallis as a small child born into a prominent Baltimore family; when her father dies early on, Wallis and her mother are left at the mercy of her Uncle Sol’s purse strings so Wallis can continue in fashionable schools and keep up with friends. Wallis is ever aware that her life isn’t as easy as her friends’ lives, yet she is still popular and vivacious, knowing that appearances must be maintained at all times. Dean gives Wallis a fictional best friend, Lady Pamela, whose devil-may-care lifestyle is both enviable and exasperating; Pamela’s superficial personality sets Wallis up for heartbreak that provides reasons for the choices she makes as she grows into womanhood. The story continues through Wallis’s disastrous first marriage and into her second, and ends as Wallis begins to realize that she’s become attractive to Prince Edward.

This story is an interesting look at Wallis, showing us a life filled with high expectation and little material wealth. Dean intersects the story with characters from her previous book, The Golden Prince, which I found to be a believable touch to the complicated Wallis. The book is well HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Reviews | 39

written and engaging, and I’m hopeful there will be a sequel because Dean’s Wallis is an intriguing woman with fascinating layers.

Tamela McCann LEHRTER STATION David Downing, Soho, 2012, $25/C$28.95, hb, 304pp, 9781616950743 / Old Street, 2012, £12.99, pb, 352pp, 9781906964757 This is the fifth novel in Downing’s series that features World War II era journalist John Russell, and the first that I read, but certainly not the last.

And for any other reader introduced to Russell via this book, I assure you it stands on its own and will also leave you hungry for more.

In this entry in the series, the British Russell and his German girlfriend Effi are living in postwar London, when Russell is approached by a Soviet agent, and reminded that he is in the Soviets’ debt for their assistance getting him and his family out of Berlin. They now want him to return, spy for them, and also offer up his services as an agent to the Americans, telling them he will spy on the Soviets for them. Complicated? Yes. Fascinating?

Yes. London after the Second World War is a popular topic, but my sense is that fewer books have been written about postwar Berlin. Downing’s glimpse into this defeated, suspicious city is absolutely eye-opening. Life does not return to normal after a loss of this magnitude. No wonder the Germans, Soviets, and Americans are all spying on each other. Despite the privations of Berlin, it is home to Effi, and Russell reconnects with old friends who take the couple in and create a sense of community. The spying and counter-spying are less compelling than the challenges faced daily, the inhumanity that continued after the war and the surprising moments of humanity. After this book, I need to read the books that came before and will definitely read the books that follow.

THE WHITE SHADOW Andrea Eames, Harvill Secker, 2012, £12.99, pb, 330 pp, 9781846555695 According to my library book group, readers either liked or hated The White Shadow. I can understand that. It is set in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in the 1960s, when the freedom fighters were beginning to make their presence felt. Eames has a reputation as a literary writer, her prose is excellent, but a novel needs more than good prose to hold a reader.

Is this a story about Abel and Tinashe becoming freedom fighters? Is it about folklore, the Shona culture, mythologies and beliefs? Is it about witchcraft? Is it about brother Tinashe being told to care for his sister, Hazvinei, when his parents die of cholera? I don’t know; the focus seemed split, without a dominant strand to hold the reader’s attention. I simply felt that the characters vacillated, without hope, or a future. For them all was bleak and depressing, their lives a muddle of missed opportunities. The plot veered between Tinashe’s sexual preoccupations, his wishes to go 40 | Reviews | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

to college, his sister’s weird behaviour, and cousin Abel wanting to become a freedom fighter. There was no single cogent plot strand to follow; it was a bit of a muddle.

The vivid descriptions of the beauties of the country were eclipsed by the passages, particularly in the last quarter of the book, involving graphic detail of the symptoms of cholera, much vomit, bloody black magic, menstrual blood, in fact just about every bodily excretion possible, including abortions. There was no conclusion, no tying up of the various strands. I’m afraid I fall into the ‘I don’t like it’ group of readers. Try it yourself and see what you think. pdr lindsay-salmon THE LOST PRINCE Selden Edwards, Dutton, 2012, $26.95, C$28.50, hb, 400pp, 978052595947 In 1898, Eleanor Burden, a young Bostonian, returns home from Vienna with a remarkable journal, which foretells the events of her lifetime.

Although Eleanor is unable to prevent evil, she knows she will accomplish great good.

Guided by foreknowledge, Eleanor accumulates a fortune. She marries and has a family.

Concurrently, she locates specific individuals destined to play an important part in her life and the achievements foretold in the journal.

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Eleanor brings the finest minds in Europe to the United States, enriching the national culture (and this novel) by exposure to genius. The competition between Freud and Jung evolves out of conversations with Eleanor who, at times, guides their thinking. Her influence also becomes important in the worlds of art, literature, and music.

All proceeds according to plan. Then, during the 1914-18 war in Europe, a man destined for an essential task is killed, calling the reliability of the journal into question. Eleanor’s plans, everything she lives for, may be false hopes—unless the man is still alive. She travels war-torn Europe hoping to find one man alive among the thousands injured or, at least, to know why he died. Only then, do we understand the true significance of the journal.

We also know more war lies ahead for Europe— but this is not a depressing story. To observe the role of predestination vs. the exercise of free will in Eleanor’s life is to recognize the power of one person’s courage, resilience, and, above all, love.

The Lost Prince is the standalone sequel to Selden Edwards’ 2009 novel, The Little Book, which tells what happened in Vienna. Both novels are entertaining, thought- provoking, and highly recommended.

Jeanne Greene

E D I TORS’ CH OICE THE SADNESS OF THE SAMURAI

Víctor del Árbol, Henry Holt, 2012, $28.00, hb, 400pp, 9780805094756 From time to time a book comes along that is staggeringly good, one that illuminates and informs readers on multiple levels, like Wolf Hall or Cold Mountain. Set in 20th-century Spain, The Sadness of the Samurai paints an unflinching picture of injustice and soul-searing evil, of passion and exquisite beauty.

Using multiple viewpoints and two timeframes, Árbol begins his story in pro-Nazi Spain in 1941, where aristocrat Isabel Mola’s political execution sets in motion a sequence of events that swirls forward for three generations, to the late 1970s and early 1980s and to lawyer María Bengoechea, whose greed leads her to prosecute and send to prison César Alcalá, a man she knows in her heart is not guilty as charged— at least, not completely.

The character-driven plot wherein Isabel’s son persecutes César’s family – the wrong family – for his mother’s murder for forty years is complex, brutal, and heartbreaking. Evil walks through these pages, propelled by greed, love, and misunderstandings, which in a lesser writer’s hands could easily have gone awry. What seem to be coincidences abound in a story that at the end comes full circle. There are “aha” moments when connections are made. To say that María and Isabel’s stories come together in an almost familial way and that María eventually orchestrates César’s escape from prison and helps him find his kidnapped daughter is not, I think, giving away too much of this literary historical novel.

This is award-winning Spanish author Víctor del Árbol’s first novel translated into English, and I can only hope it will not be the last. As one character says, “The past is never forgotten; it’s never wiped clean.” Obviously, Árbol, who is a member of the Catalonian police force, knows whereof he speaks.

Alana White 20th Century

THE FAMILY CORLEONE Ed Falco, Grand Central, 2012, $27.99, hb, 436pp, 9780446574624 / Heinemann, 2012, £18.99, hb, 448pp, 9780434020980 The Family Corleone is a novel based on the screenplay Mario Puzo left upon his death. The Godfather II saw Vito Corleone’s early years in New York during the Twenties; The Godfather covered his later years, 1945-1955. This prequel covers the years in between, 1933-1935, and focuses heavily on Vito’s son Santino (Sonny), still in his teens, and his decision to enter his family’s life of organized crime against his father’s wishes. Prohibition, the source of a great deal of income to crime families in the US, ends during this period, causing a shakeup in the power structure as the various gangs jostle for the remaining resources. Fiorello LaGuardia is elected New York’s first Italian-American mayor during the same span of time. Can Sicilians like the Corleones get along with a Neapolitan like LaGuardia? And can the younger generation, more inclined to a melting-pot model, include Irishmen in their heists and Irish women in their beds? Or are Erin’s sons to be consigned merely to corruptible law enforcement in their use to gangland?

As we have come to expect from this genre, the Corleones are bizarrely brutal one moment, touchingly loving family men the next. Not for the faint of heart, but from a historical novel perspective, this is a beautifully written book.

Historical details pitch perfect make every page visceral – as when Sonny buys a pack of cigarettes from a girl in a club, tossing a quarter on her tray and telling her to “Keep the change” – and the backing of a film script gives us a car-chase pace.

No detail does not have its place. The number of characters with names, first, last and nick, is sometimes overwhelming, but most of them are well drawn, so this rarely becomes a problem. A chart of family relationships on the fly leaf tries to help, but it too is overwhelmed, and it is hard to imagine fitting this all onto the silver screen.

Ann Chamberlin THE MAP OF LOST MEMORIES Kim Fay, Hodder & Stoughton, 2012, £12.99, pb, 321pp, 9781444738094 / Ballantine, 2012, $26.00, hb, 336pp, 9780345531346 Fay’s debut novel begins in Shanghai in 1925, the second part takes place in Saigon, and the third is set in Cambodia. Irene Blum, expert on the civilization of the Khme,r is denied the position she expects in the museum in Seattle because she is a woman. Desperate to leave her mark on the world of museums and artifacts, she decides to travel abroad to find the ten lost copper scrolls describing the history of the Khmer.

We expect a female Indiana Jones and an expedition filled with adventure and excitement, but while there are exciting moments, the focus is more on character, and the whole expedition is more of a journey of self-discovery. Irene searches out another expert on the Khmer, Simone, to assist her, so helping her escape her abusive husband.

Much of the book focuses on the relationship 20th Century

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THE AGE OF DESIRE

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Jennie Fields, Viking/Pamela Dorman, 2012, $27.95, hb, 352pp, 9780670023684 / Ebury, 2012, £14.99, hb, 368pp, 9780091949716 It’s the winter of 1907. Edith Wharton, already famous for her fiction, attends Comtesse Rosa’s glamorous Paris salon, as she has for months. Unlike other times, she’s suddenly ill at ease; a stranger stares at her from across the room, as if daring her to dismiss him. This is her fateful meeting with handsome young journalist Morton Fullerton, and the opening scene of Jennie Fields’ fresh and insightful new novel The Age of Desire. Trapped in a sexless marriage—“Edith was raised to be a lady, not a woman,” writes Fields—the esteemed author will become drawn into an illicit affair that will alter not only her married life but a close personal relationship that has developed over the years with Anna Bahlmann, her former governess and, now, literary secretary and companion.

The story is brilliantly told through dual perspectives—shifting smoothly back and forth between Edith’s complex (and often naïve and confused) striving toward a satisfying romantic relationship, and Anna’s seemingly justified concern for the woman she’s helped raise and still cherishes. Along the way, we enjoy glimpses of Paris’s glittering Belle Époque, Wharton’s lovely home and gardens in Massachusetts, and travel to visit Henry James at his English mansion. Sadly, as Edith’s marriage disintegrates, and her husband increasingly shows signs of mental illness, a compassionate Anna desperately tries to warn her friend of Morton’s possible betrayal. This is a heartbreaking, exquisitely told story. Fields’ imagining of the passions, desperation and divided loyalties of her subjects is mesmerizing.

Highly recommended.

Kathryn Johnson between the two women and examines their different motivations. Is the intention to restore lost history to the forgotten civilization or is it self-aggrandisement and building of a reputation?

This is a key theme of the novel, explored in some depth. An intriguing read that takes different paths to those expected. Recommended.

Ann Northfield MEMORY OF THE ABYSS Marcello Fois (trans. Patrick Creagh), MacLehose, 2012, £16.99, hb, 221pp, 9781906694005 Returning home late one night, Felice Stocchino and his young son, Samuele, are refused a glass of water at a neighbour’s house. It is an act that the neighbour and his entire family will pay for in blood. This is Sardinia, in the early 1900s, where honour is everything. Fois was born in Sardinia and is one of a gifted group of Italian writers known as “Group 13”, who explore the cultural roots of their various regions. His descriptions are intensely evocative, and nature is at the heart of the violent legends of his homeland, deeply imbued in memory and folklore. Samuel’s mother knows, even before he is born, that her son has a heart shaped like a wolf ’s head, a murderer’s heart. While still a boy, he is saved from death by a juniper bush huddled against the steep rock walls of a ravine. He is found by Mariangela, who later becomes the only woman he ever loves.

Fois follows Stocchino through the North

African campaigns of 1911–12 and later to the Carso Front of the Great War where the Italian army becomes entrenched for years against the Austro-Hungarian troops. Stocchino has a peculiar affinity with the bayonet, indeed any knife blade: his skill as the agent of death, almost inviting his victims to impale themselves, becomes legendary, as does his seeming immortality. These wars are just the prelude to the bloodbath that then follows back in Arzana.

Fois recounts these violent events in a style that rivals the parched ground of the Sardinian hills.

Memory of the Abyss is both a story of the darkest side of human nature, “the snarl of vengeance”, and an evocation of the immortal figure of the outlaw in Sardinian history and the price of honour.

Lucinda Byatt MISSION TO PARIS Alan Furst, Random House, 2012, $27.00, hb, 272pp, 9781400069484 / Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012, £18.99, hb, 272pp, 9780297863922 While this novel opens dramatically with a murder in Bulgaria, its settings change rapidly, and finally the protagonist appears on a ship bound for France. Stahl is a multilingual American born in Vienna, a successful Hollywood movie star who has played romantic roles, but as “the knight not the gigolo.” Although it’s 1938, Paramount is oblivious of European events. Having obtained Stahl from Warner Brothers in exchange for Gary Cooper, HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Reviews | 41

they have asked him to make a picture there.

While Stahl is excited about another role and about returning to Paris after some 18 years, the plot moves at the luxurious pace of the transatlantic liner. In Paris, he receives his entitled VIP treatment and enjoys the usual rounds of cocktail parties, dinners at fancy restaurants, and (bullet-hole mirrored) bistros. He indeed lives up to a suggestion that he recalls: “When you are in Paris, you have to make love to somebody.”

However, the novel picks up steam when Stahl receives a telephone call to see the Second Secretary at the American Embassy, is interviewed

by Le Matin, and is invited by a Nazi propaganda group to dine at Maxim’s. The Americans do not exactly want him to spy, but to let them know if he were to “stumble on something.” The newspaper twists Stahl’s anti-war comments to make him sound like he was for French disarmament (and pro-German). While Stahl manages to damagecontrol those subtle remarks, he’s faced with a direct challenge posed by the Nazis, who want him to visit Berlin or face dire consequences.

This espionage thriller, written in the style of le Carré, is Furst’s 12th course in his moveable feast of novels set in Europe. Readers will enjoy it and likely look forward to the BBC mini-serialization of his earlier The Spies of Warsaw.

Waheed Rabbani

BY STARLIGHT Dorothy Garlock, Grand Central, 2012, hb, $25.99/C$28.99, 9780446540094 This story takes place during the Great Depression in the small town of Colton, Montana.

The speakeasy in the basement of Maddy Aldridge’s family mercantile store is far from the mobs of Chicago, but close enough to be touched by them. She is not aware how dangerous her business partner, Jeffers, and his minion really are, and what physical dangers lie ahead for her. Maddy knows that running the illegal bar is wrong, but it is the only way that she can think of to save the store without her ailing father finding out how close he is to losing his business. The return of Maddy’s first love, Jack Rucker, after seven years of silence throws her heart into turmoil, and his as well when he discovers that she is a partner in the illegal operation. The reader knows that Jack has returned on assignment to locate and shut down the town’s speakeasy, arresting all those involved in it, and we watch his struggle to do his job, while he also struggles with his heart.

This light read is not only a tale of danger, trust, forgiveness, and love, but it is also a lovely peek into the America of 1931. The small town characters are nicely portrayed, the bad guys, busybodies, and the all-too-frequent drinkers play well with the star-crossed lovers. It is a nice book to take along on vacation and time travel.

Beth Turza COMEBACK LOVE Peter Golden, Washington Square, 2012, $15.00/ C$17.00, pb, 294pp, 9781451656329 42 | Reviews | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

Told through a series of past and present episodes, Comeback Love focuses on the theme of timeless love. Aspiring journalist Gordon falls in love with Glenna, a ravishing medical student, during the late 1960s heyday of free love, drugs, and civil rights. As Gordon struggles to make sense of his place in New York City, he and Glenna develop an attachment common to the free spirits who proclaimed “Live for today.” As she finishes work on her M.D., Gordon tries to make sense of their lives together showing the “almost truthfulness” of couples afraid of long-term commitment, yet longing for it at the same time. Their youthful zest and enthusiasm is tempered by their parents’ lives, which are more conventional but more confused than their own. The novel slips back and forth among their various reencounters over fifty years, carefully blending those mysterious elements in love affairs that seem to mock the passage of time, and yet transcend it all the same.

Those who experienced the military service in Viet Nam, the fight for women’s reproductive rights, and the thrills of Woodstock will recognize the powerful forces mirrored in Gordon and Glenna’s experiences. Peter Golden’s period references to drugs, sex, and rock and roll are accurate and compelling. Through his characters, Golden brings to life the enduring influence of “the Stars and Stripes with a peace symbol stamped on it”.

Liz Allenby TROUBLE BREWING Dolores Gordon-Smith, Severn House, 2012, $28.95/£19.99, hb, 224pp, 9780727881694 On a friend’s recommendation, Harold Rushton Hunt, owner of Hunt Coffee, asks Jack Haldean to find out what happened to his great-nephew.

No one has seen Mark Helston since he left his home in January, and Scotland Yard hasn’t turned up any clues. Has he been kidnapped? Is he dead?

Did he kill someone and run away? To complicate matters, Hunt believes something’s wrong within the company, but is Mark responsible?

With the help of friends, Jack investigates the suspects: Hunt’s son who runs the business, Mark’s sister who gains a bigger inheritance with Mark dead, her second husband who’s on the brink of bankruptcy, or might it be someone else entirely?

Once Jack discovers the first body, others soon follow, and each new clue adds another wrinkle in a puzzling case.

Set in the Twenties, this is the sixth Jack Haldean mystery. Readers will have no trouble diving in without having read the previous titles in the series. Solving the mystery, however, may be more challenging. This fast-paced page-turner has more twists than a serpent, yet it’s easy to follow, and the ending may surprise even the most diehard mystery fan. Great read!

Cindy Vallar THE HISTORY ROOM Eliza Graham, Pan, 2012, £7.99, pb, 325pp, 9780330509275

Almost the only history in this novel is in the title. It is a modern mystery with the origins going back to the Prague Spring in 1968, but there is little of this earlier time described, and when it is, it is rather superficial.

Meredith’s husband is badly injured in Afghanistan, and their marriage falters as he tries to come to terms with his disability. She returns to teach at her old home which has been converted into a prestigious private school by her Czech father.

Disturbing events which start in the History room puzzle everyone, and Meredith is also concerned with what she believes is a sinister influence on a vulnerable girl. Determined to solve the mysteries, Meredith risks endangering the school and her own reputation.

The mystery is intriguing, the initial puzzle at first horrific, and then apparently inexplicable.

Following a well-used scenario of a closed (almost) community with a limited number of suspects, it is in the village cozy tradition. There is some physical danger, but it is not emphasised, and there is never the feeling than Meredith or anyone else is in real peril.

Nonetheless it is an enjoyable, easy read, so long as historical detail or insight is not expected.

Marina Oliver JASMINE NIGHTS Julia Gregson, Touchstone, 2012, $16, pb, 432pp, 9781439155585 / Orion, 2012, £12.99, hb, 416pp, 9781409108092 In 1942, Saba Tarcan, a determined and talented young singer from Cardiff, joins ENSA, the Entertainments National Service Association, much to her Turkish father’s and English mother’s displeasure. During a hospital concert, she meets Dominic Benson, a wounded fighter pilot, and they are attracted to each other. Saba is sent to North Africa to entertain the troops and because of her knowledge of Turkish, she is asked to assist the Secret Service. Dominic pursues Saba to the Middle East, and they fall in love while the war rages around them. But Saba cannot tell Dominic about her work for the Secret Service, and this causes problems for the young couple.

This is a wonderful romance and adventure story about two passionate young people determined to live life to the fullest, knowing they may not live to see tomorrow. Despite the dangers, Dominic won’t give up the flying he loves so much, and Saba is determined to have a singing career, while bravely doing what the Secret Service asks.

I enjoyed Gregson’s East of the Sun very much, so I had high hopes for this book, and it did not disappoint. The story, the characters (even the supporting ones), and the setting were all rich with detail and expertly done, and I was totally engrossed. The contrast of the glamorous, exotic setting with the gritty reality of life in a war zone was compelling and made for a great read. Not to be missed.

Jane Kessler 20th Century

THE MIDWIFE OF HOPE RIVER Patricia Harman, William Morrow, 2012, $14.99/ C$16.99, pb, 400pp, 9780062198891 Patience Murphy is a “thirty-six year old widow, wanted by the law in two states,” so when she takes up the duties of midwife in rural West Virginia in 1929, it’s clear she’s going to face challenges far beyond ensuring the health of the women in her care.

Her darkest secrets are revealed gradually through flashbacks, and although she lives in constant fear of discovery, that doesn’t stop her from displaying liberal notions and taking risks.

She’s even prepared to infringe state guidelines or try innovative methods if necessary. When Bitsy, a colored girl, becomes her assistant and moves in to share her home as an equal, Patience inevitably invites more controversy. And her growing relationship with the local vet, Daniel Hester, further complicates matters.

Patience observes that “Birth is a messy, primitive event, and… it’s not for everyone”, and the numerous scenes of life struggling its way into the world – some animal as well as human – are certainly graphic.

Not all of the births are intrinsic to the plot, but they add reality and truth about this fundamental and often dangerous aspect of women’s lives in the past, and it is rare to find such sympathetic and accurate descriptions elsewhere in historical

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fiction.

The author’s affinity for the setting with its poverty and injustice can’t be faulted, although readers unfamiliar with the miners’ strikes and union battles of the era might like some exposition as to the real historical characters and events, such as in a postscript or author’s notes.

The ending is satisfying with potential for a sequel, but there is also much intriguing material in Patience’s back story for a powerful prequel as well.

Heart-warming, rewarding, and recommended – although with a warning that men could find some content confronting!

Marina Maxwell THE THREAD Victoria Hislop, Harper, 2012, $14.99, pb, 400pp, 9780062135582 / Headline Review, 2012, £7.99, pb, 480pp, 9780755377756 At the beginning of the 20th century, the Greek city of Thessaloniki was populated by a vibrant mixture of Jews, Muslims and Christians. Many of the families had lived in Greece for centuries, but within a few decades, only the Christians remained. The political decisions of 1917 and the wars that followed resulted in the forced Muslim repopulation of Asia Minor and the removal of Greece’s Jewish population by the Nazis.

The book opens with Katerina and Dimitri as elderly grandparents. Soon we learn that their

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

David R. Gillham, Putnam/Amy Einhorn, 2012, $25.95, hb, 400pp, 9780399157769 City of Women takes a chilling look at the unspeakable limits reached by the women of WWII Berlin and the stress and fear that shaped their lives. It is 1943, and Sigrid Schröder is the dutiful wife of a German soldier who is fighting on the front lines south of Moscow.

Her marriage is mostly routine, and she lives with her critical mother-in-law. Early on, Sigrid demonstrates her desire to help the other side when she assists Ericha, a young girl running from the Gestapo. With a heightened sense for survival at all costs, coupled with her compulsion to aid the underground fight, Sigrid accepts the increased risk.

One day she meets Egon, a young and handsome stranger. She thrives on danger, and with her capricious desire, she can’t help but become Egon’s lover. He is extremely taciturn, and as he eludes her questions, her suspicions are raised. Under the watchful eyes of her neighbors, mother-in-law, and the Gestapo, she burrows beneath her ordinary life as a stenographer and lives in a secretive world of intrigue and peril.

The author’s characters live and breathe with full dimension. Sigrid has boundless love and iron nerves that will assure her place in literary history, as do Ericha and Egon. David Gillham’s writes with a poetic precision; his beautiful, lilting phrases present a multisensory and more than satisfying read: ““It was the sort of cold that followed you inside, that searched your clothes for gaps and penetrated you slowly, until it crept into your heart and chilled your blood.”

An elegiac story, emotionally seductive with tense moments throughout, City of Women has plot twists that will keep readers guessing. The wrath of the Gestapo, the fear from “catchers,” and the risky existence of the Berlin underground all combine to create a terrifying, historically realistic atmosphere that lingers.

Wisteria Leigh 20th Century

European-educated grandson is perplexed by their devotion to the worn and decaying city. The couple could leave for a better life in England or America, and yet they choose to remain in Thessaloniki. As they share with him their personal story, the reader is treated to a view of a world that is no more. It’s a vibrant and beautiful tale of love and loyalty, of suffering and courage, of patriotism and heroism.

Although the book recalls a period of Greek history that was at times brutal, divisive and unflattering, Victoria Hislop gives us a remarkable Katerina and an admirable Dimitri. They may be fictional characters, but they represent an entire generation of a heroic people whose story should not be forgotten. The Thread is a wonderful addition to the historical fiction genre.

Veronika Pelka HELLFIRE James Holland, Corgi, 2012, £7.99, pb, 571pp, 9780552773997 This is the fourth wartime novel from author James Holland to feature the rough and ready Jack Tanner, an uncompromising hero very much, as has often been described, in the Richard Sharpe mould.

At the height of the African campaign during World War Two, we find Sergeant Tanner recovering in a Cairo hospital from wounds received in his previous adventure, Blood of Honour.

But Tanner is in for a surprise, for not only does he receive a battlefield commission, but he is then seconded to SIME, the Secret Intelligence Middle East, so that he can help his old pal, Major Alex Vaughan, track down a spy network operating in the Egyptian capital. Tanner is frustrated at not being able to be back at the front in the thick of the action, and this has an effect on the novel, too.

For, though a constantly exciting read, Hellfire is really two books in one fighting for your attention: a typically Commando-like tale of derring-do, with explosive battle scenes as Monty’s troops try to put a stop to Rommel’s onslaught, and a classic espionage tale set among the claustrophobic streets of a very atmospherically drawn Cairo, full of shady characters and beautiful spies. Both types of war, of course, went on side-by-side, but it can be frustrating to be so enveloped in the chase for the villainous secret agents, to then be suddenly thrown into the dusty confusion of a night-time desert fire-fight.

That aside, this remains a gripping read throughout, and is packed with Holland’s impressive and always impeccable details of actual warfare.

I.D. Roberts THE HOUSE OF VELVET AND GLASS Katherine Howe, Voice, 2012, $25.99, hb, 417pp, 9781401340919 / Penguin, 2012, £7.99, pb, 496pp, 9780141038179 When Sybil Allston lost her mother and sister when the Titanic sank, she assumed her mother’s habit of visiting a medium in order to get closure for her loss. With spinsterhood looming for her future HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Reviews | 43

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E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Tracy Groot, Tyndale House, 2012, $13.99, pb, 400pp, 9781414359472 American pilot Tom Jaeger is shot down over France in 1944. Because he personifies the ideal Aryan, the French Resistance recruits him to pose as a Dutch-born German officer. He is assigned to regularly visit a Germans-only brothel, to retrieve intelligence needed for the upcoming Allied invasion.

His contact is Brigitte Durand, who is not welldisposed towards Americans. If America had joined the war sooner, her boyfriend might not have died, and she might not have been forced by starvation into a profession that causes the townspeople to regard her with scorn. Tom experiences culture shock in occupied France, especially when his German uniform produces continuous fear among the locals. Then when another girl from the brothel throws suspicion on Tom and he is arrested, Brigitte realizes she loves him. Can she help the Resistance save Tom before he is tortured to death?

Flame uses the Biblical story of Rahab, the harlot who helped Joshua’s forces conquer Jericho, as a framework. Prostitutes and torture are uncommon themes in Christian historical fiction, but Groot handles them deftly without getting graphic. The religious element is more covert than overt, coming out subtly in scenes such as a group of food-deprived French obtaining a small wedge of real cheese, and sharing it out in a communion-like ritual. The characters are rich and well-rounded: not all Germans are evil, nor are Resistance members necessarily saintly. I had a bit of a problem keeping some characters straight, however. Resistance members naturally used multiple names, so a list of aliases would have helped.

Groot continues producing superior Christian fiction (such as Madman) that consistently avoids stock characters and clichéd situations. Fans of mainstream World War II fiction will love it, as will the inspirational market. Highly recommended.

B.J. Sedlock and a wayward younger brother being kicked out of Harvard, Sybil’s desperation turns her toward Professor Benton Derby, her former love and a man of science. While Benton and his friend expose the medium as a fraud, Sybil discovers that, with the help of opiates, the scrying stone the medium gave her actually works. Confused by what she sees in the stone, Sybil’s use of it both intrigues and frustrates Benton, but can its secrets of the future help Sybil make sense of the past?

The House of Velvet and Glass takes a while to get going, with Sybil spending much time hand-wringing over her brother’s actions and her own inability to make peace with her losses.

It is not until Benton becomes involved with her paranormal activity that the story gathers speed, and from then on it builds quickly to a surprising climax. I am frustrated with the final chapter, however, and would have liked to have had a clearer understanding of the reasons for ending the book in this manner because it has an abrupt feeling.

Interspersed with Sybil’s story is the backstory of her father and his own descent into scrying the future, as well as the scenes of Sybil’s mother, Helen, and her younger sister Eulah as they live their last hours aboard the Titanic.

The House of Velvet and Glass is filled with interesting characters and awash in secrets, and the historical accuracy is spot on. I enjoyed this unique 44 | Reviews | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

look at the fascination with spiritualism of the time period.

Tamela McCann THE FLATEY ENIGMA Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson, AmazonCrossing, 2012, $14.95, pb, 337pp, 9781611090970 When seal hunters find a decaying corpse on a deserted Icelandic island, it triggers an investigation involving a secret runic code and a medieval manuscript. The body turns out to be a Danish intellectual who has been missing for months. A second victim is later found mutilated in the old Viking fashion. Kjartan, the district magistrate’s representative, is charged with finding the killer. He eventually solves the mysteries as the plot winds slowly through the quiet, austere, nearsubsistence lives of the Flatey islanders circa 1960.

The author lived on Flatey as a child, and the stark simplicity of the islanders’ lives comes through with vivid authenticity.

This Glass Key prize-nominated book moves slowly at first, with much emphasis on the remote, Nordic setting. Readers looking for those bestselling Scandinavian thrillers that have been so popular recently will not find them here. This is a tale of people who eat fermented shark, start fires with dried bird skin, and hunt seals for food and fur. Every chapter ends with an excerpt

from the Viking sagas found in the Flatey Book (Flateyjarbók). Often brutal and barbaric, they provide clues to the enigma that Ingolfsson has created and woven into the story. This book is complicated and intense, with Icelandic names making it difficult for an English speaker to keep track of the players. There is also a love story and a touch of whimsy.

The book is a one-off. It does not really compare to anything else, but Viktor Ingolfsson is a successful, multi-published author, with one of his six mysteries used as the basis for an Icelandic television series. The Flatey Enigma is worth a look.

Elizabeth Knowles THE UNINVITED GUESTS Sadie Jones, Chatto & Windus, 2012, £12.99, hb, 272pp, 9780701186715 / Harper, 2012, $24.99, hb, 272pp, 9780062116505 This is a bizarre and fantastic story, which takes place over 24 hours in Sterne – a substantial English country house. But the Swifts, the impoverished owners, are in danger of losing their beloved home. There is no definite indication of the time in which the story is set, but clues suggest it is in the years leading up to the First World War. While Edward Swift goes to Manchester to seek a financial arrangement to save the house, his rather eccentric family – his wife Charlotte and newlyacquired stepchildren – focuses on the 20th birthday of Emerald and the visitors to Sterne, who are to help celebrate the day. However, plans are thrown into confusion when there is an accident on the local branch railway line and the bedraggled survivors are sent to Sterne to rest until they can be collected by the rail company. However, it soon becomes apparent to the reader that all is not as it first seems. One of the uninvited guests invites himself into the birthday celebrations and is known to the mother, Charlotte, from her younger days in London. He instigates a thoroughly unpleasant party game in which some home truths are revealed. Henceforth, the night descends into a painful and supernatural farce.

This is very different from the author’s previous two novels, both of which I have read and enjoyed; these were serious affairs about human relationships. Although The Uninvited Guests covers the same themes, the mood is very different – a sort of nastily humorous version of Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger. Sadie Jones has an excellent and acute observant eye for the nuances of human behavior, and her powers of description are impressive, with the setting vividly presented and tale well narrated.

Doug Kemp THE FAR SIDE OF THE SKY Daniel Kalla, Forge, 2012, $26.99/C$24.99, hb, 464pp, 9780765332332 Author Daniel Kalla, an ER physician in Vancouver, B.C., drew upon his own family’s heritage to write this novel of World War II. The book begins in 1938 in Vienna, where Dr. Franz 20th Century

Adler, a secular Jew and widowed surgeon, lives with his young daughter. When Nazis murder Adler’s brother on Kristallnacht, he realizes that the nightmare isn’t diminishing, and he must get his child to safety. Along with his now widowed sister-in-law, Esther, and a gay artist friend, the four manage to book and pay for tickets to China.

In the meantime, in Shanghai, “Sunny” Mah, a Eurasian nurse whose father is a physician (and both Sunny and her father know that it’s only the era’s prejudice that is keeping Sunny from being a physician herself ) ministers to the Jewish refugee community, which will soon be 20,000 strong.

Sunny and Adler are immediately attracted to one another, but their romance is far from assured.

Esther and her new love have a slightly easier time of it.

I ate up this novel. I’d just finished a couple of more literary (aka time-consuming) books, and I was ready for something that would just sweep me along. Kalla, author of several other novels that mix medicine and romance, has an easy way with words that almost invisibly puts you into the story—and it’s a good story. What a relief to read a book about European Jews during World War II where tens of thousands of Jews have escaped and are mostly in the same boat as everyone else. The Jewish refugees who were fortunate enough to make it to Shanghai had to be brave and to give up all but the most important parts of themselves. In return, most of them survived the war. Recommended.

Kristen Hannum FORD ROAD Amy Kenyon, Univ. of Michigan Press, 2012, $24.95, pb, 232pp, 9780472118205 Ford Road stretches across southeastern Michigan, from Detroit almost to Ann Arbor.

Growing up at first one end, and then the other, I was eager to read this story of love and family in suburban Detroit.

Unable to describe the pangs of nostalgia gripping her since the death of her mother, Kay Seger leaves her almost bohemian lifestyle in California and returns to Garden City, Michigan, the idyllic sprawl of suburbia outside of Detroit where she grew up. Back in the old neighborhood, she rekindles a romance with her first love, Joe, a Vietnam veteran and longtime Ford autoworker.

Like Kay, Joe can’t move forward, longing for the carefree days before he was drafted. They try to reconcile their divergent presents by dealing with the past: Joe by ignoring it, Kay by burying herself in it. With his encouragement, she begins sifting through family history, looking for the ties binding her to Michigan, the invisible wires that yanked her back. Her great-grandfather Jacques, a melancholy out-of-work printer; her grandfather Fred, devoted worker on Henry Ford’s new assembly lines; her grandmother Ada, a young girl with a big family secret. All suffused with the same nostalgia that keeps Joe and Kay from moving forward together.

This is a quiet book, delicately strung between time, exploring love and loss and memory across generations. Kenyon skips in and out of each 20th Century

story, following emotion rather than chronology, building up each character bit by subtle bit. She paints a rich picture of 20th-century Detroit, with notables from Henry Ford to Charlie Bennett.

Being from this area and being a researcher of Detroit history myself, I was soon caught up with the same nostalgia afflicting the characters.

Jessica Brockmole THE THING ABOUT THUGS Tabish Khair, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012, $24.00, hb, 256pp, 9780547731605 Sometimes it takes too long for a truly unique and memorable novel to travel from one side of the world to the other. This is lamentable. However, the English-speaking world can be grateful that Tabish Khair’s deliciously imaginative novel, The Thing About Thugs, has finally reached us two years after its first publication in India. The novel has been shortlisted for the Man Asian Booker Prize, as well as other awards. One would think this promises weighty reading, or at least a lack of appeal to casual readers. Not so.

This satire on Victorian novels, fascinated with tales of Indian thuggery and violence in the post-colonial era, is charmingly humorous and entertaining. Captain William T. Meadows, obsessed with his phrenological research and in search of perfect villainous skulls, has become fascinated with young Ali, who cleverly plays the thug, relating imaginary misadventures with a ruthless gang back in India to buy his way out of poverty. Unfortunately, a series of gruesome murders coincides with Ali’s arrival in London, and he’s done such a good job of convincing everyone of his violent history that he’s naturally blamed. Now he must prove his innocence. A pure delight.

Kathryn Johnson WHERE LILACS STILL BLOOM Jane Kirkpatrick, WaterBrook, 2012, $14.99, pb, 352pp, 9780307729422 Passion is an emotion usually associated with the young. However, Hulda Klager discovers her passion when she is in her thirties – lilacs. She has experimented with apples and daffodils, crossbreeding for a deeper yellow or an apple crisp enough to make a tasty pie. When she discovers French lilacs in a seed catalogue, her passion is ignited.

Hulda and her husband own a small dairy farm in Washington State at the turn of the 20th century. Though they have little money to spare, her husband sells a cow so Hulda can buy those precious imported lilacs. She turns previous experience to breeding lilacs in colors and shapes never before seen. Creating hybrids takes many years to show results, and the Klagers suffer numerous setbacks, particularly when the Lewis River repeatedly floods their home and threatens the work of decades. Yet Hulda never gives up on her quest for the perfect lilac.

Jane Kirkpatrick based Where Lilacs Still Bloom on Hulda Klager’s true-life achievements. This uneducated woman teaches herself how to create

beautiful hybrids, opens her gardens to the public, and generously shares her precious creations with everyone. And when disaster strikes, Hulda’s true impact is revealed in an event which brought tears to my eyes.

I enjoyed Where Lilacs Still Bloom and recommend Kirkpatrick’s gentle tale of persistence and imagination to anyone who dreams of coloring their worlds with dazzling new blossoms.

Jo Ann Butler FAREWELL: A Mansion in Occupied Istanbul Ayse Kulin (trans. Kenneth J. Dakan), Dalkey Archive Press, 2012, $16.95, pb, 430pp, 9781564787248 This novel opens in 1920 Istanbul, during the last days of the Ottoman Empire. The events unfold through the experiences and reminiscences of a family living in a posh seaside mansion. The head of the family, Ahmet Resat, is a minister in Sultan Vahdettin’s cabinet. Ahmet’s wife, Behice, spends her days mostly indoors, arguing about household affairs with Aunt Saraylihanim, who acts like a mother-in-law. The aunt has brought her grandson, Kemal, into the mansion without Ahmet’s permission. Kemal was injured in a battle but now, having sympathised with the Turkish revolutionaries, Kemal is a wanted man and hiding in the attic. He is being nursed by a young and pretty maid, Mehpare. An attractive widow who lives next door and a family doctor also feature in the story. Ahmet is torn between his allegiance to the Sultan—who’d made a secret pact with the British administrators—and his care for his rebel nephew, Kemal.

The first half of this novel recounts various happenings in the mansion, such as the developing love between Mehpare and Kemal. Although there are evocative descriptions of life in Istanbul under the occupation forces and the soldiers’ atrocities and brutal treatment of the citizens, one might wonder where the narrative is heading. However, the plot picks up steam when Kemal decides to join the National Movement under Ataturk in Ankara; Mehpare is determined to follow him.

The doctor and the widow also decide to assist the Nationalists, and Kemal requests the reluctant Ahmet for support. Matters worsen when we learn that Mehpare is expecting.

While the events of the Turkish War of Independence are well known, these are recounted through the joys and sorrows of the characters to make this novel both an educational and an interesting read.

Waheed Rabbani EDGE OF DARK WATER Joe R. Lansdale, Mulholland, 2012, $25.99, hb, 304pp, 9780316188432 May Lynn dreamed about being a movie star, and when she gets murdered, her three teenaged friends decide to take her ashes to Hollywood.

But it ain’t that simple. There are complications with missing cash from a robbery, a creepy stepfather and a stoned mother, a boy who thinks HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Reviews | 45

he’s a sissy and a colored girl with more spit than a snake, a Reverend Joy, a pistol-packing grandma, a trail of rotting body parts, plus Skunk, a grotesque bogeyman lurking in the woods. Not only all of this, but much of the action takes place on a raft going down a river, and another famous work involving young people, a raft and a river inevitably comes to mind.

Set in East Texas during the Depression era, the story is told through the eyes of feisty 16-yearold Sue Ellen, and it keeps you in turns moved, horrified, and laughing out loud.

Lansdale certainly deserves his comparison to Mark Twain, and any allusion to that other raft story is perfectly acceptable in the face of such skilled wit and whimsy. What is more surprising in a work that belongs in the “splatter-punk” genre are the insights into dysfunctional families, the racial divide, homophobia, and how people struggled during the Dust Bowl years, when they were desperate and hungry and dreams of life being better someplace else helped to keep them goin I embarked on Edge of Dark Water with some misgivings as to whether it was really historical fiction, but wouldn’t have missed this wild raft ride for two cans of lard. (You’ll have to read the book to find out about them.) A most memorable experience.

Marina Maxwell FOR THE LOVE OF CATHERINE Carole Llewellyn, Hale, 2012, £19.99, hb, 224pp, 9780709095729 Crossing on the Titanic to see her sister on the New York stage, a young mother, Mair (the heroine of the story); her toddler daughter, Catherine; and a Welsh woman, Ethel, rush to the lifeboats when they strike the iceberg. Mair goes back for a precious jewel and so is separated from Ethel and Catherine.

How they meet up again and Mair’s adventures as a nurse in London, tracing her prostitute mother, form a major part of the story.

If you like irregular relationships, with a 17-year-old mother with an intriguing back story, this book is for you. Mair’s thoughts and wishes often seem those of a mature woman. Chances have been missed to detail settings. ‘Suitable acommodation’ is not enough to describe their ship’s cabin, ‘various items on a table,’ likewise. At other times unwarranted detail is given. Who cares what the table’s made of when a discussion’s in progress?

Back in Wales the outbreak of war sends Mair’s intended husband (Ethel’s son) to the front. He returns shell-shocked for Mair to nurse. Separated by hospital, taut and unresolved sexual tension comes before eventual marriage.

Despite minor errors in London locations, this is a most enjoyable, hard-to-put-down story of hope against disaster. Its use of Welsh dialect words is welcome in the loving relationships. For the sensitive: be warned that Mair was raped, and the teenage Catherine wants to marry the rapist’s son, her half-brother until…

Tensions are racked up and resolutions cleverly 46 | Reviews | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

invented, as the story has subtle devices to get the writer out of the trouble she’s written herself into!

Geoffrey Harfield JACK 1939 Francine Mathews, Riverhead, 2012, $26.95, hb, 368pp, 9781594487194 To be Jack Kennedy, son of the notable Joseph P. Kennedy, is to meet expectations at every turn.

At first Francine Mathews portrays this young Harvard student as a man with his own ideas, unafraid to independently think and act, but he also suffers from a debilitating disease with a harsh treatment. He’s a ladies’ man as well, but definitely not attracted to the women his mother, Rose Kennedy, would want him to marry. It’s also 1939, a time when war is about to break out across Europe and probably America, despite those who naïvely think otherwise.

Into this ambience of fear, which is covered over by reckless partying, enters Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He knows young Jack Kennedy is heading for Europe to do research for a thesis, and after quizzing him, gives him a mission: discover the source and plans of a plot to financially overthrow Roosevelt’s next election bid and provide Hitler with enough money to finance his worldwide campaign. Will the mission betray all Jack’s parents have taught him? Will it indeed wind up shaming his father and family forever? What sacrifices will he have to endure to ensure a successful completion of the almost impossible task before him?

Two of Hitler’s henchmen will vie to kill everyone, including Jack, associated with stopping the spread of Nazism. Jack will meet a lady with whom he truly falls in love but whose ideas and plans remain enigmatic and even problematic – at times. Is she trustworthy? For whom?

Jack 1939 is a tautly written espionage novel that sometimes seems contrived but which overall is thrilling, credible, and memorable. Very nicely done.

Viviane Crystal HARD COUNTRY Michael McGarrity, Dutton, 2012, $28.95, hb, 624pp, 978052595246 The Western often suffers from literary snobbishness, but good authors of the genre, like Michael McGarrity, know their era and don’t embellish their pioneering folk with the sensibilities of our softer age. He doesn’t spare the realities. Most lives were short or cheap, prejudice and bigotry rife. Men were men, and women did the laundry.

This quote from the novel bluntly exemplifies what you can expect of relationships: “It was the book writers and poets who made a big deal about cooing, courting, love, and romance. In a hard country there wasn’t much room for all of that.”

The challenging landscape permeates the whole book, and its unforgiving nature is reflected in the people who try to bend it to their will. All of the characters have an honesty and veracity shaped by their life experiences. John Kearney’s guilt over

his family is at the root of his determination to start afresh in New Mexico. His son, Patrick, is both complex and confronting as he struggles to overcome the demons of childhood while his wife, Emma, must find her own way of dealing with tragedy and conflict.

Male readers will relish the usual Western ingredients of round-ups, rustlers and renegades, plus the added bonuses of the Rough Riders in Cuba and America’s entry into WW1.

The numerous horse and cattle drives may prove exhausting for some female readers, but they should appreciate the sympathetic portrayals of the women, who were either defeated by their environment or became stronger in spite of it.

Part adventure yarn, part story of New Mexico’s transition to the modern age, McGarrity’s narrative flows with laconic ease on this most satisfying journey across America’s Southwest.

Marina Maxwell HOUSE OF THE HUNTED (US) / HOUSE OF THE HANGED (UK) Mark Mills, Random House, 2012, $26/$31, hb, 320pp, 978140006819 / Harper, 2011, £7.99, pb, 400pp, 9780007276912 In 1919 Petrograd, Tom Nash is a young British agent with a plan to free his Russian girlfriend from prison. His efforts are in vain, and Irina is executed. Flash forward to 1935, and Tom is living a reclusive life in the south of France, the neighbor of Leonard, his former superior, and godfather to Leonard’s stepdaughter Lucy, who is just turning 21. Tom is 39, and when Lucy returns to France from Oxford for her birthday, there’s a subtle change to their relationship, apparent to everyone but Lucy and Tom. This is no romance, though.

Tom’s peaceful summer is shattered when an attempt is made on his life. He and Leonard realize the botched attack is connected to Tom’s past as an intelligence agent. Tom must marshal his wits to prevent further attempts, determine which of his friendly neighbors is his enemy, and protect those he loves.

This is one of those books that proves the past is ever-present, whether it’s a career that can never be shrugged off, or the realization that a life has been a lie. Mills has crafted an engrossing story about both betrayal and loyalty. There is a twist that I won’t reveal, but after I finished the book, I needed to read it a second time to appreciate its intricate plot. I love books that assume the intelligence of the reader. Mills not only excels at plot but at characters as well. With a few well-chosen words, he brings Lucy’s sharp-tongued mother to life as well as the seemingly ineffectual but actually shrewd Leonard and tormented Tom. I could, in fact, read this book a third time just for the pleasure of Mills’ prose.

Ellen Keith TO TURN FULL CIRCLE Linda Mitchelmore, Choc Lit, 2012, £7.99, pb, 333pp, 9781906932728 To Turn Full Circle is set in a small fishing port in Devon in 1909. Emma Le Goff has recently 20th Century

lost her father, mother and brother in dubious circumstances and now has to forge a new life for herself without money or family for support.

Reuben Jago is the man behind her misfortunes but his son, Seth, is prepared to ignore his father’s wishes by helping Emma. Matthew Caunter arrives to replace her father and live in the cottage that used to be Emma’s home. He is kind and takes her in, but he is not what he appears.

Emma is a likeable and well-drawn character, as are both Seth and Matthew. However, the minor characters are less credible. The book also fails to give a sense of time or place – it needed references to actual historical events and artefacts in order to embed it in the intended period.

To Turn Full Circle lacks pace, and the plot is rather predictable. I would not recommend this book.

Fenella Miller THE CHAPERONE Laura Moriarty, Riverhead, 2012, $26.95, hb, 384pp, 9781594487019 / Michael Joseph, 2012, £7.99, pb, 432pp, 9780718158972 Louise Brooks was an iconic dancer, actress, model, and showgirl during the first half of the 20th century. Known as no ordinary follower, she paved the way for those who would learn to develop a unique style in the same career path.

Laura Moriarty takes us to the very beginning of Louise’s career and a new life for Cora Carlisle, who chaperones Louise on her trip to New York where she will train for a potential career with the Denishawn Modern Dance Company.

Although Cora is an older, sedate Midwestern woman, she’s tougher than steel and yet warm and wise beyond her years. Cora is an orphan who was lucky enough to be adopted by the Kaufmann family from a harsh orphanage, a place where parentless children were raised to be sent on “the train,” to work on Midwestern farms, in homes, and other unsavory places. Louise, on the other hand, is unloved and scarred by her parents and others, a background Cora understands has shaped Louise into the hard, cynical, and sometimes downright nasty young adult she is. Cora manages Louise just fine but secretly proceeds to search for her own past identity.

The remainder of this vividly poignant and surprising story charts the journey of both women, who have been betrayed over and over again and yet find a modicum of peace in very different yet engaging ways that keep the reader riveted to each page. Who will each become as one seeks meaningful, trusting relationships and the other yearns for public acclaim? What shapes us more, nature or nurture (or lack thereof )? The Chaperone is a painful yet benign history of sexual mores in 20th-century America. Laura Moriarty’s novel is a shocking but well-written, endearing read that is just wonderful!

Viviane Crystal THE HOUSEMAID’S DAUGHTER Barbara Mutch, Headline Review, 2012, £14.99, 20th Century

hb, 416pp, 9780755392094 Set in South Africa, this novel follows the lives of two women divided by colour yet united by friendship and shared love of music. Mrs Cath has left her family in Ireland to become the bride of Edward, a man she hasn’t seen for five years.

Her closest relationship becomes the one that she forms with the housemaid’s daughter of the title.

Ada is beautiful, loyal, hardworking and loves the piano. Both sides of the racial divide are shown as apartheid is introduced and enforced.

The difficulties of being in the middle, neither one thing nor the other, are shown through the character of Dawn, Ada’s mixed-race daughter.

The political backdrop is carefully described and helps give the novel its power and force. Mentions of names such as Mandela and Steve Biko serve to remind the reader of how short a time ago this terrible system existed. The novel is being promoted as the South African The Help, and the parallels are clear. Certainly if The Help was a book you enjoyed, you will certainly find much to delight in here. Recommended as a good story that gives insights into the lives of black and white during a crucial period of South Africa’s history.

Ann Northfield A MIND OF WINTER Shira Nayman, Akashic, 2012, $15.95, pb, 332pp, 9781617751035 Oscar Harcourt is an enigmatic English art collector living on an opulent estate on Long Island, six years and thousands of miles from a Germany rent by war. Every weekend, the well-heeled escape from the city to his Ellis Park and help to chase

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away his memories with dancing, chatter, and the inanity of a generation trying to forget a war. One of his regular guests is Marilyn, a photographer trying to reconcile pictures of orphans standing amid the ruins of the London Blitz and prisoners amid the fences of concentration camps with the glitz and frivolity of post-war New York City. She cannot confide in her husband, Simon, who stays back in the city, writing. At Ellis Park, she stays awake late and alone, sorting through photos for an exhibition, while trying not to lose her tenuous grip on a delicate and beautiful marriage. Marilyn reminds Oscar of his first love, Christine, who left him unexpectedly one day for Shanghai. He doesn’t know that she’d discovered a secret in his desk, a secret that causes her to flee. In the opium dens, Christine looks for forgetfulness. These stories don’t seem connected at first, until a night in 1951 when a visitor slips into Oscar’s study, a visitor who speaks German and stirs up long-buried memories of the war for everyone.

In this dense, psychological thriller, Christine, Marilyn, and finally Oscar take a turn in telling the story, in uncovering the mystery that is Oscar Harcourt. They take us from pre-war Germany to a London crumbling under the Blitz, from the opium-swirled streets of Shanghai to post-war Long Island. The moral questions that dogged each through the war, the guilt that lingers after, Oscar’s hidden past binds them all in ways they couldn’t anticipate. The prose is gorgeous, the twists compelling, the secrets dripped in neatly. This is a novel to be digested.

Jessica Brockmole

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Anouk Markovits, Hogarth, 2012, $25.00/£12.99, hb, 302pp, 9780307984739 In Anouk Markovits’s outstanding novel, the title words could apply to many scenarios within its pages: cultures, relationships, and expectations all provide constant obstacles to either rise above or muddle through. There are many delicate balancing acts, and through it all, Markovits’s characters shine through with determination and intelligence.

The novel begins in Transylvania with the destruction of young Hasidic Jew Mila’s family in the 1940s; she is taken in to be raised as part of the strictly religious Stern family as they escape into France.

Mila becomes fast friends with her new “sister” Atara, but while Mila has no problem following the Hasidic lifestyle, Atara begins to rebel as the two grow older.

Eventually Atara finds she can no longer endure the ideas of arranged marriage and women’s inferiority, and she disappears just as Mila marries. As time goes on, Mila faces her own crisis of faith as she must deal with an indiscretion that threatens her family for generations to come. The walls that have been built within their shared family must come down in order for it to be saved.

There is heartbreak and joy in equal amounts in I Am Forbidden, and it is easy to see why both young women make their choices. I was very impressed with the fairness with which the Hasidic lifestyle is presented, and I came away with a deeper understanding of both the culture and its women. The writing is lyrical and moving, and I felt completely immersed in the lives of these two beautiful women as they struggled with their decisions. Highly recommended.

Tamela McCann HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Reviews | 47

THE GIRL ON THE BEACH Mary Nichols, Allison & Busby, 2012, £19.99, hb, 352pp, 9780749011062 On a rare day out at the seaside, eight-yearold orphan Julie Monday meets the slightly older Harry Walker. It is an encounter neither of them can forget. They meet again and marry, but the Second World War is about to start. Harry joins the RAF, and Julie is left alone with their son to face the London blitz. She is caught up in an airraid and loses her memory. In the ensuing chaos, no one knows who she is and she is given a new identity – Eve Seaton. She begins a new life, unaware that grief-stricken Harry believes that he has lost his wife and his son to the blitz. The story follows the fortunes of Harry and “Eve” and their friends as they struggle to survive the war. Harry of course thinks he is free to build a new life, but “Eve” has the burden of her lost memories – should she try to ignore them and start again?

Nichols is a consummate storyteller and cleverly weaves the progress of the war into the lives of her characters. She brings the past alive and deals with the tragic consequences of war. Love, loss, rationing, the black market, the struggle of the ordinary people and the armed forces are all touched upon in this delightfully compelling story. The reader is left wondering until the very end if it will be possible for Julie and Harry to find happiness.

Melinda Hammond ABDICATION Juliet Nicolson, Bloomsbury, 2012, £16.99, hb, 361pp, 9781408823088 / Atria, 2012, $25.00, hb, 352pp, 9781451658835 Abdication takes its title from the Abdication Crisis of 1936, but it could as easily have been entitled 1936. Starting in January, it goes through to December, mentioning everything of importance that happened in Britain, whether relevant to the abdication or not, and everybody who was anybody, if only in passing. Thus when the young couple (not Edward and Wallis) have their first full sexual contact, they notice Virginia Woolf further along the beach and exchange a wave. And of course they visit Wigan and meet, if not George Orwell himself, at least some of his friendsThe two main protagonists both arrive in Britain in January 1936. May, from Barbados, becomes chauffeur (definitely not chauffeuse) to the Government Chief Whip, meaning that she can travel a lot and meet important people, including the King and Wallis Simpson. Evangeline, from Baltimore, is a schoolfriend of Wallis on a family visit to England. May finds love, Evangeline finds disappointment, and the book ends with the Crystal Palace fire.

Juliet Nicolson is a distinguished social historian of the inter-war years, and it shows. I quite like this, but the background tends to swamp the narrative.

Edward James CASCADE Maryanne O’Hara, Viking, 2012, $26.95, hb, 368pp, 9780670026029 It is 1935, the country is in the chokehold of the Great Depression, and Desdemona Hart would do just about anything to help her father. William Hart, actor and owner of the Cascade Shakespeare Theater, is in failing health and close to bankruptcy.

With her tuition unpaid, she must return home to 48 | Reviews | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

Cascade, Massachusetts, leaving her budding career as an artist behind. She marries Asa Spaulding in order to provide stability and shelter for her father.

Desdemona appears to settle for a less-thanperfect marriage. She honestly cares for Asa, but his desire to start a family immediately makes her shudder, and so she secretly tracks her fertile ovulation days each morning. Even though

William Hart adores his daughter, he reveals that he changed his will to make Asa the beneficiary of his theater. To make matters worse, legislation may pass to allow Cascade to be flooded to create a reservoir. Dez then meets Jacob Solomon, a talented artist who sparks an instantaneous allure that is almost too great to ignore.

Dez is a conflicted character who faces life-

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E D I TORS’ CH OICE TWO CROSSES (Book One in the Secrets of the Cross Trilogy) Elizabeth Musser, David C. Cook, 2012, $14.99, pb, 464pp, 9780781405003

TWO TESTAMENTS (Book Two in the Secrets of the Cross Trilogy)

Elizabeth Musser, David C. Cook, 2012, $14.99, pb, 494pp, 9780781404990 Two Crosses begins the unforgettable story of several characters in a saga that stretches across opposite coasts of the Mediterranean Sea. The racism plaguing Algeria’s people as they fight for independence from France creates a chasm in the early 1960s that spins uncontrollably.

Teacher and student, David and Gabriella meet at a Franco-American exchange program. Mother Griolet manages the operation along with an orphanage, which doubles as the cover of a rescue mission in France. Gabriella helps David with the dangerous operation of transporting orphaned children whose family were victims of the Algerian war. David’s own past reemerges as his daughter Ophélie arrives on Gabby’s doorstep, epitomizing the stolen innocence of the children due to wartime treachery. Gabby and Ophélie bond immediately; they proudly wear their Huguenot crosses close to their hearts, which becomes symbolic and healing even as David tries to reconcile his own questions of faith with the horrors of the war he has witnessed. Gabby’s relationships with the women in the school and the orphanage are also an integral part of the story as she slowly realizes her calling in life.

Book Two seamlessly picks up the story from Two Crosses, as there is no clear divide between them. These books are definitely meant to be read in order, and the characterizations and the consequences of the war are as splendidly portrayed as in the first book.

Two Testaments continues with the aftermath of Algerian independence, as David befriends a Muslim friend and they question their faiths together.

Although the war is supposed to be over, people have been forced to split and choose sides. The pieds-noirs were French citizens, unwanted after being forced from Algeria; the Harkis were Muslim soldiers who once fought alongside Arabs but found themselves unwelcome in the newly independent Algeria. Two Testaments tells the story of the pieds-noirs and the Harkis through several characters in a way that evokes tears because of the violence and tragedy. Yet there was always hope, and victory for some, death for others, and insecurity for the rest.

The plot is a well-written composition that teaches a little about life during tragic times, it is moving and emotive as the characters reach for understanding through a higher power. There is a daunting set of names and places at first, but they are threaded together carefully throughout the story. Both of these novels explore deep themes such as prejudice, God, love, sacrifice, and hope, but these words just skim the surface of its potential to touch the reader. Book Three, Two Destinies, picks up the saga of these families 30 years later as war yet again becomes unavoidable.

Marie Burton 20th Century

changing decisions. Her situation is complex, and her choices are anything but straightforward.

Jacob Solomon is Jewish, and the reader becomes a witness to the hostile prejudice that often impinges on innocent lives. The author also deftly looks at the social norms of this time period. Women’s rights and expectations regarding marriage, divorce, children, birth control and property rights were vastly different 80 years ago.

Cascade is an insightful, sensitive, and important novel of our social history which reads with clarity and authenticity. Maryanne O’Hara shares the difficult, limited freedom and choices that women were raised to accept but which they frequently challenged.

Wisteria Leigh CAIN AT GETTYSBURG Ralph Peters, Forge, 2012, $25.99, hb, 432pp, 9780765330475 In June 1863, the Confederate army, under the command of General Robert E. Lee, enters Pennsylvania to take the war to the North. His army soon meets the Union army, led by the recently promoted General of the Army of the Potomac, George Mead. For three days in July, these two armies clash in and around the small town of Gettysburg. While the generals plan and give the orders, men in both armies face the actual fighting. Sergeant Blake and Private Cobb of the 26th North Carolina, two men as different as two people can be, lead several desperate charges against Northern lines, resulting in many casualties.

German immigrants of the 26th Wisconsin, led by Colonel Krzyzanowski, attempt to correct the bad press received about their unit during the battle of Fredericksburg, where the German soldiers were called cowards. Both units see heavy fighting during these three days until the final clash on July 3rd – remembered after the war as Pickett’s Charge.

Ralph Peters has written an exciting novel reminiscent of Michael and Jeff Shaara’s classic novels of the Civil War. His battle scenes are both exciting and horrifying. At times I thought he overemphasized the gory scenes, but considering that the major action occurs on a battlefield, the author undoubtedly felt it was necessary to show the brutality of war with this visual effect. The dialog between the characters, especially between the fictional soldiers, helps drive the story to its obvious conclusion. You could also feel the discontent between Generals Longstreet and Lee. Both men disagreed on how to fight the battle, but you soon realize Longstreet had to respect Lee’s authority. An excellent retelling of this significant campaign, and I would highly recommend this novel to Civil War enthusiasts.

Jeff Westerhoff DEAD MAN’S TUNNEL Sheldon Russell, Minotaur, 2012, $25.99, hb, 320pp, 9781250001009 With a title like Dead Man’s Tunnel, you might think you are about to read an old Western or a sinister detective novel, but in fact it is Sheldon Russell’s newest installment in his historical mystery series. Once again, he engages readers with an intricate plot. Hook Runyon is often unexpectedly entertaining. He is out of the 20th Century

ordinary and is a former rail rider, or “bo.” He is a curious character with a quick wit, pragmatic outlook and a hard-knocks education.

From the chilling opening, we know that Joseph Erikson wakes up inside the Johnson Canyon Tunnel. White-knuckle drama unfolds early on as Joseph, a U.S. military guard, realizes escape is hopeless, as he is chained to the track. Hook Runyon, the railroad bull, lives in a caboose with his dog. He works at the West Salvage Yard, where he was hired to catch copper thieves.

When he receives word that a guard has been killed, he is sent to investigate. While searching for clues, he meets Lt. Allison Capron from the Army Transportation Department. Questions of responsibility and jurisdiction erupt between the two. Hook’s brash confidence is no match for the young lieutenant. The grade to the approach of the tunnel is one of the steepest in America, and the accident gives Hook shivers; he is on a trail with deadly twists and turns. Hook is one tough, cagey yard dog with a passion for rare books and a humorous, quirky side. What he uncovers just doesn’t fit. Suicide? Murder? Accident?

This is not the first Hook Runyon book, nor will it be the last. Wherever Hook Runyon appears next, you and I should be on that ride. Spectacular writing, witty dialogue, and a complex mystery will take readers to a terrifying edge.

Wisteria Leigh BRIGHTON BELLE Sara Sheridan, Polygon, 2012, £17.99, hb, 243pp, 9781846972331 The year is 1951, and although rationing is still in force, England is slowly moving towards normality after the war years. Following the death of her married lover, Mirabelle Bevan, a backroom girl for the Secret Service, has moved to Brighton to start a new life where she takes a job as a secretary for

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a debt collection agency. However, her desire for a quiet life, where excitement consists of avoiding paying for a deck chair on the beach, is short-lived.

When a client – pregnant refugee Romana Laszlo – disappears, followed shortly after by Mirabelle’s boss “Big Ben” McGuigan, Mirabelle finds herself following a trail of gold sovereigns, betting scams and murder.

Early 1950s England is effectively portrayed in this intriguing mystery story. The ongoing problems of rationing are invoked, as is the casual racial discrimination in which a lady of West Indian origin is regarded as a cultural oddity not worthy of respect, which was endemic at this time.

The bodies pile up with satisfying regularity, and Mirabelle finds herself in danger from Nazis as well as corrupt policemen before the story is brought to a satisfactory end. An excellent read for the beach or a long flight.

Mike Ashworth THE HOUSE OF SERENADES Lina Simoni, Moonleaf, 2012, $14.99, pb, 320pp, 9781937700010 Giuseppe Berilli, Genoese lawyer and head of one of the city’s most prominent families in 1910, has always lived a privileged life. Wealthy, respected, married to the daughter of a marquis, he has no fears, even when kicked by a horse in the streets. But, when threatening letters begin coming days later, Giuseppe wonders if the horse accident may have been an accident at all. Suddenly fearful, he calls in the chief of police, Antonio Sobrero, ordering discretion. As Antonio investigates the enemies the arrogant attorney amassed in his lifetime, he begins uncovering more sinister things. Nearly everyone in the Berilli family has a secret, and they would rather take their secrets to the grave than offer them up to Genoa’s rumor mills. One person watching the investigation with

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Malla Nunn, Washington Square Press, 2012, $14.00, pb, 309pp, 9781451616927 It’s difficult to decide what is best about Malla Nunn’s most recent novel, Blessed are the Dead. The setting is the same as that of her earlier two critically acclaimed titles, A Beautiful Place to Die and Let the Dead Lie—South Africa, in the 1950s. And her lead character, Detective Emmanuel Cooper is back with a tragic and mysterious murder to solve. But there are so many other ways to look at and savor this book.

Each of Nunn’s characters is a gem—some polished, some pleasingly rough-cut, but all unique and memorable. By subtly handling the buried emotions and motives of both the white and the black worlds, the author brings us into the complex and exotic worlds of the Zulu clans and a violently divided white agricultural community. The settings, based on the author’s years spent in Swaziland, are ablaze with the colors of South Africa. Readers are transported—as if we’ve stepped out into the brush with Detective Cooper and his stalwart Detective Constable Samuel Shabalala as guides. The suspense is irresistible, and the mystery sustains itself well. This is a wonderfully effective addition to Nunn’s already masterful series of novels. A highly recommended novel.

Kathryn Johnson HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Reviews | 49

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E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Giovanni Orelli (trans. Jamie Richards), Dalkey Archive Press, 2012, pb, $13.95, 188pp, 9781564787569 Forget structure; forget run-of-the-mill plots, and logic. Think James Joyce and then, if that doesn’t scare you, plunge into Walaschek’s Dream. I wager Swiss writer and poet Giovanni Orelli will make you wonder why he has not been translated into English before. Witty, profound, mordant, humorous, his voice is unique.

The setting is Nazi Europe; the locale a tavern where a motley assembly of historical and contemporary characters meet to debate. The likes of Bertrand Russell, Van Gogh and Schopenhauer rub elbows with a baker, a blacksmith, a worker at the Wind Factory—a school teacher—and with painter Paul Klee and footballer Eugene Walaschek. The topic is one of Klee’s lesser-known works: a collage entitled Alphabet I, which Klee created by painting symbols and letters on a newspaper page relating the 1938 final match of the Swiss soccer cup. At the tavern, the discussion waxes philosophical; soccer becomes a metaphor for the fleetingness of life versus the permanence of art. What is the meaning of the ‘O’ Klee put over Walaschek’s name, splitting it in half? The O is “the oval idea of a cosmos, the annual ring on a traversal section of a tree trunk,” a magnifying lens, God’s signature, a navel…

There are wonderful digressions, Wunderteams of footballers, degenerate artists, concentration camps, doctors of the church, even as Orelli tells the melancholy story of what happened to those footballers after the heyday.

Reading Walaschek’s Dream is as spellbinding as watching a meteor shower. This is one of the best novels I have read in years.

Adelaida Lower great interest is a mandolin player who has never stopped loving the girl of his dreams, and who has never forgiven Giuseppe for causing her death.

This book was such a mixed bag for me. The unfolding mystery was neatly plotted and kept me on my toes as each fresh perfidy of the Berilli family was revealed. But the secrets came almost too soon, and the villains met their end far before the book did. The last quarter of the book felt almost like an epilogue, a drawn-out romance contrasting with the tragic mystery of the first three-quarters. The writing was also choppy in places, adding what felt like unnecessary words and explanations. The story and plotting were strong, but the writing and pacing could have benefited from more editing.

Jessica Brockmole HELEN KELLER IN LOVE Rosie Sultan, Viking, 2012, $26.95/C$28.50, hb, 242pp, 9780670023493 Blind and deaf Helen Keller is 37 in 1916.

She tours the country speaking about her “miracle” release from the silent darkness of her affliction with the help of her long-time teacher, Annie Sullivan. Helen is dependent on Annie for everything, including the finger-spelling into her hand that lets her know what others are saying and translates her own views. Her socialist leanings at the start of World War I make her speeches increasingly unpopular, and money is tight.

Helen is lonely, as she longs to be a true woman with more freedom. Annie falls ill and hires a young man to help out as Helen’s secretary. Helen 50 | Reviews | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

is immediately attracted to Peter Fagan, and a clandestine love affair begins. Her family and Annie fight against Helen’s desires and vow to separate them. Is Peter an opportunist, looking for his own fame, or a man in love?

Rosie Sultan has taken on a major task with a blind-deaf heroine. The prose is elegant, and the author deftly shows us Helen’s world through touch and smell. You believe in Helen’s desperate loneliness for a man in her life and her desire to be like other women. Her attraction to Peter begins before she even meets him, which makes their romance appear contrived, though it is partially based on fact. The snappy language between them also seems a stretch given Helen’s difficulty in communication.

I studied Helen Keller in school so came to the story with a lot of knowledge. Other readers will be encouraged to research this remarkable woman.

Diane Scott Lewis AN UNMARKED GRAVE Charles Todd, William Morrow, 2012, $24.95/ C$27.99, hb, 272pp, 9780062127013 In 1918, nurse Bess Crawford sees a murdered soldier amid the piles of the dead who have succumbed to influenza at the front. Before she can alert anyone, she falls ill herself, and while recovering, questions what she saw, believing it to be a product of her fevered brain. The suspicious death of the private who showed her the body, and additional deaths of others who could identify the “colonel” who made inquiries about the dead

man, cause Bess to reconsider and investigate. Her determination sends her back to the front, where the killer could be anyone. Indeed, she manages to stay only a few steps ahead of him.

In this fourth Bess Crawford mystery, Todd ratchets up the suspense. War itself is obscene, but the idea of a nameless, faceless killer stalking soldiers and nurses, who witness enough death, is truly frightening. Although Bess’s parents would like to shield her from danger, they recognize that she feels a sense of duty. She’s not a wartime nurse and a colonel’s daughter for nothing. If there is one dangling thread, it is that Todd will soon need to address whether family friend Simon Brandon is more than a friend. A would-be suitor sees him as competition, but Bess stays tight-lipped on the subject. The Bess Crawford mysteries are a fascinating “other side of the coin” from the Ian Rutledge mysteries, the former feeling the thick of war, the latter dealing with its aftermath Ellen Keith DEATH IN AUGUST Marco Vichi (trans. Stephen Sartarelli), Pegasus Crime, 2011, $25.00, hb, 232pp, 9781605983516 Set in Florence in 1963, this murder mystery offers the delights and peculiarities of Italy. As the city melts in August heat, Inspector Bordelli languidly uncovers who killed a wealthy signora in her villa, all while consuming delicious food, copious alcohol and cigarettes, and pondering philosophically. The personality of Bordelli holds most of our interest—single, lonely, haunted by his experiences in WWII, professionally wellrespected, and beloved by the petty criminals he’s befriended. On some level, he represents the conscience of post-war Italy. He’s disdainful of the bureaucrats and politicians and mindful of social injustices. He connects with outcasts and offbeat people, and the book is populated with bizarre human beings, all quite entertaining. The crime – not so much a who-done-it as a how-done-it – puzzles enough to draw the reader along. The solution is ingenious, and somehow I can’t see anyone but an Italian inspector figuring it out.

For lovers of Donna Leon, here’s a new author to gobble up. This is a translation, first of four books already out in Italian.

Judith Starkston CATHERINE OF DEEPDALE Millie Vigor, Hale, 2012, £18.99, hb, 224pp, 9780709096399 In 1946, Catherine Jameson leaves Southampton for the Shetland Isles, home of her new husband, Robbie, anticipating an idyllic island life. Despite discovering his home is a croft with no modern conveniences, and his mother’s disdain for the new English wife, Catherine is determined to adapt. However, when Robbie perishes in a fishing accident, and Catherine discovers she is pregnant, she can either return to her family or stay on the island and carry out her husband’s dream of breeding Cheviot sheep. Catherine decides to stay.

For readers looking for a cozy story to curl up with by the fireside, I recommend this novel.

Despite a few punctuation glitches, and the overuse of dialogue tags, e.g. ‘“Call me Doris,” said Doris’, I found it pleasant to read, with likeable and sympathetic characters.

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IN THE SHADOW OF THE BANYAN E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Vaddey Ratner, Simon & Schuster, 2012, $25.00, hb, 320pp, 9781451657708 / Simon & Schuster UK, 2012, £12.99, hb, 336pp, 9781849837583 Vaddey Ratner’s novel, In the Shadow of the Banyan, is as much memoir as it is fiction. This is the thinly cloaked tale, both shocking and heart wrenching, of her own coming of age during the bloody reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The story is told through Raami, seven years old at the beginning of the narrative. Her father ventures into the city each day to gather material for beautiful poems he will compose for Raami. But he is also reconnoitering the city, keeping an eye for trouble. Raami overhears his disturbing report to his wife as they lie in bed. More terrifying than the deprivation he witnesses are the armed, black-garbed soldiers who eventually order the family out of their home or else be shot.

Raami and her family suffer starvation, forced labor, and cruel brainwashing, and slowly they dwindle under the vicious yoke of the regime that views even memory of the past as reason for execution. At times, Raami recalls her father’s fable about Buddha who took the form of a rabbit and sacrificed himself to feed a hungry Indra, king of gods. Rabbit “built a fire… and jumped into the roaring flames. But just as he did, Indra [seized] his spirit, and flew him off to the moon, where he carved [his] figure on its luminous surface.” Raami always wonders if Rabbit isn’t up there tending his own funeral pyre— truly a chilling image of the sacrifices made by the Cambodian people even as they witnessed the destruction of their country.

The story is horrifying, but beautifully told—at once painful and captivating. The resilience of the human spirit and body, the ability to hope even in the face of extreme hopelessness: that is what carries the reader through this touching masterpiece of a novel.

Kathryn Johnson The author evokes the wild, desolate landscape of the islands so vividly that it made me want to visit and learn about crofting. Her use, at times, of Shetland dialect is not intrusive.

I found it hard to accept Catherine’s decision to remain after her husband’s death. She had a good relationship with her own family, something she does not have, initially, with her in-laws. The weather is harsh, she has few friends, and no feasible reason apart from her dead husband’s dream to remain. The plot is predictable, and I would have preferred a few surprises. The author might have been better served to omit the sex scenes, which I found clichéd to the point of laughable. Apart from these misgivings, I enjoyed the story and missed having it to curl up with once I’d finished.

Ann Northfield MORE THAN YOU KNOW (US) / THE DECISION (UK) Penny Vincenzi, Doubleday, 2012, $26.95, hb, 608pp, 9780385528252 / Headline Review, 2011, £19.99, hb, 768pp, 9780755320905 Eliza Clark expects more from her life than marriage and parenthood. In the early 1960s, careers are opening up for women, and class distinctions are starting to blur as business booms and opportunities abound. As a wealthy, beautiful upper-class woman, London is Eliza’s oyster, and she demands the best of everything – including employment. Her stylishness makes her a natural as a fashion editor, and she moves up rapidly from assistant to fashion editor at one of London’s upand-coming fashion magazines.

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THE LIFEBOAT

Eliza has the glitzy job, the fabulous wardrobe, and the wealthy (and handsome) boyfriend, but she feels strangely unfulfilled until a chance encounter with her brother’s military buddy, Matt Shaw, shakes her life up. Matt is a self-made millionaire who took advantage of the London real estate boom to make a fortune, and Eliza gives up everything that she has worked for to be the wife and mother that Matt wants her to be. When their marriage falls apart, each blames the other, and a messy divorce and cut-throat custody battle follows.

More Than You Know is typical Vincenzi, with plenty of glitz and glamour, tragic secrets, and doomed relationships. The characters are a little over-the-top sometimes – it’s hard to believe that Matt could be such an uncompromising chauvinist, and it takes a long time for Eliza to figure out that she can, and should, stand up for herself – but they do mature a bit as the book progresses. This book won’t teach you anything new or expose you to a different perspective, but it is enjoyable escapist literature that makes some of the major social issues of the 1960s and early 1970s into a personal story.

Nanette Donohue SKIP ROCK SHALLOWS Jan Watson, Tyndale House, 2012, $12.99, pb, 384pp, 9781414339146 Dr. Lilly Corbett is sent to a coal mining town in Kentucky where folks have an issue with women being anything more than hard-working wives.

Lilly struggles to get the residents to accept her, and only illness can force the issue. As successive

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Charlotte Rogan, Little, Brown, 2012, $24.99/C$27.99, hb, 274pp, 9780316185905 / Virago, 2012, £12.99, hb, 288pp, 9781844087525 We all know the story of the Titanic’s sinking, right down to how the 20 lifeboats bearing 700+ survivors were picked up by the Carpathia the next morning after a harrowing night adrift at sea. But what might have happened had no rescue boat arrived? That’s the premise of Charlotte Rogan’s The Lifeboat, and it’s not a pretty story, as food and water run out with a madman in charge.

Set in 1914, The Lifeboat is told through the voice of Grace Winter, a new bride whose husband may or may not have escaped aboard another boat. Grace details life in the overcrowded boat over the course of three desperately long weeks: the constant bailing of water, the dwindling of rations, the horror of a squall line looming. As time wears on, tempers flare, and the ultimate rule of seaman Mr. Hardie becomes unbearable; though some of the inhabitants succumb to the harshness, there still are not enough room and supplies. In a sort of cross between Lord of the Flies and Castaway, rational thought gives way to panic and delusion, with the survivors forced to take sides in a coup that will lead to murder.

This book is truly gripping from its earliest pages as Grace deals with her losses and makes choices that will affect her future… if there is a future at all. The lifeboat itself becomes a sadistic microcosm of devolving personalities, and no one is safe as time both drags and races. This imagining of “what if ” is both bold and terrifying; you can’t look away once you’ve begun the journey. Mysteries unfold and fates are decided all within one small boat, and it’s a ride you won’t want to miss. Highly recommended.

Tamela McCann HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Reviews | 51

tragedies strike the town, both Lilly’s medical abilities and tender nature endear her to the residents of Skip Rock. In turn, Lilly finds herself becoming attached to the people of Skip Rock, which disrupts her plans to marry the worthy Dr. Paul back in Boston. Meanwhile, a drifter at the mine turns out to have more in common with Lilly than she expected, and a relationship blossoms despite undercurrents of treachery and foul play.

The plot is fairly simple, yet this is a well-written character driven novel. A young lady named Armina doesn’t hesitate to tell you what’s what, and Cousin Ned works so hard you would never knew he had a peg leg; these are characters who will stay with you after the end of the book. As the plot drifts towards the mine’s endeavors and shady dealings, each of the romantic and inspirational themes provide a subtle touch to complement Lilly’s own relationships and character development.

Readers will get a dose of medical procedures with this telling, as well as welcome details on the way of life for mining families in the early 1900s.

Although part of a series, the novel stands alone, as only a small thread ties it to Jan Watson’s previous works.

Marie Burton THE ANATOMY OF DEATH Felicity Young, Berkley, 2012, $15.00, pb, 320pp, 9780425247297 Doctor Dody McCleland returns to her London home from Edinburgh, having completed a course in autopsy surgery. Dody finds her sister

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Florence heavily involved in the women’s suffrage movement under the leadership of WSPU founder Emmeline Parkhurst. A WSPU march turns into a violent riot when London police and suspicious thugs abuse and attack the women. Put forward by her famous instructor Doctor Spilsbury, Dody is summoned as an alternate coroner to determine the cause of death for three women killed during the march.

Dody must recuse herself from examination of one of the victims, Lady Catherine Cartwright, a friend of her sister and member of Florence’s particular Bloomsbury suffrage group. Her involvement in the case continues, however, for she has met and impressed the London detective assigned, Chief Inspector Pike. The Anatomy of Death is an involving story full of complex and sympathetic characters. Both Florence and Pike are haunted by prior traumas; Florence was forcefed while on hunger strike in prison, and Pike by war experiences and injury. Set during the fight for the women’s right to vote of the early 20th century, The Anatomy of Death is a well-paced mystery. An interesting author’s note explains the facts and real personages behind the story, when the “Police did behave brutally, and three women were killed.”

Eva Ulett

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THE ISLAND HOUSE

THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

M. L. Stedman, Scribner, 2012, $25.00/C$28.99, hb, 384pp, 9781451681734 / Doubleday, 2012, £12.99, hb, 368pp, 9780857521002 Tom Sherbourne returns home to Australia after four years on the Western Front, wanting a measure of peace and quiet. He takes a job as a lighthouse keeper on isolated Janus Rock, an island one mile square and nearly half a day’s journey from the mainland. Though the supply boat only comes once every three months, adventurous Isabel marries him and follows him to the island. But the extreme isolation, along with two miscarriages and a stillbirth, take their toll on the young couple, and when they hear a baby’s cries on the beach, they make a decision that forever changes their lives.

A boat has washed ashore, with a dead man and a squalling baby. Isabel takes the baby and pleads with Tom not to report it in his lighthouse log. Rulebound Tom struggles with the omission, but so far from civilization, they convince themselves that the baby is an orphan. Yet years later, when they visit the mainland on a rare shore leave, they discover that fate isn’t that simple. The baby not only has a family, but a mother who has never given up hope.

I won’t lie; this was a difficult story that brought me to tears on more than one occasion. But this is to the author’s credit, the characters are so real, flawed and yearning that I wasn’t sure who I should be rooting for: Lucy, the baby, raised amidst the wilds of Janus Rock; one mother, grieving since the day the small boat set off from the mainland; the other mother, grieving until the day the boat washes ashore on the island. Among it all is solid, dependable Tom, torn between his conscience and love for his wife. Between the deeply layered characters and the haunting loneliness of wave-swept Janus Rock, Stedman has created an authentic, heartbreaking story that I was unable to put down. A beautiful and highly recommended debut.

Jessica Brockmole 52 | Reviews | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

Posie Graeme-Evans, Atria, 2012, $16.00, pb, 464pp, 9780743294430 / Hodder & Stoughton, 2012, £19.99, hb, 448pp, 9780340920411 When archaeologist Freya Dane’s absentee father dies, she inherits his dilapidated old home on Findnar, an island off the Scottish coast.

Though Freya knows little of her father, she sees her visit to Scotland as an escape from her life and her dissertation, and an opportunity to learn more about him. She soon realizes that the home holds secrets beyond anything she could have expected, and her discoveries reinvigorate her interest in art, history, and archaeology.

A parallel narrative tells the story of Signy, a young Pictish girl whose family is murdered by Viking raiders. Signy is one of the sole survivors of the brutal raid; the other, a teenage Viking warrior nicknamed Bear, is left for dead by the raiding band.

Despite their pagan backgrounds, the residents of the monastery at Findnar take in both Signy and Bear. Bear refuses to assimilate, while Signy experiences several crises that drive her towards, and then away from, the new Christian faith.

Graeme-Evans slides easily through two time periods—the end of the first millennium A.D., when Vikings raided the islands along the Scottish coast, and the present day, where Freya and her friends learn the truth about the home her father loved so much. When the two narratives cross, it’s handled skillfully, and though there are touches of the paranormal, it’s believable. The uniting theme behind the various threads of the plot is discovery; self-discovery, discovery of artifacts, and discovery of the truth.

The Island House is a fast-paced novel packed with action, romance, tragedy, and history, and readers who enjoy sagas set in multiple time periods will appreciate all it has to offer.

Nanette Donohue THE HOUSE OF THE WIND Titania Hardie, Washington Square, 2012, $15.00, pb, 480pp, 9781416586265 / Headline Review, 2011, £7.99, pb, 528pp, 9780755346295 Readers of multi-period epics will relish this story. Hardie has skillfully blended the themes and settings of the 21st-century United States and 14th-century and modern Italy into an astounding plot reminiscent of Erin Brockovich and Under the Tuscan Sun. It also includes a masterful treatment of the myth in Keats’ poem The Eve of St. Agnes.

The novel opens in both periods on the eve of St. Agnes’ Day—January 20th. In 2007 San Francisco, a young lawyer, Maddie, is trying to sleep alone in her apartment, speechless upon hearing of the accidental death of her fiancé. For her, “St. Agnes’ moon had set.” In 1347 Tuscany, Mia, a young girl, also silent since the murder of her mother, is preparing for bed, “her breathing quiet, in respect for Agnes.” She opens the door of her villa to a man and a woman “whose face was a mystery to Mia, backlit as she was by the huge moon.”

Maddie’s and Mia’s stories are narrated in alternating chapters. Mia is helped to find her voice by the mysterious woman. She harbors secrets of her own, related to the Casa al Vento. Maddie, grieving for her loss, is unable to concentrate on an important corporate lawsuit involving workers’ health and safety. At the suggestion of her Italian grandmother, Maddie visits a casa in Tuscany.

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There the surroundings and the romantic interest of an architect soothe her mind. She learns of her heritage, upon the discovery of the bones of three women during excavations at the villa.

Readers of fast-paced historical fiction may find Hardie’s meticulously written images of medieval and modern lives interjected with myth, plague, and corporate law slow and overwhelming.

Nevertheless, immersing oneself in this novel to the conclusion will be a rewarding experience, and a discovery of heartaches and healings.

Waheed Rabbani DEAD MEN Richard Pierce, Overlook, 2012, $25.95, hb, 288pp, 9781590208687 / Duckworth, 2012, £8.99, pb, 284pp, 9780715642962 Dual-time novels seem to be in vogue these days. Some feel contrived and out of balance, shifting mechanically between decades or centuries to no purpose. Dead Men is one of those that works – all the more amazing because this is a debut novel for Richard Pierce.

In modern times, we meet Birdie Bowers, a young woman obsessed with her namesake’s claim to fame as one of the five Arctic explorers who died on Captain Scott’s famous 1912 expedition to the South Pole. She determines to retrace the ill-fated journey and finds in young drifter Adam a willing accomplice. This is a modern-day love story, on one hand, Adam falling for Birdie the moment he meets her in a London train station. But it’s also a reimagining of the story, 100 years earlier, of the men who lost their lives in a gamble for fame. The result is touchingly tragic, from the very first scene.

Pierce’s style waxes from spare prose, dialogueheavy, to poetically reflective. In a conversation about art between Birdie and Adam, she says: “If you visualize something—doesn’t matter if you’re writing or painting—you’re much more likely to be able to take your audience with you. If you just make something up that you don’t really believe in, then it doesn’t mean a thing.” In Dead Men, the author most definitely takes the reader with him.

Kathryn Johnson THE ENGLISH MONSTER, Or, The Melancholy Transactions of William Ablass Lloyd Shepherd, Washington Square Press, 2012, $16.00, pb, 432pp, 9781451647570 / Simon & Schuster UK, 2012, £12.99, hb, 416pp, 9780857205353 Before the advent of Saucy Jack, the Ratcliffe Highway murders were the most brutal to occur in London’s East End. Four individuals are viciously bludgeoned and stabbed in a draper’s shop – one a three-month-old baby. A week later, three more meet a similar fate at the King’s Arms Tavern.

Though outside his jurisdiction, Charles Horton of the Thames River Police investigates at the behest of magistrate John Harriott. The Shadwell Police conduct their own investigation; pressured by politicians and the panicked masses, they arrest a seaman who suspiciously suicides while in custody.

Case closed. Or is it?

The major characters are real persons, a great deal of the story is already extant through primary accounts, and this is where the book is strongest – the parts drawn directly from history. When Shepherd’s imagination takes over, the story Multi-period — Timeslip

falters. The tale runs along parallel plotlines, the 1811 murders and the 16th-century New World adventures of William Ablass. The slave trade plays an incongruous role, and there’s a supernatural element that feels abrupt and out of place. The jumping of the alternating chapters is distracting: one minute the novel is a Regency police procedural, the next it’s Francis Drake and privateering on the high seas. The dialogue is occasionally weak: a French buccaneer points a musket at a foe and asks, “Do you feel lucky?”

(Why, yes, Monsieur Eastwood, I do.) Ablass, robbed of motivation by the supernatural element, makes for a detached antagonist; the rest of the characterization is stronger and more engaging, especially Harriott and Horton. Shepherd also has a detailed grasp of historical London, Wapping in particular. This adds atmosphere, but occasionally devolves into superfluous research recitation.

The verdict: this debut novel is uneven, but its strengths ultimately overcome its weaknesses to make it worth the reader’s while.

Bethany Latham THE UNSEEN Katherine Webb, William Morrow, 2011, $14.99, pb, 447pp, 9780062077882 / Orion, 2011, £7.99, pb, 464pp, 9781409117179 As in her earlier, acclaimed novel, The Legacy, author Katherine Webb designs her new story, The Unseen, around a dual time frame. We begin in 1911, with a young woman, Cat, who has been brought from a questionable past into the household of a young couple living in a Berkshire village. The Reverend Albert Canning seems at first competent in carrying out his religious obligations, less so in performing his husbandly duties. (After one year the marriage has not been consummated.) His wife Hester is heartbreakingly naïve and confused about her wedded life. Before long another intrusion arrives to turn the summer swelter up another notch. Canning, who claims to have seen fairies in the fields nearby, invites an “expert” to come stay with them. And it appears that Robin Durrant has more than enough charm and masculine appeal to make up for the reverend’s sexual timidity.

When we aren’t with the Cannings we are in present time, following young journalist, Leah, who has been alerted by her ex-boyfriend to the discovery of the body of a WWI soldier who was carrying letters that might lead to a dark mystery.

Of course we can expect these two storylines to come together, and they do. But the stronger and more interesting of the two is that in 1911, which could stand on its own. The tension is palpable from the very beginning of the novel. Webb is a deft hand at grabbing readers’ attention. The characters may not always be likeable, but they are intriguing and provocative. Although the middle of the novel suffers from a dragging pace, there still is a gripping need to find out what, indeed, will happen to these tortured people – and on that basis, the novel succeeds. A good read, superior writing, but requiring patience at times.

Kathryn Johnson

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MAIDEN FROM THE SEA Nellie P. Strowbridge, Pennywell, 2012, $19.95, pb, 211pp, 9781926881744 Seventeenth-century historical, time-slip, paranormal, castaway narrative – Maiden from the Sea is a novel that defies easy categorization. The main thread of the story is (or appears to be) the tale of Genevieve Laurier, a French maid who falls overboard on her way to Canada. Washed up on an island in the Newfoundland area, she is discovered by two Irishmen on a fishing expedition. Unable to take her aboard their ship, they leave her alone on the island with rudimentary shelter and supplies.

Eventually she encounters a Beothuk warrior, one of the last survivors of his race, which is suffering under European encroachment, but their ensuing relationship makes them pariahs to both Europeans and Beothuk. As Genevieve struggles to survive, she finds her dreams haunted by women from a time she does not recognize, dreams which begin to reach into real life.

Although I understood this was not the author’s intention, I would have been happy had Strowbridge developed Genevieve’s story in a ‘straight’ historical novel; the account of the violent birthpangs of Newfoundland was gripping, the death and rebirth of Canada’s peoples tragic yet hopeful. The framework on which she hung this story was much less compelling for me.

This novel would make more sense to those already acquainted with the settlement of Canada (I had to research places and peoples to better understand the story). However, if you are interested in this subject, in the idea of genetic memory or simply in a vivid, poetic evocation of the landscape you may enjoy this unusual novel.

Susan Cook

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paranormal & | historical fantasy

SHADOW OF NIGHT Deborah Harkness, Viking, 2012, $28.95, hb, 592pp, 9780670023486 / Headline, 2012, £16.99, hb, 592pp, 9780755384730 Vampires, witches, and daemons once again unite and wage war in this second of Deborah Harkness’ All Souls trilogy. Beginning in A Discovery of Witches, Matthew Roydon (de Claremont or Clarimont in the 21st century) and Diana Bishop both seek a magical text, Ashmole 782, which will hopefully reveal the magic of life and death.

Now they time-travel to England in the year 1591. There Diana first meets the characters in the School of Night: “The Great Playwright Christopher Marlowe (Kit). George Chapman, poet and scholar. Mathematician and astronomer, Thomas Harriot.” Sir Walter Raleigh, adventurer and writer, as well as Matthew complete the list of notorious members. All are not as we contemporary readers known them; some are human and some magical creatures. The tale takes off to a riveting style from this point as Matthew’s father, Phillippe, tests Diana’s mettle on whether she can live with the “blood rage” coursing through Matthew’s being.

Their real wedding follows, with Phillippe making Diana his adopted daughter in a grotesque ritual HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Reviews | 53

that is amazing and which will serve to protect her innumerable times in future days. Husband and wife continue their quest for the book in Prague, where Rudolph, King of Bavaria, lusts after Diana; where the book is found and its stunning secrets are partially revealed; where Diana continues to learn more about her skills and spells; and so much more.

Although there are more allusions than depth to the historical figures, the history of vampires and witches is given more focus herein. Words could not possibly briefly summarize the central and minor conflicts weaving their way through the mysteries replete in these mesmerizing pages. A page-turner for sure, and amazingly crafted!

Viviane Crystal THIEFTAKER D.B. Jackson, Tor, 2012, $24.99, hb, 336pp, 9780765327611 America is not a popular setting for historical fiction these days— a shame, especially as our history is rife with drama and interesting characters. D.B. Jackson mines this potential in Thieftaker, featuring a Bostonian magician in 1765.

Ethan Kaille is haunted by his past and makes a living plying his supernatural powers to recover stolen goods for clients. He must work in the shadows, however, both because of a pervasive fear of witchcraft infiltrating the city as well as the antagonism of Boston’s preeminent thieftaker, the lethal Sophia Pryce. But when the daughter of a wealthy family is found dead, murdered by apparent sorcery gone awry, Ethan must put his reputation and life on the line to uncover the identity of a more sinister opponent, one who could be his undoing.

This is a noir-tinged tale with an unusual setting and premise; the idea that magicians roam colonial America and are both cautiously accepted yet shunned is fascinating. Jackson has a sure hand with ambiance and knows how to build suspense.

While some elements feel familiar, there is enough of the unexpected to both startle and delight.

Thieftaker is an engrossing entry in a unique new series.

C.W. Gortner HIDE ME AMONG THE GRAVES Tim Powers, Morrow, 2012, $25.99, hb, 511pp, 9780061231544 In the winter of 1862, Adelaide McKee, a reformed prostitute, knocks on the door of John Crawford, a widowed veterinarian and a man she knew briefly seven years before. Unknown to Crawford that momentary meeting produced a daughter who McKee, until now, presumed was dead. McKee reveals all to Crawford when she learns that their daughter lives, but that her life and soul are in mortal peril from a vampire ghost.

As the parents join forces to try and rescue their daughter, they discover that the diabolical spirit pitted against them is none other than John Polidori, onetime physician to Lord Byron.

Moreover, Polidori is also the late uncle to poet Christina Rossetti and her painter brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Crawford and McKee form an uneasy alliance with the Rossettis—along with a ragtag host of other bizarre allies—determined to rid the world of Polidori’s ghost, who seems to be 54 | Reviews | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

growing ever more powerful, ever more dangerous.

This novel is an ingenious and highly imagined twist on the familiar vampire story, taking all the usual vampire lore and transforming it into something entirely new. Cleverly inserting historical personages – the Rossettis, Polidori, Algernon Swinburne, Charles Trelawny – into a macabre London underground that out-Dickens Dickens, author Powers creates a lushly atmospheric and chilling novel that should be read slowly, savoring every word, and with the lights turned on.

John Kachuba THE BLACK ISLE Sandi Tan, Grand Central, 2012, $24.99, hb, 480pp, 9780446563925 Cassandra, Li, and her father live in Shanghai in the 1920s. Li is favored by her father and Cassandra (or Ling as she is called then) gets in a great deal of trouble because of her ability to see and sometimes commune with ghosts. This isn’t an occasional thing; the “dead beings” are everywhere she goes, usually depressed, macabre appearances that complain, are silent, or carrying out acts of destruction and melee in their restless, unhappy state.

When Cassandra’s father loses his job as a teacher, they are forced to move to the Black Isle, one of many small Malaysian islands where poverty and manipulation by the foreigner owners is the norm rather than the exception. After her father becomes the manager of a British-owned rubber plantation, the tenor of this story becomes more haunted and grotesque than anyone could imagine. Superstition is obviously rife and with good reason; ghosts haunt and murder without apology. Perverse, grotesque scenes galore fill these pages that are hard reading for those with less tough skins. Horrific misunderstandings lead to the destruction of their livelihood, and they move back to the main city.

The years pass with the family subsisting but Cassandra links up with the Japanese after their invasion and then with the Communists years later.

Through it all, Cassandra’s life spins between her sense of control and her real understanding that the supernatural apparitions have long memories and will rule the destiny of the living forever! The Black Isle is hard to summarize and classify with regard to history, but it is sure to be a bestseller for those who love a well-written novel saturated with horror and the macabre.

Viviane Crystal ADVENT James Treadwell, Atria/Emily Bestler, 2012, $26/ C$29.99/£12.99, hb, 464pp, 9781451661644 James Treadwell tells two linked stories in Advent, his first (and stunningly ambitious) novel. Fifteen-year-old Gavin’s family long ago lost patience regarding the lonely boy’s imaginary friend, Miss Grey. Gavin is sent off to spend a week with his equally oddball Auntie Gwen in Cornwall… except he arrives to find her missing.

What Gavin discovers instead is ancient magic, terrifyingly seeping back into the world. The second story is that of sixteenth century Johannes Faust and his fall from knowledge into evil.

Although three-quarters of this book is set in the present day, where the reluctant Gavin must

take up a classic hero’s journey, Advent’s sweeping historic scale and sense of the past infuse it throughout, rising to an unsettling crescendo that feels like the gut thrill of Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain.” Advent’s memorable characters include reassuring Hester Lightfoot, an academic who has her own issues with Miss Grey; motherless, welcoming Marina Urem; and best of all, Corbo, a croaking, menacing man-crow, and prickly Holly, a fantastical tree (what else?).

This book isn’t without flaws. In a couple places I suddenly woke from its spell and realized something hadn’t fit together—or perhaps Treadwell’s exuberantly mythical, magical writing became too obscure. And as much as I love historical fiction, I didn’t like being torpedoed back to the 16th century, preferring to stay with Gavin. I wondered, too, if kids were really up to this level of complexity. Upon reflection, I think yes. It’s adults who may struggle.

Kristen Hannum MONSTER Dave Zeltserman, Overlook, 2012, $23.95, hb, 224 pp, 9781590208601 When I watch Frankenstein, the misery and longing in Boris Karloff ’s eyes make me ache for the mute monster. Though it’s difficult to tell just how much the creature understands, he knows that a chasm separates him from the rest of humanity.

And while Dr. Frankenstein claimed to be on a quest for knowledge, what really filled his mind beyond overwhelming pride and ambition?

Reading Mary Shelley’s masterpiece answers my questions. The doctor’s creature is both intelligent and articulate. Frankenstein, consumed by guilt and revulsion, abandons his creation, and they flee across Europe and into the Arctic as the monster seeks revenge.

Dave Zeltserman’s Monster is an ingenious interpretation of Shelley’s tale. Friedrich Hoffmann is framed and executed for the brutal murder of his fiancée, only to waken in captivity. His brain has been placed into a hulking patchwork of corpsebits, but Hoffmann’s mind and memories remain intact. He hides his intellect until he manages to escape, but a spell placed upon Hoffmann by his creator compels him to return to Dr. Frankenstein’s sinister castle.

There is nothing benign about Zeltserman’s Dr. Frankenstein – in fact, he sometimes collaborates with the Marquis de Sade. It won’t take readers long to figure out who is human and which are the monsters in Zeltserman’s work.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, though when I recommend it, I will caution squeamish readers.

Dave Zeltserman’s highly readable style harmonizes beautifully with its 19th century European setting.

Monster is a must-read for anyone who enjoys horror stories, and shivers when Boris Karloff ’s pale fingers twitch back into life.

Jo Ann Butler

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children & young adult

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RACING THE MOON Timeslip — Children & YA

Alan Armstrong, Random House, 2012, $16.99/ C$18.99, hb, 224pp, 9780375858895 It’s 1947 and 11-year-old Alexis Hart wants to be the next Amelia Earhart. She and her 17-yearold brother Chuck have built a tree house that doubles as a Moon Station cockpit, and they dream about flying to the moon. Chuck, who is interested in radio and radar but was kicked out of school, is a delinquent, encouraging Alexis to participate in his ill-advised schemes. As the story begins, Alexis and Chuck meet their new neighbor, a woman named Captain Ebbs, who was a spy during World War II and now works developing food for astronauts. Ebbs takes Alexis and Chuck under her wing, amazing them with her stories, teaching them to sail, and introducing them to the eccentric Werner Von Braun.

The story is thick with fascinating characters, but the plot moves slowly without a central conflict. For me, Chuck’s delinquency is a problem. His crimes are serious, including stealing a plane and crashing it, and stealing a boat in order to sneak into a government-restricted area. Contrary to what you’d expect, Chuck is consistently rewarded for his crimes. I waited for the “bad behavior is punished and good behavior is rewarded” moral to arrive, and it never did.

In the acknowledgements Armstrong states that Chuck, as well as Ebbs and Alexis, are based on true people, which perhaps explains why things go well for Chuck in spite of his criminality. I guess I would have preferred this history to be a bit more fictionalized, aimed as it is at the child reader.

Elizabeth Felt WONDER SHOW Hannah Barnaby, Houghton Mifflin, 2012, $16.99, hb, 274pp, 9780547599809 As if things aren’t bad enough for a family of gypsies in the midst of the Dust Bowl, Portia Remini’s father takes off in search of work, leaving her behind with straight-laced Aunt Sophia. And they only get worse when Aunt Sophia, in exasperation, drops the headstrong, imaginative girl off at the McGreavey Home for Wayward Girls, presided over by the creepy Mister. Impatient, missing her father, and more than a little unnerved by some of the mysterious happenings at the McGreavey Home, Portia liberates both herself and Mister’s red bicycle one night and rides off to follow the circus. She gets a job on the ballyhoo, weaving stories for the human curiosities on display in Mosco’s Traveling Wonder Show, all while keeping an eye out for the vengeful Mister, looking to retrieve both his bicycle and his errant charge. As she gets to know each, from The Bearded Lady to The Armless Girl, she begins to see that they’re not freaks but, in some ways, more normal than she is.

Darker than the folksy blurb gives it credit for, Wonder Show is a fast-paced read populated by a colorful cast of characters. Each of Mosco’s human curiosities gets a chapter to tell his or her own story. Through their eyes, you see how plucky Portia integrates herself into the show until she’s as much a member of the Wonder Show’s strange “family” as the freaks themselves. Suitable for 12+.

Jessica Brockmole SPY FOR THE QUEEN OF SCOTS Children & YA

Theresa Breslin, Doubleday, 2012, £12.99, hb, 416pp, 9780385617055 Mary, Queen of Scots has sometimes been criticised as vain and foolish, but this fascinating account of her reign does much to redress that. It is told by Jenny, the Queen’s closest friend, who is privy to her misgivings and her struggles, and who sees at first hand the attempts made by John Knox and the various factions at Court to influence and later to destroy the young Queen.

Jenny is Mary’s constant companion, working quietly in the background to detect the spies, poisoners and traitors who threaten the Queen.

Her affectionate, fiercely loyal character gives the book a depth and resonance no mere historical account could achieve, and her own doubts about the man she herself has fallen in love with effectively mirror the uncertainty of the Queen’s situation.

Breslin has previously won the Carnegie medal for children’s fiction, and her Remembrance is a modern classic. This book in its turn will not disappoint. With a few deft details she captures the atmosphere of a court in turmoil, where luxury and extravagance are the backdrop for plotting and intrigue, and while Jenny is ready to do anything she can to protect the Queen, she is always presented as a girl of her time and her station.

It is a thrilling tale, full of midnight escapes and daring rescues, and the fact that readers already knows its sad outcome will not prevent them from thoroughly enjoying it.

Linda Lawlor THE WICKED AND THE JUST J. Anderson Coats, Harcourt, 2012, $16.99, hb, 344pp, 9780547688374 Cecily’s father is the former lord of Edgeley Hall, but he lost his home when his brother returned from the Crusades. He accepts a position as a burgess of Caernarvon in Wales. Cecily is none too pleased about the distant move, which is both unexpected and irritating. Cecily takes her rage out on Gwenhwyfar, the servant in her new home.

Though Gwenhwyfar and Cecily are the same age, their cultural backgrounds and different stations in life are a barrier that is infrequently crossed.

Part of the reason that Cecily’s father has been sent to Wales is to help squelch rebellion among the natives. His specific task is collecting taxes from the millers of Caernarvon—taxes that the Welsh feel are unfair. When famine strikes, both the English and the Welsh populations go hungry, and the Welsh rebel. The burgesses of Caernarvon cannot keep the rebellion down, and Cecily finds herself dependent on the servant she treated so cruelly.

There’s more to this novel than can easily be encapsulated in a brief plot summary. At times, the characters and scenarios feel so contemporary that I could easily imagine modern teens in the same situation. I appreciated the realism of the characters who were not consistently good, bad, or likeable.

In keeping with the popular dystopian themes in contemporary literature, it’s young people who are driving the rebellion, and young people who are seeking justice where justice is due. The main difference: this is 13th-century reality rather than a near-future dystopia.

Nanette Donohue

THE HISTORY KEEPERS: The Storm Begins Damian Dibben, Doubleday, 2011, £12.99, hb, 456pp, 9780857530530 The first volume of this fantasy series introduces Jake Djones, providing a fresh angle on time-slip novels. When his parents go missing for a few days, Jake is first kidnapped and then told that they have ventured back in time and have not returned. The truth, although difficult to accept, is that they are members of ‘The Time Keepers’ - an organisation formed to protect ‘Time’ against manipulation by evil villains.

The headquarters of this organisation is in Mont St Michael in 1820, at Point Zero. The method of travel is triggered by drinking ‘Atonium’, a precious and rare substance. It only works on those who have the power of the ‘valour’, which can be determined by a simple eye examination.

This process is credibly explained as Jake’s first journey begins to find his parents and protect The Renaissance.

This is an accessible but enjoyably challenging read. The challenge comes from the deduction used to solve the clues, discovering facts about history and the detail of costume and place. The pace is swift as the action and adventure drive the story, including a fast-paced chase sequence, making it an interesting and exciting novel. Jake is a teenager who is discovering the world, past and present, with the awkwardness of his age, as he comes to terms with all the emotions such a situation would present. He learns and adapts quickly.

The story ends at a satisfying point, where the mission has been a success, but with the thread of a new one left to follow – a new adventure beckons, which I will look forward to reading.

Val Loh WENTWORTH HALL Abby Grahame, Simon & Schuster, 2012, $16.99/ C$19.99, hb, 276pp, 9781442451964 It’s England, 1912, and the Darlington family is on the verge of collapse. With rumors of falling finances and scandal lurking in the background, the only solution is to get free-spirited eldest daughter Maggie safely married off to a rich man. But Maggie is keeping a secret that could devastate the whole family—and so is Therese, the new French nursemaid.

When the rich Fitzhugh twins arrive for a stay at the family’s ancestral home, all eyes are on them as a possible solution to the Darlingtons’ problems.

However, events soon spiral out of control when a vicious satire closely mirroring the family’s drama appears in the newspapers.

Despite my initial enthusiasm for this book upon hearing its comparison to Downton Abbey, I am sad to say that it did not live up to my expectations for two reasons: First, the historical setting was shallow and seemed poorly researched; and second, there were so many poorly transitioned plot twists and sub-dramas that I felt as if Grahame were simply going through a checklist. Perhaps more for those in search of light reading than true fans of historical fiction.

Madgalen Dobson CHANGELING: Order of Darkness, Book 1 Philippa Gregory, Simon and Schuster Children’s, 2012, £12.99, hb, 272pp, 9780857077301 / HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Reviews | 55

Simon Pulse, 2012, $18.99, hb, 9780857077301 First in a series for young adults, Changeling follows Luca, an Italian orphan adopted by the Church, and his investigations into supernatural happenings.

At first the book seems a huis clos, with Luca and his boisterous servant Frieze uncomfortably settled in a nunnery afflicted – or blessed? – by visionaries and nuns bearing stigmata. This plot, however, resolves early, and a picaresque tale unfolds ending with a werewolf mystery. The main point, one feels at the end, has been to introduce us to four attractive lead characters: Luca and Frieze, with their female counterparts Isolde, an aristocratic beauty, and Ishraq, Isolde’s muslim servant. Future books will concern other adventures with magic and witchcraft, and no doubt romance and strife between the protagonists.

The parts that worked best for me were Gregory’s effortless introduction of historical nuggets – like the esoteric understanding of the new number zero – and the development of the lead characters. Frieze edges it for me as favourite at present, but Ishraq may become equally engaging as we get to know her more. Luca for now is too good to be true, but has potential. Isolde also has potential, but I found it took me a while to imagine her differently from her representation in Larry Rostant’s teen-targeted cover art (too... brash?).

The thing I found uncomfortable in Changeling was the choice, essentially, of inquisitors as heroes.

This book is set in 1453, so before the infamous Spanish Inquisition – but Joan of Arc had already been burnt at the stake in 1431, and the first papal bull authorizing torture by inquisitors was as early as 1252. So despite the fact that Luca is humane to a fault in his attitudes, I was left with this uneasiness. At what point in future books is he going to meet with a bad inquisitor, and how will that work in a teen novel?

Richard Lee MISTER DEATH’S BLUE EYED GIRLS Mary Downing Hahn, Clarion, 2012, $16.99, hb, 329pp, 9780547760629 Based on an unsolved double murder in 1950s Maryland, where the author still lives, this chilling tale for young adult readers is both a coming-ofage story and a psychological study of accused and accusers, when no one really knows whom to blame for a brutal crime. Fictional characters replace the real players in the drama, and the story weaves around actual events without duplicating reality too closely, so that it misses being classified as “true crime.” But the pacing and the rhythm of the prose feel remarkably close to the spilling out of truth, making it easy for the reader to believe everything on the page is simply being remembered by the characters.

Central figures include Nora and Ellie, average high school girls bent on partying with friends.

What no one foresees is the shooting death of two other girls in the woods. The event shatters Nora’s life and results in nearly everyone in the town suspecting a former boyfriend of one of the dead girls, Buddy. This is Nora’s first experience with death… but not Buddy’s. His squirrely grandmother used to drag him to funerals as entertainment, even when the deceased was a stranger. But does seeing so much death make a 56 | Reviews | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

person itch to kill?

Mary Downing Hahn has created an eerie and troubling glimpse into violence and loss. Moreover, she captures with perfect clarity the innocence of living in a time before technology became so much a part of our lives, and her evocative details of the era ring absolutely true.

Kathryn Johnson DUTY CALLS (Battle of Britain 2) James Holland, Puffin, 2012, £6.99, pb, 337pp, 9780141332208 This is the second installment of Holland’s intensely detailed and thoroughly researched series of World War II combat stories. We have left Johnny Hawke behind as he is rescued from Dunkirk, and instead take off with young pilot Archie Jackson, one of the ‘few’. Jackson did appear in a cameo in the first book, and those scenes are actually revisited in the second book – a strange decision, I thought. Certainly my 8-yearold remembered whole phrases of the original descriptions, and after a short while we got the earlier book out and read them in parallel. It was fun seeing where Archie or ‘he’ had been changed for ‘Jackson’, and the other small additions or changes – but in truth it really killed the tension of the opening. The plot also followed what we already knew from the first book, and then there were flashbacks to flight training, and a cut to fighter command for strategy, and a night out with girls – and the book was about a hundred pages in before we were really getting any excitement.

This is a great shame, because these are well written books, and either would work as a stand alone. But for readers of a series? Bad mistake.

Again I can report that my warfare-obsessed son loved it. His attention did wander because of the opening, but there were new things to enjoy, like the excellent explanatory artwork at the front of the book. Factoids matter to this age group, and I’d advise similar information for infantry weaponry or tanks in future books. The heroes are likeable, just real enough, and mostly get to win: again, perfect for the age-group.

So: this is good, and I hope the series continues, but I still don’t think James Holland has hit the sweet centre of the bat yet.

Richard Lee FALLEN IN LOVE Lauren Kate, Doubleday, 2012, £9.99, hb, 201pp, 9780857531643 This collection of four stories explores love’s many manifestations: unexpected, unrequited, forbidden and eternal. Each tale possesses its own twist of fate, set against a medieval backdrop of a Valentine’s Day Faire; the explanation of its origins is explained within the book.

Readers who are not familiar with the ‘Fallen’ series, can still follow and enjoy these stories in the context of the characters who are mainly fallen angels, whilst accepting that there is a continuing race to find two central characters within the series of Luce and Daniel. At the core is a battle to unravel a curse and pinpoint the place where the ‘Fall’ began.

The ability to travel back in time is facilitated by using ‘Announcers’. For those who are reading this as an ‘in-between book’ before the final edition of

the series, Rapture, will discover some interesting facts about the characters they have followed so far within the series, such as the origin of Arriane’s scar.

The first story gives a perspective of medieval life as seen through contemporary eyes of Miles and Shelby, with some interesting detail of costume, superstition and setting. The description of Roland dressed as a knight gives the reader an understanding of what this felt like as he rides and then climbs to see Rosaline. The historical setting is the backdrop to these skilfully woven tales, the emphasis being on the detail of their emotional experiences of love.

The characters are well drawn and their journeys are intricately woven. The writing is captivating and flows easily from one story to the next, even though the reader is aware that they are to be continued and finalised elsewhere.

Val Loh GRAVE MERCY Robin LaFevers, Houghton Mifflin, 2012, $16.99, hb, 549pp, 9780547628349 When seventeen-year-old Ismae flees a brutal marriage, she is taken in by the nuns at the abbey of St. Mortain. Mortain is more than a saint; he’s the old Breton god of death. And the nuns are more than just handmaidens; with their meticulous training in combat and weaponry, they help along those who Mortain has called home.

Highly skilled and armed to the teeth, Ismae is sent to the court of Brittany, where sinister plotting is afoot to keep the young duchess Anne from being crowned. Ismae is charged with keeping an eye on Anne and eliminating the undesirables around her, marked for death with Mortain’s shadowy marque. Masquerading as the mistress of the enigmatic Gavriel Duval, no one but he knows her true identity as a handmaiden of Death. Ismae is trained in assassination, but not in how to navigate through the intrigues of court or the struggles in her own heart. She is taught never to question who Mortain lays his marque on, but her faith is shaken when he targets those she has grown close to.

This novel was packed with not only thrills and glorious fights, but also romance, mystery, and a good amount of the history of 15th century Brittany. Ismae is a compelling character, being both strong and conflicted, and she grew believably with each fresh challenge and wrinkle to her plans.

I was pleased to learn that Grave Mercy is the first in His Fair Assassin trilogy and already look forward to seeing which characters we get to follow in the future novels.

Jessica Brockmole THE P. K. PINKERTON MYSTERIES: The Case of the Good-Looking Corpse Caroline Lawrence, Orion, 2012, £9.99, hb, 313pp, 9781444001709 Virginia City, U.S.A., 1862. Twelve-year-old P.K. Pinkerton, Virginia City’s youngest private eye, has just taken on his first case. He must find the killer of good-time girl, Sally Sampson, before the murderer kills the only witness to the crime, Sally’s terrified, ten-year-old black maid, Martha.

And Martha has gone to ground.

P.K. is an unusual and immensely engaging hero. He was brought up by loving but strict fosterChildren & YA

parents: he doesn’t drink or gamble and he goes to chapel on Sundays. He’s also a loner, hates being touched and he can’t easily recognize emotion. On the other hand, he has a passion for collecting (he has over a hundred examples of different sorts of tobacco), which could prove useful, and he’s brave, truthful, tenacious and ingenious.

There is something about P.K.’s straightforwardness and turns of speech which reminds me of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, though I rather doubt that Huck would share P.K’s views on the importance of going to chapel on Sunday. It’s a nice touch that Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) appears in the book as a hack journalist.

The first person narrative allows Caroline Lawrence to get right inside P.K’s head and show us how his mind works. And very well she does it, too. She demonstrates P. K’s autistic traits without ever making the reader feel that she is labelling him as a character with learning difficulties. I love the way she captures the feel of a frontier mining town: the near lawlessness, the gun battles, the harshness of living life on the edge. It’s a terrific read and I galloped through it at break-neck speed. I then reread it to relish it.

The P.K. Pinkerton Mysteries are, plainly, exactly the right vehicle for Caroline Lawrence’s talents. Children of 10+ will love it.

Elizabeth Hawksley CAVE OF SECRETS Morgan Llywelyn, O’Brien Press, 2012, €7.99/£6.99, pb, 259pp, 9781847172075 Ireland, 1639. Twelve-year-old Tom Flynn lives in the Big House near Roaringwater Bay in County Cork. On the surface, his is a life of wealth and privilege but he is not happy; his father is a loud-mouthed bully, only concerned with making money.

Fleeing his father’s anger, Tom tumbles down a cliff and discovers a cave. Here he meets Donal O’Driscoll and they become friends. Donal’s family is welcoming. Theirs is a simple life, but there is mutual respect and kindness with everyone pulling their weight. Tom learns to make himself useful and feels valued in a way he doesn’t at home.

Donal’s father leads a band of smugglers evading English customs duties by buying goods from merchant ships before they reach port. When he invites Tom to join them, Tom is thrilled. Not only is this a real adventure but it will pay his father back for thinking him worthless.

Back home, Tom’s father has invited the Earl of Cork to stay, hoping to impress him with his lavish lifestyle. The English government is suspicious of the Catholic gentry and wants to replace them with Protestant landowners. The Catholic Mr Flynn needs influential friends in Dublin. But is the Earl really on his side, or is he after the Flynn estate for one of his Protestant friends?

I read this book very happily; I enjoyed the adventure and, along with Tom, I learnt a lot about rural life. The author is also good at illuminating the grubby politics of the time. My one caveat is that I found it a touch too stereotyped with the poor but noble O’Driscolls, and the upper-middle class Mr Flynn being boorish in his treatment of Tom and fawning on the Earl of Cork.

However, I’m sure children of ten plus will just Children & YA

enjoy the exciting story.

Elizabeth Hawksley

THE WILD QUEEN Carolyn Meyer, Harcourt, 2012, $16.99, hb, 432pp, 9780152061883 The Wild Queen is Carolyn Meyer’s latest entry in her Young Royals series, and it’s truly a uniquely fictionalized account of the life of Mary Queen of Scots. Opening on the five-year-old queen’s move to the French court to learn to become consort to the dauphin, we follow Mary through her formative years as she loses most of her Scots heritage amid the intrigues of her French relatives. As told from Mary’s point of view, it is easy to see how she was used as a pawn from her earliest days; naïve and yet headstrong, Mary grew up trusting the wrong people and untaught how to lead. It was a recipe for disaster, one that led the queen to her ultimate fate.

Meyer does a credible job getting inside Mary’s head, trying to explain her sometimes inexplicable actions and showing her determination to do as she pleased without good judgment. The novel is long on the time spent in France, flies through Mary’s years as the recognized Queen of Scots and hardly touches the time after she is deposed. Still, it is very engaging and shows a human side to the tragic Young Royal.

Tamela McCann THE SPRINGSWEET Saundra Mitchell, Harcourt, 2012, $16.99, hb, 275pp, 9780547608426 “That I went a little mad, I could not deny.”

Saundra Mitchell’s opening line of The Springsweet pulls in readers, even those who did not read her first novel, The Vespertine, featuring protagonist Zora Stewart. I know. I am one of those readers. I had no idea that I was venturing into a companion novel. The Springsweet gently introduces readers to Zora and her backstory. We learn that this Baltimore teen’s year long mourning period after the death of her fiancée ranks up there with Queen Victoria’s. And although we don’t know the circumstances of his death, we know that her family is pushing her to move forward. After a scandalous incident, she is sent off to stay with her aunt in the Oklahoma Territory until she “comes to her senses.”

Saundra Mitchell’s Zora is thrown into a much different world in the prairie. She must not only face the hardships of everyday life, but also the encouragement of her aunt to marry the “dandy” who followed her from Baltimore. Ultimately, Zora finds a new life and a new power within her.

The author’s sparse but lovely prose matches her prairie setting. Readers who enjoyed Mitchell’s first title will be pleased to enter into this world again, and new readers will put The Vespertine on their to-read list as soon as they have put The Springsweet down.

Nancy Castaldo CATLA AND THE VIKINGS Mary Elizabeth Nelson, Orca, 2012, $9.95, pb, 192pp, 9781459800571 Thirteen-year-old Catla lives in a small AngloSaxon village on the coast of England, where her future is laid out for her: her father expects her to marry Olav, a middle-aged merchant, and

settle down as an obedient wife. But one day in the autumn of 1066, when Catla wanders into the headlands above her village to gather herbs, everything changes. From afar she watches as Viking invaders burn her village and take her family and everyone she cares for captive. Catla must set out alone over the moors to get help from Aigber, the closest village. With the help of Sven, another young refugee who escaped the raid, Catla must convince the neighboring villagers to help her face the Viking invaders and save her family.

This book is geared toward younger readers, with brief chapters and a predictable storyline.

However, this simplicity does nothing to detract from the lovely prose and the likable characters.

Catla is a shy yet courageous heroine, who finds her strength in gentleness and negotiation.

While the narrative is kept a bit unrealistically G-rated – no one is murdered or raped during the raids, and everyone opts for mercy – the Vikings Catla encounters are refreshingly realistic, portrayed not as stereotypical raging Norsemen but as real people, for whom Catla comes to feel compassion as well as fear. Catla and Sven develop a convincing rapport as well; however, while their budding relationship unsurprisingly comes to take precedence over Catla’s arranged betrothal, the author avoids a sappy storybook conclusion and leaves the possibilities open. This book is a pleasant dose of reality for young readers who want to learn more about the Viking era.

Ann Pedtke THIS DARK ENDEAVOR Kenneth Oppel, Simon and Schuster, 2012, $17.99, hb, 298pp, 9781442403154 A deft and witty gothic tale, This Dark Endeavor recreates the youth and first experiments of Victor Frankenstein, the famous revivalist of Mary Shelley’s classic novel. Victor, here supplied with a twin brother, Konrad, is passionately attracted to the occult sciences, and exploring his family’s castle stumbles on a room full of very dangerous books.

When Konrad falls ill, Victor undertakes to save him by brewing up an elixir of life from an ancient recipe. His cousin Elizabeth and best friend Henry help him, but Victor and Konrad are both in love with Elizabeth, which lends a fine overcast of conflicted emotions to the story.

The writing is delightful, overwrought and eloquent, as fits the theme. Finding the ingredients for the elixir drives the plot, and permits some stunning action sequences—a night climb up a tree while attacked by vultures; subterranean cave swimming; a spectacular escape from an ogre. Frankenstein himself is beautifully drawn, brilliant and devious, consumed with his passions. Oppel scatters the path with inside jokes—the ogre is named Polidori, his home is in Wollstonekraftallee—and the details of alchemy and forbidden science are cleverly presented.

Labeled as YA, this is a lovely read for anybody.

Cecelia Holland TAKE WHAT YOU CAN CARRY Kevin C. Pyle, Henry Holt, 2012, $12.99/ C$14.99, hb, 224pp, 9780805082869 This graphic novel opens with a panel showing mountaintops. As each scene pans away, more of the landscape is shown, and in the distance the HNR Issue 61, August 2012 | Reviews | 57

reader can glimpse a structure. On the following pages we learn that it is a relocation camp for Japanese Americans. Ken is a young man who, like so many others, is forced from his home during World War II. As the story progresses, we see Ken struggle with his new life and learn to adapt.

Kyle’s parallel story takes place in Chicago in 1978. Kyle is a troubled teen who trespasses on other people’s property, breaks things that aren’t his, and steals without thinking about the consequences. When Kyle finally gets caught stealing and faces jail time, the store’s owner agrees not to press charges if Kyle works for him. Kyle agrees, and in doing so learns a valuable lesson.

The two stories are woven together predictably, as each boy comes of age through these trying experiences, but the narratives are contrasted in interesting ways. Ken’s story is told in muted tones of black and brown, while Kyle’s is told in blue and white. The different palettes and different historical backdrops offer a unique contrast, while emphasizing the fact that some emotions and experiences never change over the decades.

A historical notes section is included in the back, which fills in some important information on Japanese-American traditions that is difficult to fully convey in this medium without dialogue. This graphic novel is a nice addition to any school library that is looking for something besides superheroes and manga. However, this book may be used less as a pleasure read and more as a teaching tool to explain what happened to Japanese Americans during World War II. Gina Iorio LADIES IN WAITING Laura L. Sullivan, Harcourt, 2012, $16.99, hb, 328pp, 9780547581293 Three young women from different walks of life find themselves in the high position of serving the wife of the Merry Monarch, King Charles II. Eliza, daughter of a rich merchant, dreams of becoming a playwright while her father schemes to marry her to a titled gentleman. Zabby is a budding scientist, sent by her father from the family plantation in Barbados to further her education. Beth, the product of a ruined nobleman, tries to escape her maniacal mother’s clutches in search of true love.

Bound together by their awkwardness and the vicious reaction of the women of the court, they become the Queen’s most trusted ladies. Though they eventually drift apart, they pull together when the Queen’s life is threatened.

Unfortunately, the ending is abrupt with scanty information concerning the fate of the trio. This, along with mature subject matter, may displease readers. Though the three teenage protagonists are innocent when compared to court standards, there is much innuendo that is questionable for such young ladies to possess without the accompanying corruption. However, the style of the writing and layout of the book is geared toward a younger audience. Also, since there is no Author’s Note, the curious reader must resort to a bit of 58 | Reviews | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

research to find which characters truly existed and which events actually occurred. While this is a panoramic view featuring several different stations of life during the Restoration, the implausibility regarding characterization and events takes the credibility away from this story.

Arleigh Johnson SEEKING EDEN Ann Turnbull, Walker, 2012, £6.99, pb, 371pp, 9781406325423 This final book in Ann Turnbull’s Quaker trilogy sees Will and Susanna leave behind the troubles and abuse of the Old World and travel with their grown-up children to William Penn’s new colony in Philadelphia. The story is from the point of view of Jos, their 16-year-old boy, as he struggles to find work, love and self respect in his new environment.

I found the storytelling subtle and engaging. Jos is by no means a goody-goody Quaker, but at root he has strong faith and principles. The form of his faith encourages him to question accepted wisdom, even the newly accepted wisdom of radicals – and this puts him at odds with both his family and the new community he has joined. The New World depicted is fresh, international and challenging in unexpected ways. Above all it proves not to be entirely unconnected with other worlds – it is no Eden. Trade takes Jos to the sugar plantations, and he is drawn unwillingly but inexorably into the coils of the slave trade. We care deeply about this: not just for the abused Africans, but for the morally compromised Christians.

I haven’t read the earlier books yet, but I certainly will. Ann Turnbull writes deftly about this period without ducking the issues or over-dramatising the very real dilemmas. There is plenty of conflict, but also strong supportive and loving characters, and in the end these characters feel the most real. I like that!

Richard Lee VICTORIO’S WAR John Wilson, Orca, 2012, $12.95, pb, 157pp, 9781554698820 In this third installment in the Desert Legends trilogy, young Jim Doolen is a scout for the 10th U.S. Cavalry as they track down Apache leader Victorio, who has fled with his people from the reservation to their home in the Black Range. The Apaches are fierce fighters, and the Buffalo soldiers take heavy casualties as they are drawn deeper and deeper into the canyons of the Black Range. Jim is hesitant in battle, uncomfortable with his weapons, and is captured by his old enemy Ghost Moon. His life is only spared when his friend Wellington, also riding with Victorio’s Apaches, adopts Jim as his son. Now, as the war reaches a turning point, he must fight against the Buffalo soldiers he’d grown close to. With the Apaches desperate and on the run, Jim must fight for survival, while staying true to his heart.

It was an excellent choice to put a fictional

character on both sides of this brutal conflict. Jim, level-headed and peaceable, is able to see the good in both the Buffalo soldiers and in Victorio’s band of Apaches. Through his point of view, we get a relatively unbiased account of the historical events, while staying close enough to the action to keep it vivid. A strong, well-researched ending to this trilogy.

Jessica Brockmole PUPPET Eve Wiseman, Tundra, 2012, $9.95, hb, 243pp, 9781770492967 The Hungarian village of Tisza-Eszlar in 1882 is the setting for this harrowing story of antiSemitism and blood libel – the ancient lie that Jews kill Christian children for ritual purposes. With a brute for a father and a mother dying of cancer, young Julie does the best she can caring for herself and her beloved little sister. She has little contact with the Jewish community, but has a tentative friendship with young Morris, the rabbi’s son, and is grateful for the medicine the Jewish doctor gives her to ease her mother’s pain.

When Julie’s friend Esther disappears after being sent on an errand by her cruel mistress, the town’s suspicions center around the Jews among them. Julie’s mother dies and her father sends her sister away to live with a cruel aunt while Julie goes to work. Meanwhile the town’s suspicions grow. Morris is manipulated and coerced like the puppet of the title to give false testimony against his father and the men accused of Esther’s death. But when Esther’s body is found in the river, doubt is cast. It is up to Julie to convince judge and jury that they have no case.

Wiseman used court transcripts of the time to tell her dramatic and eloquent tale. While her plot illuminates a shameful history, her besieged narrator provides notes of grace amid the hardship and cruelty of the adult world around her. Young adult literature at its best. Ages 11 and up. Highly recommended.

Eileen Charbonneau

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PRAGUE WINTER: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948 Madeleine Korbel Albright, Harper, 2012, $29.99/ C$31.99/£19.99, hb, 480pp, 9780062030313 Madeleine Albright has written a book that mixes family memoir with Czech/European history, heavy on the history. Albright’s father, Josef Korbel, was a Czechoslovakian diplomat and part of the exiled government in London during WWII – giving Albright personal access to the era’s highest levels of government even beyond what she would have as U.S. Secretary of State. Albright mined her memories and her parents’ writings; she interviewed people who were there; she obtained access to previously unavailable documents; and Children & YA — Nonfiction

then she put it all together in a dense yet readable history/memoir of Czechoslovakia and its defenders from 1937 to 1948.

Chapters are given to Czech history, to brutal Nazi politics, and to diplomatic machinations; but for me the best were chapters devoted to Terezín, a prison camp where most of her Jewish family was sent (and none returned), and also those chapters on her own family’s life in England – and then their return to Czechoslovakia after the war and their eventual flight to the United States. Albright also discusses unanswerable Sophie’s Choice-type moral dilemmas that faced the Nazis’ victims.

Parts of Prague Winter are a slog. Their reward is that those sections enrich the enormously moving and thought-provoking personal sections.

Kristen Hannum DOWN WITH THE OLD CANOE: A Cultural History of the Titanic Disaster Stephen Biel, Norton, 2012, $15.95, pb, 312pp, 9780393340808 Lest you think, “Just another Titanic retelling,” Down with the Old Canoe is about us. Stephen Biel combs contemporary accounts to show how this “end-of-an-era” disaster has been re-interpreted over the years. In 1912 Titanic symbolized technological hubris. Anglo-Saxon men were the chivalrous breed: standing aside for their wives and fighting off multi-cultural brutes from steerage who would sink the lifeboats. Suffragettes were warned not to be uppity, because if they were equal to men, they might not have survived.

Titanic resurged in the 1950s during the Cold War, when new technology threatened the world.

Once more chivalry reigned, but Walter Lord’s more even-handed account revealed a spectrum of behavior across the classes.

Old Canoe was first published in 1996, a year before Cameron’s movie. Biel updated his book to demonstrate that Titanic symbolism has reversed course. First-class men are stuffed shirts, likely to bribe their way onto the lifeboats. Steerage is where you go to have fun with ‘real folk.’ And despite 1500 deaths, Cameron strives for a happy ending.

Will Titanic rise again, with a fresh cultural interpretation? Who knows. All I know is that Old Canoe is a fascinating analysis, and highly recommended.

Jo Ann Butler MONTE CASSINO: Ten Armies in Hell Peter Caddick-Adams, Preface, 2012, £25.00, hb, 364pp, 9781848093584 The battle for Monte Cassino in 1944 is perhaps best known for the bombing of its famous Abbey by Allied forces, but the 129 days that made up these four battles was much more than that incident. It was a campaign where mules became more important than tanks: they could trudge through mud that would stop a jeep; they could climb up mountains with ammunition and trek down with dead soldiers. Stuck in mountainous trenches, soldiers were like zombies with lack of sleep and continual fighting.

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Caddick-Adams compares the battles to the trench warfare of the First World War, detailing how every senior officer in the battle, German or Allied, had fought in it. Those experiences almost obsessed the commanders; they made constant reference in their letters to the battles of Verdun and Passchendaele.

While the four battles are covered in exhaustive detail, the political conflicts between Allied commanders are not neglected in what was a multinational affair with 14 different nationalities on the Allied side. This book is a real treat for military history enthusiasts.

Gordon O’Sullivan EFFIE: The Passionate Lives of Effie Gray, John Ruskin, and John Everett Millais Suzanne Fagence Cooper, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2012, $15.99, pb, 267pp, 9781250016256 / Duckworth, 2012, £10.99, pb, 269pp, 9780715641446 Published in hardcover two years ago, and now in paperback, this nonfiction treatment shines new light on a famous romantic triangle. Two artists with influence in the controversial Pre-Raphaelite movement of the 19th century, John Ruskin and John Everett Millais, become involved with beautiful young Effie Gray. Ruskin, a renowned art critic, marries the much younger Effie but soon— for reasons no one has been able to fully explain— turns against her. He refuses to consummate their marriage and declares her unsuitable for his passion and mentally unstable. Effie, abused and at her husband’s mercy (since divorce was nearly impossible at the time), plots to escape the marriage—but at great risk. Her second marriage to Millais, although far more successful, never rises above the horrible scandal caused by her flight.

No one is better equipped to tackle the confusing details and untangle the gossip and legends surrounding these famous icons of the art world. Suzanne Fagence Cooper, having served for twelve years as a curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum, is an expert on Victorian art and its players. Using exclusive access to Effie’s previously unseen correspondence and diaries, Cooper gives readers a fresh view of this intricate relationship.

Kathryn Johnson INTO DUST AND FIRE Rachel S. Cox, NAL Caliber, 2012, $26.95/ C$28.50, hb, 336pp, hb, 9780451234759 In the spring of 1941, before Pearl Harbor, before American committed itself to involvement in World War II, a cadre of Ivy League-educated young men joined the fight without the backing of their country, by enlisting with the British Army in Canada. The personal stories of five of these men are at the core of Cox’s work. Letters, diaries, interviews, and photographs recreate the heady days of volunteering, bidding loved ones farewell, training in England, as well as the claustrophobic, months-long journey around the Horn of Africa, to the dusty, chaotic scrambling and fighting in North Africa. The battle of El Alamein is the first, and for some, only test for these young soldiers,

and Cox’s documentation provides their unique perspective, which is missing from many accounts of the time. Culture shock, boredom, injury, recovery, and death are unflinchingly addressed, as the young men’s paths repeatedly cross. The story doesn’t end with the fighting; Cox, a niece of one of the soldiers, follows the paths of the families— both those who welcomed home survivors, and those who were left with only a telegram and a few personal effects. This is at times a painful, but completely riveting, read.

Helene Williams VOYAGERS OF THE TITANIC: Passengers, Sailors, Shipbuilders, Aristocrats, and the Worlds They Came From Richard Davenport-Hines, William Morrow, 2012, $26.99/C$29.99/£16.90, hb, 352pp, 9780061876844 Davenport-Hines has written a half-dozen of masterful biographies and histories, many of them set around the time of the Titanic’s terrible voyage.

No doubt his marvelous feel for this era built upon those earlier books. Add the detailed research that obviously went into the writing of this book and it’s no surprise that Voyagers of the Titanic is satisfying in every way.

The book’s three parts, “On Land,” “At Sea,” and “Life and Death” follow the sailors, crew, and passengers from before the great ship sailed, the drama of its sinking, and the days afterward for the survivors. Unsurprisingly, the narrative of the middle section, “At Sea,” is the most compelling— and yet for writers of historical novels or connoisseurs of Titanic lore, it’s the first and last sections that provide the most information, with especially vivid insights into the class stratification of the Titanic’s voyagers, a division that seems almost as rigid as the Indian caste system.

Recommended.

Kristen Hannum THE BLOOD OF HEROES: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo – and the Sacrifice that Forged a Nation James Donovan, Little, Brown, 2012, $29.99/ C$32.99/£23, hb, 512pp, 9780316053747 Donovan, who wrote A Terrible Glory, called the “definitive” history of Custer and the battle of Little Big Horn, has now done the same for the Battle of the Alamo, the February-to-March 1836 battle between Anglo rebels (including Davy Crockett) and the Mexican army. Alamo aficionados who have read other books on the Alamo’s complicated history have praised this book for its balanced insight. For me, an Alamo neophyte, there was a steep learning curve. The book offers exhaustive detail about the battle, using reams of new evidence about such iconic moments (for Texans, at least) as to whether or not William Travis drew a line in the sand just before the final doomed battle, asking those willing to die for Texas to step over the line and stand with him.

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others that the rebels decisively defeated the Mexican Army a month and a half later.

Donovan has a gift for organizing his material in such a way that it comes to life coherently. I’d recommend The Blood of Heroes to those with an interest in the period or anyone who loves Texas or military history.

Kristen Hannum RAPHAEL: A Passionate Life Antonio Forcellino (trans. Lucinda Byatt), Polity, 2012, £20, hb, 260pp, 9780745644110 Raphael Santi was the painter who did the most to bring art forward from its mediaeval traditions into the glories of the Renaissance. The son of a father who was a competent, but not brilliant, painter himself, Raphael took over the family studio at an astonishingly young age after his father’s death. Raphael soon left his home town of Urbino, increasing his fame as he moved on to Florence and then to Rome, where aggressive Popes were demanding that the very best artists of the age should serve them.

This is a detailed biography that explains Raphael’s achievements during his short life (he died at 37), while also showing how his social skills and affable temperament helped him to advance his career. He proved that it was not necessary to be a tortured and curmudgeonly soul to be a great artist.

This informative book is also a rich treasury of information about the artistic developments and techniques of the period.

The translation is by HNS member Lucinda Byatt, but I am sure that our Lucy was not responsible for “throws” for throes, “miniscule”, bells “peeling”, and “straightaway”. Oh, for the days when books were edited properly.

Alan Fisk MIDNIGHT IN PEKING Paul French, Viking, 2012, £12.99, pb, 272pp, 9780670921072 / Penguin, 2012, $26.00, hb, 272pp, 9780143121008 In 1937, as the Japanese mustered to invade China, the body of an English girl, Pamela Werner, was found in the badlands of Peking (Beijing) beneath an ancient haunted tower. As the daughter of a former British consul, her death caused a sensation and, to add to the horror, she had been mutilated and eviscerated.

With destiny bearing down on the city, it seemed inevitable that the investigation would be hasty and patchy with an unsatisfactory outcome and the perpetrator(s) never brought to justice.

Pamela was relegated to a footnote of history until a recent lucky find in the Scotland Yard archives sent Paul French on a quest to solve the riddle.

With incisive storytelling, he evokes vivid images of the old China as he follows clues left by Pamela’s father, who tried to solve the case while negotiating the hazards of British face-saving pomposity, triads, opium dens, sex cults and prostitution rackets, not to mention the bullets of a conflict that was the curtain-raiser to World War II. 60 | Reviews | HNR Issue 61, August 2012

This is such a cracking good story, it’s guaranteed to keep you up well beyond midnight. Five star writing, in both true crime and history. Highly recommended.

Marina Maxwell THE ALEPPO CODEX Matti Friedman, Algonquin, 2012, $24.95, hb, 320pp, 9781616200404 A codex called the Crown begins life in 930 AD Tiberius at the hand of a rabbinical scribe.

It is masoretic, meaning it includes all the points and vowels that indicate exactly how the usually unpointed text of a Torah scroll is meant to be read. The Crown escapes the Crusaders’ siege of Jerusalem, spends time in Cairo where Maimonides uses it as a research tool, then finds its way to a crypt in the ancient synagogue of Aleppo, Syria. Here it stays, treasure and talisman of the Aleppene community, until the birth of the new state of Israel triggers Arab-on-Jewish riots.

The Crown manages to survive the burning of the synagogue, but now comes the real mystery and then tragedy. An aggressive policy of Ashkenazi and western-educated Jewish prejudice disinherits immigrant Sephardic communities of their dignity and ancient manuscripts in the name of the modern state and “scholarship”.

This tale is not faith promoting, either in scholarship or in the Israeli state, so I wouldn’t recommend it to people who come to tales of vanished manuscripts for those purposes. Nor is the codex something as earth-shattering as, say, the Dead Sea Scrolls which can command a broader audience – although the tale certainly deserves to be known.

Ann Chamberlin NO EMPTY CHAIRS: The Short and Heroic Loves of the Young Aviators Who Fought and Died in the First World War Ian Mackersey, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2012, £20.00, hb, 374pp, 9780297859949 I was riveted by Mackersey’s account from the first page. On the technical side, he makes his in-depth knowledge and meticulous research accessible to the non-expert. The book includes numerous powerful photographs, showing this new technology in action, in addition to the men who flew it.

Mackersey’s exploration of what they went through is as unflinching as it is compassionate.

These terrified, traumatised young men took off daily to face frightening battles in the air. Death was usually to go down in flames, the ‘flamerinoes’, which survivors repeatedly witnessed. But they had to climb back into their planes and face it again the next day. Most only survived a number of weeks.

Mackersey digs deep into the associated psychological trauma suffered by those who flew.

He presents their hell in their own words, with their diaries and letters home. We recognise today the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, with accounts of men crying, stuttering, having nightmares, undergoing dramatic mood changes

and drinking too much. Even Germany’s infamous Red Baron, Manfred Von Richthofen, was probably affected.

Mackersey’s thoughtful, engaging book serves as a noble tribute. Highly recommended.

Elaine Powell BLOOD CRIES AFAR Sean McGlynn, Spellmount, 2011, $32.95/ C$36.95, hb, 287pp, 9780752454627 An often overlooked event in English history comes to life in this information-packed account of the French Invasion of 1216. Using an extensive list of primary sources and paying homage to many secondary works, McGlynn takes the reader through the events leading to King John’s devastating loss of Normandy and its disastrous consequences; as his barons desert him, John’s inept responses create an opportunity for Prince Louis to unite the king’s enemies and stage the first French invasion on English soil since the Battle of Hastings. McGlynn takes a vast amount of research and makes it accessible and engaging without being too dry or too dramatic, going beyond dates and charts to include details of military culture and methods of the time as well as the political and social background. The result is a dense and satisfying work of nonfiction recommended for military, political, and cultural history readers alike.

Heather Domin THE PALACE AND THE BUNKER: Royal Resistance to Hitler Frank Millard, History Press, 2012, $29.95/ C$32.95/£16.99, hb, 192pp, 9780752465692 The Palace and the Bunker is more ideological tract than history. Frank Millard, armed with a PhD in history from the University of London, grinds two axes: 1) constitutional monarchies are good, and 2) had there been a German monarchy, World War II wouldn’t have happened. His proof mainly consists of a few would-be heirs to eliminated thrones and their disapproval of Hitler.

For balance, Millard a couple of times admits to the existence of “hoodwinked” aristocrats. “It is true that a few princes allied themselves with, or were ambivalent towards, the Nazis,” he writes. In fact, an embarrassing number of German aristocrats became Nazis very early on, and Britain’s aristocracy included a number of Nazi sympathizers.

For a reasonable book on the subject, Royals and the Reich, by Jonathan Petropoulos (a professor at Claremont McKenna), has gotten good reviews.

Kristen Hannum THE TIME TRAVELLER’S GUIDE TO ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND Ian Mortimer, The Bodley Head, 2012, £20, 420pp, hb, 9781847921147 ‘Sometimes the past will inspire you and sometimes it will leave you weeping.’ This is history for everyone: the political and religious upheavals of Elizabethan England embedded in a wealth of information about the way its people thought, worked and lived. Ian Mortimer’s approach is at Nonfiction

once informed and informal as he steers the reader through Landscape, People, Religion, Character, Basic Essentials, What to Wear, Travelling, Where to Stay, What to Eat and Drink, Hygiene, Illness and Medicine, Law and Disorder and Entertainment. We see injustice, suffering, religious bigotry and racism. We also see the boldness that sends men to circumnavigate the globe, and a wondrous explosion of creativity that produces Shakespeare, Thomas Tallis and William Byrd.

On a more practical note, the widely-held belief that our ancestors were immune to the bad smells around them turns out to be just plain wrong.

This book left me with a sense of both the richness and the terrifying uncertainty of an era in which individuals could, and did, change the course of society. It is both an education and a delight.

Ruth Downie AUTUMN IN THE HEAVENLY KINGDOM Stephen Platt, Atlantic, 2012, £25.00, hb, 512pp, 9780857897664 / Knopf, 2012, $30.00, hb, 512pp, 9780307271730 What do you know about the Taiping Rebellion, or the Taiping Civil War as Stephen Platt prefers to call it? If the answer is very little, then you are in good company, for the author himself knew nothing about it until he had lived for a year in China. Yet it was more destructive of human life then either World War and 30 times more destructive than the American Civil War, which took place at the same time. And if the Taiping had won, as they nearly did and probably would have done but for British intervention (the same government that refused to intervene in America), China would have entered the Industrial Age a century earlier and the 20thcentury might have been China’s century, not America’s.

This book is the best introduction you could get.

Narrated around the careers of the four principal participants it reads almost like a novel; a good read as well as a necessary education.

Edward James TREBLINKA SURVIVOR Mark S. Smith, Spellmount, 2012, $19.95, pb, 256pp, 9780752463711 Treblinka Survivor is based on a 22-page document by Hershl Sperling. At the age of 15, Sperling was shoved into a railroad car and sent to the Nazi death camp. His family, along with 800,000 other Jews who stumbled through Treblinka’s gates, were slaughtered. Sperling was one of the lucky few who escaped, to be shuttled from one concentration camp to another. He described them as “summer camps” in comparison with Treblinka.

Sperling’s stark description of unspeakable events is filled out by the author in a superb and horrifying account. Smith’s account of the destruction of Treblinka by Sperling and his fellow prisoners is a high point. Nearly all of the prisoners died, but they rose against inhumane captors instead of dying passively. That gesture of defiance Nonfiction

makes Treblinka Survivor a must-read. So does the tacit warning – we cannot let another Holocaust happen.

Jo Ann Butler RED BLOOD, BLACK SAND: Fighting Alongside John Basilone from Boot Camp to Iwo Jima Chuck Tatum, Berkley, 2012, $26.95, hb, 368pp, 9780425247402 The black sands of Iwo Jima were witness to the largest battle ever fought by the US Marines.

30,000 Marines took part, and Chuck Tatum was one of them. He was a young man, fresh from boot camp, when he scrambled out of his AAV and up the beach. That first day he fought alongside John Basilone, hero of Guadalcanal, and continued fighting through weeks of some of the most brutal combat of WWII. His company would suffer 90% casualties on Iwo Jima.

Tatum wrote this memoir in honor of his fellow Marines. It has since become one of four sources cited in HBO’s mini-sires The Pacific. This is a true memoir, with none of the polish of professional writing, and all of the charm, authenticity, and grit of a man who is looking back on his wartime experiences with 50 years of perspective. We’re with him through boot camp, through his antics while on leave, and alongside him as the Marines fight for every scrap of volcanic soil. Though his tale is grim, Tatum delivers it with such enthusiasm that it isn’t overwhelming, like so many other books on war can be. This is a must-read for any student of WWII. Justin M. Lindsay ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: A Great and Monstrous Thing Jerry White, The Bodley Head, 2012, £25.00, hb, 682pp 9781847921802 This is the third in a history of London from the 18th century to the 20th by Jerry White, professor of London History at Birkbeck College, London. There’s such a wealth of contemporary documentation that the author needed to find a structure that would both support the vast detail and hold the reader’s attention. He has succeeded magnificently. After an introduction describing London in 1700-1708, when it had risen from the devastation of the Great Plague and the Great Fire ‘to become the largest – if disputably the finest – city in Europe’, the book is divided into five parts: City, People, Work, Culture and Power, each focusing on outstanding personalities before panning out into a richly-detailed perspective of the sights, sounds and smells of the city and the politics, economics and social conditions of its people, including many little-known human stories which should appeal to the historical novelist.

A couple of criticisms: the maps are too small to read and the endnotes badly laid out. Nevertheless, it’s an exhilarating read, written with a modern version of the wit and elegance that so delighted the people of the period.

Sarah Cuthbertson

YOUNG ELIZABETH: The Making of Our Queen Kate Williams, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012, £12.99, hb, 326pp, 9780297867814 This is a concise account that concentrates on Princess Elizabeth’s childhood and development into the young woman who would be thrust into monarchy. Kate Williams has written a riveting account of these years, full of fascinating details about Elizabeth and her sister Margaret’s childhood and upbringing. We get a wonderful portrait of the human side of the Royal Family.

For example, gruff King George V was so tickled

by Elizabeth’s attempt to pronounce her name, managing only “Lilibet”, that he decided it should be her name within the family. It was the King who fostered Elizabeth’s love of horses and on one occasion at Sandringham he got down on all fours playing “horsey” with her and she led him by the beard! The relationship–and contrast—between the two princesses is particularly intriguing, with Elizabeth’s very early sense of duty and the need to maintain routine very apparent.

I would highly recommend this book to all those interested in reading about what has helped to make our monarch the Queen she is today.

Ray Taylor THE ELIZABETHANS A. N. Wilson, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011, $30.00/£25.00, hb, 432pp, 9780374147440 / Arrow, 2012, £9.99, pb, 496pp, 9780099547143 Readers seeking political intrigue, court skullduggery, ceremonial pomp, amorous relationships, or even literary, economic, and philosophical history of the 16th century need look no further. Wilson’s eminently readable history of the Elizabethan era stretches further than Elizabeth I’s reign (1558-1603), to incorporate background and to show the longterm consequences of actions and policies, some of which the world is just moving beyond, four hundred years later. Chapters cover issues ranging from “the Difficulty” (Ireland—its people and religion) to places (Kenilworth, London theatres), to individuals (Sydney, Spenser, Essex, Hakluyt) to events (St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, the Spanish Armada, American explorations). Wilson deftly provides well-documented accounts of the realities of the time, all the while showcasing the growth of England as a naval power, with a booming economy and growth in education, architecture, and the arts. The lives and loves of the at-times indecisive and parsimonious Elizabeth— from Leicester to Raleigh to Essex—are portrayed in context, showing them as people and as political beings. Wilson superbly presents a multifaceted, wide-ranging era that connects with many aspects of the present day.

Helene Williams

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© 2012, The Historical Novel Society ISSN: 1471-7492 | Issue 61, August 2012