Historical Novels Review, Issue 66 (November 2013) by The Historical Novel Society

A PUBLICATION OF THE HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY

HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW Issue 66, November 2013

Slavery Novels the residue of history

the haunted imagination john harwood’s victorian gothic the stars align eleanor catton’s the luminaries solange’s petrarch reclaiming female history living archaeology and historical fiction the love of storytelling anne perry’s inspiration the most famous date in british history an interview with james aitcheson

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE publisher’s message | historical fiction market news | red pencil | new voices

Historical Novels R eview

pub lis h er

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

edit o r ial boa r d

Managing Editor: Bethany Latham Houston Cole Library, Jacksonville State University 700 Pelham Road North Jacksonville, AL 36265-1602 USA <blatham@jsu.edu> Book Review Editor: Sarah Johnson 6868 Knollcrest Drive Charleston, IL 61920 USA <sljohnson2@eiu.edu>

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

review s edit o r s , u k

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

Claire Cowling <clairecowling@talktalk.net>

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

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

Andrea Connell 10011 Beacon Pond Lane Burke, VA 22015 USA <connell1453@verizon.net>

Publisher Coverage: Henry Holt, Other Press, Overlook, Sourcebooks, Tyndale, and other US small presses

Jane Kessler University Library 119, University at Albany, SUNY 1400 Washington Avenue Albany, NY 12222 USA <jkessler@uamail.albany.edu> Ilysa Magnus 5430 Netherland Avenue #C41 Bronx, NY 10471 USA <goodlaw2@optonline.net>

Publisher Coverage: 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 58-69 43rd Avenue, Apt. 2A Woodside, NY 11377 USA <ann.pedtke@gmail.com>

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

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

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

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

Elizabeth Hawksley <mail@elizabethhawksley.com>

Publisher Coverage: All UK children’s historicals

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

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); and Transworld (inc. Bantam Press, Black Swan, Corgi, Doubleday)

Stuart MacAllister <hnsindie@yahoo.co.uk>

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

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

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

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

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

confe re nce s

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).

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

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

e d i tori a l pol i cy

Georgine Olson 400 Dark Star Court Fairbanks, AK 99709 USA <georgine@mosquitonet.com>

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.

copy ri g h t

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 ssue 6 6 , N o ve mbe r 2013 | I SSN 1471-7492

| columns |

ed itor ia l r ich a rd le e

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

n ew voic e s p r of ile s of debut his torical f iction authors ro s b a r b er , lor i be nto n , m ar yka b iag g io & ber w ick coa t e s | my fa nw y cook

r ed pe nc il to m ta y lor ’s b ro ck ’s traitor | cin dy vallar

| features & interviews |

8 SLAVERY N OV E LS the r e sidue of his tor y | b y kris ten ha nnu m 10 the haunted imagi na ti o n the v ic tor ian g othic n ovel | b y dou g kemp 12

th e s ta rs alig n

e le a n o r c a tton’s th e luminaries | b y bethan y l a tha m

13 s olan g e’s p etra rch r e c la iming fem ale his tor y | by terri r. ba ker 14

livin g arch a eo l o g y a nd his torical f iction | b y iri s l l o yd

15 the love of s tor y tel l i ng an n e p er r y ’s wr iting in s p iration s | by my f anw y co o k 16

th e mo s t f amou s date in british hi st o ry a n inter view with j ames aitche so n | by s arah cuth bertso n

| reviews |

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

PUBLISHER’S MESSAGE ell, I am back working in Waterstone’s in Exeter again, 7 years after leaving — and it is very interesting trying to assess the differences. The USP of the big chain bookshops in the UK was initially that they had the best range and the best IT. If you wanted a book, you’d have most chance of finding it in Waterstone’s, or the staff would have the best tools to find out about the book and order it for you. This USP is entirely gone now. Readers can find a total range of current and out-of-print books from their own homes, and order them themselves. This was already beginning to be the case 7 years ago. At that time, though, Waterstone’s still had the advantage that if we did stock the desired book, we could show it to the customer, let them read a little of it, and sell it to them straight away, where online sellers offered only delayed gratification. This advantage has now also disappeared. Electronic books are always in stock, are now browsable, and can be bought instantly. So booksellers are now working with serious competitive disadvantages. We can’t compete on price, range, or knowledge. We now sell on ‘the shopping experience’. We sell coffee, we are a nice environment, we are a good place to find gifts. We can tempt readers who don’t know what they want to read next: a place of tables as much as shelves. Bookshops are now for those readers who are already shoppers, who have already braved the traffic and the parking fees. In that sense our truest competitors are not Amazon or the supermarkets, but the other shops on the High Street. I look forward to seeing what opportunities there are within this changed Waterstone’s world for historical fiction. At the very least a themed table, I hope.

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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 66, November 2013 | Columns | 1

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

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

HNS Update The HNR has been publishing an increasing number of reviews of historical novels from Australia. If you’re interested in obtaining these books, we can suggest these stores as possibilities: Bookworld (bookworld.com.au), Booktopia (booktopia.com.au), Dymocks (dymocks.com.au), or Fishpond (fishpond.com, which has free international postage). New publishing deals Sources include author and publisher submissions, Publishers Marketplace, Booktrade.info, Publishers Weekly, The Bookseller, and more. Sarah Waters’ as-yet-untitled new novel for fall 2014 set in 1922 London, about an impoverished widow and her spinster daughter who take in lodgers that shake up the routine of their house in unsettling ways, sold to Lennie Goodings at Virago (UK), Megan Lynch at Riverhead (US), and Lara Hinchberger at McClelland & Stewart (Canada) via Judith Murray of Greene & Heaton and co-agents Jennifer Weltz at the Jean V Naggar Literary Agency and Dean Cooke at The Cooke Agency. The Boleyn King author Laura Andersen’s The Sovereign Trilogy, an alternate Tudor history in which Elizabeth I marries and has a daughter, but still must lead England into a new golden age, sold to Kate Miciak at Ballantine by Tamar Rydzinski at the Laura Dail Literary Agency. HNR reviewer Phyllis T. Smith’s novel I Am Livia, a finalist for the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, a debut novel narrated by Livia Drusilla, third wife of the Roman emperor Augustus, sold to Terry Goodman at Amazon Publishing via Elizabeth Winick Rubinstein at McIntosh & Otis. It will be published by Amazon’s Lake Union imprint in April 2014. Sally Gardner’s first novel for adults, The Pearl Hand, about a spirited young girl making her way in the less-than-respectable world of Georgian London, sold to Gail Paten, senior editor at Phoenix/Weidenfeld & Nicolson, for January 2016 publication via Catherine Clarke at Felicity Bryan Literary Agency. The Castle of Kings, by Hangman’s Daughter series author Oliver Pötzsch, a sweeping 16th-century romance and mystery set against the backdrop of the Peasants’ War, featuring a forbidden love between a strong-willed aristocratic daughter 2 | Columns |

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and a blacksmith’s son, sold to Bruce Nichols at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, by Ullstein. Ellen Marie Wiseman’s Breaker Boys, in which a young woman battles strikers and corrupt mine bosses to bring justice to underage coal miners in an early 20th-century Pennsylvania mining town, sold to John Scognamiglio at Kensington, in a two-book deal, for publication in 2015, by Michael Carr at Veritas. In Susan Meissner’s A Fall of Marigolds, two women separated by a century – a survivor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and a 9/11 widow – struggle to overcome loss while weighing the cost of loving again; it sold to Ellen Edwards at NAL by Chip MacGregor at MacGregor Literary. Rosalie Ham’s The Dressmaker, an Australian novel soon to be filmed with Kate Winslet in the lead, described as “a gothic novel of love, hate, and haute couture in the 1950s,” was bought by Hannah Westland, publisher at Serpent’s Tail, from Jenny Darling at Jenny Darling Associates in Australia. The Australian publisher is Duffy & Snellgrove. The Earth Is Singing by Vanessa Curtis, YA fiction about the little-known story of the Jews of Riga during the Holocaust, seen from the viewpoint of a 15-year-old girl forced to move with her family to the ghetto after her father is taken away by Soviet forces, sold to Stephanie King at Usborne via Ella Kahn, Diamond Kahn and Woods Literary Agency. The next book in Lyndsay Faye’s Timothy Wilde series (following Seven for a Secret, reviewed online this issue), plus new novel Jane Steele, described as “Jane Eyre meets Darkly Dreaming Dexter set in London in 1850,” sold to Amy Einhorn at Amy Einhorn Books by Erin Malone at William Morris Endeavor. James Morrow’s Galapagos Regained, an adventure novel about a failed stage actress in 19th-century England who is hired as Charles Darwin’s zookeeper, in which she steals his theory of evolution and presents it as her own, sold to Michael Homler at St. Martin’s Press by Emma Patterson at Brandt & Hochman. Pulitzer-winning novelist and Oscar-winning screenwriter Larry McMurtry’s The Last Kind Words Saloon, telling the story of the friendship between Wyatt Earp and dentist-turnedgunfighter Doc Holliday, sold to Robert Weil at Liveright, for June 2014 publication, by Andrew Wylie of The Wylie Agency. E.B. Moore’s An Unseemly Wife, about a 19th-century Amish woman forced to risk faith and family as she crosses the country by covered wagon, sold to Tracy Bernstein at NAL, at auction, in a two-book deal, by Alice Tasman at Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency. The Great and Calamitous Tale of Johan Thoms by Ian Thornton, about the ill-fated adventures of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s chauffeur in 1914, sold to Scott Pack at The Friday Project, by Lien De Nil at Westwood Creative Artists on behalf of Bruce Westwood and Carolyn Forde.

ocean journey with a mysterious and magical object, sold to Andrea Spooner at Little, Brown Children’s, at auction, in a two-book deal, for publication in Spring 2015, by Faye Bender at Faye Bender Literary Agency. Alan Finn’s Things Half in Shadow, in which a journalist sets out on assignment to unmask the fraudulent mediums of postCivil War Philadelphia and finds himself drawn into a world of supernatural happenings and murder, pitched as The Alienist meets Medium, sold to Ed Schlesinger at Gallery, at auction, by Michelle Brower at Folio Literary Management. New and forthcoming titles: Alex Myers’ Revolutionary, fiction about Deborah Sampson Gannett, who disguised herself as a man to fight in America’s War of Independence, publishes in January from Simon & Schuster (US). Rachel Caine’s Prince of Shadows (NAL, Feb), subtitled “a novel of Romeo and Juliet,” reveals the origins of a terrible curse that will claim the lives of many in Verona. Imperial Fire, Robert Lyndon’s sequel to his post-Conquest adventure novel Hawk Quest, will be out in January 2014 from Sphere and in March from RedHook (US). Linda Lafferty’s House of Bathory (Amazon, Jan.) is based on the legend of the 16th-c “Blood Countess.” In The White Russian by Vanora Bennett (Century, April), a story of love, art, and family set amid the Russian émigré community in 1937 Paris, a young American woman delves into a secret from her grandmother’s past. Girl on the Golden Coin (St. Martin’s, Feb) by Marci Jefferson tells the story of Restoration beauty Frances Stuart and her life in 17th-c France and England. Sharon Kay Penman’s sequel to Lionheart, entitled A King’s Ransom, the heart-wrenching story of the last event-filled years in the life of Richard, Coeur de Lion, is out next February from Putnam. Empress of the Night by Eva Stachniak (Doubleday Canada & Bantam/Random House US, March) continues the story of Catherine the Great which began in The Winter Palace, but this time events are recounted from her own viewpoint.

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

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Rhys Bowen’s next three books in her Molly Murphy series, to include a Christmas mystery, all set in turn-of-the-century NYC and featuring a feisty Irish PI who won’t let marriage or motherhood stop her from solving crimes, sold (again) to Kelley Ragland at Minotaur, by Meg Ruley at Jane Rotrosen Agency. The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls author Anton DiSclafani’s literary family saga exploring class, manners, money, marriage, sex, and secrets within the moneyed world of oil magnates and socialites in a freewheeling, 1960s Texas, sold to Sarah McGrath at Riverhead by Dorian Karchmar at William Morris Endeavor. Kristen Harnisch’s The Vintner’s Daughter, a fast-paced epic in which a 19th-century winemaker’s daughter fights to reclaim her family’s Loire Valley vineyard and the life that was stolen from her, along with The Vintner’s Wife, sold to Iris Tupholme at Harper Canada, with Lorissa Sengara editing, for Spring 2015 publication, by April Eberhardt at April Eberhardt Literary. The Countess and Mrs. Jackson by Tessa Arlen, an Edwardian upstairs-downstairs saga of blackmail, betrayal, murder, and revenge, sold to Toni Kirkpatrick at Thomas Dunne Books in a two-book deal, for publication in Fall 2014, by Kevan Lyon at Marsal Lyon Literary Agency. Cecilia Ekback’s Wolf Winter, about a vicious murder which leads to a series of tragic events in a small community in 18thcentury Lapland, sold to Kate Parkin at Hodder & Stoughton, in a two-book deal, by Nelle Andrew at Peters Fraser and Dunlop. Amanda Murray acquired it for Weinstein Books (US) and Jennifer Lambert for HarperCanada, via Rachel Mills at PFD. Carrie Snyder’s debut Girl Runner, about a 104-year-old woman looking back on her unconventional life and triumph at the 1928 Olympics, sold to Janice Zawerbny at House of Anansi in Canada, and to Claire Wachtel at Harper, the latter in a six-figure deal, by Hilary McMahon of Westwood Creative Artists. Former USA Today reviewer Allegra Jordan’s Harvard 1914, a story of two young students, a German poet and a Boston bluestocking, who fall in love at Harvard and must face a world at war from opposing sides, pitched as Atonement meets Birdsong and based on the true story behind a mysterious Harvard plaque, sold to Stephanie Bowen at Sourcebooks, for publication in Fall 2014, by Lacy Lynch at Dupree Miller & Associates. Mrs. Sinclair’s Suitcase by Louise Walters, in which a bookseller inherits her grandmother’s suitcase and tries to figure out the mystery of her grandparents, who fell in love during WWII, sold to Amy Einhorn at Amy Einhorn Books, in a pre-empt, by Jason Bartholomew at Hodder & Stoughton. Nicole Helget’s Wonder at the Edge of the World, set in 1855 Kansas during the height of tension between slave owners and abolitionists, about an irrepressible girl who must protect her explorer father’s priceless artifacts by embarking on an epic

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 66, November 2013 | Columns | 3

NEW VOICES Debut novelists Ros Barber, Lori Benton, Maryka Biaggio and Berwick Coates share insights about their novels and the factors that impelled them to write.

ll of the debut novelists featured here share a common bond: a love of the art and magic of storytelling. This, combined with inspiration, determination and passion, has enabled them to direct a spotlight on some intriguing aspects of history. Ros Barber’s The Marlowe Papers ( John Murray/St. Martin’s Press), which is described as ‘a novel in verse’, began to take shape as follows: “When I first heard the theory that the 16th-century playwright Christopher Marlowe was the true author behind the works we know as William Shakespeare’s – that he’d faked his death in order to escape being executed for heresy, writing in exile using the Stratford broker as a ‘front’ – I simply thought ‘great story’. Marlowe is an exciting character for any novelist: a cobbler’s son who rose to the status of gentleman after completing two degrees at Cambridge University, and was recruited into the fledging intelligence services as an agent of the Queen while producing translations of bawdy Latin poems and theatrical masterpieces for the London stage. “But what really hooked me was imagining this character placed into the psychological torment of the Marlowewrote-Shakespeare theory. Imagine being the author of these extraordinary works of literature, and not being able to claim credit for it! How would a person as brilliant as Marlowe come to terms with not only losing their identity, their homeland, their friends and family, but with surrendering all hope of literary recognition? The idea of living without literary recognition – and the pain of that – was easy for me to inhabit. What’s more, it seemed to be echoed in the voice of the Sonnets, which I used as the novel’s touchstone. “The playful post-modern exploration of history appealed enormously: honouring the dots of historical evidence but joining them differently. Additionally, I could see the possibilities of weaving both the Marlowe and Shakespeare canons into the narrative: mapping the probable date of each play’s writing against the state of mind of the author and creating a coherent and plausible progression that turns the young hotshot we know as Marlowe, by degrees, into the mature Shakespeare. The story was a gift, and in many ways, continues to inspire me.” Parlor Games (Doubleday US) by Maryka Biaggio was conceived when she “stumbled on journalist Lloyd Wendt’s 4 | Columns |

HNR Issue 66, November 2013

report, Life of May Dugas of Menominee. The first line read: ‘She was down in our files as the most dangerous woman in the world.’” Biaggio explains: “Writing about May Dugas, the protagonist of Parlor Games, has been one great adventure. It all started when Wendt’s rollicking report (as told by his Pinkerton detective informant) convinced me I had to write about May. The story posed so many questions: How challenging was it for her to break out of the societal expectations of the Gilded Age? What motivated her? Was she a victim of powerful men or did she lure them in with blackmail in mind? “To acquire a sense of May and her world, I did a great deal of research about the period and its customs. I visited the National Archives in Washington, DC, to view her travel records. In San Francisco, I roamed her stomping grounds at the historic Palace Hotel. I drew on my 1985 travels to China in portraying May’s sojourns to its bustling cities. A professional meeting had taken me to Mexico City in the 1990s, so I was familiar with its sights and geography. In the south of France, I paid the high fee to enter the exclusive Casino Monte Carlo, where I soaked up the ambience of the scene – the beautiful, inviting decor and the shuffling of chips – just as May likely did during her visits there. “My primary sources of information about May were Lloyd Wendt’s report and newspaper articles of the era. Letters or diary accounts from May herself would have been helpful. But she left none. In Parlor Games I attempted to recapture a sense of the times and the day-to-day experiences of my imagined May Dugas. I chose the first-person narrative to provide readers a glimpse into the mind of what was surely one of the most adventurous women to have lived during America’s Gilded Age.” The seeds for Lori Benton’s Burning Sky (WaterBrook Press) were sown when she “began researching the 18th-century history of what would become the United States.” Almost at once she was “drawn away from the populated seaboard settings to the sparsely settled periphery – the mountain and over-mountain frontier – where cultures inevitably collided, in friendship, trade, and war. What captured my imagination were those individuals who were drawn across those cultural barriers and not only survived the encounter, but thrived, in some cases learning to straddle that line between two worlds. “The Mohawk Valley of New York – before, during, and after the Revolutionary War – is a setting rife with such encounters, played out against the greater conflict of what amounted to a civil war. I couldn’t resist learning more about these men and women – European, African, and Native American – who survived profound losses, made wrenching choices, and saw their

families and communities fractured by violence and upheaval, leaving them to redefine their identities as nations, as neighbors, kin, and individuals. “I began writing Burning Sky in 2009, but because I let a story germinate for months before writing, I can’t recall exactly when the character of Willa Obenchain first came to me. What I do recall is that a vision of a solitary woman on a journey, somewhere on the New York frontier, intruded upon me as I was going about my day. She was tall and strong, and she bore a carrying basket on her back. And somewhere, I was fairly certain, a collie was lurking. “I’m a storyteller first and foremost. As such I hope readers are entertained by Willa’s story and transported to her 18thcentury world to experience situations and challenges most of us (thankfully) don’t encounter in our daily lives, but that hold abiding interest nevertheless.” Set in 1066, The Last Conquest (Simon & Schuster UK) is a testimony to both inspiration and determination, because Berwick Coates was 80 when he was offered a $130,000 book deal for his historical thriller. He commented that: “The ‘50s comedian Al Read said he had once asked a hundred men why they had got married. One half said, ‘I sometimes wonder’; the other half said, ‘It seemed such a good idea at the time.’” “Both those explanations might be offered to explain why I wrote. Putting together a 550-page historical novel is no light matter. Quite simply, it takes a long time. The physical effort required in sitting at a keyboard may not seem crippling, but the

actual business of creating (because that is what you are doing) does take it out of you a bit. If you don’t believe me, sit down and knock out a couple of thousand words yourself. “Then there is the obvious point that, at whatever stage in the book you stop to sit back and consider, the thought is bound to cross your mind: ‘Is anybody going to read this stuff? Is anybody going to want to read this stuff?’ Or even: ‘Is it any good?’ “So there must be some pretty powerful incentives around to make sure that you start it, that you continue it, that you finish it, and that you have enough energy and self-belief left to embark on trying to sell it. “All of which is avoiding the question: what inspired you to write it? “I don’t think anything inspired me to do it. There was no religious conversion: you know, one day I didn’t want to write it, and the next day I did. Like Topsy, it just sort of ‘growed’. I think being nuts about history from the age of seven must have helped. Having been a schoolmaster for most of my working life, I had a good, solid general knowledge. Having spent forty years trying to make history interesting, I had an idea or two about how to make a historical novel palatable. I thought I had something to offer. “But I would not call that a definitive answer. Like Al Read’s hundred men, I still sometimes wonder. It did seem a good idea at the time.” From very diverse sources of inspiration, Barber, Benton, Biaggio, and Coates have all managed to uncover the starting points for their novels, which span different centuries and cultures. They have been able to tell new stories and invite us into “unknown reading territory”.

MYFANWY COOK is fascinated by the ingenuity of debut novelists in creating new and enthralling plots. Please do email (myfanwyc@btinternet.com) or tweet (twitter.com/MyfanwyCook) about debut novelists who have captured your imagination.

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Left to right: Berwick Coates, Ros Barber, Maryka Biaggio, and Lori Benton

HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Columns | 5

THE RED PENCIL Cindy Vallar analyzes the work behind published manuscripts. In this issue, she profiles Tom Taylor’s Brock’s Traitor. Characters. They are essential to any story. They are equally important in propelling the story from the beginning through the middle to its conclusion. But any character – whether they play a major or minor role – must be believable and must draw us into the story, involve us to such a degree that we care about them. “[Readers] want your characters to seem like real people. Whole and alive, believable and worth caring about. Readers want to get to know your characters as well as they know their own friends, their own family.”1 How does an author create such a character? She examines what motivates the character, where he comes from, what his reputation is, and what he looks like. She also takes into account his relationships with other characters, his habits and patterns, his talents and abilities, and his tastes and preferences. Of all these elements, the three we care about the most are: What does the character do in the story? What are his motives? What incidents from his past influence his actions in the present? When we open the third book in Tom Taylor’s series about Jonathan Westlake during the War of 1812, we might expect that Jonathan will be there to greet us. Instead, a new character, Willie Robertson, draws us into Brock’s Traitor. Even though he’s a minor character, we still expect him to hold our attention and play an important role in moving the story forward. Draft: September 12, 1812 Upper Canada The Americans were coming. A volunteer in the Leeds County Militia, Willie Robertson stood in line at attention while peering down a bend in the road. He forced himself to take a deep breath of cool morning air but found it impossible to relax his shoulders. Known only to himself as an artist of immense talent, he wondered why he was about to kill his former countrymen. These opening paragraphs of an early draft introduce us to Willie. The first, which is called the hook, is okay, but the purpose of the hook is to grab our attention and keep it riveted to the story. We know Willie’s name, where he is, what he sees himself as, and that at one time he lived in the United States. What we don’t know is how he feels. Nor are we standing beside Willie in that line of soldiers, living the scene through his eyes. As Tom works on revisions, he keeps in mind the writer’s adage of Want . . . Because . . . But. “In every scene someone has to Want something Because [the stakes] But they can’t get it [the conflict]. This draws the reader in so that they are cheering for one side or the other.”2 The published version of the opening begins to reflect this. Final: Upper Canada, September 1812 The Americans were coming to kill him. 6 | Columns |

HNR Issue 66, November 2013

Young Willie Robertson stood to attention at the end of a long line of Leeds County Militia, his Brown Bess musket clasped tight at his side. He forced himself to take a deep breath of morning air but found it impossible to relax his shoulders. An artist of immense talent, something known only to himself, he wondered what he was doing here about to fight his former countrymen. In fact, he doubted if he even could. Since Willie is the principal character in this scene, we need to see events unfold from his perspective. Early drafts don’t usually accomplish this in sufficient detail for that to occur. Draft: To the back of the ranks, loomed the storehouse and home of Mister Joel Stone. Willie figured that the approaching riflemen would ransack the buildings, giving him time to run. If he could get past the house, he’d be safe as gofer in its hole. This paragraph fails to make us see what Willie sees, and it doesn’t maintain the level of tension necessary to hold our interest. “I needed to show Willie being scared so it is natural to fumble his musket.” Tom also omits any reference to Joel Stone by name because “even though he was an actual historical figure, I think it is important to keep the number of characters to the minimum. It is easy in historical fiction to go the other way and have too many.” Final: Willie fumbled his Brown Bess before ramming the ball down the barrel and sliding the ramrod back in place. The two ranks blocked the road. Directly behind them stood the colonel’s storehouse rich in supplies, and farther back rose his beautiful residence. It was the kind that Willie liked to draw, with a big white veranda encircling half the house. Willie figured that the approaching riflemen would pause to ransack the storehouse, thereby giving him time to run. If he could just get himself over to that residence, he’d be safe as a groundhog in its hole. This rewrite ramps up the tension and reveals more of Willie’s character, from his perspective as an artist. That makes it easy for us to see what Willie sees, while we nod our heads at how his rationale makes sense. In battle the greatest personal stake is survival, and this is a key element in the scene. Essentially, it’s kill or be killed, and how a character reacts exposes how he feels about honor. That’s the primary theme of Brock’s Traitor, but as Jonathan Westlake discovers, Willie’s purpose as a character is to “show Westlake one type of honour, just as other characters are there to perhaps surprise him with their own version of the term.” Draft: Willie squeezed the trigger and the musket rammed into his shoulder. Sixty muskets crash out spitting flame and balls but Willie saw only two riflemen fall to the ground before the smoke obscured his view. “Make ready.” The sergeant was shouting again only this time through

Aside from the physical conflict (the battle), this early version demonstrates a bit of Willie’s inner conflict (fear vs. duty). This portrayal, though, casts shadows on Willie’s honor. Those shadows disappear in the published version because Tom’s revisions place us beside Willie and truly show us why he runs. Final: In the early morning light, in the quiet stillness, Willie pressed the trigger and the Brown Bess recoiled hard into his shoulder. Sixty muskets crashed out, spitting flame and balls, but Willie saw only two of the riflemen fall to the ground before the smoke obscured his view. “Prime and load!” His ears ringing, Willie heard someone hollering, but it sounded far off, the voice unsteady. Through the drifting smoke, he saw the sergeant’s lips move. “Prime and load, I say,” the old sergeant repeated. Willie raised his musket to begin the prime-and-load drill. When he was calm, it took him thirty seconds to load and fire again. He heard that officer with the white plumes yelling, “Charge!” The enemy riflemen could easily cover forty yards in less than thirty seconds. No time to reload. Willie was about to be stabbed, run through with an officer’s sabre as easy as poking a pincushion. The musket smoke from the volley lifted, and he caught a glance of that officer’s grinning face. Willie felt a bump to his arm as the militiaman next to him turned and bolted. He glanced to his right. No one. He was the only man still standing in line. Willie threw down his Brown Bess and ran to save his life. This scene casts Willie’s fear in an honorable light, while keeping to the writing adage of Want . . . Because . . . But. “Willie doesn’t want his fellow militiamen to think he’s a coward even though he’s scared to death. He stands there willing to die rather than be dishonorable. Finally he wants to save his own life just like they do.” In creating characters, writers “use the senses to talk about” them. But these aren’t the only devices Tom uses to help us visualize Willie, Westlake, and the other characters that populate the story. “[O]ne has to always keep in mind what the character wants and what is driving him forward, especially the protagonist – in the case of Brock’s Traitor, Lt. Jonathan Westlake.” Tom succeeds in this, which makes his novels involve far more than just the history of the war. This may, in part, be because he begins each story “with an idea: Redemption [Brock’s Agent], freedom [Brock’s Railroad], and honour [Brock’s Traitor].” Once he has the theme, he writes the ending of the novel before starting the beginning. “Now I know where I am going. I stake out the historical pillars I need to support the grand fiction story on top. Finally, I fill in the characters as I need them to propel the story in the direction I need it to go.” This explains why Willie is an artist. “I wanted the opening scene to be extraordinarily visual to draw the reader in immediately. I thought an artist might see it a little clearer than the rest of us. Also, . . . Willie tries to see the truth in whatever he sketches.”

So who is Willie? “[A] young inexperienced male, age 14, wears glasses, has a limp, and a burning passion to be a famous artist. Another key point to keep in mind is that he is an American. Upper Canada at the time of the war was over 60 percent American. In many ways, this conflict was a civil war fought between Americans. Remember that New England threatened [to] secede if they were not allowed to continue trading with Britain.” Why does Willie open the story, rather than the series’ protagonist? “I wanted to try something different and see if it would work. Brock’s Agent opens with Westlake but Brock’s Railroad opens at 10 Downing Street with the Prime Minister and the Secretary of War.” The next book, however, “opens with Westlake in a battle scene!” In the Author’s Note to Irish Love, Father Andrew Greeley writes, “The purpose of historical fiction is to enable a reader through the perspective of the characters in the story to feel that she or he is present at the events.”3 This is one goal to which all historical novelists aspire – one which Tom succeeds in mastering – but they often discover that writing historical fiction challenges them because the history may interfere with the story. For those readers who seek to become writers of historical fiction, Tom offers this sage advice: Historical fiction is a lie that tells a truth. As fictional writers, we can capture the spirit of the times and their characters perhaps better than the historian. [Georg Wilhelm Friedrich] Hegel said history is the story of freedom. That’s also true of the best historical fiction. And we can write it by telling a great story. I always keep in mind Bernard Cornwell’s wonderful advice: If readers wanted a history book, they’d go buy one. The story, the story, the story. That’s our job. Yes, this is hard to do, but if you are not going for a miracle, what’s the point? Like Willie, Tom once served in the militia, and his time with the Toronto 7th Artillery provides him with experience that helps him to craft believable characters. He also achieves his goal of maintaining “a balanced perspective of the war” since each book unfolds from the perspectives of characters who are Canadian, American, British, French, or Native American. Those characters are “as complex as real people,” even minor ones such as Willie Robertson, and “[t]he intensity of Brock’s Traitor captures [us] from the start and never lets go until the last page is turned. Even then, the characters and story continue to haunt long after [we finish] the book.”4 Tom invites readers to visit his website, www.tomtaylor.ca, to learn more about him and the books in this series.

Notes: 1. Orson Scott Card. Characters and Viewpoint. Writer’s Digest Books, 1988, 5. 2. E-mail correspondence with the author while discussing his series for my article “The Obscure War: HF and the War of 1812.” (Historical Novels Review, August 2013, 8-9). 3. Andrew M. Greeley. Irish Love. Tor, 2001. 4. From my review of Brock’s Traitor, which appeared in the August 2013 issue of Historical Novels Review.

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Willie’s ringing ears. Thirty seconds to fire again. He raised his musket to begin the prime and load drill and heard that officer with the white plumes yell. “Charge!” Running forty yards in less than thirty seconds was easy. Willie was about to be stabbed. The smoke lifted slightly and he caught a glance of that smiling officer’s face. The militiaman beside him bumped his arm and Willie glanced down the line. He was the only one still standing. He dropped his musket and ran for the house.

CINDY VALLAR is a columnist, editor, historical novelist, and workshop presenter. Aside from contributions to HNR, her work includes The Scottish Thistle, the soon-to-released short story “Rumble the Dragon,” and various articles on the history of maritime piracy. You can visit her at www.cindyvallar.com.

HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Columns | 7

the residue of history

Toward the end of Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 classic Gone with the

Wind, Ashley Wilkes shares with Scarlett how much he misses the antebellum days. “There was a glamour to it, a perfection and a completeness and a symmetry to it…,” he sighs. Oh my. At least since Alex Haley’s Roots (1977) and Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987), far fewer sympathetic characters hold similar views in historical novels, especially literary, but also popular. While a system of indentures had existed in the colonies and fledgling United States, the slave trade that developed was completely different from indentured servitude, a system based on contracts that were almost always entered into freely and came with a finite, defined term of service — usually five years. Roots, Beloved, and more current novels allow readers a glimpse into the human lives caught up in the brutal Atlantic slave trade that evolved to encompass the permanent enslavement of an entire race: not only the kidnapped African, but also his or her children, in perpetuity. The list of recent novels dealing more realistically with U.S. slavery is long and impressive. For starters, consider: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson (Candlewick Press, 2006), The Wedding Gift by Marlen Suyapa Bodden (St Martin’s Press, 2013), The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom (Touchstone, 2010), Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill (W.W. Norton, 2007), Kind One by Laird Hunt (Coffeehouse, 2012), The Known World by Edward Jones (HarperCollins, 2003), Property by Valerie Martin (Doubleday, 2003), The Good Lord Bird by James McBride (Riverhead, 2013), Wench by Dolen PerkinsValdez (Amistad, 2010), and Freeman by Leonard Pitts Jr. (Bolden, 2012). Bodden, author of The Wedding Gift, believes that although it may seem like there have recently been many novels (and also films) concerning slavery, it’s only because there were so few of these types of works earlier, illustrating that both writers and readers were avoiding a crucial issue in American history. Professor Tim Ryan of Northern Illinois University thinks Barack Obama’s election has renewed the dialogue. He surveyed

Novels about slaver y... continue to perform valuable cultural work, as they always have. HNR Issue 66, November 2013

fiction about slavery in his book Calls and Responses: The American Slavery Novel Since Gone with the Wind (Louisiana State University Press, 2008). “Novels about slavery continue to perform valuable cultural work, as they always have,” he says. Such novels reflect and further thinking about slavery and racism. They are important. But for people to read them, Bodden points out, they also have to be good stories: “I first want them to put the book down and say that was a good story,” she says. “If they don’t say that, then I failed as a novelist.” Set in 1852 Alabama, Bodden’s debut novel, The Wedding Gift, is the story of the Allen family, and in particular of quick-witted and gutsy Sarah Campbell, the unacknowledged and enslaved daughter of plantation owner Cornelius Allen by his housekeeper. When Cornelius’s white daughter Clarissa marries, Cornelius gives Sarah to Clarissa as a wedding gift. The story’s ending turns readers’ expectations upside-down. Bodden tells the story through Sarah’s point of view, and also through that of Allen’s wife, a woman trapped within a life-sapping hierarchy in which she, too, is a victim. The Wedding Gift boasts an unusual background. Bodden, a lawyer with the New York Aid Society, thought she’d write fiction when she retired. In her nonfiction reading, she discovered an 1841 court case from Talladega, Alabama, in which a plantation owner claimed his wife’s child was not his. The court found for the husband, awarding him all the property that his wife had brought to the marriage, including a young slave woman. “I’d love to write this as a historical novel,” Bodden thought. But she didn’t. She only became serious about writing the story four years later, in 2003, after a homeless shelter called her about a young Asian woman trying to get her wages paid. The woman’s employers had confiscated her passport and forced her to work without pay. Bodden realized she was facing a modern-day victim of slavery. Now she had to write her novel. “I wanted to do it for my ancestors, beginning in the sixteenth century and brought to the New World as slaves,” she says. “I needed to give them a voice — and that would also give the slaves of today a voice.”

by Kristen Hannum

8 | Features |

Slaver y Novels

would leave their wives penniless), through sex, and through physical violence.” Paralleling America’s political divisions, publishing houses and individuals are still releasing novels that look back nostalgically at the white-pillared Confederacy, and at Southern society during the Civil War. Some focus on honor and bravery in battle. Slavery is an insignificant part of these stories. Military novelists such as Jeff Shaara, John Jakes, and Newt Gingrich satisfy readers who see southern history in this light. Another shoot from the lost cause branch are romances about dashing and beautiful white Southerners falling in love with one another and, incidentally, served by well-treated slaves. These books embody Wilkes’s wistfulness for the “glamour …of the old life I loved.” Ryan thinks more pitfalls lurk for white novelists than for African-Americans who write novels about slavery due to the fact that, for centuries, whites controlled the cultural conversation about slavery. “When a white person sits down to write, that writer is attaching herself to that tradition whether she wants to or not,” he says. Some white authors have successfully negotiated the dialogue. “For instance, you don’t read Property and say there are problems,” Ryan acknowledges. “She tells the story from the white slave owner’s view. Artistically it works.” It’s been suggested to Martin that she write a sequel to Property told through Sarah’s point of view, allowing readers to follow her after her escape. “I wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot pole,” Martin says. She shares, however, that one interviewer labeled her novel — and all novels about slavery, no matter who the author—as racist, written to titillate since they focused on white men abusing black women or men. While that’s true for some — Mandingo, by Kyle Onstott (1957), comes to mind — it seems far off-base with regard to thoughtful novels exploring slavery’s effect on both whites and African-Americans. Lawrence Hill, a Canadian author of African-American descent on his father’s side, has a different kind of cautionary tale. His historical novel, Someone Knows My Name, was titled The Book of Negroes when it was published in Canada. American editors said that wouldn’t fly in the United States, catching Hill unawares. The word “negro” has different connotations in Canada, he has said. That original title was taken from a historical document listing escaped slaves who sailed under British protection from the U.S. colonies to Nova Scotia. Whatever the background of the writer, Ryan argues, the goal is to write about slavery — and other ethical questions — in a way that is morally engaged but without being heavy handed. “One of the things I’m most focused on is moral complexity, looking beyond easy answers,” he says. “I always hope that a book will make me think in ways I never have, rather than reading a book where things I already believe are validated.” Today’s books on U.S. slavery often do just that.

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Agents and editors told Bodden that people didn’t want to read about slavery. She self-published and doggedly promoted her book, with small-scale success. She signed with Amazon to promote the book, selling another 140,000 copies, mostly ebooks. An agent became interested and in 2012, Bodden signed four separate six-figure deals with publishers in the United States and Europe. She’s now writing her second novel — but don’t expect it out anytime soon. “I’m still practicing law full time,” she says. “I’m a slow, deliberative writer and I do lots of research. I want my history to be authentic.” Property, by Valerie Martin, is often cited as a new classic in novels looking at life in the antebellum South, a counterpoint to Gone with the Wind. Set in 1828 Louisiana, it examines the lives of Sarah, an enslaved woman, and Manon Gaudet, a free woman. The beautiful, self-centered wife of a sugar plantation owner, Manon is the book’s first-person protagonist, an unreliable narrator if ever there were one. Intensely aware of the injustice she faces as a woman, her racism means she cannot see beyond herself to understand that Sarah, who has been repeatedly raped and borne two of Manon’s husband’s children, is a victim of even greater injustice. The reader’s initial impulse to sympathize with Manon is masterfully chipped away, and yet our desire to find out what happens — to Manon and especially to Sarah — drives us on. The past, Martin believes, is a place we can’t go and therefore we can’t know. “And yet, how invested people are in the past!” Martin says. So how does an author research a place she can’t go? One technique Martin used was to read the popular novels of the era. “Those are the fantasies or moral knowledge that people had,” she says. She also read personal letters. “The letters of the period often expressed annoyance at having to own slaves because the owners had to take care of them,” she says. “I thought about what living in those times would do to a person who feels put upon because of owning another person.” Martin has written that her novel, which won the Orange Prize in 2003, was a meditation on “the fantastic and constant perversity of the oppressor to feel victimized by the oppressed.” The past that Margaret Mitchell traveled to — a genteel plantation world destroyed by war and a leading lady largely immune from the sexist laws of her era — was very different than the brutal, sexist antebellum world that Martin wrote about in Property. There’s a similar distance between William Faulkner’s Absalom! Absalom! (also published in 1936), about destructive, nebulous cultural myths and racism, but centered on white males, and Laird Hunt’s Kind One, also a story that unfolds like an onion to reveal different layers of meaning — but Hunt’s novel is about women, both African-American and white. When it comes to writing about slavery, “gender has become central,” says Ryan. Martin sees the new focus as being due, at least in part, to who’s writing. “African-American women are writing about slavery and repopulating the imaginative landscape with more credible characters,” she says. “The question of gender is very important to me,” says Bodden. “Of course it was better to be a free white woman, but I learned while researching the book that slave owners weren’t able to shut violence off when it came to their families. They controlled the slaves with violence, and that spilled over into their family relationships. They controlled by threatening to divorce (which

KRISTEN HANNUM, a working journalist and editor, is currently working on a nonfiction book about the American South with novelist Lee Patton.

HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Features | 9

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John Harwood on the Victorian Gothic novel

he popularity of the Gothic story in novels and films shows no sign of declining. With the global appeal of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the flood of spooky, vampire-laden fiction often aimed towards the young adult market, it is clear that there still is an immense readership for the style and tone of the Gothic. These hugely popular books tend to have dark subject matter, with underlying themes of anxiety and fear, as well as strong plots full of suspense and romance. Much Gothic fiction has been and continues to be set in the past. Gothic romances were very popular in the 1970s. Often set in Cornwall, the cover revealed a windswept woman, in a shimmering silken dress, standing in front of a brooding castle or crumbling gothic pile. The heroine, one felt, very possibly wished she had put on something a little more sensible before venturing outside in the cold. Inside the castle, an evil uncle/father/husband would usually be found, plotting filthy acts of treachery, and a stunningly handsome rescuer would then appear to save the beauty from her distress. Writers such as Victoria Holt (one of Eleanor Hibbert’s pen-names – Jean Plaidy and Philippa Carr being others) and Phyllis A. Whitney produced these books by the barrow-load. Whilst the Gothic romance still retains its popularity, recent years have seen a flowering of what can be considered historical Victorian Gothic fiction – with narratives in varying nineteenth-century styles and plots verging towards the sensationalist melodramas of Mrs Wood. In 2004 John Harwood set the ball rolling with The Ghost Writer ( Jonathan Cape), a Victorian-style spooky tale in which a young boy discovers that his great-grandmother wrote a number of disturbing ghost stories. Incorporated into the text of the novel, these stories represented a fine pastiche of the Victorian narrative style. Michael Cox’s first novel, The Meaning of Night, was published in 2006 ( John Murray). Set in 1854, it was described in its HNR review as “a darkly atmospheric and very gothic tale of wrath, nemesis, and self-destruction: a 600-page journey through the claustrophobic confines of

The Haunted Imagination a raving man’s mind.” John Harwood further encapsulated this recent trend in 2008 with The Séance ( Jonathan Cape), a creepy, grief-laden novel set in 1881, in which Constance Langton inherits the haunted Wraxford Hall. The trend has, if anything, accelerated in 2013 with a third Harwood novel, The Asylum (Random House), a cunningly plotted tale of deception and betrayal, as well as through books by John Boyne, Charles Palliser and Diane Setterfield. John Boyne’s This House is Haunted (Transworld Publishers) is set in Norfolk in 1867 and owes much in mood and plot to Henry James’s Turn of the Screw, with a naïve governess entering a supernatural maelstrom to look after two orphaned and disturbed children. Charles Palliser’s Rustication (W.W. Norton), set in 1863, concerns a disturbed young man who has been sent down from Cambridge for a variety of misdemeanours and takes up habitation in a creepy old mansion inhabited by his impoverished mother and weird sister. Diane Setterfield’s Bellman & Black (Orion) is about a man’s rather macabre bargain, made following something inadvisable he did in his childhood. When I interviewed John Harwood, I began by asking him for some background to this flowering of the historical Gothic amongst fiction writers, and what, for him, was the appeal of this genre set in nineteenth-century England. He says: “I discovered Victorian Gothic fiction when I was eight or nine, through the Sherlock Holmes stories. It was the atmosphere I loved most: the fogs and alleyways and hansom cabs, the dark and stormy nights with wind rattling the casements in Baker Street. And Hobart, where I grew up, was more like Victorian England than mainland Australia, especially the old town, with its crumbling stone buildings: we had snow and frost and fogs, and there were still a few horsedrawn vehicles on the streets. My favourite Holmes stories were the quasi-supernatural ones like ‘The Speckled Band’ – a Gothic masterpiece – which led me to M.R. James and his contemporaries, and an enduring love of the ghost story. Though I’m often classified as a horror writer, it’s the restraint of the

by Doug Kemp

Once inside... that crumbling mansion, you’re utterly alone with whatever may be lurking there. 10 | Features |

HNR Issue 66, November 2013

with our own sense of facing a dangerous and uncertain future.” Harwood’s novels feature a chillingly effective atmosphere, and when asked how he crafts it, he explains: “I spend a lot of time designing and developing my settings, especially the houses, because if I can’t walk around them in my head, my readers certainly won’t be able to. Wraxford Hall, in The Séance, grew out of a painting by George Goodwin Kilburne, but by the time I’d finished it looked nothing like the elegant original! For The Asylum, I built Tregannon House from the ground up, tuning the architecture and the landscape around it to the demands of the plot. I draw up detailed floor plans as the action unfolds, until I reach a point where the house seems to materialise above the jumble of papers and sketches on my desk, and feels like somewhere I’m remembering, rather than something I’ve invented. After that I concentrate on the atmospherics: where the light’s coming from, how a room feels and smells and sounds from my character’s point of view. And of course, a decaying, isolated mansion, where you’ve only candles for lighting, is the archetypal Gothic setting, perfect for exploring the borderlands of perception – delusion, hallucination, visitation, and dream in all its varieties.” The Asylum and The Séance both have an intricate and wellexecuted plot. Given that Gothic fiction tends to be focussed upon the solution of a semi-supernatural mystery, I asked Harwood if he prepared the watertight plot in advance or if it developed along with the tale. “I tend to begin with a strong visual image: a brief, dreamlike scene that replays in my head until I realise it’s determined to tell me something. For The Séance it was a crumbling Tudor mansion, festooned with lightning rods; for The Asylum it was the image of a young woman discovering her own tombstone. Once I’ve begun writing I do a lot of planning in stages along the way, but, within the broad outlines of the mystery plot, a good deal of that gets modified or discarded as the story unfolds. I like to keep the ending as open as possible until I’m actually writing the climactic scenes; if I don’t know exactly how all this is going to resolve, it adds to the suspense.” The Séance and The Asylum have strong and likeable female characters that attract the reader to their side. When I asked Harwood if he’d given any thought to having an unreliable and/ or untrustworthy narrator as the main character, he hinted at what’s to come: “Indeed I have; I may well do so in my next book.

John Harwood lives in South Australia where he was head of the School of English and Drama at Flinders University, Adelaide, before writing his awardwinning novels. His latest novel, The Asylum, is published by the Random House Group and HMH (2013).

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classic ghost story that attracts me: the slow, atmospheric buildup, the brief, terrifying glimpses, leaving as much as possible to the reader’s imagination. Speaking as a novelist, I’m drawn to late Victorian England because it’s such a rich canvas to work on. Parts of it are strikingly familiar: the bustling streets of London, the trains and telegrams, the industrial landscapes. But in an isolated country house you’re in a world that hasn’t changed much since the 1750s. The technology that cocoons us now – cell phones, cars, electric lights – doesn’t exist: once inside that crumbling mansion, you’re utterly alone with whatever may be lurking there. It’s a more elaborate, slower-paced society, and there’s a fascination in exploring how characters – especially women – deal with its constraints. The language, too, is in many ways subtler, richer and more nuanced, especially for rendering shades of feeling, than contemporary speech. The version I’ve evolved is plainer and sparer than the stereotypical Victorian idiom, which we tend to think of as pompous, ponderous and over-ornate. But many Victorian writers were as eager to mock the stereotype as we are. Whenever I re-read the omniscient chapters of Bleak House, I’m struck by how ‘modern’ they sound, and they were written in the early 1850s, thirty years before the time at which The Asylum is set.” When asked about his favourite Gothic fiction authors, Harwood expounds, “Apart from those I’ve mentioned, I’m often drawn to particular works rather than the complete oeuvre: the Gothic strand in Dickens, especially Bleak House and Great Expectations; Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone and of course The Woman in White; Walter de la Mare’s ‘All Hallows’ – about a haunted cathedral in Wales – is a masterpiece. And of course The Turn of the Screw – in my judgement the finest ghost story – if it is a ghost story – ever written. In contemporary Gothic, the author I most admire is Sarah Waters: she writes beautifully, and her plot reversals are stunning. It’s difficult to sustain the conventions of the ghost story over a full-length novel, but she does it superbly in The Little Stranger [Virago Press, 2009] – a triumph of unreliable narration.” I asked Harwood what draws contemporary novelists to the Victorian Gothic, and what it says about our society today. He says, “For the novelist, it allows you to do things that just wouldn’t seem plausible in a contemporary setting. Also it was – like ours – a time of very rapid change and intellectual unease (which I think helps to account for the popularity of Gothic fiction, then and now). Someone born in 1820 grew up in a world in which no one had travelled faster than a horse could gallop; if they lived until 1900 they’d have witnessed the invention of the railways, the motor car, the airship, x-rays, electric light, the telephone, the camera, the phonograph… along with a radical transformation of the collective worldview. To be born into a world in which the literal truth of Genesis could be taken more or less for granted, and to see those certainties shaken by fossil geology, evolutionary theory, the new Biblical scholarship, and so forth: that’s a more dramatic transformation than anything I’ve witnessed in my lifetime. All of which resonates powerfully

DOUG KEMP is a member of the UK team of review editors for HNR.

HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Features | 11

Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries

THE STARS ALIGN

for the 2013 Man Booker Prize, Eleanor Catton’s novel S hort-listed is a tale of the 1860s New Zealand gold rush. The Luminaries (Little

The Luminaries is, amongst many other things, a pastiche. As such, it both celebrates and transcends the conventions of the Victorian novel. Brown, US; Granta, UK) begins one stormy night, when a young man Catton explains, “My own worldview is not at all Victorian, and my disembarks at the Hokitika quay, terrified by something he saw onboard readership isn’t either. I wanted to play with the form, but not in a way ship. At his hotel, he accidentally intrudes upon a secret assembly of that flouted my own values as a person and as a writer. One thing that twelve disparate men, and a mystery is revealed. A prostitute has been really bothers me about some ensemble-cast stories is the way that discovered unconscious in the road, a victim of failed self-slaughter; minority characters are frequently denied the psychological breadth a wealthy man has disappeared, and a penniless prospector is found and depth afforded to the white male characters; as tokens, they often dead…with a fortune in gold hidden in his humble cabin. Will all these become representations of a single quality, and their character arcs points align into a decipherable constellation? tend to be smaller, simpler, and more thematically incidental than the Catton expounds on The Luminaries’ meticulous structure, which arcs of white men.” Catton notes that the structural conceit helped to uses astrology as a framework: “The cast is quite avoid this, since the characters’ psychology had to large: twelve ‘zodiacal’ characters, seven ‘planetary’ fit within their astrological archetypes, keeping characters, and one ‘terrestrial’ character around “everything in balance.” whom everybody else moves. Their interrelation A corollary issue is how minorities should be and motion over the course of the book follows treated, in the interests of historicity, by the other the movement of the heavens over the year 1865characters. “Racism and sexism,” says Catton, 66, as seen from the Hokitika goldfields. “were codified in Victorian society in all sorts of “This astrological dimension found its way into ways, and I had to be careful in navigating that the book in a way that was mostly thematic: I territory...I didn’t want to patronise the past, but wanted to play with both definitions of the word I didn’t want to whitewash it either. The most ‘fortune’. I discovered a computer program that important thing to me was to treat each character could generate a star chart — a fixed portrait of as a complex individual, capable of subtle selfthe heavens — from any position on earth, and regard, and capable of change.” from any moment in history. I typed in Hokitika’s Explaining that Moby-Dick and The Brothers co-ordinates, and the date that gold was first Karamazov were her two most direct Victorian discovered there, to see what was happening in influences, Catton stresses that, “For me, the the skies at that time. I spent a couple of weeks most important test of any historical fiction scrolling through the years and watching the is plausibility, which is not at all the same as planets move — just observing, half-dreaming, realism or historical accuracy; ‘plausibility’ has waiting for a sign. Eventually some of the patterns that overtone of belief: you must write something clarified, and I could see the beginning of a story.” that could be believed in, that somebody wants But Catton didn’t want the structural conceit to believe in. It’s much more about gaining the to dominate: “I wanted it to exist behind, or above, the story, occluded reader’s trust than about proving the writer’s expertise.” except to the initiated, visible only to those who cared to look. I And Catton, unlike many of her contemporaries, has a refreshing have come to see astrology in the way I see the Greek pantheon: not take on the audience for whom she writes: “I’ve always liked the idea something to be believed in, exactly, but more of a repository for that one writes for an imagined audience of every author one has ever cultural knowledge and history that is rich in meaning and significance. read — a prospect that at first seems terrifying, and after a while feels As a system, it allows for incredibly nuanced internal patterning.” more like a healthy challenge. It’s very important to assume that your The Luminaries features a pitch-perfect evocation of setting, an reader is smarter, more well-read, and more multifarious than you are. outgrowth of Catton’s native landscape. Raised in Christchurch, she The worst kind of writing is that which condescends to its readers, or also spent time on New Zealand’s West Coast, which she describes imagines itself better than its readers. The biggest compliment a reader as “stunning, thickly rainforested, bordered on one side by high can pay to a writer is the wish to read their book again, but it would mountains, and on the other by a dangerous sea. The sense of ‘frontier’ feel vain to hope for that. I think that what I most hope for is that a is written into the landscape; it’s a lush, savage, vertiginous place.” The reader would finish the book in a redemptive state of mind — feeling Hokitika goldfields were, Catton says, very different in character from as though the book’s loves and losses have worked upon them in some those (e.g., the Klondike) that preceded them: “partly because of the redemptive way.” climate, and partly because goldfields legislation developed a great deal over those decades...That gave me a lot to work with in terms of laying Bethany Latham is HNR’s Managing Editor. down the pattern of the plot.”

MY OWN WORLDVIEW...

by Bethany Latham

is not at all Victorian, and my readership isn’t either. I wanted to play with the form, but not in a way that flouted my own values as a person and as a writer.

12 | Features |

HNR Issue 66, November 2013

reclaiming female history in Mary Novik’s Muse

M ary Novik’s Muse (Doubleday Canada, 2013) opens with

Solange Le Blanc inside her mother’s womb, listening to the beat of her mother’s heart, experiencing a vision that signals Solange’s future as a prophet. In a story of popes, poets, and muses in fourteenth-century Avignon, this beginning also emphasizes how Solange listens first to her own heart. Set during the Avignon Papacy (1309–77), Muse explores the history of a canonical poet, Francesco Petrarch. Although Petrarch’s most famous love sonnets were addressed to an unattainable blonde beauty, Laura de Sade, Novik imagines Solange as the unknown woman who bore his children. Yet it is the collection of love sonnets that Petrarch wrote to Laura – just as another collection of love sonnets was at the center of her first novel, Conceit (Doubleday Canada, 2007) – that inspired a Renaissance in literature that is still studied today. During her career in academia, Novik studied and taught these sonnets. “I loved the literature that I taught,” says Novik, “but I was never allowed to bring biography into the picture. I am interested in creating a story and putting [biography and an author’s works] together, imagining a story behind the actual finished poems of these authors.” Although Novik explores the private life of Petrarch, it is her feminist sensibility that dominates, reclaiming a lost female history through the familiar physical, emotional, and mental cycles that many women across history share. From Solange’s birth to her apprenticeship as a scribe, we empathize with her, especially when tragedy thrusts her from a sequestered home to the cruel outside world. Despite Novik’s focus on feminine cycles and challenges in historical settings, however, there is a tendency for reviewers to categorize historical fiction about women connected to famous men as explorations of the story of the woman behind the great man. Novik resists this kind of categorization. “I didn’t set out to write that kind of story,” she says, explaining how the scarcity of information on Muse’s Solange and Laura inspired her to explore their histories creatively. “We have letters by the men that may allude to the women. We may have birth, death, and marriage records, if they survived. But the only documentation

Solange’s Petrarch

we really have on these women is the references in the literature produced by men. Even Laura de Sade, a noblewoman, has precious little written about her.” Before Laura, Novik imagines, Petrarch loved an earthly muse, Solange, a character created from what Novik calls “historical scraps.” Opposing Laura as Petrarch’s ideal of spiritual, unrequited love, Solange is his ideal of earthly, physical love. Through her representation of these different ways of loving, Novik participates in the criticism of literary representations of women. She explores how the idealization of women in maleauthored literature sabotages female identities, thus entering into what Novik calls a “conversation with authors of the past.” “That conversation is something that I’ve always had,” she says, referring to her studies and teaching of English literature. “I want to be part of a literary tradition. That is my subject matter as well.” It is this intimate understanding of both the works of these poets and the ambition that drove them that inspires Novik to also explore the dark side of literary genius. “I see poets as real people,” she says. “The poet is probably more likely to go through the window [that separates us from our dark side] than others. That is the nature of the poet.” It is Novik’s representation of the dark side of Petrarch – known as the “first great humanist of the Italian Renaissance”1 – that is one of the most compelling features of Muse. Novik’s depiction of Petrarch’s rejection of Solange after encountering Laura contrasts starkly with his continued correspondence with Solange and need for her aesthetic critique of his poetry. Despite Petrarch’s rejection, Solange – lover, scribe, prophet, and mother to Petrarch’s children – fights for her rightful place at Petrarch’s side.

Terri R. Baker is a Ph.D. candidate and an instructor in the Department of English at the University of Calgary. Her dissertation examines Hilary Mantel’s Tudor novels. 1. Monfasani, John. “Petrarca, Francesco. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved 23 Aug. 2013. Web.

by Terri R. Baker

The only... documentation we really have on these women is the references in the literature produced by men.

HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Features | 13

Living Archaeology O n my desk sits a burnt flint I use as a paperweight. It is one of

and historical fiction

bone.” Sure enough, on further scraping, the baby’s skeleton was revealed. We found over 50 of them (premature, stillborn and new born) all over the site in pits, ditches and post holes. Babies were thought to be of no value until about five years old and may have been buried in this way during fertility rites or to bring luck. I have included the sacrifice of a baby girl in my narrative. As to the burnt flints: found in abundance in the chalk, they were placed in the fire then dropped into water to heat it. During a coach ride south after an Alaskan cruise, the driver informed us that we were passing through land that belonged to the Stoney Indians. He said, “They were called Stoney Indians because they used to put stones into the fire then drop them into water to heat it.” Of course, I told him that we were using the same method in Britain thousands of years ago. I was telling this story to a visitor to my bookstall and she said, “My mother used to do that when the electricity was cut off during the war.” Sadly, after 35 years of excavations, the site has now been closed. Current thinking in professional circles is that artefacts should be left in the ground for future generations to find. Just as we regard the Victorian diggers as vandals, taking away the interesting finds and discarding everything else, without recording any data, so future generations may regard us in the same way. However, all our discoveries are being recorded onto databases and the artefacts will eventually be donated to Newbury Museum. One unique Roman coin among about 1,000 found has gone to the British Museum to fill a gap in a collection. I am so glad that I was around at the right time and that Bron in her pagan Atrebate settlement has been brought to life up there on the Berkshire Downs.

70 tons found on an archaeological dig on top of the Berkshire Downs, south of the Ridgeway, a site that was occupied for over 1,000 years. I used to live half a mile away and helped with the digging. Intrigued, I was inspired to write a series of novels about Bron, born there in AD 385, at the end of the Roman occupation. With such personal knowledge, I worked several of our finds into the stories including a Medusa medallion, a dog skeleton and a rare fish brooch, indicating Christian activity. A silver ring was also found there, in the shape of hands holding a heart surmounted by a crown. This is now known as an Irish claddagh ring, but it is much older in origin. A few other authors have also drawn inspiration from the actual experience of participating in a dig. One is Margaret Elphinstone, whose latest novel, The Gathering Night (Canongate, 2009), was prompted by a flint shard, a microlith, found during a dig at a Mesolithic site on the Hebridean island of Coll. As well as taking part in this dig, Elphinstone’s research included building a coracle. My research included forging a log poker at a blacksmith’s. Googling “Novels based on archaeology” brings up dozens of books, including classics by Jean M. Auel (The Clan of the Cave Bear, 1980), Richard Harris (Pompeii, 2003), several by Lindsey Davis, and so on. For the most part, they are written about places already explored. Edward Rutherfurd in London (1997) created a Roman Arch on the site of Marble Arch, where he felt one must have existed, though he didn’t get down on hands and knees with a scraper to look for the foundations! The reasons are obvious: serious archaeologists deal in fact and not make-believe, whereas historical novelists base their stories on fact but need to let their imaginations fly. Iris Lloyd is a writer who is passionate about archeology. The I was scraping the side of a pit one day when I saw what I series of Bron novels is published by Pen Press publishers. For thought was a pin from the back of a brooch and called the more information, see irislloyd.co.uk. archaeologist over. “That’s not a fibula,” he said, “it’s a baby’s rib

by Iris Lloyd

Current thinking...

in professional circles is that artefacts should be left in the ground for future generations to find.

14 | Features |

HNR Issue 66, November 2013

Anne Perry’s writing inspirations

C C

The Love of Storytelling

nne Perry, who has sold over 26 million novels A worldwide since 1979, talks about the inspiration for her

MC: Which of the novels that you have written stand out for you and why? novels and her series of Christmas novellas. AP: Always the best one is going to be the next one. It offers the chance to do a little better than last time. My personal favourites MC: Victorian Britain obviously fascinates you. Would you have will always be Tathea and Come Armageddon because they state liked to live during that period? my philosophy of life and my beliefs of eternity. Also, I was able AP: It fascinates me for its dramatic contrasts of wealth and to describe places of the imagination both beautiful and terrible. poverty side by side. I like the ebullience I gave myself license to do whatever I and optimism. The inventions are wanted. Those were written for me. fascinating, sometimes ludicrous, always imaginative. At that time London thought MC: What impels you to continue writing? itself the centre of the world, and for good AP: Apart from needing to earn a living, reason. You can have almost anyone live I simply love doing it. Who doesn’t enjoy there or pass through. The entire world is telling a story? It is work, at times hard on the door-step at one time or another. work, but then don’t we all try to do The responsibilities and the burdens something the very best way we can? Not and delusions of power open up infinite many people get paid to enjoy themselves. possibilities. No, I would definitely not I have ideas crowding my mind for at least like to have lived then; the plumbing, the a dozen more stories, and then a dozen medicine and the dentistry in particular, after that. would put anyone off. MC: Why did you decide to write a series of MC: Your series featuring the Victorian Christmas mystery novellas? policeman Thomas Pitt and his well-born AP: I wanted to write the first one because wife, Charlotte, which started with The the idea was burning a hole in my mind. Cater Street Hangman, has been described I was advised it would be difficult to sell as “the longest sustained crime series by and the best length would be novella. a living writer.” The main character in your Monk novels, which It worked surprisingly well and Random House asked for a appeared first in 1990, has a much darker protagonist than this first second. I am now working on the thirteenth. They seem to me series. What inspired you to write your William Monk series and to to be lots of interesting and relevant stories that could well be create the character of Oliver Rathbone? based on Christmas and something where a really happy ending, AP: Monk wakens in hospital with absolutely no memory of with a moral to it, was totally acceptable. It was a temptation I himself, even his own face in the mirror is unrecognisable to him. did not even try to resist. That is an extreme and dramatic version of the questions most of us have, ‘who am I’? How much of your identity do you still Anne Perry was selected by The Times as one of the twentieth have without your memory of your experiences, your successes century’s top 100 “masters of crime” fiction. and mistakes? Who did you love and who loved you and why? See www.anneperry.co.uk Imagine having no knowledge of who your friends or enemies are. Oliver Rathbone was necessary as a foil to Pitt, of equal Myfanwy Cook is an avid reader of historical crime fiction and a intelligence and determination but totally different background. member of the HNR editorial team. As I worked with him, I came to like him more and more.

by Myfanwy Cook

I was able... to describe places of the imagination both beautiful and terrible. I gave myself license to do whatever I wanted. Those were written for me.

HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Features | 15

an interview with James Aitcheson

worn Sword is set after the Battle of Hastings, told from a S Norman point of view. How would you “sell” it to readers who may not know what happened after 1066? 1066 is the most famous date in British history. While the story of that fateful year is relatively familiar, though, what’s less well known is that Hastings was merely the beginning of a long and bitter war for mastery over England, as the Normans struggled to subdue a hostile country rife with rebellion. Sworn Sword and its sequels tell the story of that turbulent time, when the kingdom’s fate hung in the balance.

C C

The Most Famous Date in British History

always with good reason, and I own up to it in the afterword at the end of each book. Have any historical novelists influenced your writing? I take my influences from many genres, but historical novelists who have particularly inspired me include C.J. Sansom, Barry Unsworth, Bernard Cornwell and Kevin Crossley-Holland. In fact, Crossley-Holland’s evocation of the Welsh Marches in The Seeing Stone was so stirring that it led me to set my second novel, The Splintered Kingdom, in that part of the country as well.

What drew you to the period and why did you make your protagonist a Norman knight? The Norman Conquest is a fascinating subject, since it marks a turning-point not just in the political landscape, but also in the society and culture of Britain. In both scale and speed, the upheaval it generated was unprecedented, and has rarely been matched since. By taking the viewpoint of Tancred, a Norman knight, I wanted to show the Conquest in a new light and escape the traditional distinction that’s often drawn between the valorous English and the repressive Normans. In reality there was good and evil to be found on both sides of the conflict.

Can you tell us a little about your background? I’ve always loved writing fiction, but it was only in my final year studying History at Cambridge that I thought about combining that passion with my interest in the Middle Ages. Shortly after graduating I started working on Sworn Sword, and enrolled in the MA in Creative Writing programme at Bath Spa University. A couple of years later the series was picked up by Preface, my UK publisher, and I now write full-time.

A second novel about Tancred, The Splintered Kingdom, is already out in the UK. What’s next for you? The Splintered Kingdom will be released in the US in August 2014, and the third book in the series, Do you think historical fiction offers a worthwhile perspective Knights of the Hawk, has just been published in the UK. Set in on historical events, or is it just for fun? autumn 1071, it sees Tancred waging war in the Fens, where a One of the most powerful things that fiction offers is its group of rebels are making one final, desperate stand against the ability to put us in other people’s shoes. Not only does it help us Normans. I’m currently enjoying getting stuck into research as see events from alternative points of view, but it can also help to I decide upon my next project. All will be revealed in due course... challenge myths and misconceptions about the past. Sworn Sword was published by Sourcebooks in August 2013, Which comes first for you – history or story? Do you think it’s and in the UK by Preface in 2011. The author’s website is www. OK to take the occasional liberty with the historical record jamesaitcheson.com. for the sake of the plot? The advantage of writing fiction set during the Middle Ages is Sarah Cuthbertson has been involved in the HNS since 1998 as that the historical sources are often fragmentary or conflicting, a reviewer, interviewer and editor. She lives in a Northumberland which allows the novelist plenty of freedom. Part of the joy, for village which has its very own Roman fort and a quite well-known me, comes from weaving my stories in and out of the real events, Wall nearby. and so I usually see little reason to alter the facts. When I do, it’s

by Sarah Cuthbertson The Norman Conquest... is a fascinating subject, since it marks a turning-point not just in the

political landscape, but also in the society and culture of Britain.

16 | Features |

HNR Issue 66, November 2013

Reviews |

online exclusives

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.

prehistoric

SHAMAN Kim Stanley Robinson, Orbit, 2013, $27.00/£18.99, hb, 456pp, 9780316098076 Billed as a coming-of-age story set 30,000 years ago during the height of the Ice Age, the novel follows the life of a shaman-in-training named Loon from his initiation-by-wandering-alone to adulthood, fatherhood, and his achievement of full shaman status several years later. Along the way he quarrels with his mentor, falls in love with a girl from another clan, gets captured by proto-Eskimos – and is rescued by his mentor with the help of a lonely Neanderthal. Since it’s heavy on descriptions of day-by-day activities and light on plot, I had difficulty getting into this book in the early going. For what little dialogue there is, the author chose to not use quotation marks. This sometimes made it difficult to determine when dialogue stopped and internal monologue resumed. I also had difficulty trying to determine exactly where this story was taking place. Based on the verbal descriptions in the text, I was first thinking it was maybe just east of the Mediterranean or the Black Sea. By the end of the novel, I had figured out that it must have been somewhere in what is now France or Spain, but had there been a map at the front of the book, such as found in The Clan of the Cave Bear, it would have been extremely helpful. However, in spite of these drawbacks, by the time I had neared the end, I had become quite attached to the characters and found the book to be rather engrossing. The anthropological lore that went into this book was first class. We need to read books like this in order to remind ourselves how rough life was before agriculture and civilization turned us all into spoiled house cats. Barry Webb Prehistoric — 1st Century

classical

HANNIBAL: Fields of Blood Ben Kane, Preface, 2013, £14.99, hb, 421pp, 9781848092358 Fields of Blood begins its tale in 216 BC, a particularly violent time in history when Rome and Carthage vied for supremacy, with Rome initially coming in second best. It is a return for Ben Kane to the Carthage/Rome conflict, having taken time away from it to write his Spartacus series. The first impressions as you raise book in hand are of a hefty book, something for readers to get their teeth into, though the cover does little to inspire and is not to his usual standards. The novel itself concentrates on the continued story of three individuals, Hanno, Quintus and Aurelia, who experience the conflict from differing points of view but still have a close bond of which I will not enlighten you; that’s an experience I shall leave to you to discover. Ben Kane really shows great skill and knowledge in his delivery of this novel. His immense knowledge of the time period comes shining through, but it’s not the facts that he relies upon. His descriptive writing is a joy to read as it moves readers relentlessly from one emotion to another throughout the book. Battle scenes are, to coin a phrase, ‘mind blowing’. Ben Kane picks you bodily from your chairs and drops you into the mayhem, slaughter and blood. The one slight issue is the plot offers no real surprises, but it does deliver on so many other levels, so much so that it makes it difficult to complain of the lack of originality. Robert Southworth

1st century

DEATH IN THE ASHES Albert A. Bell, Jr., Perseverance, 2013, $15.95, pb, 270pp, 9781564745323 Four years after witnessing the horrors of Vesuvius and Pompeii and the death of his uncle, Pliny the Younger still has nightmares of the disaster and has avoided returning to that locale. However, when his close friend Aurelia’s husband is accused of murdering a servant in Pompeii, he feels compelled to offer his assistance. He welcomes an excuse to escape from Rome, leaving behind his mother’s irksome plans for his marriage, his feelings for the slave Aurora, and a troublesome legal case. But solving the crime isn’t simple: the murder scene has been disturbed, questions abound, and Pliny finds himself confounded by the very people he’s trying to help.

Why is Calpurnius so unwilling to talk? What is the emperor’s connection? And just who is Lady Plautia? As the web of intrigue is untangled, Pliny discovers information that endangers them all. The smart, witty Pliny is a likable detective, the bantering friendship between Pliny and Tacitus adds humor to the suspenseful tale, and there are ample details of Roman life in A.D. 84. Bell admirably juggles his multiple storylines and characters. A helpful glossary and list of characters is included. Although part of a series, I found it enjoyable as a standalone mystery, and I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys the novels of Steven Saylor, Lindsey Davis, and Ruth Downie. Michael I. Shoop CLAUDIA, WIFE OF PONTIUS PILATE Diana Wallis Taylor, Revell, 2013, $14.99, pb, 336pp, 9780800721381 Author of several books featuring New Testament women, Diana Wallis Taylor turns her attention to Claudia, the wife of Pontius Pilate. In the year AD 24, Claudia, the granddaughter of an emperor and daughter of an outcast, grows up in isolation. When a new emperor comes to power, Claudia is torn from her family and sent to the palace in Rome, where she is betrothed to the dashing soldier Lucius Pontius Pilate. The newlyweds are assigned to far-off Judea, where Pilate serves as governor over a rebellious population of Jews. In the midst of violent conflicts between Jews and Gentiles, Claudia strives to learn more about Jewish culture and, against her husband’s will, witnesses Jesus’ healing powers and message of peace. Claudia, mentioned briefly in the Book of Matthew, is an intriguing character, and Wallis Taylor brings the story of an obscure historical figure to life. Through Claudia’s eyes, we witness the crucifixion and obtain a unique look at Pontius Pilate, a caring but flawed man who has been placed in an untenable situation. This is a touching story of love, survival, and belief as told by an oftenoverlooked observer. Rebecca Henderson Palmer THE SWORD AND THE THRONE Henry Venmore-Rowland, Bantam, 2013, £14.99, hb, 351pp, 9780593068533 The Sword and the Throne continues the memoir begun in The Last Caesar (HNR 61) of Aulus Caecina Severus, an ambitious senator caught up in the turbulent Year of the Four Emperors, 68-69 AD. A real-life Roman mentioned by Tacitus, Caecina was instrumental in Galba’s plot to overthrow Nero, but now Emperor Galba has summoned him to Rome on an embezzlement charge (‘true...[but] not something for which senators were ever prosecuted’, as our hero wryly HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 17

observes years later). Bent on revenge, Caecina, now a military commander, joins the march of the Rhine legions over the Alps to Rome to oust Galba in favour of their General, Vitellius. But before long, bad news reaches them: the Praetorian Guard has already replaced Galba with its own man, Otho. There’s no turning back. Caecina has a devious rival to deal with, and soon there’s another threat in the offing. With Caecina as narrator, the author brings a fresh perspective to an already popular fictional setting. Intelligent, unscrupulous, brave, treacherous, Caecina is a dangerously attractive protagonist manoeuvring at the centre of events and increasingly corrupted by them. The supporting characters are vividly realised too, especially Caecina’s sparky wife Salonina and his clever Hibernian freedman Totavalas. This is an accomplished novel: well written, smoothly plotted, its dialogue sharp and natural. There are battles, intrigues and betrayals, but also welcome touches of levity. Otters’ noses, anyone? Sarah Cuthbertson

The Eagle’s Vengeance sees Centurion Marcus Tribulus Corvus (aka Valerius Aquila) and company return to the north of Britain. With insurrection brewing at the highest levels and the Legions under strict orders to hold their positions, the Tungrian cohort is sent into the land of the Venicones, further north than Hadrian’s Wall, further even than the Antonine wall. Their task is as audacious as can be… to recover the revered Eagle of the Sixth Legion. Without this symbol of Roman power, the Legion will be doomed to a dishonourable disbandment. Confronting an old enemy, the Selgovae war leader Calgus, on top of hidden threats from within, not to mention from the vengeful barbarians, Marcus and his men will need Fortuna with them if they are to survive. Well up to the cut and thrust of Legionary life, The Eagle’s Vengeance is a book that I would certainly recommend to anyone looking for a military page turner, as well as those with an interest in the Roman army. For my part, I cannot wait for the next novel in the saga. Highly recommended. Chris James

SOLID CITIZENS David Wishart, Crème de la Crime (Severn House), 2013, $28.95/£19.99, hb, 224pp, 9781780290546 Marcus Corvinus is settling in for Winter Festival at his daughter’s home in the small town of Bovillae near Rome when Publius Silius Nerva comes calling. Nerva, a prominent senator from Bovillae, needs help solving the embarrassing matter of Quintus Caesius, a politician who had the temerity to get himself bludgeoned to death at the back door of Bovillae’s brothel. Now the town elders want to hand the investigation over to Corvinus and wash their hands of it. Corvinus quickly discovers that small towns can be just as riddled with corruption and secrets as Rome. The more people he interviews, the more suspects he adds to his list—until two prime suspects end up dead as well. After a visit to back to Rome, the pieces finally fall into place, and he solves the murders in time for holiday festivities. While I thoroughly enjoyed the mystery, the “below stairs” rivalries of the servants were a bit overblown, and the prevalence of modern idioms stopped me in my tracks more than a few times. Although I would have liked to see more phrases evoking Roman life in AD 39, I still found the book to be a very entertaining read. Kristina Blank Makansi

DARK OMENS Rosemary Rowe, Severn House, 2013, $28.95/£19.99, hb, 240pp, 9780727882998 In Roman Britain, Libertus gets a visit to his mosaic workshop from Genialis, a citizen from a nearby village, who wants a rush job for his betrothed’s threshold. Preoccupied with the festival’s sacrifice, Genialis is less than enthusiastic about his bride, who turns out to be his brother’s recent widow. When an old priest bungles the sacrifice, a terrible blizzard blows in, and news of the Emperor’s death reaches Britain, townspeople begin to fear dark omens are coming true. And then Genialis goes missing. As Libertus searches for Genialis, a mutilated body is found in a snow bank and riots in town due to the Emperor’s death begin to threaten public safety. Then a second body is found, and Libertus comes to realize that both good men and bad are capable of evil deeds. I found Dark Omens to be a well-researched mystery, and I particularly appreciated the detailed foreword which helped me put the time and place in historical context. The plot had plenty of twists and turns, and the author tied the separate threads together in a satisfying ending. Kristina Blank Makansi

2nd century

THE EAGLE’S VENGEANCE (Empire VI) Anthony Riches, Hodder & Stoughton, 2013, £14.99, hb, 355pp, 9781444711905 Bloody; Graphic; Intense. These are just some of the words that could describe this new addition to Anthony Riches’ Empire series. It is a brilliant book, with action aplenty as well a clever plot within. 18 | Reviews |

HNR Issue 66, November 2013

3rd century

THE FAR SHORE Nick Brown, Hodder & Stoughton, 2013, £18.99, hb, 439pp. 9781444714913 AD 272. Cassius Corbulo, an agent of the Imperial Security Service, arrives in Rhodes on a routine mission to pick up some important papers from the deputy commander of the Security Service and then take them to Antioch. On his arrival he finds the deputy commander has been

murdered. Accompanied by his ex-gladiator bodyguard Indavara and servant Simo, Corbulo begins an investigation. He follows the assassin’s trail to the farthest reaches of the empire to an area where Rome’s power is slender, and murder is the ultimate weapon of power. This is the latest in the successful Agent of Rome series, a fast-paced, action- packed novel tinged with humour which brings alive the harsh reality of the period, the people and the culture. The battle sequences are vivid and expertly told without being graphically violent. This book can be read independently of the others in the series, as there is sufficient back story to fill in any gaps. This is a welcome addition to the genre. Recommended. Mike Ashworth

4th century

THE LION AND THE LAMB John Henry Clay, Hodder & Stoughton, 2013, £14.99, hb, 468pp, 9781444761320 Britannia in the 4th century is very different to the earlier centuries of Roman occupation. By this time, Roman rule is settled, with the elite deeming themselves Roman but still retaining some of the old tribal ideals. This is where the story of brother and sister Paul and Amanda and Irish Eachna is played out. Paul and Amanda live in the rich villa country of the south, but circumstances see Paul fleeing his home and joining the beleaguered Roman Army in the north. Meanwhile Amanda is witness to the wider politics of late Roman Britain in all its complexity. Eachna is enslaved, cruelly, and escapes southward toward Hadrian’s Wall and another life. This book very much feels as though the author had ideas of the story he wanted to tell, perhaps showing how different the Late Roman era was from the earlier Empire. So a series of marks need to be hit, such as Christianity, politics, slavery, army, civilians, etc. But this means that the plot rather exceeds the characters. For the most part, the story of the individuals does not really leap off the page, except for a few scenes where it really shines. There are one or two slips in material culture: were there hairbrushes in 4th- century Britain? Would a character view the sky as being velvet? But overall the setting feels authentic, and the plot succeeds in showing that by the 4th century the Empire was becoming unstable, and changing into something very different. S Garside-Neville

5th century

THE RUIN John Sawney, Fireship, 2013, $15.50, pb, 358pp, 978161179257 In the 5th century AD, the Romans pulled out of Britain, and the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes moved 1st Century — 5th Century

in. The Scots also increased their raids. In the midst of this chaos, the protagonist, Eiteol, finds himself a man hunted by Hengest, leader of the Jutes; the mysterious Bishop Germanus and leader of a motley group of leftover Romanized Britons; and newly arrived Saxons. Eiteol’s “crime” was saving the elderly would-be leader of the Britons, Vertigern, from assassination. The story revolves around the journey of Eiteol and Vertigern into the hills of Wales, where they find not the peace and safety they hoped for, but more death and destruction. Along the way Eiteol and Vertigern encounter a number of narrow escapes and pick up another fugitive, a young boy named Ambris. He ends up betraying them to the forces of Bishop Germanus, where he is recognized as the son of Ambrosius Aurelianus, a former king and hero of the Britons. The book started slowly but became more interesting the further I got into it. The plot was also difficult to discern because it seemed to be mostly just a chase tale, but there was a lot of intrigue which became clear toward the end of the book. The novel also provides a good feel for the brutishness of life in 5th-century Britain. Barry Webb

HILD

6th century

FACES IN THE FIRE Donnita L. Rogers, Bagwyn, 2013, $15.95, pb, 257pp, 9780866988018 A series, of which this is the first, based on the women of Beowulf written by a woman who taught the epic in high school for years and published by an imprint connected with the Arizona State University Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies? An attractive proposal to me. I enjoy first-person historicals, and this is from the point of view of Freawaru, Hrothgar’s daughter. This volume begins with an idyllic childhood as the king’s daughter then follows through the attack then death of Grendel and to our heroine being sent as a “peaceweaver” bride to Hrothgar’s enemy, Ingeld. Plenty of research has been undertaken in the creation of this novel. Unfortunately, with all this going for it, I found the book difficult to enjoy. Many of the skills of a historical novelist, more than just the research that goes into a dissertation, are lacking. The author never found a way around the given problem of a young woman by definition being excluded from the most exciting scenes, even from having

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Nicola Griffith, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013, $27.00/£20.00, hb, 560pp, 9780374280871 Hild is three years old when the book opens. Even at that point, Hild’s worldview – as the “light of the world” her mother believes she was born to be – is different. When her father, the King of Elmet, is poisoned, her family goes to live with her uncle, Edwin of Northumbria, destined to become overking of the Anglisc through any means necessary. Hild becomes the king’s seer, and her family is effectively placed at Edwin’s mercy. Against the backdrop of a violent world that is dramatically evolving from paganism to Christianity, Hild grows into young womanhood. She is a warrior and a leader, wielding a sword as well as any of Edwin’s men. She is likely a sensitive – but more than this, perhaps; she is completely in tune with the natural world, matching cause with effect, being instinctively aware of her physical surroundings. She kills enemies without compassion, yet she is able to see a veritable wasteland and envision making it into an oasis for her people, to whom she is loyal. In many ways, she is an equal with any man of her time. Even after Hild receives baptism, more as a method of ensuring Edwin the Anglisc crown than in a display of religious fervor, she is more naturalist than Christian. The birds, the waters, the skies – these are her apostles. Indeed, in Griffth’s book, Christ has precious little sway over Hild, and there is virtually no warning that we are being introduced to a woman who will become a revered saint. Clearly, Griffith has done a mammoth amount of research into the early Middle Ages. Filled with complex relationships, Griffith’s narrative flows like a river; Hild’s thoughts and deeds are expressed in pitch-perfect tone, in prose approaching poetry. Anyone expecting to open up this book and read a dry fictionalized biography about St. Hilda of Whitby is going to be sorely disappointed. Unexpected, perhaps, but utterly brilliant. Ilysa Magnus 5th Century — 8th Century

a driving purpose. Freawaru gets told everything after the fact. The skill of setting scenes that draw us in with details and metaphor is also missing, as is the ability to create story arcs and tension. The threat of Grendel goes on and on for years and gets diffused by a thousand daily duldrums. Page 130 gives the starkest example. Two brief paragraphs in the center of the page set us up for a return of Grendel with the lengthening dark. (Finally!) And another year and a half pass in the very next paragraph. End of tension, end of caring. Ann Chamberlin

7th century

THE CURSE OF BABYLON Richard Blake, Hodder & Stoughton, 2013, £14.99, pb, 484pp, 9781444709735 This is another adventure of Brother Aelric, a monk in England who was once the Lord Aelric, a senior official in the eastern (Byzantine) Roman Empire. Unlike previous instalments, this one is told almost completely in flashback, a wise decision, as it is a very physical tale, with large amounts of fighting, fornication, leaping from rooftops and other forms of derring-do. This time Lord Aelric is attempting an essential land reform program for the Empire, which inevitably brings him into conflict with established interests. While attempting to fend off political moves to inflame the mob and influence the indecisive emperor Heraclius against him, he also has to deal with Persian intrigue. A war between the two empires has been going on for some time, and the Romans are losing. A Persian ship is loose in Byzantine home waters, containing an old adversary, Shahin, who is making extraordinary efforts to retrieve a magical artifact called the horn of Babylon that has come into Aelric’s possession. Finally he becomes entangled with a woman called Antonia, who has disguised herself as a man so she can pursue a career as a petitioner, but is certainly more than what she appears to be. A Byzantine adventure indeed! Aelric is a trendy anti-hero, although his ruthlessness and cynicism are less evident in his earlier life. There is still a lot of material that is frankly very demeaning to human dignity, but if you can put aside the occasional descriptions of perverse sexual practices and also that the mighty lord Aelric does a lot of footwork that really would have been done by underlings, this is a very exciting and intriguing story with lots of twists and turns. Martin Bourne

8th century

SAXON: The Emperor’s Elephant Tim Severin, Macmillan, 2013, £16.99, hb, 372pp, 9780230769106 The Saxon of the title is Sigwulf, a minor Saxon HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 19

prince exiled to the court of King Carolus. It is the second in the Saxon series. Having really enjoyed the first, I looked forward to the read and I wasn’t disappointed. In this latest instalment, Carolus wants to send unusual and extravagant gifts to the Caliph of Baghdad in return for presents received. Forget gold or precious stones: Sigwulf is charged with hunting down a number of exotic animals and birds. The challenge is that they have to be white, the colour of the court of Baghdad. Some are rare to the point of elusive, such as a unicorn. Once Sigwulf has obtained these animals, he is then charged with delivering them safely to Baghdad. But someone is out to sabotage the mission, and that includes threats to Sigwulf ’s life. The search for the animals is exciting and engrossing. As well as familiar characters such as Osric (Sigwulf ’s companion from the first book), he has new associates such as Walo, a vulnerable young man with a gift for working with animals, and ship’s captain, Protis. Once the animals are assembled (including the truly terrifying aurochs, a type of wild ox), Sigwulf has to travel with them on their long, perilous journey to Baghdad. As to be expected, Severin’s portrayal of the Saxon natural world is masterful. Whether sailing on the hazardous river Rhine, camping out in a crumbling Rome or arriving in a sweltering, magnificent Baghdad, he takes the reader there and we share every exhausting, exhilarating mile. I had one minor criticism: the elephant of the title only makes a minor appearance. The set-up for the next book is that the animal will play a major role. So as a title, it seems an odd choice. E.M. Powell

THE PAGAN LORD

E D I TORS’ C H OICE

HEREWARD: End of Days

James Wilde, Bantam Press, 2013, £12.99, hb, 390pp, 9780593065020 This is the third outing for Hereward the Wake, England’s 11th-century forgotten hero. In 1071, England is under the grip of the conquering Norman king, William. The hated William has secured power and control through his ruthless campaigns. Still holding out are the rebel English in the east. But their hero, Hereward, is missing and they have to fight alone. William looks set to be victorious. Hereward, of course, returns and has to lead his outnumbered people against the Norman invaders. Wilde portrays Hereward as a complex individual who has his own demons as well as those he fights. His conflict with his brother Redwald provides an extra layer to the unfolding drama, and we share in Hereward’s conflicted emotions. As well as the central drama of the fate of England, there are a number of other exciting sub-plots woven in. Secondary characters such as Deda, the Norman knight, and Rowena, a young English widow, are intriguing and credible. With this fast-paced and exciting novel, we are drawn into Hereward’s world from the off. The battles are bloody, and the boggy landscape is as treacherous as those who walk it. Having enjoyed this book so much, I will be seeking out Hereward’s first two adventures and look forward to the next. E.M. Powell

9th century

TO SIN WITH A VIKING Michelle Willingham, Harlequin, 2013, $6.50, pb, 288pp, 9780373297504

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Bernard Cornwell, HarperCollins, 2013, £20.00, hb, 320pp, 9780007331901 / Harper, 2014, $27.99, hb, 296pp, 9780061969706 I do not generally read series of books, but I do read the Uhtred books, and greet each one with pleasure. It inevitably has the ‘failings’ I find with all series: toofamiliar scenes, too-familiar jokes, the ‘shaggy-dogstory’ element. Where Bernard Cornwell excels is that despite this there is usually a freshness: an unexpected twist, a pitch-perfect action set-piece, a whimsy, audacity, horror or world-view that beguiles with its elegance (or inelegance). In Pagan Lord what intrigued me first was Uhtred as flawed father: truly a poignant strand by the end of the novel. I then enjoyed the freebooting energy of the plot. Uhtred returns to Bebbanburg! An element I always enjoy in these novels is the Christian/Pagan conflict. As modern England gradually secularises, Cornwell muses on how it became Christian in the first place, and I find there is a relevance for then and now. Finally there is always a rough poetry to these books. Inspired by the earliest English verse, they convey the otherness of that melancholy and contracting world. Then, before you know it, you are in the middle of a pivotal historic battle, a symphony of dread, brutality, entrails and heroism. And a great ending. Masterful. Richard Lee 20 | Reviews |

HNR Issue 66, November 2013

Caragh Ó Brannon is starving. On the rainswept western Irish coast, the grasses are yellow and dry, and the inhabitants are apparently clueless about obtaining food from the sea. Just when it seems things could get no worse, a Viking ship arrives. Caragh’s brother launches a desperate counter-attack for food and hijacks the Viking ship and crew. Meanwhile, Caragh knocks the Viking leader unconscious and chains him up to stop the violence. The remainder of this romance charts the tempestuous falling-in-love of Caragh and the Viking chief and the retrieval of a stray brother, ship, crew and, unfortunately for Caragh, her Viking’s estranged wife. I have read good Harlequin Historicals before. This was not one of them. The historical errors are not major – they are many and minor (Willingham’s Dublin is a sizeable city, its Viking inhabitants have a propensity to burn human sacrifices, and Norwegian Vikings are blonde while Danes are dark). But it was the storytelling that really irked. Willingham gratingly ‘tells’ the characters’ emotions throughout, the plot is choppy, and character feelings regularly see-saw without coherence. Even the romance is undercut by the author’s determination to make the Viking hero stereotypically harsh. Not recommended. Carol Hoggart

11th century

THE KING’S HOUNDS Martin Jensen (trans. Tara Chace), AmazonCrossing, 2013, $14.95, pb, 272pp, 8th Century — 11th Century

9781477807262 1018. A bloody war has just ended, Viking marauders roam, and tensions between Saxons and Danes are at fever pitch. The Danish king Cnut, now ruler of England, seeks to foster unity. When murder threatens his goals, he looks to an unlikely source to solve it. Chance has thrown together former monk Winston, England’s most talented illuminator, and dispossessed nobleman Halfdan – aptly named, since he’s half Danish and half English. Can they solve the murder(s) before England is plunged into yet another war? The characterization works well: Winston’s intellectuality plays off of Halfdan’s skirt-chasing rogue. Halfdan as narrator didn’t exactly do it for me (as a woman, I wanted to alternately slap his face and kick him in the…), but he does provide a wry, worldly tone to the story. The casual brutality of the time as well as the politics are aptly portrayed, and the suspects plentiful. No attempt is made at historicity for the dialogue (modern idiom and slang abound), but as this is a translation from the Danish, it’s impossible to tell if this is the author’s or the translator’s choice. Regardless, it doesn’t detract overmuch from the enjoyment of this mystery, which has a novel time period and setting as background. Bethany Latham

12th century

ANARCHY Stewart Binns, Penguin, 2013, £6.99, pb, 544pp, 9780718194598 Harold of Hereford was raised by his mother Estrith, a respected nun and churchwright, to take pride in his English heritage and to honour his father, Sweyn of Bourne, and the legacy of his grandfather, Hereward of Bourne. During the first half of Anarchy, we learn of Harold’s early exposure to Norman savagery then follow his coming of age and knightly adventures in the eastern Mediterranean and the Holy Land. Harold survives a pirate attack, participates in the destruction of Zadar, loses the woman he loves and becomes one of the founding members of the Knights Templar. After the battle for Tyre, Harold returns to England with his faithful companion and sergeant, Eadmer. In the second half, Harold becomes further dedicated to his English ancestry and commits himself to helping Empress Matilda secure the throne after the death of Henry II. When Stephen of Blois seizes the throne, civil war erupts across England. Stewart Binns has created a story full of adventure, heroic figures and calamitous events. Historic detail is woven seamlessly into the narrative. The voice is that of a man relaying his personal story, which from time to time creates a sense of looking down on the action rather than being in the thick of it. Nonetheless, the characters and times readily come alive. A thoroughly 12th Century — 14th Century

enjoyable read. Mary Tod GREEK FIRE James Boschert, Fireship, 2013, $19.95, pb, 544pp, 9781611792553 In 1176 AD, while in the city of Acre in the Levant, Sir Talon de Gilles and his Sergeant named Max are ordered to accompany Sir Guy de Veres, the Knight Templar Senior, to Constantinople. The Templars are to meet secretly with the Emperor of Byzantium to discuss an impending crusade. While in Constantinople, Talon befriends the Byzantine emissary, Alexios Kalothesos. Talon soon becomes entangled in palace intrigue. His discovery of Greek fire by the ships of the Byzantine navy, used as a weapon to destroy enemy ships, falls into the hands of an enemy of Byzantium. The secret of Greek fire had been well guarded by the Byzantine government. This novel is the fourth book of the adventures of Sir Talon. I have read all the books in the series and enjoyed reading each one. The author knows his history – the French, Byzantine and Arab cultures – and molds his stories into exciting adventure tales where his hero is constantly put in difficult situations. I would recommend reading the previous three books only to obtain a better background of the main characters, especially Sir Talon, who as a young boy, had been captured by the Arabs and trained as an assassin. I highly recommend this book and series to readers who enjoy exciting tales of the Levant and France during the 12th century. Jeff Westerhoff THE SUMMER QUEEN Elizabeth Chadwick, Sphere, 2013, £16.99, hb, 496pp, 9781847445452 / Sourcebooks Landmark, July 2014, $15.99, pb, 560pp, 9781402294068 Elizabeth Chadwick writing Eleanor of Aquitaine is an enticing prospect. In earlier Chadwick books, Eleanor has been the subject of vignettes. This is her chance to give one of the most remarkable lives of medieval royalty the definitive portrait of our generation, in a trilogy that will necessarily be chock-full of iconic events. No-one is better qualified for the task. This opening novel takes a very young Eleanor and demonstrates how unglamorous glamour can be. Initially cosseted, events push her to an enforced marriage as child-bride to a complete stranger – which also, of course, makes her Queen of France, and one of the most feted heiresses in medieval Europe. The story unfolds in marital difficulty, scandal, court intrigue, crusade, and finally a dynastic shift – leaving us poised for a new beginning in the next book. For me the stand-out episodes surrounded Petronella’s wayward and damaging romance, the emotional and political breakdown in the Holy Land, and Henry Plantagenet’s energetic arrival in the tale. Equally well written, but less enjoyable, were the scenes of Louis’ psychological breakdown, and Eleanor’s increasing sense of entrapment.

Chadwick’s writing is at its very best, both sensitive and nuanced, and I very much look forward to the next – for me more exciting – episode in Eleanor’s life. Richard Lee

14th century

MASTER OF WAR David Gilman, Head of Zeus, 2013, £15.99, pb, 501pp, 9781781850197 1346, and the reign of Edward III. Edward’s ambition is to regain his lost lands in France, and so begins the 100 Years’ War. He needs all the fighting men he can get, which is how Thomas Blackstone finds himself wielding a longbow instead of being sentenced to hang for a crime he did not commit. He finds himself at Crecy where, although badly wounded, he is knighted by the Black Prince for services rendered. King Edward commands Godfrey de Harcourt to care for Thomas, and he is taken to the castle at Noyelles. From then on his life changes completely. This is an excellent book. Many have been written about the 100 Years’ War, the prowess of the Black Prince, Crecy, Poitiers, etc., but this story is told from a totally different angle. Thomas Blackstone is a commoner, a peasant, a stone quarryman by trade with few rights or privileges but who rises in life to make a name for himself. After Crecy we learn of the war from the French side through Godfrey de Harcourt who, despite his family’s divided loyalties, is himself loyal to King Edward. To a certain extent we see how ‘the other half lives’. I was gripped by this book from page one and learned a lot about the age from it. The characterisation was good and the fictitious blended well with the facts. It will certainly stay on my bookshelves. Thoroughly recommended. Marilyn Sherlock THE WALLS OF BYZANTIUM (The Mistra Chronicles: Book 1) James Heneage, Heron Books (Quercus), 2013, £16.99, hb, 565pp, 9781782061120 By 1392, the Byzantine Empire has been reduced to the city of Constantinople and the Peloponnese. There is talk of a mysterious treasure, rescued from Constantinople over a century before by the Emperor’s Varangian guards, which may yet save the last of the Empire from the Turks, but no-one knows what it actually is, and even 16-yearold Luke Magoris, a descendant of one of those Varangians, believes it to be a myth – but then Luke becomes caught up in the power-politics between the rival cities of Monemvasia and Mistra, the Ottomans, and the trading empires of Venice and Genoa. His search for the truth about the treasure and the need to keep ahead of his enemies take him on a breakneck adventure around the eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans and switchback changes of fortune. HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 21

This is storytelling on a grand scale, with a cast of thousands and tortuous political manoeuvrings. There are scenes of undoubted power and terror, such as the clash of the Ottoman army and the Crusaders at Nicopolis in 1396; however, a great deal of the writing seems to strive too hard to be epic and sensual, with the opposite effect. The graphic sex-scenes, mostly involving the novel’s “bad girl”, Zoë Mamonas, seem superfluous. Luke is an admirable hero, but the characters who really come alive are the spirited Anna Laskaris, the love of Luke’s life, and the ruthless, ambitious Zoë. The author clearly has a well-researched knowledge of late mediaeval Byzantine history, but on a pedantic point, bougainvillea and prickly pears, although ubiquitous in the Mediterranean region today, are both natives of South America and would be unknown in Europe at the time the novel is set. This is the first in a trilogy and inconveniently ends on a cliff-hanger. Mary Seeley THE STUDY OF MURDER Susan McDuffie, Five Star, 2013, $25.95, hb, 264pp, 9781432827205 This is the latest in Susan McDuffie’s 14thcentury mystery series. Scottish sleuth Muirteach MacPhee finds himself accompanying Donald, a young wayward student, to the city of Oxford in 1374, along with his wife Mariota. Against the noisy backdrop of town and gown, a tavern maid disappears and Donald Muirteach helps Undersheriff Grymbaud investigate. Meanwhile, Mariota disguises herself in order to attend allmale classes at the medical school. Following the gruesome murder of an Oxford master, an aged servant at the college is arrested, causing unrest and riots, followed by another killing in which Mariota’s life is endangered. This raises the stakes for Muirteach. A fast-paced tale with excellent period detail and lively characterizations, Oxford comes to life through Muirteach’s wry point of view. The mores and customs of medieval Oxford do not seem that different compared to a modern university town. The author includes a map of Muirteach’s Oxford, which is helpful as the reader follows him through the case. Many twists and turns keep the reader guessing, and the use of ancient parchments and manuscripts contributes to the medieval setting. McDuffie provides an entertaining adventure into the past. Liz Allenby MUSE Mary Novik, Doubleday Canada, 2013, C$22.95, pb, 324pp, 9780385668217 In her second novel, Mary Novik explores the life of a woman betrayed by a real historical poet. Muse tells the story of the unnamed woman who bore the children of the canonical 14th-century poet Petrarch, the inspiration for a Renaissance in English literature. His poetry became famous for worshipping an unattainable beauty, yet Solange Le Blanc, born into poverty in Avignon when the Papacy was based there (1309-1377), is the opposite of Petrarch’s idealized lady. 22 | Reviews |

HNR Issue 66, November 2013

After she flees from the nunnery where she grew up and became a scribe, Solange meets the as yet unknown Petrarch, who convinces her to produce fair copies of his work. The two become passionate lovers until Petrarch encounters his unattainable beauty Laura de Sade and finds a new inspiration for his poetry. Despite the success of the poetry inspired by his idealistic love, Petrarch continues to correspond with his flesh-and-blood lover, Solange. In Novik’s imagining of this medieval love story, Solange is more than a muse to Petrarch; she is his critic, his lover, and a devotee of his work. Told in Solange’s first-person point of view, Muse recreates 14th-century Avignon: its corruption and excesses, its beauty and its art. Throughout, Novik’s feminist sensibility dominates, reclaiming Solange’s lost female history through the familiar physical, emotional, and mental cycles that many women across history share. From Solange’s birth to her apprenticeship as a scribe, we empathize with her, especially when tragedy thrusts her from a sequestered, female-centred home to negotiate the world of men. Terri Baker HAWKWOOD’S SWORD Frank Payton, Fireship, 2013, $18.98, pb, 348pp, 9781611792539 In 1361, Sir John Hawkwood is leading an army of mercenaries known as the White Company through Italy. The army consists of men from England and Germany, hired by the Pope, to defend the Marquis of Monferrato. Monferrato’s land is being attacked by Bernado Visconti, the ruler of Lombardy, who has an army led by Count Landau of Milan. This was a time in Italian history when the various city-states fought against each other for power and land. Prior to arriving in Italy, Sir John fought for Prince Edward at Poitiers in France. He was made a knight by the king after the battle. The story includes a love interest, a young Italian lady who wins Sir John’s heart. My only issue with the novel was the name confusion between John Hawkwood, who was called Jack at times and Gianni at other times, along with members of his band named John Brise and Jack Onsloe. At times, first names were used in the dialog, and I had to reread the preceding paragraphs to determine who was being addressed. Other than that minor flaw, I found the story a fun read, with well-drawn out characters and wellwritten prose. Mr. Payton is knowledgeable about Italian history, and his accurate descriptions of the settings add to the authenticity of the story. Highly recommended, and if other books about Hawkwood are written, I would definitely read the next ones in this series. Jeff Westerhoff SHADOW OF THE ALCHEMIST: A Medieval Noir Jeri Westerson, Minotaur, 2013, $25.99, hb, 320pp, 9781250000309 This entertaining series featuring Crispin Guest never disappoints. Once a wealthy knight, Crispin was stripped of his title when he was found guilty of treason (and rightly so). Now, with the help of his young “apprentice,” Crispin makes his way in

the seedy neighborhoods of 14th-century London as the Tracker, investigating murder, kidnappings – whatever sustains his living. In this 6th entry into the series, Crispin comes up against murder, a kidnapping, alchemy, and the search for the Philosopher’s Stone. Along the way, he engages with his former friend, powerful Henry, Lord Derby, who is battling King Richard II’s refusal to open Parliament. Westerson whips history and mystery into a delicious blend. It has been a pleasure to watch Crispin transform in these books from a bitter man into one who has (somewhat) accepted his lot in life… always glimpsing the chance to reclaim his former status. Crispin helps people. Some admire him, while others fear him. He still drinks too much. And he gets beat up a lot. It would be interesting to know what path Crispin would choose if he did have the chance to rejoin the king’s court (with no strings this time around) and actually exchange his hard-earned rags for his lost riches. Alana White

15th century

MACHIAVELLI: A Renaissance Life Joseph Markulin, Prometheus Books, 2013, $21.95/C$23.00, pb, 740pp, 9781616148058 Styled a “nonfiction novel,” Machiavelli is a doorstop of a book about the famous (and infamous) Florentine civil servant and philosopher who managed to survive through the tempestuous, cyclical regimes of various Medicis, Borgias, Sforzas and other ill-assorted, decadent, nasty and downright evil princes of both the Church and the State. Florence tried hard to maintain its independent status, as did many Italian citystates starting from the fall of the Roman Empire, and was perhaps more successful at it than many others. In a time and place where loyalties were changed more quickly (and definitely more often!) than one’s clothing, Niccolo Machiavelli held steadfast in his allegiance to “the rule of the people and justice” in Florence, and hoped that one day that would be the norm in Italy. Through the playful but insightful use of dialogue and story-telling, mixed with outright history, Markulin presents a very entertaining and reasonably clear overview of a very complex, tangled and turbulent period. Machiavelli rose from humble origins to become the Secretary to the Gonfaloniere or governor of Florence, and was sent on delicate, protracted ambassadorial missions to negotiate with the likes of the prophetpriest Savanarola and the brilliant but evil Caesar Borgia. But the Wheel of Fortune turned full circle more than once in his life, and he found himself at the bottom more often than at the top. The only thing missing from this book is the bibliographical foundation for the “nonfiction” part; there are no footnotes or references for the historical assertions and events. However, the “novel” part is certainly interesting and entertaining. Mary F. Burns 14th Century — 15th Century

16th century

A RESCUE FOR A QUEEN Fiona Buckley, Severn House, 2013, $28.95/£19.99, hb, 224pp, 9781780290409 Eleventh in Fiona Buckley’s series featuring Elizabeth I and her spy Ursula Blanchard Stannard, A Rescue for a Queen opens at the funeral of Ursula’s husband Hugh Stannard in England, but soon shifts across the channel into the Netherlands where Ursula’s greatest foe, the Countess of Northumberland, now resides. Cecil, Elizabeth’s Secretary of State, persuades Ursula to go to such a dangerous location by concealing her mission from her. She thinks she’s escorting her foster daughter to her wedding, but the engagement has been brought about intentionally to entice Ursula back into action for the Queen. Mary Stuart is once again suspected of plotting her way to the English throne, and Elizabeth needs Ursula to uncover the truth. Witnessing the death of other spies sent on this mission and chased by several enemies including the Inquisition, Ursula loses her stomach for clandestine work and leans even more on her trusty manservant, Brockley, much to Brockley’s wife’s distress. The book traverses Europe from Bruges to Rome to Madrid. A surprise visit by a past character in the series will please readers of these mysteries. In the end, with some help from her friends, Ursula once again keeps her nerve enough to protect her beloved England from foreign invasions—although I won’t reveal who the actual plotters turn out to be. Longtime readers of Fiona Buckley will enjoy this addition to Ursula’s adventures. Judith Starkston MURDER AT HATFIELD HOUSE Amanda Carmack, Obsidian, 2013, $7.99/C$8.99, pb, 288pp, 9780451415110 Kate Haywood, a young musician in the employ of Princess Elizabeth, becomes embroiled in murder when Lord Braceton, Queen Mary’s henchman, descends upon her mistress’s home and Kate’s own father is arrested. Able to go where the princess cannot, Kate acts as Elizabeth’s eyes and ears, helping investigate the murder of Braceton’s servant and other mysterious happenings in the environs of Hatfield House while also attempting to gain enough information to free her father from prison. Kate is aided in her investigations by Anthony, a young lawyer, and Rob Cartman, a player. The competing attentions of the two young men set up a pleasant subplot, as Kate attempts to unravel the coil. Kate is an engaging and likeable sleuth, and the author’s portrayal of the young Princess Elizabeth realistic and plausible. Amanda Carmack writes beautifully and obviously greatly enjoys the Tudor period. I did wish there was a map, or that Carmack had included more specific information about distances 16th Century

between Hatfield House, the village, and other manor houses in the story. This lack of information had me wondering about time and distance when Kate suddenly appears in a different location, jarring me out of the story just a tad. Despite that complaint, I enjoyed Murder at Hatfield House and recommend it; it is a cozy excursion into Tudor times with a lively heroine. I look forward to reading more books in this series and apparently a sequel is already in the works, so I shall not be disappointed. Susan McDuffie IN DEFENSE OF THE QUEEN Michelle Diener, Season Publishing, 2013, $14.99, pb, 355pp, 9780987417633 Artist Susanna Horenbout was almost certainly employed by Henry VIII as his illuminator. None of Susanna’s paintings have survived, and very little is known of her. Intrigued by the success of a Flemish woman in a male-dominated profession at the English court, Michelle Diener has crafted her a fictional context. In Defense of the Queen is Susanna’s third adventure but easily stands alone. Susanna’s life in London is interrupted by the arrival of her brother. Although pleased to see him, Susanna worries he will usurp her position at court. However, Lucas Horenbout carries more than professional rivalry to England; he is the bearer of a secret missive to the embattled Katherine of Aragon. Susanna must choose where her loyalty lies: to Henry Tudor, or to her family and Queen Katherine. Unfortunately, others already know of the letter and will do anything to prevent its delivery. Susanna finds herself shot at, accused of treason, and betrayed by those she thought friends. The plot twists and turns, a second plot rears its ugly head, and the action never stops. Diener has crafted a clever and intricate story, bolstered by solid historical detail and sweetened by the romance between Susanna and the King’s courtier, John Parker. I have a few reservations. Diener tends to employ rather one-dimensional antagonists. Cardinal Wolsey is, as in the preceding volume, an unmitigated villain, and the assassin, Jean, is simply psychopathic. Secondly, Susanna and Parker’s romantic relationship is rather static. I also found the message to the Queen unconvincing in content and importance. Finally, while the second plot surrounding the King’s bastard son supplied a very believable sense of urgency, it appeared quite abruptly in the middle of a drama purportedly concerning the defense of the Queen. Minor criticisms of what is overall a fast-paced, wellresearched historical adventure. Carol Hoggart ROYAL INHERITANCE Kate Emerson, Gallery, 2013, $16.00, pb, 368pp, 9781451661514 Royal Inheritance, the latest novel in Kate Emerson’s Tudor Court series, tells the story of Audrey Malte. Although raised to believe that she is the daughter of John Malte, tailor to King Henry

VIII, as Audrey grows older and interacts more regularly with members of King Henry’s court, she starts to question her origins. The king is overly generous towards her, even though a young woman of her background should receive little if any notice from a monarch. In addition, Audrey’s colouring, which is nothing like John Malte’s, is remarkably similar to both the king’s and that of his daughter Elizabeth. Could Audrey really be the illegitimate daughter of Henry VIII? Royal Inheritance is told through the eyes of Audrey herself, who, while suffering from a prolonged illness, recounts for her young daughter the story of her life. This narrative technique generally works well, although it does remove some of the tension/suspense from the main story given that the reader already knows how certain aspects of the plot will turn out. Audrey Malte is a likable heroine, and her quest to learn the truth about her background is intriguing. The cast of supporting and tertiary characters is extensive, but each character is generally well drawn. Emerson does a commendable job with the characterization of Henry VIII in particular, especially during the later years of his reign. While readers looking for new insights or fresh perspectives on the Tudors will not find much that differentiates this novel from the multitude of others set at Henry VIII’s court, the story is nevertheless an engaging one, and fans of Emerson’s previous Tudor Court novels will undoubtedly be pleased with this latest addition to the series. Melissa Morrisey THE SPANISH QUEEN Carolly Erickson, St. Martin’s, 2013, $25.99, hb, 304pp, 9781250000125 Catherine of Aragon tells her own story by writing a reflective remembrance of her life. She begins with her happy childhood in Spain and recounts her eager anticipation of marrying the English prince Arthur. Her romantic fantasies of life with the future king of England are soon dashed when she discovers the physical weakness and fragility of her new husband. She quickly finds herself widowed and alone far from home. She spends several uncertain years, not knowing if she will remain in England or if she will return to Spain. It is finally decided that she will marry Henry, Arthur’s younger, and more athletic and spirited brother. Her reign as queen is full of heartache, however, as all of her children except for one die as infants. Henry responds by looking for a new wife – a younger one to give him sons and ensure the Tudor succession. Fans of Tudor-era fiction will find few surprises in this novel, but that is not Erickson’s intent. Her writings, self-described as historical entertainments, are more concerned with exploring how the historical figures felt rather than providing actual new historical information. In this Erickson excels. Her Catherine is not the quiet, suffering queen found in so many Tudor novels but instead is the proud, strong daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. While other stories portray her as HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 23

simply pious and grieving, Erickson explores the range of Catherine’s emotions over the death of her first husband, the loss of several children and the betrayal of King Henry. Her Catherine brims with emotions, at one turn kind and understanding, at another seething with hurt and jealousy. This multifaceted characterization of Catherine is much more satisfying than previous portrayals. Highly recommended. Janice Derr THE LADY FLIRTS WITH DEATH Peg Herring, Five Star, 2013, $25.95, hb, 246pp, 9781432827120 In the third book of the Simon and Elizabeth Mysteries, we find the Lady Elizabeth imprisoned in the Tower, accused of treason by her sister, Queen Mary I. Simon Maldon, her old friend, disguises himself as a priest, enabling him to offer his help to the princess, should she need it. What she needs is a friend, and Simon has proven himself that over the years. On his way to visit Elizabeth, Simon discovers an acquaintance of his, Peto the Pope, is also in the Tower, accused of murder. Peto swears he is innocent and Simon is compelled to investigate the case. Meanwhile, Simon’s wife, Hannah, befriends a pregnant girl. Hannah is grieved that she has not yet had a child, though she and Simon have been married for a while. When the baby is born, Hannah falls in love with the child. Little does Hannah know that the young woman who has just given birth is deeply involved in Simon’s murder case, bringing them all into danger. Simon and Hannah are likeable characters, and the friendship they share with Elizabeth brings a touch of glamour to their otherwise simple lives. The mystery is not as fully developed as in previous books—the plot is somewhat thin—but overall, this is a lovely way to spend an afternoon. Anne Clinard Barnhill THE ALTARPIECE Sarah Kennedy, Knox Robinson, 2013, $27.99, hb, 224pp, 9781908483478 / also £12.99, pb, 224pp, 9781908483485 The Altarpiece inaugurates a series by first-time novelist Sarah Kennedy. Set in Tudor England, this story essentially lifts up the layers of English society at the time and shows how Henry VIII’s break from Rome and subsequent religious reformation affected the average person living at the time. The book opens in 1535. Catherine Havens is a young nun with a talent for healing who has lived in Mount Grace Abbey since she was abandoned as a child. Catherine’s world is being dismantled, as abbeys and monasteries are being ordered to surrender valuables over to the crown. They are also expected to take vows against the Catholic faith and testify to royal religious authority. On the heels of the arrival of the king’s men at Mount Grace, the abbey’s altarpiece has gone missing, a mysterious death in town is causing a disturbance, and an epidemic of smallpox is spreading. 24 | Reviews |

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For a relatively short first installment, a great many things are happening in The Altarpiece: there is mystery, action, and even some romance. Kennedy has managed to create some interesting characters in the sisters of Mount Grace, particularly in Catherine, who is both intelligent and resourceful. She finds herself torn between her vows to the church and her desire for more in life. Although the mystery and search for the missing altarpiece provide the story with needed momentum, it is the more subtle tensions of the tale that are most interesting. It is intriguing how the nuns Christina, Veronica, Ann, and Catherine struggle and come to terms with the fact that their way of life is changing and may never be the same. Kennedy also deserves credit for approaching the period from the refreshing perspective of the devout. Hanne Pearce CRIMSON ROSE M.J. Trow, Severn House, 2013, $28.95/£19.99, 224pp, hb, 9781780290539 Will Shakespeare struts and frets his hour upon Christopher Marlowe’s stage as a bit player, hoping to parlay success on the boards into a career as a playwright. When a mishap with a prop arquebus kills Shakespeare’s landlady (and, it’s rumored, lover) the future Bard finds himself in the Clink with little hope of escape. Enter ‘Kit’ Marlowe, playwright and part-time secret agent, to sort London’s seedy underbelly and rescue his actor from a plot of graft and blackmail that reaches the highest levels of political power. Lovers of early English theater (at least, those unencumbered by excessive scholarship) will enjoy this witty, often bawdy, sketch of Elizabethan London. Young Shakespeare a.k.a. Shaxsper comes across as inexperienced but not inept. Despite Marlowe being the main character, there is none of that anti-Stratfordian conspiracy foolishness; Will writes his own sonnets, thank you, and even Marlowe admits they’re quite good. Everyone else gets a mention – Burbage, Alleyn, Faunt, Walsingham and the intriguing Doctor Dee, to name several. At times the action is confusing, with new characters making entrances nearly every chapter and most of them taking on point-of-view duties. The patient reader will manage to keep track of it all, and find the threads tied at the end. Enjoyable, if a bit rough, and recommended. Richard Bourgeois THE TWELVE CHILDREN OF PARIS Tim Willocks, Jonathan Cape, 2013, £12.99, hb, 754pp, 9780224097451 Paris, 1572: Knight of St John, veteran of the Siege of Malta, janissary-trained in war and weapons – Mattias Tannhauser is a very dangerous man who is looking for his wife and stepson. Orlandu is a student amongst thousands in the city. Pregnant Carla has been summoned to play with the musicians celebrating a Catholic-Huguenot royal marriage. With the fatal shooting of Coligny, the King’s friend, wedding celebrations are replaced by wholesale killing in a city overflowing with

hostility and blood lust. Tannhauser, frustrated, deceived and provoked into lethal duelling, finds Orlandu badly wounded. In the house where Carla stayed, there are slaughtered men, women and children, mutilated almost beyond recognition. The ensuing extraordinary events take place over a night and a day amidst unforgettable horrors. These must be acceptable to readers on two counts. Firstly: Tannhauser, a Knight Hospitaller, is familiar with human anatomy. When he kills he can give a quick death or lingering agony, and it is fascinating to be with him throughout. Secondly, the people, especially the inhabitants of the Paris underworld; there he finds loyalty and courage, even in Cockaigne, where the monstrous and terrifying Grymonde rules. Not to be forgotten in Tannhauser’s frantic search for Carla – now mother of a baby girl – are the nobility of Clementine the carthorse and the valuable street-wisdom of Lucifer the dog. And Tannhauser’s ragtag Twelve Children: how many will survive the voyage down the Seine to safety? A brilliant novel, thrilling and mysterious with a suspense hard to bear. Nancy Henshaw

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MARBECK AND THE KING-IN-WAITING John Pilkington, Severn House, 2013, $27.95/£19.99, hb, 192pp, 9780727882943 As Queen Elizabeth lies dying in England in 1603, the plots for a favored successor begin. The Queen’s Master Secretary, Sir Robert Cecil, aka “The Toad,” the power behind the throne, views Marbeck the spy as a suspected traitor because of supposed dealings while serving in Spain and refuses to see him. Meanwhile, other intelligencers gradually learn of two plots to take over the throne of England upon Elizabeth’s death. Before entering that wild fray of intrigue, Marbeck’s current lover, Lady Celia Scroop, begs Marbeck to find her son, Henry, who has left Exeter College and now follows the fanatic Puritan religious leader, Isaac Gow. Marbeck’s initial attempts to bring Henry back to Exeter fail, and Marbeck becomes distracted after hearing important news of an attempt to make a Spanish princess the new Queen of England. Marbeck is engaged to discover and report on the very rich, financial backer of this plot. The carrying-out of his plan keeps will keep readers furiously reading, with pulse-throbbing tension exuding from every page. At the same time, Isaac Gow is arrested, and Marbeck realizes Gow has his own plans for King James of Scotland, who is progressing through England before his coronation. The traditional but startling scene in York where Gow and King James meet is explosive! Many are the traitors, fierce the battles, and exhausting the speedy trips back and forth as Marbeck and his assistants attempt to stay one step ahead of the plotters. John Pilkington crafts this adventurous 16th Century — 17th Century

historical mystery with just enough careful description, insertion of clues, and clever analysis by Marbeck to totally engage readers’ nonstop interest. Once one reluctantly finishes this tale, one will definitely want to read more by this talented author! Viviane Crystal THE WHISPERING OF BONES Judith Rock, Berkley, 2013, $15/C$16, pb, 352pp, 9780425253663 When Jesuit Charles du Luc and his elderly confessor stumble upon a corpse in an ancient Parisian crypt in 1687, the shock fells the older man. Du Luc, who has assisted the Parisian police before, desperately wants to help with this investigation too, but his superiors forbid it – he’s already attracted too much attention to himself when he assisted the police in earlier cases. Louis VIV overrules the superiors, a good thing since the deaths may be connected with an anti-Jesuit conspiracy. A banned and libelous book Monita Secreta, a kind of Protocols of the Elders of Zion, with Jesuits instead of Jews as targets, is back in circulation in Paris. Is there a connection with the murders? Du Luc, despite being a guilt-ridden former soldier, is likable and sane, living in a Parisian world

that comes alive with details and color. The author’s work for her Ph.D. in art and theology took place in part in Paris, where she researched the early ballets produced at the Jesuit College of Louis le Grand. ( Jesuits and ballet!) She not only read the 17th-century French version of the Monita Secreta at Paris’s Mazarine Library, she also read what passed as the newspapers of 1687. In an afterword, Rock writes that the Mazarine librarian climbed a ladder to retrieve the newspaper (actually a bound book) from a high shelf, bringing it to her along with a “weighted silk cord for holding the fragile pages down without damaging them while I read… I was moved almost to tears. I was holding a tiny piece of 1687 Paris in my hands.” I found the book to be meaningful, insightful, funny, and suspenseful. It’s a delight to find this kind of intelligent, well-researched historical novel, and even more gratifying to know that it’s part of a series. Recommended. Kristen Hannum THE SCOTTISH PLAY MURDER: A Restoration Mystery Anne Rutherford, Berkley Prime Crime, 2013, $15.00, pb, 305pp, 9780425255889 In Restoration-period London, whore-turnedtheater manager Suzanne Thornton decides to

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

CONFESSIONS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE

Juliet Grey, Ballantine, 2013, $15.00, pb, 445pp, 9780345523907 Confessions of Marie Antoinette is the third and final installment in Juliet Grey’s detailed account of Marie Antoinette’s life. The novel starts as the French Revolution is beginning in earnest, with the march onto the Royal Palace in Versailles, and then follows the royal family into captivity and to trial. The deposed queen is forced to endure humiliation and separation from her family. Surrounded by enemies, she clings to the hope that her family will be spared. The story of Marie Antoinette is undeniably popular, and this particular period of French history has been thoroughly dissected by researchers and writers. It is a tale that requires little embellishment, as the mere historical facts contain elements sufficient for a gripping drama. In her time, France’s last queen was reviled and mocked for her opulent lifestyle, but Grey has follows the recent trend to paint Marie Antoinette in a favorable light. It is refreshing to begin the story at the start of the Revolution, for so many other accounts focus on the early years of affluence and luxury and quickly gloss over this dark and crude time in history. Grey has tackled it well, weaving elements of hope and light into what would have been a very bleak part of Marie Antoinette’s life. The research done for the book is exceptional; so good, in fact, that at times one has to think about whether they are reading historical fiction or a biography. Through this novel, one realizes how long the French Revolution felt for those who lived through it. In modern times, revolutions seem to happen in a matter of weeks, while the French royal family lived through this revolution for years, passing the days in hopes that they might escape. This novel is highly recommended for anyone approaching this period for the first time, for its overall historical accuracy and its artfulness. Hanne Pearce 17th Century — 18th Century

ignore superstition and the advice of her cast and put on a production of The Scottish Play, aka Macbeth. She’s not so far removed from her younger and lustier days that the appearance of a good-looking Scotsman, perfect for the titular role in the play, doesn’t affect her thinking. Diarmid Ramsay is mysterious and avid in his courting of her; but is he also a murderer? As soon as the play goes into rehearsal, the deaths begin. This novel is a fun historical whodunit, making interesting use of Restoration theater and the malleability of the Shakespeare plays at that time. The setting, complete with the filth, violence and narrow thinking of Restoration London, provides an excellent backdrop. The details are rich and thickly used. Historical elements – wandering aristocrats, pirates, borderland conflict between Scotland and England – are well integrated into the plotting and the characters’ stories. Suzanne herself is an interesting mix of old tart and budding intellectual, a woman who has learned to survive, who has raised her child alone in a dangerous time, and yet has retained enough emotional innocence to succumb to flattery. This novel is the second in the series, so not all ends tie up; there’s more to come, especially in Suzanne’s active love life. Jeanne Mackin THE KING’S EXILE Andrew Swanston, Bantam Press, 2013, £14.99, hb, 358pp, 9780593068885 In spring 1648, scholar, bookseller and once royal cryptographer Thomas Hill is back in his bookshop in Hampshire, well content to be done with war, plots and civil war. Or so he thinks – until he finds himself arrested for writing a harmless pamphlet, summarily sentenced to deportation and indentured as a servant in Barbados. Life on a sugar plantation is never easy, and Thomas is unfortunate enough that his new masters are the roughest of brutes – but who hates him enough to do this to him? Little he knows that his old enemy Tobias Rush, not quite as dead as everyone thought, is bent on exacting revenge on Thomas, his sister and his nieces. This second instalment in Swanston’s Thomas Hill series is an adventurous tale set against the repercussions of English Civil War in the far away Barbados, with plenty of twists, a couple of anachronistically-minded characters, and villains black-hearted enough for a Jacobean tragedy. Chiara Prezzavento

18th century

THE RELUCTANT BRIDE Beverley Eikli, ChocLit, 2013, £7.99, pb, 353pp, 9781781890868 Set in the period after the French Revolution, this novel tells the story of Emily, who has no option but to marry Angus, if she is to escape from poverty. She does, however, feel disloyal to her dead fiancé, Jack. Angus, although he is in love HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 25

with Emily, and is tormented by his dead mistress, Jessamine, is determined to atone for his past. Emily has to learn how to love Angus. It is a fast-paced story of finding love, with detailed storylines and intricate plots, which is very well researched and full of surprises. The descriptions are delicate and dialogue believable, with nice long chapter lengths for total immersion in the story. There is some mystery, suspense and action as well in this page-turning historical romance, which comes complete with English and French spies. The characters are well drawn with a charismatic Angus, believable Andreas and although Emily can be a bit frustrating initially she grew on me as the book developed. Eikli creates a enchanting sense of time and place, real emotional conflict and lots of drama. I loved the cover of the book; it attracted me immediately and would stand out on a bookshelf. A great read for history lovers, romance lovers and those who like a bit of mystery and suspense. Barbara Goldie THE LAST BANQUET Jonathan Grimwood, Europa Editions, 2013, $26.95, hb, 320pp, 9781609451387 Jean-Marie d’Aumout’s sharply distinctive and intelligent voice narrates his life story spanning 18th-century France, from desperate poverty to the viciousness of boarding school for destitute aristocratic boys, to military academy, marriage that brings fortune and titles, and beyond, to face his own demise. “Our lives are built almost entirely on a foundation of events colliding,” D’Aumout philosophically states, as he ponders the unlikely chain of events that comprise his life. D’Aumont rises to fame guided by his exceptional sense of taste and eagerness to explore flavors without regard to social taboos. A primal desire to sample all the world offers guides him in his journey through the rise of the Enlightenment, the war with Corsica, and the fall of the aristocracy in the French Revolution. He is a man of great intellect, with an undisguised disdain for the degenerative decadence of Versailles, comparing the “underlying sourness” of the food at the palace with its corruption; corresponding with the likes of other great minds of the time – Voltaire, de Sade, and Benjamin Franklin, for example. But he is also lover, husband, and father, with a fondness for rescuing exotic creatures that earned him the title Lord Master of the Menagerie. The Last Banquet is a bold gastronomic adventure (one not for the squeamish, however), a quest to fully live before the passage of time and history stamps out the flame. Written with just the right combination of rumination, contemplation, and startling – at times shocking – action, the prose is seductive and sophisticated. Jean-Marie D’Aumont is an ingenious human embodiment of the age of reason, with an at times morbid streak of scientific and intellectual curiosity, matched by a profound and masterful understanding of the human condition. Another fine work of 26 | Reviews |

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literary fiction from Europa Editions. Highly recommended. Andrea Connell NEVILLE’S QUEST Ken Holdsworth, Ulverscroft Large Print, 2012, £16.99, 306pp, pb, 9781444810295 The action takes place in 1754. Thomas Neville is in search of his lost love Emily, and to find her, he travels across the sea to America, fighting off pirates and having other adventures along the way. The tale goes along merrily enough, but there are many references to earlier happenings and events, presumably in a previous novel. The trouble is that these earlier events seem considerably more interesting, and so the reader feels a distinct inclination to be reading this book, which deals with an evil Satanist, among other things, instead. My particular pet hate of “your” written as “you’re” downgraded the book further for me. There are some exciting scenes with highwaymen and graverobbers, and the characters are clearly described, but somehow the novel never coalesces into a tense and compelling whole. The love story is complicated by the issue of colour because Emily is part black, but this issue is not as fully explored as it could be. Her past as a slave is referred to sometimes but is presumably dealt with more fully in the previous book. Overall, a reasonable beach

LONGBOURN

read. The fact that it seems to have been designed to raise money for eye disease charities hopefully encourages potential readers more. Ann Northfield THE DOUBLE CROSS (Spanish Brand, #1) Carla Kelly, Camel Press, 2013, $13.95, pb, 240pp, 9781603819459 In her new novel set in 1780, Carla Kelly presents a very simple plotline of brand inspector Marco Mondragon opening his heart again despite his big fear of the consequences. With eloquent prose, the story slowly plays out as we fall in love with the New Mexican setting and the characters that we meet along the way as Marco, a widower, tends to his business. Afraid to love again, Marco finally takes the big step of buying a dog to keep his feet warm at night. When Marco meets a young woman caring for a dog, it seems he has lost all his wits, as he pays a full peso for this overpriced runt. He can’t get the woman, Paloma, out of his mind (and vice versa) while their lives are turned upside down while tending to a wounded Comanche Indian. Each of these characters’ personalities are portrayed so endearingly that at the end of this unforgettable story of honor, love and redemption, we are sad to let them go, making us eager to see what is in store for the next installment of the series. Marie Burton

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Jo Baker, Knopf, 2013, $25.95, hb, 339pp, 9780385351249 / Doubleday, 2013, £12.99, hb, 368pp, 9780857522016 Longbourn is the story of the servants who work for the Bennet family of Pride and Prejudice, including the housekeeper, Mrs. Hill; her husband, Mr. Hill; the child servant, Polly; the mysterious footman, James; and our heroine, the maid Sarah. Sarah is a wonderful character: innocent, intelligent, kind, a hard worker who longs for something more than servitude. Pride and Prejudice’s story is a vague shadow against the engaging plot of Longbourn. Sarah’s double love interests (James the footman and Bingley’s footman Ptolemy) mirror, very slightly, the double love interests of Elizabeth Bennet (Darcy and Wickham). The near tragedy that strikes Lydia works as a foil to the devastating events of James’ life. A reader might admire Elizabeth for ignoring the mud and trudging the three miles to be with her sister, but the maid who must clean her petticoats does not. The servants are glad that Jane falls ill elsewhere, for they won’t have to clean up after her. When Sarah gets sick, her fellow servants do not have the time to take care of her, and the Bennets do not have the inclination even to worry about her. Longbourn gives us a glimpse, with marvelous historical detail, of what life was like in Regency England for the majority of the people who lived then. A fan of Pride and Prejudice, I loved Longbourn. Seeing the evilness of Wickham with more clarity, learning about Mr. Bennet’s secret life, and, of course, getting to know the family servants has given my favorite Austen story a brand new depth. Longbourn could have been dark and bitter, profiling, as it does, the difficult lives of the lower classes, but Baker makes clear that love and hope exist; that dreams, if kept practical, can come true. Highly recommended. Elizabeth Caulfield Felt 18th Century

THE SPIRIT KEEPER K. B. Laugheed, Plume, 2013, $16.00, pb, 352pp, 9780142180334 Western Pennsylvania’s earliest frontier settlers know they are taking a risk. In 1747, tension is building between English colonists and French Canada, for both sides claim lands west of the Appalachians. Indians from many tribes have been pushed into that region as the coastal plain developed, and raids on outlying farms have increased. Seventeen-year old Katie O’Toole’s family is dozens strong, yet they cannot prevent Indians from killing the men and dragging away the women and children. The captives will be sold to the French, who will then ransom them back to Pennsylvania. Katie can go home if she wishes, but she is the thirteenth child of a desperately poor family and has known nothing but starvation and abuse for all her life. She abandons her family and remains with Syawa, a seer who, with his companion, Hector, crossed the Rockies in search of a vision. Syawa had “seen” a woman of strength and courage: the Creature of Fire and Ice. Red-haired, blueeyed Katie fits the description perfectly. She takes Syawa’s hand and never looks back. K.B. Laugheed’s The Spirit Keeper is a fine read for adults and teens, and she does a terrific job depicting the clash of worlds as Katie, Syawa, and Hector come to understand each other. Her writing flows like the great river the trio crosses in this beautifully-told tale, with vernacular which enhances the story without overwhelming. I was sorry to see The Spirit Keeper come to an end, but it’s “Ledger One,” and that bodes well for the future. Highly recommended. Jo Ann Butler LADY OF PASSION: The Story of Mary Robinson Freda Lightfoot, Severn House, 2013, $28.95/£19.99, hb, 256pp, 9780727882875 She was once “a leader of fashion, the doyenne of Drury Lane… the adored mistress of a royal prince,” but when Mary Robinson begins her story in 1800, she is 42 and dependent on friends to keep her out of debtors’ prison. The daughter of a doting mother and an absentee father, the young Mary is bright, talented, and well-educated. She wants to be an actress, but her mother prefers to see her safely married and, at the age of 15, Mary is wed to a pleasant wastrel. When they drift into a relationship that demands little of either, Mary embarks on her theatrical career. Mary’s beauty brings her to the attention of the Prince of Wales. The 17-year-old son of George III (who opposes his son’s relationship with Mary) promises much but delivers little in the way of income. The American war provides background for the years in which Mary, beautiful and infamous – her picture is on sale all over London – has a series of affairs with men of power and/or money to survive. Ironically, she finds the love of her life 18th Century — 19th Century

and her talent as a writer only after contracting a crippling disease, but neither the man nor her career brings her the security she craves. We reach the final chapter of Mary Robinson’s life with a better understanding of her struggles, and with affection for a spunky woman who might have prospered better in the modern age. Lightfoot’s latest novel is based largely on primary sources, including Mary Robinson’s memoirs, which makes it surprisingly moving. Recommended. Jeanne Greene

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AS FLIES TO WHATLESS BOYS Robert Antoni, Akashic, 2013, $15.95 pb/$24.95 hb, 320pp, 9781617751561 Sporting surely the funniest title of the year, As Flies to Whatless Boys is a kind of complex word game, a historical narrative in a lilting Caribbean accent, wrapped around with an oddball love story in a wild form of English that seems to create itself as it goes along. In between, snippets of contemporary records provide foils for both these linguistic inventions. The narrative concerns the efforts of a crackpot

INFAMY

British engineer, John Etzler, to found a colony in Trinidad in the West Indies based on a contraption he called the Satellite, which would use wind, sun, and water to do all the labor, freeing the people for more creative and spiritual activities. Willy Tucker, the teenaged boy who tells the story (many years later, to his own son), is more interested in a girl named Marguerite, who cannot speak, than he is in machines, but he has a keen eye and a quick wit. The way of telling the story softens the terror of colonists parked suddenly on an unknown shore and attacked by insects and disease. Etzler’s vision of a community freed from the burdens of labor drowns in harsh reality, but Antoni’s lusty language is worth the experience. Cecelia Holland A BURDEN SHARED Malcolm Archibald, Fledgling Press Ltd, 2013, £9.99, pb, 296pp, 9781905916597 This book, set in Dundee in 1849, is the second in a series featuring Detective Sergeant Mendick, following The Darkest Walk. Sergeant Mendick has arrived from London to collect an escaped prisoner. Although born there, he has no love for Dundee and is not pleased to be retained to help investigate a series of gruesome murders. Mendick employs his considerable skills to eventually solve the case. Whilst doing so he interacts with the highest

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Lenny Bartulin, Allen & Unwin, Au$29.95, pb, 343pp, 9781743316115 It’s 1830. William Burr is recovering from injuries after his latest skirmish chasing mahogany pirates in British Honduras when he receives a request from an old friend in Van Diemen’s Land offering him a reward for the capture of a notorious convict turned outlaw, Brown George Coyne. As soon as Burr arrives in Hobart Town, he witnesses Ellen Vaughan, wife of a magistrate, being abducted by three men in broad daylight. Sabre swinging, Burr gives chase and manages to seriously maim one of them before they escape. Ellen eludes her captors with the help of Robert Ringa, an Aboriginal brought in from the mainland to track down absconders, both black and white. Like Burr, Ringa is also an interloper in this strange, mythical country and has his own struggles with the consequences. The ruthless and maniacal Coyne has officials in his pocket and grandiose designs to take over the colony. Overseeing the seek-and-destroy process is the uptight and unpopular Lieutenant Governor George Arthur, who struggles to maintain law and order in a society that gives the finger to both as it tries to build a Little England “on a dung-heap” and where the pristine beauty of the landscape is in sharp contrast to the corrupt and vile rabble that infests it. This extraordinary novel is an amalgam of the literary, romantic and cinematic. All the characters – real or imagined – are tackled with cool style. The descriptions are vivid, the verbal ripostes witty, the humour macabre. It’s a violently graphic cornucopia; it’s Errol Flynn meets Tarantino in Deadwood down-under. This ride is so outrageous, fast-paced and exhilarating that any anachronisms glimpsed in passing don’t matter. Lenny Bartulin has an exciting new voice in historical adventure that goes well beyond oldfashioned swash-and-buckle and confidently busts loose into new territory. Brilliant! Marina Maxwell HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 27

THE DESCENT OF THE LYRE

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Will Buckingham, Roman Books, 2012, £16.99, hb, 242pp, 9789380905075 In the summer of 1811, armed men take off with a young bride-to-be; left devastated, and with rage boiling within him, the bridegroom departs his parents’ house and heads for the bitter lawlessness of the mountains. The father had bid the Virgin save his son and do with his life what she will, but the music was already there; it was in the name his mother had once sung to her unborn son; it was in his lineage; it was in the place of his birth, and through it he was to become legend. Years later, and resonant of Orpheus’ charming of the King of the Dead, a captured musician is bid to play – for his life. The Descent of the Lyre is an immensely rich and rhythmic reinvention of the great myth of Orpheus; it is the legend of Ivan Gelski, the man whose “name spoke of blossom, music and death”. Leading us deep into the lands of the ancient Thracian empire, Buckingham guides us gently, so that we too might find our feet, on an unmarked path, sharing with us his journey as he draws out the threads of the tale of Ivan Gelski, saint. The Descent of the Lyre tells not only of the origins of the guitar, of the essence of true music, plucked and drawn out by more than perfection alone, but of Ivan’s descent, just as Orpheus before him shunned the world of the living and descended into the Underworld. Do not mistake this for a mere retelling. This is masterful storytelling, such that one cannot help but sense the ancient thrum, the pulse quickening, and deep down the feeling that the music really has been there all along. Penny Wild echelon of Dundee society as well as mingling with the riffraff. The accurate historical detail brings Victorian Dundee vividly alive. One can almost taste and smell the vile backstreets, see the tall hatted, bluegarbed policeman and hear the elite of Dundee talking. A Burden Shared is a terrific read, and I am eagerly awaiting the next instalment in the series. The history is accurate, the characters well drawn and the writing fast-paced and excellent. I highly recommend this book. Fenella J Miller THE TURNER EROTICA Robert J. Begiebing, Ilium Press, 2013, $14.95, pb, 265pp, 9780983300243 What do you do when a revered artist’s memory is about to be smirched, and the evidence lies in your hands? Nowadays, you write a triumphant book and are praised for redirecting history. In 1858, if you are Keeper of Collections at London’s National Gallery, and that evidence is a fistful of erotic sketches, you burn them. After all, the erotica was drawn by J.M.W. Turner, beloved landscape painter, now deceased. How could you let a man famed for coalescing mists onto canvas be dragged through the gutter? It isn’t long before artist William J. Stillman gets wind of the destruction, and also that a few depictions of “flesh under the burden of passion” still exist. To ensure the drawings’ survival for posterity, Stillman steals them. He gives the drawings to a friend for safekeeping, but then the 28 | Reviews |

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friend disappears. So does the Turner erotica. Robert Begiebing’s The Turner Erotica shows us just how hard it is to keep a secret. For decades the obsessed William Stillman follows rumor and cold leads across Europe and America. However, he cannot possess the sketches without being charged with theft. If he can find Turner’s handiwork, who can Stillman possibly trust with it? The events and people in The Turner Erotica are real, and so is the art, erotica and all. The awardwinning Begiebing skillfully recreates the Victorian art world, delicious intrigues, and the foibles of the rich and famous. A fine read. Jo Ann Butler CLOSE TO THE WIND Zana Bell, ChocLit, 2013, £7.99, pb, 305pp, 9781781890264 When Georgiana da Silva overhears her fiancé discussing a plot to murder her beloved brother Charlie, who is hoping to find gold in New Zealand, she flees her aunt’s home in Victorian England, vowing to reach Charlie before his killer does. Dressed as a boy, she inveigles her way on board a ship sailing for New Zealand, intending to work as a cabin boy. The captain is the dashing Harry Trent. A fugitive from the law, he too has an important task waiting in New Zealand, one on which his future and indeed his life may depend. A series of misadventures throw Georgiana and Harry together on the various legs of their journey. Pursued by unknown enemies, unable to trust or confide in one another, they dare not surrender to

the strong attraction growing between them. Bell has plotted a very successful romantic adventure. If life on the ship might not satisfy Patrick O’Brian fans, the picture of New Zealand’s 19th-century gold rush towns is more convincing. Georgiana is a lively, likeable heroine who is given a social insecurity that adds a touch of depth to the character. Bell skilfully uses her unusual circus/ acting background to advance the twists and turns of the corkscrew plot involving the opium trade, a gold rush, lost heirs, murder and other bits of skulduggery. Will they be caught? Will they fall in love? The suspense is maintained right up to the last pages. In Harry, we have a handsome gentleman adventurer, fearless and honourable – an ideal romantic hero. Witty dialogue is another plus. All together, a most enjoyable light read. Lynn Guest KABUKI BOY Perle Besserman, Aqueous Books, 2013, $14.00, pb, 310pp, 9780988383760 If the power of the historical novel is to carry the reader into the middle of an unknown world, Kabuki Boy is a triumph. Perle Besserman’s intensive, immersive research has produced a riveting picture of feudal Japan, delivered as the personal experience of real people. The Tokogawa Shogunate was a wild time of peasant uprisings and battling samurai, and Besserman’s tale expands over all of that. But the most moving and fascinating scenes occur in the “floating world,” the evanescent day-to-day life on the streets, of witty drunkards and doomed courtesans and kabuki and gossip and crime. The hero of the novel is Myo, a boy who rises from rural poverty to be a star of the kabuki stage, playing women’s roles. This area of the novel reminds one sharply of Genji – the manners, the frivolity and the religious rituals – but Kabuki Boy has a social conscience, and pushes into darker, grimmer places, as the Shogunate begins to crumble into constant class warfare. The research and the writing of this book are impressive. As a story it has problems, though. Myo rules the first half of the book, perfect in voice and sensibility, but Myo dies halfway through. The novel never really recovers from this loss. The second half, well-written as it is, and the wispy frame story never reach that same intensity. Nonetheless, as a window into 1800s Japan, the book is very worth reading. Cecelia Holland THE WEDDING GIFT Marlen Suyapa Bodden, Century, 2013, £12.99, hb, 399pp, 9781780891019 / St. Martin’s, 2013, $25.99, hb, 320pp, 9781250026385 Sarah is the daughter of a slave and Mr Allen, an Alabama plantation owner. She plays with and shares lessons (illegally – slaves were not to be educated) with her half-sister Clarissa, and when they are eight becomes Clarissa’s maid. On Clarissa’s marriage she goes with her to her new home. Sarah longs to be free of the life which she 19th Century

and Clarissa’s mother Theodora narrate in turn, even though conditions on the Allen plantation are much better than most. The restrictions imposed on slaves in the mid-19th century, especially those who try to escape, are brutal and horrific, but they are described with a gentleness that is more powerful than fire and fury would be. Not only slaves are oppressed. The wives and daughters of the plantation owners suffer from domineering menfolk, as Theodora describes. Both she and Sarah are strong, resilient women, though, and Sarah’s determination to escape leads to an exciting climax. This is an impressive first novel, with interesting characters, especially the slaves and free Negroes, and I look forward to more from this author. Marina Oliver LADY JENNY’S CHRISTMAS PORTRAIT Grace Burrowes, Sourcebooks Casablanca, 2013, $7.99/£5.99, pb, 364pp, 9781402263835 Lady Jenny Windham longs to escape to Paris to further her education as a painter but is hindered by Regency society’s expectations of a duke’s daughter. Enter Elijah Harrison, an accomplished portraitist and Royal Academy candidate, who’s been commissioned to paint several of Jenny’s relatives. Elijah critiques her work and encourages her to continue painting, while romance buds. But Jenny remains torn between the urge to create and her well-meaning yet smothering family. Will Elijah be able to help her overcome guilt about the death of her brother, and realize her dream of becoming a real artist? Burrowes has a lot of fans who might disagree, but the pace seemed slow to me: the characters paint and talk and make love and paint some more, without much else happening. The romance is good, but I grew impatient for Jenny to make up her mind and take some action. This is the last in Burrowes’ Windham family series, according to the acknowledgments. Fans of the series will like it, but readers who haven’t read the other volumes may have a problem keeping the minor characters straight in this outing. B.J. Sedlock MR DARWIN’S GARDENER Kristina Carlson (trans. Emily and Fleur Jeremiah), Peirene, 2013, £12.00, 122pp, pb, 9781908670090 This is not so much the story of Thomas Davies, the gardener, as of the villagers of Downe and the way in which the presence among them of Charles Darwin heightens their self-awareness and their sense of enquiry into things best left alone: the existence of God, the wages of sin, the seemingly unbridgeable gulf between the modes of thought of women and men. On the surface as traditionally English as Cranford or St. Mary Meade, Carlson’s Downe, filtered through the observing eye of the outsider (Carlson is Finnish), is set apart by the way in which she delves into and articulates the consciousness of those stalwarts of English village life – the shopkeeper, the landlord, the doctor, and their wives and daughters. Davies the gardener, 19th Century

grieving inordinately for his dead wife, left with two children who are ‘not quite right’, provides a focus for their troubled and rebellious ruminations. Carlson has created an extraordinary communal voice, translated here into an elegant, pared-down English. By using multiple first persons, she blurs the boundaries between individuals and makes the villagers speak with a collective consciousness whose presumptions of morality are confounded by the godless gardener whose grief is ultimately consoled by nature, the coming of spring after winter. This is a beautiful book, post-modern in the best sense, in that its author has not allowed narrative convention to interfere with what she has to say and how she wants to say it. It has no plot as such but is driven by the power of its voice, ‘the soft reinforcement of the four-stranded rope’, as Davies characterises the strength of his own family. A lovely meditation on the human spirit and its capacity to endure. Sarah Bower THE LUMINARIES Eleanor Catton, Granta, 2013, £18.99, hb, 828pp, 9781847084316 / Little Brown, 2013, $27.00, hb, 848pp, 9780316074315 In January 1866, Walter Moody, newly arrived in the New Zealand goldfields, stumbles into a furtive gathering of twelve local men who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved mysteries. The wealthiest man in town has vanished; a whore, half dead in the street from opium poisoning, is found to have a fortune in gold sewn into her clothes; and a hermit dies in poverty yet has a stash of gold bars concealed in his cabin. At the centre of the mystery stands Francis Carver, smuggler, murderer and captain of the ship that brought Moody to Hokitika. Catton’s second novel, recently shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker prize, is a tour de force of storytelling, ingeniously plotted and stuffed with vivid Gothic and Romantic imagery in the best 19th-century tradition. It is narrated by a remote and anonymous ‘we’, again, in an ostensibly 19th-century tradition, yet the reader is always, and uncomfortably, aware that the novel is by no means a pastiche of its earlier predecessors. From the outset, when you see that the principal players are listed under their stellar and planetary influences, and that all the chapter headings relate to the topography of the zodiac, you are aware that, whoever is telling this story, it is not merely the author, and that the cool, nay, chilly, analytical voice may not even be of this world. This narrative device gives the novel brilliance, but it also makes it very difficult to engage with the characters, whose histories, motives and personalities are subjected to a ruthless, clearsighted analysis, almost as if they are specimens in a laboratory. While I admired the novel for its technical expertise, therefore, I remained unmoved by it. Sarah Bower

THE SPYMISTRESS Jennifer Chiaverini, Dutton, 2013, $26.95/ C$28.50, hb, 320pp, 9780525953623 Spinster Elizabeth “Lizzie” Van Lew is horrified when her beloved state of Virginia votes to secede from the United States in 1861. A woman of means due to her inheritance from her father, she’s a staunch believer in Mr. Lincoln’s government. In the capitol of Richmond, Lizzie watches the Civil War begin, and captured Union soldiers are brought into the city and imprisoned. She scandalizes the local gentry when she insists on ministering to the wounded Yankees rather than the Confederates. Finding the Northern men’s situation in the dank prison deplorable, she demands better conditions and must finagle—sometimes successfully, other times not—the Confederate officers in charge. Soon, she starts to smuggle out messages from the Yankee officers to their commanders in the North. She recruits other “Unionists” in the city, and an elaborate spy network is formed. Harassed and threatened, always in danger of being discovered, Lizzie never demurs from her mission to help the Unionist cause. Lizzie Van Lew was an actual personage in the 19th century. Some of her escapades seem implausible, but her actions are based on fact. Many agree that without the information she managed to have delivered to high-placed officials and generals in the North, the war could have turned out differently. To this day she’s derided as a traitor to the Confederate cause. As a former resident of Virginia, I found this novel a compelling read. Miss Van Lew deserves recognition as an intelligent and resourceful spy who may have shortened the length of the carnage during the Civil War. Diane Scott Lewis DAUGHTER OF THE GOD-KING Anne Cleeland, Sourcebooks Landmark, 2013, $14.99, pb, 368pp, 9781402279850 Daughter of the God-King takes places in the early 19th century, at the time of the Congress of Vienna and Napoleon’s exile on the Isle of Elba. The novel’s heroine, Hattie Blackhouse, is the daughter of famous Egyptologists who are always off exploring the Valley of the Kings while she passes the time in remote, uneventful Cornwall. When her parents go missing after discovering the tomb of an Egyptian princess, Hattie sets out for Egypt in an attempt to uncover the truth behind their disappearance. But Hattie soon learns that there is much more to her parents’ disappearance than meets the eye, and she quickly finds herself the centre of various intrigues. While Daughter of the God-King is a quickpaced historical adventure with a spirited heroine, the stated premise of the novel – Hattie’s quest to discover the fate of her parents – often takes a backseat to the story’s romantic subplot. This subplot focuses on Hattie’s budding relationship with Monsieur Berry, a man who worked for her parents. Given that very little about Berry is revealed even by the novel’s end, he fails to come across as an appealing romantic lead. Though there HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 29

is much to like about Hattie, her lack of emotion over the disappearance and presumed death of her parents is off-putting, especially given her focus on her romantic entanglements instead. As a result, the reader may, at times, feel little sympathy for her. The various political intrigues that form part of the novel’s plot are interesting, although much more could have been done with them. Although certain aspects of Daughter of the God-King didn’t work as well for me as I’d hoped, I think readers looking for historical adventure that includes a prominent romantic storyline will enjoy this novel. Melissa Morrisey THE PURSUIT OF MURIETA Thomas D. Clagett, Five Star, 2013, $25.95, hb, 240pp, 9781432827915 In 1853, Joaquin Murieta and his outlaw gang are terrorizing the state of California, killing and robbing the white (gringo) population. Three years earlier, Murieta and his wife were returning home to Mexico from the gold fields of California when they were stopped by three white men who beat and whipped Joaquin and raped his wife, Rosita. In revenge, Murieta hunts down and kills the gringos responsible. He then leads a band of Mexican men in killing gringos who try to get away with murder

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and/or rob poor Mexicans. He gives most of the money he steals to other poor Mexicans living and being abused by gringos in California. In this well-written western novel of revenge gone wrong, Joaquin Murieta is eventually captured and killed before he can return to his wife in Mexico. There are complex motives behind the people in the hunt, which adds suspense to the story. Do the men in pursuit kill him, to seek their own revenge, or capture him to stand trial? With his first novel, Clagett has written a fun read with a unique twist to the average Western by providing a tale from the viewpoint of both the protagonist and those who are in pursuit. The characters are well drawn out, the plot of the story is fast-paced, and the book is a quick read. Highly recommended. Jeff Westerhoff FALLEN WOMEN Sandra Dallas, St. Martin’s, 2013, $25.99/ C$29.99, hb, 320pp, 9781250030931 Beret Osmundsen arrives in a Denver police station in the spring of 1885, determined to discover who murdered her younger sister, Lillie. Beret is a strong woman, well-off and smart, and it doesn’t take long before she is working with Detective Mick McCauley in an effort to learn more about the last weeks of Lillie’s life. But the

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Lynn Cullen, Gallery, 2013, $26.00, hb, 320pp, 9781476702919 In this tremendously detailed account of Edgar Allan Poe’s supposed affair with poet Frances Osgood, the years 1845 to 1847 are narrated by the lady who was his reputed muse, confidante and lover. With the phenomenal success of “The Raven,” Mr. Poe is on the lips of everyone in New York City, from the literary elite to poor children in the slums. His macabre style is bursting into fashion, and writers such as Mrs. Osgood find themselves obliged to emulate society’s new favorite. Having been abandoned by her husband, Frances relies on her writing career to support her daughters, but the magazine publishers want dark tales, not the children’s stories she usually turns out. Meeting with Mr. Poe, Frances discovers that instead of the gloomy, depressive character she’d expected, he is in fact a gentle and intriguing man, and she soon looks forward to seeing him at their shared literary functions. Meeting Mrs. Virginia Poe, however, complicates matters, and as a relationship begins to form between the famed poets, Edgar Allan Poe’s “child bride” becomes more and more unstable. Set upon the backdrop of a fascinating era and with many famous personas depicted, this is not only a captivating story of forbidden lovers, but an elaborately spun tale of NYC society, complete with descriptions of the city, its people and their backgrounds. Photography was in its infancy, and many fantastic inventions were being introduced, making this an immensely engaging historical novel. The author’s use of Edgar Allan Poe’s and Frances Osgood’s actual poetry, especially the pieces that are known to be a link between the writers, is the backbone of the story and a solid argument that this novelized version of their relationship may not be very far from the truth. Highly recommended! Arleigh Johnson 30 | Reviews |

HNR Issue 66, November 2013

more the two delve into the grisly crime, the more secrets are revealed: not only was Lillie, once a pampered, privileged young woman, a prostitute when she was murdered, but she was also pregnant. While these details are shocking, it soon becomes evident that Beret herself has much to hide, as do her politically-minded aunt and uncle, with whom her she and her sister previously lived. Layer after layer is revealed until lives are laid bare and all is revealed. Normally I love anything Sandra Dallas writes, but this one was, unfortunately, rather flat for me. In an attempt to show Beret’s strength and polish, Dallas writes her as stiff and aloof; I never warmed up to her personality so I never was particularly shocked by anything she exposed. The often stylized way of speaking (“And do you have proof of these foul accusations?”) seemed to be an unsuccessful attempt at recreating Austen’s work, and yet the words just do not feel natural. The mystery is fairly well done, with a number of red herrings and an eventual conclusion that, while not unexpected, is still fairly chilling. Even so, I had to force myself through because there was never anyone I felt like cheering on within any of the pages. For those, like me, who are used to a character-driven story from Dallas, this one is a disappointment. Tamela McCann ANY DUCHESS WILL DO Tessa Dare, Avon, 2013, $5.99/C$7.50, pb, 384pp, 9780062240124 In this Regency romance, Griffin York, the Duke of Halford, finds himself a reluctant guest in Spinster Cove, an English seaside village that’s a refuge for single women. Furious at his mother, the force behind his erstwhile kidnapping, and her demand that he marry “anyone,” he chooses Pauline Simms, a barmaid and serving girl. Pauline, despite her father’s abuse and her poverty, has good looks and a quick mind and dreams of opening a bookshop. When Griff offers her a substantial sum for a week’s work enduring (but intentionally failing at) “duchess training” at the hands of his mother, Pauline sees a way of making her dream a reality. Pretty Woman and “Cinderella” come to mind when reading this story. There is a subplot involving Pauline’s mentally challenged sister, and the death of Griff ’s baby daughter gives the story pathos and depth. The reader wants these two people to fall in love, to have their happily-everafter. And they get it. Monica E. Spence A LADY MOST LOVELY Jennifer Delamere, Forever, 2013, $8.00/C$9.00, pb, 383pp, 9781455518968 Tom Poole left Victorian England in a rush and under mysterious circumstances seven years ago. Now he has returned a wealthy man, hoping to become both a gentleman and a better Christian, two goals that, based on the behavior of other “gentlemen” in his midst, seem completely contradictory. Margaret Vaughn catches Tom’s eye, but 19th Century

she is engaged to another man and has larger concerns than love. Margaret finds herself barely maintaining appearances while she struggles to hold on to the legacy left by her father. Tom and Margaret’s worlds collide in electric, sometimes violent, ways, leaving readers wondering if they can find love together when the only people able to keep them apart are themselves. Both of them must learn when to fight and when to surrender to their desire, and both must also determine when to hold on to what’s been left, and when to let go and begin a brand new legacy. Readers will appreciate the way the plot swerves early in the book, away from historical romance’s traditional love triangle angst and into a complex, character-driven climax. It’s easy to care about Tom and Margaret and their world, yet difficult to predict what will happen to them. Amy Watkin BANQUET OF LIES Michelle Diener, Gallery, 2013, $16.00, pb, 320pp, 9781451684452 London, 1812. Giselle “Gigi” Barrington is the daughter of a gentleman folklorist, traveling Europe and collecting recipes for her passion of cooking. While she knew her father sometimes transported state documents for the British government, she was never aware of the details. As such, she was unprepared for the situation she was thrust into when she witnessed her father being murdered for refusing to hand over a letter that was secretly sewn into her dress. She found herself on the run and looking for a place to hide in plain sight, while searching for a mysterious person by the alias of “D.” Taking a position in a house near to her home in London, Gigi uses her culinary skills to become a suitable French cook for a young, single gentleman with specific tastes. As he begins showing more interest in her than she’d like, she discovers her father’s murderer, the shadow man, is lurking around the neighborhood – looking for her, and always just a step behind. With the time-sensitive document still in her possession, she must find a way to safely transfer it to its intended recipient. This story may be of particular interest to those who have read the author’s previous book, The Emperor’s Conspiracy, as characters from the two books blend seamlessly together to create a unique setting that has the feel of a series. Diener has found the perfect formula for a great historical read, including genuine characters, a fast-paced and intriguing plot, and a storyline that will delight readers of mysteries, as well as those interested in the Napoleonic War era. This book is pure reading pleasure! Arleigh Johnson AN OLD BETRAYAL: A Charles Lenox Mystery Charles Finch, Minotaur, 2013, $25.99/C$29.99, hb, 320pp, 9781250011619 Member of Parliament Charles Lenox is always on the run between sessions but, in spite of a 19th Century

myriad of other responsibilities, when his former protégé Lord Dallington gets sick, Lenox feels obliged to take the case. He always has time to aid a friend with an unfaithful husband, or a maligned employee, or a frightened young woman in trouble, even while following the thread of a tangled mystery that takes him into the Palace itself Unlike the man, the plot of An Old Betrayal moves at the pace of leisurely conversation, arousing curiosity without suspense. We get a taste of life as an upper middle-class Victorian gentleman whose shirts require cuff links and whose watch requires winding. But when Finch starts reading crime reports in the daily newspaper, instead of the blue books and parliamentary memoranda, we understand his discontent. Readers who like to match their wits with the author will have plenty to work with and ample time to do so in this mystery, while looking forward to Lenox’s return as a private investigator. Jeanne Greene

Beautifully written and told is this story of Dortchen Wild, who fell in love with Wilhelm Grimm the first time she saw him and helped him to collect the fairy tales for the famous collection. My personal reservation is that I found Dortchen highly irritating at times and wished that the blurb had not led me to believe that the story started like a Grimms’ fairy tale would, as the blurb did: ‘Once there were six sisters. The pretty one, the musical one, the clever one, the helpful one, the young one... And then there was the wild one.’ That’s how I wanted the story to start. However, historical facts about Dortchen were almost nonexistent, so Kate Forsyth had a free hand to imagine things. She has a somewhat ‘grim’ imagination, which suits the tone of many of the fairy tales retold in the novel. We follow poor Dortchen’s struggle to marry Wilhelm through the Napoleonic wars, French occupation, and family disasters to the final happy ending. It’s quite a fairy tale in itself and well worth reading. pdr lindsay-salmon

THE WILD GIRL Kate Forsyth, Allison and Busby, 2013, £12.99, pb, 512pp, 9780749 013288

HAVISHAM Ronald Frame, Picador, 2013, $26, hb, 368pp, 9781250037275 / Faber & Faber, 2013, £7.99, pb,

THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Elizabeth Gilbert, Viking, 2013, $28.95, hb, 512pp, 9780670024858 / Bloomsbury, 2013, £18.99, hb, 532pp, 9781408841891 Brimming with verve, wit, and intellectual curiosity, Gilbert’s absorbing epic embodies the spirit of the transformative 19th century: an age of exploration, industrial expansion, and scientific discoveries which saw people pondering the links between religion and nature. Carrying readers through this sweeping novel of ideas is a singular heroine whose life suits these big themes perfectly. Alma Whittaker is born in 1800, the daughter of Henry, a self-made English entrepreneur whose botanical import-export firm makes him “blisteringly rich,” and his practical Dutch-born wife, Beatrix. Growing up on her father’s large, isolated Philadelphia estate, Alma spends her days studying plants, which are described in loving detail. A brilliant scholar, yet unattractive and overly tall, she abandons hope for romance until, in late middle age, she meets Ambrose Pike, a talented orchid illustrator who shifts her life’s course. The language delights from the get-go. “His penmanship was shamefully crabbed. Each sentence was a crowded village of capital letters and small letters, living side by side in tight misery,” it says of Henry Whittaker, scribbling his account of Alma’s birth in his ledger. Likewise, its structure is refreshingly old-fashioned. As the setting moves from England to America to Tahiti and elsewhere, the author narrates Alma’s lifelong coming-of-age journey in a sprightly voice full of compassionate wisdom. Some secondary characters’ personalities are beyond eccentric, but they certainly keep things entertaining. Without getting preachy, Gilbert reveals much that readers can take away from Alma’s experiences. Everything Alma encounters has something to teach her, from the quiet strength of mosses to her surprising realizations about family members to her own body’s desires. Over the years, she adjusts her views as needed and always soaks up new opportunities. Her story honors scientifically-minded women while demonstrating that it’s possible to create a full life despite personal disappointments. The result is a novel that’s both edifying and very satisfying. Sarah Johnson HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 31

368pp, 9780571288304 In this book, Frame allows one of the greatest characters in English literature to tell her story. Miss Havisham, from Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, is the crazy old lady who, after being abandoned at the altar, closes up her house, leaves the wedding feast to rot on the table and wears her wedding gown for the rest of her life. In Frame’s story, we learn about Catherine Havisham’s youth as the motherless daughter of a wealthy brewer. Catherine loves her father and is proud of the family name, but she has no peers. Lonely, she chooses Sally, the daughter of a servant, as her best friend. In her way, Catherine loves Sally, but they have an odd relationship. Catherine confides in Sally, but she never treats Sally as an equal, and Sally never confides in Catherine. Mr. Havisham, wanting his daughter to rise socially, sends Catherine to live with the aristocratic Chadwycks. From the Widow Chadwyck and her children, Catherine is meant to learn the manners, the dialect, and the ways of the gentry. They study the classics and arrange themselves in tableaux. However, the lessons she learns from the Chadwycks cause her to be romantically naïve and overly dramatic—setting her on the road to becoming the character we know she must become. Through his extraordinary writing, Frame gives the narrative to Miss Havisham, but does not make her sympathetic. The reader never feels close to her. Even as she tells the story, Catherine keeps us at a distance. Readers familiar with Great Expectations know the tragedy that will befall Miss Havisham. We cringe at her bad choices, wrong assumptions, and spiteful schemes, but realize that no other way lies before her. Frame clearly shows how a naïve brewer’s daughter became the horrible Miss Havisham. Elizabeth Caulfield Felt A BARGAIN STRUCK Liz Harris, ChocLit, 2013, £7.99, pb, 314pp, 9781781890486 In Wyoming in the late 1800s, Connor Maguire, a widower with an eight-year-old daughter, Bridget, advertises for a wife. Ellen O’Sullivan, a widow, answers his advertisement, and the two meet and marry on the same day. They share a marriage of convenience, with her taking over the woman’s work at the homestead, caring for his daughter, and hopefully providing him with an heir. But Ellen hasn’t been entirely forthcoming, and by keeping things back, she brings difficulties to her new husband and resentful stepdaughter. Add a beautiful schoolteacher with a mean streak and a ne’er-do-well brother to the mix, and Ellen’s new life is hard, to say the least. A Bargain Struck is a tale very well told. While not awash with historical detail, the reader is fully aware of place and time, and the plot of the story itself is engrossing. A thoroughly enjoyable read, full of romance and with enough treachery and intrigue to keep you rooting for Ellen until the last page. Katy O’Dowd 32 | Reviews |

HNR Issue 66, November 2013

PRAIRIE SONG Mona Hodgson, WaterBrook, 2013, $14.99/ C$16.95, pb, 298pp, 9780307731166 The setting for this inspirational romance is a wagon train heading west in 1866, providing an interesting background for a dual love story. The personalities of the two couples were not quite distinct enough to keep me from being confused at times, but I was entertained by the German background and alcoholic mother of one heroine, the interesting variety of immigrants on the wagon train, the introduction of a character with dementia and the plausible period details. I felt that the author had tried hard to bring complexity and color into this novel to bolster what was inevitably—as in any romance novel—a fairly predictable tale of growing love beset with obstacles. The spiritual elements of the story were moderately strong but not overly preachy. Some florid phrases such as “her Italian responses flying like bats at midnight” raised my eyebrows, but on the whole I found the writing to be polished, confident and lively with just the right tone for the historical setting. Fans of inspirational romance should enjoy this tale. Jane Steen

NOSTALGIA

MORTAL ARTS Anna Lee Huber, Berkley, 2013, $16/C$17, pb, 384pp, 9780425253786 Mortal Arts is second in Huber’s Lady Darby series. Kiera Darby was introduced in The Anatomist’s Wife as the widow of a 19th-century surgeon who forced her to use her artistic talents to draw cadavers for his publications. Of course, this branded her an unnatural woman when it came out. Much of the first mystery dealt with others’ reactions to her, which grew a bit wearisome. This second installment moves past that as Kiera, her sister, and brother-in-law are called to Edinburgh to help an old family friend who has a few too many skeletons in his closet for his fiancée’s family. That fiancée happens to be the cousin of Kiera’s brother-in-law. This is one of those mysteries where the whodunit is negligible compared to the characters. Kiera’s talents and how she used them have put her beyond the pale for polite society, but apart from the whispering, she cares little for that. Though she is loath to admit it, she does care for Sebastian Gage, an inquiry agent. They butt heads in this book as they did in the first, although ostensibly both are working towards the same goal. Social issues and conformity play a large part in the plot as well. Kiera is appalled to learn that her

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Dennis McFarland, Pantheon, 2013, $25.95/C$28.95, hb, 336pp, 9780307908353 Summerfield Hayes enlists in the Union army in the summer of 1864, despite his older sister’s objections. Prior to his enlistment, Hayes had been providing his sister, a Brooklyn schoolteacher, with the comfort she needed after the death of their parents. Soon after his training, his unit joins the Army of the Potomac in Virginia. After the battle of the Wilderness, Hayes is abandoned by his comrades. Thinking he is wounded, he winds up in a Washington military hospital. Unable to speak or write, he befriends a visitor, well-known poet Walt Whitman, who is compassionate and tries to heal Hayes of his wounds, both physical and mental. Because he is unable to communicate, the army doesn’t know his name, hometown, or relatives. Nor do the doctors and staff understand why he feels he is wounded when there are no signs of injury. This literary novel describes the early signs of shell shock before it became a popular diagnosis during and after World War I. Men who faced mental anguish after battles were categorized as cowards for refusing to return to the battlefield. This story is reminiscent of early novels of the Civil War such as The Red Badge of Courage, where men wounded in war faced more than actual physical wounds and entered into their own private hell of mental anguish. I was impressed with the author’s writing style as he describes the interaction between Hayes and other characters, both during the battle and his convalescence. The hospital scenes are especially well written; I could feel the patients’ compassion as well as their suffering. Many on the hospital staff support the patients, while there are others who take advantage of their mental and physical conditions. I highly recommend this novel as a character study of the effects war has on the mental state of soldiers after battle. One of the better novels written on the Civil War, this book could become a classic. Jeff Westerhoff 19th Century

THE PURSUIT OF MARY BENNET

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Pamela Mingle, William Morrow, 2013, $14.99, pb, 29 pp, 9780062274243 This Regency novel is a continuation of Pride and Prejudice. It takes place a few years later and focuses on Mary Bennet. Jane Austen portrays Mary as awkward and irritating, but now Mary has changed. She is a good sister and daughter, she has managed to polish her own rough edges, and it looks as if she will have her own chance at love and marriage. A pleasant young clergyman seems interested in her, and perhaps she will not be the spinster sister after all, left at home to care for her chronically unhappy parents. Jane and Lizzie, both happily married with children, are pleasant and supportive. Devious Kitty seems to be trying to snatch Mary’s suitor, and the deplorable Wickhams cause dire problems that may undermine Mary’s hopes for a happy future. Without ever stepping outside the mores of the time, Mary continues to mature, and builds herself into a strong, worthy woman as she struggles to find happiness and security for herself and those she loves. This novel is hard to put down. As an emotionally deep story of one woman’s re-invention of herself, it is a character piece that transcends genre. Anglophiles will love the masterfully drawn scenes of the English country settings and the elegant prose with its British voice – always difficult for an American author to get right. Highly recommended. Elizabeth Knowles former art tutor, the brother of the family friend, was institutionalized for what is now called posttraumatic stress disorder. Huber makes this 20thcentury construct work in this setting. Much to Kiera’s horror, she finds the doctor at the mental institution sets his sights on those who are different, reinforcing the 19th-century ideals of conformity as the norm. Huber calls to mind some other authors (Anne Perry for the social issues, Deanna Raybourn for the romantic antagonism), but Kiera and Gage can stand on their own. Ellen Keith TRACES OF MERCY (The Medallion Series, Book 1) Michael Landon Jr., and Cindy Kelley, David C. Cook, 2013, $14.99, pb, 352pp, 9780781408691 From the director and screenwriters who brought Janette Oke’s Love Comes Softly to life comes this exciting, original series set in Reconstruction-era St. Louis. Christened “Mercy” after the medallion she was found wearing, a young woman awakens from a bad accident with no memory of her true name or her past, only a yearning to discover the truth. Mercy begins to build a new life for herself as a local bachelor pursues her. Mercy is hesitant to commit lest any dark secrets emerge from a past she’s forgotten. A chance encounter with a stranger from her old life now threatens to unravel all of her dreams. More than a name, mercy is the underlying theme, with examples of times when we show kindness to those in need to the rarer occasions when we must show mercy to our enemies. Mother Helena is a wonderful Christ-like example in the 19th Century

book. Her wisdom and daily reliance on God are a costly perfume that permeates the lives of those around her and provides an absentee parental role in Mercy’s life. Anyone who loves Christian fiction, westerns or a post-Civil War historical read will enjoy this new book from writing team Landon and Kelley. Lauren Miller 1812: The Land Between Flowing Waters Ken Leland, Fireship, 2013, $18.50, pb, 275pp, 9781611792515 Set in Upper Canada and the Great Lakes region, 1812 recounts the story of Loyalists and members of the First Nations as they struggle to survive and repel American aggressors. Captain Alex Lockwood returns home to find his sweetheart, a former slave named Janie, married to his best friend and pregnant with their second child. Alex welcomes General Brock’s assignments because they keep him from pining after Janie, and while ferreting out traitors, a Quaker girl falls in love with him. Young Hannibal escapes slavery and is adopted by Kshiwe of the First Nations. Kmonokwe, his wife, teaches Hannibal to be a medicine person like herself, and together they help their people and the wounded once war breaks out. The intriguing premise never meets readers’ expectations. For example, the love-triangle conflict fails to materialize. Since the story unfolds from so many points of view – both major and minor characters – and is populated by a plethora of characters, it’s easy to lose track of who’s who. After the first 70 pages, the narrative switches back and forth between third and first person, which is

disconcerting and jarring. When it’s in first person, it’s not the same character’s perspective each time. The lack of an author’s note provides no clue about his intent in telling this story, and he portrays only Canadian perspectives, which makes the Americans seem stereotypical aggressors. Those seeking a well-rounded and deeper account of 1812 would do better reading Tom Taylor’s Brock’s Agent. Cindy Vallar MUNDY’S LAW Monty McCord, Five Star, 2013, $25.95, hb, 242pp, 9781432827540 Joe Mundy is out of a job. As deputy marshal of Baxter Springs, Kansas in 1876, one night Mundy kills a prominent rancher, along with the rancher’s son and his foreman in a gunfight. Although the shooting was determined to be in self-defense, the town’s marshal, Mundy’s boss and friend, thought it best for him to leave town. Events take him to Nebraska, where he is offered a job as town marshal of a small cattle town named Taylorsville. He becomes involved in the investigation of cattle rustlings, aware that a killer named Lute Kinney is on his trail to avenge the death for the men he killed in Kansas. McCord has written an excellent Western filled with action, suspense and an unusual love interest. His characters and dialog are realistic and authentic to the period, with pageturning chapters that keep the reader engrossed in the story. Highly recommended for Western enthusiasts. I look forward to reading more of his books. Jeff Westerhoff THOREAU AT DEVIL’S PERCH B. B. Oak, Kensington, 2013, $15.00, pb, 352pp, 9780758290236 First in a new series, this is a well-constructed murder mystery set in 1840s New England. Thoreau is residing at Walden Pond, and his character is nicely presented: dignified, thoughtful, humorous, and indeed, ever as observant and deductive as Sherlock Holmes himself. The death of a young, unknown Negro man is quickly dismissed as an accident by the town’s nervous selectmen, but both Thoreau and the main protagonist of the story, Dr. Adam Walker, observe enough to know it was murder. There is an engaging love story between the doctor and his cousin, Julia, who is an artist and rather more independent-minded than most of the women in the small town of Plumford, Mass. Between these two and Henry, this murder (and more) is solved to everyone’s satisfaction, and with some great peril to both hero and heroine. Oak writes very well, the characters are solid and interesting, and the victims and suspects are well-matched and not easy to determine. The only quibble I had was that the story is told as if from journal entries of Adam and Julia, taking chapters by turn; once you accept that construction, though, their “journal entries” have plenty of dialogue and action so it’s easy to forget that’s what they are, until the beginning of the next chapter. There is a good HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 33

THE SIEGE

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Arturo Pérez-Reverte (trans. Frank Wynne), Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2013, £14.99, 672pp, 9780297864325 (hb) / 9780297864332 (pb) In 1811 Spain, in the Peninsular War, the city of Cádiz is under siege, with French artillery shelling it from across the bay. Violence is also closer at hand: a serial killer is torturing, mutilating, and murdering teenage girls. Commissioner Tizón must catch him; but how? The siege and the murders will upturn the lives not only of Tizón, but also of a French artillery officer, a capable businesswoman, a tough corsair, and a fussy taxidermist who is also a French spy. These are only a few of the fascinating and memorable characters. I don’t think this was meant to be a murder mystery, because there are few if any clues to help the reader spot the identity of the murderer (readers who are more intelligent than myself may disagree). This is instead an absorbing “straight” historical novel, with characters whose attitudes and behaviour are plausibly those of their own time and place. It is a grim story, whose ending seems inevitable, but even in translation its literary quality shines out. Strongly recommended. Alan Fisk sense of the times and the life of simple but smart people living in rural Massachusetts – though not so far from Concord and Boston that they don’t know what’s going on in the rest of the world. Thoreau seems as real as any other character, and I was happy to see that the author avoided the ploy of putting famous “quotes” in his mouth to show he is indeed the Thoreau we’ve all read. It was really quite a page-turner, and I stayed up pretty late one night to finish it off! Mary F. Burns DEATH OF A ROBBER BARON Charles O’Brien, Kensington, 2013, $15.00, pb, 287pp, 9780758286369 Set during New York City’s Gilded Age (the late 19th century), this mystery initially transports us to a time of luxury and elitism for the fortunate wealthy. Author Charles O’Brien smartly captures the essence of a good “cozy” mystery. Nothing threatening here, at least to the reader. But in the lives of its characters scandals, thievery, and murder inevitably crop up. We meet Mrs. Pamela Thompson, a charitable woman who has adopted an orphan into her posh Greenwich Village townhome. Sadly, her husband isn’t one hundred percent behind her charity. Instead he foolishly risks their fortune on bad investments. Bad turns to worse when he loses Pamela’s inheritance and then commits suicide. It’s up to Pamela to use her wit and diligence to come back from the devastating blow of having lost everything she holds dear. The story provides an easy-going adventure. More depth of character and attention to setting details would make it a real standout, but readers who love their cozy mysteries set in the past will appreciated this gentle tale. Kathryn Johnson 34 | Reviews |

HNR Issue 66, November 2013

BLIND JUSTICE Anne Perry, Ballantine, 2013, $26.00, hb, 352pp, 9780345536709 / Headline, 2013, £7.99, pb, 416pp, 9780755397150 In this, the 19th installment in Perry’s William Monk series, a moral dilemma is presented to us: if someone knows that a crime has been committed, does he have a moral obligation to ensure that justice is served, no matter the cost to him? Monk’s wife, Hester, works with a young woman whose father is in dire financial straits, having been effectively coerced into making exorbitant donations to a church by its pastor. Since Hester’s father committed suicide after finding himself in much the same circumstances, Hester is determined to bring the thief to justice. The case is assigned to the Monks’ old friend, Sir Oliver Rathbone, who recognizes how difficult it will be to obtain a conviction, even if justified by the evidence. At a critical point in the proceedings, Rathbone, in possession of crucial evidence which will convict the wrongdoer, finds a way to get that evidence into the “right hands,” ensuring a conviction. Something goes terribly wrong, though – and Rathbone is arrested for perverting the course of justice. Monk goes to work as an inquiry agent, seeking to find exculpatory evidence to free his friend. Although I enjoy the Monk books thoroughly, I became weary of the inner workings of Rathbone’s thoughts. What saved the book for me was Perry’s ability to focus on the great inequality between rich and poor and how the judicial system can be manipulated by corrupt individuals in high positions. As always, an insightful foray into Victorian London, and for me, an attorney, the British legal system. Ilysa Magnus

THE DEVIL OF CLAN SINCLAIR Karen Ranney, Avon, 2013, $7.99/C$9.50, pb, 378pp, 9780062242440 American Virginia Traylor is forced into marriage with a titled British noble to satisfy the desires of her social climbing father. After his death, in 1869, Virginia finds herself penniless unless she can produce an heir to prevent the title from passing to her husband’s cousin, Jeremy. She remembers her former attraction, Macrath Sinclair, who lives in the Highlands of Scotland. Meanwhile Paul Henderson, the valet who served Virginia’s deceased husband, desires to take his master’s place by marrying Virginia. He becomes determined to foil any prospect of Virginia’s romance with any other suitors, especially Macrath. In this first in her new Clan Sinclair series, Karen Ranney enchants the reader with strong descriptions of people, places, and artifacts. Her characters are finely drawn, and one can count the muscles rippling on Macrath Sinclair’s arms as he holds Virginia to his chest. Her descriptions of the Scottish Highlands and in particular the Sinclair home, Drumvagen, along with Macrath’s grotto are clear and evocative. An energetic story with many surprising twists and turns. Liz Allenby DAVID Ray Robertson, Biblioasis, 2013, $21.95, pb, 296pp, 9781926845869 Born and sold in 1847, David is the biracial child of a slave and her master. When David’s mother is freed, she begs her savior to buy her child back, and he does; so begins their journey to freedom in Canada following the Reverend William King, a white Presbyterian minister who begins a settlement of former slaves. David is raised to revere Rev. King and his strict rules of education and Christian community. He is an exceptionally bright boy, and the Rev. King personally sees to David’s education, determined that he should become a minister himself. Though David enjoys learning, and continues his studies, something inside him tells him that he is nothing more than a slave to the Rev. King’s personal ideals and so rebels. Soon after his mother’s agonizing death, David’s whiskey drinking and whoring get him banished from the community. David reasons, philosophizes, and justifies his opposition to his teacher and champion with hard work, both legal and illegal. As David grows older and more settled, the death of Rev. King forces David to seek the introspective closure he subconsciously craved. This is an exceptionally well-written novel. Though there is nothing simple about David’s thoughts or story, the reader is drawn into David’s contemplation with the author’s forthright prose and the reader’s own curiosity about how David the child became the intelligent, jaded man so eloquently telling his own story. The characters are all engaging and interesting. This reader wouldn’t mind having whiskey with David herself. Highly, highly recommended! Cynthia McArthur 19th Century

BELLMAN AND BLACK: A Ghost Story Diane Setterfield, Orion, 2013, £14.99, hb, 320pp, 9781409128014 / Atria, 2013, $25/C$24.95, hb, 338pp, 9781476711959 When he is a boy, William Bellman somehow manages to kill a rook stone dead with a single catapult shot. His friends are impressed by his luck, but life goes on and he and they forget about it. But rooks do not forget. They are guided by two things only: Truth and Memory. William finds work in a woollen mill owned and run by his estranged grandfather and uncle. Slowly but surely, profits rise and the mill expands and prospers. Eventually he owns it. Meanwhile he marries a woman he loves, and they have four children they both adore. Until tragedy strikes. Soon, his thirteen-year old daughter, Dora, the only one left, is hanging onto life by the most slender of threads. He then has a strange conversation with the mysterious Mr Black, and a nebulous bargain is agreed. Meanwhile he leaves the mill in capable hands and begins a new business. We are now at the height of the Victorian obsession with death and all its trappings, and so he devises a huge shopping emporium for the bereaved. Bellman & Black sells everything from the large to the very small. People flock through it door. But William is troubled and profits start to fall inexorably. Is there something very important he’s forgotten? What on earth is it? The Thirteenth Tale was a huge worldwide bestseller, and it has taken many years for a second novel from Diane Satterfield to be published. Was it worth the wait? Absolutely. Bellman & Black is a much finer novel: more mature, more accomplished, more wide‑ranging and multi-layered and much, much more than a simple ghost story. If there is any justice in the book world, it will achieve greater critical acclaim. Sally Zigmond A FATAL LIKENESS (US) / A TREACHEROUS LIKENESS (UK) Lynn Shepherd, Delacorte, 2013, $26.00, hb, 384pp, 9780345532442 / Corsair, 2013, £7.99, pb, 352pp, 9781780331683 1850/1816 London. One man, four women. The man is Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. The adolescent women who protect him at all costs are the interrelated Fanny Godwin Imlay; Shelley’s first wife, Harriet Westbrook; his second wife, Mary Godwin Shelley; and Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont. Lord Byron is here, too, as the natural father of Claire Clairmont’s baby. The fictional protagonist, Charles Maddox, carries the weight of this disquieting tale. Summoned by Shelley’s son in the fall of 1850, our Charles, who is a private detective, agrees to investigate the “stranger” who claims to possess papers that will reveal the late poet’s secrets to the world. These secrets propel Charles through this complex story of suicide, deceit, lies, accusations, and breathtaking meanness. What is true? Who betrayed whom? What terrible truths may be revealed that has the acclaimed author of Frankenstein, Mary Godwin Shelley, determined 19th Century

to quash them in order to protect her husband’s reputation and, quite likely, hers, as well? Childlike, prone to horrific dreams, Shelley is eccentric and a raving madman on occasion. Employing an omniscient viewpoint that allows her to step out of the story and interpret events from time to time (from as far away as the 21st century, which I found jarring), Shepherd deftly peels away the layers of Shelley’s disturbing world. Incriminating papers are burned, children die or go missing, the guilty go unpunished. Even Charles Maddox falls from grace as he judges those around him and finds them lacking while remaining blissfully unaware of his own shortcomings. A fatal likeness, indeed. Despite its unsettling underpinnings, the writing in this work is glorious, and I recommend it highly. The book contains a genealogy with comments on the interwoven Shelley and Godwin families and extensive author’s notes. Alana White A SONG AT TWILIGHT Pamela Sherwood, Sourcebooks Casablanca, 2013, $6.99/£4.99, pb, 416pp, 9781402273254 This historical romance contains all the elements of a typical love story, but with a unique challenge that provides unexpected intrigue. The premise is simple: Robin and Sophie meet in 1891 in Cornwall, fall in love, and realize they are soul mates. But a secret soon destroys all hope of marriage and happiness. Years pass, and Sophie becomes a singer of great fame and fortune in London. When Robin re-enters the scene in 1896, their love rekindles, and the couple must figure out how to overcome the barriers keeping them apart. Although it started as a run-of-the-mill romance with a formulaic plot, the story eventually turned into a murder mystery which kept the plot twisting. Robin and Sophie endeavor to solve the murder, figure out their relationship, and navigate the tricky waters of a changing society. Despite its convenient and predictable ending, I was pleasantly surprised with A Song at Twilight. Overall, this is a pleasing romance with a good mysterious twist. Rebecca Cochran IN PRAISE OF ANGELS Richard Smolev, Academy Chicago, 2013, $19.95, pb, 274pp, 9780897337250 In Praise of Angels covers the years shortly after the Civil War, when Reconstruction brings political struggles over the status of the Confederate states and their former slaves and new commercial opportunities occasioned by a rapidly expanding, yet still somewhat loosely regulated, America. Smolev imagines a young reporter, Benjamin Wright, who has seen his family destroyed by war and seeks to uphold the ideals for which his brothers died. Excluded as a younger son from the conflict that has dominated his youth, Benjamin must now fight his own battle and make his own sacrifices in two key events of the early Reconstruction years: the threatened impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, and the scandal that drives Horace

Greeley’s presidential campaign four years later over the massive diversion of public money into private pockets during the building of the Union Pacific Railroad. The novel tackles questions that are still fresh today about the role of the media in standing up to corporate and political might. Benjamin attempts to uphold the American ideals – the “better angels of our nature” of Lincoln’s inaugural address – for which the war was fought, but he does so at enormous personal cost. Despite some moments in which the characters seem to indulge in 21stcentury thinking, In Praise of Angels is a plausible, well-researched dramatization of an era which shaped today’s America, for good and bad. Jane Steen A JANE AUSTEN DAYDREAM Scott D. Southard, Madison Street, 2013, $14.95, pb, 410pp, 9780983671923 The incidents of Jane Austen’s life are well known to her fans, and we are legion. Author Southard has taken the facts about the great author and woven them into a credible, touching, and also entertaining portrait of a life. This is a novel more than a fictionalized biography, but in most particulars Southard remains true to Jane’s early 19th-century world, showing a highly intelligent young woman limited by a circumscribed life. She faces the same dilemma as her characters of whether and whom to marry, and the consequences of those decisions. Jane’s wit, strength, and devotion to family and her art carry her through such trials as the proposal, and temporary acceptance, of the hand of Mr. Bigg-Withers. This episode is one of the highlights of the novel, after which Jane’s wastrel brother Henry comments, “I have to say... that, Jane, you are no longer fun at parties. You are far too unpredictable.” Novels are also little fun if predictable and in creating a story of Jane’s life, where the facts and incidents are already known, Scott Southard has managed to produce both an unexpected and unconventional story. A Jane Austen Daydream captures the warmth, laughter, folly, wisdom, and grief that must have been present in Jane’s family life and surroundings for her to have produced her novels. And in Southard’s novel dear Jane is given a much kinder end. Eva Ulett THE LINCOLN DECEPTION David O. Stewart, Kensington, 2013, $15.00/ C$16.95, pb, 253pp, 9780758290670 Lincoln is a popular topic. David O. Stewart, a respected historian, has made a strong contribution with The Lincoln Deception, his first work of fiction. The prosecutor of the Booth conspirators told on his deathbed of a dangerous secret concerning Lincoln’s assassination, but he took the secret to his grave and the provenance of this tale was “by no means sturdy.” The story being too juicy to ignore, Stewart turned to fiction. Stewart’s historical premise is that Booth was not a fanatic working alone, but part of an HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 35

attempted coup d’état. With suspense Stewart has you guessing the co-conspirators’ identities. Both Northern and Southern suspects, including major institutions, abound. In between, Stewart works in some romance for his main character, a fictional doctor based loosely on Bingham’s real physician. The other main character, a black pro baseball player, is also based indirectly on an historical person, but the fictionalization gives Stewart room to tell an exciting story and develop unusual characters in depth. Lincoln himself is an indirect presence in a book set years after the president’s death and focused on the motives and thinking of the conspirators. Who would have gained by Lincoln’s death, financially or politically? What advantage could a defeated South see in its foe’s murder? This book raises interesting questions while taking a fresh angle on the Lincoln story. Stewart has enough historical expertise to pull off this flight into fiction. Judith Starkston CARIBBEE: A Kydd Sea Adventure Julian Stockwin, McBooks, 2013, $24.00, hb, 328pp, 9781590136683 / Hodder & Stoughton, 2013, £18.99, hb, 368pp, 9781444712049 During the Napoleonic Wars, Captain Thomas Kydd, aboard HMS L’Aurore, is assigned to the Caribbean and the Leeward Islands station. He is to concentrate his naval activities on the capture of French privateers who are attacking English merchant convoys. Soon he is ordered to join the Jamaica Squadron at Port Royal to protect valuable sugar cargo from landing in the hands of French privateers. He is ably assisted by his secretary, Nicholas Renzi, who also has a history (in previous books in this series) of spying on the French for the English government. Kydd is called to task to discover the location of a French base used to attack British shipping in the Caribbean islands. This novel is the 14th in the successful Kydd sea adventure series. The story is fast-paced and a fun read for those who enjoy British nautical books, such as those written by Forester and Patrick O’Brian. The nautical terms can be a little confusing for those readers who don’t know them (even though Stockwin includes a glossary), but I still found that his knowledge of the British Navy, the locale, and the language used by the characters overshadowed any problems with the difficult terminology. Stockwin is able to make the reader feel he has stepped into the past and has become a part of the ship’s crew. I have read most of the novels in this series and will continue to enjoy Captain Kydd’s adventures in the future. I highly recommend this book for those who enjoy a good sea yarn. Jeff Westerhoff A CASE OF DOUBTFUL DEATH Linda Stratmann, The Mystery Press, 2013, £8.99/$14.95, pb, 386pp, 9780752470184 The Life House, despite its name, is a waiting mortuary near Kensal Green Cemetery, in which corpses are left to putrefy to prevent accidental 36 | Reviews |

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premature burial. When, on the night of 21st September 1880, its reliable orderly Henry Palmer vanishes following the sudden death of its director Dr Mackenzie, detective Frances Doughty is called in to find the missing man. But her investigations are hampered by the fact that nobody connected with the case seems to be telling the truth... This is the third Frances Doughty mystery, but that should not hamper any new readers as key facts about the protagonist’s past are woven into the novel. Unfortunately the emotionless prose, which no doubt is an asset in Stratmann’s true crime books, means that this novel lacks pace for me. Without either dizzying highs or dark lows, the comic relief provided by Frances’ associates falls flat because there is nothing to contrast it with. Even the ending didn’t feel like it was building towards a climax. At times, the central mystery feels lost as Frances investigates other cases, most of which turn out (too coincidentally?) to have at least a tangential connection with the main plot. Moreover I can’t help feeling Frances comes across as somewhat middle-aged for someone who, at 20, is still technically a minor under Victorian law. Apart from a flutter of interest in a potential love interest and annoyance at clients who lie to her, she doesn’t seem to have many emotions. Nor did I ever feel she was in real danger, which killed the tension. On the other hand, the research into lateVictorian London seems extensive, and the description of the descent into the catacombs under Kensal Green Cemetery is effective. Recommended for readers who prefer mysteries cosy rather than high-octane. Jasmina Svenne FIRE ACROSS THE VELDT John Wilcox, Allison & Busby, 2013, £19.99, hb, 347pp, 9780749010089 This is another book in the Simon Fonthill series, but with one important difference. Fonthill usually prefers to work for the army as a scout or undercover agent without actually being a member of it. This means that he can operate outside the framework of army discipline, which he loathes. This attitude, as those who are familiar with the series will know, stems from his experiences as a young officer. But in this book, set in the Boer War, he is required to officially join the army, as is his side-kick, 352 Jenkins, so called because of the prevalence of men named Jenkins in the Welsh regiment of which, along with Fonthill, he was originally a member. However, Fonthill is able to evade the constraints of army discipline by forming his own regiment, Fonthill’s Horse. And, wait for it, 352, who has always been the bane of sergeantmajors, becomes its Regimental Sergeant-Major. The idea of course is that such a regiment will be able to use unconventional methods in tracking down the elusive Boers. The main strength of the book is its description of the Boer War itself and of how those hardy Afrikaner farmers were able to give the British military the slip by exploiting their knowledge

of the Veldt. There are good descriptions of the main protagonists, including Kitchener and the Boer leader Botha. There is also an interesting portrait of Emily Hobhouse, who exposed the concentration camps (at the time the word was not pejorative) in which the families of the Boars were held. Alice, Fonthill’s wife, who unusually for a woman at the time, is a journalist, meets and interviews Hobhouse. For the rest, the novel, with its scenes of action and adventurous soldiering, should leave lovers of the Fonthill series, of which I am one, well satisfied. Neville Firman

20th century

THE BIG CROWD Kevin Baker, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013, $27/C$34, hb, 432pp, 9780618859900 Irish brothers making it big in New York City is a familiar story. The Big Crowd tells the particular story of brothers Tom and Charlie O’Kane. Charlie came over from Ireland first, paving the way for his younger brother Tom to join him in 1939. Both brothers take an interest in the law. Tom works as a dockyards organizer, attending law school at night. From humble beginnings as a beat cop, Charlie becomes district attorney for the city, then mayor of New York. Now, in 1953, it’s Tom who works for the district attorney’s office while Charlie and his young second wife live the expatriate life in Mexico City after Charlie’s ambassadorship to that country ended. The history between the brothers, both personal and political, is dense. In fact, it’s almost too dense. Baker’s style is to layer flashback upon flashback. Tom is sent to Mexico City to wrestle the truth out of Charlie about the Kefauver hearings and Charlie’s term as mayor. Charlie alternately blusters and plays on their shared history to deflect his brother’s questions. Distracting Tom from the sidelines is Slim, Charlie’s wife. They too share a history. Baker gets the tone of early to mid-20th century New York just right. The deals made between the law and the lawless are all too realistic. But a combination of too many flashbacks, confusing the narrative line, and the number of characters that had me wishing for an index to them made this less than successful. It was difficult to lose myself in the story when I had to flip back and forth, refreshing myself as to who was a good guy and who was a bad guy. Perhaps that was the point. Ellen Keith ONCE WE WERE BROTHERS Ronald H. Balson, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2013 (c2010), $15.99/C$18.50, pb, 400pp, 9781250046390 Elliot Rosenzweig is supposedly a survivor of Nazi persecution in Poland. He made it big after coming to America and, now elderly, is a widely admired philanthropist. His world is shaken 19th Century — 20th Century

when he is publicly confronted by Ben Solomon, also a Polish immigrant of advanced years, who accuses him of actually being a former SS officer. Rosenzweig says Solomon is lying or insane. The novel moves back and forth from contemporary events to scenes set in World War II Poland. In America, Solomon sues Rosenzweig for property expropriated during the war. His purpose is to expose the man as the monster he thinks he really is. Solomon’s Jewish family, we learn, charitably took in an ethnic German youngster, Otto Piatek. Piatek and Solomon grew up as brothers. Then, Germany invaded Poland and everything changed. The author vividly portrays the situation of Solomon and his family, trapped under Nazi rule and fighting for survival. He also shows us young Piatek’s gradual alteration from a decent young man, loyal to his Jewish foster family, to someone who wears an SS uniform with no apparent strain. But is Rosenzweig really Piatek? The author is an attorney, and the courtroom scenes seem authentic. Among the other strengths of the book is the vivid portrayal of historical circumstances in Poland. The members of the Solomon family are brought to life, and the reader comes to truly care about them. I was gripped by two central mysteries. Were Rosenzweig and Piatek actually the same person? And how could an admirable young man change so much that he turned on people he loved and became a Nazi executioner? The novel fully and convincingly answers the first question. Perhaps fittingly, I was left pondering the second one. All and all, this is a truly absorbing novel. Phyllis T. Smith IN THE KINGDOM OF MEN Kim Barnes, Windmill, 2013, £7.99, pb, 336pp, 9780099559276 / Anchor, 2013, $15.00, pb, 336pp, 9780307474698 Gin McPhee, an orphan raised in poverty by her strict Methodist grandfather, hastily weds her sweetheart Mason on finding herself pregnant. She loses the baby and Mason his chance of university. In search of a fresh start, Mason takes a job in the Saudi Arabian oilfields of the 1960s, and soon Gin is living a life she never dreamed of: a luxurious house in a gated compound, a houseboy, and for entertainment a round of cocktails, dinner parties and a little light flirting. But soon this lifestyle palls. Mason is often away on the rigs, her marriage is changing, and most of the other company wives bore her. Discontented, she asks questions and makes discoveries, leading her to suspect that the wealth is paid for by corruption and the exploitation of Arab workers. She fears Mason may be implicated. Why, she wonders, did the previous occupants of their house leave so suddenly? And who killed the young Bedouin woman washed up on the beach? This is much more than a thriller. It’s about what happens to a marriage thrust into an alien setting, to people of two different cultures destined to mutual misunderstanding, and above all to a 20th Century

spirited young woman who breaks the rules. The novel is all the more rewarding for taking its time. We get a vivid feeling for Gin’s blighted youth, her selfhood crushed by a bigoted guardian, and for her hope that her life as a company wife in a foreign land might allow her to be herself. But it proves to be just another form of oppression. Then, seeking that elusive freedom out in the desert, she finds a form of female subjugation far worse than she could imagine. For all her travelling, she’s never really left the kingdom of men. Sarah Cuthbertson THE PARIS ARCHITECT Charles Belfoure, Sourcebooks Landmark, 2013, $25.99/C$29.99/£17.99, hb, 384pp, 9781402284311 In 1942 Paris, the good guys are not all that good. We meet the hero/antihero of this novel, architect Lucien Bernard, as he nervously jokes with Nazi soldiers who just murdered a Jewish man on the rue la Boétie. Some blood has splattered on Bernard’s suit, which the SS officer admires for its cut. Ironically, Bernard is on his way to a meeting with a wealthy and daring businessman who bribes Bernard into devising hiding places for Jews. This industrialist will ensure that Bernard gets jobs designing munitions factories and such, collaborating with the Germans, but only if he will design the hiding places. Bernard keeps insisting that each hiding place is the last, but he saves lives despite himself. Bernard’s drab wife doesn’t want Bernard collaborating with the Nazis or, worse, helping Jews. As for Bernard’s mistress, she’s sleeping with a sadistic Nazi. I enjoyed this novel’s suspense, and I also liked the author’s smooth writing, fast-paced action, and description of Paris during World War II. There’s a lovely little map of Paris, showing the locations of all the streets mentioned in the story, a nice touch that appears in too few historical novels. However, the cast of contemptible characters was discouraging. As for Bernard, he evolves but he’s so unlikeable that I didn’t care all that much. Warning: there are paragraphs of description of the SS torturing their victims. Kristen Hannum THE LION SEEKER Kenneth Bonert, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013, $28, hb, 576pp, 9780547898049 In the 1930s, Jews in South Africa were coping with the threat of Hitler in the territory they had left: Lithuania, in the case of the Helger family, the main characters in this interesting historical novel. The protagonist, Isaac, strives to become what his mother calls “a Clever” (in contrast to “a Stupid”) by building a business in junked automobiles in partnership with a dubious character who sees the impending war as an opportunity in scrap metal. Isaac falls in love with a girl from a prosperous liberal family, coming to her attention when he sets a rival’s hair on fire. Isaac encounters Greyshirts who model themselves on the Nazis and become more powerful as World War II approaches. Isaac

resents discrimination against Jews, but he cannot conceive of the Blacks as anything but inferiors to be exploited, and he dismisses anyone who claims to think differently. Isaac’s mother carries a scar from a pogrom, the details of which he discovers gradually. She hopes to aid relatives back in Dusat to escape from the growing horrors. His hard work to build her a dream house might be considered admirable, but he commits an unforgivable crime in this pursuit. Afrikaans, Zulu, Yiddish (called Jewish), and other languages are sprinkled through the book, adding texture at the cost of occasional confusion. The main character is not particularly sympathetic, but the virtue of the book is its strong portrayal of the Jewish diaspora during a crucial period. James Hawking THE ICE-COLD HEAVEN Mikko Bonné, Overlook, 2013, $27.95/C$29.50, hb, 368pp, 9781590201404 / Duckworth, 2013, 16.99, hb, 432pp, 9780715645840 In 1914, in spite of impending war, King George V gives the go-ahead for Irishman Sir Ernest Shackleton, expedition commander on the ship Endurance, to sail for Antarctica. His mission: to be first to cross the icy continent on foot. Shackleton, a polar veteran, handpicks a crew of 27 men but, when Endurance reaches the open sea, he has 28 men on board, including a 17-year-old stowaway hidden in a locker. Merce Blacksboro, who is loosely based on the real stowaway, is conveniently placed to tell the story when, after a shorter-than-expected summer, Endurance is trapped and destroyed by pack ice. Merce is determined, observant, and a good judge of character who recognizes Shackleton’s ability to manage a crises. In spite of his youth, Merce keeps his head like most of the crew when the ship sinks, leaving them stranded on ice. Merce is also along when Shackleton treks the rugged frozen terrain to the nearest whaling station and returns for the men left behind – 635 days after Endurance sailed. Shackleton’s first question upon reaching land in 1916 is particularly poignant: “Tell me, when was the war over?” only to hear, “The war is not over… the world is mad.” Although Shackleton did not accomplish his original mission, he is justly famous for one of the most remarkable rescues in history. Interested readers may find his own account of the voyage, The Story of Shackleton’s Expedition, 1914-1917, available free online. Even those not normally drawn to adventure novels will find the depth of characterization in Bonné’s thrilling novel absorbing. Ice-Cold Heaven is a richly imagined voyage based real events and, as such, is highly recommended. Jeanne Greene A COMMONPLACE KILLING Siân Busby, Atria/Marble Arch Press, 2013, $16.00, pb, 271pp, 9781476730295 / Short Books, 2013, £12.99, pb, 272pp, 9781780721484 The war may be over, but London is definitely HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 37

not at peace in this darkly suspenseful novel set in London at the close of World War II. In a landscape filled with bomb crates and houses partially or fully destroyed, the reader covers a journey with Londoners trying hard, and unsuccessfully, to get back to normal. What is perhaps strongest in this novel is the authenticity of the emotions of the characters: wives not completely happy that the soldier husband has come home after all; girl friends who easily turn on each other for a pair of new stockings; children so already traumatized that finding a corpse is part of a day’s play. The victim is housewife Lillian Parry, and her crime, if her murder is a form of punishment, is simply wishing that things were different, that she could have a different life. Detective Jim Cooper must encounter the dark side of the English middle class to solve this case, and author Busby knows how to convey disillusion like no other writer I’ve recently read. There are no fairy tale endings, she tells us. War changes everyone and everything, making this a mystery with an important message. What makes this novel even more poignant is that the author died before it was completed and her husband, who also wrote the introduction, completed it from her notes. There is a noticeable style change in the last chapters, but somehow that backstory makes the fictional one even more compelling. This is a brave and fascinating story. Jeanne Mackin BENEDICT HALL Cate Campbell, Kensington, 2013, $15.00/ C$16.95, 384pp, pb, 9780758287595 Campbell’s novel captures a wide swath of Seattle in the early 1920s, bringing to life a city struggling with growing pains as well as class and race issues. At the center of the wide-ranging cast of characters is the long-established successful Benedict family. Son Dick is following his father’s footsteps, while his brother Preston has no urge to settle down, instead indulging in destructive, attentiongetting activities both at home and during his time in the Middle East in the Great War. Daughter Margot is a doctor, an unusual career choice at the time, and her work with the have-nots – from the poor produce workers at the Pike Place market to prostitutes to alcoholics – brings further, sometimes unwanted, attention from the establishment. Her relationship with Preston is especially fraught, for reasons that slowly become clear. Military veteran Frank Parrish arrives in Seattle only to find that a promised job has disappeared; unemployment is high, and prospects are not good for a one-armed engineer. A chance encounter with Preston brings him into the Benedict family circle, where his attraction to Margot does battle with Preston’s malicious mischief and his own ongoing post-war pain. Long-time family servant Blake is the bridge between many of the characters, and his story is in many ways the most poignant. Campbell provides a strong narrative, incorporating realistic detail ranging from the 38 | Reviews |

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social to the legislative to the medical; less successful are her elements of supernatural realism, which threaten the credulity of an otherwise solid tale. Helene Williams THE HIDDEN Jo Chumas, Thomas & Mercer, 2013, $14.95, pb, 444pp, 9781477848197 The Hidden is an aggressive debut novel that dares to take on a complex plot set in two time periods, 1919 and 1940, which features a double mystery. We begin in 1940 by meeting Aimee Ibrahim, who has been called to her husband’s university in Cairo to retrieve his belongings following his death. Therein resides the first mystery, upon which much of the novel depends. Aimee is thrown into a plot against Egypt’s king during her search for her husband’s killer. The other mystery involves Aimee’s past, of which she knows little. Only when she has her mother’s diary in hand, written 20 years earlier, does Aimee discover her dead mother’s identity (a Sultan’s daughter and female revolutionary) and her tortured life. As time passes, she comes to realize how closely their lives mirror each other’s. The strongest and most appealing elements of the novel are its richness of setting details and characterization. Everything about the way the characters think and how they relate to each other feels authentic. This is a stunning launch for a new fiction writer, although the novelist’s skills are still being honed. Sometimes the language verges on awkward or clichés creep in. Nevertheless, the book is the 2013 winner of Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award in the mystery-and-thriller category, undoubtedly deserving that prize. The only real disappointment for this reader is the concluding scene of the story, which might be more satisfying without the rushed mutual confessions that seem necessary to explain all of the misunderstandings and motivation for earlier action. How much more satisfying it would be if the author had figured out a way to wrap things up more organically. Despite this, The Hidden is a solid first novel. Readers should look forward to seeing more from this talented author. Kathryn Johnson A SPIDER IN THE CUP Barbara Cleverly, Soho, 2013, $26.95/£17.99, hb, 336pp, 9781616952884 Barbara Cleverly’s latest Joe Sandilands mystery is an international affair. In 1933 London, a woman’s body is unearthed on the banks of Thames with two unusual features. One of her toes is missing, and she has a valuable gold coin in her mouth. Scotland Yard’s Assistant Commissioner Joe Sandilands catches the case, but he also has his hands full babysitting U.S. Senator Cornelius Kingstone, a Franklin Roosevelt confidante, in London for an international economic conference – two totally different assignments, until Sandilands discovers a link between the body and Kingstone. Set amidst the tension and uncertainty of

pre-World War II London, Cleverly displays her encyclopedic knowledge of the London of that era, and that provides one of the few weaknesses in the book. There’s an assumption that the reader will be as well-versed in that time period as the author, causing a bit of confusion at times. But the descriptions are almost lyrical as Cleverly weaves her plot in and out of the streets of London, tying them together in a conclusion that is both surprising and satisfying. If you are a Sandilands fan, you’ll find this adventure propels him into a mystery unlike his earlier cases, and he rises to the challenge very well. Tony Hays BOOTS AND SADDLES Paul Colt, Five Star, 2013, $25.95, hb, 352pp, 9781432828035 In the spring of 1916, there is a revolution in Mexico. Pancho Villa, leading a band of bandits, attacks the American town of Columbus, New Mexico and kills several of its citizens. President Wilson is forced by his cabinet to order an expeditionary force into Mexico to either apprehend or kill Villa. Leading the American army is General “Black Jack” Pershing. His aide is Lieutenant George Patton, who, at thirty-two, wants to be involved in combat, not only to test his theories on cavalry movements but also to rise in rank. Patton and Pershing soon become friends. Through General Pershing’s tutelage, Patton learns that the days of the “horse soldier” are over. The author provides excellent characterization of the major characters, both historical and fictional. The story telling is linear in nature, from the introduction of the characters to the final scene, where Pancho Villa is forced to move away from the boundary of the United States. The book ends as Pershing and Patton join the American army and head for Europe to fight Germany in World War I. Colt knows his history and tells an exciting tale of this oft-forgotten clash between Mexico and the United States. Highly recommended. Jeff Westerhoff THE SECRET KNOWLEDGE Andrew Crumey, Dedalus, 2013, £9.99, pb, 234pp, 9781909232457 Whether this qualifies as historical fiction is a moot point: it’s set in multiple pasts, multiverses, spanning the 20th century, from 1913 Paris to 1919 Glasgow, 1924 Capri, 1940 Barcelona, 1941 New York, 1967 West Germany and modern London. However, the past is not there for its own sake. What matters instead are the interlinking strands of events whose effects spin through time and space – only a writer with a PhD in theoretical physics could write so effortlessly, and brilliantly, of these alternate realities, which also feature in Sputnik Caledonia, an earlier award‑winning work. The physical object linking the different episodes in Crumey’s latest novel is a musical score, the work of a brilliant pianist, Pierre Klauer, and an arcane book, a code-breaker perhaps, or an initiation to the “secret knowledge”, last owned by 20th Century

Walter Benjamin. Both score and book are pursued by suspicious types, under false names (Carreau, Verrier, Verrine, Oeillet), who are doubles in time and space, as suggested by the radical 19th-century theorist, Auguste Blanqui. Described as an “intellectual mystery”, the book explores the illusion of progress in history, perhaps also in our individual lives, a tribute to Benjamin’s own theories. Interestingly, the women are the most coherent and linear characters: Yvette and Paige, in particular, but even the historical figure, Hannah Arendt, who appears in the book alongside Theodor Adorno. The two key plots involving Yvette and Paige spiral together, doubles whose strands of DNA intersect only in that the music score is central to both: one has the feeling, at the end, that their stories might easily start all over again. As another of the characters says: “Who can say where anything begins or ends?” Challenging stuff, but fascinating. Lucinda Byatt DEATH RIDES THE ZEPHYR Janet Dawson, Perseverance Press, 2013, $15.95, pb, 232pp, 9781564745309 December 1952. Jill McLeod is a Zephyrette, a stewardess on the California Zephyr (CZ), which is making its Christmas run from California to Colorado. Jill hopes for a quiet run until a rock slide forces the train to a standstill, stranding passengers on board with a thief and a killer. As a Zephyrette, Jill has direct access to every passenger aboard, making her the most likely candidate to find the missing loot and discover the crooks’ identities. Dawson’s extensive research into train life is translated into a moment-by-moment account of life on the CZ, and we are privileged to see every aspect of being a Zephyrette, from dealing with rude customers to the ticket colors used when scheduling luncheon and the dinner hour. The well-detailed nature of the piece does affect the pacing, which at times feels slow, and dampens the suspense of the actual murder, which comes much later than anticipated. The highlight of the novel is the Vista-Dome experience as we can only imagine it, a pleasure dome with unobstructed views of the Sierra Nevadas, Great Basin, and the Colorado Rockies. Train lovers will love this glimpse of a life spent riding the rails on this unique streamliner that originally operated from its inauguration on March 19, 1949 to its final westbound run from Chicago to Oakland on March 22, 1970. Lauren Miller THE CARTOGRAPHER OF NO MAN’S LAND P. S. Duffy, Liveright/WW Norton, 2013, $25.95/ C$27.50, hb, 384pp, 9780871403766 Holidays in Nova Scotia inspired P. S. Duffy’s setting for her first novel, The Cartographer of No Man’s Land. Duffy promises a fresh examination of the effects of World War I on soldiers, their families, and their community. While her narrative competently examines the relationship between 20th Century

Lieutenant Angus MacGrath and his son Simon, Duffy fails to fully explore their relationship with their wife and mother, Hettie MacGrath. Notification that Hettie’s brother, Ebbin, is missing in action motivates Angus to enlist to find him. Defying his pacifist father, Angus thinks he will serve as a cartographer but is instead sent to the Front, where he witnesses the death and hysteria of trench warfare. Complicating his search for Ebbin is his own struggle to stay alive and his love for a French widow. Contrasting his experience is Simon’s growing relationship with his Nova Scotia town’s German-born schoolteacher. Throughout, Hettie remains ambiguous, a woman who married Angus because she was pregnant, a woman we could admire for taking over the family business but condemn for her lack of effort with Angus’s physical and psychological struggles on his return. As Angus’s withdrawal alienates his son, a year and a half passes before a neighboring veteran gives him the redemption he needs, just as Simon’s life is endangered. Although Duffy’s focus on Angus and Simon’s relationship gifts the story with two rounded male characters, and we are given an indication that Angus has healed, her neglect of Hettie robs the story with a flat character, leaving the narrative with a sense of something missing. Terri Baker MANNA FROM HADES Carola Dunn, Constable & Robinson, 2013, £7.99, pb, 305pp, 9781780336480 Manna from Hades is the first of three Cornish mystery novels published in the UK in 2013 from the pen of Carola Dunn, author of the Daisy Dalrymple series. The author states in her ‘Notes’ that the series is set in a fictional village world somewhere in the 1960s/70s between her childhood memories of Cornwall and the present reality. Eleanor Trewynn has returned to her Cornish roots after a long marriage of living overseas with her husband, an employee with the London Save the Starving Council, Lon*Star. Recently widowed and now retired, she has bought a home in the village of Port Mabyn. Using the last of her savings and now existing on a small pension, she has converted her house into a flat for herself upstairs and a shop below to enable her to continue the charity work. Returning from a day of collecting donations she discovers a corpse in the storeroom of the shop. With her niece, Detective Sergeant Megan Pencarrow of the county constabulary, Eleanor assists the police in the solving of the murder. The crime seems to be related to a violent robbery in London, the proceeds of which Aunt Eleanor thought was a particularly generous gift to Lon*Star. This is an entertaining crime and mystery tale written by an established author. There are strong female characters, including the dog, Teazle, and easily manipulated men. The dialogue is amusing at times. The fictional setting depicts life in an idyllic seaside village. The book, however, struggles

to fit into the genre of an historical novel. Gwen Sly THE CAPTAIN’S DAUGHTER Leah Fleming, Simon and Schuster UK/ Trafalgar Square, 2013, $12.99/£6.99, pb, 569pp, 9780857203441 The Captain’s Daughter opens with two very different women taking the famed ship Titanic to America, neither anxious to be aboard, and both unsuspecting of how the looming iceberg will shape their futures. Irishwoman May Smith is accompanying her husband and baby daughter in third class, hoping for a better life; first-class passenger Celeste Parkes is returning to her abusive husband after attending her mother’s funeral at home in England. When the women end up in a lifeboat together, Celeste takes the distraught May and her baby under her wing, and their friendship only solidifies as the years pass. May takes daughter Ella back to England, and Celeste eventually works up the courage to take her son Roddy and run away home. Celeste’s family takes in May and Ella as the First World War rages, and their lives continue to intermingle, even after May succumbs to a wicked infection. But her death is really only another beginning for Celeste and Ella; May leaves this world revealing a secret about that long ago night which will change everything. Spanning from 1912 to 1959, The Captain’s Daughter ties the tale of the two women and their families to the night of the sinking. Ella’s survival is based on a legend of Captain Smith handing a baby into a lifeboat after the ship went down, while Titanic heroine Molly Brown makes an impression upon Celeste. The characters are vibrant and well drawn, with actions made believable through devastating circumstances. Not only do we experience the loss of the Titanic, but we also live through the tragedies of both world wars. My only complaint is that the book is a bit slow in spots, but the grand opening and even more heartfelt ending make it an entirely enjoyable saga in which to lose oneself. Recommended. Tamela McCann GHOST MOTH Michèle Forbes, Bellevue Literary Press, 2013, $14.95, pb, 237pp, 9781934137604 In 1969, bloody rioting in Belfast in Northern Ireland exploded into the decades-long Troubles. Michèle Forbes’ excellent first novel works in that material, but through the private lives of a Catholic family in Belfast. Katherine Fallon has carried the memory of a lost love with her through her marriage, as the Irish have carried the memories of past hatreds through their history, and that has shaped all the lives around her, her husband, her children. She meets the lost love, a wonderfully Irish tailor, when she is singing Carmen in an amateur production; he sews her costume and seduces her. Her outer self moves on, but her mind stays in this unreal, theater moment. Forbes weaves these two selves together into a story that chimes with the history of Ireland. HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 39

George Fallon, Katherine’s husband, is a Belfast fireman and is always being called away to put out fires; in a hair-raising scene, he and his children are trapped in his car in a hostile mob. The shop where the children go for sweets explodes in flames. This book is not upbeat, but it well rewards the reader. The writing is precisely observed, understated, elegant, and the characters live off the page, not because they’re likeable but because they’re so intensely human. A fine first novel. Cecelia Holland SONGS OF WILLOW FROST Jamie Ford, Ballantine, 2013, $26.00/C$28.00, hb, 352pp, 9780345522023 / Allison & Busby, 2013, £14.99, hb, 350pp, 9780749014582 Ford returns to Seattle for inspiration in his eagerly awaited second novel, after the wildly successful Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. This time, readers glimpse the city during the 1920s through the Great Depression. Twelveyear-old William Eng has lived at the Sacred Heart Orphanage for five years, ever since his mother, nightclub singer Liu Song, became ill and was carried out of their small Chinatown apartment. William doesn’t have many friends, other than two other outcasts: blind Charlotte Rigg, and Sunny Sixkiller, who also understands what it’s like to be teased for looking different. Life in an orphanage can be lonely and scary, and the residents have all had to face harsh realities, leaving childhood dreams behind. At an annual movie outing, though, William sees a miracle; his mother, or someone who looks and sounds just like her but is called Willow Song, is on the big screen. His resolve to find her, and to find out why she abandoned him, takes him and his friends into the dangerous, hardscrabble world of Skid Row and the seamy underside of vaudeville life. Liu Song’s story is told in flashbacks, acquainting the reader with the equally undesirable aspects of Chinatown. Ford deftly, and heartbreakingly, illustrates the clashes between cultures, generations, and genders that resulted in Liu Song’s painful decision to send William to the orphanage. The scenes are not all bleak; there are moments of joy for Liu Song at Butterfield’s music store, and the arrival of the bookmobile at the orphanage is a transformative experience for many of the children. Pain and darkness are never far from the surface, however, and Ford has done an exceptional job of showcasing the struggles that immigrants and outsiders of all kinds faced during this period in history. Helene Williams WELCOME TO THE FREE ZONE Nathalie and Ladislas Gara (trans. Bill Reed), Hesperus Press, 2013, £9.99, pb, 355pp, 9781843914662 In 1942, the village of Saint-Boniface in the Ardèche, in the French Free Zone established after the 1940 armistice, plays host to a motley assortment of refugees. There is the Russian Countess Prokoff, who is not respectable because 40 | Reviews |

HNR Issue 66, November 2013

she goes to the cinema. Her lover plays Mozart superbly but has strange ideas about shirt-tails and underwear. Madame Cleps, a former film star, scandalises the community by wearing turbans and trousers and has a morbid terror of running out of cigarettes. Several Jewish families are “guests” of the local farmers, coping with varying degrees of resourcefulness with rationing, exploitation and forged papers. Among them are Tibor and Ellen Veres and their two children, thinly disguised versions of the authors, just as this novel is a thinly disguised memoir of their wartime experience. Full of acute observation and waspish humour reminiscent of E. F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia stories, the novel sheds light on a world far from Resistance derring-do. The progress of the war here disappears almost completely from view as the villagers expend all their energy and ingenuity on circumventing the rationing laws. SaintBoniface is a hotbed of secret mills and butter churns, and deals as complex as anything the City of London could contrive involving nails, glycerine suppositories, illegal pigs and ersatz Pernod. As the Germans advance through France, all that matters to anyone in Saint-Boniface is the potato harvest. Sensitively translated by Bill Reed, Welcome to the Free Zone is funny and brutal, tragic yet infused with hard, rural pragmatism, and offers an original and spellbinding insight into the world behind the war. Sarah Bower

THE TILTED WORLD

GODS OF THE STEPPE Andrei Gelasimov (trans. Marian Schwartz), AmazonCrossing, 2013, $14.95, pb, 286pp, 9781611090734 This novel is part coming-of-age story for a 12-year-old boy, and part critique of a mining operation near a remote village in the Russian Steppe. It is summer 1945, and the boy, Petka, constantly fantasizes about being in the war. He idolizes the troops at a nearby army base and finds ways to sneak in and soak up the atmosphere. Unfortunately, most of the characters in this story are unsavory – including the main protagonist. The only likeable character is a Japanese POW, Hirotaro, who is a physician expert in using herbs, with which he attempts to cure ailments of his fellows and their Russian captors. The Japanese POWs are forced to work in the mine, which happens to be laced with uranium, causing an excessively high death rate among the POWs. The POW physician makes a connection between the POW death rate and the mutations of various plants in the vicinity, but no one will listen to him. In the end he temporarily cures Valerka, Petka’s closest friend, and Petka, who grew up hating the Japanese because of government propaganda and war fever, develops a close bond with this particular Japanese. American readers will find the first 2/3 of this book difficult to plow through, as there does not seem to be any central plot, and many of the actions

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly, William Morrow, 2013, $25.99, hb, 320pp, 9780062069184 Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly tell the story of a historic catastrophe, the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, through the eyes of people in a fictional town, Hobnob. Set during Prohibition, the novel also demonstrates the futility of that “noble experiment” and how it caused normally law-abiding citizens to flout the law and led to corruption at many levels. The story centers around a bootlegger named Jesse and his wife, Dixie Clay, now a talented bootlegger herself. Jessie is selfish, mean and cruel, the marriage has broken down, and Dixie is haunted by the loss of a baby son. Enter two federal revenue agents, one of whom, Ingersoll, is a decorated WWI veteran and an orphan. They’ve been sent by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover to find out what happened to two other agents who have gone missing. When Ingersoll finds a baby boy orphaned after a shootout at the general store, he feels compelled to find a home for him, which leads him to the bootlegger’s wife. Meanwhile, the rain keeps falling and the townspeople are working day and night to keep the levee secure. In the Authors’ Note, Franklin and Fennelly mention that “despite being considered by many to be the worst natural disaster our century has endured, the flood of 1927 seems largely forgotten today.” Thank goodness it has not been forgotten by the authors, as they have written an absorbing, suspenseful and richly atmospheric story, which I enjoyed tremendously. The era is evoked skillfully, with no awkward information dumps, yet one feels that one has actually been there and lived through the flood. Most highly recommended. Jane Kessler 20th Century

of the characters seem a little too contrived, and even silly. There are, however, numerous intriguing subplots – left unfulfilled until the epilogue. The epilogue is nice. Barry Webb HOME FRONT GIRLS Rosie Goodwin, Canvas, 2013, £18.99, hb, 439pp, 9781472101006 Coventry suffered one of the worst air raids in World War II, a night of annihilation that destroyed three-quarters of the city centre and killed 550 people. It seems a fitting setting for Rosie Goodwin’s novel Home Front Girls, a story of the lives of three young women living in Coventry during the war. Annabelle, Lucy and Dotty, while coming from very different backgrounds, form solid friendships during their time working together in a department store. Goodwin has clearly researched the period thoroughly, and uses brand names such as “Olivetti”, or details of lighting gas-rings skilfully, to create a sense of time. The prose is unchallenging and, in places, clichéd (for example, different characters are described more than once as having “a heart of pure gold”, and motherly figures gaze after the main characters summing up events to date, or wondering what their future holds). Despite the intriguing backdrop of Coventry and its fate of which the characters are initially unaware, there is little effort to create any sort of foreshadowing or suspense, and the book could have been set in any major city during WWII. Home Front Girls, despite depicting tragic events of war including the deaths of loved ones, is a positive, character-driven book. The three heroines, like characters in a fairy-tale or in the romances Dotty writes, must learn to trust and depend upon one another and overcome their individual faults and setbacks to triumph in love and life. Its strength is the extent to which the reader comes to care about Annabelle, Lucy and Dotty and their journeys to happiness and fulfilment. Laura Shepperson EMANCIPATION DAY Wayne Grady, Doubleday Canada, 2013, C$24.95, pb, 330pp, 9780385677660 Navy Band trombonist Jack Lewis has a secret. It is a secret he carries with him from his hometown of Windsor, Ontario to his posting in St. John’s, Newfoundland in the closing days of the Second World War. It is a secret that he carries with him when he returns home to Windsor with his new bride Vivian, fresh off the train and wide-eyed in the gritty, teeming city. And finally, it’s a secret he carries with him when he visits his father, William Henry, in hospital after a severe accident leaves him in a coma. Obviously in writing this review it became necessary to decide whether to share Jack’s secret in order to discuss the plot and characters more fully or to keep the surprise and allow the author to reveal it in his own time. I have decided to do the 20th Century

latter, and here’s why. Emancipation Day is Wayne Grady’s first novel, having previously written 14 works of non-fiction together with a number of awardwinning French translations. The subtle details of his writing are extraordinary, combining civic history lessons (Newfoundland did not become a Canadian province until 1949) with discussions on racism (Windsor, Ontario is located directly across the river from Detroit and shared many of its racist treatments of blacks in the 1940s) and an enthusiastic sharing of his love of 1930s and ´40s jazz and swing music. But, in some small ways, however, the experienced writer yet inexperienced novelist dichotomy shows. Some of Grady’s situations are easily readable (high school student sleeps with friend’s mother, for example) and some of his minor characterisations verge on stereotypic, but for all its shortcomings, Grady’s novel is compelling enough to want the best experience for the reader. So in true Jack Lewis style – the less said about the secret at this stage, the better. Janice Parker

to graphic violence. Samson Abrams is a Jewish boxing champion in Auschwitz, kept from the gas chambers by Commander Höss so that his fights can provide entertainment for the German soldiers. Despite losing family members by horrific means, Samson is sustained by the example of fellow inmate Maximilian Kolbe, a Catholic priest sent to the camps along with the Jews he aided. When Samson’s boxing victories start giving hope to the prisoners, Dr. Mengele is determined to end the contests, even to the point of meeting Samson in the ring himself. Characterization takes a back seat to action in this story, and the setting means readers will encounter some truly repellent violence. Numerous interjections like “Crack!” and “Bang!” evoke a graphic novel style. Hoffman wrote the story as a screenplay and then adapted it into this novel. In a postscript he says the story was based on real events, and provides footnotes for those wishing to read more. Readers with strong stomachs will experience the Holocaust from an unusual perspective. B.J. Sedlock

SAMSON: A Savior Will Rise Shawn Hoffman, Thomas Nelson, 2013, $15.99, pb, 304pp, 978084996488 The opening scene of a man being flayed alive may shock religious fiction fans unaccustomed

THE HUNTING GROUND J. Robert Janes, Open Road/Mysterious Press, 2013, $14.99, pb, 352pp, 9781480400733 Best known for his St-Cyr and Kohler mysteries, Janes is on familiar Nazi-occupied French ground

THE LOWLAND

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Jhumpa Lahiri, Knopf, 2013, $27.95, hb, 352pp, 9780307265746 / Bloomsbury, 2013, £16.99, hb, 352pp, 9781408828113 Jhumpa Lahiri’s stunning novel, shortlisted for the 2013 Booker Prize, tells the story of two brothers, Subhash and Udayan Mitra. Born in Calcutta just as India gains its independence, the boys are inseparable through childhood. But as they grow into adulthood, the slightly older, more conservative Subhash focuses on academia, while Udayan is drawn into the militant Naxalite movement, a communist group responsible for terrorist activities in India in the 1960s. Subtash moves to America to pursue his studies in oceanography in Rhode Island and lives quietly, still with the traditional expectation that he will return to India and marry a girl chosen by his parents. Udayan, in contrast, remains at home, but confounds the family by marrying a young student, Gaura, and becoming so implicated in extremist politics that his freedom and his life are at risk. The Lowland spans continents and decades effortlessly. The consequences of Udayan’s choices and Subhash’s response to what happens become the story of Subhash’s whole life, as well as the lives of academically brilliant Gaura and her daughter, Bela. This is a novel that reads like an epic but is wonderfully spare in its telling. Lahiri’s feel for language, nuance, rich metaphor and symbolism – from the Lowland of the title to the postcolonial Tolly Club and the sweeping beaches of Rhode Island – make this a masterful novel. But it is more than this. In The Lowland, Lahiri manages to create that rare combination: a powerful story with fascinating, complex characters, every bit as enchanting to the reader as the beauty of her prose. Kate Braithwaite HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 41

THE THICKET

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Joe R. Lansdale, Mulholland, 2013, $26.00/C$27.98, hb, 336pp, 9780316188456 Upon the death of his parents from smallpox, Jack Parker begins a trek through East Texas along with his younger sister, Lula, and their grandfather to seek refuge with an estranged aunt. When crossing a river on a ferry, outlaws kill Jack’s grandfather and kidnap his sister. Saddened by this misfortune, Jack soon begins a quest to rescue his sister by hiring a dwarf and bounty hunter named Shorty; a local gravedigger and ex-slave named Eustace; Jimmie Sue, a local prostitute who Jack grows to love; and even a huge swine named Hog. During the turn-of-the-century East Texas landscape, when cars and telephones are new to the public, Jack and his motley crew attempt to track down the bandits, soon discovering they have gone to the Thicket, a country inhabited by outlaws. This is one of the best books I’ve read this year. The story is humorous, exciting and definitely a fun read. The dialog would make Robert Parker proud if he were alive today. The cast of characters alone makes the novel worthwhile, with the dark humor and pageturning excitement, crisp dialog, and thrilling ending. I found myself laughing to myself as I read the descriptions of the scenes as they played out. I highly recommend this book and will definitely look for other novels written by Joe Lansdale. Jeff Westerhoff in this wartime thriller told by Lily de St-Germain. With an English father and passport, Lily begins the war hoping to convince her husband to abandon his work at the Louvre to move their young family to England. But she finds him in an affair with her younger sister and in league with the invaders. When she tries to trade earrings for passage, she meets a dashing American who brings her reluctantly into schemes, including one to steal priceless art treasures back from the Nazis. Told by a narrator who is “scared all the time” and portentously pointing to future horrors, The Hunting Ground alleviates scenes of unbearable tension with poetic and poignant moments and exquisite details of decorative arts and clothing. The opening invocation of “To the past there is but the present” holds true in style and substance as Lily returns to the scene of her wartime activity with vengeance in mind. Scorched by grim experience and as a casualty of the concentration camps, she often lives in various parts of her past as she struggles to set traps for the people who tortured or betrayed her. This can make for rough going for all but the most attentive of readers, but Lily’s harrowing story proves worth the effort. Eileen Charbonneau TAPESTRY J. Robert Janes, Open Road/Mysterious Press, 2013, $14.99, pb, 349pp, 9781480400771 Jean-Louis St-Cyr and Hermann Kohler make up the intriguing duo of detectives fighting everyday crime in Paris during the German occupation. Brutal assaults on women suspected of being unfaithful to their POW husbands, plus 42 | Reviews |

HNR Issue 66, November 2013

murder and theft, are suddenly rampant during the literally pitch-dark hours after curfew, and der Führer is annoyed that his “model” city isn’t living up to his expectations. St-Cyr and Kohler are under pressure, but at the same time they’re being set up by forces who want the pair of intensely honest, unbribable, and exceedingly smart inspectors to disappear in a hail of bullets or be fired in disgrace. An extraordinary amount of detail about everyday life in occupied France fills this book, at times a bit too much. Janes’ writing style is quirky and unique: in any given conversation among characters, each character’s point of view is represented, first by the thoughts they have to themselves, often in the form of a question, then by what they say aloud. It is strange and disconcerting, and, for this reader, led to confusion and frustration trying to keep track of who was thinking and/or saying what. The proliferation of characters with German and French names, titles and nicknames, often used interchangeably, makes this process even harder. Add to that a final quirkiness of a constant passive tense used as description—“The cigarette was taken, ash flicked to one side.” “Fingers were impatiently snapped.”—and you’ve got a book that is close to unreadable. I was more than halfway through it before I could actually figure out which of the two inspectors were talking, and what the crimes were that they were investigating. I admire the detail and atmosphere of the setting, but I deplore the stylistic choices and odd writing choices that makes this a very hard and not very enjoyable read, despite the gradual sympathy the reader feels for these courageous men working in impossible circumstances. Mary F. Burns

RUIN VALUE: A Mystery of the Third Reich J. Sydney Jones, Mysterious Press, 2013, $14.99, pb, 294pp, 978148042687 Post-World War II Germany is a fascinating place. Much has been written on the postwar victors, especially England (although postwar deprivations made them feel less than victorious). Much less has been written on postwar Germany (David Downing’s series excepted). Ruin Value takes the reader to Nuremberg, as that city is preparing for the trials of war criminals. An influx of reporters has arrived to cover the proceedings, including Kate Wallace. Anxious to find a story that will bring her fame, she discovers that Nathan Morgan, an American captain and former detective, is investigating a string of serial killings. He’s aided by former Chief Inspector Werner Beck, of the German police. Beck was jailed by his nemesis, but Morgan has him released to his custody to help in the investigation. A ruined city with trials that have the eyes of the world upon them is a provocative setting for a serial killer. Morgan and Beck work to determine a pattern – is it the black market, is it the nationalities of the deceased? And what to make of the book pages placed next to the bodies? This is one of those mysteries where the killer is revealed to the reader before the protagonists. While normally not a structure I favor, in this case it ratcheted up the suspense as the killer grew closer to the detectives and the reporter. The time and setting is a reminder that anti-Semitism didn’t miraculously disappear once the war was over. Morgan is Jewish and endures epithets not only from the Germans but from his fellow Americans. Not only war is hell. Ellen Keith FIREFLY Janette Jenkins, Chatto & Windus, 2013, £12.99, pb, 230pp, 9780701187422 / Europa, 2013, $15.00, pb, 156pp, 9781609451400 Jamaica 1971, and Sir Noël Coward is in declining health, living out his final years in the sun and heat at his eponymous house in the West Indies. His days are spent, when not trying to cope with the infirmities that his body is frustratingly subject, in rather waspishly dealing with his visitors and the patient and decent Jamaicans who look after him. He still drinks heavily and takes pleasure in rereading the children’s books of E. Nesbit, a favourite of his when he was growing up. But Coward also drifts back to his past, and has nostalgic memories and dreams of times and famous people in London when he was at the height of his considerable fame and he was feted throughout society. It is a London that even in 1971 had long disappeared. This is a very short but beautifully executed novel. It flits through the mostly disconnected thoughts of Noël Coward as he faces decline and death, but is still able to love his own little memoryladen Caribbean paradise. Doug Kemp

20th Century

RISING SUN, FALLING SHADOW Daniel Kalla, Forge, 2013, $27.99, hb, 352pp, 9780765337641 This novel is the sequel to The Far Side of the Sky and is set in Shanghai in 1943. Things are looking bad for the Jews who have taken refuge in Shanghai; the Japanese occupying forces have interned the British and Americans and, urged on by their Nazi allies, have forced the Jews into what is effectively a ghetto. Dr. Franz Adler and his Eurasian wife, Sunny, cope with an escaped internee, the Chinese Resistance, shortages in the hospital they run, and increasing threats from both the Japanese and Germans. Not having read the initial novel, I felt rather overwhelmed by the multiple plot lines and the large cast of characters at first. Once I had sorted them all out, though, the occasional forays into backstory felt intrusive in a novel that could have stood up well by itself. The Shanghai setting added a new dimension to the sadly familiar story of the Jewish people struggling to survive against terrible odds, and I appreciated how the very nature of Shanghai, a polyglot, cosmopolitan city before the war, lent itself to the introduction of a number of different tensions and opposing interests. Having a large number of characters allowed for a balanced, nuanced portrait of a society where each character acted out of his or her own background and allegiances rather than falling onto one side or another along predictable, nationalistic lines. A slightly impersonal perspective in Kalla’s writing meant that I was not always fully engaged in the emotions of the situation. But on the whole I found this novel to be an interesting insight into an aspect of World War II and the Jewish experience that is not often found in fiction. Jane Steen THE NIGHT OF THE RAMBLER Montegue Kobbé, Akashic, 2013, $15.95, pb, 256pp, 9781617751813 On the night of June 9, 1967, sixteen men from the “forgotten” Caribbean island, Anguilla, including three US mercenaries, had “invaded” St. Kitts. This key action had led to Anguilla’s separation from the St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla associated state, which had been created earlier by Britain. The ill-trained rebels sailed from Anguilla aboard a 35-foot motorboat, The Rambler, armed mostly with old rifles, ammunition and explosives. The revolutionaries expected to find a significant number of supporters in St. Kitts willing to help them fight their way into the capital town, Baseterre, with the objective to carry out a coup d’état and install a new government sympathetic to the Anguillan cause. However, following their wet landing on the beach, the Anguillans found only four rum-drinking young men playing dominoes who, upon questioning, retorted: “Wha? Dis time at night yer come to cause trouble?” Montegue Kobbé has structured his novel’s events non-linearly. While starting the story in medias res – on the sloop heading towards St. Kitts – the deplorable conditions on the island 20th Century

(no electricity, no ports, no telephones, etc., the main reasons for the Anguillans’ rebellious actions) are revealed through the backstories of the group leaders. While these narratives are interesting, the non-linearity in the plot can be distracting. Similarly, the unfolding of the events leading up to the sailing requires careful attention to keep abreast of the story’s timeline. While the novel is well written in third-person omniscient, the dialogue in Caribbean-accented speech tends to slow down the reading. However, those persevering with the book will be rewarded with deeper insight into the political and economic turmoil engulfing that region. Waheed Rabbani LAST TRAIN TO ISTANBUL Ayşe Kulin (trans. John W. Baker), AmazonCrossing, 2013, $14.95, pb, 450pp, 9781477807613 This novel uncovers a little-known dramatic rescue through the fictional story of a Turkish family who, in 1943, are part of a group of Jewish evacuees on a special train from Paris to Istanbul. The Turkish couple – Selva, a pretty Muslim, and Rafael, a handsome Jew – meet while at university in Istanbul. Having fallen deeply in love, they marry in 1933, much against Selva’s father’s wishes. However, facing social harassment, they move to Marseilles. Only a few years later, they encounter more serious threats to their lives from Hitler when Rafael is picked up by the Gestapo. Since Turkey remains neutral during most of WWII, it maintains its offices in Paris and Marseilles. Selva’s sister and her husband – he works for the Turkish Foreign Ministry in Ankara – and other diplomatic contacts all strive for Rafael’s release. Instrumental in those efforts is the Turkish Consul in Marseilles. With assistance from the underground resistance, a plan is established to have a special train transport Turkish Jews to Istanbul. Forged papers are prepared for nonTurkish Jews, enabling them to also join this group. Back in 1492, Beyazid II, the eighth Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, had issued an invitation to the 250,000 Jews being expelled from Spain to come to his country. Nearly 450 years later, Turkish diplomats during WWII took great personal risks to rescue some 15,000 Turkish and about 20,000 East European Jews from the Holocaust. Kulin, a bestselling Turkish author, has penned this brilliant novel using the techniques of historical fiction. Her narrative with numerous characters and a number of subplots is handled deftly. Although in parts the English translation and the use of far too many clichés will make readers smile, the story is compelling up to the end and deserves a film adaptation. Highly recommended. Waheed Rabbani DISSIDENT GARDENS Jonathan Lethem, Doubleday, 2013, $27.95, hb, 384pp, 9780385534932 In Dissident Gardens, Jonathan Lethem presents 20th-century New York in a sweeping tale of strong

women, ideals and disappointments. Rose Zimmer – a Jewish Communist, a community activist, a mother and the lover of a black policeman – is not your stereotypical 1950s suburban housewife. Her daughter Miriam runs to Greenwich Village and embraces a 1970s hippie lifestyle with her husband Tommy, an Irish folk artist, who is never the same after his first album receives a crushing review. Male characters’ stories wind through Rose and Miriam’s. Cicero Lookins, the son of Rose’s policeman lover and an embittered college professor; Sergius, Miriam and Tommy’s son; and Lenny Angrush, Rose’s nephew, are all influenced, for good and bad, by the two women. Dissident Gardens is a multilayered story of peoples’ lives, heavily influenced by the background of political and world events. The narrative moves backwards and forwards in time across the decades, and multiple characters share their stories. This makes it a challenging read and a very selfconsciously literary novel. Lethem’s trademark wit and satire are present, and his language is fresh, but at points it feels as though the author’s linguistic ambitions overreach his responsibility to his characters and story. Rose is described as a toad in the garden and at the same time as a mountain. On the same page we read that: “when Rose laughed up her sleeve, the sleeve was the Twentieth Century. You were living in her sleeve.” Where Lethem is truly successful, it is in bringing out the politics and events of the twentieth century through the everyday lives of his characters, but this is not his most readable or satisfying novel to date. Kate Braithwaite FOREVER FRIDAY Timothy Lewis, WaterBrook, 2013, $14.99/ C$16.95, pb, 288pp, 9780307732217 In modern-day Texas, Adam Colby has given up on love. A nasty divorce has left him bitter and hopeless, until he stumbles upon an album filled with postcards and love poems from a man named Gabe Alexander to his wife, Pearl. These poems illustrate a love that lasted six decades, from the 1920s into the 1980s. Desperate to find the secret to matrimonial bliss, Adam delves into the lives of these two lovers. Timothy Lewis’ Forever Friday is a heartfelt and entertaining read. The greatest strength of the novel is its innovative structure. The reader is taken on a journey to the past, only to be brought back to the present for a glimpse into the changing life and world-views of the story’s narrator. The main characters are likeable enough, though the mysterious Mister Jack is by far the most interesting. The story drags a bit in places. Also, the timeline can be somewhat confusing, though I found it more invigorating than anything else. Overall, the story is solid, and the structure is well worth it. Forever Friday is a story of lifelong love that will capture the hearts of readers. Shaylin Montgomery

HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 43

MY LADY DECEIVER Freda Lightfoot, Allison & Busby, 2013, £7.99, pb, 352pp, 9780749013431 In 1905, Rosie Belsfield crosses the Atlantic with her family to start a new life, but on the grounds of ill health is forced to return alone. She disembarks in England with a new identity, very much higher on the social scale, and a new-born boy who is the heir to wealthy Sir Ralph Tregowan. Determined to see the boy safely installed in his rightful place, Rosie travels to Cornwall and faces the Tregowan family, who, naturally, are not welcoming. Forced to lie, Rosie then has to keep to her deception, and to say more would spoil the story. Suffice to say that Freda Lightfoot has an easy style which makes reading no effort at all and from Rosie’s initial deception, all sorts of twists and turns grow into alarms and intrigue. No revelation seems out of place, and the constant underlying threat to Rosie’s life is believable, given the personalities with whom she lives. The Tregowan family as a whole do nothing to endear themselves to Rosie or the reader, but thankfully there is one person who has her best interests at heart. Freda Lightfoot has many fans who will be delighted with this book. I recommend it for your enjoyment. Jen Black DEATH AT THE CLOS DU LAC Adrian Magson, Allison & Busby, 2013,

THE SLEEPING DICTIONARY

£19.99/$29.95, hb, 383pp, 9780749040161 Picardie, 1964. At the exclusive – and reclusive – Clos du Lac sanatorium, a grisly discovery is made in the swimming pool, triggering another case for Inspector Lucas Rocco, ‘France’s answer to Jack Reacher’ (Crime Squad) – though think Reacher as Lee Child intended him, not – please – Tom Cruise. A well-paced, tightly plotted tale ensues, revealing dark doings in high office and bringing Rocco and his small, rural police force into conflict with the forces of international diplomacy. This is Adrian Magson’s fourth Lucas Rocco novel, and my third. Opening it at the first page was like settling into a favourite armchair. The ingredients that have made the earlier novels in the series work so well – the evocation of the atmospheric, waterlogged landscape, the lively characterisation of Rocco’s team and his rustic, yet shrewd neighbours, the juxtaposition of murderous malarkey and serious social comment – are all here, inspiring absolute confidence in the reader. I knew I was in for a good read from the ingeniously ghastly outset, and I was not disappointed. Has anybody bought up the TV rights yet? If not, why not? The 9pm whodunit slot is just crying out for a series of Lucas Rocco mysteries. Though who to cast as the gorgeous, brooding detective with his long black overcoat and his deep, dark past…? Hmmm. Now there is meat for some enjoyable speculation! Sarah Bower

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Sujata Massey, Gallery, 2013, $16.00/C$18.99, pb, 481pp, 9781476703169 In 1930s Bengal, ten-year-old Pom is orphaned when a tidal wave sweeps through her coastal village. She is rescued by a tongawalla (horse carriage driver) of an English boarding school near Calcutta. Pom, renamed Sarah, is hired there first as a fan-puller and later, having picked up English, as a helper of a rich Indian girl, Bidushi, who becomes her best friend. Sarah helps Bidushi write letters to her betrothed, Pankaj, a handsome young man studying law in England. Through this correspondence, Sarah falls secretly in love with Pankaj but, accused of stealing Bidushi’s ruby necklace, she has to flee from school. Although her train is bound for Calcutta, Sarah gets off in a smaller town and, without money to continue her journey, she seeks employment. Unable to find a job, she resorts to scrounging for food. An Anglo-Indian woman takes pity on Sarah and gives her shelter in her villa, which turns out to be a high-class brothel (somewhat like the one fictionalized in Cleland’s Fanny Hill). Here Sarah becomes a “sleeping dictionary” and endures sexual tortures but continues to think about her first love, Pankaj. After several misadventures, and upon hearing his name whispered by the wind, she departs to search for him in Calcutta. This novel’s theme will remind readers of Jane Eyre. Evocative descriptions of the late Raj period’s Indian cultures, customs, cuisine, flora and fauna are narrated delightfully. Although hers is essentially a story of love and human endurance, Massey, an award-winning author, has admirably woven the events of the Indian independence movement into the plot, particularly the efforts by Subhas Bose. This is an informative and entertaining historical novel. While the ending is unlike that of Brontë, it’s just as intriguing a page-turner. Highly recommended. Waheed Rabbani 44 | Reviews |

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A WOLF IN HINDELHEIM Jenny Mayhew, Hutchinson, 2013, £14.99, hb, 352pp, 9780091954024 Rural Germany, 1926. Set in an isolated small village, this story relates a series of strange events and the human irrationality and unpleasantness it prompts. The tale’s main character is a widower, Theodore Hildebrandt, the local constable severely disabled from war wounds, who is called upon to investigate some seemingly minor events in Hindelheim involving the Koenig household. Hildebrandt, a likeable character, has the talent for irritating and upsetting those around him, though he develops a crush on the zesty Ute Koenig, the wife of the village doctor. His researches and suspicions uncover some odd behaviour and eventually trigger mass-irrational interest in a socalled Wolf Man of the village – a young Jewish store-owner Elias Frankel, who escapes from the capture of Hildebrandt’s deputy. The cynical Hildebrandt eventually goes too far for the comfort of his superior officers, but he succeeds (we think!) in unravelling the train of circumstances. Despite the remote location of Hindelheim, the growing anti-Semitism and belief in the benefits of eugenics that infiltrated 1920s Germany also found their ugly way to the village, and indeed, I wonder if the mass-hysteria over the so-called werewolf is possibly meant by the writer as an allegory of sorts to understand how the German people came to support the extreme doctrines of National Socialism. This is a literate and enjoyable first novel, with some lovely descriptive narrative. Just at times, the characters seem to lack a little credibility or resonance, giving a little grit to the otherwise well-oiled machine of the novel’s authority for the reader. Doug Kemp A TREACHEROUS PARADISE Henning Mankell (trans. Laurie Thompson), Knopf, 2013, $26.95, hb, 384pp, 9780307961228 / Harvill Secker, 2013, £17.99, hb, 400pp, 9781846556234 The famed author of the popular Kurt Wallender series takes a real-life historical tidbit and expands it into a meaty novel of colonialism, race, freedom, the shaping of one’s identity, and the search for happiness. Opening in 2002 with the discovery of a mysterious diary in a hotel in Beira, Mozambique, the novel quickly dives into the past. In 1903, a young Swedish woman, Hanna, finds herself driven from her home when famine strikes, and due to the kindness of a family acquaintance, ends up on a ship bound for Australia. But heartache, abandonment, and loss seem to cling to Hanna, who finds herself a widow within weeks. When her ship docks in Portuguese East Africa, she slips off and makes camp in the coastal trading city of Lourenço Marques (now Maputo, the capital of Mozambique). There, Hanna becomes the unlikely owner of a brothel, and through her employees – native 20th Century

women of color – experiences firsthand the brutal realities of colonialism, racism, prejudice, and violence. Rather than embrace the attitude of white superiority or even ignore the treatment of local blacks at the hands of white colonialists, Hanna instead strikes out in an unlikely – and unpopular – way. Mankell has lived in Mozambique part-time since the 1980s, and his love for the people and country are clearly seen, even as he critiques the ruinous impact of colonialism. Reminiscent of Sena Jeter Naslund or Jeanette Winterson, Mankell’s novel imagines an unusual heroine unique in her time, articulated in a straightforward but thoughtful manner. The writing style is descriptive, rich with detail that evokes the grimy, sweaty, and rugged urban center where the novel is set, and occasionally disturbing, as Hanna’s journey in finding herself is not simple, boring, or safe. Audra Friend A HOME IN THE COUNTRY Sheelagh Mawe, Hale, 2013, £18.99, hb, 208pp, 9780719809835 This claims to be a true story and doubtless it is, but to classify it as non-fiction would be a disservice to the author’s artistry. It is written mainly in dialogue: vivid, quick-fire colloquial British and American English. The viewpoint is totally subjective, there are very few dates and places (at no point are we told where this happened, except that it was somewhere in America) and the intention is to convey a psychological truth rather than a precise record. If not an historical novel it is certainly novelised history. This is the story of four dreadful years in the author’s childhood, ‘Mis-Lit’ as it is termed in the book trade. It is linked to a specific historical event. In 1940 a relatively small number of children, mainly from British upper-class families, were evacuated overseas, mostly to America, to escape the wartime bombing. The programme came to an abrupt end with the sinking of the SS Benares, the loss of many children and the epic boat voyage of a group of survivors. The author and her brother reached America before this, to endure years of extreme emotional, physical and sexual abuse on an American farm. The American foster kids on the farm fared no better. We know that many evacuee children, myself included, were harshly mistreated in Britain, but I had always supposed that the overseas evacuees lived in comfort and safety. But it seems that all over the world there are people ready to abuse vulnerable children, and that teachers and social workers often don’t want to know. Edward James DANDY GILVER AND A DEADLY MEASURE OF BRIMSTONE Catriona McPherson, Hodder & Stoughton, 2013, £19.99, hb, 234pp, 9781444731880 Dandy, the eponymous heroine, is one half of an unusual detective pairing. Together with her partner Alec Osborne, she is asked to investigate a 20th Century

strange death at the Hydropathic Hotel in Moffat, Scotland run by the somewhat odd and rather suspicious brother and sister team, Dorothea and Tot Laidlaw. Were they involved in the death? Did Mrs Addie die of fright? What are all the ghost hunters doing, and what is behind the mysterious locked door in the Turkish bath? These questions and others that arise during the investigation keep the plot moving along at a good pace. The character of Dandy is likeable and endearing; she is clever and brave without being superhuman, and the reader wants her to succeed in her endeavours. The novel is written in the first person and is set around 1929, the mental scars from the war still evident through subtle but telling references. In general, the historical context is clear but not overpowering, flavouring events, speech and the actions of the characters in a delicate manner. Fans of David Roberts and Dolores Gordon-Smith are probably already readers of this series, but if not, there is a new favourite writer to add to the to-read list. This is the eighth in the series, the first novel being After the Armistice Ball. I for one am going back to the beginning to enjoy the adventures of Dandy and Alec from the start. Recommended. Ann Northfield UNDER THE HAWTHORN TREE Ai Mi (trans. Anna Holmwood), Anansi International, 2011, $14.95, pb, 356pp, 9781770893504 This novel first appeared on the pseudonymous

A TRUE NOVEL

author’s website in 2007, sold millions of copies, has been filmed, and is now available in English translation. Translator Anna Holmwood’s introduction says the book is an example of “scar literature,” a genre that tries to come to terms with the Cultural Revolution period in Chinese history. In the early 1970s, high school student Jingqiu’s mother struggles to feed her daughters on a teacher’s salary. Jingqiu gets sent to a small village for a protracted school assignment. Her host family introduces her to Sun Jianxin, nicknamed Old Third, as he is close enough to them to be like a third brother. Because of her own family’s political taint of being “bad class,” Jingqiu is afraid both of gossip and of incriminating Old Third by association. So she tries to keeps him at arm’s length, refusing gifts and avoiding being seen together with him. But when Jingqiu may have a chance at a teaching job upon graduation, the political situation requires that she choose between supporting her family and a future with Sun Jianxin. Jingqiu will seem unbelievably naïve about sex to Western readers, but Holmwood says that “it shows the startlingly intimate reach of politics in that period.” The romance is Romeo-and-Juliet bittersweet. I liked learning about life during the Cultural Revolution, such as Jingqiu having to refuse payment for sewing clothes for her neighbors so she wouldn’t be accused of running a black market. Recommended to both romance fans and those interested in Chinese history. B.J. Sedlock

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Minae Mizumura (trans. Juliet Winters Carpenter), Other Press, 2013, $25.00, hb, 880pp, 9781590512036 Japanese readers fell in love with 19th-century western literature because it strove to transcend daily life to focus on the “ideal” existence. However, when striving to imitate this form, Japanese authors struggled with how to avoid the traditional form of the “I” novel, in which one wrote about one’s “real” life with its fragmented, confusing, suffering, joyful and elusive, everyday elements. It is this mixture of both styles for which Mizumura strives and brilliantly succeeds in creating within A True Novel. This is the story of Taro Azuma, who in reality Mizumura’s family knew. Taro as a young man appears in California working as a chauffeur for an upper middle-class family (1960s), avidly studying English, and ultimately becoming a rich man through investing in medical equipment like the endoscope. He displays evidence of darkness, unhappiness, and violent anger. The plot about this young man then shifts backward and forward to the Karuizawa vacation area in Japan, following the vicissitudes of the Saegusa and Shigemitsu families and their puzzling interaction with Taro. We tensely follow the ups and downs of his first and only very serious love affair with Yoko, as narrated by the maid Fuyue. But the novel also charts the changing times (spanning the mid-1940s to 1998) in culture, language, geography, dress, and socially acceptable standards. Reality blends with a haunting, surrealistic quality that grips the reader on every page. A True Novel is classic Japanese literature that is a sheer delight to read! Viviane Crystal HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 45

THE IMPERSONATOR Mary Miley, Minotaur, 2013, $24.99/C$28.99, hb, 352pp, 9781250028167 Impersonation tales never end well, but they’re almost impossible to resist. What will trip up the impersonator? What happened to the person whose identity has been assumed? These questions and more are answered in this debut novel. Impersonation offers a high risk, but the impersonator is usually hard up and needs the payoff. Such is the case for Leah Randall, a struggling vaudeville actress in 1924. Oliver Beckett attends a performance and is struck by her resemblance to his missing niece, who conveniently was an heiress. When her employment prospects dim, Leah takes up Oliver on his offer and sets out to convince Jessie’s family in Oregon that she is their long-lost relation and can claim Jessie’s fortune on her 21st birthday. Leah’s years in vaudeville allow her to easily improvise her way through attempts to trip her up, and she feels a bond with the missing Jessie and is determined to learn her fate. Complicating that aim is whoever is responsible for Jessie’s disappearance and Leah’s growing attraction to Jessie’s half-brother. Jessie’s family is a mixed bag of people Leah genuinely wishes she was related to and those she can’t stand. Miley effectively creates an aura of danger around Leah. The family home is in a remote area outside Portland; a series of murders have been committed over the years; and certain members of Jessie’s family are none too happy she’s returned, dashing their hopes for her inheritance. Miley’s first novel held my attention from start to finish. Leah is a tough yet sympathetic character, and the reader roots for her success. Other characters are less likeable, but their hostility only serves to emphasize Leah’s strength in navigating her impersonation. In the end, this is that rare impersonation tale that does end well. Ellen Keith THE GILDED EDGE Danny Miller, Constable& Robinson, 2013, £7.99, pb, 412pp, 9781472101860 When white, upper-class Johnny Beresford is found dead in Belgravia and a black nurse-comeprostitute Marcy Jones is bludgeoned to death in Notting Hill in 1965, Detective Vince Treadwell discovers there is far more linking these two murders than meets the eye. His investigation takes him to the seedy gaming and drinking clubs of a Swinging Sixties London in which classes mingle and gambling and sex go hand in hand. But, as he becomes more involved in the case, and with Beresford’s alcoholic and drug-dependent sister, he finds a far more sinister corruption of the mind at work. Danny Miller was a finalist in the New Blood Dagger ITV3 Crime Thriller Award 2011, and it is easy to see why. The plot in The Gilded Edge is fast-paced and flows seamlessly through the high and low lives of mid-1960s London society with equally gritty realism. The historical period is so well-embedded in this novel that losing oneself in 1960s London is effortless. The characterisation is fabulous – rounded, flawed and believable people who make themselves either detestable or endearing to the reader. This is no cozy crime by 46 | Reviews |

HNR Issue 66, November 2013

EIGHT GIRLS TAKING PICTURES

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

Whitney Otto, Scribner, 2013, $16.00, pb, 334pp, 9781451682724 Whitney Otto’s novel, Eight Girls Taking Pictures, points the camera at the lives of eight photographers, women who live out the juxtaposition between making art and making babies. Spanning the 20th century, the women come from all walks of life, truly a montage of the struggles of the female artist. Six of the women are portraits of real-life photographers, including Imogen Cunningham, Tina Modotti, Lee Miller, Grete Stern, Ruth Orkin, Ellen Auerbach and Madame Yevonde. The other two women in the book are purely fictional. Not only does the sweep of the novel cover a century in time, it also covers the globe. Berlin, London, San Francisco, Buenos Aires, and Rome are brought into full focus in Otto’s deft hands. But it is the lens of feminism which sharpens the book. Otto does not shrink back from the difficult, often impossible circumstances under which these various women work to fulfill their artistic goals. Nor does she demean the roles love and motherhood play in both constraining and inspiring the artists. Otto delivers a nuanced, skillful, heartbreaking novel about the lives of women who want more and must be more than society will allow. Yet there is no strident anger here; instead, you’ll find snapshots of joy and wonder at being alive in such a world. You’ll find love and loss and success and failure. You’ll find women whose work elevates domesticity to its own art form and those for whom the home is truly a frame from which they cannot escape. In the end, this novel is a picture of the lives of women artists who throb with, and are hungry for, life. An engaging, provocative read filled with intelligent, well-focused prose. Anne Clinard Barnhill any means, and indeed violence is the name of the game here. But this violence is both necessary to, and advances, the plot and is never overused. The sign of an entertaining, excellent genre read is getting to the end of the novel with a heavy heart and wishing to read it all over again – or wanting to read the next in the series. For those who like their mysteries teamed up with a historical setting they can relate to, then this is very highly recommended. I sincerely hope that Danny Miller continues to produce historical crime fiction of this caliber, and I look forward to his next release. This was a wonderful read. Claire Cowling ONE NIGHT IN WINTER Simon Sebag Montefiore, Century, 2013, £16.99, hb, 456pp, 9781780891088 In Russia of 1945, Stalin is continuing to dominate the political scene, and all Russians live with the underlying fear of arrest, interrogation and the potentially extreme consequences. Noone is immune, and the style of leadership leaves those close to Stalin in the Politburo equally vulnerable. When two teenagers, pupils of the Josef Stalin School 801, are killed on a bridge as Moscow celebrates victory over Hitler, the ensuing investigation is directed by Stalin himself. Teenagers and children of Russia’s most important leaders are arrested, held in the notorious Lubyanka prison, and their interrogators have no qualms about the use of ruthless techniques to elicit confessions in order to solve the “Children’s Case”. Secrets are uncovered and allegiance to the

Communist Party questioned. This is a partly fictional tale, based on a true story, which grabs the reader and holds their interest to the end. Some of the characters you can have empathy with and others you await their fate with trepidation, but throughout you are conscious of how sinister the Communist regime was within Russia during this period of history. Cathy Kemp THE ROAD FROM GAP CREEK Robert Morgan, Algonquin, 2013, $25.95, hb, 318pp, 9781616201616 Robert Morgan’s masterpiece, Gap Creek, came out in 1999 and was an Oprah pick. This new novel continues the story of the Richards family whose hardscrabble life in the Appalachian Mountains is both heart-wrenching and inspiring. In the new book, Morgan does more than tell the story of a family (as if that weren’t difficult enough). He weaves the history of the United States in the 20th century into the tale. We see how common everyday folks are touched by world-shaking events: the First World War, the Great Depression, WWII, and the shifts of life from rural to urban, farm-based to factory-based. When the family receives news from the men in black suits that Troy, the youngest child, has been killed in the war, each begins to grieve. And, like all of us, each will grieve in a particular way. Annie, the youngest girl who is six years older than Troy, remembers her adventures with Troy as they grew up together. These memories are like a quilt, patched together the way the mind works, 20th Century

one thing leading to another. What emerges is a portrait of Troy and the entire Richards family, rendered with rich detail, shown in relief against the larger story of world events. The writing is beautiful, showing Morgan’s skill with words. He is a poet as well as fiction writer and biographer. In short, The Road from Gap Creek is a splendid book. Anne Clinard Barnhill A HIGHER DUTY Peter Murphy, NoExit, 2013, $14.95, pb, 352pp, 9781842436684 A Higher Duty opens in London, 1960, when a shocking death at Cambridge University sets into motion a low-key investigation of the case and a swift but surprising ruling which has far-reaching results. Not all cases are so quickly resolved. A Higher Duty reveals an inside look at the cases and personalities of a set of legal Chambers of the British Bar. Chambers are primarily run by educated and often privileged white males who were seen to represent traditions of integrity. But justice is not always blind, but merely self-serving. Other challenges arise when social changes are proposed, such as taking a female pupil into chambers when, of course, they can’t invite her into The Club. One prejudiced barrister refuses to accept a Jewish pupil but tolerates the female one because her father is a judge who will assure high level work for their Chambers. Sadly, the oldest, most experienced member is being voted out because his only wealth is his vast knowledge of law and how to approach a case, but that doesn’t pay the chamber fees. When a simple divorce case takes a scandalous turn that threatens ruin for many, the Head of Chambers is galvanized into covert action to save face, but is it already too late? Peter Murphy’s novel is an excellent read from start to finish and highly recommended. Tess Heckel

THE GRAMMARIAN

THE SÉANCE SOCIETY Michael Nethercott, Minotaur, 2013,$24.99/ C$28.99, hb, 304pp, 9781250017390 Young Lee Plunkett has inherited his father’s private-eye business but doesn’t seem cut out for the job as much as his ex-cop father. But when Trexler Lloyd, an eccentric inventor and entrepreneur, is electrocuted in his Spectricator, a machine designed to speak with the dead, Plunkett finds himself drawn into the mystery surrounding the ghost-seeker’s death. A retired cop is certain that Lloyd was murdered and asks Plunkett to investigate. Urged on by his fiancée, Audrey, Plunkett enlists the aid of Mr. O’Nelligan, a genial and scholarly Irishman with the gift of blarney to investigate Lloyd’s death. The duo encounters a host of colorful characters, including a surly medium, a former speakeasy queen, a gardener that sees ghosts, a snobby English chauffeur, a beautiful Spanish widow, and a household of bizarre servants, any one of whom could be implicated in Lloyd’s murder. This debut novel set in the 1950s is a mystery in traditional Agatha Christie style with smart and witty dialogue, touches of humor, and a fastpaced narrative. The paranormal theme gives the story a contemporary feel without sacrificing the traditional elements of a mystery. It’s an enjoyable read and highly recommended. One hopes there will be more Plunkett-O’Nelligan mysteries. John Kachuba ESCAPE BY MOONLIGHT Mary Nichols, Allison & Busby, 2013, £19.99, hb, 382pp, 9780749013035 Summer 1939, and England is bracing itself for war. In the quiet country village of Nayton, Lucy Storey helps her boorish father to keep the local railway station running. She finds some escape from the drudgery of her life in her brief encounters with dashing Jack de Lacey from nearby Nayton Manor. Meanwhile Jack’s mother and stepfather want to

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Annapurna Potluri, Counterpoint, 2013, $24.00, hb, 257pp, 9781619021020 This spellbinding novel is set in colonial India of 1911. It tells the story of Alexandre Lautens, a young French linguist from the Sorbonne, who has traveled to southern India to study and write a grammar of Telugu, an obscure but beautiful ancient language of that region. As the guest of a wealthy, Anglophile Indian family, he works in the midst of the lush, sensual sites and scents of tropical India, and in the midst of the family’s domestic life and its two daughters. Mohini, engaged to be married, is lovely and graceful with no desires beyond a good marriage. The elder daughter, Anjali, lacks any beauty, and her childhood polio has robbed her of any grace. She does, however, possess a brilliant, politically subversive, and unhappy mind. Her eventual love for the married Alexandre and his heedless disregard for the gulf between their two worlds lead them not to a physical affair, but nevertheless to shame and banishment for her, and, to a lesser extent, for him as well. The Grammarian is a marvelously written novel, filled with lovely, atmospheric descriptions of India and of the life Alexandre lives with his wealthy hosts. The author captures India is all its sensuality: the colors and smells, the languid heat and fecundity. The Telugu language mirrors this lushness and further seduces Alexandre. The final few chapters of the book lose momentum and some interest once Alexandre leaves India and his and Anjali’s separate lives are brought up to post-World War II. But that doesn’t mar the mesmerizing accomplishment of the novel’s exquisite writing and the author’s seductive storytelling. One of the year’s best. Most highly recommended. Pamela Ferrell Ortega

20th Century

do their bit for the war effort and take in evacuees, including an engaging scamp called Bernard. Far away in France, Jack’s half-sister Elizabeth chooses to remain and help her grandparents on their farm in the Haute Savoie rather than return to the relative safety of Nayton. She had been expected to marry the gallant Captain Max Coburn, but instead she finds herself involved in smuggling British airmen across the border into Switzerland. Nichols weaves an engaging tale of romance, adventure and mystery. There is a host of colourful characters, not just in Nayton and its “big house” but also in war-torn France. Her sure touch brings the past to life, creating a wonderful picture of wartime England and while not shying away from the horrors of war, her narrative is never grim. She provides enough information to keep the reader informed of the bigger picture of the war but never swamps the story with too much detail. Melinda Hammond TEATIME FOR THE FIREFLY Shona Patel, Harlequin Mira, 2013, $15.95/ C$18.95, pb, 43200, 9780778315476 Teatime for the Firefly creates a vivid portrayal of the exotic world of the Assam tea plantations and Indian life during both WWII and the momentous upheavals immediately following the war. The tensions between British colonialism and Indian aspirations for a free nation are played out against the intensely personal story of Layla and Manik. From their chance and rather magical meeting through their unusual marriage, Patel has given us a sophisticated understanding of daily life in India through the eyes of one young woman. Layla, born under an “unlucky star” and orphaned early on, has been given the great gift of choosing her destiny by her wise and progressive grandfather. With a good education and a strong will, she moves between challenging the assumptions of her world and conforming. The violence and bigotry of this period add excitement to a plot that is as much about place and richly developed character as it is about actions. The reader will feel, smell and see this isolated, remarkable corner of India. Patel has wound into her story many themes and events imbued with Indian culture, and in the process has woven a rich tapestry for the reader: leopard attacks, rogue elephants, the paternalistic role of the tea companies, the childlike naiveté of the “coolie” workforce, children sold into prostitution, the racist attitude of the English toward all things Indian, the Hindu-Muslim riots, the need for education reform, the rejection of widows, and the vulnerability of women in Indian society. Patel incorporates so much without weighing down her humane tale. This book excites the palate with its depth and fullness. Judith Starkston LOSS OF INNOCENCE Richard North Patterson, Quercus, 2013, $26.95, hb, 368pp, 9781623650926 / Quercus, 2013, £12.99, pb, 416pp, 9781782064077 The 1960s were volatile, impassioned, and revolutionary years. In this prequel to Fall from Grace, Richard North Patterson deviates from many of his usual themes to explore the world of the rich and struggling residents of Martha’s HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 47

Vineyard during these tumultuous times. Whitney Dane comes from a wealthy family who manipulate economics and politics to their own beliefs. They seem to have forgotten from whence they came. Whitney is about to marry Peter, a fatherless young man who has been taken under the wings of Whitney’s father, Charles Dane, for employment and to escape the Vietnam War draft. Her sister is the darling beauty of the family whose life is spiraling downward at a frightening pace, something Whitney alone worries will end in disaster. Then Whitney’s world is overturned when she meets angry, young Benjamin Blaine. Ben is devastated by the assassination of Bobby Kennedy and conveys his sarcastic, cynical views about those now running for office, including Richard Nixon. The questions he poses to Whitney force her to ponder her previously inherited and unexamined beliefs about family and politics, as well as her upcoming marriage to a mindless follower of Republican politics and her desire to write about what truly matters. When her father interferes in her life with a momentous act, she discovers his real deceit, and as Whitney’s sister falls even further, the entire family is dramatically affected. This is Whitney’s powerful, painful comingof-age tale. While the historical gist of the story is given surface treatment, Patterson manages to convey the essence of ideal, wealthy lives caught up in a very human world. Whitney’s family may not live happily ever after, but they are forced to wake up; indeed, they are a microcosm within the forces that shaped history and American society during those momentous times. Nicely done! Viviane Crystal QUIET DELL Jayne Anne Phillips, Scribner, 2013, $28.00, hb, 480pp, 9781439172537 The real-life murders perpetrated in the small West Virginian town of Quiet Dell are lovingly coaxed to life by Jayne Anne Phillips. The author spent years researching the tragedy, and claims that she was “haunted” by the family whose lives were so brutally cut short. The novel begins with this family, the Eichlers: Asta, the middle-aged widow who was victimized by her late husband and yet still desperately seeks love; her eldest, mentally challenged daughter, Grethe; her son Hart, thrust into maturity following his father’s untimely death; and Annabel, the youngest daughter, with an inventive imagination. There is a sense of underlying doom to this section of the novel; the reader knows that the family is about to be slaughtered. Fortunately, the actual deed is not depicted, only hinted at through innuendo. The next section introduces the fictional protagonist, Emily Thornhill. As the only female journalist at the Chicago Sun, she is an interesting study in the burgeoning independence of women in the 1930s. A host of other fictional characters are introduced through her, each adding another layer to an already complicated story. While the prose of the novel is beautiful, paragraphs are dedicated to description and often slow down the progression. Another concern is the occasional insertion of Annabel’s ghost, who divulges some of the more gruesome moments of 48 | Reviews |

HNR Issue 66, November 2013

the murder of her family, and yet presides over the narrative as some benevolent spirit seeking justice. Despite these issues, readers who have an interest in true crime novels will find much to enjoy in Quiet Dell. Caroline Wilson ALL FOR A STORY Allison Pittman, Tyndale House, 2013, $13.99, pb, 348pp, 9781414366814 In the Roaring Twenties, Monica Bisbaine is a gossip columnist for the D.C. rag, Capitol Chatter. Hiding behind the pen name “Monkey Business,” she entertains her readers with tales of her nighttime escapades in the city’s forbidden speakeasies. She loves her job and the excuse it gives her for living on the edge. So when the owner/editor of the newspaper dies suddenly, leaving everything to his nephew, Monica and her coworkers fear the worst. However, Max Moore, the nephew, does not intend to shut down the paper. He leaves an editorial position at an evangelical organization in L.A. in order to continue his uncle’s legacy, but he is determined to change the direction of the Chatter’s reporting to align with his own Christian values. Naturally, Max and Monica will have some adjustments to make. Monica is a somewhat unusual protagonist for a

Christian romance. She’s involved in an adulterous relationship and supports herself, in part, with gifts from her lover. In contrast, Max is a steadfast believer, strong and generous. He’s charmed by the beautiful, witty, and lively Monica and she, in turn, becomes dissatisfied with the life she’s living when she looks at it through his eyes. This is an entertaining Christian romance with a flashy historical backdrop, engaging dialogue, and solid characters. Sue Asher HERE COMES MRS. KUGELMAN Minka Pradelski (trans. Philip Boehm), Henry Holt, 2013, $26.00, hb, 240pp, 9780805082128 Here Comes Mrs. Kugelman is an allegorical sort of novel about remembrance. Mrs. Kugelman is a Holocaust survivor, and she is determined no one forgets the little Polish town she grew up in. She announces to the narrator, Tsippy Silberberg, that all of the teachers and students in her childhood school are alive in Israel through a mystical process. “There’s a group of us classmates who keep them alive. We tell stories about them…before you know it they’re up and moving.” Tsippy, whose own parents’ refusal to discuss their pre-war childhoods has left Tsippy with emptiness, has come to Tel Aviv from Germany

E D I TORS’ CH OICE

THE INFORMANT (UK) / THE LITTLE TOYKO INFORMANT (US)

Andrew Rosenheim, Hutchinson 2013, £18.99, hb, 406pp, 9780091954062 / Overlook, 2013, $26.95, hb, 400pp, 9781468300734 September 1941, and J. Edgar Hoover is preoccupied with using Hollywood to promote the image of the FBI. To this end, he has appointed Special Agent Jimmy Nessheim to the American Motion Pictures studio to advise on movies featuring the Bureau. But when one of Nessheim’s informants, a Japanese American with Hawaiian connections, disappears, and a WASP State Department employee of impeccable pedigree is murdered after a clandestine meeting with Nessheim’s boss in Washington, life begins to imitate art… or the movies. In this assured, well-written thriller, Rosenheim develops an ingenious hypothesis about the Japanese entry into World War II, involving some colourful murders and a terrific cast of Russian femmes fatales, ruthless studio bosses, ‘pinko’ writers, ingénue starlets and inscrutable Japanese girls, and a redoubtable nun running a leper colony. He recreates the Hollywood of the pre-war era with loving attention to detail, finding time even within his fast-paced plot to describe the sharp suits, the fedoras, the cocktail cabinets in every sitting room, the white-walled tyres on every star’s convertible. His fictional world has great depth and authenticity, supported by wellnuanced language which owes much to the pulp fiction and B movies of the age without feeling in any way contrived. Although a hard-boiled thriller, The Informant is nevertheless a kind of pre-lapsarian tale, set in the very last weeks of an age of innocence that would be swept away by Pearl Harbour. The Japanese attack forms the novel’s climax, and its denouement takes place in a JapaneseAmerican internment camp. And as Nessheim prepares to enlist, the shadow of the Cold War is already lengthening. A fabulous read – gripping, witty, violent and elegiac. An intelligent thriller. No higher praise as far as I’m concerned. Sarah Bower 20th Century

to receive her inheritance from an aunt: a 70-yearold empty suitcase and a partial silver fish service. Tsippy suffers from a mania for ice and for eating frozen vegetables straight from the freezer: “My icy addiction shields me from the world but also keeps me bound.” Mrs. Kugelman appears uninvited in Tsippy’s hotel room and begins to tell stories. She returns daily, and these visits are intermixed with Tsippy’s surreal excursions around Tel Aviv in search of a husband. The stories are reminiscent of traditional Jewish Chelm folktales in some ways. They frequently have an irrational and/or symbolic quality to them. Pradelski uses these stories to capture the details and meaning of a lost Jewish world and to lead us to its inevitable destruction. This is a book about the legacy of the Holocaust on survivors, with their silences (especially with their own children) and the conflicting need to remember. It is also about how that legacy bound and marked the next generation. Judith Starkston THE SISTERS WEISS Naomi Ragen, St. Martin’s, 2013, $24.99, hb, 336pp, 9780312570194 The dichotomy between filial and religious duty and the desire for independence, freedom and selfexpression may be a familiar theme, but Naomi Ragen’s treatment of this subject is exceptional. In this novel, Ragen delves into the hidden world of ultra-Orthodox Judaism and its restrictions on women’s freedom, a subject she has explored in such previous novels as Jephte’s Daughter and The Sacrifice of Tamar. Pearl and Rose are sisters growing up in 1950s Brooklyn. As young Jewish women from observant families, their futures have been decided for them: to become a wife to a Jewish man, and a mother to Jewish children. Period. Then a chance encounter with the father of a less religious friend leads Rose to develop an interest in photography. When she is found with a photography book that is deemed inappropriate by her parents, a life-altering series of events is unleashed that ultimately leads to Rose’s isolation from her community and family. The story follows the divergent life paths of the two sisters from the 1950s until the present. While Pearl conforms to expectations, Rose follows an unconventional path by becoming a well-known photographer – but Rose’s path is one that inevitably leads to her exile from all she has known and loved. Ultimately, the story is about the ties that bind, about sacrifices, and about the love that outlives pain. Ragen is a skillful storyteller who draws in the readers with her beautiful and evocative prose. A helpful glossary of Hebrew and Yiddish terms is included at the book’s end. Regardless of your religious affiliation, this is an utterly riveting book that should be on everyone’s “to read” list this fall season. Hilary Daninhirsch IN DIAMOND SQUARE Mercè Rodoreda (trans. Peter Bush), Virago, 2013, £12.99, pb, 206pp, 9781844089253 This classic Catalan novel was first published in 1962, and this is the third English translation, to mark the book’s fiftieth anniversary. Rodoreda 20th Century

was still living in exile when she wrote the book in the aftermath of the Civil War, but her work soon became the symbol of the re-emergence of that extraordinary culture and minority language from Franco’s military and linguistic stranglehold. The indomitable spirit of Natalia, or La Colometa (the pigeon girl) as she is known in Catalan, emerges from the story told in the first person of her youthful passion and marriage, and then gradual slide into poverty as Catalunya was hit by economic depression and increasingly radical politics. As with many powerfully written narratives, selected details and an understated tone paint a painfully vivid picture of suffering and starvation during the civil war years. Natalia’s focus is entirely domestic and this too reflects the parabola of her own life: the walls, doors, crockery and furnishings peel, crack and are sold as she and her children slide into poverty. At one point the intensity of the stream-of-consciousness prose reflecting Natalia’s mental state culminates in an ear-splitting scream. I was uncomfortable with some of the translated names in the book (Natalia’s husband becomes Joe in English, rather than Quimet as in previous translations); more successful was the choice of her own nickname Pidgey, rather than La Calometa. Names aside, Natalia’s voice will echo in your ears, like the surging waves inside the couch shell which comfort her as she pieces together her life in Barcelona. There are some books that you know will remain with you forever. For me this is one, and I would strongly recommend that, if you haven’t already done so, you read it now. Lucinda Byatt RED JOAN Jennie Rooney, Chatto & Windus, 2013, £12.99, hb, 384pp, 9780701187576 Taking the more unusual approach of not if, but why, this novel is loosely based on the real life 87-year-old grandmother who was unmasked as a Russian spy in 1999. Joan Stanley is taken in for questioning one morning regarding her previous employment of helping to develop the atomic bomb. Her lawyer son Nick is at first outraged and adamant about her innocence, but slowly realises (as many of us do in a less dramatic way) that there is often more than meets the eye regarding parent lives before the child comes along. Told through flashbacks interspersed with her scenes of her interrogation, Joan looks back at her time at Cambridge University and her fateful meeting with the mysterious Sonia and her dynamic and passionate Communist cousin Leo. The characters are vividly realized, and their manipulation of the innocent Joan into traitorous actions is built up carefully and made very believable over the course of the novel. There is no tension really regarding whether she did it or not; instead the novel explores her mix of motivations, all of which serve to help her continue to remain a sympathetic or at least understandable character, despite her treason. It is an enjoyable and thoughtprovoking novel, particularly regarding issues such as nationalism, war and the nature of love. I thoroughly enjoyed the tale and will be seeking out more of this author’s work. Ann Northfield

HENRY AND RACHEL Laurel Saville, Lake Union, 2013, $14.95, pb, 316pp, 9781611099669 In the second decade of the 20th century, Rachel, the author’s great-grandmother, uprooted herself and four of her children from their home in the West Indies and traveled by steamer to New York City, where she lived out the rest of her life in poverty. Rachel left behind her husband, Henry, and her eldest son, James. Henry never saw his family again. In this fictionalized version of her great-grandparents’ marriage, Saville imagines the personalities and circumstances that might have led Rachel to make such a drastic choice. Abandoned by her own parents as a young girl, Rachel had been left in the care of the George family and raised as neither daughter nor servant. The hint of duskiness in her skin led many to assume she was Mr. George’s natural child by an Islander, not an unusual circumstance in the West Indies. Henry, on the other hand, came from a large and happy British family which had scattered throughout the world in search of wealth and adventure. Henry found neither, and teetered on the edge of respectability as he spent more and more time pursuing his dream of success as an inventor. Although it is unusual to have a story jump around in time and viewpoint (eight altogether), this format allows the reader to understand and appreciate each major character. After reading this book I was left with a feeling of great sadness because so much that was wonderful was thrown away by the characters. It is, perhaps, this ache for a better ending that gives the book its power. We cannot change the course of Henry and Rachel’s story, but we can take action and change our own. Nancy J. Attwell SWIMMING IN THE MOON Pamela Schoenewaldt, William Morrow, 2013, $14.95, pb, 368pp, 9780062202239 It is 1904, and 14-year-old Lucia lives with her mother, Therese, a servant in a Neapolitan grand home. There Therese, marginally unstable emotionally, earns her keep by singing soothing melodies for the Countess when the other woman suffers from chronic headaches. It’s no wonder her mistress’s head hurts – her husband is a cruel and demanding man. When the count labels Lucia’s mother a hysteric and encourages a doctorfriend to experiment on Therese, nearly killing her, Lucia and her mother are forced to escape Naples. They flee to America. In Cleveland, Ohio, the two women try to make a new start but end up struggling to survive, as so many immigrants in the early 1900s did. Lucia’s grand dreams of completing high school and going to college seem nearly impossible at times, but she bravely soldiers on and becomes involved in the fight for workers’ rights. Lucia grows into herself, becoming involved in the Cleveland Garment Workers’ Strike of 1911 and helping others to a better way of life. This is a beautifully written book just in terms of the use of language. However, it also paints a believable and poignant portrait of an early 20th-century American city. Universal themes of caregiving and the tragedy of mental illness play major roles. There are even glimpses into the vaudeville lifestyle when Therese attempts to HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 49

return to her singing to help support herself and her daughter. One can’t help falling in love with these two women. They might be our mothers or sisters in another place and time. This is a special novel that remains with the reader long after the book closes. Kathryn Johnson THE RUSSIAN TAPESTRY Banafsheh Serov, Hachette Australia, 2013, Au$29.99, pb, 387pp, 9780733629860 Marie Kulbas belongs to a family that is enlightened enough to allow her to study law, but like all young women from the privileged class, she also goes to balls and the ballet in St Petersburg and dreams of a happy future. The advent of war in 1914 changes everything. Marie’s brother Nikolai and her fiancé, Pyotr, march off with the expectation all will be over within weeks, but the incompetent Russian generals underestimate German strength and are ultimately held responsible for the shocking deaths of thousands of ill-equipped soldiers from starvation and worse. This ignites the fuse that culminates in the fall of the Tsar and the Russian Revolution. The lightweight opening of this novel is deceptive, as it soon gets down to the grim realities of battles, prison camps, bread queues and personal tragedies. Through the eyes of the various characters including soldiers, peasants, revolutionaries, and even the Tsar himself, we gain the “tapestry” view of these momentous events. Marie volunteers for Empress Alexandra’s nursing service. Pyotr, Nikolai and others like them struggle with the military disasters and increasing

FIN & LADY

brutality. And Marie’s heart is torn between loyalty to the missing Pyotr and her growing fascination with the married Alexei Serov, who has his own personal demons to face. Numerous novels have been written about World War I on the Western front, so it is enlightening to read how events unfolded on the Eastern front in Russia and Estonia and how they contributed to the ensuing civil war. Banafsheh Serov’s first historical novel is loosely based on her own family’s experiences. Contrivances and romantic licence are to be expected, but the research and background feel authentic. This lavish and enthralling tale has been crafted with much care and sensitivity and deserves a wide audience. Marina Maxwell LOUISE’S DILEMMA Sarah R. Shaber, Severn House, 2013, $27.95/£19.99, hb, 192pp, 9780727882950 This is the third in a series featuring Louise Pearlie, a young widow who works at the OSS in 1940s Washington, DC. Louise, who is smart and competent, started as a file clerk and has recently been promoted to analyzing and indexing documents. Louise enjoys her independent life in DC and desperately wants to hold on to her job after the war. She knows she has to excel because once the war is over, the soldiers will return and will need the jobs held by women. In this installment, Louise is asked to analyze a strangely worded postcard sent to an American citizen from occupied France. She travels to Maryland to investigate and becomes convinced something is not as it should be, all the while dealing with the male chauvinism of her colleagues. She also continues her romance

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Cathleen Schine, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013, $26.00, hb, 273pp, 9780374154905 In 1964, eleven-year-old Fin, called Finino by his estranged (and some say “strange”) half-sister Lady, loses his second parent. With no one left to care for him, Lady shows up at their father’s funeral to take charge, in her own fashion, bringing him to live with her in New York City. She is unpredictable, unconventional, not well thought of by many respectable adults (due to unladylike habits such as smoking, swearing, and speaking her mind), and… she thoroughly enchants young Fin. Therein begins his journey to become a “turned-around” Fin. He loves her for her wackiness, her delight in treating him to more sweets than any sane adult would lavish upon a child. She sweeps him up and into her world so completely that he finds little time to mourn or think about being an orphan. And along the way, through the years of their life together, both Fin and Lady endear themselves to the reader. Cathleen Schine has become known as a writer who understands how to handle wit while revealing wisdom. What she accomplishes in her latest novel about a young boy taken under the wing of an outrageous half-sister is heartbreakingly entertaining, full of surprises, and memorable. Schine has a talent for selecting a single moment in time and elevating it within a sentence or three to a poignant experience. Schine does what novelists were meant to do. She creates people our hearts can cuddle up to and want to linger with. Highly recommended. Kathryn Johnson 50 | Reviews |

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with fellow boarder and Czech refugee Joe Prager, but worries that it might cost her her position in the OSS. This is a fun series: an entertaining combination of mystery, adventure, and romance, with a great sense of place and time. Jane Kessler YUDL AND OTHER STORIES Layle Silbert, Seven Stories Press, 2013, $17.95/ C$17.95, pb, 301pp, 9781609804404 Layle Silbert grew up in Chicago, the daughter of Russian Jews. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in literary magazines and in five different collections. This recent, posthumous collection, Yudl and Other Stories, reveals the author’s continued reflection on this experience. The stories follow a linear timeline, focusing on Ellen, a daughter of Russian Jews who live in 1920s Chicago. It begins with a disorienting story told from the point of view of a very young Ellen, and through each successive story, we watch Ellen grow up in an immigrant milieu and become embarrassed by her parents’ foreignness. Dividing the collection is a long story told from the point of view of Ellen’s father, Yudl. It is through his story that we learn to appreciate immigrant feelings of exclusion. A motif of the famous Italian anarchists, Sacco and Vanzetti, symbolizes the complexity of these pressures of loyalty to an immigrant society while enduring the prejudices of American society. In “LaSalle Street Station,” Yudl tells Ellen that Sacco and Vanzetti have been executed. In the same story Ellen’s mother Ryah has left Yudl. While no explanations are given, and Ryah is present in the next story, this rupture in her family’s existence parallels the loss and bewilderment this execution brought to the American immigrant experience. Throughout this collection, Silbert’s photographic experience adds light and shadow to her settings, while her minute observation of smell helps to re-create 1920s America. This is a slow-paced, thoughtful collection with elegant prose and ironic overtones. Terri Baker GUESTS ON EARTH Lee Smith, Algonquin, 2013, $25.95, hb, 352pp, 9781616202538 The narrator of Lee Smith’s (Fair and Tender Ladies, The Last Girls) latest novel is thirteen in 1926, when she is admitted to a mental ward of Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. For the next twelve years she chronicles both her own life and the lives of staff, doctors and fellow inmates, including its most famous: Zelda Fitzgerald. Vulnerable Evalina Toussaint is the orphaned daughter of an exotic dancer of New Orleans and the dancer’s father: a reality, like many in the book, which becomes clear gradually. Evalina is a musically gifted piano accompanist whose first break from the hospital takes place as she goes off to study. But a liaison with an opera singer ends in tragedy and a return to the haven of Highland. The horrific fire that kills Mrs. Fitzgerald and eight other women locked on the hospital’s top floor provides both the climax and catalyst for a new beginning. Besides its most famous inmate, Smith’s characters include a damaged Southern belle, a 20th Century

sterilized “moral imbecile,” a shell-shocked veteran of World War I, and a feral groundskeeper. At once surreal and pointed in its detailed world of innovative programs including valuing exercise; diet; and art, occupational, and shock therapy, Guests on Earth brims with people struggling with identity and the line between sanity and madness. Colorful characters come and go and provide roads not traveled by. All are illuminated by deep humanity and the lyrical style and graceful notes of a master Southern storyteller. Eileen Charbonneau THE LONGEST RIDE Nicholas Sparks, Grand Central, 2013, $27.00/ C$30.00, hb, 398pp, 9781455520657 / Sphere, 2013, £16.99, hb, 432pp, 9780751549942 Ninety-one-year-old Ira Levinson, stranded in a snowy embankment after a car accident, swears his wife Ruth, beloved, but dead nine years, is in the seat next to him. As Ruth morphs from the young woman Ira fell in love with in 1939 to the woman he married after WWII to the woman he grew old with, collecting paintings from emerging mid-century American artists, he reminisces on the decades shared with her, recalling the sorrows and the joys of their marriage. A few miles away, Sophia, a Wake Forest senior studying art history, meets a young cowboy. Luke is a competitive bull-rider, a job that leaves him more battered than impassioned. He introduces Sophia to a world far removed from the sorority house and lecture halls she’s used to. And, in return, she offers him an unexpected bit of hope. The neat twist in the book comes when these two stories intersect, when Ira and his memories of Ruth come into contact with Sophia and Luke. This is a book of gentle love stories, both young and old, new and lasting. Sparks excels in the quiet moments, in the close-held secrets, in the slowly unfurling romances. Although Sophia and Luke’s story was compelling, I was unsurprisingly drawn more to Ira and Ruth’s, stretching from just before WWII to the present day: Ira’s experiences as a navigator during the war, Ruth’s as a student at Wellesley, summers in the Outer Banks, their honeymoon visit to Black Mountain College, which spurs on a lifetime of serious art collecting. Their story was packed with so much neat history, told through affectionate banter, that I was eager to get to the next chapter. A charming book, recommended. Jessica Brockmole ON DISTANT SHORES (Wings of the Nightingale, #2) Sarah Sundin, Revell, 2013, $14.99, pb, 426pp, 9780800720827 With quiet dexterity, author Sarah Sundin fuses together touches of inspiration and times of war in this second installment in her WWII series. We follow Lt. Georgie Taylor, in a reprising role, on her journey as a nurse close to the front lines during German aggression overseas, confronting both fears and family members during very difficult times. Characters from the previous novel are present and new ones are introduced, as Georgie meets her new love interest in the Army’s pharmacist. The story is focused on both of these characters, and much like the first novel (With Every Letter) this is another 20th Century

emotionally charged but realistically told story of love, friendship and hardship. The author knows her historical subject matter, and while the reader may not fully comprehend many of the details of the foreign places or the Army lingo, we are still completely at ease and immersed in the eloquent storytelling featuring disasters, air strikes, and hope. The tender romance of Georgie and Hutch manages to avoid the stereotypical story arc of inspirational romance, and its evolution is well plotted. On Distant Shores is another fantastic WWII novel that I recommend to readers of the genre. Marie Burton THE SLEEP ROOM F.R. Tallis, Pegasus, 2013, $25.95, hb, 384pp, 9781605984766 / Pan, 2013, £7.99, pb, 400pp, 9781447204992 Readers of Frank Tallis’ Max Liebermann mystery series can rest assured that Tallis is just as good a writer when he’s not writing about Max and 1906 Vienna. But The Sleep Room, nonetheless, sticks to the psychological/medical themes Tallis obviously loves and is very good at. The plot, set in the 1950s, unwinds slowly as we follow young psychiatrist James Richardson to the dark, windlashed fens of Suffolk by the sea, where he’s taken on a prestigious post at Wyldehope Hall, an ancient mansion turned psychiatric institution. His charismatic boss, Dr. Hugh Maitland, is famous for his experiments and pioneering therapies on mental patients, and his latest project involves keeping patients asleep for weeks, maybe months. It all starts to unravel as James begins to experience odd encounters in the dark and, step by step, closes in on the mysteries at Wyldehope. This is a thrilling, suspenseful novel about the human mind and as such, is reminiscent of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw in its presentation of questions about what we know, how we know it, and the deep, dark places the human psyche can inhabit. I hope we see more like this from Tallis soon. Highly recommended. Mary F. Burns THE GOVERNESS OF HIGHLAND HALL Carrie Turansky, Multnomah, 2013, $14.99/ C$16.95, pb, 314pp, 9781601424969 It’s 1911, and Julia Foster is back in England after 12 years of missionary work with her parents in India. Her father’s illness makes it necessary for Julia to find work, though she’s not sure she’s cut out for a governess position, especially for Sir William Ramsey, the new master of Highland Hall, and his two children and two cousins. Has her training in India prepared her for the conflicts over class, education, and inheritance that she will have to face at Highland Hall? Can her Christian upbringing carry her through unwanted advances from men, the scheming of those she thought were her friends, and resistance from her charges at Highland? Historical romance readers familiar with Jane Eyre and Downton Abbey will feel at home in the world of Highland Hall, but it is important to note that, while Turansky’s work carries echoes of those predecessors, it stands on its own as a tale rich in character development, intrigue, love, and fascinating storylines of some of the

minor characters. Turansky reflects both the time period and Julia’s Christianity with a light touch, allowing both to become underpinnings of plot and character without making the reader feel overwhelmed. Amy Watkin NO SKYLARKS SING Millie Vigor, Hale, 2013, £19.99, hb, 224pp, 9780719809576 This is the sequel to Catherine of Deepdale, which described Catherine’s arrival in the Shetland Islands and the early years of her life there. No Skylarks Sing is set 15 years later, with Catherine now remarried, following the death of her first husband, and with three more children. This is arguably not an historical novel, since the story has now reached the 1970s. However, the Shetlands are still relatively unchanged; the oil boom which changed them for ever has yet to come. The novel is a fairly slow moving family saga – essentially Catherine has a crisis in her marriage and survives. The daily life of a Shetland croft, its delights, tediums and relentless backbreaking toil are described in detail. If you liked the earlier book you will like this, and it will appeal to anybody interested in the traditional life of the Shetlands, now largely vanished. Edward James TATTLER’S BRANCH Jan Watson, Tyndale House, 2013, $12.99, pb, 275pp, 9781414339153 Lilly Corbett is the only doctor in a small town in 1911 Kentucky coal country. With her husband frequently away on mine inspection trips, she uses local assistants in her office, like her younger sister Mazy and neighbor Armina Tippen. Armina sets the story in motion when she witnesses the murder of a young mother and then steals the baby for its safety. Lilly discovers that the baby has multiple medical problems and arranges foster care. Unbeknownst to her, the baby’s father, Shade, wants his daughter back, and will stop at nothing to achieve it, including kidnapping Lilly. Watson’s characters are more complex than average in the genre, though I found Mazy’s shallowness more annoying than humorous. The story’s drive moves at a good pace, and I liked learning about medical history in scenes where Lilly uses period remedies, like administering borax and glycerin to a baby with thrush. The ending makes a bit of a misstep, though, when a timely gift of money from afar makes for problems too easily solved. Despite that minor point, I’m sure inspirational fiction fans will enjoy this sequel to Skip Rock Shallows. B.J. Sedlock THE GIRL IN BERLIN Elizabeth Wilson, Serpent’s Tail, 2013, $14.95/£7.99, pb, 320pp, 9781846688270 In 1951, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, both high-level British diplomats, were exposed as Soviet spies and fled to Moscow. At the same time, Sir Anthony Blunt, one of the leading art historians of his generation, came under deep suspicion. Burgess and Maclean are only mentioned in this cold war thriller, and Blunt appears only briefly, but their well-known history lends an air of HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 51

verisimilitude to the cloak-and-dagger goings-on. When a refugee German scientist (who may, or may not, have written an explosive memoir) is found murdered in a London cemetery, Special Branch agent Jack McGovern is dispatched to Berlin to investigate his background. Also involved in the plot is a homosexual communist, Colin Harris, who wants to return from East Germany to England and bring with him an attractive young German woman whom he has offered to marry. Are they spies? And what is the woman’s connection to a child prostitution ring that flourished amidst the rubble of post-war Berlin? The action alternates between London and Berlin – both locales vividly portrayed by the author – and draws in a large cast of supporting characters ranging from the naïve Dinah Wentworth, a worshipful student of Sir Anthony’s, to the morally and sexually ambiguous Feierabend, who is both a female impersonator and a double agent. Woven through all of their stories is the patrician and inscrutable inspector Kingdom, who keeps appearing in the unlikeliest places. This is a good read that will keep you guessing right up to the end. Bruce Macbain THE NINE FOLD HEAVEN Mingmei Yip, Kensington, 2013, $15.00, pb, 320pp, 9780758273543. In the novel Skeleton Women, Camilla was adopted, raised and trained to spy for Big Brother Wang of the Red Demons Gang on Master Lung, leader of the Flying Dragons Gang, in 1920s Shanghai. Camilla’s entire focus in life has been to kill Master Lung. Camilla, the famed Heavenly Songbird, had had an affair with Master Lung’s son, Jinying, and given birth to their son, Jinjin or “Handsome Handsome.” That plot ended in a bloody gang war shoot-out. Camilla then escaped to Hong Kong with stolen riches but no idea of who is alive or dead after that brutal, bloody conflict. Now, in this sequel, she is desperate to know what happened to the gang leaders, her beloved, and her baby son in Shanghai. Her deeper desire, however, is to find her own identity outside of being a “skeleton woman” who is dependent on every male who crosses her path. Thus redemption, through the rescue of a former lover, Shadow, assistance to spy Rainbow Chang, and discovery of her son and another special blind girl, progresses while her own life is in constant jeopardy amid opposing characters whose ultimate passion is wealth and revenge. In multiple scenes Camilla ponders her place in a land that no longer reveres Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity or any other spirituality, yet Camilla’s insertion of constant quotes from these sources belies her insistence that Shanghai is now a spirit-less land. Camilla indeed is the exemplar of a society rooted in familial loyalty and love. Absolutely delightful historical fiction! Viviane Crystal

multi-period

THE ELIXIR OF IMMORTALITY Gabi Gleichmann (trans. Michael Meigs), Other 52 | Reviews |

HNR Issue 66, November 2013

Press, 2013, $18.95, pb, 768pp, 9781590515891 Ari Spinoza, the last surviving member of his family, is dying. Childless and at the end of his family’s long line of sons going back 17 generations, Ari is the sole repository of almost 1000 years of Spinoza family history and a dangerous, potentially world-altering, manuscript containing a formula for ensuring immortality developed by one of his famous ancestors. At this crossroads, we meet Ari in the present. In a rambling, often disjointed narrative beginning with the Espinosas in the 11th century, Ari regularly deviates from the Spinoza family history (which is often fascinating) by reporting disconnected and, from this reader’s perspective, unilluminating stories told to him by his greatuncle. Ari knows that his method of storytelling is choppy and annoying, but he frankly doesn’t care and says as much. Spinoza history meanders through Moorish Spain, through the Spanish Inquisition and Torquemada, though the French Revolution and Voltaire, to Hitler and Stalin. Great and respected philosophers, physicians, scientists and teachers fill the pages of this chronicle. The Spinoza family history mirrors Jewish experience through the centuries – from grudging acceptance, to expulsion, to genocide, often with humor, typically with great philosophical grace. Regrettably, at some point, I just didn’t care. I felt like I was slogging through molasses. I wasn’t looking for a fun, breezy read, but this effort, I believe, could have been much more than it ultimately became for me. It is indisputable that Gleichmann is a talented writer – Hungarian, raised in Sweden, his debut novel was published in Norwegian and is beautifully translated here. The Eastern European Jewish experience is never very far from the author’s world view. However, this saga of a famous – and sometimes infamous – Jewish family might well have been a stellar debut, but for me, the stars did not shine. Ilysa Magnus THE RESURRECTIONIST Matthew Guinn, Norton, 2013, $25.95, hb, 304pp, 9780393239317 Matthew Guinn’s fascinating, occasionally macabre, and engrossing novel offers a story of redemption and renewal while revealing the uncomfortable details about the historical practice of procuring human cadavers for doctors in training. Jacob Thacker, a doctor at a South Carolina medical college, is on probation for drug abuse. When construction workers find human bones in the foundation of a campus building, Jacob embarks on an investigation about them and the school’s history with cadaver acquisitions. He discovers a ledger noting a Nemo Johnson, a slave purchased in the late 1850s, and following that, a strange absence of cadaver purchases by the school. Bought by the seven-member faculty of the college, Nemo was a “resurrectionist,” employed to procure cadavers – a task he accomplished by raiding cemeteries. He works alongside a campus instructor – Dr. Johnson, the owner who gifted him with his surname – and gains a medical education right along with the white students. Guinn’s story alternates between the two

characters, even changing narrative style for each: present tense for Jacob, past tense for Nemo. Both arcs, however, are articulated with unvarnished detail about cadavers, anatomy classes, and medical training. The squeamish might feel faint but the scenes never verge on grotesque or outrageous; Guinn’s skill is in presenting a discomforting reality while not out-and-out disgusting the reader. Inspired by a real case, Guinn’s novel touches upon the unsavory history many institutions wish to forget while wrestling with the long legacy of race, power, and privilege in the South. Audra Friend HUNTERS IN THE SNOW Daisy Hildyard, Jonathan Cape, 2013, £16.99, hb, 316pp, 9780224097444 The first thing to say about this novel is that it is really not at all conventional historical fiction, yet it is of interest to anyone interested in history and historiography. The young female narrator is staying at the otherwise empty, cold farmhouse in Yorkshire that belonged to her deceased grandparents. She is sorting and clearing her historian grandfather’s papers. Jimmy Thompson, a former professor of history, had assembled a series of notes on a number of figures and events from the past – Edward VI, Peter the Great’s visit to west Europe, the former African slave Olaudah Equiano and Lord Kitchener are all discussed from Jimmy’s rather scattered and ad hoc notes. The nature of historical truth and interpretation, and approaches to uncover the hidden past are the underlying themes of these historical detours. Allied to this is the disjointed thread of the narrator’s memories of her own grandparents and growing up with Jimmy’s historical enthusiasms. At times the book reads more like autobiographical musings than fiction, and being the author’s first book it is perhaps understandable. This is a readable and intelligent novel that prompts the reader to reflect upon the role of the past in life and the necessity of history and its understanding. For some readers therefore, the book might fail as a more conventional fictional narrative; the plot, as such, is rather disconnected and lacks a unifying drive. Doug Kemp MORNING GLORY Sarah Jio, Plume, 2013, $15.00, pb, 304pp, 9780142196991 After her divorce, Ada Santorini needs a big change in her life, so she impulsively moves across the country to live in a houseboat community in Seattle. Her houseboat has been there for well over 50 years, and Ada discovers a trunk of personal belongings that belonged to the original owner, Penny. The author then takes us back to 1959, during the lonely year that Penny spent on Boat Street as the wife of an artist who preferred spending his time in the studio rather than with her. Through this dual-period novel, we get to know Penny’s relationship with her neighbors over that lonely year, while Ada is meeting some of those same neighbors in 2008. Most of the owners are senior citizens now, but there is an attractive man on the next dock who Ada becomes involved with. There is a mystery as to what exactly happened to 20th Century — Multi-period

young Penny, who disappeared during the summer of ´59 and was believed drowned. None of the neighbors will talk about that night, so Ada may never find out the truth. I have not yet read a Sarah Jio book that did not keep me interested in her well- developed storylines and characters. This book is written in the nowfamiliar past and present times, with a mystery for the woman in the present time to solve. Both of the women find love following much sadness, and the novel becomes a lesson in trusting and believing in oneself. Beth Turza THE GIRL YOU LEFT BEHIND Jojo Moyes, Pamela Dorman/Viking, 2013, $27.95, hb, 369pp, 9780670026616 / Penguin, 2012, £7.99, pb, 544pp, 9780718157845 France, 1916. The Kommandant of the German soldiers who occupy the village of St. Péronne is a cultured man, but he’s capable of brutality. When he orders Sophie Lefèvre, the owner of a small restaurant, to cook for his officers, she complies. When he wants conversation, they discuss art. The Kommandant is captivated by the portrait of Sophie painted by her husband Édouard before the war. When Édouard is captured while fighting with the French forces, Sophie offers the Kommandant her most precious possession in return for her husband’s safety. England, 2013. Long after her husband David’s sudden death, Liv Halston is still adrift. She is in debt, her job is drying up, and David’s last gift, a painting by Édouard Lefèvre, reminds her of the past. Then Liv meets Paul McCaffrey, and something wonderful happens: her hope returns. She invites him into her home, but Paul leaves knowing he cannot see her again outside of work. Moyes has great sympathy for life’s dilemmas. Hurting from Paul’s rejection, Liv learns that ownership of the painting, which has grown in value, is in dispute. She must prove David bought it from its legal owner, a daunting task, or face another devastating loss. If only Liv had some of Sophie’s courage! As the history of the painting is gradually revealed, with astonishing results, you may decide she does. When two very different women from different worlds meet, metaphorically at least, in a courtroom, they raise important issues that anyone who has loved and lost – and that is almost everyone – will understand. Moyes writes movingly of love (Me Before You, 2013, and The Last Letter to Your Lover, 2011), and The Girl You Left Behind is highly recommended. Jeanne Greene THE FOUNTAIN OF ST. JAMES COURT OR, PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS AN OLD WOMAN Sena Jeter Naslund, William Morrow, 2013, $26.99, hb, 447pp, 9780061579325 Writing two novels in one, Naslund juxtaposes chapters set up as “Fountain” or “Portrait” to chronicle two artistic women: Kathryn Callahan, a 69-year-old successful novelist living in presentday Louisville, Kentucky, and Elizabeth LeBrun, a late 18th-century artist about whom Kathryn has just finished writing a novel, with the “Portrait” title. Multi-period — Alternate History

Homage to James Joyce aside, the narrative self-consciously presents us with a modern Mrs. Dalloway as we follow Kathryn from midnight to midnight of one single day. By contrast, the chapters presenting LeBrun span her entire life, opening when she is seventy, walking in the woods in France, and looking back on her life, particularly during the French Revolution. Both women muse on the meaning of various things— love, husbands, children, nature, inspiration, the creative process—but LeBrun’s sections are far and away more interesting and more thoughtful than Kathryn’s. The openly stated comparison to Mrs. Dalloway invites disappointment—Kathryn lacks Clarissa’s simple dignity and concentrated sense of the just and the true. The similarities between the two are thin, consisting more in Kathryn’s endless enthusing over autumn leaves or watching light play on the fountain rather than any inherently intelligent observations on life and purpose. She lacks the deep human relation to people and life that shines so clearly in Mrs. Dalloway’s character. Though meant, I believe, to be a sympathetic character, especially to women of a certain age (of which I am one), Kathryn as a person is shallow, needy and self-centered, and the “courage” she musters at the end of the story to face a particular fear seems contrived and empty. LeBrun, as a portrait artist of the French aristocracy, lives through uniquely dangerous times and personal tragedies that inform her character and understanding with honor, love and a brave optimism. As much as I have loved Naslund’s previous books, this one falls short, or at least, half of it does. Mary F. Burns THE LUDWIG CONSPIRACY Oliver Pötzsch, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013, $26.00, hb, 448 pp, 9780547740102 The enigmatic King Ludwig II of Bavaria and his fairytale castles are at the heart of this latest mystery by German author Oliver Pötzsch. In The Ludwig Conspiracy, a mild-mannered rare book collector named Steven Lukas is given the lost journal of one of Ludwig’s closest friends. The journal, written in code, is said to contain the truth about Ludwig’s mysterious death. Steven soon finds himself hunted by several shady characters who appear to be set upon stealing the diary from him. He is rescued from a violent death by an attractive young art detective, Sara Lengfeld, with whom he joins forces in order to piece together the King’s last days. As Steven and Sara travel throughout Bavaria exploring Ludwig’s marvelous castles, they are chased by both the police and the members of an Arthurian-obsessed cult. In the meantime, Steven is brought closer not only to the secrets of the king but to the secrets of his own family history. Amid the suspenseful, lively and humorous narrative, the author offers a poignant depiction of the Dream King, shedding a great deal of light into the magical world of his creation. Ludwig’s attempt to withdraw from modernity into the romantic past led to his destruction but greatly benefitted his people in the long run. For anyone who has traveled in Bavaria, the novel will help you to mentally return there, so vivid are the descriptions. For those planning to visit Ludwig’s castles someday, The Ludwig Conspiracy is an excellent

guide, as well as a gripping story. Elena Maria Vidal

alternate history

THE BOLEYN DECEIT Laura Andersen, Ballantine, 2013, $15.00, pb, 372pp, 9780345534118 The Boleyn Deceit is second in a proposed alternative history trilogy based on the idea that Anne Boleyn’s son was not stillborn. She, of course, remains queen, and when Henry VIII dies some years later, their son William ascends the throne as Henry IX. The first novel in the series details the transition from the regency government as William finally comes of age. The introduction of several new characters in the first novel, including William’s best friend Dominic Courtenay and his sister Elizabeth’s chief lady-in-waiting and friend, Minuette Wyatt, sets the stage for the conflicts in the second. This second installment picks up when the first ended. A plot to overthrow William has been uncovered, its perpetrators have been arrested, and several key characters are dead. Details from this first book are leaked throughout the first half of The Boleyn Deceit, but for those readers who prefer to be fully informed, the first novel should definitely be read before attempting this one. One of the primary focuses of the plot is the love triangle between William, Dominic, and Minuette. Unfortunately for the king, Dominic and Minuette are in love and are forced to dissemble in order to keep the peace. This quandary provides plenty of tension, though the high drama sometimes verges on trite. The most interesting thing about this book is that author Laura Andersen has gone to great lengths to keep the same historical personages intact despite the fact that her version is an alternative history. This use of real history will please historical purists; therefore, this novel is recommended for all lovers of historical fiction. Caroline Wilson MARGOT Jillian Cantor, Riverhead, 2013, $16.00, pb, 352pp, 9781594486432 Margie Franklin prefers to live a quiet and solitary life. She works as a secretary in a Philadelphia law firm and doesn’t share much personal information with her friends and colleagues. They know that she is a shy young Christian woman and that she is originally from Poland. She rarely goes out with friends after work; instead she goes straight home to concentrate on her studies to become a paralegal. Her routine is disturbed in the spring of 1959, when everyone starts talking about the new movie based on The Diary of Anne Frank. Her friends and co-workers can’t stop raving about the movie and don’t understand why Margie doesn’t want to go see it. What they do not know is that she knows the story better than anyone else can, because Margie Franklin is really Margot Frank. Contrary to contemporary press reports, Anne Frank’s older sister did not die in Bergen-Belsen. She managed to escape and came to the United States to make HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 53

a fresh start and forget her former life. But how can she do that when everyone is talking about her sister? Suddenly the sweater that she wears to cover her concentration camp tattoo feels heavy and oppressive. Margie has to decide whether she wants to continue to keep her secret and live in hiding or if she wants to take a chance and finally start a new life and find happiness. Cantor’s novel reminds us that both of the Frank sisters wrote diaries but only Anne’s was found. Her thoughtful imagining of Margot gives the reader another side to a familiar story. The author also delves into the guilt that many Holocaust survivors felt and explores their struggle to assimilate after the end of the war. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Margot since I finished this book. Highly recommended. Janice Derr THE WINDSOR FACTION D.J. Taylor, Chatto & Windus, 2013, £14.99, hb, 380pp, 9780701187873 / Pegasus, 2013, $25.95, hb, 368pp, 9781605984780 It is the first few months of the Second World War, and the British are in that curiously suspended situation, wondering when, if ever, the fighting will start. But this is a different history – for in this story Wallis Simpson died on the operating table in 1936 and King Edward VIII mooches unproductively around Windsor Castle, grieving for his mistress. The King’s opposition to the war is well known, and inchoate groups of right-wingers, anti-Semites, pacifists, appeasers and general eccentrics emerges to keep Britain from getting embroiled in a disastrous military conflict with Germany, hoping that the King will provide a focus for their aims. The writer Beverley Nichols is invited to help the King with his Christmas Day broadcast, and when Edward VIII delivers pacifist opinions at odds with government policy, matters come to a head. Cynthia Kirkpatrick, who works on the staff of a new literary review has family connections with members of the “Faction”, and begins a love affair with Tyler Kent, a US diplomat who supports an isolationist policy. Cynthia has no particular support for the appeasers, and is a likeable and sympathetic character who, towards the end of the story, gets dragged into playing a central role in some serious events. This is an absorbing and well-written novel. Very often it is amusing in an almost Wodehousian manner with DJ Taylor’s closely-observed descriptions of the more ludicrous behaviour of some of the characters a delight. Doug Kemp

historical fantasy

ELISHA BARBER E. C. Ambrose, DAW, 2013, $24.95, hb, 304pp, 9780756408350 Elisha Barber is a blend of historical fiction, fantasy and medical thriller set in 14th-century England. Elisha Barber is a medieval barbersurgeon who is forced to go and work as a medic on the bloody battlefield of an inequitable war. When 54 | Reviews |

HNR Issue 66, November 2013

a seductive young witch lures him into her world of sorcery, Elisha must untangle certain magical threads as well as accept the discovery of his new powers. I found this first tale of the Dark Apostle series well written. The lead character, Elisha Barber, is a well-developed, dark protagonist, a man full of flaws but whose heart is in the right place. Through the eyes of Elisha, the author explores the occupation of the medieval barber, which involved hair-cutting, beard-trimming, and basic medical treatment. Through her extensive research, the author vividly brings to life the medieval battlefield, the wounds and the rudimentary surgical treatments of the Middle Ages. The horrors, the grime and the stink also spring from every page. I did have one minor reservation about the beginning of the story. Elisha’s actions do not seem deserving of the heavy guilt he bears. Thus, his reasons for accepting his fate as a battlefield surgeon, to atone for these actions, doe not seem entirely feasible. Despite this, I found the story entertaining, and although the supporting cast remains largely one-dimensional, I am sure lovers of dark historical fantasy will greatly enjoy Elisha Barber. Liza Perrat THE EMPEROR’S AGENT Jo Graham, Crossroad Press, 2013, $15.99, pb, 290pp, 9781937530488 This invigorating follow-up to The General’s Mistress finds its heroine, Dutch courtesan-actress Elzelina Ringeling, aka Ida St. Elme, in a tough spot. It’s 1805 in Paris, and she’s being blackmailed by Fouché, the Minister of Police, into informing on people from her past. A crucial choice on her part brings her to Napoleon, who charges her with flushing out a spy who’s been feeding his invasion plans to England. Arriving in the coastal city of Boulogne, she finds herself in way over her head. There are many highly-placed suspects, and as she tries to scout for the traitor, she’s forced into the company of Michel Ney, her soul mate, who had previously left her to marry someone else. Elza is one of the most distinctive characters in Napoleonic-era fiction. She is based on a real person whose provocative journals (Mémoires d’une Contemporaine) gained her considerable renown, and through her eyes, we observe both the feminine demi-monde as well as the camaraderie and banter among officers in the Grande Armée. A woman of her times, Elza acknowledges gender constraints while boldly fashioning her own way of life within them. Dressed as her alter ego Charles van Aylde – or in shedding her male garb when slipping into bed with an understanding lover – she can embrace the other side of her nature. With this sequel, Graham brings readers fully into the realm of historical fantasy as her reincarnation themes become more prominent, and Elza comes to accept her clairvoyant abilities. One of the most enjoyable aspects is that the novel’s mystical tone isn’t limited to these scenes; the descriptive language simply glows as it awakens us to the realization that all around us is a place of marvels. Not only a beguiling story of political espionage, self-discovery, and deeply felt love in early 19th-century Europe, it also gives us a creative and lovely way of envisioning these characters’

world.

Sarah Johnson

THE IMPOSSIBLE LIVES OF GRETA WELLS Andrew Sean Greer, Ecco, 2013, $26.99, hb, 289pp, 9780062213785 Following in the tradition of The Confessions of Max Tivoli, Andrew Sean Greer returns to a tale of the impossible and magical, set against a strong historical background. In 1985, Greta Wells is unhappy. Her beloved twin brother Felix has just passed away, and her boyfriend Nathan has left her. To combat her unshakeable depression, she agrees to undertake a radical electroshock treatment. But the treatment comes with very unexpected side effects. When Greta awakes the morning after her treatment, it’s to a different time and a different version of her own life. There are two alternate lives, she learns, and she cycles between 1918, 1941, and her own 1985 during the course of 25 treatments. In 1918, she’s a bohemian and in 1941, a devoted wife and mother, but she’s surrounded by the same people in both, by Felix and Nathan, playing roles both familiar and unfamiliar. She isn’t the only Greta cycling, and each of the three Gretas weighs how much to interfere in the other two times, to achieve what that particular Greta wants most of all. A book hard to explain, but a book easy to understand, this is a story about choice and consequence, about taking second chances and finding that they may take us down unforeseen paths. I enjoyed this book, of three Gretas trying to hold on to three Nathans and Felixes, through the war and Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, through the next generation’s war of 1941, and through 1985’s new battle, with AIDs. Intricately plotted, this is a thoughtful story peopled by characters all different enough despite their similarities to provide interesting contrasts between the three eras. Recommended. Jessica Brockmole REBEL ANGELS Michele Lang, Tor, 2013, $26.99/C$31.00, hb, 314pp, 9780765323194 In October 1939, Hitler is possessed by the arch demon Asmodel. Hungarian Jewish witch Magdalena Lazarus, scion of a line dating back to the Witch of Ein Dor, fights to save her people and the world from the brink of the Holocaust. If your definition of “historical” allows you to accept these urban fantastical premises, I have no reservation in recommending this novel. Even a more mundane interest in Jewish mysticism and alchemy should be enough to send you on this deep, engrossing ride, half-spy thriller, half-Thousand and One Nights. Getting up to speed with this book, the third in a trilogy of which I had not read the previous volumes, presented no problems. The prose goes lickety-split, and yet there is space for some really profound thoughts, as in the best of fantasy. Lazarus and her husband must travel deep into the magical world of the Caucasus. While the Reich works black magic, Stalin’s Russian science seeks to cut magic from the world. The showdown comes at the Battle of Stalingrad, and if your world contains precious little magic, this may be just the antidote. Lang, of Hungarian Jewish ancestry herself, Alternate History — Historical Fantasy

NINE DAYS

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Toni Jordan, Text Publishing, 2013, Au$26.99/$15.95, pb, 256pp, 9781444763577 This is not a historical novel in the conventional sense but a narrative consisting of nine vignettes, each taking place over the course of one day. The earliest is set in 1939 and the latest in the early 21st century. Each story is told from the point of view of someone connected to the Westaway family who lived in Richmond, an inner suburb of Melbourne, and it is what happens to some of them during World War II that leads to their continuing special connections. Fifteen-year-old Kip is given a shilling by his employer, and it becomes his lucky coin. His twin brother, Francis, acquires an amethyst pendant in a dubious fashion that will have significance in the next generation. And grandson Alec will come across a special photograph. Some stories are funny, others heartbreaking, but all are compassionate and insightful. The author has a light touch that imbues each generation with the attributes that define it. Her dialogue and description of life in war-time Melbourne are so convincing that should she ever decide to write a more expansive historical novel set in this era, her grasp of how people lived and behaved then would guarantee its success. The cover plays an important role in the book. It shows a photograph of Australian soldiers leaving on a troop train. In the centre one of them leans down, about to kiss a woman being lifted up to reach him. The real subjects of this genuine news photo are unknown, but they were Toni Jordan’s inspiration for the Westaway family. Read and enjoy this novel not just for its perfect historical snapshots, but for its engaging tale of family and how love binds us all together. This is a poignant, beautiful work and is most highly recommended. Marina Maxwell makes it all plausible by the deftest use of true details – from the Hungarian comfort food Lazarus’s sister feeds her to prove she is dead to the painted white tree trunks, the only night lighting in downtown Baku. Ann Chamberlin STEEL BLUES Melissa Scott and Jo Graham, Crossroad Press, 2013, $14.99, pb, 310pp, 9781937530303 In Steel Blues, the second in the Order of the Air Series, Melissa Scott and Jo Graham tell the gripping story of the Gilchrist Aviation Team as they hit desperate times during the Great Depression. The team attempt to win first prize in an exciting coast-to- coast air race, since the cash would keep the business going for a while. Along the way, a necklace, a Russian countess, a century-old curse, and a New Orleans axeman add excitement to their adventure. Although part of a series, it is also a good standalone novel. It contains elements for everyone: a bit of mystery, romance, history, and adventure, plus some paranormal happenings and humour. It has a wonderful, magical sense of time and place and is pure escapism; however, the authors still capture the feel of life in the 1930s. The reader is transported into the fast-paced world of aeroplanes. The authors can certainly tell a story, keeping the pace flowing extremely quickly and adding in spooky happenings. All the characters, main and minor, are very well Historical Fantasy — Children & YA

drawn and easy to get to know, and I enjoyed seeing the story from different points of view. The novel has all the things a great adventure should be: it is a quick and easy read with nail-biting tension and great descriptions and dialogue. Although this is the only book of the series I have read, I will certainly be searching out the first novel, The Lost Things. I can recommend it for a few hours of reading steeped in aviation and magic. Barbara Goldie THE GARDEN AT THE ROOF OF THE WORLD W.B.J. Williams, Dragonwell Publishing, 2013, $16.95, pb, 366pp, 9781940076003 This historical fiction has been set up to read like a historical manuscript, complete with footnotes by the “translator” and definitions to assist “researchers” in deciphering certain words. While this unique format creates a historical atmosphere, the story itself is clearly pure fiction. Set in a fantastical 13th century setting, several young women set out on a quest to save a dying unicorn. With the assistance of a younger unicorn, Britomar, the women must figure out where the Garden of Eden exists, and how to get there. Their goal is to find the fruit that Eve ate, which will heal the unicorn. Each woman has her own ulterior motives for taking on this quest, from love and romance to revenge and redemption. Their journey spans continents, and involves danger and challenges that ultimately examine their very souls. Each woman undertakes

different challenges and personal missions that test her loyalty, faith, chastity, and fortitude. With demons, yetis, giant sea creatures, and other terrors, nonstop action keeps the pace fast. In fact, at times, it felt like there was nothing to the plot other than vicious attacks by evil creatures. Nevertheless, the people the women meet along the way and the search for the garden intrigued me. I appreciated the different tenor of this novel; the fantasy and mysticism created a new perspective on old religious accounts, and the ultimate story is one of friendship, love and bravery. Rebecca Cochran NIGHT PILGRIMS Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Tor, 2013, $29.99/ C$34.50, hb, 416pp, 9780765334008 The 26th volume in the legendary SaintGermain series finds the millennia-old vampire in 13th-century Egypt. Known here as Sandjer’min, he is asked to lead a group of Christian pilgrims through the desert to the holy sites of Ethiopia, using his knowledge and experience to protect them from environmental and political dangers. The pilgrims – including a beautiful and lonely noblewoman, perfect for Sandjer’min’s special needs – face increasing perils as he and his devoted servant Roger (here called Ruthier) endeavor to protect them while also protecting themselves from discovery. Fans of this series know well what to expect: densely intricate writing, abundant historical research, and elaborately worded romance. Yarbro’s books are period pieces, renowned for evocative settings and attention to detail rather than action and fast-moving plots. Some readers find them slow, while others enjoy immersing themselves in the period and experiencing history through the Count’s eyes. If you find the setting intriguing but hesitate at the vampire element, don’t worry – as in all Saint-Germain books, vampirism is a minor detail, a vehicle by which a unique character travels through history. As always, an unusual and absorbing read. Heather Domin

children & young adult

A HORSE CALLED HERO Sam Angus, Macmillan, 2013, £6.99, pb, 282pp, 9781447235774 1940. World War II is raging. Dodo, and her nine-year-old horse-mad brother, Wolfie, live in London, a dangerous place during the Blitz. When their father fails to return from Dunkirk, the children are evacuated to Devon. Then comes news that their father, a World War I hero, has been accused of cowardice and desertion. Dodo and Wolfie passionately believe in his innocence, but the villagers close ranks, leaving the children ostracized in the village and bullied at school. Their father, writing from prison, tells them that he witnessed a Nazi massacre of British soldiers, an act against all the rules of war. His superiors don’t believe him, and he faces a court martial. Everything depends on whether anyone survived from the slaughter at HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 55

GHOST HAWK

E D I TORS’ C H OI C E

Susan Cooper, Bodley Head, 2013, £12.99, hb, 330pp, 9781782300007 / Margaret K. McElderry, 2013, $16.99, hb, 336pp, 9781442481411 1600s, Massachusetts. Winter is coming. Elevenyear-old Little Hawk must undergo a three-month test of survival alone in the forest with only a tomahawk, a bow and a quiver with a dozen arrows. If he can survive the winter storms, scarcity of food and the threats of wolves and bears, then he will be accepted as a man of the Pokanokets tribe, as his father and grandfather were before him, when – and if – he returns. But Little Hawk’s world is changing. White settlers, arriving from Europe seeking religious freedom, are beginning to come into contact with the Native American tribes. The newcomers have different lifestyles and different priorities, and tensions between the two peoples are rising. Little Hawk’s path is fated to cross that of eleven-year-old John Wakeley from England, and both lives are changed forever. John is a cooper’s apprentice in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The settlers’ respect for freedom from persecution does not extend to the Native Americans on their doorstep, whom they see as the Devil’s spawn, full of wickedness and lies. When the Quaker preacher, Roger Williams, visits the settlers’ church and preaches a doctrine of love, tolerance and peace, local opinion is outraged – but John agrees with Williams and increasingly finds himself questioning the settlers’ beliefs and assumptions. Can John find a place to live in harmony with the Native Americans, or must he witness yet more bloodshed? This book deals with important questions of life and death, and it doesn’t pull its punches. I believed absolutely in Susan Cooper’s Native American–white settler early 17th-century world. She shows us from the inside, as it were, how far apart Little Hawk and John’s lives are in some ways, yet how close they are, too, in their common humanity. Highly recommended for thoughtful children of 11 plus. Elizabeth Hawksley Wormhout to corroborate his story. Wolfie is badly affected by all this, but the chance finding and caring for an orphaned foal he names Hero enables him to put Hero’s needs above his own fears, and the traumatized boy gradually becomes more happy and settled. But the war has another cruel twist and, soon, Dodo and Wolfie’s belief in eventual justice for their father, and Wolfie’s concern for Hero’s well-being, will be tested to the utmost. As the war rolls on and the children grow up separated from their father, what sort of people will they become? This important question is dealt with sympathy and insight. The boy and his horse story is not uncommon, but what makes A Horse Called Hero different is the standard of the writing. A Horse Called Hero has a lyrical quality, and Angus captures the sights, sounds and smells of country life with an unusual intensity, giving the book added depth. I found it very moving. Recommended for boys of nine plus but girls should enjoy it as well. Elizabeth Hawksley JADE BOY Cate Cain, Templar, 2013, £6.99, pb, 432pp, 9781848772298 The blurb says this is a ‘thrilling story of sorcery and mystery laced with macabre horror and historical detail’ – I couldn’t have put it better myself, although it’s heavy on the magic and horror, and much lighter on the history. 56 | Reviews |

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Twelve-year-old Jem Green is the son of the Duchess of Bellingdon’s widowed maidservant – or so he thinks, although his real parentage is easy to guess. He lives a miserable life toiling in the kitchens, where he’s regularly beaten and mistreated by some of the other servants (I did wonder why Jem’s mother couldn’t do more to help him!). When a supposedly mute black boy, Tolly, and a young witch, Ann, befriend him, he is therefore very happy, even though he is a bit frightened at first by the strange things they can do. However, his new friends are bound to a cruel and sinister master, Count Cazalon, who, unbeknown to Jem, needs him for an important magical rite. The story is set during the time leading up to the Great Fire of London and involves King Charles II and a mysterious plot to burn the whole city to the ground. I enjoyed it very much and found it wellwritten and exciting. For anyone wanting to read a historical novel, the background, speech, clothing and so on are all accurately described so you feel you are in the 17th century. But all the sorcery and magic soon takes centre stage, so I would class this more as a fantasy adventure story where the history is merely the backdrop. I’m sure this Gothic tale would appeal to girls and boys of eleven plus alike – although some of them might baulk at the gruesome descriptions in certain passages – and if you want a very different, exciting read, then this book is for you. Pia Fenton

VANGO: Between Earth and Sky Timothée de Fombelle (trans. Sarah Ardizzone), Walker, 2013, £14.99, hb, 429pp, 9781406354010 1934, Paris. Vango, a teenage boy of mysterious origins and with an unusually isolated childhood, is about to be ordained priest, when a shot rings out. Moments later, Vango is on the run, falsely accused of a crime he didn’t commit. The peace brokered after the First World War is crumbling, and fascism is on the rise. In Germany, the newlyformed Gestapo are searching for dissidents; in Russia, Stalin is ruthlessly crushing opposition; and arms traffickers and spies are everywhere. Not even the remote Aeolian island where Vango was brought up is safe any more. Vango’s quest to prove his innocence takes him across a volatile Europe by train, boat and even Zeppelin in an attempt to evade his unknown enemies and to discover the truth about his own past. As the strap line says: “When people are chasing you but you don’t even know who you are, where do you turn?” Vango is caught between those who love him and try to protect him from his past by keeping silence, and the realization that ignorance is more dangerous than the truth – whatever it may prove to be. This is a beautifully written, multi-layered book, impeccably translated by Sarah Ardizzone, and it has an intensity and freshness of vision which reminds me of Alan Garner’s work. And, as with Alan Garner’s novels, you have to be fully alert to follow the twists and turns of the plot as it jumps about in time and place. Fortunately, it’s so exciting, it scarcely matters if, occasionally, you get lost. My one criticism is that you never stag-hunt on horseback in the Scottish Highlands; the terrain, peat and heather, would make it lethal. You stalk them, on your stomach if necessary. Having said that, I enjoyed Vango and sophisticated teenagers should enjoy it, too. Elizabeth Hawksley WORLD WAR I TALES: The Last Flight Terry Deary (illus. James de la Rue), A & C Black, 2013, £4.99, pb, 63pp, 9781408191682 1916. Young Alfred Adams in a private in the British Army about to be sent to the Western Front. He has heard terrible things about the conditions there and doesn’t want to go. Fortunately, he has a stroke of luck; his commanding officer discovers that he is an excellent photographer. Alfred is promoted to lieutenant and transferred to the new Royal Flying Corps as an aerial photographer. He will go up with Donald Stewart, his pilot, and photograph the enemy’s position from their twoseater flying machine called FE2b. In this first person narrative, Alfred writes to his sister about his adventures, which gives the story immediacy. He tells Lucy about the famous German air ace, Baron Manfred von Richthofen, and how he hopes to shoot down the famous ‘Red Baron’. But it is Donald and Alfred, in their new efficient Bristol plane, who are shot down by the baron. They are taken captive and spend the rest of the war in a German prison camp. The Last Flight is based on a true story, and Terry Deary and his illustrator James de la Rue have pitched it just right for boys of seven plus who are learning about World War 1 in time for the centenary next year. Planes are still in their Children & YA

infancy, and de la Rue’s drawings show the FE2b looking exactly like the stick insect Alfred calls it; it’s a bi-plane, made out of canvas, wood and wire. It looks, and obviously was, horribly unsafe. The illustrations, from various vertiginous angles, give us the action from Alfred’s point of view. There are some terrific pictures of dog-fights with planes spouting smoke spiralling down. I can’t help feeling that de la Rue thoroughly enjoyed this drawing assignment, and I’m sure that small boys will love them, too. Highly recommended. Elizabeth Hawksley If I had to rate this book I would give it 9 out of 10, missing one point because it is not long enough. However, I can read it quickly. If I was the little girl that Alfred was writing to, I would be both shocked and thrilled by this story. The thrilling bit is the scenes involving Alfred and Donald almost being shot down by a fighter plane of the Red Baron. But I would be shocked if someone gave me a very old and stained book, and I’d think ‘Wow, this must be a real manuscript with letters of a World War One photographer’. Recommended for ages 7-13. Louis McNulty, age 10 DUSK Eve Edwards, Penguin, 2013, £6.99, pb, 293pp, 9780141337395 Set against the backdrop of WW1 and, more specifically, shortly before and during the Battle of the Somme, this first part of a trilogy centres on the relationship between nurse Helen Sandford and artist Sebastian Trewby. As their different backgrounds collide, Helen lies about her age and signs up as a nurse to the Forward Medical Station near the Somme, and Sebastian enlists in the army. Helen finds herself having to make life and death decisions about who’ll survive and who won’t, while Sebastian fights to protect his men against the senseless slaughter of the trenches. Dusk is beautifully written in places, with plenty of imagery, for example, ‘dawn would flush the horizon, bringing a false rosy glow to the dead world’, and the relationship between Helen and Sebastian develops at a suitably slow rate, culminating in a tender romance. The camaraderie among the men in Sebastian’s unit is touching and, despite their joking about, the author manages to create a true sense of fear. The references to moths and butterflies are both poetic and clever, and Helen’s exquisite tiger box functions as an anchor to a gentler time in a world of hatred and destruction. However, there are instances where the author resorts to cliché, e.g. Helen’s troubled relationship with her domineering father, and Sebastian’s fellow soldier, a cheeky chappy Cockney. Also, the story jumps back and forth in time which, sadly, made it hard to become emotionally engaged, at least not until the end, and it would have benefited from being told in chronological order. With life in the trenches reminiscent of Pat Barker’s Regeneration, and with plenty of blood and guts in the hospital scenes, too, I would rate this novel as suitable for the 17+ age group. Henriette Gyland THE CLOCKWORK SCARAB Colleen Gleason, Chronicle, 2013, $17.99, hb, Children & YA

356pp, 9781452110707 In an alternative 1889 London, where airships and steam-powered machines, vehicles, and devices are common, Mina Holmes, niece of Sherlock, and Evaline Stoker, sister of Bram, embark on the first of what promises to be a series of adventures. Sherlock’s old nemesis, Irene Adler, summons the girls to the British Museum to investigate a series of apparent suicides of young society women and the disappearance of another. The only clue is an Egyptian scarab left with the bodies. Soon Mina and Evaline realize this is a case of murder, not suicide, and they discover the victims are members of a secret society devoted to the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet. They infiltrate the society to discover why the girls are being killed. But will they avoid becoming the next victims? The Clockwork Scarab is a thrilling, fast-paced adventure, and Gleason’s London is a fascinating place, both like and unlike the real London. She presents us with two intrepid, and contrasting, heroines: the logical, brilliant, but physically and socially awkward Mina and the beautiful, impulsive Evaline, who possesses superhuman strength. They are not the best of friends; in fact, they distrust each other at first and must learn to work together to solve the murders. There are three potential love interests: Pix, a pickpocket; Grayling, a Scotland Yard inspector; and Dylan, a time traveler from the present day. Dylan was accidentally transported to 1889 after touching the scarab on a statue of Sekhmet; besides solving the murders, the girls have to figure out how to get him home. I am looking forward to reading more of Mina’s and Evaline’s adventures. Vicki Kondelik KITTY PECK AND THE MUSIC HALL MURDERS Kate Griffin, Faber & Faber, 2013, £7.99, pb, 352pp, 9780571302697 1880. In London’s East End underworld, the fearsome Lady Ginger reigns supreme, ruling her criminal empire with ruthless efficiency. Opium dens and various dodgy music halls are under her sway. Everyone, in particular her ‘girls’, do exactly what she tells them. But she has a problem. Someone is stealing her girls, and that cannot be tolerated; the guilty party must be found and made to pay. She decides that seventeen-year-old Kitty, bold, impetuous and brighter than she realizes, will be the bait. Kitty’s high-wire trapeze act will become the sensation of London. From up high, Kitty will be able to spot any nefarious goings-in – and woe betide her if she does not come up with information leading to the perpetrator being unmasked. Kitty has no option, for the Lady knows the whereabouts of her beloved missing brother and has made it clear that Joey’s life is at stake if Kitty does not do as she’s told. I really enjoyed this book. The seedy world of Limehouse’s opium dens and Victorian theatreland is chillingly drawn, as is the sinister Artisans Gallery in Mayfair where bored aristocrats queue up to view the brilliant but decadent painting The Cinnabar Girls. This is also a coming-of-age story; Kitty must jettison all her preconceptions about people she loves and learn to see the world as it

truly is. On her journey, she will encounter many dangers and come face to face with some of her worst fears; and it’s not only her own life that is at stake if she fails. This book could be described as Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray meets Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus, but with thrilling and dark edges all its own. I can’t wait for Kate Griffin’s next book. Highly recommended for girls of fourteen plus. Elizabeth Hawksley THE SEEING Diana Hendry, Bodley Head, 2012, £10.99, hb, 170pp, 9780552564090 Set in the 1950s, this story is narrated mainly by 13-year-old Lizzie, who lives in a small coastal town, in a comfortable home with aspirational parents. When the school summer term starts she meets a new girl, Natalie, a wild, audacious girl from the wrong end of town, who fascinates and inspires her, causing her to drop her former friends. At first this seems like a mild teenage rebellion on Lizzie’s part, but a prologue, in which Lizzie is clearly recovering from some trauma, has already hinted at something more. Occasional diary entries from Natalie reveal her disturbed state of mind. Natalie has a strange little brother, Philip; and soon the story turns darker as Lizzie begins to realise that Philip has some sort of second sight and is able to point out “left-over Nazis”; he can see the swastikas on their hearts, says Natalie. Soon the three children are engaged in a campaign of hunting out and harassing several harmless people, two of whom feel driven to leave the town. Then their attention turns to the artist Hugo Kesler, who has a caravan on the beach and comes every summer to paint – a man who engages with all three of them in different ways. The events that follow build to a horrifying and completely unexpected climax. Diana Hendry captures well the emotional turmoil of girls in early adolescence. This is a powerful book, beautifully written, and recommended for thoughtful readers of 12+. Ann Turnbull HOW TO CATCH A BOGLE Catherine Jinks, Harcourt Children’s Books, 2013, $16.99, hb, 320pp, 9780544087088 In Victorian London, children who aren’t born into “respectable” families – that is, wealthy ones – are pretty much on their own. Other than being a street sweeper, or mudlark, and combing through the Thames muck at low tide, there’s not a lot of honest work to be done. And even children must earn their meager keep. Birdie works for Alfred the Bogler. In short, she’s his bait for catching monsters capable of snacking on a less clever child than Birdie. She’s good at what she does, and brave as they come. Things seem to be humming along as they should for this young monster catcher. Until the day when it becomes clear that London orphans have begun to disappear. This historical thriller, for readers ages 9-12, transports young adventurers to the grim world of 19th-century England. Author Jinks uses inventive language, brilliant imaginings, and appealing characters like Birdie and Jem to draw readers into a long-ago world. And yet the dangers, risks, and frightening possibilities of demise are in many ways no more or less real than those that today’s child HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 57

faces in reality, or is subjected to in news reports. Our bogles – violence, drugs, bullying, predators, and terrorists – are just as terrifying as the worst of the bogles Birdie encounters. Any child reading this deliciously scary novel will instantly see the comparison. Just as easily, the reader will be charmed and entertained. A highly recommended novel. Kathryn Johnson SAWBONES Catherine Johnson, Walker, 2013, £6.99, pb, 240pp, 9781406340570 ‘Medical science is flourishing, and in London the illegal trade in corpses has never been more… alive.’ This quote sums up the novel perfectly. In 1792, sixteen-year-old Ezra McAdam assists at the dissection table as a gifted apprentice to a high regarded London surgeon, learning how to reveal the secrets each body hides. His age is an estimate based on medical measurements as he, a mulatto of mixed race, was bought in Spanish Town by his master, Mr McAdam. The skills he learns as a surgeon’s apprentice will serve him well for life. Meanwhile, magician’s daughter, Loveday Finch, thinks her father was murdered and enlists Ezra’s help to find out why. The plot takes us through the streets of 18th-century London to vastly differing settings from the operating theatre at St Bartholomew’s, the damp vaults of Newgate Prison, to the inner corridors of the Ottoman Embassy. However, the wealth of detail never slows what is a tightly woven plot. I did not want to put this novel down. Ezra shows us the world of cadavers from the perspective of medical science, whilst the brave yet vulnerable Loveday introduces the mystery. Together they discover a web of intrigue. The book is both original and informative. Ezra and Loveday complement each other and entertain, whilst dealing with life-threatening situations. The inhuman aspects of society at the time are mentioned, but it is the positive ways the two react to events which really make the story appealing. The ending holds a delightful surprise, which I hope means Ezra and Loveday will return to intrigue me again. Sawbones is suitable for competent readers of 10+ to adult. Val Loh SILENT NOON Trilby Kent, Alma, 2013, £12.99, pb, 284pp, 9781846882999 Fourteen-year-old Barney Holland is sent to board at Carding House School on Lindsey Island in the North Sea after his mother abandons him. Barney is not accepted by the boys at the school. He is an outsider and, coming from Camden Town, is seen as being lower class. He is bullied and isolated until he makes an awkward alliance with Belinda Flood, the housemaster’s daughter, expelled from her all-girls’ school and allowed to attend lessons alongside the Carding House boys. Barney and Belinda meet an older boy, Ivor Morrell, and are drawn into his strange and secretive world, with tragic consequences. It is 1953, and the war still casts a long shadow over the lives of the people on the island. The three misfits meet a woman accused of being a 58 | Reviews |

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collaborator during the German occupation of Lindsey. The body of a baby is found buried near the school, and secrets about the island’s wartime past start to emerge. The school is an inwardlooking, enclosed place, which gives the story a claustrophobic feel. Kent focuses on the small, telling details, letting a sense of menace gradually unfold. She captures the casual cruelty of the staff and pupils and an almost callous indifference to suffering and loss, as much a legacy of the war as the names of former pupils on the memorial plaque in the school chapel. The observations are sharp and the characters rounded. The age of the central characters and the setting suggest that this is a YA book, but I feel the story is too slow and subtle to engage the YA reader. Nevertheless, I highly recommend this well written, carefully researched and atmospheric book to anyone who enjoys character-led stories. Pat Walsh WITCHFALL Victoria Lamb, Corgi, 2013, £6.99, pb, 385pp, 9780552566186 Witchfall follows young Meg Lytton to the court of Queen Mary in the service of the Lady Elizabeth. It is a dangerous time for the members of the small household of the possible future Queen Elizabeth, living through stifling suspicions of heresy, disloyalty, domestic rivalry and sexual jealousy; a persistent setting of interacting tensions. Affairs of state pertaining to the succession sit over this backdrop, and the Inquisition is at its pernicious work. Meg, a country witch and associate of the magician John Dee, in love with a Spanish priest, is in particular peril. Witchfall is the second book in Victoria Lamb’s Tudor Witch series, and she has chosen to keep the recapping of the back story to a minimum, which advances the plot into the sequel at a tremendous pace. However, readers of the first book, Witchstruck, will be aware that the smouldering novice Catholic priest, Alejandro, belongs to the Order of Santiago, a military order who were permitted to marry, but this is not explained until well into Witchfall. There is a delicious darkness to these books. Historical distance permits a realistic depiction of torture that would be impossible to tackle in YA in a modern setting, and Meg is no teen ‘bubblegum witch’. The author has deftly established credible divisions between the ‘high magic’ of Dee and the ‘low magic’ of the witch. Although it is unlikely that Dee was channelling angels through a young associate at this time, it is a fiction writer’s prerogative to suppose that he might have. This leads to the introduction of Dee’s fictional apprentice, Richard, and, as a romance is at the heart of the book, he makes a flawed foil to the perfect Alejandro. Eager readers from eleven to twenty-one will enjoy this book. Charlie Farrow THE EXTRA Kathryn Lasky, Candlewick, 2013, $16.99, pb, 320pp, 9780763639723 In 1940 the Nazi regime’s deadly fingers have reached into Austria, and Jews are disappearing. Vienna’s Gypsy population knows that they are also in danger when the Nuremberg Laws

have ordered all of them over the age of 14 to be fingerprinted. Lilo is fifteen, and purple ink still stains her fingertips when Gypsy classmates begin to vanish. Lilo’s parents are artisans, but skill and craft cannot save the Friwald family. Lilo’s father is gone in a trainload of men and boys, never to be seen again. Lilo and her mother are starved and tortured in the name of “medicine.” Then Leni Riefenstahl comes to camp. The Nazi filmmaker is directing – and starring in – a romantic movie, and thinks that imprisoned Gypsies would make perfect “Spanish” extras. She picks the dark-haired Lilo, who insists that her ailing mother come with her to the movie set. Luck plays a huge part in whether Lilo will survive, but the protagonist of The Extra is one strong and resourceful girl. She is also clever enough to see through Riefenstahl’s artifice, to the malice which drives the Nazi’s life and death decisions. The award-winning Kathryn Lasky has produced a heart-rending historical novel for adults and teens, and reminds us that the Holocaust encompassed Gypsies, gays, the disabled, and other groups which the Nazis considered undesirable. The Extra would be a worthy introduction to this horrific topic for school classes, and for all who enjoy a tale of survival and determination. Jo Ann Butler THE MYSTERIOUS MISADVENTURES OF CLEMENCY WRIGGLESWORTH Julia Lee, Oxford, 2013, £6.99, pb, 318pp, 9780192733672 Late 19th century. Miss Clemency Wrigglesworth, age eleven and newly orphaned, boards the P & O steamer in Bombay bound for England. All she has is her luggage and a ticket. She has no idea where she’s going or who her relations are. Mrs Potchard, a professional child-minder on board ship, places her in Mrs Marvel’s boarding house in Portsmouth, and puts an advertisement in The Times announcing Clemency’s arrival, sure that someone will claim her – and reimburse her fees. The Marvels are a lively family, quite unlike the stiff formality of Clemency’s own parents. Whitby, who dances at the Hippodrome theatre and keeps her hair up with knitting needles, longs to join the Genuine Red Indian Travelling Circus, and her cousin, Gully Potchard, is a gangly teenager with a psychic gift for finding lost things. When Clemency is removed without warning by the intimidating Miss Clawe, Gully is worried. She hasn’t even taken her luggage with her. It doesn’t smell right to him. Clemency is taken to her mother’s childhood home in Somerset, but, far from being welcomed by her relations, she’s forced into being a scullery maid, the lowest of the low. It’s clear that she’s not wanted. Why is she being kept from her uncle and aunt? Why is she treated like a skivvy? In spite of being cold, hungry and uneasy about her future, Clemency is determined to get some answers. Meanwhile, Gully, Whitby and the Genuine Red Indians set out to discover what’s happened to Clemency…. The story zips along, and the twists and turns of the plot had me on the edge of my seat. There’s more than a touch of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s put-upon heroines who fight back in Clemency, Children & YA

which gives the book an authentic period flavour. Most enjoyable. For girls of 10+ Elizabeth Hawksley ANTON AND CECIL: Cats at Sea Lisa Martin and Valerie Martin, Algonquin Young Readers, 2013, $16.99, hb, 256pp, 9781616202460 In the time of sailing ships and pirates, two cats, brothers Anton and Cecil, live near the docks of Lunenburg. Anton is very like his mother, sleek, gray, and a lover of music, whereas the much larger Cecil, who takes after their dad, is goofy, black with white patches, and an adventurer at heart. Unfortunately, when the captain of the Mary Anne wants a ratter for his ship, it is rodent-hating Anton who is captured. Cecil soon seizes an opportunity to follow his brother by stowing away on another ship, but how will he ever find Anton on the vast ocean? It is the cats’ adventures, including their friendships with various animals, that give this story its charm, but it is their interactions with the sailors that add depth. The humans are mysterious creatures who are only relevant because they provide food, water, and transportation to the cats. This makes it fun to watch the drama in the sailors’ lives from the viewpoint of such disinterested observers. Well written, with an easy flow of language and plenty of action, Anton and Cecil comes recommended not only for pre-teen readers but also for adults to read aloud and share with younger children. Nancy J. Attwell MEETING CEZANNE Michael Morpurgo (illus. François Place), Candlewick, 2013, $15.99/C$18.00, hb, 64pp, 9780763667177 / Walker, 2013, £7.99, hb, 64pp, 9781406313796 In this charming little book, British Children’s Laureate Michael Morpurgo tells the story of Yannick, a young Parisian boy who is sent away to live with his aunt and uncle in Provence when his mother falls ill. Provence is the country of Cezanne – whom Yannick believes is the “greatest painter in the world.” When a mysterious artist visits his uncle’s inn, Yannick sets out to introduce himself and win a drawing from his idol. At just 64 pages, this little volume is geared toward beginning readers, and takes no more than half an hour to flip through. However, the prose is never “dumbed down,” and the book has the flavor of a tightly-crafted short story rather than a simplified novel. The countryside of Provence is lovingly rendered, and the relationship between Yannick and his cousin Amandine is depicted as the sort of hopeless puppy love that can nurture rather than disappoint. Tender, lyrical, and supplemented with beautiful illustrations, Meeting Cezanne is a book that offers early readers ages 6-10 an accessible introduction to what good literature can be. Ann Pedtke INVASION Walter Dean Myers, Scholastic, 2013, $17.99/ C$19.99, hb, 224pp, 9780545576598 Although a book for ages 12 and up, Invasion gripped this adult as well. There are milestone Children & YA

events in World War II, and June 6, 1944 – D-Day – is definitely one of them. This book opens on May 14, 1944. Josiah Wedgewood, a young soldier from Virginia, is in the 29th Infantry, and after many false alarms, his company joins the invasion of Normandy. Today, D-Day marks a turning point in the war, but Invasion reminds us that victory came at the cost of many lives. And there was no relief for those who survived it. The battered remnants of Josiah’s company fight their way across France, with orders that send them back and forth, always with more casualties and ultimately hollow victories as they retake the ruins of a town. Josiah is the everyman in this war. He finds friends and enemies among his fellow soldiers, and both are mowed down in battle. He runs into an African American friend from his hometown, whose skin color puts him in the Transportation Corps, treated as a second-class citizen. Letters from his mother and a girl from home keep him connected, but he realizes that some of the horrors he sees can never be shared. Myers has written an exemplary book about war (not his first – he’s published other young adult books about the Vietnam and Iraq wars). Although “boots on the ground” is an overused phrase these days, that’s what came to mind. This is what war is for those in the middle of it: confusion, fear, exhaustion, adrenaline, and a chilling introduction to adulthood for young men. Ellen Keith THE BURNING SHADOW Michelle Paver, Puffin, 2013, £12.99, hb, 271pp, 9780141339283 Bronze Age Greece. In this, the second Gods and Warriors book, Hylas, the Outsider; Pirra daughter of the High Priestess of Keftiu; and Telamon, the Crow chief ’s son, once friends but now estranged, have been separated. Hylas has been captured and is now a Crow slave, condemned to work in the copper mines on the volcanic island of Thalakrea. He is desperate to return to Messenia to find his sister, but no-one ever escapes from the mines. But then he finds the lion cub, Havoc, and an unlikely partnership is forged. Pirra is frantically looking to escape from Keftiu. Soon, she will be sent abroad to marry the king of Arzawa by her ambitious mother. How can she get away when she’s watched all the time? She bribes the seer Hekabi, a woman she suspects of being a fake prophet, to help her escape. But Hekabi has other ideas… Telamon, once Hylas’s friend, carries a burden of guilt. He feels that it was his fault that Hylas and his sister were separated. His clan, the Crows, now own the stone knife which has the power to control everything and, as Telamon recognizes, they do so with ruthless cruelty. Prophesies say that when the Outsider holds the knife, the Crows will fall. And, as Telamon knows, Hylas is an Outsider. Somehow the three children must find each other and repair their friendship. But trust, once broken, is not easy to mend. Over it all, the Fire Goddess looms, furious at the way the miners are plundering her sacred mountain. Will she destroy them all or can the three find a way to escape? As before, this book had me gripped. The Bronze Age world of rival tribes fighting for power is brilliantly portrayed, and the pace is terrific.

Recommended for children of 11 plus. Elizabeth Hawksley THE LAST RIDE OF CALEB O’TOOLE Eric Pierpoint, Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, 2013, $7.99, pb, 288pp, 9781402281716 Twelve-year-old Caleb O’Toole’s last ride is motivated, like all his other actions in this adventure tale, by the dying words of his mother: “I need you to be strong.” Cholera, a lawless mob, and murdering thieves have made the family home of Great Bend, Kansas, a dangerous place to be in 1877. Caleb, along with his older sister Julie, younger sister Tilly, and dog Tumble barely escape with their lives. After witnessing murders by the Blackstone gang, Caleb and Tilly are rescued by Civil War veteran Henderson, afterward accused of the Blackstones’ crimes. The children begin a journey to the ranch owned by their aunt in the Bitterroot Mountains – over a thousand miles distant. The way takes them over parts of the Oregon and Bozeman Trails. They experience the company of both hostile and friendly Indians, thieves, tornadoes, deserts, and hungry wolf packs. The Blackstone gang is in pursuit. Henderson and his mighty horse return with allies and are ready to lend a hand in the final showdown. Rife with incident and spine-tingling excitement, this classic journey Western could have used one more pass with an editor’s pen for cliches and repetitions. The level of violence and body count may be a little high for its targeted youngeryoung-adult age group. Ages 8 and up. Eileen Charbonneau THE BOMBER DOG Megan Rix, Puffin, 2013, £5.99, pb, 263pp, 9780141342899 Dover 1944: World War 2 is at its height. One night, after a bombing raid, a young Alsatian dog rescues his friend, a spaniel, and drags her to safety. He is found by Nathan, who is about to join up. The dog is homeless and ownerless and Nathan, impressed by his courage in rescuing his friend, names him Grey and takes him to the War Dog Training School. Nathan will train as a paratrooper and Grey will be his paradog. They will be dropped over occupied France. Grey loves Nathan and learning, but the parachute drop, shortly before D-Day, is a disaster. They become separated. How can Grey, now on his own, find Nathan again? And how can he keep safe and alive when war is raging all around him? I love the way that Megan Rix gives us a dog’s eye view of the world; the importance of smell, for example, and Grey’s natural curiosity about other creatures he meets, from goats and chickens to old Elijah, a traveller living in a bombed-out plane on the French sand dunes. Elijah looks after Grey when he is hurt by shrapnel, and, later, plays his fiddle to soothe him. Grey’s life will touch a number of people, English, French and German, and bring out the best in all of them. My one niggle is the time it takes for Grey’s story to get going. Do we really need a first chapter about Sabine in France hiding a puppy from the Germans? Readers naturally identify with the first characters they meet. They don’t expect them to disappear for over 180 pages, leaving them to start again with HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 59

Grey. However, I enjoyed learning about the War Dog Training School and the important part played by dogs in the Allied victory. Children of 9+ should love this book. Elizabeth Hawksley I thought that this book was amazing because it was so real and lifelike, that when I was reading it, I could imagine myself being Grey and jumping off that plane. Throughout, I wished I could have a German Shepherd dog because Grey was so kind, loving and brave. If this was a real story, I would definitely choose Grey to be a paratrooper dog. I loved how Nathan was always in the story too and not being left out – their relationship is startlingly well-developed. From the first moment they meet they are perfectly in tune. If I had to rate this book, I would give it 10 out of 10, and the ages that I think should read it are 9-15, because it so real that I think my older brother would love this book too. Louis McNulty, aged 10 THE CAGED GRAVES Dianne K. Salerni, Clarion, 2013, $16.99, hb, 336pp, 9780547868530 Set in Catawissa, Pennsylvania in the summer of 1867, The Caged Graves opens as 17-year-old Verity Boone returns to her birthplace after an absence of fifteen years. A small, rural community, Catawissa is nothing like the city of Worcester, Massachusetts, where relatives raised Verity after the death of her young mother. Verity is a plucky miss and prepared to embrace her new life and marriage to the young man she knows only through letters and shared photographs. What she is not prepared for is finding her mother’s body buried outside the church cemetery and surrounded by an iron cage. Verity is determined to find out what happened to her mother and the young woman who is buried there, too. Along the way, Verity encounters the whiff of witchcraft, a stolen treasure, greed, and a most unusual means of murder, all while forging a new relationship with her father and questioning whether or not her betrothed truly is the man for her. The caged graves at the heart of this story are as compelling as they are eerie, especially since Salerni wrote this book after finding two caged graves in Catawissa; moreover, the mystery behind them remains unsolved. Alana White MY FRIEND THE ENEMY Dan Smith, Chicken House, 2013, £6.99, pb, 303pp, 9781908435811 1941, a village in North-East England. German warplanes frequently drop superfluous incendiary bombs after bombing Newcastle shipyards. Peter, aged twelve, playing in the woods, sees a German Heinkel in flames and glimpses a parachute. One of the Nazi airmen has escaped the crash, and Sergeant Wilkes sends soldiers to find him, making it clear that the man will be killed. Peter and his friend, the tomboy Kim, sneak out that night to look for souvenirs from the wreckage, but instead find an injured German airman. Peter is unsure what to do. He’s been taught that Germans are evil monsters; he knows he should report him, but he doesn’t want the man killed in cold blood. The children decide to hide Erik, who doesn’t look like a monster to them, just a frightened young 60 | Reviews |

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man in pain. Kim splints Erik’s twisted ankle, and Peter sneaks food out of his mother’s larder and gives him some of his father’s old clothes. But how long can they keep him hidden? This book grabbed me from page one. Peter must learn that true courage means behaving in a way that is morally right, even if adults are telling you something different. His agonizing over taking his father’s old clothes for Erik, stealing some of his mother’s scarce rations, and caring for the man he comes to regard as a friend, is very real. Moral choices are never easy, and Dan Smith doesn’t pull his punches as Peter gradually works out what his conscience says is the right thing to do, and holds to it. Dan Smith obviously knows his history; the way belts had to be tightened during the war comes across naturally (Peter is often hungry) but Smith never resorts to info dumps; everything is woven in seamlessly. Highly recommended for children of 11 plus. Elizabeth Hawksley RECORD BREAKER Robin Stevenson, Orca, 2013, $9.95/C$9.95, pb, 142pp, 9781554699599 It’s 1963, and because he’s afraid the Russians will drop an atomic bomb on Ottawa, or the steel factories in nearby Hamilton, Jack’s dad is building a fallout shelter in their backyard. Or, he was, before Jack’s baby sister died of SIDS. Now the backyard is a mess, and Jack’s mom can’t even get out of bed most days, although his sister died almost a year ago. Twelve-year-old Jack thinks he can cheer up his family by setting a world record, like those listed in his Guinness Book of World Records, but his continued attempts just get him into trouble. When he makes a new friend, a girl named Kate whose mother suffered her own depression after being blacklisted for something she wrote, Jack gets some new ideas about what his family needs. Record Breaker is an honest look at how a child might view a parent’s depression, deftly showing Jack’s sense of guilt, abandonment, anger and confusion. The historical setting is subtle, dropping hints about the politics and events of the early 1960s without over-explaining them, which could lead to interesting classroom or family discussions. Middle-grade readers should find Jack a sympathetic, realistic, and sometimes humorous character. Elizabeth Caulfield Felt DEATH OF A KING Andrew H. Vanderwal, Tundra, 2013, $19.95/ C$21.99, hb, 279pp, 9781770493988 Young Alex Macpherson time-travels to medieval Scotland in a quest to discover why his parents have disappeared into the 13th century – and if they are still alive. King Alexander has died under mysterious circumstances, and William Wallace is battling for Scotland’s freedom. The country is in chaos. Alex and his friends, both medieval and modern, face daunting obstacles in a story filled with action, adventure, danger, and mystery. Alex plays a heroic, pivotal role in the Battle of Stirling Bridge, and readers will cheer for his courage and stamina in struggling against overwhelming odds that would probably defeat a lesser boy. There are a few jarring anachronisms, but the real problem with Death of a King is that it does

not stand alone. It follows Vanderwal’s The Battle for Duncragglin, and it may be a good idea to read the two books in order. Death of a King indicates that Alex travels through time, but it does not show how he does it until very late in the book. Alex’s parents appear briefly in the prologue, but it is hard for the reader to care much about them, as they are not seen again until very late in the story, in an oddly unemotional reunion with Alex. Younger readers will probably enjoy this story for the historical derring-do and the spine-tingling time-travel method, especially if they have already read the first book. Elizabeth Knowles

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JANE AUSTEN’S ENGLAND (US) / EAVESDROPPING ON JANE AUSTEN’S ENGLAND (UK) Roy & Lesley Adkins, Viking, 2013, $27.95, hb, 422pp, 9780670785841 / Little, Brown, 2013, £20.00, hb, 448pp, 9781408703960 With the exception of the character of Fanny Price from Mansfield Park, Jane Austen’s novels portray the gently bred class rather than the greater part of the population: the poor. This study, however, focuses on both sets, with particular emphasis on everyday life. Using entries from contemporary diarists, personal letters (including those from Jane Austen to her sister), and newspaper articles and ads, the authors uncover facts about events of the day, living conditions, and the very thought process of contemporaries with a realistic view of life around them. This era, leading up to the Industrial Revolution, still seemed practically medieval for the majority, with most barely scraping a living and taking on dangerous work to survive. Even after laid to rest, the corpses of the poor were prime targets for theft, sold to medical schools – a grisly, though lucrative underground trade. Though this is most definitely not the idealistic Regency era that Austen fans adore, for serious readers, this is an indispensable guide to every aspect of society, from the lowers classes to nobility. This volume includes maps, illustrations, portraits and timelines. Arleigh Johnson GEORGE WASHINGTON: Gentleman Warrior Stephen Brumwell, Quercus, 2013, $30.00, hb, 512pp, 9781623651008 George Washington is the subject of seemingly countless biographies, and his conduct and exploits are detailed in every survey of the American War for Independence and the early American republic. But what Brumwell has done with this work is focus not merely on Washington’s various roles— militia colonel, general, president, et al—but on his life as a gentleman warrior. To set up this narrative, Brumwell details what it meant to be a gentleman in 18th-century America, and how this way of life, including its attitudes and expectations, helped transform Washington into one of the greatest contributors to western democracy. We see how Virginia planter society, British connections, and Washington’s family legacy influenced his childhood. We spend more time with him during the French and Indian War than in most Children & YA — Nonfiction

biographies, and from there we launch into the War for Independence itself. Though many of the details, including the blow-by-blows in the war, are well known, Brumwell returns time and again to Washington as a gentleman warrior, thereby giving the reader a new perspective on the great man. Little time is spent on the presidency or on his life in retirement, seeing as his role as a warrior, save for a few brief interludes, had been retired. This book has won the George Washington Book Prize for 2013, and is likewise recommended by this reviewer. Justin M. Lindsay TUDOR: The Family Story Leanda de Lisle, Chatto & Windus, 2013, £20, 539pp, 9780701185886 / PublicAffairs, 2013, $29.99, hb, 560pp, 9781610393638 What a story this is. The perfect book for the legions of readers obsessed by the bloody Tudor dynasty, it ‘recalibrates our perspective’ in de Lisle’s own words and, in crisp prose, warns against interpreting the past from the point of view of the present. Starting with the moment when a chamber servant, Owen Tudor, literally falls into the lap of the young widow of Agincourt hero, Henry V, it becomes a roller-coaster ride through five generations of royal family squabbles of the most vicious, devious, ambitious and bloody sort. De Lisle is a brilliant story-teller, and this is no dry account, but unlike much of the fantasy history written these days she squares her observations with known facts, and where the record is missing she offers credible and fair-minded suppositions about what might have happened. To this end questions that have teased historians and general public alike are put in context. Mysteries such as the disappearance of the little princes in the Tower, for instance, though she admits to a lack of documentary evidence, she shows to have been in the interests of both Richard III and his successor Henry VII in order to justify their own ‘right’ to the Throne and, for Henry, the first Tudor king, to gain a firmer grasp on the Crown. Well supplied with family trees, maps, footnotes and bibliography as well as a succinct epilogue, this book must surely become the first port of call for anyone wishing to understand the who, what and why of this blood-soaked dynasty. Cassandra Clark 1913: The World Before the Great War Charles Emmerson, The Bodley Head, 2013, £25, hb, 52pp, 9781847922267 In his introduction, Emmerson explains that he wants ‘to look at the world in 1913 through contemporary eyes, in its full colour and complexity, with a sense of the future’s openness.’ He analyses a number of Western capital cities; various British Dominion capitals; Algiers, a French colonial capital; Tehran, ancient capital of the Persian empire, a city with almost no government and little modern infrastructure; Jerusalem, the holy city of three faiths, which has its own unique problems; Constantinople, capital of the crumbling Ottoman empire; China, newly awakening; and Tokyo, capital of an emerging empire. Emmerson depicts a world both connected as never before by electric telegraph, railways and new democratic ideas, and divided by ancient autocratic governments, unwilling or unable to adapt to the modern world, where the proletariat, women and Nonfiction

various ethnic groups are agitating for their rights. 1913 is an intellectual tour de force, and Emmerson quotes perceptively – often from ordinary people rather than the movers and shakers – to prove his points. His range is international and he offers a global perspective rather than concentrating on a Western viewpoint. He argues that the world’s escalation into war in 1914 was by no means a foregone conclusion. Highly recommended. Elizabeth Hawksley THE ASTRONAUT WIVES CLUB Lily Koppel, Grand Central, 2013, hb, 288pp, $28/ C$31, 9781455503254 / Headline, 2013, £16.99, hb, 320pp, 9780755362592 There are plenty of books about the remarkable men of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs, but this is the first dedicated to the equally remarkable women who stood behind them: the wives who held down the home front and kept up appearances, conforming to unbending expectations without any of the training and support given to their men. Lily Koppel spoke with surviving wives and their families, allowing them to tell their stories in their own voices, then used those stories to construct this dishy, irreverent, bittersweet, poignant memoir. For those new to space history, a handy list is provided to keep track of who’s who; for space buffs, old stories are given new life with fascinating details never revealed before. Readers looking for a scholarly text may find the casual style lacking, but readers who want to experience what these women’s lives were actually like – the pressure and perfection, infidelity and resilience, Jell-O recipes and perfect hair – will be absorbed by this heartfelt and inspiring book. For those readers, The Astronaut Wives Club is highly recommended. Heather Domin UNCLE BILL Russell Miller, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2013, £25.00, hb, 466pp, 9780297865841 In 2011 the National Army Museum in London held an online poll to nominate Britain’s greatest general. The result was a tie between the Duke of Wellington and Field-Marshal Sir William Slim. I voted for Slim myself. He is remembered for his command of the Fourteenth Army in the Burma campaign of 1942-5, where by his extraordinary powers of leadership he transformed a defeated and dispirited force into one that inflicted the greatest defeat that the Japanese army has ever suffered. Slim had dreamt since boyhood of becoming an army officer, but his family background prevented that, until the First World War gave him his chance. Over the next decades he would fight in theatres from France to the Northwest Frontier of India, collecting wounds and decorations. Although this book refers to him throughout as “Bill”, rather over-familiar for my liking, and it could have been better edited (note to W&N’s editors: there is a difference between “naught” and “nought”, and between “prophesy” and “prophecy”), I recommend it. I still rate him above Wellington, and Uncle Bill will, I hope, show you why. Alan Fisk

9780230343139 This scholarly collection of essays investigates historical fiction written from the 18th century to that produced in contemporary times. The book includes work from a number of important scholarly critics and tackles a variety of texts within it, together with a range of new, contemporary debates and approaches taken to an analysis of historical fiction. Most importantly, a focus is placed on the relevance of the readers and their capabilities in negotiating the links among the past, the present and future history. The authors which are dealt with in this book are an interesting choice: there are writers who are often considered in relation to historical fiction, such as Daniel Defoe, Lord Byron, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Charles Dickens from a historical perspective, and John Fowles and A.S. Byatt from a more recent one. However, it also considers authors who are not always discussed in relation to historical fiction, such as William Morris and Ann Radcliffe, or Sophie Gee. This in itself brings a fresh insight into authors whose works can provide a new and interesting perspective to the study of historical fiction. This is a book which is of use to those who have a vested interest in scholarly knowledge of the debates surrounding historical fiction, but the knowledge of how these works are viewed in the current climate could be of equal use to authors of historical novels. It may also be a general reader’s interesting, if not such an easily accessible (or affordable), way of discovering what is happening in the world of historical fiction. Claire Cowling OUT OF THE RAT TRAP Max Reisch (trans. Alison Falls), The History Press/Trafalgar Square, 2013, £9.99/$17.95, pb, 176pp, 9780752490076 In Out of the Rat Trap, Austrian author Max Reisch details his experiences in the German army during World War II. Reisch had been a travel writer before the war, and he found himself a German officer, assigned to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s command in the North African theater. Never a believer in the Nazi cause, Reisch plotted from the beginning to desert from the army, and that provides the central core to the book. Assuming the translation is true to the original, Reisch, who died in 1985, portrays himself as a sort of real life antihero, vis à vis the fictional Harry Flashman, creation of the late George Macdonald Fraser, and if that was his aim, he doesn’t quite achieve it. He recruits a pair of co-conspirators, and they try, by hook or crook, to create an opportunity to leave the army behind. But the humor is black at best, and while from an Allied perspective his motive is laudable, he seems to be a bit lighthearted about what must have been a serious and dangerous decision. But the book offers a perspective on the war that’s not seen all that often, and for that reason alone merits a read, particularly if you are a World War II buff. Tony Hays

READING HISTORICAL FICTION: The Revenant and Remembered Past Kate Mitchell and Nicola Parsons, eds., Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, £50.00, hb, 243pp, HNR Issue 66, November 2013 | Reviews | 61