Historical Novels Review, Issue 73 (August 2015)

A PUBLICATION OF THE HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY

HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW Issue 73, August 2015

Swashbucklers are Dead... or are they?

on seeing (& not seeing) medieval london place in the historical novel flame tree road shona patel’s latest book the hanoverians long-suffering georgian women tony hays profile of a historical writer fresh air, frolics & murder seasonally-inspired settings biblical story & egyptian history two aspects of the ancient world

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE publisher’s message | historical fiction market news | history & film | new voices

Historical Novels R eview

ISSN: 1471-7492 | © 2015 The Historical Novel Society

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pub lis h er

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

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edit o r ial boa r d

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

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

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

Edward James <busywords_ed@yahoo.com>

Publisher Coverage: Arcadia; Atlantic Books; Canongate; Hodder Headline (inc. Coronet, Hodder & Stoughton, NEL, Sceptre); John Murray; and Robert Hale | Alma and The History Press (interim)

Doug Kemp <doug.kemp@lineone.net>

Publisher Coverage: Allison & Busby; Little, Brown & Co (inc. Abacus, Virago, Warner); Random House UK (inc. Arrow, Cape, Century, Chatto & Windus, Constable & Robinson, Harvill, Heinemann, Hutchinson, Orion, Pimlico, Secker & Warburg, Vintage); and Transworld (inc. Bantam Press, Black Swan, Corgi, Doubleday) | Quercus (interim)

Tracey Warr <traceykwarr@gmail.com>

Publisher Coverage: Birlinn/Polygon; Bloomsbury; Faber & Faber; Granta; Pan Macmillan; Penguin; Short Books; Simon & Schuster | Accent Press; HarperCollinsUK; and Knox Robinson (interim)

Jessica Brockmole <jabrockmole@hotmail.com>

Ilysa Magnus <goodlaw2@optonline.net>

Tamela McCann <jjmmccann@aol.com>

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

re v i e ws e d i tors , i nd i e

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Helen Hollick <author@helenhollick.net>

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

Steve Donoghue <st.donoghue@comcast.net>

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

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Publisher Coverage: All UK children’s historicals

review s edit o r s , u sa

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

confe re nce s

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

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Elizabeth Hawksley <mail@elizabethhawksley.com>

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Arleigh Johnson <arleigh.johnson@att.net>

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Publisher Coverage: Bethany House; HarperCollins; Henry Holt; IPG; Penguin Random House (all imprints); Severn House; Trafalgar Square; university presses; and any North American presses not mentioned below

review s edit o r s , u k

Publisher Coverage: Algonguin; Other Press; Overlook; Sourcebooks; Tyndale; and other US small presses

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

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

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Andrea Connell <connell1453@verizon.net>

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

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

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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>

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e d i tori a l pol i cy

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

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

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copy ri g h t

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

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

HNS WEBSITE: www.historicalnovelsociety.org

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Historical Novels R eview I s s u e 7 3 , A u g us t 2015 | I SSN 1471-7492

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ed itor ia l r ich a rd le e

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

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n ew voic e s p r of ile s of debut his torical f iction authors ja so n hew itt, a my ste wart, van es s a laf aye & m ar y la w r enc e | my fa nw y cook

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histor y & film t he p o ld a r k sa ga | bethan y latham

| features & interviews |

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SWAS HBU C K L E RS ARE DEAD...

or are they? | b y cin dy va l l a r

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on se e ing ( an d n ot s eein g ) medieval l o ndo n p lac e in the h istorical n ovel | by bruce ho l si nger

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f lam e tr ee road

s h ona pa te l’s lates t n ovel | by j udith s ta rk sto n

13 the han overi a ns lon g-suffe r ing ge org ian wom en | by laura pu rcel l 14

to ny ha ys p r o file of a h istorical writer | by s arah jo hnso n

15 fr e sh air, f rolics , cocktails & mu rder s ea s ona lly -inspired s ettin g s | by my f anw y co o k 16 re conc iling biblical s tor y & eg yp tian hi sto r y t wo aspe c ts of the an cient world | b y an n sw i nf en | reviews |

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

PUBLISHER’S MESSAGE hings generally need to change if they are not working – but in our case, I think we need change because things are going too well for our existing structure. Simply put, we are growing into a large society. In 2015, we have our highest ever member numbers (1300+), have enjoyed our largest ever conference (Denver, 450 delegates), are running our largest new novel competition (230 entrants) – and our new projects, our first Australasian conference, our budding chapter scheme, and our second Indie Award (2015 winner Revenge and Retribution, by Anna Belfrage) – are going from strength to strength. This is terrific. However, it all depends on a structure that has evolved, rather than been planned, and the weight of many responsibilities falls on too few shoulders.

Over the next months, therefore, I want to work with engaged members on reorganizing the way we run the society. The main agent for this will be the website: we are getting together a redesign, and the focus will be a ‘getting involved’ section. We need energy and enthusiasm to take forward all aspects of our activities. The magazine will continue much as it is, but we would like to issue a general call for qualified individuals to serve as reviews editors for the UK. Chapters and conferences are actively seeking to expand their teams. We also have a new plan: an HNS Academy. The idea of this is to help writers at all stages of their careers. We want to initiate courses and mentor schemes for new authors; to organize writers retreats; to work with established authors to help with promotion and social media. And we want to find the best ways for our members to benefit from the hundreds of thousands of visitors to our website.

Exciting times. I look forward to hearing from any of you who want to play an active part in them.

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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 73, August 2015 | Columns | 1

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

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

HNS Updates A reminder: if you rely only on this print magazine for the latest reviews from the HNS, you’re missing out! Due to space restrictions, many additional reviews of mainstream and small press titles are published on the HNS website as “online exclusives.” They currently number over 1000 in total. Find them all at: https://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/?type=online In addition, over 700 reviews of the best in indiepublished historical fiction can be found here: https:// historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/?type=indie All of these reviews can be searched and browsed by category alongside all other reviews in our database.

We continue to have a position open for a UK-based reviews editor interested in working with publishers and reviewers.

This is a volunteer position, as is the case with others within HNS. Editors receive free membership during their tenure and first picks on incoming review books. Please contact me for more details. Thanks to Doug Kemp, Edward James, and Tracey Warr for working with an increased number of publishers during the interim period.

Special thanks to Fiona Sheppard for her work on proofreading the reviews within our short timeframe.

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

Candace Robb sold a new three-book medieval mystery series to Pegasus Books via Jennifer Weltz at the Jean V. Naggar Agency. Set in 14th-century York, the first book, The Service of the Dead, introduces readers to the axe-wielding young widow Kate Clifford, who runs a high-end guest house.

Set in 12th-century England and Ireland, The Lord of Ireland by author and HNR reviewer E.M. Powell, following up on The Fifth Knight and The Blood of the Fifth Knight, sold (again) to Emilie Marneur at Thomas & Mercer, by Josh Getzler at Hannigan Salky Getzler (world).

NYT bestselling author of The Traitor’s Wife and The Accidental Empress Allison Pataki’s untitled novel, about the beloved Habsburg Empress Elizabeth (Sisi), following her dynamic heroine as she comes into her own as one of history’s most captivating – but often forgotten – leading ladies, sold to Kara Cesare at Random House, at auction, by Lacy Lynch at Dupree Miller & Associates.

Geraldine Brooks’ Horse, about a famous racehorse and a missing masterpiece, moving from match races in the antebellum South to the salons and paint-spattered studios of the 1950s 2 | Columns |

HNR Issue 73, August 2015

New York art world at the dawn of abstract expressionism, set as the Civil War ignites, threatening both a beloved horse and an irreplaceable painting, sold (again) to Paul Slovak at Viking,

by Kris Dahl at ICM. The Fifth Victim by Tessa Harris, first in her new mystery series set in 1888 London and featuring a cockney flower peddler who discovers she is able to communicate with the dead, sold to John Scognamiglio at Kensington, in a three-book deal, by Melissa Jeglinski at The Knight Agency.

Thomas Womack’s The Sound of Seven Thunders, Christian fiction telling an epic story of a noblewoman and her son who are captured by the invading Roman army, made slaves, and put into a role where she can observe the politics of Rome and the clash of the official Roman religious with upstart mystery cults, sold, along with two additional titles, to Kathleen Kerr at Harvest House by Chip MacGregor at MacGregor Literary.

Pitched as inspired by a real-life mysterious interlude when Picasso disappeared in 1936, Camille Aubray’s Cooking for Picasso introduces a young chef whose life is vastly changed by the artist, and her granddaughter, who many years later seeks to discover the truth about their relationship. It sold to Susanna Porter at Ballantine Bantam Dell, in a pre-empt, by Susan Golomb at Writers House.

Crown of Dust author Mary Volmer’s new novel Reliance, Illinois, telling the story of a 13-year-old who arrives in Reliance with her mother soon after the Civil War and becomes the ward of a wealthy and eccentric woman with strongly progressive views about women’s roles, sold to Bronwen Hruska and Mark Doten at Soho Press by BJ Robbins at BJ Robbins Literary Agency.

Neverhome author Laird Hunt’s Dog Day, centering on the seismic and tragic events of a single day in 1930s Indiana, told through the eyes of two women, one white and one black, sold to Josh Kendall at Little, Brown.

Marta Elva’s American Tumbleweeds, the story of a MexicanAmerican family’s struggle to stay together as tradition collides with the social upheaval of 1960s America, set along the border between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, sold to Jean Huets at Circling Rivers, in the publisher’s first acquisition, for publication in 2016 (World).

The Bomb Girls by Daisy Styles, the story of five women who work together in a munitions factory during WWII, sold to Maxine Hitchcock at Michael Joseph, in a two-book deal, for publication in March 2016, via Diane Banks at Diane Banks Associates.

The Other Typist author Suzanne Rindell’s Eagle and Crane, set in the world of a 1930s flying circus in California, and Three Martini Lunch, about three characters who are connected by their ambitions in 1950s New York book publishing, sold to Ivan Held at Putnam, with Jake Morrissey editing, for publication in Summer 2016, by Emily Forland at Brandt & Hochman.

Melissa Lenhardt’s Sawbones, first in a new series featuring a female surgeon from New York who flees out West after being falsely accused of murder, pitched as Outlander set in the postCivil-War era, sold to Susan Barnes at Redhook, in a threebook deal, by Alice Speilburg at Speilburg Literary Agency.

Janet Todd’s A Man of Genius, taking place in London and Venice in 1819 just after the Napoleonic Wars, and centering on the tortuous relationship between a writer of cheap gothic novels and a genius, sold to Katherine Bright-Holmes at Bitter Lemon Press for publication in April 2016.

The Second Winter by Craig Larsen, set in a rural town in occupied Denmark during WWII, tracing the breathless sequence of events set into motion when the father of two children – a disowned aristocrat and member of the resistance – steals a cache of jewels from a Jewish refugee and introduces a young, seductive stranger into the family, sold to Judith Gurewich at Other Press, by Lena Yarbrough and Kim Witherspoon at Inkwell Management.

MJ Trow’s The Circle, the second in the Grand and Bachelor 19th-century transatlantic historical crime series, sold to Kate Lyall-Grant at Severn House, by Andrew Lownie at Andrew Lownie Literary Agency.

Affinity Konar’s Mischling follows twin sisters who are selected by Josef Mengele as subjects for his horrific attempts to unlock the secrets of genetics; following the camp’s liberation, one sister and her fellow survivor travel through Poland’s ruined cities to find the other missing sister and exact revenge on Mengele; it sold to Lee Boudreaux at Lee Boudreaux Books for publication in fall 2016, by Jim Rutman at Sterling Lord Literistic.

Erratum Due to an editorial error, Tom Vallar’s review of Conor Brady’s A June of Ordinary Murders (HNR 72, p.26) listed an incorrect timeframe. It takes place in 1887, as Victoria is celebrating her 50th year as monarch.

New transatlantic editions Hermione Eyre’s Viper Wine ( Jonathan Cape, 2014), an Editor’s Choice title in the Aug. 2014 HNR, was published in the US by Hogarth ($25.00, hb, 432pp). “The story works, brilliantly so. Hermione Eyre imbues the reader in 17th-century life, society and conventions and tells a superb story,” wrote reviewer Douglas Kemp.

The third novel in Robin Blake’s Georgian-era mystery series, an HNR Editor’s Choice selection, is published as The Scrivener in the UK by Constable (see online exclusive reviews, this issue), and as The Hidden Man in the US by Minotaur (see HNR 72).

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

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Daughters Unto Devils by Amy Lukavics, about a 16-yearold in the 1800s who is coping with a secret pregnancy and her family’s move to the prairie, where she must figure out whether she’s being haunted by an evil presence that is tainting the land or simply losing her mind, sold to Rachel Mann at Simon & Schuster UK Children’s, in a two-book deal, by James Wills at Watson Little, on behalf of Joanna Volpe at New Leaf Literary & Media.

Sarah Maine’s House Between Tides (previously published as Bhalla Strand by Freight Books in the UK), about a woman who inherits her ancestral home in the Outer Hebrides and uncovers the century-old secrets and betrayals of its previous owners after a body is discovered in the basement, sold to Jhanteigh Kupihea at Atria, in a two-book deal, by Fiona Brownlee at Brownlee Donald Associates, on behalf of Jenny Brown Associates.

Australian rights sold to Allen & Unwin.

Proof of Unusual Daring by Jillian Cantor, about a littleknown part of WWII resistance, the subversion of stamps to relay covert messages out of Nazi Germany, and the secret love story that a contemporary young woman discovers as she looks into her family’s past, sold to Laura Perciasepe at Riverhead by Jessica Regel at Foundry Literary + Media.

Tessa Arlen’s The Last August Rose, the next book in her pre-WWI mystery series featuring an elegant lady and her redoubtable housekeeper, as they investigate a murder of concealed passions and secret desires to discover a villain of audacious cunning among a group of amateur rose-breeders, sold to Anne Brewer for Minotaur, in a two-book deal, for Winter 2017 publication, by Kevan Lyon at Marsal Lyon Literary Agency.

Jane Kirkpatrick’s She Who Went First, in which a woman takes on the established medical world in 1870 Portland when she chooses to seek not only a medical degree but to become Portland’s first pediatrician, sold to Andrea Doering at Revell in a three-book deal, for publication in Sept. 2017, by Joyce Hart at Hartline Literary Agency.

Mark Zero’s The Whale: A Love Story, set in the witty, highspirited literary society of 1850s New England, centering on how Herman Melville’s emotionally charged relationship with Nathaniel Hawthorne transformed Melville’s masterpiece, Moby Dick, sold to Carole DeSanti at Viking by Stuart Bernstein.

Australia’s Stella Prize winner Emily Bitto’s The Strays, about a young girl in 1930s Australia who befriends daughters of an infamous avant-garde painter, becomes infatuated with their wild, makeshift family, and witnesses how the daughters pay the greatest price for their father’s art as the girls are drawn closer to the white-hot flame of creativity, emotions and art, sold to Deb Futter for Twelve, and Adrienne Kerr at Penguin Canada, both in pre-empts, for publication in Winter 2017, by Daniel Lazar at Writers House, on behalf of Clare Foster at Curtis Brown Australia.

Laurie Lico Albanese’s Saving Adele, the story of two women’s lives set against the backdrop of pre- and post-WWII Vienna; the first woman is the subject of Klimt’s most famous painting, while the other woman is her niece; it sold to Sarah Cantin at Atria by Heather Schroder at Compass Talent Agency.

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

HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Columns | 3

NEW VOICES Debut novelists Jason Hewitt, Vanessa Lafaye, Mary Lawrence and Amy Stewart discuss the research and coincidences that inspired them.

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anessa Lafaye, author of Summertime (Orion, 2015; also Sourcebooks, 2015, as Under a Dark Summer Sky) believes that “life is sometimes more dramatic than fiction.” The inspiration for her novel came at “a low moment in my life,” she relates.

“I had not written anything for quite a while, for two reasons: I was discouraged by lack of success with other books, and debilitated by cancer treatment. All this changed on a visit to my family in Florida in 2010 when I opened the morning paper to find a long feature article about an horrific lynching in Greenwood in 1935. The accompanying photo captured my imagination: a black man stands looking up at a body hanging from a tree, his face blank of all emotion. Only the legs of the corpse are visible. I started to wonder who the observer was, why he was there. When I returned to the UK and started my research, it led by accident to the story of the Labor Day hurricane and the veterans on Islamorada. Although I grew up in Florida, I was ignorant of the events. Once I learned about them, I felt compelled to dramatise them.”

As Lafaye’s research progressed, she says, “I was drawn into one of the most scandalous episodes of the period – not just of Florida, but of the US as a whole.

And I found myself thinking, ‘How is it possible that I didn’t know about this?’ I talked to other Floridians and found the same degree of ignorance. The story was so dramatic, yet I could find no works on fiction about it. I began to picture what life was like in a small town where the colour of your skin was everything, where the government was prepared to risk the most vulnerable people in the face of the most intense storm in history. I started to imagine what it must have been like to experience that storm with only the most basic protection.”

Lafaye sums up: “A series of coincidences and random chances led to me writing the book, and discovering one of the darkest episodes in Florida’s past – and mine.” In a similar manner, Amy Stewart stumbled across her inspiration for Girl Waits with Gun (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015) when she was least expecting it. As she explains, she was “researching a gin smuggler named Henry Kaufman” for her most recent non-fiction book, The Drunken Botanist. “I turned up an article in the New York 4 | Columns |

HNR Issue 73, August 2015

Times from 1915 about a man of the same name who ran his car into a horse-drawn carriage driven by three sisters, Constance, Norma, and Fleurette Kopp. I never did figure out if this was my gin smuggler, but I couldn’t stop digging into the story of the Kopps.

“I quickly realized that the three of them led incredible lives.

I was amazed that nothing had been written about them. I reconstructed their life stories from scratch. A lot of people write historical fiction about well-known figures from another era, but it’s a very different challenge to pluck someone from obscurity and put the facts together for the first time.

“Since then, I’ve collected hundreds of newspaper articles from digitized papers available online, and from good old microfilm in library basements. I went around to courthouses to pull birth certificates, property deeds, and criminal records. And I’ve been to Paterson and Hackensack [in New Jersey] to visit the places where the major events took place.

I toured the jail where Sheriff Heath lived and worked. I found site where the Kopp house in Wyckoff once stood, and the cemetery where they are buried, as well as the locations of significant events, such as the intersection where the girl waited with the gun. I even tracked down family members who had stories about them.

“One night, early in the research,” Stewart says, “I started to wonder what Constance’s mother thought about what happened to them. Later that night, I found a newspaper profile in which Constance answered that exact question.

Being able to ask my character a question and get a 100-year-old answer in her own words is bizarre and delightful.” Stewart went on to discover that “even after six non-fiction books,” this was the most emotional and rewarding piece of research that she had ever carried out.

“Wandering through the stacks of libraries” is one of the favorite pastimes of Mary Lawrence, author of The Alchemist’s Daughter (Kensington, 2015). “About 20 years ago I came across a book about alchemy,” which intrigued her, she writes, and she “started imagining how their science was influenced by their spiritual beliefs and their limited background in empirical method.” Lawrence is also “an avid reader of Tudor and Elizabethan history and fiction,” and “drawn to the rich language of the period, the clever humor and observations of writers back then,” she says. “Many novels set in the 1500s concentrate on court intrigue. I wanted to know what the citizens living under Henry VIII thought of their ill-tempered king and how they navigated his strange and brutal policies. In many ways their existence echoes our own: the common man trying to survive under a government controlled by the elite few.”

Lawrence’s “other interest is in medicine and plants,” she states.

“Suddenly my protagonist appeared. A girl who lived in Tudor London, whose father was an alchemist and whose mother was the white witch of the neighborhood. Bianca is the amalgamation of her parents’ influence.” Her novel, she says, “went through twenty years of reimagining and rewriting. Originally it was a coming-of-age story. It landed me an agent and some interest, but it never sold. Bianca languished in a purgatory of endless rejections.” She lost faith in her original project, but “the concept of Bianca and her world was solid” and so she transformed her work into a mystery, and “after twenty years of rehashing, Bianca became a sleuth and the manuscript sold to the second editor who read it.”

Jason Hewitt’s inspiration, like Mary Lawrence’s, was unearthed as a result of visiting a library. As he explains: “There’s a quote by Stephen Fry outside the British Library in London.

‘An original idea,’ he says. ‘That can’t be too hard. The library must be full of them.’ And the idea for The Dynamite Room (Simon & Schuster UK, 2014; Little Brown US, 2015) was indeed found in a library.

“When I first started thinking about the story, all I knew was that I wanted to write a World War Two novel with a difference, and one where I could pitch the opposing sides against each other in an unusual way. Then, in a library, this time in Wimbledon, I stumbled across a book about the events surrounding the mystery of the German invasion of Britain and whether any German troops ever did land on the east coast. In truth it is unlikely, but German bodies were occasionally washed up onto

the shore, usually from shot-down planes or torpedoed boats.

Of course, the fear amongst the locals was that one day someone would be washed up who was not actually dead. On a beach in Suffolk called Shingle Street, German chocolate wrappers were in fact found that were suspiciously dry and not in any way tampered by the sea, causing a local panic. On reading about this everything clicked into place and I realized, with a sudden burst of excitement, that I finally had both my setting and my story.

The house, Greyfriars, where my German soldier takes shelter, came from my love of gothic horror. It is a house that is haunted but not in a traditional sense. I then needed to put someone else in it with him – the most unlikely person for my German to be ‘trapped’ with. From that Lydia, my eleven-year-old runaway evacuee, was born.

“Similarly with the other story lines I tried to unearth elements of the war that I knew very little of. My view was that if they were new and interesting to me, they might be new and interesting to other readers as well. The sub-plot set in Norway around the battle for Narvik is just one example, and was something I unexpectedly stumbled across when researching a previous story.

“The Dynamite Room, then, is a war novel but with many of the typical war elements taken out – all the bombs and blasts – and reduces the global conflict to a single domestic setting and two very different individuals thrust together by circumstance.

It is not a novel about war itself, but what war does to people, regardless of which side you are on.”

Coincidentally, each of the debut novelists featured has, by unleashing the untold stories stacked on library shelves and through their own research, been able to capture the human condition in different historical periods and to inform, shock and engage their readers.

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MYFANWY COOK admires the creativity of debut novelists and their different approaches to transforming historical fact into historical fiction. Email (myfanwyc@ btinternet.com) or tweet (twitter.com/MyfanwyCook) about debut novelists you have enjoyed reading..

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Jason Hewitt, Vanessa Lafaye, Amy Stewart & Mary Lawrence

HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Columns | 5

aHISTORY & FILMe THE P OLDARK SAGA

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inston Graham was the definition of a prolific author; beginning in 1934, he published at least one book a year until he died in 2003. Despite this massive oeuvre, Graham is probably most famous for a single series of a dozen novels: his Poldark saga. The first novel, Ross Poldark, was published in 1945, and three other books would quickly follow. Graham then took a hiatus from the saga for twenty years before starting up again, with the last novel, Bella Poldark, appearing in 2002, shortly before his death. Set during the Georgian period (the saga begins circa 1783), the first novels revolve around the titular character, Ross Poldark, just returned home to Cornwall after fighting in the American war (aka the Revolution).

Much has changed during Ross’s absence.

His love, Elizabeth, has demonstrated her faithfulness by becoming engaged to his cousin, Francis. In other good news, Ross’s father has also died, leaving nothing but a crumbling estate, dilapidated mines, debt, and a couple of feckless house servants. Welsh mining success and the cut-throat banking practices of the upstart, nouveau riche Warleggan family have taken their toll on the local Cornish economy. Many of the aristocracy and gentry are in straitened circumstances, and the poverty-stricken tenants who rely on them for their livelihoods are on the verge of starvation. Things seem bleak, but the war has been a crucible for Ross’s iron-clad character, he looks upon the care of his tenants as one of his primary responsibilities, and he is anything but idle. Still deeply in love with Elizabeth, who now, despite her “true love’s” return, marries his wealthier cousin anyway, Ross throws himself into his work, garnering investors and reopening his mine to search for copper. Demelza, a dirtpoor but spirited young woman Ross rescues and employs as a kitchen maid, may be able to help him get his house, amongst other things, in order.

In 1975, the BBC launched what would become a phenomenally popular adaptation of the Poldark saga starring 6 | Columns |

HNR Issue 73, August 2015

Robin Ellis, which would encompass two series and run until 1977, drawing an estimated fifteen million viewers. Not having seen this adaptation in its entirety (admittedly, its 1500 minute run-time is a factor; I’m not good with arithmetic, but I believe that’s somewhere more than half a work-week), I cannot comment on it. It does bear noting that, despite its popularity, the liberties taken with the original source material have been decried in more than one circle, and Graham himself initially loathed it. He was particularly put out — “livid” is the word his daughter used — with the portrayal of Demelza, a character based upon his own wife, who had been converted from the vivacious tomboy of Graham’s books into a sexually loose floozy in the television adaptation. Graham wished to stop the series from airing, worried that his novels would be devolved into bad romance, but as he had no editorial control, this was not possible.

He was allowed input, however, when the saga went into the second series, and eventually “came to embrace the show.”1 Forty years later, the BBC is having another go at the Poldark saga.

This adaptation I have seen (well, the first three episodes so far), so have been granted license (by myself ) to hold forth about it. The production value is good, as one has come to expect from Masterpiece Theatre costume dramas. The dirt and hardscrabble are not particularly glossed: the teeth of Poldark’s manservant, Jud, make one want to vault headlong into the dentist’s chair for a good scraping, and Demelza’s clothes were enough to provoke a sonnet penned in praise of my high efficiency washing machine. The gap between the haves and have-nots is adeptly portrayed, and the class struggle in Georgian Cornwall feels like a character in and of itself. Ross Poldark bridges these two worlds — we see him dancing gavottes with his fellow gentry and working side-by-side in the mines with his tenants.

Aidan Turner and his amazing abs star as Ross, and he seems to strike the right balance between brooding/quick-tempered and kind/infallible moral compass. He appears to have an easier time doing right by those not of his station than observing the niceties requisite for acceptance by his society peers. His noblesse oblige is boundless, and while he’s certainly not without his faults and flaws, there’s no doubt that here is hero material — his charity towards those less fortunate, sometimes at great cost to himself, is a defining feature. His lost lady-love, Elizabeth (Heida Reed)

Moving on from eye candy and voyeurism, one thing that struck me as perhaps a bit incongruous about this adaptation is that it seems almost to have a split personality. On the one hand, there’s plenty of romantic melodrama, Ross smoldering, themes of love and loss and longing and monstrous jealousy. It has much that will appeal to fans of the bodice-ripper. On the other hand, the series seems to take a minute interest in business dealings and economics, the ins and outs of mines and wages and speculation, the Poldark and Warleggan empire-building.

It’s not that the two can’t go hand in hand, it’s simply that this adaptation doesn’t seem to be able to meld them with fluidity — at least, not so far. This may be where the television adaptation struggles the most with Graham’s original material.

The series has already aired in Britain, garnering an estimated eight million viewers for its season finale episode alone. Thus, it will come as no surprise that it’s been picked up for a second series. I’ll certainly be finishing out the first, as soon as ever PBS will stream them to me. I understand in future episodes, more scything goes on.

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References: 1. Johnson, Angela. (7 March 2015) “Why Poldark Writer Hated ‘Slutty’ Demelza’.” The Daily Mail. Available from: http://www. dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2984357/Why-Poldark-writerhated-BBC-s-slutty-Demelza-Creator-furious-promiscuousportrayal-servant-based-wife.html 2. Lawson, Mark. (6 March 2015) “Poldark, A 40-Year-Old Series Set in 18th-Century Cornwall, Was Ripe for a Remake.”

The Guardian. Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/ tv-and-radio/2015/mar/06/poldark-a-40-year-old-series-setin-18th-century-cornwall-was-ripe-for-a-remake 3. Hale, Mike. (19 June 2015) “Review: ‘Poldark’ on PBS’s ‘Masterpiece’.” The New York Times. Available from: http://www. nytimes.com/2015/06/20/arts/television/review-poldark-onpbss-masterpiece.html?_r=0 4. O’Keefe, Meghan. (6 July 2015) “‘Poldark’ Recap: Poldark Took His Shirt Off.” The Decider. Available from: http:// decider.com/2015/07/06/poldark-s1-ep3-recap/ 5. Jones, Alice. (3 April 2015) “Poldark May Be Hunky, But He Shouldn’t Be Objectified.” The Independent. Available from: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/it-doesntmatter-if-a-mans-hunky-like-poldark--no-one-should-beobjectified-10154739.html

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seems a less auspicious casting choice. The Elizabeth of the books is fair-haired and perfectly beautiful, a porcelain doll representation in three dimensions of aristocratic womanhood.

The brunette Reed does have beautiful skin, but she doesn’t manage much more than distressed looks in Ross’s direction and hushed conversations, with the occasional haughty mean-girl sucker-punch, leaving the viewer wondering, more than once, what Ross sees in her. Francis Poldark (Kyle Soller) is suitably weak in character, while Jack Farthing as George Warleggan is just as suitably viperous. Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson), as was her predecessor in the 1970s adaptation (Angharad Rees), has been converted into a redhead, since what more is needed to convey a feisty, impulsive nature? Luckily, Tomlinson has more than her red locks to recommend her, and she manages with aplomb Demelza’s transformation from filthy urchin replete with “crawlers” (lice and fleas) to vibrant love interest.

Jud (Philip Davis) and his wife, Prudie (Beatie Edney), round things out by providing short bursts of comic relief which, it must be admitted, really aren’t that funny. (Constant loutishness and drunken domestic violence — what a knee-slapper!) It might also bear mentioning that there isn’t much fodder here for those of a feminist stripe. The female characters are believable products of their time: the course of their lives depends entirely upon the men who take them under their care (or abuse them, as the case may be). The resulting characterization arcs for the Poldark women are unsurprising.

Cornwall as setting has been portrayed as a brooding place with dark ambiance (think the novels of Daphne du Maurier and their film adaptations), but the Poldark series doesn’t fit this mold. While the Cornish coastal cliffs can look intimidating, there are plenty of sunlit scenes and fields of wildflowers. A Guardian article noted that “with corsets, horses and green fields sweeping to the edge of sun-speckled sea, Poldark offers much of what mainstream viewers now seem to want.”2 There is, in short, more than enough going on visually to hold the viewer’s attention. Especially, it must be noted, if that viewer is (like your humble author) a woman. As a New York Times reviewer put it, “the main thrust of the story, even more than in the original series, is simply the presentation of Ross Poldark as the noblest, hottest, most down-to-earth hero who ever rallied the troops or scythed a field shirtless and in slow motion.”3 I can attest to at least the last statement; I was running on the treadmill when first I viewed this scene (described by one female reviewer as “the most brilliant scene ever written, produced, or directed for television”4) and I almost shot off the back and left my imprint in the wall behind me. There is an obvious, conscious choice to put a little something for the ladies in this series (other scenes include Turner naked sea-bathing). I was only slightly deterred when I finally placed where I had seen Turner before — as a ridiculously lovelorn dwarf in The Hobbit. Drooling aside, these cinematographic choices are notable for the fact that they’re blatant enough to spawn opinion pieces on the evils of objectifying male actors…for once.5

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

HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Columns | 7

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or are they?

indy Vallar explores the world of swashbuckling adventure C with Lawrence Ellsworth and Nico Lorenzutti.

What do Captain Blood, Zorro, the Musketeers, and Robin Hood have in common? They are swashbucklers – courageous characters fighting for noble causes and wielding swords and wits with equal aplomb. A fan since childhood and an authority on swashbuckling adventure fiction, Lawrence Ellsworth recently compiled The Big Book of Swashbuckling Adventure anthology (Pegasus, 2014).1 Ellsworth says these “classic tales of dashing heroes, dastardly villains, and daring escapes,” include: a hero who’s a bit of a rogue but has his own code of honor, an adventurer with laughter on his lips and a flashing sword in his hand.’ The sword may be optional, but the code of honor is not: this is a genre about oaths and betrayal, about heroes who choose to do the right thing even when it’s hard or seemingly suicidal.

That said, a swashbuckler is usually a canny lad or lass who’s unlikely to follow the most orthodox or straightforward route to a goal. These are the heroes who show a decided preference for escaping with a whole skin.

Nico Lorenzutti, who translates Emilio Salgari’s stories so English readers can enjoy this Italian author’s many tales, concurs. “The plot is filled with thrills and excitement, twists and turns, battles and escapes. There may be a damsel to rescue (though I find it much more interesting if the damsel is highly resourceful and can fend for herself ), and there must be swordplay, tons and tons of swordplay.”

While these descriptions solidify the modern meaning of “swashbuckler,” Graeme Donald, author of Sticklers, Sideburns & Bikinis, explains the word’s origins: “a buckler was a small round shield used both defensively and aggressively in the kind of 14thcentury sword fighting in which enthusiasm outweighed finesse.

‘Swash’ described a scything sword-swipe, and a ‘swashbuckle’ called for the kind of rhythmical slash-bang of sword and shield in which the most energetic fighter was the victor.”2 By the middle of the 16th century, it defined a swaggering bully or thug, which was eventually applied to books and other

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Swashbucklers Are Dead... media containing characters who portrayed the characteristics previously described.

Sarah Johnson, in her introduction to swashbuckling adventure, says this subgenre of historical novel is declining,3 but Ellsworth’s view is that “the swashbuckler is too appealing to ever really die. Who wouldn’t want to face deadly danger with confidence and élan? Who can deny the thrill of clashing blades, hairbreadth escapes, and daring rescues, of facing vile treachery with dauntless courage and passionate devotion? Escapism? Sure! But a good swashbuckler can be as morally complex as any literary fiction. Look no further than the works of the late Dorothy Dunnett.” This doesn’t mean, however, that the swashbucklers of yore are the same as those today. Ellsworth says: Swashbuckling adventure stories have gone through the same evolutions as other familiar types of genre fiction: in recent years we’ve seen the rise of the anti-hero, greater moral ambiguity, the empowerment of heroines, more attention to the gritty details of history, and a greater diversity in characters and settings. By far the biggest change in the last half-century has been the gradual replacement of historical settings with imaginary worlds. The entire genre has flipped: swashbuckling fantasies are now the norm, and straight historical adventures are almost the exception.

Nowadays it’s easier to find a cape-and-sword novel set in an Elizabethan alternate-history fantasy world than during the historical invasion of the Spanish Armada.

Whether the setting is fantasy or history, the hero male or female, the protagonist still tends to be no shrinking violet, but a roguish outsider with a swaggering air and a ready wit.

This evolution doesn’t mean that research and history – vital to historical fiction – are any less important in the swashbuckling subgenre. “Eighty to a hundred-fifty years ago, when historical adventures were arguably the leading form of genre entertainment, the best swashbucklers were thoroughly grounded in historical events – and even quickie pulp throwaways paid lip service to the high points of history,” Ellsworth explains.

“However, even during the period of the swashbuckler’s greatest

by Cindy Vallar

The sword...may be optional, but the code of honor is not: this is a genre about oaths and betrayal, about heroes who choose to do the right thing even when it’s hard or seemingly suicidal.

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HNR Issue 73, August 2015

traveling westerners. These were stories with tough-minded characters, fast-moving plots, and exotic settings thoroughly grounded in their time, place, and culture. Most of these tales were recently reprinted in a fine series of collections edited

by Howard Andrew Jones; if you like historical adventure, I strongly urge you to give one a try. Wolf of the Steppes is a good one to start with.” But Ellsworth confessed that “next week I might choose Dumas, Rafael Sabatini, Dorothy Dunnett, or Patrick O’Brian.”

Not all good swashbuckling characters obey the law. Some are actually outlaws. Ellsworth believes “they’re rugged individualists who choose, for one reason or another, to defy the law – and as outcasts from civilized society, they have to live by their own codes, and stick to them. How they do that usually marks them as men and women of greater integrity than the societies they’ve left behind.”

Whether they adhere to the legal or illegal side of the law, are they idealistic? These heroes need “to be true, or at least attempt to be true, to his or her own ideals,” Ellsworth says. “A failure to live up to these ideals, or a fear of such failure, is the driving motive behind many a swashbuckling hero.” As Lorenzutti explains, “It’s fun to cheer for the underdog, and cheer against authority when that authority is corrupt.”

For readers who enjoy swashbuckling adventure or who would like to dip their toes into this thrilling genre, The Big Book of Swashbuckling Adventure is a great starting place.5 Or if you seek a tale that’s a bit more exotic, Lorenzutti recommends Salgari’s Sandokan tales: The Tigers of Mompracem, The Pirates of Malaysia, and The King of the Sea. “They’re set in Borneo in the mid-19th century. To my knowledge there are no other adventure novels where the heroes are a band of Malay pirates fighting against the British Empire . . . Salgari has often been praised for casting non-Europeans as his heroes; his descriptions may not always be politically correct, but they were quite enlightened for his time.”6

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Notes: 1. To learn more about Lawrence Ellsworth and his book, visit http:// swashbucklingadventure.net/.

2. Donald, Graeme. (2008) Sticklers, Sideburns & Bikinis: The Military Origins of Everyday Words and Phrases, Osprey, 244-5.

3. Johnson, Sarah L. (2005) Historical Fiction: A Guide to the Genre.

Libraries Unlimited, 400.

4. Available at http://www.cindyvallar.com/captainbloodhistory.html.

5. For my review of Lawrence Ellsworth’s book, see http://www. cindyvallar.com/Swashbucklers.html. For reviews of recently published swashbuckling adventure, try http://historicalnovelsociety.org/?post_ty pe=review&s=swashbuckling&submit=Search.

6. For my reviews of the Sandokan titles, see http://www.cindyvallar. com/sandokan.html. Readers can also learn more about Emilio Salgari and download sample chapters of the Sandokan titles at http://www. rohpress.com.

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popularity, when the average readership probably had a firmer grasp of the elements of history than many do today, the best historical adventure authors made it their business to take the readers back to their chosen era and immerse them in the culture and mores of the time. Read any novel by Dumas, Sabatini, or Stanley Weyman, and I guarantee you’ll come away knowing more about the story’s period and setting than you did before.

“This is still true today,” he continues, “whether the setting is history, alternate history, or straight-up fantasy: the author must carry the reader off to a world that, however new, is solid and credible. If the reader doesn’t buy into your setting, she’s not going to care about your plot or characters.”

A reader with knowledge of the history will find the swashbuckler even more rewarding. That proved the case for me when I reread Rafael Sabatini’s Captain Blood in preparation for writing “Captain Blood: The History behind the Novel” for Pirates and Privateers.4 I first read this story in college, but many years later, after more than a decade of studying the Jacobite Rebellions and maritime piracy, I was astounded at how much I had missed or didn’t understand the first time around.

Ellsworth adds, “It enables the pleasurable experience of making connections between new facts and what one already knows.

It’s an aspect of historical fiction that I love, but which is rarely discussed, which I find strange.”

Although the heyday of the swashbuckler lasted from 1865 through 1935, they actually have been around since long before the American Civil War. “In Western literature,” Ellsworth says, “I’d go with the Robin Hood legends, or even the Arthurian cycle – those knights were always getting their iron panties in a twist over matters of honor and romance. In Asia the genre goes back even further, to the second-century heroes of the Chinese ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms.’ The national epics of Korea and Japan follow suit, culminating in the quintessential samurai tale of the Forty-Seven Ronin. Those guys were totally swashbucklers.”

For those readers who enjoy swashbucklers, selecting a favorite is often difficult. I’m hard pressed to decide between Captain Blood and Robin Hood, although perhaps that’s because Errol Flynn played both. When I posed the question to Ellsworth, he responded: You would ask that. There are so many. How to choose?

After three turns around the house, I’ve decided to go with Alexandre Dumas’ four musketeers: d’Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. . . Each is his own man with a distinct personality, but between them they incarnate all the qualities you could wish in swashbuckling heroes; together, they are unbeatable.

Choosing a favorite author presents an even more challenging question. Ellsworth selected “Harold Lamb, an American author of the early 20th century who is remembered most nowadays for his biographies of the strong men of Asian history . . . However, in the 1920s and ’30s he wrote a tall stack of excellent historical adventure stories, tales that broke the prevailing mode by being set in Russia, the Near East, Central Asia, or India during the Mughal Empire. And more, he did this with protagonists who were drawn from those same regions, rather than the usual far-

A freelance editor and historical novelist, CINDY VALLAR also writes the bi-annual “The Red Pencil” column for HNR. She presents writers’ workshops on a variety of topics and writes nonfiction articles about maritime piracy for Pirates and Privateers. Her historical fantasy “Rumble the Dragon” appears in Dark Oak Press’ anthology A Tall Ship, a Star, and Plunder. You can visit her at www.cindyvallar.com.

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Bruce Holsinger on place in the historical novel

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ne of the paradoxes of historical fiction is that it must both inhabit and invent its settings. Writers in the genre might perform months of research, pore through a dozen archives, spend weeks walking the back roads and visiting the buildings and streets that once defined their characters’ lives. Yet no matter how much research we perform, no matter how often we travel to the cities, towns, and landscapes portrayed in our fiction, we are faced, in the end, with the difficult task of invention — of making all or most of it up. When it comes to place, even the most rigorously researched historical novel demands creative license, as we flesh out in language those intimate details of structure, landscape or room we can never fully recover from the archive.

Every historical place and time, though, comes with its own unique set of challenges, as I’ve learned in writing novels set in late medieval London, during the reign of Richard II. The post-medieval history of the city proved all but catastrophic for anyone wishing to place a novel in that world. The built environment of medieval London is largely lost to us, victim of the Reformation, the Great Fire of 1666, the Blitz, and the sheer passage of time. The great Roman walls, which once circumscribed the Square Mile and defined the core of pre-modern London, were dismantled centuries ago, and while certain streets retain their medieval names, these byways are deceptive guides indeed to the ambience and sightlines of the fourteenth-century city.

There are numerous traces of medieval London and its environs if you know where to look for them, though, and one of the great pleasures in researching and writing A Burnable Book and The Invention of Fire have come in discovering those traces for myself, and working them into a scene, a character arc, a turn of plot.

Take Southwark. It was here, at the Tabard Inn (along the current Borough High Street), that the fellowship assembled for the pilgrimage imagined in the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, an important character in both A Burnable Book and The

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On Seeing (And Not Seeing) Medieval London Invention of Fire. It was in and around these Southwark haunts, just about six centuries ago, that my novels’ historical protagonist lived a good portion of his adult life. Beginning around 1377, the poet John Gower let a house and small chapel from the church of St. Mary Overie (now Southwark Cathedral), an Augustinian priory that sat in the shadow of Winchester Palace, house of the powerful bishops of Winchester. The ruins of the palace’s great hall and the door to the buttery are nicely preserved just up the street from the cathedral. Gower’s house was likely situated along the priory’s outer walls, signaling his double orientation toward the church and the outside world.

Southwark Cathedral is a bit off the beaten path, at least for tourists. During my visits to the church, I have often been the sole person in the place experiencing it as a sight-seer rather than as a parishioner or an employee. Gower’s tomb sits in a recess along the north aisle, with soaring ogees over three trefoiled arches, each poised above one of the allegorical figures of Charity, Mercy, and Pity. Garishly restored in the 1950s, the tomb depicts the poet in effigy, his head on a pillow made up of his three major works of poetry.

Standing in front of Gower’s tomb, leaning back against the pews, I’ve thought more than once about the often invisible pressures of place on the formation of literary character, particularly on those figures from the past brought to new life in historical fiction. Gower offers a wonderfully ambivalent case in point. He was a loyal and devout parishioner, by all indications, yet with a nose for iniquity that must have been sharpened by experience, and by the moral geography of Southwark itself, seat of bishops and taverners, prostitutes and Austin canons, chapels and stews.

Such contradictions are ripe for the speculative reconstruction of character that historical fiction allows us to pursue.

Indeed, it is in these brief placings of character that some of the most interesting work in historical fiction occurs. Think of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell, who slips with such ease in and out of his home at Austin Friars that the house becomes as

by Bruce Holsinger

No matter... how much research we perform, no matter how often we travel to the cities, towns, and landscapes portrayed in our fiction, we are faced, in the end, with the difficult task of invention.

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HNR Issue 73, August 2015

That was the second year of King Henry IV When I stopped writing, because I am blind.

My ability serves me no further, although my will does, But my physical agency lacks the means to write more.

While I was able to write, I wrote very many things with zeal; This part clings to the world, that part clings to God.

Nevertheless I have left to the world its vanities still to be written, And with a final poem I write and I go to die.

With these and other passages from Gower’s work in mind, I’ve thought a lot about the implications of representing a visually impaired character in a genre that places so much emphasis on the historical accuracy of sights and sites. There are any number of models, of course, including Sharon Kay Penman’s Rhiannon in her Plantagenets trilogy. “The blind are often hidden away from the world, as if they are a cause for shame,” Rhiannon notes in a conversation with Eleanor of Aquitaine, though she has compensated for her blindness in myriad ways. More recently, in Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See (2014), a blind girl’s father carves a wooden replica of nearby streets and buildings as a way of helping her navigate the town — which is also, of course, the novel’s setting.

In researching the treatment of blindness in Gower’s day, I’ve learned about medieval eyeglasses, corneal surgery (!), and other technological dimensions of the subject. I’ve also been struck by the frequency with which medieval writers (including Gower) draw on biblical and proverbial metaphors of blindness to discuss matters of morality, faith, and the nature of sin.

Near the beginning of The Invention of Fire, Gower reflects on the diverse sources of beauty around him, the many sights he will miss when his eyes finally fail: Dusted arcs of sunlight in the vaults of St. Paul’s, crimson slick of a spring lamb’s offal puddled on the wharf, fine-etched ivory of a young nun’s face, prickle of stars splayed on the night.

Color, form, symmetry, beauty, radiance, glow. All fading now, like the half-remembered faces of the departed: my sisters, my children, my well-beloved wife. All soon enough gone, this sweet sweet world of sight.

Gower, that is, experiences medieval London through the blurred lens of his encroaching blindness, which determines in part his relationship to the novel’s setting, his historical moment, even memories of his own family. For John Gower, to see the London of his day is to see a whole visual world soon to be lost.

Perhaps historical fiction has a compensatory function in this respect, providing our own world with new ways of seeing pasts otherwise lost in the shadows of history.

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much a part of the man as his limbs (“The paneling has been painted. He walks into the subdued green and golden glow”).

Centuries later, in the World War II London depicted in Simon Tolkien’s Orders from Berlin, an agent named Charles Seaforth stands in St. James’s Park and watches a flock of geese rise with pastoral grace from the park lake, only to mingle in his vision with the vapor trails of planes engaged in aerial battles high above the city. In the same genre is Alan Furst’s Spies of the Balkans, a war-era noir that begins omnisciently, with a weather system on the Bulgarian-Greek border, before panning to a police officer in Salonika snapping aloft an umbrella that he then closes just before spying a melancholy sponge seller in the street market on Aristotle Square: “Marooned, he could only wait, for if his sponges got wet he’d have to carry the weight for the rest of the night.”

Andrew Taylor’s The Scent of Death (2013) limns this relationship between place and character with particular grace.

Set in revolutionary Manhattan during the last years of British rule, the novel features Edward Saville, a London clerk sent to New York by the American Department. One of the intriguing aspects of Saville as a historical character is the often opaque lens through which he views the roiling city around him. New York is still part of England at this point, and as an Englishman abroad in a revolutionary America, Saville must straddle two worlds, balancing his loyalties to the crown with his horrified vision of the half-ruined Manhattan that surrounds him.

But what if your character simply can’t see the setting you create for him or her — or can’t see it very well? A formidable challenge in writing from the historical viewpoint of John Gower has come in imagining and accounting for the poet’s blindness. We know that Gower was blind or nearly so by the early years of Henry IV’s reign (1399-1413). There are no records of the potential cause of his affliction, nor does he say anything about whether his blindness came on over a number of years or appeared suddenly at the turn of the century. I’ve been working on the assumption that Gower lost his vision gradually, over a long period of time.

This is an unprovable hypothesis, of course, though there is an intriguing hint at the end of his Confessio Amantis (completed circa 1390) that the poet was already suffering from impaired vision at the time he wrote his long Middle English poem: “Myn yhen dymme” (“My eyes dim”), Gower’s narrator avows, locating the visual condition among a wider catalogue of afflictions assaulting him in his old age.

Gower writes openly about the failure of his vision in his Latin works, nowhere more movingly than in his poem ‘Quicquid Homo Scribat’ (here in R.F. Yeager’s translation):

BRUCE HOLSINGER’S first novel, A Burnable Book (HarperCollins UK/William Morrow US, 2014), won the John Hurt Fisher Prize and was named one of the Best Mysteries of 2014 by the American Library Association. The Invention of Fire appeared earlier this year from HarperCollins (UK) and William Morrow (US).

HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Features | 11

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Shona Patel discusses her latest novel

Flame Tree Road (MIRA, 2015) is an unconventional novel. Its

structure arises from the pattern of one’s man life, Biren Roy. Author Shona Patel says of him, “Biren belongs to the period of great Indian thinkers, Gandhi, Tagore, Raja Ram Mohan Roy – foreign educated Indians trying to create this new idealistic identity for the country.” The novel’s meaning arises from the spark that drives Biren to work for women’s educational equality in India. That spark does not catch fire from a single event. Biren grows up in a small waterfront village in Bengal. His family is happy and blessed with love. On his walks with his father, he regularly meets a widow who must live in the hollow of a Banyan tree alone, cast off.

His father encourages Biren’s friendship with this wise lady, but he also tells Biren to conceal their unacceptable bond. This is one of many embers that lights Biren’s mission. A potent combination launches Biren: the love he feels from his mother and father, his father’s ability to feel compassion outside the rules of their society, and this kind widow who undermines the prejudices against her in the young man’s mind.

Biren Roy appeared as a key character, the grandfather, in Patel’s first novel, Teatime for the Firefly. When Patel decided in Flame Tree Road to focus on the grandfather’s life, a sort of prequel, she said she had to “sleuth in reverse.” In Teatime she had created “a man with a vision, who is so into female education. What would have made him like that?

That some woman he loved was deprived of that education — his mother. The theme of the Hindu widow organically happened.”

This theme is articulated in Biren’s own thoughts: “Biren grew quiet as he thought about his mother. Society had found a way to keep her trapped as a widow. Irrespective of money or caste, the plight of all Hindu widows was the same. They had no voice; it was almost as if they did not exist.” Nonetheless, the widow Charulata who must live in the Banyan tree plays a significant role in Biren’s story. Although their friendship occurs early in the novel, that character was added much later in the writing process. Patel says of her method, “Once I get my claws into a

Irrespective...

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Flame Tree Road

theme, I expand on it. I do not work in a straight line, but take a ball of putty and shape it in all directions.”

Patel has skillfully built up the network of influences that become the adult Biren. The concept of sacrifice is present for Biren from the beginning — his father gave up his education in order to care for his extended family. A pivotal change occurs when Biren’s father dies and his joyous mother becomes a widow, isolated from all. The embers are turning into a powerful bed of coals. Later in the novel these twin ideas — love and unjust treatment of women — will continue to stoke Biren’s fiery idealism and toss him into the depths. We’ll follow his life and his gradual ability to take small but effective action within the insurmountable inaction of India’s traditional culture.

One of the other great strengths of Flame Tree Road is the vivid world it creates. Patel says, “I’m a visual artist. I see an environment so clearly in my mind, the really small brushstrokes. These are things I’ve personally observed. I’ve seen the rivers of Assam, the loneliness that rises from them, the fishing villages. These are all a part of me. My goal is to transfer that image into the mind of my reader.”

She calls this a “cultural stickiness,” as in it will stick with the reader. Absolutely! Patel pairs rich detail with lyrical language.

Patel draws the reader into this setting, which heightens the emotional power when Biren discovers himself an outsider in this familiar world because he has traveled and adopted outside ideas. But the spark that lights that journey began at home, and eventually Biren finds his inner peace at home also — on Flame Tree Road. The novel renders tangible the twin themes of love and justice.

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Judith Starkston writes historical fiction and mysteries. Her debut, Hand of Fire, set within the Trojan War, combines history and myth in the untold story of Achilles’ captive Briseis.

by Judith Starkston of money or caste, the plight of all Hindu widows was the same. They had no voice; it was almost as if they did not exist.

HNR Issue 73, August 2015

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a closer look at the ‘long-suffering’ women of the Hanoverian court

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The Hanoverians

For years, the historical fiction market has been swamped with

books about Henry VIII’s wives. Whether in the spotlight or part of the background action, these royal women have sparked hundreds of novels, from romances to murder mysteries. After the success of Philippa Gregory’s The Cousins’ War, we have also seen a surge in fiction set around the Plantagenets. There’s just something about the intrigues of a royal court – the power, glamour and danger – that captures our imagination. But one royal dynasty is conspicuously absent from the bestseller shelves: the Hanoverians. To date, only Jean Plaidy is notable for attempting to tackle these monarchs in historical fiction.

It’s hard to understand the reason for this neglect. After all, the Hanoverians were hugely important to British history.

From the accession of George I in 1714 to the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, they provided the building blocks of our modern monarchy. But books set in the Georgian era tend to focus on other great forces.

We have thrilling sagas such as Poldark and The Scarlet Pimpernel. Military series like Sharpe and Hornblower have proved hugely successful, especially as we mark the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo. And for those readers keen to avoid bloodshed, Regency romances abound.

Perhaps the sheer range of exciting tales possible in this time of upheaval has made us forget about the royal family. If we think of them at all, we dwell on the doomed court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. However, by ignoring the British royals of the period, we are missing out on some incredible stories. Imprisoned wives, bigamous marriages and madness are only some of the subjects on offer. Add in bitter father-son feuds, kidnapped heirs, potential incest and trials for adultery, and you get an idea of the kind of dysfunctional dynasty with which we are dealing.

Personally, I am fascinated by the lives of the women at the Georgian court; the queens, the princesses, the ladies in waiting.

On the one hand, they were powerful and able to wield a great

deal of influence. On the other, they were at the whim of men – often infuriatingly difficult men. Let me assure you, Hanoverian princes were not the type to whisk girls away to happily ever after. The best phrase to describe the women they married and took for their pleasure would be ‘long-suffering.’

Yet the courage and resourcefulness of Hanoverian women is astounding to research. Most adjusted to the general decline in royal power with grace. Losing their children, their positions and their health bent them, but it seldom broke them. Some forfeited their titles, some lived in fear of their lives. Yet through it all, they remained true to a sense of duty and self-worth.

One of the biggest surprises for me was the progressive attitude of these Georgian queens towards female equality. We often forget that, before the prudish ways of the Victorian era set in, there was a brief period that gave birth to Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Some of the Georgian royals became influenced by these ideas. As I learn more, I am fascinated to see the power struggle between the sexes mirroring the battle between monarch and subjects on the national stage.

I am indebted in my research to a range of biographies, released long after Plaidy’s original Georgian saga. Flora Fraser, Tracy Borman and Lucy Worsley in particular have illuminated the lives of Georgian royal women, presenting them for a modern audience. I can only keep my fingers crossed that such books will continue to be published. As a new generation of royalty receives Hanoverian names such as George and Charlotte, we have a chance to spark public interest in this neglected period. We must make the most of it. The stories of the original George and Charlotte are just too important to be left behind.

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Laura Purcell is a former Waterstones bookseller turned author. The second novel in her Georgian Queens series, Mistress of the Court, will be released August 2015 by Myrmidon Books. She writes an 18th- and 19th-century themed blog at www.laurapurcell.com.

by Laura Purcell

Let me... assure you, Hanoverian princes were not the type to whisk girls away to happily ever after. The best phrase to describe the women they married and took for their pleasure would be ‘long-suffering.’

HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Features | 13

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Tony Hays

Tony Hays had many facets to his character. He was a talented

English teacher with a hidden past in intelligence work. He was a world traveler, fluent in Arabic, who loved exploring different cultures but who felt most at home in his Tennessee cabin with the former puppy mill dogs he rescued.

Most of all, he preferred to be known as a writer.

Tony died suddenly in January of complications from diabetes while on vacation in Egypt from his job, which involved teaching English to Saudi airmen in Saudi Arabia for a U.S. defense contractor. He was 57. We had begun corresponding via email after I reviewed his sixth novel, The Beloved Dead, for my blog, and we became good friends over the last four years.

Tony’s interests in history were boundless.

As he told me once, “I’m always on the lookout for a new time period.” During the 1990s, he documented current events as a journalist, winning a Tennessee Press Association award for his stories on narcotics trafficking. He was a recognized expert in local genealogy and history, including the 1862 Battle of Shiloh.

“My teens and early college years were spent writing ‘serious’ stories,” he revealed. “My twenties were spent writing Southern humor and mystery/espionage stories, some of which got published. It wasn’t until my thirties that I turned to novel writing and found my voice.”

Tony was fascinated by unsolved mysteries and conspiracy theories, and most of his novels fit that category in some way. He sought out new angles on well-known people and events, yet presented them in a fashion that didn’t contradict recorded history.

Tony’s first two published novels, Murder on the Twelfth Night and Murder in the Latin Quarter (Bell Buckle Press, both 1993) were YA mysteries, he said, “designed to give high school students an entertaining introduction to Shakespeare.” Next came The Trouble with Patriots (Bridge Works, 2001), a “zany political satire” based on his experience teaching in Kuwait. His best known books are the Arthurian Mysteries, which include The Killing Way, The Divine Sacrifice, The Beloved Dead, and The Stolen Bride, all published in the US by Forge between 2009 and 2012. The first two were also published in the UK by Atlantic, under the name Anthony Hays.

His protagonist, Malgwyn ap Cuneglas, was created to show the traditional mythos from an outsider’s viewpoint. For me, Malgwyn fits so naturally into the Arthurian legends that it’s hard to believe he’s one author’s invention. A tough soldier who lost an arm fighting

Although he left...

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alongside Arthur against the Saxons, Malgwyn has a cynical outlook that makes him a good sleuth; he doesn’t initially trust Arthur or his vision for post-Roman Britain. Malgwyn’s a witty fellow, though, and his wry observations on life and religion inject humor into the stories. Tony’s Arthurian world is gritty and dark, filled with military threats and political infighting, but he doesn’t neglect his female characters, such as Ygerne, the intelligent woman Malgwyn loves, and Guinevere, a young woman whose passionate liaison with Arthur causes a scandal.

Regrettably, the series was halted when the critical acclaim it received didn’t translate into increased sales – not an unusual scenario for today’s writers. Despite this temporary setback, Tony pressed forward, writing a new novel he planned as the first in a series. Shakespeare No More delves into the mysteries surrounding the Bard’s death from the perspective of a Stratford constable, Simon Saddler, a former friend whom Shakespeare had betrayed. Set in early Jacobean times, it draws readers into the lives of Shakespeare’s family members and theatrical contemporaries, and into a London swirling with political intrigue. Tony was thrilled when the novel was picked up by Perseverance Press, a small press focusing on mysteries; it will appear this September.

Amid his busy teaching schedule and literary activities, Tony also generously gave back to organizations that supported him.

He wrote many reviews for this magazine, interviewed authors for the HNS website, and mentored new writers at our conferences.

Throughout his later life, in his good-natured but persistent way, Tony continued to pursue new avenues for his writing, exploring new topics as well as e-publishing. His e-novella The Redemption Path (2014) continues Malgwyn’s story; he had planned to write many more novels. “I’ll never stop,” he wrote in one of our last email threads. “It’s not something I do, but as clichéd as it sounds, it’s who I am.”

Although he left this world too early, Tony’s adventurous spirit ensured that he led an exciting life, one experienced fully, with great curiosity, and with gratitude for the opportunities he had.

For readers who have yet to be entertained by his books, he left a substantial written legacy that’s well worth discovering.

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Sarah Johnson is HNR’s Book Reviews Editor.

by Sarah Johnson

this world too early, Tony’s adventurous spirit ensured that he led an exciting life, one experienced fully, with great curiosity, and with gratitude for the opportunities he had.

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HNR Issue 73, August 2015

Myfanwy Cook explores seasonally-inspired settings

S easide resorts come in all shapes and sizes, from windswept

working-class Blackpool to the socialites’ sun-drenched Nice and Monaco or the literati’s Florida Keys. The authors who have chosen to set novels in these places that usually only come alive for a season have used them as a colourful backdrop for murder, intrigue and romance.

In the 1720s, Scarborough in Yorkshire was one of the first recorded seaside resorts, and rolling bathing machines may have been invented by Benjamin Beale, a Quaker, as a means of making certain that ‘modesty’ prevailed. Certainly, by 1750, in English seaside resorts such as Margate, bathing machines were a common sight. In M.C. Beaton’s Beatrice goes to Brighton (Robinson, 2011) the main character, Hannah, is delighted with the experience and the opportunity to escape from her whalebone stays. The ‘machine’ also acts as a suitable setting for Lady Beatrice and Lord Alistair Munro to indulge in a romantic moment.

The eighteenth-century resorts, in contrast to many popular twentiethcentury destinations, were the domain of the aristocracy. However, it wasn’t until the 1860s that Nice and Monaco in Europe, and later Long Beach and the Hamptons in America, started their rise to fame amongst rich socialites.

The spirit of these glamorous resorts has been captured in Mrs Hemingway (Picador, 2014) by Naomi Wood, which is set partly in 1920 in Antibes and reflects the luminous light and fragile gaiety of the time and people. A similar sense of ethereal and tangled, tortured love is to be found in Beautiful Fools (Duckworth Overlook, 2013), a work of biographical fiction by R. Clifton Spargo about the lives of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald during their 1939 holiday in Cuba. In contrast, A Hundred Summers (Putnam, 2013) by Beatriz Williams conjures the havoc that the 1938 hurricane causes on her imaginary community of Rhode Island socialites alongside the emotional storm raging within the community.

Deauville, Biarritz and the English Riviera are resorts whose popularity with the ‘high society’ of the day was transient. Their

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Fresh Air, Frolics, Cocktails & Murder

‘hey-days’ are now past, but they have all provided authors with an ideal venue for murder. Murder at the Brightwell (Allison & Busby, 2014) is a traditional mystery with two ‘bright young things,’ Amory and Milo, acting as the detectives. Author Ashley Weaver’s imaginary English seaside resort hotel recreates the essence of the period as enshrined in the Art Deco Burgh Island Hotel, built in 1929, and the Imperial Hotel, Torquay, both in Devon and featured by Agatha Christie in her novels.

Seaside resorts for the less affluent members of society have also been highlighted in novels such as The Ladies Lending Library (Harper, 2009), by Janice Kulyk Keefer, where a group of Ukrainian Canadian women in the 1960s confront the dilemmas caused by the period’s rapid social change. Alison Atlee’s The Typewriter Girl (Gallery, 2013) provides insight into the role of women in Victorian Britain through main character Betsey Dobson, who is singled out to become a tour manager for Idensea’s Pier and Pleasure Building Company.

Interestingly, one characteristic of all seaside resorts, with a few exceptions, is their limited shelf-life. The Brighton of the Regency period resort set no longer exists, but as the tide of time changes it uncovers new resorts, which have been rebranded as ‘coastal resorts’ and with them the flotsam and jetsam needed to write entertaining fiction.

The continuing fascination of authors with seaside resorts is understandable, because often the rules of the society of the period were suspended and time spent there was not just about improving one’s health — it also offered the possibility of adventure. As Alan Brennert’s character Eddie sums it up in Palisades Park (St. Martin’s, 2013), they were also places ‘where you could forget the mess that is going on in the world, or the heartaches you’ve got in your life.’

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Myfanwy Cook runs creative workshops on such themes as: The Art of Using Words, Historical fiction based on in-depth research on specific places and sites; Engaging Characters; and Science Fiction. She is a member of the HNS editorial team.

by Myfanwy Cook

The Continuing fascination... of authors with seaside resorts is understandable, because often the rules of society of the period were suspended and time spent there was not just about improving one’s health.

HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Features | 15

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exploring two aspects of the ancient world

I t is one of the best-known stories in the world. When the sons

of Jewish slaves in Egypt are being killed at birth on the orders of Pharaoh, one baby is set afloat amongst the reeds in a woven basket. He is discovered by Pharaoh’s daughter and reared in the palace as an Egyptian prince, only to return years later to lead his people to freedom.

The child was Moses. Pharaoh’s daughter is unnamed.

This is by no means the only story of the abandoned baby who returns as a hero or king. It is a common motif in legend and folk tale. Oedipus and the twins Romulus and Remus spring to mind. Like Moses, the twins were also set afloat, while Oedipus was abandoned on a mountainside. There are similar stories in many cultures.

In The Pharaoh’s Daughter (Waterbrook, 2015), Mesu Andrews has undertaken the complex task of reconciling the Biblical story with Egyptian history. “This woman’s story had always intrigued me,” she says. “Why would an Egyptian princess save a Hebrew baby and raise him as her son? Couldn’t she have children of her own? Did she keep his identity secret or openly defy the king’s edict? So many unanswered questions — not all of which were answered by research.”

What might be her motives? “I believe the Pharaoh’s daughter was motivated by both [fear and love] on the day she found that Hebrew baby in the basket. She was shackled by fear as surely as the Hebrews were captive to their masters, and she was bound by a woman’s yearning to love with a mother’s heart.”

The Bible itself provides little or no guidance as to the date of the story, and both Biblical scholars and Egyptologists differ in interpretation of dates. Some Biblical scholars are doubtful the Jews were ever enslaved by the Egyptians. “With so many differing opinions, how did I decide what story to tell?” Andrews says. “I went to the one Source of Truth that I’ve built my life on — the Bible. With any biblical novel, I begin by using every Truth in the biblical story as my foundation. I then use historical facts as a second layer, adding secondary characters and interesting cultural and scenic texture. Creative fiction becomes the mortar that holds Truth and fact together.”

It was necessary, however, to make a decision about which

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period of Egyptian history to use. After some research, she decided the reign of Tutankhamun, around 1250 BC, was feasible. He had no daughters, so she made Anippe, the Pharaoh’s daughter of the title, his sister, daughter of the previous Pharaoh. Writing the novel was made more real for her by visiting an exhibition in Seattle, “giving the opportunity to actually see the intricate furniture, jewelry, and mummies of ancient Egypt.”

The background and life of the woman in the Bible are a mystery, leaving Andrews free to invent them to provide a credible reason for the adoption of the Jewish baby. In the novel, Anippe has witnessed her mother dying in childbirth, which has given her a lifelong terror of pregnancy. As a royal princess she has an arranged (but acceptable) marriage and is expected to fulfil her duty by producing an heir. The prolonged absence of her husband at war and the discovery of the baby provide the opportunity to fake her own pregnancy, with the connivance of Moses’s sister Miriam and the Jewish midwives. She passes off Moses as her own child, although it proves awkward to account for his size and age. This link between the palace and the Jewish slave camp gives Andrews scope to explore both worlds.

I asked about the next project. “The main character is Miriam, Moses’s sister.

For her eighty-six years, Miriam has found complete contentment in her relationship with El Shaddai, but when her brother Moses returns from exile proclaiming God’s new name — Yahweh — troubling doubts plague her night and day. Yahweh no longer speaks in her dreams, and her harsh but predictable life is shattered. This Yahweh she thought she knew speaks to others, performs unfathomable miracles, and challenges her to live when she thought her life nearly spent. Miriam’s soul awakens, stirring deep yearning for more of God, more of life, more of love. Unsettled and frustrated, Miriam must choose: cling to familiar bondage or embrace uncharted freedom.”

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Ann Swinfen has published eight historical novels: The Testament of Mariam, Flood, This Rough Ocean, and the Tudor series beginning with The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez. The sequel to Flood will be published in 2015. www.annswinfen.com

by Ann Swinfen

The greatest challenge...

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HNR Issue 73, August 2015

in writing historical fiction is bringing to credible life the mind-set and culture of the past.

Reviews |

letter to the editor

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In response to the review of my novel Cut from Strong Cloth (HNR 72), I would like to remind the reviewer that every society has many classes of people with distinct standards and codes of conduct. While a wealthy or even middle-class woman of the period might not leave home without corsets and petticoats, the working-class Irish immigrants of pre-Civil War Philadelphia did not always adhere to those dictates.

My novel is not a history text, but historical fiction, and when I included the character of the backwoods woman, I did so after reading about the desperation of poverty-laden widows in rural America of 1860.

As I stated in the Author’s Notes, Cut from Strong Cloth is based upon the life of my greatgrandfather’s first wife, Ellen Canavan, whose manufacturing efforts influenced military history when she helped to design a new type of textile for soldiers’ uniforms and sold it to the U.S. government.

In the acknowledgments I thanked the numerous institutions and historians who helped me authenticate the research behind the book.

To further ensure the accuracy of story details, I traveled to each geographic location in the story and read local diaries, newspaper articles, and multiple non-fiction texts about pre-Civil War Philadelphia and Savannah, in order to validate Ellen’s struggle to succeed.

Linda Harris Sittig

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online exclusives

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Due to an ever-increasing number of books being reviewed and space constraints within HNR, many reviews are now published as online exclusives. To view these reviews and much more, please visit http://www.historicalnovelsociety.org/ reviews/?type=online Denotes an Editors’ Choice title

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THE DOG MASTER: A Novel of the First Dog W. Bruce Cameron, St. Martin’s, 2015, $25.99/ C$29.99, hb, 416pp, 9780765374639 Before there was written history, man traveled Prehistoric — Classical

in tribes or clans as hunter/gatherers, always searching for food and shelter. Upon the death of his father, Silex becomes the leader of a tribe, the Wolfen, which emulates the wolf in both habits and customs. The Mother Council rules the Kindred tribe. They decide the pairings for marriages and determine when to move the tribe north or south each year.

When Calli, wife of Palloc of the Kindred tribe, gives birth to a deformed child, Mal, there is friction when the Great Mother, Albi, deems he is bad luck and must be destroyed. Saved by the Mother Council, Mal grows older yet is unable to keep up with the other males because of his deformed foot.

Eventually he is forced by the Mother Council to leave. He later stumbles upon an injured female wolf and her cubs and seeks refuge in a cave with them.

I found this debut novel entertaining, with details of what life could have been like during this early stage of human existence. This is a fictionalized account of man’s first relationship with the wolf, which would eventually evolve into many species of domesticated dogs. The in-depth writing about early man, told in an epic tale of tribal warfare and customs and forbidden love, is fascinating. My only negative comment is about the number of characters; the story moves from tribe to tribe within each chapter, so I had to make a list of characters in each tribe to follow along. With that done, this became a rather minor point. For those who enjoy fictionalized books about prehistory, you should add this book to your library.

Jeff Westerhoff

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biblical

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LIGHT OF THE CANDLE Carol Pratt Bradley, WiDo Publishing, 2015, $15.95, pb, 274pp, 9781937178659 Set in 605 BC, Light of the Candle is the story of Daniel, a prince of Judah, and his friends Hannaniah, Mishael, and Azariah, who comprise the young Jewish nobility sent as hostages to Babylon after King Nebuchadnezzar’s capture of Jerusalem. After a harrowing months-long desert journey, the boys settle into an education according to Babylonian tradition. A devoted scholar, Daniel proves himself worthy, eventually coming to the notice of the king, providing assistance on the design of the hanging gardens and, using his ability to see the future, interpreting a dream which has confounded all of the King’s sages.

Shortly before his capture, Daniel is betrothed to Sarai, whom he has known and loved since childhood. Overnight her secure future vanishes.

No interest in remarrying and as the only child, she begs her father’s permission to study under Huldah, the prophetess, as a son might have done.

After eight long years, Sarai and her parents find themselves amongst the two thousand Jewish elite sent to settle in Babylon (predicted by God through

Jeremiah and known as the 70-year Babylonian Captivity).

Alternating between Daniel’s and Sarai’s story, Bradley’s fiction is significant in its research and depth. She moves through this ancient world with ease and assurance, incorporating biblical, historical, and imaginary characters into her narrative, along with an authenticity of language and custom. Unfortunately, a number of editorial inconsistencies jumped off the page and spoilt an otherwise fascinating read. Definitely worth a reedit, however, as this book will no doubt bring enjoyment to lovers of historical and inspirational fiction alike.

Fiona Alison AFTER ABEL AND OTHER STORIES Michal Lemberger, Prospect Park, 2015, $16.00, pb, 275pp, 9781938849480 Michal Lemberger, teacher of Bible as Literature at the American University in Los Angeles, collects nine short stories of women in the Bible (Old Testament), often the lesser-known characters, and often in first person. I’m going to count the afterword as number ten because although it is more a dissertation than story, it has a very interesting perspective on the Book of Ruth. The other focus characters begin with Eve in a heartwrenching discussion of how she had no one to teach her what it means to lose a child: “To be the mother of the living is also to be mother to all the dead.” Then follows Lot’s wife (her role in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah will surprise and delight you); Miriam, Moses’s sister; and Hagar the slave who sees that “here, her master’s god broke all the rules for his benefit.” I did not care so much for the next story, told by Zeresh. Who? Zeresh, wife to Haman (boo, hiss). It could have been great, as could the tale of Yael, which had some inconsistencies and missteps to my mind.

Then follows Penina the fruitful, less-loved wife of Elkanah, father of Samuel; a beautiful rendition of Michal, Saul’s daughter; and Achsah, the less memorable daughter of Caleb the spy.

Ann Chamberlin

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HELEN OF SPARTA Amalia Carosella, Lake Union, 2015, $14.95, pb, 389pp, 9781477821381 Young and gloriously beautiful, Helen always thought she’d marry her childhood friend, Menelaus, but when her sleep is disrupted by nightmares of a shining city in flames, screams, and death, she is convinced such disaster can only be averted by refusing to marry him. Her decision pits her against her mortal father, King Tyndareus of Sparta, and her fierce mother, Leda. When suitors gather to bid for Helen’s hand, and she discovers she will be given to Menelaus, she persuades the Athenian half-god hero, King Theseus, to help her HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Reviews | 17

escape. Theseus, in love with her himself, agrees, and spirits Helen, disguised as a slave, away to Athens. Storms blow their ship off course to Asia Minor, where Helen has a chance meeting with a youthful shepherd who will later play a major role in her life. On reaching Athens, she masquerades as an Egyptian princess, Meryet, and is married to Theseus. Her true identity known only to Theseus’ mother, Aethra, and his sons, Helen remains terrified of being found by Menelaus and causing hostilities to explode. When Theseus goes on a quest to the Underworld with his friend King Pirithous, their charade is discovered and violence erupts. Helen, however, is determined to decide her own fate.

Using an admirable balance of history and mythology, and a readable, smoothly flowing narrative with vivid descriptions of ancient Achaean culture and customs, Carosella manages to illuminate a different aspect of the legendary woman’s life. Courage, love, betrayal, tragedy, and the idea that one’s true destiny is ruled by the gods all figure largely in Helen’s narrative; this story is but a dress rehearsal for Helen’s ultimate fate. A satisfying and entertaining tale about a woman who continues to hold many in thrall.

Michael I. Shoop DEATH EX MACHINA Gary Corby, Soho, 2015, $26.95, hb, 368pp, 9781616955199 Gary Corby has delivered another delightful mystery set in Classical Greece. He combines intriguing historical details with a dry sense of humor. Nicolaos and Diotima are at home in Athens, married now and still finding plenty of trouble. A ghost is reported to be sabotaging the Great Dionysian plays. Pericles hires Nicolaos to orchestrate a sham removal of said ghost—which neither of them believes is present. However, serious villainy strikes and then murder, sacrilegious and totally embarrassing for the powers that be.

The cancellation of the festival has widespread diplomatic and military implications—all bad, and the pressure on Nicolaos to find who is at the heart of the crimes grows. Trips to the surrounding countryside (you’ll love these excursions that reveal daily life while keeping us moving along with the plot) gradually reveal a matrix of possible villains.

You won’t know who done it until everyone does, and that’s a riot—in both senses of the word. Corby manages to make ancient mayhem hilariously funny while deadly dangerous.

Judith Starkston

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THE WOLF OF BRITANNIA: Part I Jess Steven Hughes, Sunbury Press, 2015, $16.95, pb, 321pp, 9781620065600 Between 27 and 40 AD, Britain is inhabited by several tribes, all ruled by kings, each with his own parcel of land. They have to defend their lands not only from the Romans, but also from other tribes. Caratacus, a young prince of the Cymbeline tribe in lower Britain, wants to unite several of the tribes to eventually defend themselves against the Romans. Presently, the tribes trade with Rome, but 18 | Reviews |

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he feels someday the Roman army may want to conquer their country like they did in Gaul. There are those, like his brother Aminios, who want to side with the Romans because they wish to take over more territory and become friends with Rome when their army invades Britain.

This book is Volume I of the saga of Caratacus, a real-life leader of the Cymbeline tribe prior to the invasion of the Roman army under Emperor Claudius in the middle of the 1st century. This book is a well-written and well-paced story of early British life and the power struggles that flourished during this time. The author has managed to mix fictional and historical characters, although there is very little written history available for this period other than those of a few Roman writers. The tension builds between the tribes as they each try to gain control of Britain. The battle scenes are realistic, conveying the chaos and panic during the fighting.

I found this book entertaining to read as I became immersed in the story. I highly recommend this novel of early Britain and look forward to reading its sequels.

Jeff Westerhoff

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EAGLES AT WAR: Eagles of Rome, Book 1 Ben Kane, Preface, 2015, £12.99, hb, 420pp, 9781848094048 Based on real historical events, Eagles at War tells the story of Lucius Tullus, Governor Varus and a legion of Roman soldiers, situated on the banks of the Rhine in Germania of the year 9 AD, as they prepare to do battle against the German tribes, waiting on the opposite side of the river, angry and resentful at the imposition of taxes. Added into the mix is the local chieftain, Armenius, who, although trusted by Rome, has been plotting to rid his land of the Romans and plans an ambush of the Romans before the start of the battle.

All in all, this is a massive epic, filled with jealousies, suspicions, plots, spies in the camp and military manoeuvres. Meticulously researched, it tells the story of the real historical characters and as they build up to the battle against the local tribes east of the Rhine. The book is a study in relationships between different groups of men, waiting for fighting to commence, with tensions rising, rather than an action-packed novel containing lots of blood and gore. That isn’t to say there is no action. The fight scenes are detailed and realistic, and you are often left wondering about the futility of war in whatever time period. Kane does not take sides. He simply details the story in fluid, well-written prose, interspersed with convincing dialogue, sometimes vulgar and scatological, to convey the voice and emotions of ordinary men about to fight and possibly die for their cause.

This is the first of the Eagles trilogy by Kane, who has also written historical fiction about Spartacus and Hannibal. Fans of novels about military planning and precision will find this novel

an absorbing and gripping read.

Linda Sever

BROTHERS IN BLOOD: Roman Legion 13 Simon Scarrow, Overlook, 2014, $26.95, hb, 366pp, 9781468311341 / Headline, 2015, £7.99, pb, 544pp, 9780755393961 The latest entry in Scarrow’s Roman Series begins in 52 AD, with the pursuit of a secret agent through the streets of Rome. It then moves on to Britannia, where the recurring heroes Cato and Macro are pursuing Caratacus, the native leader who has long been troubling Rome. Lengthy battle scenes with plenty of bravery and bleeding are the main business of the series. The first action is a bloody hunt to pursue game for the hungry legion, serving as an appetizer for the main course of combat. A rivalry between Emperor Claudius’s freedmen, Pallas and Narcissus, endangers the Roman presence on the island, and our main characters are possible targets for murder by stealth in addition to death in battle.

The future emperor Otho appears as a tribune, improbably accompanied by his stunning wife, Poppaea. There does not seem to be any indication of their presence there in the historical record, but there are different accounts of the circumstances and timing of their marriage, allowing the novelist some leeway. Otho serves to illustrate how inexperienced politicians are placed above experienced military personnel. Caratacus is captured and then escapes, and the action shifts to diplomacy in an effort to get Roman ally Queen Cartimundia to turn him over, but it isn’t too long before the swords are out again, to the delight of the reader who likes his or her Roman fiction with more stabbing and less dialogue. Caratacus comes off as the most appealing fictional character, as he does in the period’s history. As a postscript, there is “A Brief Introduction to the Roman Army.” I would have preferred a discussion of how and why liberties were taken with the history.

James Hawking

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2nd century

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EMPIRE: Thunder of the Gods Anthony Riches, Hodder and Stoughton, 2015, £14.99, hb, 419pp, 9781444731965 Thunder of the Gods is the eighth book in Riches’ Empire series, taking the hero, Marcus Aquila, and supporting cast to the far east in the late 2nd century Roman Empire. Thus, the Emperor is Commodus, and the Empire has come out of a period generally regarded as its high point, not that this was necessarily the perception at the time.

Like previous instalments of the Empire series, the novel is a military page-turner whilst also having a few twists in the plot. This time, the Tungrians (auxiliary cohorts) are pitted against the might of the Parthian Empire, the greatest rival to Rome since Republican times. The stage is therefore set for a great story, and the book does not disappoint.

It is assured, informed and engaging. Whilst it could be read alone, the reader would be advised to start with the first Empire novel (Wounds of Honour) and decide to continue with the series based on that book. It gets my recommendation!

Chris James Classical — 2nd Century

Fidelma Society website.

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5th century

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THE FOURTH GWENEVERE John James, Jo Fletcher Books, 2015, £8.99, pb, 304pp, 9781848664135 The circumstances of the production of this novel are extraordinary. The fact that the author’s life ended before his work on it was completed could have spelled disaster. Happily for all of us, two Arthurian scholars, John and Caitlin Matthews, took on the project of the completion of the thenunfinished manuscript. From the first lines on page one, the prose flows easily, unpretentiously and poetically. It has delicacy, yet it becomes hard and uncompromising where it needs to. One feels at ease, too, with the use of convincing research, which never becomes obtrusive or heavy-handed.

The complexity of the plot and the intricacies of the central storylines are properly developed, and the temptation to resolve things too comfortably is cleverly resisted.

In my view, this book will take a well-deserved place on the shelves of readers who are not only familiar with the subject matter, but of those who will become intrigued by this able and impressive telling of the stories. On a more subjective level, my own response to The Fourth Gwenevere was slightly diminished by the amount of concentration I needed in order to establish and retain a necessary knowledge of who is who, where is where and when is when. So many unfamiliar names, places and relationships among the familiar ones.

Julia Stoneham

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7th century

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THE DEVIL’S SEAL Peter Tremayne, Minotaur, 2015, $26.99, hb, 352pp, 9781250059727 / Headline, 2015, £8.99, pb, 368pp, 9781472208323 Ireland, 671. In this 25th book of a series, clerical visitors from the East mystify the rulers at Cashel. The delegation refuses to reveal why they have come. A string of inexplicable murders has Dálaigh Fidelma and her Saxon husband, Eadulf, struggling to solve this complex, early medieval puzzle.

When the delegation from Rome finally reveals that they want to determine which religious house will oversee the others, Fidelma cannot believe that this is the whole story. She digs deeper to understand what is really happening. Meanwhile, Eadulf is dealing with a new-found relative and the issue of two working parents struggling to find time for their little boy. Other characters deal with disability and issues of romance as the death count rises, and Fidelma searches for the unknown menace.

Peter Tremayne is the pseudonym of respected Celtic scholar Peter Berresford Ellis. Anyone interested in the old Irish language and history should like this book. It stands alone, but will whet new readers’ appetites for the earlier titles. A guide to Gaelic pronunciation would be helpful, but can be found in other places online, such as the Sister 6th Century — 12th Century

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Elizabeth Knowles

9th century

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BODO THE APOSTATE Donald Michael Platt, Penmore, 2015, $18.50, pb, 344pp, 9781942756323 The apostasy alluded to in the title of Donald Michael Platt’s excellent new book Bodo the Apostate occurred, if contemporary accounts can be believed, on Ascension Day, May 22nd, in the year AD 838, and it was no small doctrinal matter. On that date, according to quasi-legend, Bishop Bodo, chaplain and confessor to both the Emperor Louis the Pious and the Empress Judith, converted to Judaism, took the name Bodo-Eleazar, and became in an instant the ultimate cautionary tale for every Western divine who thought, as one of Platt’s characters puts it while speaking for the overwhelming majority, “Jews are the greatest threat to both the unity of our Church and empire.

They are mendacious, demonic, sons of the Devil, each one an antichrist striving to fulfill Satan’s will.”

In a masterfully controlled narrative, Platt builds up to this amazing moment, taking readers first through Bodo’s childhood, upbringing, and rise to power at the heart of the 9th century Carolingian Empire, whose kings, princes, prelates and ordinary people Platt captures with a pitchperfect blend of research and dramatization. By the time the story winds its way to Bodo’s momentous decision, I, too, felt like everything in the world was on the line. A fantastic, thought-provoking novel; very enthusiastically recommended.

Steve Donoghue

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11th century

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THE CHOSEN QUEEN Joanna Courtney, Macmillan, 2015, £12.99, hb, 396pp, 9781447281900 In 1055, Edyth Alfgarsdottir is the young daughter of a Saxon Earl at the court of King Edward, where she is befriended by Harold Godwinson and his handfasted wife, Svana. Her father falls foul of the King and, driven into exile in Wales, Edyth marries the Welsh King Griffin.

King Edward has no heir, leaving England an appealing invitation for invasion by Hardrada, King of Norway and William, Duke of Normandy.

Only a reluctant Harold Godwinson stands between Saxon England and the outsiders. After Edyth’s Welsh husband dies, she returns a widow to the English court, where King Edward is dying.

Harold has to step up as the only English successor to the throne. Svana is even more reluctant than Harold to become embroiled in the battle for England, and so Edyth Alfgarsdottir is chosen to

support Harold as his queen.

As with many histories of these times, there is a great deal we do not know and probably never will, but Joanna Courtney creates a plausible account, placing emphasis on a sexual, emotional interpretation from Edyth’s imagined point of view. She tells the story in a direct, well-researched manner with visual, evocative writing. The language is occasionally gauche or overblown, the conversation sometimes a little too contemporary, and some of the characters tend towards caricature, but the book is an enjoyable immersion in a vivid, credible world of people making choices and leading their daily lives in a Saxon England still resonating with pagan rituals. Courtney builds well to the inevitably pacy denouement, with Hardrada’s defeat of Edyth’s brothers immediately followed by Harold’s defeat of Hardrada at Stamford Bridge in the north, and then his forced march south three days later to confront Duke William’s invasion.

Tracey Warr NAKED: A Novel of Lady Godiva Eliza Redgold, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2015, $14.99/ C$17.50/£10.99, pb, 240pp, 9871250066152 In 11th-century Coventry, the heart of England’s Middle Lands, there is a threat of invasion by the Danes. Lady Godiva, determined to protect her people, agrees to marry Leofric of Mercia, fellow Saxon and the earl of a neighboring land. His protection will in turn keep the enemy from his borders, while strengthening the Anglo-Saxon stronghold endangered by the rule of King Canute.

The marriage, however, may prove to be just as treacherous as facing the Danes.

The legend of Lady Godiva is well known, though the history behind it is less so. Because there are not many facts known about her life, the lady Godgifu—God’s Gift—is a malleable character for historical novelists. This retelling imagines her as a young woman determined to uphold her late father’s legacy to his people. A series of bad harvests has ravaged the lands, and most cannot pay the tax owed to their new lord, Leofric. It falls to Lady Godiva to intercede, and thus the story is played out in parallel to the famous legend.

Bordering on the historical romance genre, this novel may disappoint readers looking for an indepth account of a historical figure. The characters seem a bit two-dimensional, but this could have been avoided with further background information early on. The descriptions of life in Anglo-Saxon England are spot-on, and the customs and inner workings of society make interesting reading. The writing style is charming but can be overdone, with repetitive use of choppy sentences. Overall, it’s an enjoyable, light read, but perhaps not to every reader’s taste.

Arleigh Johnson

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12th century

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TWICE ROYAL LADY Hilary Green, Buried River Press, 2015, £8.99, pb, 350pp, 9781910208335 The story of Matilda, daughter to Henry I, and her attempts to wrest the throne from King Stephen in 1135 is well known and fairly well HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Reviews | 19

documented, and there have been many books, films and TV adaptations covering the period.

This novel is different in that the author takes us back, first to Matilda’s childhood and her betrothal to Henry, Emperor of Germany, when she was only eight years old, and then to her marriage to him when she was twelve. We are more familiar with the events after Henry I died suddenly of a surfeit of lampreys, so we are told, and her cousin, Stephen, raced off to Winchester, seized the treasury, and had himself crowned as King of England. What followed has become known as ‘The Anarchy’, or a period called ‘When Christ and the Saints Slept’.

There are no author’s notes to guide us as to her sources for her account of Matilda’s childhood, so this may be based on fact or simply the author’s own supposition, but the book is eminently readable and convincing. Her main characters are real people, of course, but it all fits together well, and the pace of the story is good.

This would appear to be Hilary Green’s first medieval historical novel, but from reading this one, I would definitely read another.

Marilyn Sherlock THE HOLY LANCE: Book 1 of the English Templars Series Andrew Latham, Knox Robinson, 2015, $27.99/£19.99, hb, 240pp, 9781910282410 The author sets his ‘work of military historical adventure’ in the Holy Land in 1191 during the Third Crusade. A ferocious fighter and knightbrother of the Templars, Michael Fitz Alan is charged by the Grand Master of his order and King Richard to lead a small force to recover the Lance of Longinus, which pierced the side of Christ on the Cross. The relic, which is hidden in a secluded hospital for the treatment of lepers, lies in what is now Saracen territory.

From the siege of Acre to numerous skirmishes along their route, against not only Saracens but rival Christian factions, the action remains unrelenting and violent. The Templars are portrayed as ‘holy, disciplined and deadly killers’, religious fanatics really, but this was a cruel age, and their foes are worse, inflicting torture, murder, and rape on innocent civilians. The picture of shifting alliances of convenience and ambitious leaders callously justifying all manner of atrocities as a means to an end, whether it be personal ambition or the destruction of non-believers (widely interpreted), seems depressingly familiar in the Middle East nearly a millennium later.

Fitz Alan is an interesting figure: he serves God to atone for past pursuit of vainglory, but he is taking the first, uncertain steps from intolerant and simplistic fanaticism towards compassion and understanding. He finds the Lance, but will he manage to deliver it to Richard and his unscrupulous chancellor, both of whom he dislikes and mistrusts? Will he choose to? As first in a series, many plot strands are left hanging, and there are a surprising number of annoying typographical errors. Recommended, nevertheless.

Ray Thompson

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13th century

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HNR Issue 73, August 2015

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THE KING’S ASSASSIN Angus Donald, Sphere, 2015, £19.99, hb, 420pp, 9780751551976 In this 800th anniversary year of the Magna Carta, it seems only right that the latest instalment in Angus Donald’s Outlaw Chronicles should see his re-telling of the Robin Hood legend reach Runnymede. Alan Dale, our narrator, is now a sworn knight in the service of Robin.

As Earl of Locksley, the ex-outlaw now plays an important part in the affairs of England, supporting men such as William Marshal and the king’s half-brother, the Earl of Salisbury. As the novel opens, Alan and Robin are, like the rest of England’s barons, being bled dry by King John’s rapacious demands for taxation and oppressed by the lack of justice he shows. Together with old comrades, including Little John, the two are then drawn into John’s wars with France, culminating in a tense, exciting account of the Battle of Bouvines.

In the aftermath of the battle, as England explodes into civil war, Alan and Robin have to decide where their loyalties lie.

Alan is a likeable, yet flawed central character whose loyalty, sense of honour and impetuosity lead him to become embroiled in a plot to kill the king, and Donald’s writing is fast-paced and engaging. Despite being the seventh book in a series, this novel stands up well on its own. Donald’s fictional characters are rooted in a well-researched and believable historical backdrop, whilst also remaining true to the spirit of the Robin Hood legend. An entertaining and highly enjoyable read.

Recommended.

Charlotte Wightwick

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14th century

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THE TOWERS OF SAMARCAND James Heneage, Heron Books, 2015, £7.99, pb, 517pp, 9781782061182 Volume Two of The Mistra Chronicles, and the 14th century draws to its close at one of the most dangerous and crucial times in the recorded history of the world. The ancient walls of Byzantium, hitherto indestructible, are under threat from cannon in the hands of the Turks.

Luke has lived the life of a nomad amongst the hardiest people on earth. Already a superb warrior, he returns to his comrades with all his abilities enhanced.

This tremendous book is a challenging but rewarding experience for anyone who has not read The Walls of Byzantium. Do not try and remember who everybody is; enjoy the enormous

scope of the story, distances that must be covered by horses in relays, the vastness of wild scenery, beauty and danger, even the obliterating terror of sandstorm scenes. And, small but important, the sheer bloody courage of the Italian engineers: it’s great, suspenseful writing. Women play their full part throughout: mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, lovers, including Luke’s dearest love, Anna. But inevitably, the most memorable is the icy bitch, Zoe. Will she meet her match in the most powerful man, East or West? Tamerlane is a brilliant, unfathomable psychopath who occasionally may appear to be a benevolent, bespectacled grandfather; leader of the Mongol Horde, he seems to want to drown the whole world in human blood.

Will he continue west or turn towards the mighty prize of China? City after city falls before Luke witnesses the ultimate horror and an overload of cruelty in the destruction of Aleppo. This hardened soldier succumbs to a trauma from which it seems impossible he will emerge. This extraordinary story deserves high praise, but readers, please start with Volume One. Nancy Henshaw

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THE INVENTION OF FIRE Bruce Holsinger, William Morrow, 2015, $26.99, hb, 432pp, 9780062356451 / Harper, 2015, £8.99, pb, 496pp, 9780007493364 In this, the second in Holsinger’s acclaimed mystery series set during the reign of Richard II, the political intrigues of the day, the art of war, and the ruthlessness of those surrounding the crown come to life through a complex plot and the character of the poet and trader in secrets, John Gower.

Sixteen bodies are discovered, all victims of wounds from a new invention – the handgonne.

Although this weapon is in its infancy, it is apparent that it is a dangerous and potentially war (and society) altering tool -- one that, if it falls into the wrong hands, can easily defeat an enemy.

Gower is compelled to investigate: Why have these 16 men been executed and dumped in the canal?

Who has these handguns, and for what purpose do they intend to use them?

Holsinger takes us on a romp through London, through Greenwich (where we spend some time with Gower’s best friend, Geoffrey Chaucer), and through Calais, where Gower is saved by his wayward son. All the while, the Mayor of London will not engage in an investigation into the murders, but why not? What becomes clear as the mystery deepens is that there are enemies everywhere, the truth is not as it seems, and what once seemed apparent to Gower – who is going blind – is that no one can see the nose on his face, not even Gower, until it is almost too late.

With a novel peopled by historical figures at every turn, and with London a palpable presence as Gower reaches out to his sources and walks the city’s streets in search of an answer, Holsinger has done a masterful job here. From the discovery of 12th Century — 14th Century

one wayward phrase in an obscure tome, Holsinger has woven a complex tale of intrigue, creating an entire world in which a reader can easily become lost. Whether you’ve read The Burnable Book or not, pick this one up and start reading. It’s terrific.

Ilysa Magnus

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15th century

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KINGMAKER: Broken Faith Toby Clements, Century, 2015, £16.99, hb, 447pp, 9781780891705 Toby Clements really does get into the nittygritty of how the people of 15th-century England ‘lived, loved, fought, and died’. He thanks many for their expert knowledge, but it is his infectious quest for the precise detail that brings this second novel in the Kingmaker trilogy alive, as much as the first. That precision is not only expressed in medical detail – of which there is plenty: a successful caesarean section (successful for the newborn, that is), the amputation of a forearm, and the extraction of an arrowhead embedded in a subscapular position, all of which call for the application of large quantities of cleansing urine – but also in the cruel depiction of life in the northern fortresses of Alnwick and Bamburgh, which were held by Henry VI during the years when everything appeared to conspire against him.

Clements’s protagonists, Thomas and Katherine – the latter spends most of the book being someone else – are wholly convincing and carry the narrative well: their reunion and subsequent journey north bearing a mysterious ledger, which they intend to present to the Lancastrian king, forms a compelling backbone which will continue to the final volume of the trilogy. Many of the characters will be familiar to those who enjoyed the first book, Winter Pilgrims, including the trusted Sir John Fakenham and the villainous Rivens. Clements has given a powerful interpretation to the two main battles of this period, Hedgeley Moor and Hexham, based less on legend and more on his reading of the topography and the possible psychological forces at play among the turncoats in Henry’s army. Whatever the ‘truth’ of the matter, this is a thoroughly engaging read.

Lucinda Byatt

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WARS OF THE ROSES: Margaret of Anjou (US) / WARS OF THE ROSES: Trinity (UK) Conn Iggulden, Putnam, 2015, $27.95, hb, 448pp, 9780399165375 / Penguin, 2015, £7.99, pb, 576pp, 9780718196394 Conn Iggulden has written a spellbinding novel about England’s York and Lancaster families.

Theirs is a war fueled by the fact that King Henry VI remains asleep or catatonic for most of the year 1454. Margaret of Anjou, his queen, is his voice, his power, and his weapon.

It opens with Richard of York as Protector 15th Century — 16th Century

of the Throne while the king is unable to assume the heavy tasks of the crown. Loyalty is paramount for Richard, but for those jealous of the power they yearn to have, Richard is branded a traitor. So begins the vicious wars over this increasingly bitter feud. Readers are made to feel as if they were there, watching and hearing about the deft spy-craft skills of Derry Brewer; the intense hatred over two families because of a brutal attack during a family wedding; the indescribably brutal battle at St. Albans; the successes and failures of York’s peers, Salisbury and Warwick; and their formidable enemies, the houses of Percy and Neville, who are used by Margaret for her own gains.

While many know about Richard’s latter days and battles, few know of his efforts to prevent what eventually became a renowned enmity. The difficulties faced by soldiers and commoners leading up to each and every battle are described with scrupulous attention, as are the battles themselves, which occur in three different places.

Conn Iggulden’s writing is, as always, accurate, well-researched, and tension-ridden without being overwhelming. One interesting note: pay attention to the relationship between Richard and the king – there is a carefully scripted climax between the two. Highly, highly recommended historical fiction – kudos once again to Conn Iggulden!

Viviane Crystal DEVIL’S MOON Amanda Scott, Forever, 2015, $8.00, pb, 416pp, 9781455556663 The Scottish Borders, 1428. When Devil Ormiston follows a cattle raider home, he is surprised to find that the thief is 19-year-old Robyna Gledstanes, the twin sister of Devil’s recently deceased best friend, Rab. Robyna is beautiful, feisty, and headstrong. When “Dev” is appointed warden of her family’s castle, the haggis hits the fan. Robby and Dev are at loggerheads, but their love for each other is undeniable, and a really clunky plot device gets them married. Robby learns some decorum, and Dev spanks her only once as the relationship progresses. There is a buried treasure, and a nine-year-old laird whom Dev and Robby nurture carefully. Robby’s dead brother speaks to her frequently, although other characters cannot hear him. Rab’s italicized dialogue coming out of nowhere is probably as startling to the reader as it is to Robyna. As the plot resolves, Dev turns out to be not so devilish, the English are not invading after all, and the villain has some redeeming qualities. This is entertaining fun. It is served on a solid foundation of Scottish history by a multi-published author well known for this type of fiction.

Elizabeth Knowles CICELY’S SOVEREIGN SECRET Sandra Heath Wilson, Buried River Press, 2015, £9.99, pb, 364pp, 9781910208373 Henry VII has claimed the throne after

defeating Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, but the new King has a secret that he is anxious to keep hidden. Cicely Plantagenet, sister to Henry’s Queen, Elizabeth of York, also has a secret which Henry must not know about yet.

Intrigue and danger abound.

In her notes at the end of the book, the author states: ‘Historical fiction is fact with the addition of make-believe… So I must repeat that the love between Cicely and Richard III, John de la Pole (whom she resurrects after the Battle of Stoke) and Henry VII are my invention’, as indeed are other characters and most of the book. In other words, Sandra Heath Wilson has taken a group of historical people and woven a completely fictitious story around them with not a shred of historical fact to back up her imaginings. The ‘great secret’, when it is eventually revealed, is also total fiction and fairly easily anticipated.

Can this really be classed as an historical novel?

She also appears to have written some Regency novels. Maybe these are her real forte.

Marilyn Sherlock

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16th century

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TREGIAN’S GROUND Anne Cuneo (trans. Roland Glasser and Louise Rogers Lalaurie), & Other Stories, 2015, £9.99/$17.95, pb, 528pp, 978908276544 In the musical lexicon, ‘Ground bass’ is the term used in Baroque music where a bass part is repeated throughout the piece although the ‘tune’ can vary considerably. This is a perfect title for this ‘autobiographical’ novel. I call it that because although the basic facts of this man’s life are known to musicologists, the details, whilst wellresearched, are speculative.

Francis Tregian was a Roman Catholic, Cornish gentleman, when religious observance was in a state of flux. Protestantism in England was on the rise but precarious. He was a talented musician who compiled the prestigious Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, which is vital to our understanding of the great composers of the period. Cuneo has researched his life in painstaking detail. (Her afterword ‘Looking for Francis Tregian’ is well worth reading.)

This account tells of Tregian’s extensive journeys in England, France, Italy and Flanders, as a musician, clerk, messenger, spy and soldier. He was acquainted with William Shakespeare, Monteverdi and William Byrd and was highly regarded by both Elizabeth I and Henri IV, despite the difference in their religious observance. It would appear that everyone admired him, including Lord Burghley.

Most autobiographies are self-serving, but Tregian comes over as too good to be true. He was excellent in warfare, adept in Latin and most European languages, a brilliant musician but not a composer. He played the virginals beautifully, and could even make them.

This is a very long book. However, although it is a slow, and, at times, laborious read, it is a fascinating account of a turbulent life and well worth reading. I enjoyed it.

Sally Zigmond HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Reviews | 21

THE LADY OF MISRULE Suzannah Dunn, Little Brown, 2015, £14.99, hb, 312pp, 9781408704660 The Lady of Misrule could be Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Days Queen, or it could be her newlyappointed companion, Elizabeth Tilney. Elizabeth volunteered to accompany Lady Jane to her new apartments at the Tower of London in order to escape her own domestic situation. A good Catholic girl had been requested, and Elizabeth has tried very hard to be that, but it hasn’t been easy.

At first it seems the two young women have very little in common, and Elizabeth finds being shut away very dull, but gradually she makes a friend of Jane and of her young husband, and of those who are charged with keeping the young couple under lock and key. However, the imprisonment cannot continue forever and, shut away as they are, they are unaware of the machinations and schemes that are happening at court, and when the end comes, it is a shock to them all.

Suzannah Dunn continues to build a reputation as the queen of Tudor fiction, and this book is another testament to her skill; she has made the minutiae of the domestic and women’s day-today lives her canvas. Despite her use of modern language in place of more archaic speech, there is an intrinsic truth in the dialogue and interaction between the young people in this novel, which makes it compelling reading.

Lisa Redmond WATCH THE LADY Elizabeth Fremantle, Simon & Schuster, 2015, $15.99/C$18.99, pb, 501pp, 9781476703121 / Michael Joseph, 2015, £14.99, hb, 498pp, 9780718177102 Watch the Lady tells of Lady Penelope Devereux, the 2nd Earl of Essex’s smarter sister and the inspiration for Sir Philip Sidney’s sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella. The focus is on Penelope’s struggle to keep her beautiful but impulsive brother, Essex, from the slimy clutches of Queen Elizabeth I’s chief advisor, Lord Cecil.

Lord Cecil, blinded by his envy of Essex, will go to any length to destroy him. Penelope outmaneuvers the wily Cecil, but her attempts to keep her family in the royal favor are frustrated by her brother’s unsuccessful rebellion against the Queen. Penelope uses her formidable wit, connections, and wealth to salvage the situation and keep the Devereux family in the Queen’s good graces.

At more than 500 pages, this story could have used an editor to cut many repetitious elements, and to help with character attributions. When Penelope speaks of her “father,” it is not always clear whether she means her natural father, her stepfather, the Earl of Leicester, or her mother’s third husband, Christopher Blount. A family tree or a list of characters would help immensely.

Flashbacks and flash-forwards are very tricky, and Ms. Fremantle indulges in them to the point that a reader suffers temporal whiplash. In the final chapter, for example, the narrative goes on a dizzying joyride through time. First Penelope has a chinwag with her dead brother, who morphs into her nephew, the new Earl of Essex. The story flashes forward to the coronation of James I in 1603, then flashes back to her Essex’s execution in 1601, and 22 | Reviews |

HNR Issue 73, August 2015

then fast-forwards to 1603 for a paragraph – and then flashes back to 1601. This MTV-like editing paradoxically slows the story down because it disorients the reader.

Liz Milner THE TRAITOR’S DAUGHTER Barbara Kyle, Kensington, 2015, $15.00, pb, 448pp, 9780758273260 The Traitor’s Daughter, the seventh book in Barbara Kyle’s Thornleigh Saga, is an excellent addition to the series, as it can still stand on its own for readers just starting out. The heroine, Kate Thornleigh Lyon, is the daughter of a baron and a staunch supporter of Queen Elizabeth.

She has been disinherited for marrying a poor playwright, who is also a supposed Catholic and maybe a supporter of Queen Mary of Scots. The truth is that the Lyons are not Catholic and not supporters of Queen Mary; they are working with Queen Elizabeth’s secret agents to bring down the ever-present threats to the Protestant throne of England. As Kate and her husband, Owen, are drawn into their next assignment, she discovers that her long-exiled brother, Robert, is back on English soil. But is he there to rekindle old bonds, or is he a part of a dangerous plot to bring down Queen Elizabeth?

Barbara Kyle does an excellent job of conveying the setting of 16th-century England. Vivid details of London and other places depicted in the book really transport the reader to a time when intrigue was around every corner. The inner turmoil experienced by Kate is palpable as she seeks to unravel her brother’s mysterious reappearance and infiltrate the ring of leaders hoping to return England to Catholic rule. Other secondary characters are also finely drawn. The beginning of the novel is a bit slow but quickly picks up in pace as the mystery unfolds. Lovers of Tudor-era fiction and historical mysteries will find much to enjoy in The Traitor’s Daughter.

Caroline Wilson THE SHEPHERDESS OF SIENA: A Novel of Renaissance Tuscany Linda Lafferty, Lake Union, 2015, $14.95, pb, 576pp, 9781477822074 Ostensibly, this is the story of Virginia Tacci, a poor shepherdess who loves horses. But that’s only part of it. It’s really more about the history of 16thcentury Tuscany under the de’ Medicis. As a girl, Virginia can only dream of riding in the Palio, the all-important horse race now associated with the contradae of Siena. During Virginia’s childhood, however, it was a race only for the nobility, until the leaders of Siena decide to hold their own. This momentous decision, a careful thumbing of the nose at the ruling de’ Medici, catapults Virginia into history at the first female Palio rider ever – and makes her an unwitting and unwilling symbol of rebellion, an insurgence that places many lives at risk.

Be forewarned that this was not a pleasant period in history, so you’ll be reading about plenty of tragic events. If you’re an equine person, you’ll love the level of detail in this book, from the raising and training of a horse, to the preparations for a grand race, and will be able to relate to Virginia’s single-minded devotion to her horses. If you’ve

ever wondered what it would be like to ride in Siena’s infamous Palio, you’ll get to experience it right along with Virginia. Those not interested in horsemanship may enjoy a peek into the cruel, manipulative world of the de’ Medici and how their whims and desires ruined many lives. However, if you’re looking for a suspenseful, somewhat happier story that involves the Palio, you’re better off with Anne Fortier’s Juliet.

Nicole Evelina THE ALCHEMIST’S DAUGHTER Mary Lawrence, Kensington, 2015, $15.00, pb, 304pp, 9781617737107 Sixteenth-century Southwark, London’s most notorious slum. Make no mistake about it: Bianca Goddard is an alchemist’s daughter, but she will fight anyone so foolish as to call her anything other than an herbalist who creates medicinals for the poor in her labyrinth stocked with tripods, flasks, and mashed frog bones. Employing vivid description, a dollop of colorful dialect, and ripe, telling details, this first entry in the Bianca Goddard series finds spunky Bianca accused of murder for “accidentally” poisoning a friend who turns to her for help when she falls ill.

As Bianca fights to prove her innocence, the plague, a constant threat, gains ground. There are some who will do anything to cover up the looming presence of rats, rats, rats – hissing, gnawing and crawling – a burgeoning threat to all in their path.

A complex plot and a likable cast of characters nicely round out the story. These are common folk, with Henry VIII cast in the background (though Bianca’s infamous father has been accused of plotting the king’s death), making this a pleasant change of pace for readers who prefer all things Tudor England.

Alana White FLASK OF THE DRUNKEN MASTER Susan Spann, Minotaur, 2015, $25.99, hb, 304pp, 9781250027061 Japan, 1565. The third Shinobi mystery from Spann opens with the murder of a sake brewer and the imprisonment of an obvious suspect, but samurai detective Hiro Hattori isn’t convinced they have the right man. Together with Father Mateo, the Jesuit priest Hiro is bound to protect, he searches for the truth during a dangerous political shift in Kyoto before it’s too late for the condemned man.

As a secret shinobi (called a ninja in China), Hiro favors the discipline and skill of his training, oftentimes cringing at Father Mateo’s naivety of tradition. This makes a splendid backdrop for those unfamiliar with 16th-century Japan, as there are ample situations in which Hiro must explain to his companion the finer points of Japanese customs and weapons.

Spann’s writing is detailed and descriptive enough to ground you in the story but is not overly flowery, which suits her two heroes as they face the hurdles of their investigation, namely samurai guards on alert for spies, and money-hungry lenders. I do find the glossary helpful for the proper usage of names, as the people can get confusing depending who is addressing a character, and to what level of respect. Enjoyed it!

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THE MASQUE OF A MURDERER Susanna Calkins, Minotaur, 2015, $24.99, hb, 336pp, 9781250057365 Lucy Campion returns for this third installment of Susanna Calkins’ mystery series set in late 17thcentury London. Months after the Great Fire of London ravaged the city, Lucy is an apprentice to a printer and bookseller when the daughter of her former master, Sarah Hargrave, asks her to accompany her to the deathbed of a former friend.

The dying man, Jacob Whitby, had become a Quaker shortly before he was crushed by a horse and cart. With his last breath, Jacob tells Lucy that he was pushed before the cart and that he fears for the life of his young wife. When Jacob’s sister Julia turns up dead wearing a scold’s bridle, Lucy worries that Jacob’s story is true and that his murderer may be hiding amongst the Quakers, who now include Sarah in their numbers.

The historical details truly make this series shine. The printing presses, the Quakers’ struggles with the king, the searcher with her bell, the scold’s bridle, the societal upheaval after both the plague, and then the fire – all provide a setting that becomes another character in the tale. I enjoy experiencing the surroundings through Lucy’s eyes as she tracks down the villain.

Rebecca Henderson Palmer THE SILVERED HEART Katherine Clements, Headline Review, 2015, £14.99, pb, 440pp, 9781472204240 The Silvered Heart is Katherine Clements’ followup to her critically lauded debut, The Crimson Ribbon. With this new story she returns to the Civil War era, using a real person as a springboard for her storytelling. This is the fictionalised account of Lady Katherine Ferrers, a 17th-century heiress and legendary highwaywoman who lost her land during Cromwell’s rule and was rumoured to have become a highwaywoman in order to survive.

Clements makes the legend her own, bringing the “wicked lady” of folktale to vivid life as a real and sympathetic character as we follow her from childhood, with her mother’s untimely demise, to her own very young and unhappy marriage, and finally to finding friendship, love, and happiness.

The research is impeccable and the storytelling first-rate. You feel the hunger of Lady Katherine and her faithful retainers through the lean years and smell the dirt and filth of the age. The book brilliantly highlights the dangerous times in which she lived, when even a king could be put on trial, as we watch the political fortunes of those around her shift with the wind and her husband’s often feeble attempts to switch allegiance and save his neck. There is a wonderful portrayal of the friendship between Lady Katherine and her lady’s maid, Rachel, and the close bonds that can be formed between women while their destinies are decided by the men around them. This is powerful historical fiction at its best.

Lisa Redmond TO A STRANGE SOMEWHERE FLED 17th Century

D. M. Denton, All Things That Matter Press, 2015, $16.99, pb, 180pp, 978990715863 Oxfordshire, England, 1682: Donatella journeys from Genoa to a small English village, joining her Italian mother and English sea captain father in a strange land. Donatella’s move is predicated by the death of composer Alessandro Stradella; their relationship was detailed in Denton’s previous novel, A House Near Luccoli. In this second book, Donatella mourns her loss, while beginning to accustom herself to this new world. Her struggles with the English language mirror her struggles to adapt to her new life while still grieving her old one.

She meets Roger North, a complex and fascinating neighbor, as well as Henry Purcell and others, while she slowly finds her footing.

Music and passionate lyricism inform this book.

Denton’s style of writing is poetic and musical itself, perhaps at times challenging to readers used to a more straightforward narrative; the book lingers in the mind like some elusive and beautiful tune heard through open windows on a summer’s day.

At times I felt the story might have been easier to follow had I read the earlier volume, but eventually things became clear.

Denton has done a great deal of research, and the book includes many real characters— Henry Purcell, Roger North and his brother Sir Francis, and Celia Fiennes, the “fine lady upon a white horse” of nursery rhyme fame. Denton’s deep understanding and love for the music and musicians of this era are evident on every page and transport the reader. Lovers of poetry and music will enjoy this excursion to Baroque England, as I did.

Susan McDuffie JADE DRAGON MOUNTAIN Elsa Hart, Minotaur, 2015, $25.99/C$29.95, hb, 321pp, 9781250072320 In this classic “who done it” set in 17th-century China, a librarian, Li Du, is exiled by the Emperor for political reasons. Wandering far from Beijing, Li comes upon the town where his cousin, Tulishan, is magistrate, and stops to pay his respects – but the Emperor is coming for a solar eclipse in six days, so Li must be gone by then.

Priests, traders, and astronomers in town for the eclipse speak freely to Li, a learned man. Hanza, a Turk, befriends Li, but his tales seem to contain warnings. Sir Nicholas Gray, who represents the East India Company, guards a clockwork model of the solar system that predicts the time of the eclipse, a very strange gift for the Emperor. The Jesuits have many skills, some hidden, and make no secret of their rivalry with the Dominicans for influence. Li’s cousin Tulishan is ambitious. He desperately wants a job in Beijing, and his consort, Lady Chen, is scheming to go with him. Li listens to all carefully.

When a Jesuit priest is found poisoned, Tulishan wants to drop the matter before the Emperor arrives. But Li, who suspects one of his new acquaintances has a motive for murder, insists that justice be done. When Li turns investigator, an attempt is made on his life. Quick thinking keeps Li alive to see the sun return – and to stop another murder.

The plot recaps are unnecessary, and the easily obtained confessions (a la Perry Mason)

stretch credulity. A subplot would relieve the rather relentless pace. Hart’s characters are very convincing, however, and the ending is truly explosive. If Jade Dragon Mountain has the sequel it deserves, Li Du will have an exciting back story.

Jeanne Greene TIDEWATER Libbie Hawker, Lake Union, 2015, $14.95, pb, 621pp, 9781477829929 Jamestown, Virginia Colony, 1607. This long novel is a retelling of the Pocahontas and John Smith story. Opening with Pocahontas as a child, and John Smith newly arrived in the colony with the Virginia Company, it shows the misery endured by colonists who did not know how to survive in the New World. The “Real People,” on the other hand, live a comfortable life in tune with nature. They are led by Pocahontas’s father, the chief Powhatan, who has formed an empire of several tribes.

All attempts at understanding between the colonists and the Real People seem to end in heartbreak and tragedy—mostly for the colonists.

Still, more and more of them come, and learn to survive and thrive by stealing the Real People’s food, by violence, and by treachery.

As Powhatan leads his people further into the forest, other voices are raised in discussion of what to do. There is Powhatan’s brother, Opechancanough, and the shaman, Utta-matomakkin. One tribe sides with the English, selling Pocahontas into captivity. She feels this is a punishment for her earlier help to the English. She loves her husband, Kocoum, but after his death marries John Rolfe.

This story is generally well known, although told here with great historical detail. The sumptuous descriptions of life among the Real People are engrossing—the descriptions of Jamestown’s squalor, less so. The story weakens with Pocahontas’s relationship to John Rolfe. There is little emotion or detail to make their love come to life. Pocahontas’s fictional marriage to Kocoum seems more authentic than her real one to Rolfe.

A historical note indicates two factual inaccuracies, and includes a welcome pronunciation guide. Fans of Virginia colonial history should try this vibrant, well-written novel.

Elizabeth Knowles ENCHANTRESS OF PARIS Marci Jefferson, Thomas Dunne, 2015, $25.99/ C$29.99, hb, 336pp, 9781250057099 In 17th-century France, during the early reign of King Louis XIV, one of Cardinal Mazarin’s seven nieces captured the young king’s heart. Marie Mancini, born under an evil star, was the least likely candidate for a companion – and indeed, her older sister, Olympia, had made a conquest of the king first. The noted intellectual of the Mazarinettes, Marie intrigued Louis with her love of learning and poetry, ideas for bettering the country, and her grasp of the current political situation. Cardinal Mazarin and the Queen Mother, however, were not thrilled with the king’s attachment and planned to exile Marie before marrying Louis to Maria Theresa of Spain.

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to break free. Marie detests her uncle’s handling of Louis’s affairs and plots His Eminence’s downfall, even if it means delving into the dark arts. When she finds a letter with proof of the Cardinal’s and Queen Mother’s duplicity, it seems her hard-won bid for position is over – but at what cost for France?

Engrossing and witty, this account of the fascinating Mancini sisters will hold the reader’s attention with exceptional historical detail and convincing characters. Though Louis is irritatingly weak, and painfully blind in regards to his mentors, there is a theme of coming into one’s own and a glimpse of the events that made Louis XIV into the king he would become. This beautifully written narrative is heartily recommended for lovers of royalty and biographical novels, and will not disappoint those looking for a politically charged, lightly romantic tale.

Arleigh Johnson A WANT OF KINDNESS Joanne Limburg, Atlantic, 2015, £14.99, hb, 464pp, 9781782394850 Joanne Limburg considers that Queen Anne has been neglected by novelists in comparison with other English and British monarchs (Anne was the first English monarch to become British), and A Want of Kindness is her bid to remedy this.

She calls her work a ‘collage’. It intersperses short pieces of narrative in modern English in modern typeface with pieces of 17th-century text in an approximation to 17th-century type. Most of the latter are actual letters written by Anne or texts she would have read.

The story follows the life of Anne from the age of ten until her late forties, just before she became queen in 1702. I think Limburg wants us to sympathise with Anne; she certainly suffered a great deal. By 1702 she had had 18 pregnancies, but only three children survived more than a few days, and none were still alive when she became queen. For all her efforts she was the last monarch of her dynasty.

None the less, I found Anne difficult to like.

She complains constantly of the ‘lack of kindness’ of her father ( James II), her sister (Mary), and her brother-in-law (William III), while showing a great lack of kindness herself. Even her prayers are full of complaints about her family. Her main activities, except when indisposed, are playing cards and intriguing to get an increase in her personal allowance.

Fortunately for Britain, she was totally dependent on her confidante, Sarah Churchill, who effectively became queen in 1702 and went on to appoint her husband as Britain’s greatest military commander.

Edward James

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THE SEEKER S.G. MacLean, Quercus, 2015, £13.99, pb, 398pp, 9781784292232 Oliver Cromwell’s London in 1654 is a place of distrust, censorship, spies and murder. Covert royalists plot to return the son of the executed king to the throne and to overthrow Cromwell’s government. The Protectorate has become steeped in corruption and vanity, losing sight of its egalitarian vision, as Cromwell insists on being 24 | Reviews |

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called His Highness, luxuriates in the royal palaces, and considers expanding into a Caribbean empire. One of Cromwell’s officers is stabbed to death in Whitehall. The dissident lawyer Elias Ellingworth is found standing over the body, knife in hand, and taken to the Tower. However, the victim’s wife is also covered in her husband’s blood and does not give a satisfactory account of her movements.

Damian Seeker is a feared enforcer in Cromwell’s employ, and like a relentless hound, he is on the trail of the murderer through London’s coffeehouses and seedy apothecary shops. Seeker is a compellingly tough, taciturn hero with a soft centre. The novel is brimful with vividly drawn other characters, too – the opium-addicted royalist wife of the murder victim, a Dutch royalist spy, the feisty sister of the dissident pamphleteer. Seeker stalks through London’s alleyways and palaces and through Oxford colleges, interrogating aristocrats, merchants, pedlars, preachers and crooks of the very worst calibre, intent on truth and justice.

The story twists, turns and grips. I read it avidly in a couple of sittings, constantly thinking I had fathomed the plot, only to find I was quite wrong.

S.G. MacLean has been compared to C.J. Sansom and Hilary Mantel, but she has an assured voice of her own, vividly evoking a good man’s effort to navigate an honest path through treacherous times.

An excellent read.

Tracey Warr CROW HOLLOW Michael Wallace, Lake Union, 2015, $14.95, pb, 335pp, 9781477828014 Crow Hollow is a settlement in 1676 where the settlers and Native Americans are walking a thin line between war and peace. A wealthy landowner, Sir Benjamin Cotton, is murdered during an Indian raid, and his toddler daughter, Mary, is carried away. His widow, Prudence, suffers greatly from her losses and writes an account of the raid, which is of great interest to James Bailey, an agent of the Crown sent to Boston to investigate the murder.

When James’s Indian companion dies mysteriously, Prudence convinces him that she can travel with him, as she is knowledgeable in the Nipmuk language. She is convinced that her daughter is still alive and vows to find her, against the wishes of her sister and her minister husband, who had taken her in following the tragedy. This unlikely pair sets off, facing many dangers from travel and those who wished them to cease their quest.

I found this story to be both compelling and an authentic representation of the period following the Indian Wars. The characters are well thought out, and the interactions between them are well done and kept me interested as to who had the most to gain by the murder of Sir Benjamin. The ongoing plotlines of finding little Mary alive and getting this mystery solved make this book a pageturner. I would recommend it to historical fiction readers.

Beth Turza

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THE PENNY HEART Martine Bailey, Hodder & Stoughton, 2015, £13.99, pb, 464pp, 9781444769852 Martine Bailey provides a traditional culinary recipe before each chapter. One caution, though: the ‘most effectual Hystericon for Women’ needs careful preparation, as too enthusiastic a dosage of henbane brings ‘convulsions and fatal sleep’.

Fortunately, there is more than enough interest in The Penny Heart to keep the reader from such experiments. It is 1792, and Grace Moore, a timid, artistically-talented spinster with a drunken and violent father, sees marriage as her only way out, although she thinks herself too unattractive.

However, the small fortune inherited from her grandmother attracts the Croxon family – needy, ambitious and unscrupulous – and they launch their attack using their handsome son, Michael.

Soon father Moore is pensioned off, and the nuptials are rushed forward. But on the wedding night, Michael is absent from his wife’s bed and for many nights thereafter.

Woven into this is the tale of Mary Jebb, pickpocket and swindler. Sentenced to death for substituting a forged pound note for a real one, she is reprieved and transported to Australia. She escapes, arrives back in England, changes her name, and hires herself out as a cook. Grace Croxon is delighted to take on the obliging ‘Peg Blissett’, who comes with glowing testimonials. By turns affectionate and duplicitous, loyal and murderous, Peg and Grace face love and betrayal – and cooking – together.

The Penny Heart is a good read. The heroine may seem a ninny, gullibly falling in with her husband’s base intentions, but considering the vulnerability of women of that day, and the problem in legally escaping from an unwise marriage, one feels for her in her struggles.

Peter Prince LAUREL Susan F. Craft, Heritage Beacon Fiction, 2015, $17.95, pb, 260pp, 9781941103913 Set in North Carolina in 1783, this multiracial family drama features a compelling group of characters, at the centre of which are Nicholas and Lilyan Xanthakos, a young married couple whose baby daughter, Laurel, has been kidnapped by white slavers. Circumstances surrounding the kidnapping lead to a lot of soul-searching and guilt on the part of everyone involved. From this fateful day, Lilyan’s world shatters: her contentment with her family life narrows to a pinpoint of light at the end of a long and frightening tunnel. The plot takes us on a 200-mile journey from the Blue Ridge Mountains to Charleston, onwards towards Baltimore, then Okracoke Island. But this isn’t just a search for a stolen child. The narrative is filled with character background, including one backstory which lands Lilyan in jail, where, in miserable circumstances, she aids others less fortunate than herself.

Laurel is a rapid page-turner, not because it’s light (far from it) but because it’s full of action and 17th Century — 18th Century

adventure, historical facts and fascinating tidbits, including an interesting glossary. Each chapter is aptly headed with a Cherokee legend or saying, a historical fact, or a biblical reference. Driving the narrative is the steadfast love between Nikki and Lilyan, which envelops them even when they are parted for long periods of time, and the narrative of their love is beautifully described, never feeling cliché. We see the world mostly through Lilyan’s eyes – the search, the new leads, the excitement and the disappointments. Her family has endured hardship and war; some, including Lilyan, have committed acts they aren’t proud of, but they are brought to life as flawed, fallible people and are easy to relate to. The motivational aspects of this novel fit perfectly in context.

Fiona Alison

he fervently prays for Pachacuti. Spanish conquistadores, and priests, and landlords – gone!

As unrest grows, Santiago helps to stir emotions, and pursues his dream of becoming a brujo – one who knows magic. Santiago does not despise all things Spanish: when Ana Alfaro’s fiancé is killed in a riot, Father Gregorio sends her to his hacienda for safety, putting her under Santiago’s personal care. Attraction between the two is inevitable.

Lori Eshleman, in her debut historical novel, Pachacuti, brings Ecuador to life in a vivid olio of history, intrigue, and cultures in flux. Multiple plots and locations, and a large cast of characters, require some sorting out, but Ms. Eshleman drew me along with her fluid writing and rich scenes.

Recommended.

Jo Ann Butler

CUCKOLD POINT Patrick Easter, Quercus, 2015, £19.99, hb, 392pp, 9781780877648 London, 1799. Left ashore by the Royal Navy, Tom Pascoe has made a new and successful life for himself in the Thames Marine Police, but he is also a man with tragedy in his past and a drinking problem. To add to his troubles, his much younger brother has come to live with him just as the Wapping office embarks on a difficult new case.

Pascoe and his crew have to race against a gang of violent thieves and two American agents for a shipment of silk that, according to the Foreign Office, hides a crucial secret dispatch.

This book, fourth in the Tom Pascoe series, has a great premise set against an unusual – and wonderfully described – riverside London.

Unfortunately, the story is not up to the atmospheric setting. More than twisting and turning, it drifts this way and that, as characters (even the much admired and feared hero) keep missing, failing to recognise or downright neglecting obvious clues, and when anyone gets anything right it is by coincidence – again and again until the abrupt and unsatisfying ending. A most frustrating read.

Chiara Prezzavento

THE PRETENDER’S LADY Alan Gold, Yucca, 2015, $24.99, hb, 376pp, 9781631580482 This book spans the second half of the 18th century, beginning in the 1740s, just as Bonnie Prince Charlie arrives in Scotland for the first time, ready to reclaim what he feels is his rightful throne.

Gold gives us several points of view, including those of Bonnie Prince Charlie, King George II, the Duke of Cumberland (the king’s second son), and Flora Macdonald, a staunch supporter of Bonnie Prince Charlie even though her beloved stepfather supports King George II. There are additional points of view as the book goes on, which are interesting in their own right; but since it’s Flora’s story that we are really engaged in, the other perspectives begin to take away from her tale rather than adding to it, and I began to wish for more from just her point of view.

I was not able to become absorbed in the story as I might have wished, partly because the historical detail sometimes felt like an interruption, and partly because some sentences were difficult to decipher, given their unnecessarily complicated syntax.

Overall, though, the book offers a rich, fascinating story, full of historical figures and their intersecting lives. We meet the politicians Benjamin Franklin and Patrick Henry; writers Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, and Samuel Richardson; philosopher David Hume; and economist Adam Smith. As I mentioned, though, it is Flora’s tale that is most compelling as we follow her through her encounters with Bonnie Prince Charlie, and her life as it continues both alongside and beyond him.

Amy Watkin

PACHACUTI: World Overturned Lori Eshleman, Bagwyn, 2015, $16.95, pb, 360pp, 9780866988063 It has been three centuries since Columbus arrived in the New World. Spaniards and Jesuits who followed in his wake, searching for gold and souls to Christianize, have nearly obliterated the Andean cultures. Pachacuti – the world overturned – ends one cycle of history and begins another. It has happened before in Andean legend: the world flamed by the sun, drowned in salt water, and ravaged by a rain of snakes and jaguars. In this cycle, Andeans are enslaved and devastated by diseases spread by their European overlords. They fervently hope for the next Pachacuti: revolution to sweep the Spaniards away.

Jesuit inquisitor Gregorio Moncada faces potential revolt, and an equally disturbing threat to his mission in Quito, Ecuador. Spain is deciding whether to eject the Jesuits, ending their oversight of the Spanish empire’s Catholics. Even if the Quichuans stay cowed, Father Gregorio may be cast from his South American home anyway.

Though Santiago Huamán manages Gregorio’s country hacienda, like most Quichuans, 18th Century

THE LAST CONFESSIONS OF THOMAS HAWKINS Antonia Hodgson, Hodder & Stoughton, 2015, £14.99, hb, 371pp, 9781444775457 The previous novel featuring Thomas Hawkins was The Devil in the Marshalsea, one of my books of the year in 2014. I could not wait to review this one, hoping it would be as good as the first. It isn’t.

It is even better. Thomas Hawkins is a respectable parson’s son who has gone to the dark side.

Previously imprisoned for debt, he is living in sin with Kitty Sparks and now becomes unwillingly embroiled into doing a secret job for the Queen.

The language is evocative and imaginative. One

character is described as ‘an old, ruined man, on the turn like spoiled milk, sour and sickening’. The novel is based on real events of the time, as discussed in the interesting notes at the end of the book.

Hodgson shows the seamy underbelly of Georgian London, and does for this era what C. J. Sansom and Rory Clements have done for Tudor times.

The seedy atmosphere permeates the book without being too overpowering. ‘Disgraceful things were happening in dark corners, half glimpsed in the fluttering candlelight.’ You could conceivably read this as a stand-alone, but, honestly, why bother when you can double the pleasure – and it really is a pleasure. I really hope Ms Hodgson writes another one in this series, and soon please!

Ann Northfield DEAREST ROGUE Elizabeth Hoyt, Forever, 2015, $8.00, pb, 239pp, 9781455586356 Lady Phoebe Batten wants to explore life, even if she falls, but her brother cages her like a bird because she’s blind. Captain James Trevillion, an ex-dragoon, loves her in silence, protecting but never stifling her. He never expects footpads to kidnap her on London’s reputable Bond Street in 1774, but despite his crippled leg, he rescues her.

Perhaps because of her blindness, she sees past his lameness and wants to explore their relationship further. But when a second kidnapping attempt nearly succeeds, he blames his injury and resigns as her bodyguard.

What nefarious plans does the kidnapper have for the sister of the most powerful duke in England?

Trevillion hunts for the true mastermind, who lurks in the shadows, manipulating others to do his bidding, because he loves Phoebe even though they can’t be together.

Hoyt weaves an intricate tale that demonstrates how those of us with sight can still be blind. While the mystery fades in the middle and, at times, seems a bit forced, the skillfully-drawn protagonists come to life and allow readers to experience their heartwarming story as love blossoms.

Cindy Vallar FEZZIWIG: A Life Danny Kuhn, Knox Robinson, 2015, £19.99/$27.99, hb, 280pp, 9781910282465 Fezziwig is a character in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, the kindly businessman to whom Ebenezer Scrooge is apprenticed as a young man.

Fezziwig: A Life is an imagined memoir by William Fezziwig, moving from his humble beginnings in rural Lincolnshire to his life as a prosperous London merchant. In a series of adventures, and quite a few lucky escapes, he builds up his business in England and America, frequents the newly established London coffeehouses and befriends many of the major figures of the 18th century.

This was a time of great upheaval, and the story covers a whole range of subjects, from social injustice to scientific discovery, from political dissent to the American War of Independence.

It is a thoroughly researched and ambitious trawl through 18th century London, using language and events to evoke a feeling of the age. However, as a reader, I would have preferred a narrower scope and more depth of description and characterisation.

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his wife is sketchy, and we never learn very much about her personality or appearance. Given the class preoccupations of 18th-century England, I was also curious as to why his future father-in-law did not make pointed enquiries about his family background. But anyone with an interest in the period, or who enjoys a classic rags-to-riches tale, will find plenty in this book to satisfy them.

Karen Warren DEATH IN SALEM Eleanor Kuhns, Minotaur, 2015, $26.99/C$31.50, hb, 336pp, 9781250067029 This is the fourth in a series featuring 18th century traveling weaver Will Rees. During his travels, Will stops in Salem, Massachusetts to buy his pregnant wife some luxury fabric that he cannot weave himself. Stopping for the funeral procession of the invalid wife of a wealthy merchant, he meets up with a friend from the Revolutionary War, who is an undertaker. The next day on his way home to Maine, his friend, Twig, catches up with him to say that the woman’s husband has been murdered.

Twig’s girlfriend, who is the family’s slave, has been arrested. Knowing that Will has solved other murders, he begs him to come back and investigate.

I was disappointed in this book. I had to force myself to finish it, which is surprising for a mystery.

I found Will to be a rather clumsy detective and couldn’t imagine how he had managed to solve other mysteries. Without spoiling the plot, so many dramatic happenings within one family strained believability. I originally was interested in it for the weaving, but was disappointed there also, since there was not much information on historical weaving practices. This is the only volume in the series I have read, and I won’t bother with the others.

Jane Kessler THE APOTHECARY’S WIDOW Diane Scott Lewis, Books We Love, 2015, $17.95, pb, 305pp, 9781771453677 The Apothecary’s Widow is set in Truro, Cornwall. It is 1791 and England is at war with the American colonies. With his fiscal affairs in turmoil, Squire Branek Pentreath is forced to take action: reduce his miners’ wages, increase rents, lay off the manor staff and sell the family Chippendale.

Added to his woes is the sudden death of his overly pious and cold wife, from whom he is estranged, along with the doctor’s implication that Branek has poisoned her for his own ends. Jenna Rosedew, a widow who runs the apothecary’s shop, is also a suspect according to the belligerent investigating constable, who seems determined to see them both hang. Jenna was responsible for mixing the potions ordered by the physician during Lady Pentreath’s illness, but she swears they were never tampered with. Branek and Jenna fall quickly into an affair, but they are in danger from two sides. He is highborn; she a commoner… and their tryst will look to others as another reason to have wanted the wife out of the way.

This is a lighthearted, entertaining story, a bit short on action, which at times made it slow-going.

A mystery with small pinches of history, it will certainly satisfy lovers of the genre who want a few hours of escape.

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THE SECRETS OF CASANOVA Greg Michaels, Booktrope, 2013, $19.95, pb, 328pp, 9781620151785 In 1755 Jacques Casanova, exiled from Venice, visits his brother in Paris and comes into possession of a mysterious scroll. Hoping it will provide him with the wealth he needs to fulfill his dream of returning to Venice, Casanova sets off across Europe in search of treasure.

The cover of this novel proclaims it a mystery, but The Secrets of Casanova is more of a Dan Brownstyle suspense novel crossed with a swashbuckling adventure tale than a novel written for mystery readers. The scroll doesn’t come into view until nearly halfway through the book, and the plotting is too loose and episodic to support the puzzle at the heart of the tale.

I felt that the author had done a great deal of research into Casanova and his times, and perhaps that’s why I found it hard to like Casanova himself.

The portrait Michaels paints has realistic feet of clay – Casanova is presented as a man with many faults and weaknesses, a profligate adventurer prone to episodes of instability. The lover, philosopher, and scholar is hinted at but never truly realized on the page. The novel is also hampered by a florid style of writing that I found unappealing.

Jane Steen THE FLIGHT OF SARAH BATTLE Alix Nathan, Parthian, 2015, £8.99, pb, 273pp, 9781910409602 Sarah Battle grows up amid the chaos of her father’s coffeehouse in late 18th-century London where, inspired by the French Revolution, political debates about the rights of the common man (and woman) are rife.

Obliged to serve behind the counter after the death of her mother, Sarah dreams of something greater than her narrow life and her father’s cynicism. But is the answer to her longings James Wintrige, Customs Office clerk and member of the Corresponding Society, who dazzles her with liberal rhetoric? Or is it printer and bookseller Thomas Cranch, who dreams of a freer and fairer society in America?

It was always going to be tough for a debut novelist to live up to the positive review from Hilary Mantel that graces the front cover of this novel, but by and large Alix Nathan succeeds. Her characters are quirky without descending into stereotypes, and her research is blended with her plot, bringing the period vividly to life.

For me, however, the pace flags a little towards the end. I’m not wholly opposed to open-ended novels – I thoroughly enjoyed James Long’s The Balloonist, for instance – but I can’t help feeling that this fairly short book would have ended more satisfactorily if just one more chapter had been added to bring the story to a natural pause (while still leaving the way open for a sequel), instead of being left literally hanging in mid-air.

One minor point. Is it really necessary to use a word as modern as “unfazed” when there are plenty of more neutral words (such as unruffled or unperturbed) that could be used instead? That said, I am looking forward to reading more of Sarah’s adventures in the future. A writer to watch out for.

Jasmina Svenne

THE FRENCH PRIZE James L. Nelson, St. Martin’s, 2015, $26.99, hb, 315pp, 9781250046611 A 19-year-old American captain sails his merchant vessel for Barbados in 1797. At that time America was not at war with France, but England was. That’s important. A French vessel, better gunned, better manned, and better sailed, attacks the young captain’s ship. Miraculously, the American vessel survives, but it’s not over yet.

The second half of this novel is filled with action.

The ending is very satisfying, but you, the reader, will have to endure some difficult scenes in order to get there. There’s a great deal of back story – in fact, one after another, and multiple flashbacks. There’s even back story within flashbacks. The author describes the family background of all the major characters, presumably because that’s important to the plot, and there is, indeed, much emphasis on personalities, even among the crew of the French ship, but it strains the reader to follow the story in the beginning.

There’s the obligatory storm at sea, with its attendant descriptions of the black sky and the gray sea and the waves. Some semblance of character development occurs as the dandy passenger struggles to help secure a gun in a dangerous wind.

It would have been better had the author employed that action-oriented technique more often instead of telling the reader the personality traits of the actors, as in “aloofness was not his nature” or he “harbored a natural defensiveness,” or “he was a man who commanded attention.”

In fairness to the author, there are many snippets of excellent writing. “Up, up into the wind, Abigale turned.” “The ship carried the officer right into the path of the bullet.” There are descriptions of threedimensional space and movement aboard a ship in battle. If you can make it through the back story and the author-injected personality descriptions, you’ll find it a spectacular swashbuckler.

Kevin Montgomery THE EXCHANGE OF PRINCESSES Chantal Thomas, Other Press, 2015, $16.95, pb, 336pp, 9781590517024 French historian Chantal Thomas returns to fiction in The Exchange of Princesses, a sensitive and tragic novel about two child marriages. The author’s lavish prose and penetrating insights into the characters remind the reader that fiction can be a high art. Through the conniving of the Regent, the Duc d’Orléans, eleven-year-old Louis XV of France is betrothed to the four-year-old Spanish Infanta. The Infanta’s older brother, the teenaged Prince of the Asturias, is betrothed to Orléans’ twelve-year-old daughter, Mademoiselle de Montpensier. The two princesses are exchanged at the border, and each goes on to complete their childhoods in a foreign land.

We see how too often at royal courts the innocence of children was not spared, all depending on the vigilance of whoever was in charge. The little Infanta-Queen is cared for by the prudent Madame de Ventadour, the royal governess who saved the life of Louis XV when he was an infant.

The three other children, Louis XV and the Prince and Princess of the Asturias, are older and not attended to so diligently. They encounter problems that they do not have the emotional maturity to 18th Century

handle. We are shown the enormous capacity for emotional and physical damage involved in such child “marriages,” which in the end benefit neither the countries nor the individuals.

Elena Maria Vidal

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LANDFALLS Naomi J. Williams, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015, $26.00/C$29.99, hb, 311pp, 9780374183158 / Little, Brown, 2015, £14.99, hb, 336pp, 9781408705766 To say that this debut novel is thoroughly delightful may sound too dismissive of what is a deeply researched and ingeniously told story, but there it is: it’s a joy to read. The book is a reimagining of the Lapérouse expedition, which set sail from France in 1785 on an ambitious scientific voyage to explore beyond the boundaries of the known world, and was not heard from again after it departed Botany Bay in 1788. Virtually none of the story takes place while the two ships of the expedition—the Boussole and the Astrolabe—are underway, since it is in fact about the landfalls that the voyage makes. The story is told chronologically, starting with the outfitting of the voyage’s state-ofthe-art navigational equipment in England, and moving forward on the journey to Chile, Alaska, Macao, Russia, and beyond.

Differences in geography aside, what gives this story its unique appeal is that each chapter is told from a different person’s point of view.

Various members of the expedition, their relatives, people they meet, even some whom they don’t, are all represented here, sometimes in the first person, sometimes in the third, sometimes even as letters or reports. Each one is believable and fully rendered, in equal measures to dramatic, comedic, or tragic effect. The language Williams uses for each of her characters is immediately accessible, even modern, and yet it feels genuine to the time, place, and person.

A significant historical record exists of this voyage that never returned, and it’s clear that Williams used much of it. This novel must have been a vast undertaking, but the reader sees none of that heavy lifting. Instead Williams simply weaves in the details that allow her to take her readers around the world on a wondrous journey of discovery.

Jennifer Bort Yacovissi

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TO WIN HER FAVOR: A Belle Meade Plantation Novel Tamera Alexander, Zondervan, 2015, $15.99, pb, 352pp, 9780310291077 With To Win Her Favor, Tamera Alexander introduces us to new characters in the familiar setting of Belle Meade, easily allowing the novel to be read as a stand-alone. The main protagonists 18th Century — 19th Century

are Cullen McGrath and Maggie Linden, strangers forced to work together to save Maggie’s homestead of Linden Downs in Tennessee in 1869. Maggie no longer has an easy life at the time Irishman Cullen McGrath befriends her ailing father. Although Cullen, an Irish immigrant, is considered an outsider, Mr. Linden can see Cullen’s potential and solicits an intriguing contract with him: “Marry my daughter and you can have Linden Downs.”

Maggie has no wish to marry anyone, let alone a lazy Irishman, but she sees the wisdom in her father’s wishes if she wants to save her home. With slavery and racist attitudes still a painful product of the South’s way of life, Linden Downs barely has a fighting chance to survive once the crooked leaders of the town set their sights on the property. Cullen already has a target on his back as an immigrant, and his new wife has ideas of horse racing that Cullen cannot sanction for very personal reasons.

The story revolves around the blooming relationship between the newly married couple and their slow-to-ignite romance due to their mistrust of each other, but romance readers will appreciate the building tension. The novel highlights the struggles for Cullen and Maggie in overcoming the town’s prejudices as suspense and intrigue accentuate the story.

Cullen stands out as an easy hero to like, though Maggie’s sensitivity borders on selfishness as she focuses on entering her horse in Nashville’s race.

The quiet undertones of a Christian message of seeking redemption while keeping the faith and surrendering to God’s will should easily satisfy Tamera Alexander’s growing fan base.

Marie Burton HOUSE OF THIEVES Charles Belfoure, Sourcebooks Landmark, 2015, $25.99, hb, 432pp, 9781492617891 John Cross is a successful architect working in New York in 1886. He is married, although not happily, and has three children the eldest of whom, George, has a gambling problem. George is in debt to crime boss James T. Kent, a Princeton man with rich tastes and a ruthless approach to his business.

Kent threatens to kill George unless John uses his knowledge of the buildings of Manhattan to help Kent’s Gents commit a series of daring robberies.

A severed head in his icebox quickly convinces John he has no choice but to work with Kent.

Splendid in its evocation of 19th-century Manhattan, House of Thieves captures the highs and lows of New York life. John Cross finds he is adept at identifying targets for Kent and they embark on a series of dramatic robberies. Cross’ wife, meanwhile, is preparing their daughter Julia for her debut, but Julia is more interested in adventures to the dog-fighting dens of the Tenderloin than choosing gowns and taking tea at the Astor’s brownstone mansion on Fifth Avenue.

Add schoolboy Charlie to the mix—the youngest of the Cross children—who tells his parents he is visiting museums when he’s really wrangling rats or selling newspapers with his friend from the Five Points, and it becomes clear that Belfoure’s novel is aptly titled.

This is a page-turning novel, packed with incident, making up for what it lacks in emotional depth and characterization. Lively period detail

and its crime-caper feel make this an enjoyable read.

Kate Braithwaite

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THE INFIDEL STAIN M.J. Carter, Fig Tree, 2015, £14.99, hb, 355pp, 9780241146255 1841: Captain William Avery and Blake have separately returned to England after their Indian adventures, which were related in The Strangler Vine. Reunited in London, they are hired by an aristocratic philanthropist to investigate a series of gruesome murders mysteriously ignored by the new Metropolitan Police Force. The first three victims, publishers of cheap pornography, had been 1830s political reformers; such radicals with atheist and republican beliefs were called “infidels” and condemned as dangerous revolutionaries. As Avery and Blake probe into London’s underworld, they find connections linking the victims to respected politicians and the rising Chartist movement.

Their investigations take them from appalling slums to a grim prison and on to brothels and Mayfair. Further murders and blackmail enrich a convoluted and gripping plot.

Avery and Blake are excellent characters.

M. J. Carter cleverly plays Avery, the Devon landowner, more muscle than brain, against the street-wise cynicism of Blake, a product of London’s vicious rookeries. If Avery’s naivety is occasionally overdone, it sharpens the gulf between his conservative opinions and Blake’s political reformism. Influenced by the Tory press, Avery dismisses the Anti-Corn-Law Leaguers and the Chartists as working-class agitators. However, Blake brings him into contact with ordinary people, especially vulnerable children, struggling to survive in wretched conditions, and gradually Avery’s understanding grows.

But the novel’s real hero is 1841 London.

Carter’s descriptions of the filthy, dangerous streets, the hovels and workshops are superb. Her lesser characters add to the rich period picture: a girl watercress-seller; Henry Mayhew, the chronicler of London’s poor; the founders of Punch and other ink-stained pioneers of a free press. The combination of a strong plot and the vivid social picture makes this a most satisfactory read. Highly recommended.

Lynn Guest BLESSING Lyn Cote, Tyndale, 2015, $14.99, pb, 576pp, 9781414375618 Blessing is the tale of two unlikely allies in preCivil War Cincinnati, but that’s not where the story begins. When we first meet Blessing Brightman, a widowed Quaker hiding more than one secret, and Gerard Ramsay, the disowned playboy son of a wealthy Boston banker, neither has any idea that their paths crossing will change both their lives. He’s looking to build his personal fortune and annoy his father, while she is intent on saving HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Reviews | 27

the world, one disgraced woman, runaway slave, and orphan at a time, to atone for her previous “sins.” Though they try to deny their mismatched attraction, it soon becomes clear they will need one another if they are to fight the ills of society and survive the dangers of their racially divided city.

Cote does a wonderful job shedding light on the workings of the Underground Railroad and how the people who risked their lives to hide runaway slaves concealed their work from the general public. Her depiction of a city bubbling with racial tension brings to mind the modern-day struggles in Baltimore and Ferguson. However, that was not enough to make this story stand out. In the beginning of the story, Blessing and Gerard are quite manipulative, purposefully trying to outdo one another in their own private quests. Cote deserves credit that the characters grow and change over the course of the book, although this feels a little forced. This, combined with slow pacing and a predictable plot, contribute to the novel not shining as much as it could.

Nicole Evelina

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THE LAST MIDWIFE Sandra Dallas, St. Martin’s, 2015, $25.99, hb, 336pp, 9781250074461 Gracy Brookens has delivered hundreds, if not thousands, of babies over her decades as a midwife. However, modern times are coming to Colorado’s mountains in 1880, and a doctor has taken up residence in the mining town of Swandyke.

Gracy, feeling the weight of decades, is wondering whether it’s time for her to retire, even though she’s the last midwife in the region, and doesn’t believe that women will confide in the inexperienced Little Dickie – I mean, Dr. Richard Erickson.

Then, Gracy is accused of murdering a newborn infant in revenge for her husband’s firing from his job at the gold mine. Gracy has heard more than her share of childbirth confessions, and some truths just can’t stay hidden from experienced eyes, so she knows that there’s a dilly of a cover-up behind the little boy’s birth – and death. Revealing the truth could save her from jail or the gallows, but Gracy has never betrayed a confidence.

Secrets and suspicions abound in Swandyke, and Sandra Dallas does a terrific job of sorting them out in The Last Midwife, saving the best twist for last. Ms. Dallas is no stranger to the New York Times best seller list, and The Last Midwife may well take her there again. It’s fast-paced and clearly told; the reader becomes part of Gracy’s world. I loved this story, and it is highly recommended.

Jo Ann Butler SOPHIE AND THE SIBYL: A Victorian Romance Patricia Duncker, Bloomsbury, 2015, $26.00/ C$30.00, hb, 304pp, 9781632860644 / Bloomsbury, 2015, £12.99, pb, 304pp, 9781408860533 28 | Reviews |

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George Eliot is one of the top five people in history I’d most like to meet, so naturally I was drawn to Duncker’s fictional reimagining of Eliot’s life and milieu. The Sibyl of Duncker’s title is Eliot herself. Sophie is the young Countess von Hahn, love interest of Max Duncker, brother of Eliot’s publisher. The plot is told mainly through Max’s point of view, but with many narrative digressions.

Even though Max and Sophie are ostensibly the protagonists, and their courtship is central to the plot, neither is sufficiently strong to carry the novel.

Fortunately, it becomes clear early on that the Sibyl and the narrator (a deliberate feminist foil to John Fowles’s narrator in The French Lieutenant’s Woman) are the real heavyweights in the narrative, and through them Max and Sophie are illuminated and transformed.

Duncker blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality, not only the historical reality in which the real Eliot lived, but also the fictional reality of Duncker’s characters, some of whom exist as the inspiration for Eliot’s novels. Essentially, Duncker creates a self-conscious, fictional hall of mirrors that is much more confusing to explain than it is to read! Fowles’s memorable line from The French Lieutenant’s Woman, “Fiction is woven into all,” could be Duncker’s manifesto also.

As in Eliot’s novels, science, philosophy, and religion are central. The paradox of Eliot’s unconventional life – she lived with the married George Henry Lewes for more than twenty years – is compared to the conventional women in her novels.

Readers who prefer to keep their disbelief firmly suspended may dislike the intrusive narrator, but those who enjoy the playfulness of postmodern conventions will love the literary humor. A mustread for fans of George Eliot and lovers of literary fiction.

Clarissa Harwood KILLER OF WITCHES W. Michael Farmer, Five Star, 2015, $25.95, hb, 346pp, 9781432831226 Killer of Witches begins in November 1865, when hundreds of Mescalero Apache disappear from the New Mexico concentration camp where they’re guarded by “blue coats.” The book’s narrator, just five when the story begins, escapes with his parents. White men—Indah—are invading the desert lands of New Mexico and Arizona, coming in undefeatable numbers, but there’s always another canyon to slip away into. Author Farmer was smart to begin his book with an episode based on this true event: it’s an exciting beginning for the story of the boy growing to manhood, learning how to be a warrior, a hunter, and, eventually, a killer of witches.

This book is a curiosity. Most historical novels are recognizably modern stories set in past eras.

Their heroes and heroines laugh at the same things we laugh at, for instance. We could mostly sit down and relate to the characters in most of the books we love. Killer of Witches, on the other hand, reads like something written not only about the 19th century, but written in the 19th century. The story—its sensibilities, its illustrations, and the style of writing—feels as though it comes out of a different time, reminding me of the old-fashioned books from my father’s and grandparents’ childhoods that

I can’t bear to get rid of.

Farmer’s respect for the Apache people and his love of language comes through, and he’s a good storyteller. I’d recommend the book to readers who enjoy old-fashioned Westerns and who are curious about the Apache people. This is a good yarn.

Kristen Hannum THE FATAL FLAME Lyndsay Faye, Putnam, 2015, $26.95, hb, 464pp, 9780399169489 / Headline Review, 2015, £19.99, hb, 448pp, 9781472217370 Manhattan, 1848: Copper Timothy Wilde hates fires. His parents died in one, and a second conflagration, in 1845, scarred his face and burned his life savings to ashes. So when Tammany Hall alderman and tycoon Robert Symmes consults Wilde about threatening letters received from an incendiary, Timothy reluctantly investigates.

Wilde’s search leads him to Dunla Duffy, a “simple” girl who speaks in enigmatic riddles of witches and angels, and to Sally Woods, a trouserclad advocate of rights for women. Sally had previously worked for Symmes, slept with him, and instigated a strike against working conditions in his garment factory. Now she sends letters threatening arson. A tenement burns to the ground, and lives are lost. Wilde’s investigation grows far more complicated when his brother challenges the corrupt Symmes in the upcoming election.

Meanwhile the elusive Mercy Underhill returns unexpectedly from London, and sends Timothy’s personal life into turmoil.

The Fatal Flame, the third novel in Lyndsay Faye’s Gotham trilogy, is a thrilling, careening ride through 19th-century Manhattan. Faye’s vivid descriptions and her use of “flash” dialect immerse the reader in the gritty underbelly of a teeming metropolis populated by a cast that includes starving immigrant seamstresses, independent Bowery girls, ambitious newsboys, and Tammany Hall politicos. Neither Timothy and nor any of the other fully realized characters in this novel are presented with easy choices but, as Timothy concludes, “it’s the fraction we were dealt.”

Recommended.

Susan McDuffie THE GREY RAIDER John Flanagan, Bantam Australia, 2015, A$32.99, pb, 512pp, 9780857986504 In 1863, Confederate commerce raider Manassas, under the command of Captain Pelle, sails the seven seas chasing and sinking any merchant vessel flying the Stars and Stripes. When her tally reaches sixty-two, Abraham Lincoln is furious and orders Captain Stacy of USS Oswego to pursue CSS Manassas and destroy her.

A thrilling sea-going game of cat-and-mouse is on.

Pelle has precarious health and a ship badly in need of repair, but he is determined to do his duty until the bitter end, while the irascible Stacy has a personal score to settle from the time both men served together during the Mexican War of 1847. Meanwhile, professional gambler and Confederate spy, Kitty Anson, heads for Europe and tries to shake off the Pinkerton man on her trail. In Antwerp, she discovers something unique about the Oswego and plans on how she can warn Manassas.

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Readers familiar with the maritime history of the American Civil War will recognize that this is unashamedly based on the battle between CSS Alabama and USS Kearsage, that the two main protagonists even have physical echoes of the real Captains Semmes and Winslow, plus there is a similar final showdown off Cherbourg. The reasons the author chose to fictionalize the event are explained in his concluding notes.

Naval enthusiasts will appreciate the authenticity and attention to detail. The two flawed captains are convincingly portrayed, and there are comedic aspects to other characters such as the Yankee chargé d’affaires with his trophy wife and the self-important French admiral. Kitty is formulaic, the token glamorous female who causes minor diversions and disruptions but can’t hope to change the course of this particular history.

A grand adventure yarn recommended for anyone interested in the lesser-known maritime and international aspects of the Civil War. Marina Maxwell KEANE’S CHARGE Iain Gale, Heron, 2015, £16.99, hb, 294pp, 9781848664807 Keane’s Charge is the latest instalment of Iain Gale’s series set within the Napoleonic era. The previous books, Keane’s Company and Keane’s Challenge, have been well received, earning praise from the Napoleonic novelist master, Bernard Cornwell. This is my first foray into the writings of Iain Gale, but with the book set firmly in my favourite era, I had high hopes.

The main protagonist, James Keane, is a former man of the ranks who now serves the Crown and Wellington by gathering information on those formidable French. The story line is well balanced, with the author splashing just enough historical fact across the pages to keep even the nerdish of us happy. The book combines an imaginative storyline with well thought-out characters that are not out of place in the book or era. The author is skilled in portraying the differing scenes, but excels in the action sequences.

Overall, the book was a worthy read. If I had any issues, it would be the similarities to Cornwell’s Sharpe series. Sharpe and Keane as characters are men that could wear the same cloak.

If coupled with the similar writing style between Gale and Cornwell, it can leave the reader a little disappointed. Not because the book is not an excellent read, but more because I didn’t feel I had heard a new voice within historical fiction. The second issue is very minor; I don’t think the book really holds up as a standalone novel. To gain the most enjoyment from this book, the previous two must be read. Despite, these two minor issues I do feel compelled to visit the earlier books in the series.

Robert Southworth HIGH RIDER Bill Gallaher, TouchWood Editions, 2015, $15.95/ C$15.95, pb, 263pp, 9781771511148 It is 1867, and former slave John Ware can now leave Georgetown, South Carolina, a free man.

Hoping for a decent future anywhere other than South Carolina or the Deep South, John gathers his belongings and begins his long 1,000-mile walk 19th Century

to Texas. He has heard of ranches that raise horses and cattle. Eventually he arrives at the Flint Springs Cattle Company, a small ranch owned by Amos and Ellie Cole, along with their only son, Emmett.

John has a natural affinity for horses and impresses Amos by riding a bucking horse that has never been ridden before. Color-blind, Amos Cole hires John, where he stays until 1878. When he learns of a cattle drive, he decides to become a cattle drover and heads north to Ogallala, Nebraska.

Eventually, John travels farther north to Alberta, Canada, where he buys land, marries and settles down, earning a reputation and the respect as a cowboy worth his salt, one who can ride with the best white cowboys.

This novel is based on the true account of exslave John Ware, who meets with discrimination wherever he travels. Because of his positive attitude and love for life, he is able to convince those he meets that he is capable of living a decent life as his own boss. The author takes liberties with filling in dialog and including several adventures, along with renaming some characters. This story is historical writing at its best, with details of everyday life in the West, the heartfelt troubles John faced throughout his travels, and interactions that provide depth and life to every character.

If you want to comprehend the pain that former slaves endured after the Civil War, become enlightened with this book.

Jeff Westerhoff THE SPRING BRIDE Anne Gracie, Berkley Sensation, 2015, $7.99/ C$9.99, pb, 320pp, 9780425259276 In the third book of the Chance Sisters series, Jane determines on a safe marriage to a wealthy suitor. After her destitute childhood she craves security, not love. Unfortunately, the roguish gypsy who rescues her from a street gang is far more attractive than Lord Cambury, who merely wants to add her to his collection of beautiful objects. The ‘gypsy’, Zach Black, conveniently turns out to be the disguised Earl of Wainfleet, a former spy, but there are complications: he cannot inherit his estate until he proves his identity, but if he does so he will be arrested for the murder of his stepmother.

As is the case with Regency romances, true love eventually triumphs, but before they can deserve each other, the protagonists must first learn some hard lessons and make sacrifices. This is a wellstructured and involving novel: it gives insight into the impact of hardships in an unforgiving era and shows how women can mitigate them by standing together and fighting for what they believe in.

Definitely recommended, despite the rather sentimental conclusion.

Ray Thompson

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THE SCRIBE Matthew Guinn, Norton, 2015, $25.95/C$30.95, hb, 320pp, 9780393239294 In 1881, Atlanta is preparing to celebrate the International Cotton Exposition. When wealthy black entrepreneurs are discovered brutally murdered, detective Thomas Canby is asked to return to Atlanta from Ringgold, Georgia to help solve the crimes. Canby left Atlanta several years earlier because of accusations concerning accepting bribes. Reluctantly he returns to Atlanta, not

only to clear his name, but also to join his old friend Chief of Police Vernon Thompson, along with Atlanta’s first black detective, Cyrus Underwood.

Faced with racism and Jim Crow laws in Atlanta and trying to regain his love affair with schoolteacher Julia Preston, he takes on the search for the serial killer. He soon learns that the power of Atlanta, known as the Ring, is in political control of the city.

The Old South comes alive in this novel – the prejudices against the black population, the segregation of its citizens, and the overwhelming desire to begin a New South through the Exposition, even inviting General Sherman to be a keynote speaker at the event.

Award-winning author Matthew Guinn has written an excellent sequel to the first novel (The Resurrectionist, 2013) in his series of mysteries set in the Reconstruction South. The author superbly portrays the evil that lurks along the streets of post-war Atlanta. His research of Atlanta after the war is impeccable, and the plot, with its twists and turns, is fast-paced, gripping, and compels the reader to turn each page. I highly recommend this mystery.

Jeff Westerhoff THE DUKE AND THE LADY IN RED (Scandalous Gentlemen of St. James Place) Lorraine Heath, Avon, 2015, $7.99, pb, 384pp, 9780062276261 At a grand ball in the Twin Dragons, formerly a gentlemen’s club restricted to members of Society and now a decadent gambling hell favoring cash over class, the wealthy widow, Rosalind Sharpe, meets Avendale – the Duke of Avendale, that is – and sparks fly. Avendale is most undoubtedly the Real Thing – noble, and wealthy to boot – but is the lovely Widow Sharpe the Real Thing? Is she even a widow? Or is she, perhaps, a shrewd con woman on the make and after Avendale’s money?

This luscious set-up introduces us to a rollicking, but also heart-wrenching, tale set in late 19th-century London and based partially on the plight of a poignant, real, Victorian personage.

Skillfully written, well-characterized, and deeply textured with titillating historical and erotic detail, The Duke and the Lady in Red queries the nature of right and wrong, good and evil, and offers possible redemption for its deeply flawed characters. Also, it’s smart and a great deal of fun. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.

Joanne Dobson

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THE MARRIAGE OF OPPOSITES Alice Hoffman, Simon & Schuster, 2015, $25.95, hb, 384pp, 9781451693591 / Scribner, 2015, £16.99, hb, 512pp, 9781471112096 Rachel, the mother of Camille Pissarro, father of Impressionism, has dreamed of Paris from the time she was a child. To save her father’s failing business, Rachel marries Isaac, a man older than her own father. Up until then, Rachel was a HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Reviews | 29

contrary young girl who bucked every word of advice from her cold mother and their small Jewish community living on the island of St. Thomas. These people knew the history of exile and knew that conformity kept attention away, but Rachel couldn’t have cared less about all that. Later, as a widow, she meets Frederick, her husband’s relative, newly arrived from Paris to manage the family business. Rachel and Frederick’s love is the essence of this novel, along with a very special friendship with a native woman whose daughter is abducted. It’s also the story of Frederick’s and Rachel’s favorite son, Camille, another rebel whose passion for phenomenal shades of color and structure becomes his salvation despite his family’s wanting him to work in the stifling business of commerce. Secrets are gradually revealed that ironically involve the manner in which individuals and the community are saved from the passion of love, which transcends tradition at every turn. The story spans almost the entire 19th century, from St. Thomas to Paris, Venezuela, St. Croix, and back to Paris.

Alice Hoffman has created a literary masterpiece rife with a magical, realistic connection between humans and nature that envelops the characters’ thoughts, feelings, dreams and events on every page.

Grim reality is juxtaposed against otherworldly hopes and passions. Beauty on so many levels is celebrated. This is magnificent, literate historical fiction, a must- read that this reviewer wishes had never ended!

Viviane Crystal THE SURFACING Cormac James, Bellevue Literary Press, 2015, $16.95, pb, 384pp, 9781934137932 Lieutenant Morgan is at the edge of the known world in 1850, with plenty of worries on his mind.

His captain is driving their ship farther and farther north in pursuit of a reckless dream, threatening to trap the crew in the hardening ice as the Arctic winter approaches. His friend DeHaven, ship’s doctor, is spreading whispers of mutiny. And the letters that find their way through from home only serve to remind Morgan of the family obligations he hoped to leave forever behind.

When the ship makes port in Greenland to resupply, a bright spot enters Morgan’s life in the person of Kitty Rink, the governor’s sister. At once calmly practical and passionately daring, Kitty declares that she will accept any life except that of a spinster sister doomed to solitude in a northern outpost. When Morgan’s ship sails again, Kitty is on board as a stowaway—and once the ice has closed their route home, she reveals herself to Morgan with the news that she is pregnant with his child. However Morgan may have hoped to escape domestic responsibility, he now finds that he must navigate the dangers of the Arctic with more than one fragile life under his care.

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and philosophical musing. While the narrative occasionally wanders into dense sections—no quotation marks are used, giving every scene the contemplative sense of an internal monologue— the harsh realities and gruesome details of life and death in the far north remain at the fore. What emerges is a pure and transcendent vision of the joy of fatherhood—and the joy of learning to trust another person in the face of a future that may hold nothing but ice and darkness.

Ann Pedtke DEATH AND MR. PICKWICK Stephen Jarvis, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015, $30.00, hb, 816pp, 9780374139667 / Jonathan Cape, 2015, £20.00, hb, 816pp, 9780224099660 Robert Seymour is the most prolific cartoonist and caricaturist in 1830s England. Seymour develops a new character named Mr. Pickwick, and presents his idea to a publisher, who hires a writer.

The stories, along with the pictures that Seymour draws, are published in serial form under the title The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. The idea for the story comes from The Daffy Club, a “euphemism for alcohol where there was an interest in sport among men where the real pursuit was alcohol.” The serial feature follows the adventures of this fat, lovable man and his companions during his travels. The stories become very popular, but the stress causes Seymour to “slow down,” and his wife suggests he take some time off from drawing.

Seymour’s mental state begins to deteriorate at this point in his life.

This novel is very long, and at times can be a slow read, especially the last 200 pages. There are a lot of twists and turns throughout the story; for example, Seymour commits suicide, and Charles Dickens takes over the serial, transferring the character of Mr. Pickwick to his novel The Pickwick Papers.

Stephen Jarvis is a talented writer, and his research is impeccable. I just wish the novel wasn’t quite so long, and didn’t become such a boring read towards the end. He could have better told how The Pickwick Papers evolved, in my opinion, if he didn’t continue to stray away from the story of Seymour to other characters, such as Grimaldi, of the clown family.

If you enjoy reading books that are literary in nature, lengthy, and have little action or suspense, you may enjoy this. For me, it was a slog.

Jeff Westerhoff THE BURYING GROUND Janet Kellough, Dundurn, 2015, $11.99/C$11.99, pb, 304pp, 9781459724709 In 1851, there are odd goings-on at the Strangers’ Burying Ground outside Yorkville, a growing community north of Toronto. Graves are being disturbed, which infuriates sexton Morgan Spicer, but because the bodies are left intact, “resurrectionists” can’t be blamed. When Spicer runs into Luke Lewis, the new assistant physician to the elderly Dr. Christie, he realizes who can help him: Luke’s father, Thaddeus, an old acquaintance of Spicer’s who is known to love puzzles. On his return trips to Yorkville after preaching along the Yonge Street circuit, Thaddeus tries to catch the culprit.

The principal viewpoint in this 4th in the series, though, is Luke’s. He’s a charming character with

aspects of his past he’d prefer to keep secret, even from his father, but a chance encounter with two young women draws him into situations that become steadily more worrisome. Luke is a straightlaced fellow, which creates some amusing episodes.

True to his shy nature and Methodist upbringing, he’s alarmed at the thought of attending a soiree downtown (“If there was to be dancing, it was a good excuse to stay home”), but his employer knows that his mixing with the wealthier classes will help him fit in and increase their income. Dr. Christie’s burly and irascible housekeeper, Mrs. Dunphy, adds more doses of humor.

At times the historical backdrop gets lecture-y, particularly the long recap of the 1837 Rebellion, but otherwise mid-19th-century Toronto is richly evoked, with its political and religious divisions, bouts of deadly illness, the beginnings of urban sprawl, and the reputed miracle cures of Irishborn “Holy Ann” (a real person). Americans in particular may appreciate seeing how their country’s antebellum policies on slavery play out north of the border. Kellough also keeps readers on their toes by fleshing out her plot with unexpected turns throughout.

Sarah Johnson VARIATION WEST Ardyth Kennelly, Sunnycroft Books, 2014, $19.95, pb, 760pp, 9780990432005 This massive, sweeping saga may be said to begin with Hindle Lee, somewhere in the middle of fifty-odd children born to seven or eight polygamous wives of John D. Lee. Hindle barely remembers her father, so divided was he among households. But grown to womanhood, she does remember how the news came that he had been executed, sitting on his coffin, a scapegoat, some say, for the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

This blight upon Mormon history, which most would rather forget, culminated coincidentally on September 11 (1857) with the slaughter by Mormons and their native allies of perhaps 140 members of the Baker-Fancher wagon train heading to California through Utah Territory.

We follow many women, mostly working class, and mostly Hindle’s descendants or the descendants of friends, as they lead their lives in the same downtown Salt Lake neighborhood through statehood, the end of polygamy, wars and the Great Depression, through loves, births and deaths. For great numbers of pages, the story seems unplotted, like life, but the details of each life—even when I lost track of the multitude of characters— were so compelling, often unnerving and bizarre but still made totally believable—that I never felt lost and couldn’t wait to read on. The language, a reflection of uneducated and sometimes streamof-consciousness speech, might put some off, but I loved it and felt it also sucked me along. We never once enter a Mormon wardhouse or see the tangle of relationships we could find there, which would be perhaps difficult to get right and believable at the same time. Most characters we focus on are lapsed Mormons at best. But the tale slowly circles, like the doomed Baker-Fancher wagons, to a conclusion that strangely parallels the PTSD of the Vietnam War with the frontier mindset. Every one of the 760 pages is worth savoring.

Ann Chamberlin 19th Century

CHIEF OF THIEVES Steven W. Kohlhagen, Sunstone, 2015, $34.95, hb, 382pp, 9781632930460 / also $26.95, pb, 382pp, 9781632930453 In September 1863, Augustyn P. Damours is on the run from the U.S. Army and the Catholic Church after conning them out of millions of dollars. In order to protect his identity, he adopts his wife’s last name, changing his name to Gus Smoot. Living in the Colorado territory, they decide to travel north in 1865 and set up a ranch in Washington Territory, a dream also held by his wife Lily, a former prostitute and con artist herself.

They hide their stolen money in Augie the bear, one of the most comical non-characters in the story: a mounted grizzly carried on the back of their wagon. Gus is not cut out for the ranching life and spends the next eleven years scouting for the army.

Meanwhile, Lily manages the ranches, both in Washington and then later in Wyoming Territory.

On their trail is a bounty hunter who continues to get closer to his prey. Gus, as an Army scout, is headed for the battle of the Little Big Horn.

This novel, based on a factual story, is a sequel to the author’s first novel, Where They Bury You, which was awarded the Best Western of 2014 in the National Indie Excellence Book Awards.

This book is an exciting, well-written saga of the Plains Indians War with fictional and non-fictional characters blended together. There is enough drama and action to compel readers to turn the pages. I highly recommend this sequel, which can be read as a stand-alone, and look forward to reading future books by this author.

Jeff Westerhoff OTHERWISE ENGAGED Jayne Ann Krentz (writing as Amanda Quick), Piatkus, 2015, £8.99, pb, 342pp, 9780349401737 / Jove, 2015, $7.99, pb, 400pp, 9780515155372 This story begins on an unnamed island in an unnamed part of the world, where the heroine, Amity Doncaster, discovers the hero, Benedict Stanbridge, injured in an alleyway and capably delivers him back to his bunk aboard the Northern Star. There she sets about nursing him as they sail for New York. By Chapter Three, we are back in Victorian London, where Amity is kidnapped and threatened with a gruesome end. It won’t come as a surprise if I say that she escapes the serial killer known as The Bridegroom and lives to fight another day. The rest of the story details her attempts to find and bring the man who threatened her to justice. She is helped by Stanbridge, who has been on a mission of his own concerning solar engines and Russian spies, which adds a confusing element to the tortuous plot. Initially I found the hectic pace engaging, even though it seemed a tad disjointed as new people and places were brought to my attention.

I have read Amanda Quick before and find her writing style a pleasure. That still holds, but this time there was repetition, particularly on the social standing of characters, that should have been edited out. I also found that the plot took so many twists and turns that it succeeded, in the end, in confusing me. I shall need to do a re-read to make things clear to my own satisfaction. If I’m honest, by two thirds of the way through the book, I grew weary of the frenetic pace and wanted things to 19th Century

slow down or come to a conclusion. That does not mean it is a poor book; but if you decide to read it, be prepared to concentrate, perhaps take notes or just let it all flow over your head.

Jen Black AMERICAN METEOR Norman Lock, Bellevue Literary Press, 2015, $15.95, pb, 208pp, 9781934137949 April 1865. Private Stephan Moran, 18, bugler for the 173rd New York, loses one eye through carelessness with his gun. For this, he receives an unearned Medal of Honor, personal thanks from General Ulysses Grant, and a job as trumpeter on the funeral train carrying Abraham Lincoln’s body home.

Stephen, who is in and out of trouble, says he’s “good for nothing but murder and love.” He has a talent for making powerful friends like Grant, Walt Whitman, and William Durant. The vice president of the Union Pacific gives him a cushy railroad job—and an opportunity to watch manifest destiny in action.

In Utah, when the last spike is driven in the transcontinental railroad—as staged for official photos—Stephen is shocked by the treatment of Chinese laborers. In Montana, he meets Crazy Horse and witnesses the battle at Little Big Horn.

Each time he encounters willful malevolence, Stephen seems to change. He develops what seem like modern sensibilities—in the 19th century.

It is not a spoiler to say he has special gifts— readers not already familiar with Lock’s novels will be alerted early on. Stephen knows from personal experience how man’s tendency to live for the moment affects future generations, but he attributes his perspicacity to vivid dreams. Lock calls American Meteor a story that needs to be heard by a new generation of Americans. It is not only a history lesson but also a reading pleasure.

Jeanne Greene GATHERED WATERS Cara Luecht, White Fire, 2015, $14.99, pb, 252pp, 9781939023308 Brianna is an ordinary Swedish wife and mother in her strongly Lutheran country in the late 1800s. The Church is so strong that anyone crossing their leaders is totally ostracized. When the Church begins selling liquor, and others object that the Church should not be allowed to interfere with civil matters, the backlash is swift and harsh.

Brianna’s family objects to any rebellion, but she and her husband make a costly decision. They join a new church that conducts services in a private home. When one of the other troubled families undergoes hardship, Brianna and her husband provide food for the wife and children. As they are outcasts, this brings more Church inquisition and menacing fury. Eventually, the outcasts begin to hear of a life in America that is hard but free, and so the remainder of this book is about that journey.

This life is not for the faint of heart, and Brianna survives many losses and much fear but becomes an indomitable spirit who gives strength to family and friends. An abiding faith free of man-made restrictions and orders actually frees Brianna to go deeper in her faith than previously thought possible. This story parallels the journey of so many Swedish families who sought a better life in

the American Midwest. Possessing a strong work ethic and a passionate faith, they are part of the American story. A very nice story, well-told, and recommended for all who love fact-based novels about the indomitable human spirit and the struggles of European immigrants.

Viviane Crystal A LADY OF GOOD FAMILY Jeanne Mackin, NAL, 2015, $16.00/C$19.00, pb, 368pp, 9780451465832 A Lady of Good Family is a fictionalized account of landscape gardening pioneer Beatrix Farrand’s struggle to escape her privileged background and establish herself in her career.

Beatrix Farrand (1872-1959) was one of the 20th century’s greatest landscape designers. An early advocate of storm water management and the use of native plants in her naturalistic designs, she was a champion of sustainability long before the term was invented. Farrand was born into a privileged family, the niece of novelist Edith Wharton. She was a student of Frederick Law Olmsted and a friend of Henry James.

This is a coming of age novel. Farrand found her “voice” as a gardener while touring the great gardens of Europe and, since Farrand was a member of Henry James’ circle, the author, Jeanne Mackin, has chosen to tell the story in a “Jamesian” voice. The character Mackin selects to be narrator is Daisy Cooper Winters, an American socialite who inspires James’ novella, Daisy Miller.

Initially, this choice of narrator was grating.

Unlike James’ Daisy, Cooper Winters speaks in an arch, smug tone. Since the reader is dropped headfirst into Farrand’s milieu, with no explanation of who all these upper-class snobs are, I felt, to paraphrase the Bible, that I was viewing the action “through a glass smugly.” This trick of narration dramatized the stultifying atmosphere that Beatrix sought to escape, and the smugness soon dissipated in the excitement of Farrand’s encounter with the gardens and people of Europe.

Liz Milner WORDS OF COMMAND Allan Mallinson, Bantam, 2015, £18.99, hb, 383pp, 9780593073223 January 1830 is a hard winter, the King is in failing health, and though it is peacetime, there is discontent in England and increasing demands for constitutional reform that the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, is resisting. Matthew Hervey, back from an assignment in the Balkans, takes command of the 6th Light Dragoons, stationed at the new Hounslow Barracks. As well as dealing with personal domestic problems with his wife and regimental matters such as whom to promote that are far from easy to resolve, Hervey is called upon to help against local unrest. Then he is sent to Belgium for the celebrations of Waterloo, and becomes involved in riots as the Belgians demand separation from Holland.

This twelfth Hervey adventure has more about army practices than military action and so may disappoint readers expecting excitement.

Mallinson shows impressive knowledge of the detail of regimental life in peacetime, and of army discipline and practices. In writing a series there is always the dilemma of how much to include about HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Reviews | 31

earlier books, for the benefit of readers who may not have read them, and I felt there was here too much in the first chapter. I also take issue with the frequent and often unnecessary use of parentheses; they begin to be noticeable. However, the pace improved when there was action, as in dealing with the incendiarists close to Windsor and the Belgian rioters in Brussels. A quiet book, but for fans of Matthew Hervey a satisfying novel.

Marina Oliver AN ELABORATE HOAX Shirley Marks, Montlake, 2015, $12.95, pb, 240pp, 9781477830338 To comfort his ailing grandmother, David Cavanaugh informs her over the years that he not only married as she urged, but has two children.

But when warned she is on her deathbed at last and wishes to see them before she dies, the bachelor is faced with a problem. Fortunately, he is able to borrow his godson and goddaughter from his close friends and to persuade their great-aunt Penny, a young widow, to play the role of his wife. When the grandmother makes an unexpected recovery, however, they find themselves trapped in the hoax.

The premise of this Regency is intriguing, if improbable, but it is not well handled. The prose is awkward, at times confusing; the plotting unfocused, losing sight of the developing relationship between David and Penny amidst various distractions; and the conclusion abrupt, leaving one to wonder how the complications will be resolved. Penny accepts David’s belated proposal of marriage, and dear old Gran seems content with this when they confess, but how will her friends and neighbors react, especially when the children leave?

Ray Thompson TIMETABLE OF DEATH Edward Marston, Allison & Busby, 2015, £19.99, hb, 384pp, 9780749018078 When the body of Vivian Quayle is discovered in an open grave in the Spondon village church, everyone is shocked. As he was a director of the Midland railway company and the local police are baffled, Inspector Colbeck of Scotland Yard, the “Railway Detective”, is called in. Shuttling between Derby, Spondon, Nottingham and London, Colbeck discovers that he needs to look deep into the background of the victim; a task made difficult by him being the archetypal virtuous businessman.

Soon, however, the inspector and his faithful Sergeant Leeming piece together the story of a darker, more unpleasant man. His bickering family has past secrets they want kept secret, he had a rival for the chairmanship of the railway, and he was strict with his staff. Colbeck has to dance around the local Police Superintendent, who resents Scotland Yard’s interference but soon digs deeper than the grave. Why was the body actually put in the grave of Cicely Peet, a much-loved local gentlewoman? What is the local gossip? And was there a link to the brutal murder of a Spondon labourer a few years past? After all, the village of Spondon was so small, it didn’t even have a railway station.

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and the plot is thick with suspects, solutions and clues. Marston has a real knack for blending detail, character and story with great skill. Reading this as a stand-alone case, the reader will be compelled to get further cases of the “Railway Detective”.

Alan Cassady-Bishop THE BLOODING James McGee, Pegasus, 2015, $25.95, hb, 496pp, 9781605988108 / Harper, 2015, £8.99, pb, 496pp, 9780007320141 In 1812, Matthew Hawkwood reluctantly finds himself on American shores after leaving France, due to misfortune; he had hoped to arrive back in England. On his way to British Canada, Hawkwood is drawn into the war between Britain and America after rescuing British officer Major Douglas Lawrence from a Yankee prison. On the trail of Hawkwood and Lawrence is Major Harlan Quade, an American infantry officer and part of the invading force that hopes to conquer Canada.

Helping Hawkwood along his way north is a Mohawk Indian named Tewanias.

This book is the fifth in the series featuring Bow Street Runner Matthew Hawkwood. As a policeman on the streets of London, Hawkwood has a knack for solving crimes and catching criminals. The previous novel took Hawkwood to France to join a British spy network and attempt to negotiate a peace with France.

We learn in this novel that Hawkwood has roots in America. Several chapters provide a back story for Hawkwood when he was a young boy in 1780. As an orphan, he eventually finds a home with a Mohawk tribe led by Tewanias. Therefore, this book reveals not only his early life in America, but also how he learned how to fight from the Mohawk Indian tribe.

I’ve read all the books in the series and enjoy Hawkwood’s escapades. This fast-paced novel has characters that leap from the pages, and the action is relentless. This gripping drama would be enjoyed by readers of Bernard Cornwell, with its exciting hero and sharp, well-written dialog. It’s a must-read for the adventurers in all of us. I can’t recommend this book and the series too highly.

Jeff Westerhoff DIARY OF AN ACCIDENTAL WALLFLOWER Jennifer McQuiston, Avon, 2015, $7.99/C$9.99, pb, 370pp, 9780062335012 Bestselling author Jennifer McQuiston offers the first book in her new Seduction Diaries series, Diary of an Accidental Wallflower, which is sure to delight readers of Regency romance. Miss Clare Westmore has her sights set on obtaining the next Duke of Harrington as her husband. She enters the Season full of promise, but her bright future takes a drastic turn when she sprains her ankle while feeding the ducks with her younger siblings.

Clare is forced to sit in the wallflower line and watches in dismay as her so-called best friend sets her sights on the duke.

As Clare is sitting on the sidelines, she is approached by Dr. Daniel Merial, a handsome and intelligent man, who becomes her family’s doctor and helps Clare on her path to recovery. The attraction between them grows, and Dr. Merial is beloved by Clare’s younger siblings. As Clare and

Daniel spend more time together, she realizes that her original thoughts regarding what love is and class distinction are not what they once were and that she needs to follow her heart to find her happiness.

McQuiston does an excellent job providing a storyline that is engaging and full of family secrets and has created main characters that are easy to love. I’m looking forward to the next in this new series.

Troy Reed FOR THEIR OWN GOOD Bradette Michel, Harvard Square Editions, 2015, $22.95, pb, 258pp, 9781941861042 In the late 1850s, Adam Fletcher, a young doctor from Seneca Falls, NY, is disillusioned by what he considers to be the state of medicine as he’s required to practice it – outmoded and even harmful “remedies” that are anything but. He decides to set out on his own and take a position at the Illinois State Hospital for the Insane, where innovative and humane treatments are supposedly making great progress with the mentally ill. What he finds there is far from what he expected.

This debut novel purports to illuminate the often pitiable plight of inhabitants of 19th-century asylums – some perfectly sane but locked away against their will by husbands or families who want them out of the way, subjected to humiliating and ineffective “treatments” for a mental illness they do not possess. Yet this tale is one-sided; while the asylum employing Fletcher is co-ed, he’s concerned not at all with the predicament of its male inhabitants. It is always the women’s ward where he exercises his savior complex. The novel suffers from flat and predictable characterization: the matron and her assistant are cruel, the doctor running the asylum is a hypocrite, the town sheriff is corrupt, and Fletcher is unbelievably idealistic and forward-thinking for his time period, sometimes in incongruous ways (he’s righteously indignant about a prostitute using the only tool she has to advance her position, but he accepts a female transgender without batting an eye). In short, this work’s rather clumsy application of feminism and trending political correctness make it a lopsided offering in the realm of historical fiction. That being said, the novel is a quick read with an ending which ties up all plot threads, and it does highlight the powerlessness many of the marginalized, especially females, could face in the 19th century.

Bethany Latham THE DAUGHTER OF AN EARL Victoria Morgan, Berkley Sensation, 2015, $7.99/ C$10.99, pb, 307pp, 9780425280775 In the early 1820s, Lady Emily Chandler is still grieving the loss of her fiancé four years before.

She appeals to Jason’s co-worker at the East India Company, Lawrence Drummond, to help her find proof that Jason’s death was not accidental. When Drummond advises her to leave the past alone and makes advances, American shipping magnate and family friend Brett Curtis intervenes. He cautions Emily about the dangers of opposing the EIC, but she is determined, and reluctantly agrees to his terms: that she not pursue the inquiry without him. Such togetherness naturally leads to romance, and they heat up the bedroom during the course of 19th Century

their investigation.

Morgan gives a plausible reason for keeping the couple apart at first: Emily believes no one will want her because the depths of her grief must mean there is madness in her blood. Brett is an incredibly unselfish lover, and fits the genre’s strong and handsome mold. The villain is telegraphed long in advance, so the mystery element isn’t that suspenseful.

Some too-early-for-the-period Americanisms, such as “flunking out” and “stuck with,” are uttered by British characters, which may jar readers out of the past. Yet fans of the genre who don’t mind those minor drawbacks will still like this historical romance.

B.J. Sedlock INSPECTOR OF THE DEAD: Thomas de Quincy Mysteries, Book 2 David Morrell, Mulholland, 2015, $26.00, hb, 352pp, 9780316323932 This novel opens in 1855 in London, on the heels of its prequel, Murder as a Fine Art. De Quincy, his daughter Emily, and Inspector Ryan are recuperating, as guests of Lord Palmerston in his Piccadilly mansion. Although Emily and De Quincy were due to depart that Sunday, following the government’s collapse, they get embroiled in investigating another series of grisly murders.

One occurred while they were attending St. James’ Church. Lady Cosgrove is found in her pew with her throat slashed. A note near her corpse, and similar ones on the slaughtered bodies of other London gentry, read “Young England”. This is a reference to the group that, decades earlier, attempted to assassinate Queen Victoria. The constabulary, Emily, and Quincy—using his exceptional (opium-enhanced) philosophical knowledge in Holmes-and-Watson style—strive to find the serial killer quickly. Her Majesty might be again in danger.

David Morrell’s extensive research into Victorian norms and life, and his vivid descriptions of foggy London streets, squalid homes, palatial mansions, Queen Victoria’s eighteen-course dinner party, and so on, might seem too detailed to some, but they are nevertheless a pleasure to read. They complement the thrilling murder mystery, which is entertaining despite the grisly homicide scenes, which are depicted like those in modern TV crime dramas. The killer is presented compassionately and, while some readers might spot the murderer early on, Morrell’s evocative writing keeps us turning the pages. The novel has unique insights, too, such as the government’s schemes to build the future Suez Canal, drug addiction, and the plight of the Irish; these add depth to the story. Written mostly in the third person, the narrative also slips into Emily’s first-person perspective; although this is sometimes done abruptly, it’s a welcome digression from the omniscient third-person voice.

Highly recommended.

Waheed Rabbani JUSTICE AT REDWILLOW John D. Nesbitt, Five Star, 2015, $25.95, hb, 230pp, 9781432830496 During the late 19th century, after many of the buffalo that roamed the plains have been killed, Jim Fontaine and his partner, Ben Spoonhammer, collect buffalo bones lying on the prairie. Dried 19th Century

bones can mean a few extra dollars in their pockets.

A young man, Jim sees no future in this occupation and feels he needs a fresh new start. Ben gives him a deed to a small piece of land near the town of Redwillow, Wyoming.

Shortly after arriving in Redwillow, Jim befriends two local neighbors, Charley Drake and Walt McClatchy. While in town one night, after heavy drinking, Charley is found in a back alley passed out next to the body of Emma, a local whore. Initially thought guilty of killing her, he is found innocent and is soon set free. Jim, along with Emma’s sister, Nora, who arrived in town to discover her sister’s murderer, search together for the killer. Jim is also faced with a trespasser who seems to be looking for something on his land.

Spur Award winner John Nesbitt has written another excellent Western. He has the ability to paint a colorful and well-described backdrop to his stories. The steady unraveling of the plot is exciting to read. The characters are clearly defined, with descriptive language used to picture, in your mind, the identity of each major character. This book is an absorbing blend of mystery (who killed Emma, and what is important about the land owned by Jim Fontaine?) western suspense, and a trail of twisted stories. I highly recommend this novel for those who enjoy a good western tale.

Jeff Westerhoff TWO BRONZE PENNIES Chris Nickson, Severn House, 2015, $28.95/£19.99, hb, 224pp, 9780727884916 Christmas Eve, 1890. Detective Inspector Tom Harper is settling in for the holidays with his new wife when he’s pulled from cozy domesticity into the bitter cold to investigate the murder of a young Jewish man, left with two bronze pennies on his eyes. Soon a synagogue is also set ablaze, and Harper’s superiors need perpetrators in the cells before the fear and unrest sparked in the city’s Jewish quarter blooms into something far more dangerous.

This is the second Tom Harper mystery, and it’s another well-written foray into 19th-century Leeds. Harper is infinitely likable, and both he and the secondary characters are well-developed and engaging. These are people the reader is made to care about, their backstories providing depth to the mystery and counterpoint to the grind of police procedural. Nickson is skillful in both his excellent grasp of dialogue and his portrayal of Industrial Age Leeds, as well as the prejudices of its inhabitants and the plight of its Jewish population.

In sum: another well-executed and enjoyable mystery from an author accomplished in this genre.

I look forward to the next in the series.

Bethany Latham MISS EMILY Nuala O’Connor, Penguin, 2015, $16.00/C$20.00, pb, 256pp, 9780143126751 / Sandstone, 2015, £8.99, pb, 350pp, 9781910124550 In this novel, Emily Dickinson is not a dark, morose woman, but a spritely thirty-something wishing for more time to ponder her thoughts and scribe her beloved words. The Dickinsons’ maid has recently left service, forcing Emily and her sister, Vinnie, to pick up the chores. Deliverance comes in the form of a young Irish immigrant, Ada

Concannon, who not only takes over the kitchen with alacrity, but cautiously befriends the woman all of Amherst, Massachusetts finds strange and standoffish. Emily, in turn, fiercely defends the young Ada—seen as lowly to most of the affluent families connected with the Dickinson household.

This refreshing depiction of the American poet features a short period in the 1860s in which her family employed Ada—a fictional character related to one of the Dickinsons’ known Irish maids.

Told in dual voices, the relationship between the responsible, but irrepressibly talkative and superstitious maid and her famously reclusive mistress is one of empathetic camaraderie and understanding on both sides. O’Connor’s characterization of Emily will resonate with fans of the poet for the care taken by the author to capture Emily Dickinson’s essence, yet without borrowing heavily from her verses. A major theme is Emily’s well-known transition to wearing only white—a peculiarity to others, but an easier wash day for Ada. All aspects of the book—characterization, prose, setting and storyline—are in top form, setting this author apart from many who take on a rehash of a well-known and documented historical figure. Lyrical and beautifully written, this story should not be missed by fans of Emily Dickinson, or anyone simply looking for a great historical read.

Arleigh Johnson FLAME TREE ROAD Shona Patel, MIRA, 2015, $14.95/C$17.95, pb, 416pp, 9780778316657 Shona Patel’s tale of life in West Bengal during the late 1800s entranced me from the very first page. Flame Tree Road tells the story of Biren Roy. As a young boy, his father’s steady intelligence and his mother’s sense of life and fun mold Biren into the man he will become. The untimely death of his father and the sudden change in his mother’s life, due to her widowed status, propel Biren on an unforeseen path, leading him to become a champion for the education of Indian girls—not a highly regarded cause in that era. The novel, also a love story, recounts Biren’s romance with and marriage to Maya, and the fate of Biren’s daughter and his granddaughter. More of the granddaughter’s story unfolds in Patel’s earlier book, Teatime for the Firefly.

Patel’s lyrical writing infuses Flame Tree Road with powerful imagery and the sights and sounds of this culture, which was foreign to me. My only complaint is that the book was far too short. It could easily have been a much longer novel, and I felt the closure came far too abruptly. Years were glossed over; I wanted to hear much more about Biren’s struggle to build his girls’ school and of his life after the death of his wife. Perhaps that story is detailed in Patel’s previous novel. I definitely look forward to reading Teatime for the Firefly and more of Shona Patel’s work in the future.

Susan McDuffie

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THE LAST BOOKANEER Matthew Pearl, Penguin Press, 2015, $27.95/ C$32.95, hb, 386pp, 9781594204920 / Harvill Secker, 2015, £17.99, hb, 400pp, 9781846556197 Matthew Pearl, author of The Dante Club, has created a unique literary adventure. For over HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Reviews | 33

a century, non-restrictive copyright laws have allowed the works of authors great and small to be published without their consent, allowing them to attain a certain level of fame (Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Dickens) while depriving them of the fortune that should go with it. Publishing houses grew wealthy, the growing reading public got their material modestly, and this vortex of events allowed for the development of a new class of thieves, the “Bookaneers” – literary pirates – and they, too, thrived. Bookaneers prided themselves on plotting and deception to acquire not-yet-published manuscripts.

At the dawn of the 20th century, a new international treaty is about to be authorized to shelter authors’ rights to their own property, meaning the Bookaneers will cease to exist. Pen Davenport, crafty and one of the best of the Bookaneers, gets word that a dying Stevenson is near to completing a new novel on the island of Samoa. The idea of poaching this last manuscript incites his soul. He sets out with his man, the tentative Fergins (the narrator), for this last chance at tremendous fortune and quietly relishes the inevitable adventure and folly it will entail. There are other Bookaneers on the same trail, namely Belial, Davenport’s nemesis, a worthy adversary, both malevolent and intelligent. This pairing leads to loaded skirmishes and absorbingly captivating situations.

Pearl leads us down a path of island culture and clashes, international politics, and stunning characters. He has created something remarkable: an original concept with a historical theme and an overwhelming sense of adventure that is both rollicking and thought-provoking. The Last Bookaneer is a beautifully crafted piece of art and nothing short of brilliantly written and conceived.

Wendy Zollo BALM Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Amistad, 2015, $25.99/ C$31.99, hb, 288pp, 9780062318657 Balm is a literary historical, the second by Dolen Perkins-Valdez to explore race and society in 19thcentury America. This novel opens in the aftermath of the Civil War as people of all races are trying to move past the torment of the previous five years.

There are three protagonists in Balm: Madge, a free woman of color with the skills of a healer; Hemp, a recently freed slave searching for the family that was so cruelly taken from him; and Sadie, a white widow with the ability to commune with the dead.

Their stories are bound together on a similar and significant theme: how does one heal when life is torn asunder?

Dolen Perkins-Valdez is a gifted writer. Her prose is lyrical and descriptive. Her goal is not just to tell a story, but to do it well while commenting on the historical time period. She does not leave out the prejudices or other trials experienced by people of color in that era, for which she is to be 34 | Reviews |

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commended. Hemp, Sadie, and Madge are unlikely bedfellows at first glance, but as they enter each other’s orbit, the narrative begins to take shape.

Even though they represent different parts of society, one thing binds them together: the search for redemption. For Hemp, it is to find his family; for Madge, it is to be taken seriously as a healer; for Sadie, it is to be reconciled with her father while coming to grips with her unusual gift. They are all trapped by society’s expectations, and to be truly free, they must learn to break away. While the book is wonderfully written, it can be a bit slow in parts.

But for readers who enjoy a well-written novel at a leisurely pace, Balm will be a delight.

Caroline Wilson

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VALLEY OF THE SHADOW Ralph Peters, Forge, 2015, $26.99, hb, 509pp, 9780765374035 This is a rip-snortin’, page-turning Civil War novel. Col. Peters does for the Civil War what Bernard Cornwell has done for medieval warfare.

Instead of following Lee and Grant, like 99% of all other Civil War novels do, he bases this story on a plethora of lesser-known names, from Union General Sheridan down to lowly Confederate grunt Nichols.

The novel begins with Confederate General Early’s invasion of Maryland and failed attempt to sack Washington, then shifts to the life-and-death struggle between Early and Sheridan in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. While the battle scenes are vivid, and Cornwellian, Peters also takes you into the minds of the generals and privates alike and will have you cheering for both sides as he switches his narrative from Union to Confederate and back again, and switches point of view among dozens – and then shows how each side snatched defeat from the jaws of victory via dumb mistakes.

Along the way, you will meet a couple of future U.S. Presidents: William McKinley and Rutherford B. Hayes. Comic relief is provided by the flamboyant and self-centered George Armstrong Custer. The only complaint I had with this book was that scenes shifted; it was often impossible to tell whose viewpoint I was supposed to be in until a page or two or three into the scene. Other than that, it would score 100%. The language and the dialogue are superb and serve as a clinic to anyone wanting to write a Civil War-era novel. I can still hear some of my old-timer 19thcentury-influenced ranch relatives talking with the syntax and cadence of Peter’s Confederates. Highly recommended.

Barry Webb AMY SNOW Tracy Rees, Quercus, 2015, £7.99, pb, 551pp, 9781784291457 Last year, Tracy Rees’ debut novel won Richard and Judy’s “search for a bestseller” competition. Completely engrossing, it was a worthy selection.

Set in England in 1848, it’s full of romance and mystery, taking the form of a scavenger hunt in which the heroine, Amy Snow, follows a trail left behind in letters by her late friend and mentor, ebullient heiress Aurelia Vennaway. Seventeenyear-old Amy owes her life to Aurelia, who had found her as a newborn, abandoned in the snow on her wealthy family’s Surrey estate. Lord and Lady Vennaway had acceded to their daughter’s wishes in letting Amy grow up at Hatville Court but always resented her presence. Before Aurelia’s tragic early death from a heart ailment, she developed a clever way of ensuring Amy’s future livelihood while broadening her social horizons – and attempting to make up for her family’s hateful behavior.

‘The clues Amy finds (some of which take time to figure out) lead her around the country, introduce her to fascinating people, and prove that the kindness, love, and the family life she craves exist outside of Aurelia’s sheltering wings. Along the way, she learns surprising revelations about Aurelia and a lot about herself. Amy’s journey – and, consequently, the novel’s structure – may be contrived, but the author wisely makes her aware of it. The obligations of her mission chafe from time to time, as does her burden of secrecy, especially when enticing alternatives present themselves.

While the story is fanciful in spots, Amy Snow is written with warmth and attention to detail, particularly on Victorian geography and modes of travel. Best of all, it offers a tenderly poignant portrait of true friendship, a rare thing that both young women rightly treasure.

Sarah Johnson THE MEDEA COMPLEX Rachel Florence Roberts, NAL, 2015, $15.00/ C$18.00, pb, 368pp, 9780451474148 Lady Anne Stanbury wakes in a dark cell in 1885 and has no memory as to how she got there.

She believes she’s been kidnapped for ransom.

Soon she discovers she’s in a mental asylum for a horrendous crime after a British court pronounced her mad. Anne cannot recall her crime, and also doesn’t remember her husband, Edgar. Edgar is a commoner who married into an earl’s family and is resented by the earl and his staff. After Anne’s commitment, he grieves over Anne’s devastating actions, his own connivances to gain prestige and wealth, and is torn between pity and the urge to hate his wife—a wife he’d grown to love—for the murder that ruined his dreams. Dr. George Savage, chief medical officer of Bethlem Hospital (a real historical personage), begins to question his initial diagnosis of Anne while one nurse on the medical staff swears she’s faking.

This is a complex story with many twists and turns where nothing is as it seems. Anne is not an easy character to like, with her angry ravings and over-the-top behavior unbecoming a lady of her era, but I did sympathize with her—at first.

I disliked Edgar for his initial tricking of Anne into marriage, but soon realized he was only a pawn in his cruel father’s machinations. The clues to the truth are very subtle, so pay attention and enjoy this page-turning journey through insanity, the intricacies of post-partum-psychosis, or is it blatant evil? Roberts based the story on cases of actual people from this time period. The ending shocked and saddened me.

Diane Scott Lewis 19th Century

THE FATEFUL LIGHTNING: A Novel of the Civil War Jeff Shaara, Ballantine, 2015, $28.00/C$34.00, hb, 640pp, 9780345549198 Union victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg have proven to be the turning point in the Civil War. Victory now seems within the North’s reach.

In November 1864, Lincoln seeks to bring the war to a close by promoting General Grant to command all Union forces. General Sherman fills the vacancy left by Grant.

He conquers Atlanta, and to the astonishment of all, and the consternation of many, he strikes out with his entire army across northern Georgia.

This famous “March to the Sea” proves to be an unstoppable wave of blue across the countryside.

No one, least of all his superiors in Washington, can follow his progress. When Savannah falls to his army, he turns north. The Carolinas, and the last holdout for the Southern Cause, General Johnson’s army, are arrayed before him. His leadership will prove to be essential to the Union’s victory.

The Fateful Lightning is Shaara’s fourth and final installment of his Civil War novels set in the west, an oft overlooked theater in the war. He embeds us with Union and Confederate forces, in the presence – inside the heads – of personalities like Seeley, a freed slave, and Sherman himself. We are there for the frustrations and victories, surprises and lost opportunities that dog both sides. It is a powerful and emotional narrative, and worthy of Shaara’s other works. Highly recommended.

Justin M. Lindsay THE HARLOT COUNTESS Joanna Shupe, Zebra/Kensington, 2015, $7.99/ C$8.99, pb, 352pp, 9781420135541 The second in the Wicked Deceptions series describes how Lady Maggie Hawkins fights back against public disgrace after she is unjustly blamed for trying to seduce her friend’s fiancé. Now a widow, she deploys her considerable artistic talent under a pseudonym to draw cartoons of Simon, Earl of Winchester, her own prospective fiancé who failed to defend her. When they meet again, however, the powerful feelings between them reignite, and after numerous plot complications they dispatch the villains who threaten them both.

The focus of this Regency is upon the vulnerability of women in a society that applies a double standard of behavior, especially in sexual conduct, and Maggie’s spirited defiance of its censure, as heroic as Simon’s growing understanding of its injustices, is commendable. Unfortunately, there is rather too much going on, and not all the elements are satisfactorily integrated. Though the progress of the lovers’ relationship is involving, the graphic sexual encounters not only seem at odds with the central theme, but become repetitive; information on art is interesting, but steamers to America in 1819? This needed further editing, but recommended nonetheless.

Ray Thompson THE FIFTH HEART Dan Simmons, Little Brown, 2015, $28.00/ C$31.00, hb, 624pp, 9780316198820 / Sphere, 2015, £18.99, hb, 624pp, 9780751560954 What happens when a despondent and suicidal Henry James meets Sherlock Holmes on the banks 19th Century

of the Seine in Paris in 1893? In the hands of Simmons, a mystery on par with many Holmes stories.

Holmes, in disguise as a Norwegian after having faked his own death, is also contemplating suicide, but instead enlists James to help him solve the murder of Clover Adams, wife of Henry Adams, and member of the secretive Fifth Heart Club.

Along the way, Holmes and James cross paths with a number of historical people, including Samuel Clemens, John Hay, and Teddy Roosevelt, as well as fictional characters from Holmes lore, including Irene Adler and Moriarty – both of which provide a unique Holmes novel twist in the end. In order to solve the murder, Holmes and James travel from Paris to New York to D.C., and eventually to the World’s Fair in Chicago. Besides trying to solve the murder, Holmes is also struggling with the notion that he may not even be real – that he may just be a figment of some writer’s imagination.

This is a book that demands your attention. At over 600 pages and with metafiction and historical details that border on the extreme, this is one book that you have to be geared up to read. My biggest complaints are that there were too many sections that felt unnecessary to the overall plot, and Simmons’ attention to historical details dragged down the pacing. I wanted to love this book, the concept is so unique, but I just couldn’t. Simmons’ writing is at times humorous and devilishly sly, and when the pace picks up, it is evident why so many people enjoy his writing. Devotees of Simmons will laud this book; if you are not one, you will have to really want to read it.

Bryan Dumas HEART OF THE COUNTRY Tricia Stringer, Harlequin MIRA Australia, 2015, A$29.99, pb, 400pp, 9781743692707 In the year 1846, Thomas Baker finds himself alone in South Australia, having lost his mother prior to departure and his father on the long voyage out to the colony. In desperation, he applies for the job of overseer at the remote Penakie sheep station. A J Browne, the station’s owner, recognises Thomas’ lack of experience, but decides to give him a chance, advancing the money for a horse and necessary supplies. Septimus Wiltshire is not so generous. He sees the naïve young Thomas as a chance to make easy money. Through isolation, injury, drought and double-dealings, Thomas must fight to bring in the annual wool clip. But in this harsh, unforgiving land filled with ex-convicts and hardened conmen, it doesn’t take him long to realise there are more than the natural elements pitted against him.

Following on from her three rural romances, Heart of the Country is Tricia Stringer’s first foray into historical fiction. The time period is well drawn, as are the isolation, dust, flies and parched beauty of South Australia in the newly claimed lands to the north of Adelaide. Stringer takes care to show the harsh treatment meted out to the indigenous landowners by the early settlers.

We are also treated to a host of interesting side characters – shearers, shepherds, overseers, and other station owners. My primary criticism of the novel would be its lack of surprises. Thomas is a good young man, his enemies truly evil. Though he pits himself against all manner of natural and

unnatural adversaries, we are never in doubt as to how the story will end. But for those who want a simple, plot-driven pioneer-succeeding-in-a-harshnew-land tale, this novel is bound to appeal.

Elizabeth Jane Corbett THE LOOKING GLASS HOUSE Vanessa Tait, Corvus, 2015, £14.99, hb, 298pp, 9781782396543 Vanessa Tait is the great-granddaughter of Alice Liddell, the Alice of Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass. In her childhood Vanessa was in demand as an Alice lookalike, so it was perhaps inevitable that she should write a novel about Alice and the writer whom she inspired, Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll).

The story is told not through the eyes of Alice or Charles but through those of Alice’s governess (‘the shadowy figure behind the glare of the children’), Mary Prickett. Mary was Alice’s real governess although there is no evidence that she was in love with Charles or that she engineered his break with the Liddell family out of jealousy of his relationship with Alice, which is the line taken in this book.

This is a Victorian pastiche, written in the whimsical, ingenuous style of the Alice books.

It is an easy, entertaining read about a strange relationship between a seven-year-old girl and an Oxford don which we still struggle to understand.

Edward James HOUSE OF PURPLE CEDAR Tim Tingle, Cinco Puntos Press, 2015, $16.95, 329pp, 9781934944145 “The hour has come to speak of troubled times.

Though the bodies have long ago returned to dust, too many ghosts still linger in the graveyards… It is time we spoke of Skullyville.”

This erratic and ambitious novel, set in the Choctaw settlements of Oklahoma in the 1890s, tries to encompass not only the way of life of a people, but the depth of the Choctaw conflict with the white people (Nahullos)—not all, but some— who want their land.

Tingle is very good at observed details. “The road to the church was the color of a roan horse, lined with tall pines, deep green and sweet to smell.”

“The windows were open and the curtains moved with the soft life of an old man napping.” The larger structure of his novel is less satisfying, however. He winds a wide range of stories and myths into his tale and his sympathy for the embattled Choctaw gives his telling the feel of elemental conflict, but these same assets sap the novel of its cohesion and its forward drive. The stories often wander far afield, and the tone wavers from epic incantation to mawkish sentiment. Tingle’s love and outrage turn his Choctaw people into such spotless, noble souls, and make the Nahullo so evil, they become caricatures. I do not need another white sheriff who gets drunk and beats his wife so the hero can save her and look good.

Cecelia Holland SECESSIA Kent Wascom, Grove, 2015, $26/C$35.95, hb, 352pp, 978802123619 In 1862, New Orleans was under Union government, but its population was largely sympathetic to the Confederacy. Benjamin Butler, HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Reviews | 35

in charge of the city, became known as “The Beast” after his order that women spitting on Union military would be treated as common prostitutes.

In addition to containing the local population, he conspired with his brother to find ways of deriving profit from wartime conditions. The novel’s most memorable character is Elise, introduced in a brief prologue set in 1844, when she bites off the ear of an overly eager suitor. At the time of main action, she is dealing with the suspicious death of her elderly husband and the dangers her young son faces roaming the streets of the city. Dr. Emile Sabatier aids her in efforts to clean up her husband’s body and hide her secrets. At the same time, the doctor aids Butler in public health efforts to head off yellow fever.

Imminent Southern victory is expected, and many of the women occupy themselves by sewing Confederate flags. Flags themselves become the battlefield when a man climbs the post office to destroy the symbol of federal dominance. This drama of America’s most crucial moment offers some unique features, being set in the country’s least American city. French and Spanish culture are always present, and the role of free people of color, some with hidden African blood, is at its most prominent here.

The language is sometimes opaque, particularly in the early stages. The love stories are not particularly absorbing, and the Civil War is only a distant rumor. Not recommended.

James Hawking

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WILL STARLING Ian Weir, Steerforth, 2015, $17.00, pb, 480pp, 9781586422301 After five years on the Continent, where he assisted military surgeon Alec Comrie during the Napoleonic Wars, nineteen-yearold Will Starling returns to London. The year is 1816, and Will is helping Comrie build a surgical practice in the city’s rough Cripplegate area. Romanticism and scientific discovery is in the air, and Comrie, as well as other men of science, such as the mysterious Dionysus Atherton, embark upon research into the very nature of life and death, research that requires a continual supply of fresh corpses. Happily for Comrie and Atherton, there are grave robbers— Doomsday Men—always ready to fill that demand.

When a grave robbing goes awry, a chain of events is set in motion that results in the murder of a moneylender and the arrest of young Meg Nancarrow. Will is convinced that the woman is innocent, despite her confession. His investigation uncovers an unholy alliance between the Doomsday Men and Atherton, as well as a conspiracy that draws him into its vortex, just as it has drawn Meg and several others.

Weir’s language is lush and evocative, rendering a detailed and authentic portrait of 19th-century London. His research is meticulous but never gets in the way of a fast-paced read. The book is filled with nefarious street people, grave robbers, thugs, 36 | Reviews |

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debauched gentry, the walking dead, and egoistical surgeons willing to cross the lines of morality and decency for their brief moment of fame. This wonderful novel reads as though Mary Shelley had teamed up with Charles Dickens. It should not be missed.

John Kachuba THE FIVE STEP PLAN Elizabeth Welsford, The Wild Rose Press, 2015, $16.99, pb, 306pp, 9781628307764 The Five Step Plan is a medical marvel. In 1829, less than ten years before Victoria takes the throne, society is beginning to tighten up its morals. The hero is Dr. William Whitcraft, who specializes in the treatment of women for hysteria.

It was a lucrative practice even before William’s mistress, Mrs. Minnoch, a well-known madam among society’s blades, shows him how to effect the treatment in a quarter of an hour or less by using only five steps. This treatment, known as pelvic massage, has become famous for the relief of hysteria among married women, particularly women whose husbands have no interest in marital relations, such as Mrs. Pannade. Despite his success, all is not smooth sailing for Dr. Whitcraft.

He is troubled by Dr. Marplot, an archetypical villain, who manages to steal Whitcraft’s patients, as well as credit for the Five Step Plan, which he is now calling “The Marplot Maneuver,” and also Whitcraft’s fiancée, Miss Reave, a spendthrift with other vices. Just as all seems over for Whitcraft, it is Mrs. Minnoch and Mrs. Pannade to the rescue.

Elizabeth Welsford has written an amusing, tongue-in-cheek tale, using an actual medical treatment, once used for a sad condition of women, as a plot point. There is a veritable parade of characters, some with prosaic names worthy of Charles Dickens. It is also a well-structured mystery. The Five Step Plan is a light, lovely adventure. A good summer read.

Audrey Braver SING FOR US Steven Wise, Lake Union, 2015, $14.95, pb, 326pp, 9781477829912 I admit I am guilty of judging a book by its cover, and that at first glance I was prepared to be disappointed by Sing for Us and its a-bit-tooPhotoshopped-for-my-taste cover. I was wrong.

Indeed, I was deeply touched by the story and found myself needing more than one tissue to make it to the end.

When the story opens, the Civil War is almost over, and Letha Bartlett, a young widow, is nursing the wounded in a Confederate hospital in Richmond, Virginia. The soldiers in her care admire her, and she tends to each one as if he were a beloved family member. Of course, she has particular favorites, but none touch her as much as Granville Pollard, a Yankee fighting for the Confederacy, who arrives in the ward after both feet are blown off in battle. A gifted musician who was studying in the South when the war broke out, Granville is spurned by both his fiancée and his father and turns inward, losing all hope. What he doesn’t lose however, is his singing voice. Based on a true story, Wise gives readers a beautifully told tale of love lost and found, of the power of friendship, determination, and an enduring example of how

two voices raised in song can mend men’s souls.

Recommended. Have tissues handy.

Kristina Blank Makansi THE RANGE WAR OF ‘82 Ethan J. Wolfe, Five Star, 2015, $25.95, hb, 270pp, 9781432830724 In 1882, Jefferson Parker is the richest cattle baron in Wyoming. He wants statehood for the territory and will stop at nothing to claim all the available grazing land for raising his cattle. James and Sarah Johansen are in the third year of raising crops on a small-acre farm adjacent to his ranch.

Along with several other small farmers, they are in Parker’s way of keeping all the land an open range for raising cattle. Farmers can build fences on their land so that their crops don’t get eaten or trampled by the ranchers’ livestock. Parker offers money to the farmers to purchase their land, using a reputed gunslinger named Cord to convince the farmers that their best option is to sell. Parker has a hotheaded son who is anxious to resolve this situation through intimidation and is not willing to wait for Cole to complete his mission. The conflict between the rancher and the farmers leads to a range war.

Ethan Wolfe is one of my favorite western authors. His books always contain characters that are well-formed and credible and show emotion in every scene. This novel did not let me down and was a real pleasure to read. The character of Cord, as a reputed gunslinger with a conscience, adds an interesting facet to this tale. Will Cord continue to side with Parker, or will he try to defend the rights of the farmers in retaining their land? I highly recommend this book, rich in western lore, to those who enjoy a good Western.

Jeff Westerhoff

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THE DISTANT MARVELS Chantel Acevedo, Europa Editions, 2015, $17.00/ C$17.00, pb, 304pp, 9781609452520 The struggle for Cuban independence from Spain is at the heart of this exquisitely woven story-within-a-story.

It is 1963. The narrator, an old woman by now, is rescued from her home, as her Cuban island is on the verge of a hurricane. Along with other village women, she is taken to a building called Casa Velázquez to wait out the storm. The old woman, María Sirena, knows she is dying, but she never has spoken aloud about her origins and her shameful secret. With a captive audience, including a former friend whose late son was engaged to her daughter, she begins her story in a reverie-like state.

María Sirena recounts her origins, being born to Cuban nationals who were revolutionaries.

Her birth on the high seas landed her father in prison, while she and her mother were essentially imprisoned at an inn, while her mother was forced to become the mistress of the innkeeper. After her father is released, the family continues with the fight, while María Sirena finds unexpected love along the way.

The book is a tribute to the lost art of storytelling, the heartbreak of making difficult choices in difficult times, and undying love. The 19th Century — 20th Century

author’s language is lyrical, the story compelling.

Hilary Daninhirsch A WILDER ROSE Susan Wittig Albert, Lake Union, 2015, $14.95, pb, 302pp, 9781477849606 Rose Wilder Lane grew up listening to her mother’s stories of a struggling childhood in a succession of little houses on the prairie. She’s determined not to know such poverty herself and devotes herself to an ultimately successful writing career. When the Depression threatens her parents’ farm, she encourages her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder, to write down her life story. That initial manuscript becomes the basis for the familiar series of children’s books. But, in Albert’s novel, it is Rose who is the driving force behind it all. Unable to resist rewriting and restructuring, she heavily edits her mother’s drafts before they are sent to the publisher, working behind the scenes but, initially, letting each manuscript go out with none but Laura’s name on it. In time Rose begins to regret this decision, resenting her mother’s dependence on her editing skills, as well as the success with no credit given to Rose herself.

It’s well accepted that Rose had a hand in the creation of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books. Just how strong a hand is a question that has been up for debate. Albert takes the stance—controversial among fans of the beloved children’s series—that Rose was the primary, and uncredited, author.

Regardless, Rose is challenging as a narrator. She’s arrogant, impatient, and often unabashedly highhanded. Rose claims that her mother tells rather than shows and sets about adding in those vivid details that turns a narrative into a story. Somewhat ironically, Albert structures her own novel with a similar format of telling instead of showing. It presents Rose’s later life as a series of events and bitterly-held grudges, but, at least for this reader, never quite brings her story to life.

Jessica Brockmole THE NURSE’S WAR Merryn Allingham, Harlequin Mira, 2015, £6.99, pb, 382pp, 9781848453807 The Nurse’s War is the second book in Merryn Allingham’s World War Two series ‘Daisy’s War’, which began with The Girl from Cobb Street and will continue with Daisy’s Long Road Home. Although this book is mid-series, it is relatively easy to pick up the thread. Allingham gives us enough of the story so far to save confusion but not so much that the first book is re-hashed.

Daisy is now back from India, having trained as a nurse, and has settled into working at St Bart’s and living at the nurse’s home. She has begun to rebuild her life, having found a friend in fellow nurse Connie and a vocation in looking after the Londoners injured in the bombing of spring 1941.

However, Gerald, Daisy’s husband whom she had believed dead, turns up demanding her help.

Gerald has deserted and wants Daisy to get him false papers so that he can begin again in America.

Daisy does her best to help, relying once again on her old friend Grayson Harte.

Allingham writes an engaging story with plenty of action and some interesting characters. Daisy’s determination to be self-sacrificing can become quite irritating at times, although she usually 20th Century

redeems herself. If you like your villains dastardly and your heroes dashing, then this is the book for you: romantic, atmospheric, and full of great period detail.

Lisa Redmond

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A GOD IN RUINS Kate Atkinson, Doubleday, 2015, £20, hb, 396pp, 9780385618700 / Little Brown, 2015, $28.00, hb, 480pp, 9780316176538 This is a sequel/ companion volume to Kate Atkinson’s wonderful 2013 novel Life after Life, which was mostly about Ursula Todd’s strange ability to go through rebirths when her life went wrong for one reason or another. Ursula grew up in a lively middleclass family in early 20th-century rural England, and the focus of this story moves to her younger brother, Teddy. In the first book, Teddy was a delightful, attractive young boy and then young man who volunteered to fight in the Second World War. In A God in Ruins, he has (somewhat unlikely) survived as a bomber pilot who made many raids into Germany, and the plot moves around his story – from a young boy to being a grandparent and a very old man in 2012. The most poignant and captivating parts relate to the detailed and historically accurate description of the bombing raids over Germany; but the early death of his wife, Nancy, and his move, as a widower, from his home in York to sheltered accommodation, when his only daughter Viola tries to ruthlessly dispose of his accumulated possessions, are also key landmarks in the life of this kind and lovely man. The narrative zips around chronologically, but because of Atkinson’s consummate skill as a storyteller, the reader never gets to feel that the constant time switches are in any way disconcerting.

Kate Atkinson sets the book in the times and mores of England at times throughout the 20th century. She makes the reader care passionately about the characters and what happens to them.

Read this, if you want an example of superb historical fiction – both accessible and touching upon deep matters of life and death. The deepest matters.

Douglas Kemp SAINT MAZIE Jami Attenberg, Grand Central, 2015, $25.00, hb, 336pp, 9781455599899 / Serpent’s Tail, 2015, £12.99, hb, 336pp, 9781781254738 Mazie Phillips is a neighborhood fixture in 1920s New York City. She’s the ticket taker at The Venice movie theater, she’s a notorious flirt and goodtime girl, and she’s a regular at the speakeasy down the street. But her fun-loving exterior hides a woman more complex. She’s risen from a rough childhood. She’s devoted to her sisters and, as their own perfect stories begin crumbling, she’s the foundation to shore them up. Though she thinks herself independent, in some small way she’s always searching for love, but never finding it in a place

she can take it. When the Great Depression hits, Mazie begins to look beyond her ticket cage and into the faces of those suffering in the street. The men she’d flirted with, the ones she’d sold tickets to every morning, they need her in a different way.

And Mazie wants to help all she can.

Saint Mazie is as unconventional as Mazie herself. Told mostly, over decades, through Mazie’s diary, her story is also told through transcriptions of fictional, present-day interviews with people who knew her back when she was on the rise to becoming the woman lauded as “Saint” Mazie. They each hold a part of her story—the man who nursed a childhood crush, the great-granddaughter of the theater manager, a history teacher, a publisher, the son of the only man she loved. In pieces, they feel disconnected; put together, by the end, they build a life.

Jessica Brockmole THE TRUTH ACCORDING TO US Annie Barrows, Dial, 2015, $28.00/C$34.00, hb, 512pp, 9780385342940 / Doubleday, 2015, £12.99, pb, 512pp, 9780857523273 Layla Beck, a beautiful, spoiled Senator’s daughter, lands in small-town West Virginia in the summer of 1938, after her father cuts her off and forces her on to the government’s WPA relief program and the Federal Writers’ Project. Her job is to write the history of Macedonia, West Virginia for its upcoming sesquicentennial celebration. No one expects much of her, from her family, to the WPA, to the family she boards with in Macedonia.

The Romeyns used to run the American Everlasting Hosiery Company, but lost it, and their position in society, two decades earlier due to fire and theft. Layla steps into a still-simmering battle of wills and conflicting stories about what really happened that fateful night, and gets drawn into the lies, fiction, and truth that create a captivating history of a town and its leaders.

Felix Romeyn, handsome and evasive, with questionable morals; his sister Jottie, smart, suffering, and stalwart in the face of societal rejection; and Felix’s young daughters, twelve-yearold Willa and nine-year-old Bird, are the heart of the Romeyn family. Minor characters are just as well-drawn and believable, adding humor and depth to the story. Barrows fully captures summer life in Depression-era small-town West Virginia: readers will feel the sweltering, humid afternoons, itch at the indentations of wicker furniture on sweaty skin, hear the screams of children as they play, pelting each other with plums. She also perfectly renders the emotions of the characters, as they form unexpected alliances and exhibit the Macedonian virtues of ferocity and devotion in alternately keeping, and revealing, the family’s longheld secrets.

Part epistolary, part narrative, this delightful novel is written from multiple perspectives, melding the past and the present to allow readers to piece together the “truth” about the Romeyn family and the town of Macedonia.

Helene Williams THE WHITE GHOST: A Billy Boyle World War II Mystery James R. Benn, Soho, 2015, $26.95, hb, 352pp, 9781616955113 HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Reviews | 37

Lieutenant Billy Boyle of the U.S. Navy has been ordered by the Kennedy family to investigate and prove Jack Kennedy’s guilt or innocence after Jack is accused of murdering a native Melanesian – a “coastwatcher,” one of the brave men who watched for the approach of attacking Japanese planes or ships. Billy is both intrigued by this latest Kennedy debacle and repulsed that he is expected to clean up the mess, that is, make sure his investigation finds Jack innocent and thereby free of staining the family name. He travels to the Solomon Islands with his buddy, the Polish baron in exile, Piotr Augustus Kazimierz – “Kaz” to his friends. It’s Kaz who gets Billy to admit he carries an old grudge against Jack Kennedy, but Billy waits to explain the source of his rancor against the Kennedy family. Unfortunately, during the search for the actual murderer, many other gruesome deaths occur, and Billy fights for his life. Before the murderer is uncovered, Benn peppers the plot with descriptions of breathtaking Japanese and Melanesian battles. Replete with riveting and beautiful descriptions of the customs, rituals, and geography of these beautiful islands, this makes for great historical fiction for readers who crave a good mystery as well as a good war story.

Viviane Crystal GLORY Rachel Billington, Orion, 2015, £19.99, hb, 544pp, 9781409146230 This year all the remembrances of the beginning of hostilities between the major players in the First World War are honouring 100 years of recollections. In the books published linked to the history of Gallipoli, the mindless slaughter of soldiers on both sides of the conflict is recalled in all its horror, and the lack of insight of the leaders’ decisions is recounted without holding back.

Glory follows this vein, linking three characters of fiction with some of the players from history who orchestrated the various initiatives of the invasion in this fateful campaign. The fourth main character, Sylvia, is linked with these three soldiers at different points in the story, where love and the stability of each character are challenged to their limits. Over the course of the campaign, our heroes change radically, influenced by their experiences, as indeed happened across society during this period of history.

Rachel Billington describes the most appalling scenes of destruction and pure gore during the battles for small areas of seemingly worthless Turkish land and the impact on the invading forces, which never stood a chance of succeeding under the circumstances. The narrative flows well through the months of fighting and the subsequent period until the culmination of a peacetime visit to the Dardanelles, which continues to give us a realistic view of how the land would have recovered in the intervening period.

Cathy Kemp IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT Judy Blume, Knopf, 2015, $27.95, hb, 416pp, 9781101875049 / Picador, 2015, £16.99, hb, 432pp, 978-1509801657 This is the story of Elizabeth, New Jersey, a town shocked by three plane crashes within months of each other during the years of 1951 and 38 | Reviews |

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1952. Blume intersperses the lives of her characters with newspaper articles (written by her character, Henry, a conglomeration of several actual journalists who reported on the events), giving the book a compelling mix of objective reporting and personal stories.

At times it feels like Blume is trying to include the entire town of Elizabeth, giving the points of view of so many characters that they become difficult to keep track of and care about. But halfway through she starts to focus more on Miri Ammerman, a Jewish ninth grader trying to live a normal life of stylish haircuts, dating boys, and hanging out with her best friend, Natalie. But her normal teen anxieties are compounded when she and her mother witness the first plane crash in their town. When the crashes keep occurring, Miri wonders if the rumors of alien invasion or government conspiracy are true. And when she has to cope with her grandmother’s new gentleman friend, her mother’s boyfriend, and the divorce of her best friend’s perfect parents, it feels as though nothing will be okay ever again.

The book feels occasionally aimless, but when Blume zeroes in on Miri and the teen issues of which she has always written so brilliantly, the book comes to life and becomes a joy to read.

Amy Watkin

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SWEET CARESS William Boyd, Bloomsbury, 2015, $28.00, hb, 464pp, 9781632863324 / Bloomsbury, 2015, £18.99, hb, 464pp, 9781408867976 William Boyd’s latest is a sweeping tour de force seen through the eyes, and lens, of a single character, Amory Clay.

Born in 1908, young Amory finds a quick love of photography and, after schooling, joins her uncle in taking society pictures.

From there, Amory has stints of success – taking photos for major magazines – and failures – a disastrous gallery showing in London. All the while, we grow with Amory as she wends her way through her complicated life with a depressed father, superstar sister, and late-blooming brother.

Sweet Caress follows Amory through English fascist riots, World War II, and Vietnam, from a marriage with an alcoholic Scottish lord to a daughter who runs away with a pseudo-cult in California. All the while, her life is continually touched by tragic events, but they never shape who she is.

Sweet Caress is wonderfully written, both from Amory’s fictional narrative and in her fictional journal from 1977, as she reflects on her tempestuous life, and it even includes “found” images from her private collection. Boyd weaves both parts together masterfully. His easy flowing style draws you into every page, every word. This is a book that should be on top of everyone’s fall reading stack.

Bryan Dumas FIRE FLOWERS Ben Byrne, Europa Editions, 2015, $17.00, pb,

360pp, 9781609452483 “Two yankii sailors—enormous black men in flapping white trousers with tiny hats perched on the tops of their heads—were strolling amongst the clapboard stalls and counter of the Ueno Sunshine Market. I was quietly stalking them— Captain Takara, First Ghost Army. I’d collected half a dozen long cigarette butts already, and one of the sailors was about to fling another to the ground.”

Hiroshi Takara is one of several orphaned children fighting to survive in the ruins of Japan after the war, the fire flowers who Ben Byrne displays in this deeply felt and well-observed novel. Searching for cigarette butts, pretending to be glorious heroes, fighting and loving and sick and occasionally joyful, the children live out the tensions of the occupation, the collapse of values in a handful of moldering vegetable peelings, hope in a plum blossom.

The Americans are less sympathetic. A side plot with an American narrator concerns the occupying government’s efforts to hide the effects of the Hiroshima bombing from the world. Byrne’s graphic descriptions of the bombing and the cynical, brutal reactions of the military clash hard with the poignant lives of the children, highlighting both their frailty and their moral endurance.

The novel is not perfect. Byrne shifts narrators from chapter to chapter, and his decision to use the first person for all his characters is confusing, to say the least. But the effort to inhabit this culture at its moment of extremity is engrossing. Fire Flowers is the fruit of an American imagination at its best.

Cecelia Holland DEATH AT DOVECOTE HATCH Dorothy Cannell, Severn House, 2015, £19.99/$28.95, hb, 256pp, 9780727884800 The English town of Dovecote Hatch is still recovering from one troubling murder when another resident, the affluent Kenneth Tennyson, takes a violent fall down his stairs. His death is ruled an accident, but the sharp-eyed Florence Norris—the local investigator of sorts—suspects there might be secrets to unearth. Secrets that will shock the seemingly quiet village.

This is the second in the Florence Norris mystery series. Those who have not read the first book, Murder at Mullings, may find themselves lost or playing catch-up, as the events at Mullings are referred to frequently. However, this newest installment shows off the gravity of small-town gossip at its best. While Florence Norris is off on holiday, we get a seat at the tea table of Dovecote’s most ambitious and interesting patrons as they consider the preceding events and wonder about unusual strangers, unable to resist a bit of fingerpointing. Although most of the action seems to have already taken place, we do meet with the pleasant Florence a few times as she makes an observation or two, which allows her to connect the dots neatly in the end for an interesting, though not overly shocking, who-done-it.

Holly Faur COME HELL OR HIGHBALL Maia Chance, Minotaur, 2015, $24.99/C$28.99, hb, 320pp, 9781250067876 In Prohibition-era New York City, we are introduced to a 31-year-old society matron, Lola 20th Century

Woodby, who has survived a loveless marriage with highballs, detective novels, and cakes. When her husband, Alfie, dies, Lola thinks she can now enjoy his fortune, but instead inherits his debts. Kicked out of her mansion by her temperance-touting brother-in-law, she moves into her late husband’s love nest in the city with her faithful Swedish cook, Berta. But without money to pay for rent or the other essentials of life, Lola and Berta accept an offer made by one of Alfie’s girlfriends to retrieve a reel of film from a high society acquaintance. It all sounds easy enough, until the man in possession of the film is murdered, and Lola is suspected. In an attempt to clear her name and hopefully find that reel of film, Lola and Berta tangle with gangsters, another murder that makes Lola the suspect again, silent film stars, movie producers, a girdle heiress, a snoopy journalist, interfering relatives, and a sexy private investigator.

The Roaring Twenties and New York City of the era come to life as Lola and Berta get themselves involved and sometimes embroiled in dangerous situations, but the fun, humour, and slapstick situations of a romp or caper are flat, or stretched too thin to be amusing. The heroine, Lola, is sassy and witty, but relies more on Berta’s smarts than her own and sometimes comes across as rash rather than strong.

This is the debut of a new crime series that relies too much on stereotypical characters and situations to be a fun-filled caper.

Francesca Pelaccia WE THAT ARE LEFT Clare Clark, Harvill Secker, 2015, £16.99, hb, 458pp, 9781846556067 / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015, $28.00, hb, 464pp, 9780544129993 This is Clare Clark’s fifth novel – all have been historical tales reviewed by the HNS –and this is another engagingly narrated story. On starting the book – a very familiar setting in an English country house in 1910, with a doomed charismatic son and adoring younger sister – I did wonder just how original the plot would be. But events quickly moved on: Theo, the son and heir to the Victorian Gothic pile, Ellinghurst, is killed in France in 1915, casting his family into despair. Thereupon, the three main characters emerge out of his shadow – his younger sister Jessica, his older sister Phyllis, and Oscar, who has a godmother in the girls’ mother.

The essence of the story concerns how the three fare after the end of the war. Jessica, a rather vain and shallow creature, feels suffocated and bypassed at the family pile, where her mother turns to the fraudulent comforts offered by spiritualists to keep in touch with Theo. After inveigling to get a flat in London, Jessica discovers how hard it is for even attractive females to find suitable young men in the immediate post-war years. The studious Phyllis worked as a V.A.D. during the war and then researches ancient Egypt. Oscar, who has his own overwhelming experience of bereavement, goes to Trinity College, Cambridge to study physics and the way that new theories of the universe and the nature of time and space by thinkers such as Einstein are challenging the old empiricist natural laws.

Clark’s narrative descriptions are lovely and 20th Century

observations shrewd. It is an engaging story, one that makes you care very much about the characters and their motivations and destiny. The alert reader, though, will have spotted the forthcoming complication at the conclusion of the novel that makes matters very messy for the three.

Douglas Kemp

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THE RACE FOR PARIS Meg Waite Clayton, Harper, 2015, $25.99/ C$31.99, hb, 336pp, 9780062354631 There’s nothing new about journalists and photographers reporting from war zones. On Europe’s battlefronts during World War II, however, the tradition of suave, self-assured, cigarettesmoking men reporters was in upheaval, as they were joined by a few talented and adventurous women eager to provide the first news of the action as it unfolded. Clayton’s gripping tale was inspired by the women writers and photographers who broke through bureaucratic and gender barriers to report from the front lines, such as Martha Gellhorn, Margaret Bourke-White, and Catherine Coyne.

The story is narrated by Jane Tyler, a young reporter from Nashville, who is fighting to break away from her own past. She teams up with photographer Liv Harper, wife of the editor of The New York Daily Press, when Liv goes AWOL in her passion to be among the first journalists on the scene as Paris is liberated in August of 1944.

Liv runs into old friend and fellow photographer, Fletcher Roebuck, who reluctantly agrees to drive them on the route the military is taking, putting both women perilously close to active battle.

There’s danger, secrets, and romance in the story, along with the underlying deep need of Jane, Liv, and Fletcher, to portray the truth about the war: the empty gaze of children who have known only pain and battle; the courage of doctors and nurses to operate and tend to patients in the midst of shelling and raids; the fear of the soldiers on all sides. The narrative is framed by the opening of an exhibit of Liv’s work, 50 years later in 1994, which allows the reader to make valuable connections between the past and near-present. It also serves as a gentle farewell to the well-drawn characters for whom this reader grew to care very much.

Helene Williams MIREILLE Molly Cochran, Lake Union, 2015, $14.95, pb, 573pp, 9781477828571 For Mireille La Jouarre, beauty is a curse. Fleeing the clutches of her lecherous stepfather sets her on a path to tragedy and triumph as her remarkable life unfolds. Reinvention becomes Mireille’s antidote as she uses her beauty and mystery to first become Europe’s most sought-after call girl, then Hollywood’s most-sought after actress. But behind the glamour and the glitz is a deeply conflicted little girl full of self-loathing.

At 573 pages, Mireille is a tome, one that is

suffused with melodrama and goes on for far too long. With each successive page, the heroine sinks further into slavery, whether it be to the sex trade or the movie trade. The novel’s villain, Oliver Jordan, is disgusting. A spoiled playboy turned movie producer with a voracious sexual appetite, he lives to control and degrade Mireille into submission. He stops at nothing – not rape or blackmail – to keep her under his thumb in a sick, desperate bid for her love. The frustrating part is that Mireille allows herself to be controlled by him, rarely putting up a fight against his depraved tyranny. While she is initially forced into a reluctant partnership with Jordan, she later prostitutes herself in worse ways than when she was a call girl. She seems to have no will, only a whiny desire to live an obscure life with her daughter, who has been stashed at a Bavarian boarding school for most of her life. When every opportunity is dashed, Mireille simply gives up for the short term and allows herself to be lured back into Oliver Jordan’s treacherous grasp.

The last chapters take a dramatic turn, but by the end, Mireille is finally at peace. Lovers of ragsto-riches stories will rally behind the novel’s heroine and her quest for happiness, but many readers may be disturbed by the content of Mireille’s checkered story.

Caroline Wilson THE FLYING CIRCUS Susan Crandall, Gallery, 2015, $26.00, hb, 368pp, 9781476772141 The ´20s are in full swing as three strangers’ lives collide in a burst of dazzling stunts and graceful planes, but each one holds a secret that might tear apart their makeshift family and their newfound life in the sky. The sullen Charles “Gil” Gilchrist discovered his love of flying during WWI, but is haunted by the images he can’t forget. Henry Jefferson (Schuler) is on the run from the law for a crime he can’t remember, while also hiding his German heritage, and the spirited Cora Rose Haviland would rather take her chances on the back of a motorcycle than marry against her will, even if she is near-penniless. But as they storm across the Midwest, caught up in freedom and adventure above and below the wings of their beloved “Jenny,” their pasts will eventually catch up to them—and one will make the final sacrifice.

I found much to love about Susan Crandall’s three-person aerial circus. The characters drew me in immediately, and each of their stories played out with just the right amount of twists and turns to keep me guessing and hoping. The love angst is a bit predictable, but my only true critical observation is the skipping over of chunks of time in which I would have liked to know a little more of what was happening, such as Henry learning to fly the plane; however, for the sake of the story, we really aren’t allowed to linger. I did especially like reading about the plane, which felt like a fourth character because of the excellent research the author put into her aircraft and its mechanics. I would absolutely recommend this book for fans of Sara Gruen and Lauren Hillenbrand.

Holly Faur THE GODS OF TANGO Carolina De Robertis, Knopf, 2015, $26.95/ C$32.00, hb, 384pp, 9781101874493 HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Reviews | 39

The theme of a woman passing as a man in society is not new to literature or music. Both Shakespeare and Mozart used the theme to great success. Carolina De Robertis taps into the idea in her novel The Gods of Tango, set in the early 20th century. In lyrical style De Robertis tells the story of Leda, a young woman who leaves Italy for a new home and husband in Argentina. When she arrives, she discovers her husband-to-be has been killed. Living by herself in a tenement and on the brink of destitution, Leda chooses to cut her hair, bind her breasts, and become “Dante,” a male violinist pursuing his passion—the scandalous tango. A dance of impoverished lower-classes, the tango had a reputation as music fit only for brothels and cabarets. Dante’s band wants to lift the tango beyond the demimonde to the elegant soirees of high society. In the constraints of a society where gender boundaries, as well as musical boundaries, are firmly set, Dante finds love that transcends those boundaries. As she enters into relationships with various women, she must confront gender identity, male power, and the few ways by which women can improve themselves in a male-dominated society. As she confronts her real self, she jeopardizes her musical career and her life.

While both tender and passionate, the book is written in a straightforward narrative style which at times can be off-putting. The reader is never given the chance to connect with Dante in a deeply emotionally satisfying way. Several flashback sequences, instead of elucidating the plot, never quite follow through. However, the author’s love of her characters and the musical environment in which they operate are evident. Readers will no doubt want to follow up with investigations of their own into the scandalous history of the tango.

Lorraine Norwood SUPERFLUOUS WOMEN Carola Dunn, Minotaur, 2015, $24.99/C$28.99, hb, 305pp, 9781250047045 / Constable, 2015, £16.99, hb, 320pp, 9781472122759 In 1927, Daisy Dalrymple goes to the countryside to recover from an illness. A school friend of hers is living in a house near the village of Beaconsfield, with two other friends. They belong to a generation of “superfluous women” whose marriage prospects are poor because so many men were killed in World War I. Daisy’s husband, Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, joins them for a Sunday lunch. When the women tell him the wine cellar is locked and the key is nowhere to be found, he picks the lock and finds a decaying corpse. Daisy’s friends are the most obvious suspects and, because Alec found the body, he can only help the local police unofficially with the investigation. Will Daisy and Alec be able to clear her friends’ names?

This is a delightful addition to this popular mystery series, which will appeal to fans of Agatha Christie. Daisy’s curiosity leads to many situations where the police resent her interference, while needing her help at the same time. It also gives insight into a generation of women who decided to 40 | Reviews |

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make their own way in life at a time when there were many more women than men in England.

Vicki Kondelik FIVE BRIDES Eva Marie Everson, Tyndale, 2015, $14.99, pb, 346pp, 9781414397443 This is a charming story set in Chicago during the early 1950s. At the heart of the tale are five working-class women who are bonded together by a shared wedding dress. Joan, Betty, Evelyn, Magda, and Inga all come from very different backgrounds, but because of similar hopes and dreams, they find themselves rooming together in a tiny apartment.

One day on a shopping excursion, the women find the most perfect wedding dress that magically fits them all. Together, they buy the dress, vowing that each woman will, in turn, wear it at their wedding.

This promise binds the women in friendship, despite their eventual varying paths in life.

Chapters switch between each of the women as they struggle with day-to-day life, romance, and women’s rights. As the five women experience life’s heartaches, joys, and challenges, they become close friends. It was interesting to experience the different careers, morals, and backgrounds of each girl. I particularly enjoyed Evelyn’s experience as a small-town girl in a big city. At times though, it was hard to follow because of the great number of characters introduced, and with five different stories, it was often difficult to remember who was doing what and why. Overall though, the themes of friendship, love, and trust in God endured.

Recommended for fans of Christian romances.

Rebecca Cochran THE ITALIAN WIFE Kate Furnivall, Sphere, 2015, £7.99, pb, 373pp, 9780751550757 / Berkley, 2015, $16.00, pb, 432pp, 9780425281383 Set in Mussolini’s Italy in 1932, this novel certainly starts with drama. Isabella Berotti is sitting in a café when she is asked to look after a young girl for a few minutes. Naturally she is horrified when the mother throws herself from the clock tower a few minutes later. This begins a breathless and compelling plot with communist rebels, secrets from the past, and nasty Blackshirts; the leering and arrogant figure of Mussolini himself even makes an appearance. The prose can be somewhat purple at times, and this is definitely towards the romantic side of historical fiction. There are consuming kisses, desire seeping from the skin, melting into each other and powerful aches – and that’s just page 262. It is well-researched and clearly reflects a society where your thoughts as well as your actions need to be guarded. The reasons why people were originally drawn into fascism, viewing the movement as a way to encourage economic improvements and modernisation are clear. The downsides and hidden price to be paid for this ‘progress’ are also evident. If you like Victoria Hislop and Santa Montefiore novels, you will probably like this entertaining holiday read.

Ann Northfield

HIMMLER’S COOK Franz-Olivier Giesbert (trans. Anthea Bell), Atlantic, 2015, £12.99, pb, 344pp, 9781782394129 Celebrated chef and restaurateur, Rose, begins this memoir of her life, and the 20th century, with a letter of informing her of a death, yet we do not find out why this affects her until near the novel’s end. For Rose is a tricky and teasing narrator, juxtaposing a jokey, faux-naïve voice with a grim tale of the century’s genocides, beginning with Armenia and ending in the excesses of the Cultural Revolution.

Although written in a deceptively simple and direct style, very well-rendered in Anthea Bell’s translation, this is a complex novel, a combination of personal memoir and historical narrative in which both Rose and the 20th century itself vie for centre stage. Orphaned by the Armenian genocide, Rose makes her way via Istanbul to Marseilles under the protection of a series of lovers, with whom her relationships set a pattern. She makes it clear she’s with them for the sake of her survival, yet her astute erotic sensibility also enables her to sympathise with them. This pattern of exploitation through pandering to men’s appetites, for food as well as sex, is repeated throughout Rose’s life, as her fame as a chef grows and she uses her power over men to wreak revenge on those responsible for the tragedies of her life.

Rose’s vengeances are apposite and funny as well as brutal and give the novel its mood of black humour. The directness with which she writes about sex and death is both shocking and hilarious, yet where cooking, reading and real love are concerned, she is a serious and insightful narrator.

A novel whose contrasts do not always sit easily together, but a compelling read nonetheless.

Sarah Bower THE ZIG ZAG GIRL Elly Griffiths, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015, $25.00, hb, 336pp, 9780544527942 / Quercus, 2015, £7.99, pb, 336pp, 9781784291969 When a young woman is discovered sliced into three precise pieces, Brighton’s Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens believes she is the victim of a killer mimicking a magic trick: the Zig Zag Girl, created by his friend and fellow soldier, Max Mephisto. Former members of the Magic Men, a unit dedicated to using theatrical tricks to fool the enemy, Edgar and Max fear the killer may be one of their old comrades—but which one? And why kill now, in 1950, when the war is over? After the girl is identified as one of Max’s favorite assistants, and another body turns up, also mimicking a famous trick, the two set out to track down the killer before the curtain falls on another old friend.

The Zig Zag Girl is the first in a new series by veteran mystery writer Elly Griffiths, and her current fans will not be disappointed. Griffiths ably evokes post-War England and the somewhat seedy and fading world of traveling theatricals, magicians, jugglers, contortionists, and even snake charmers.

Her cast of characters is well drawn, and she gives 20th Century

readers a feel for the vast differences quirks of birth and blood bestow in socioeconomic status and opportunity as well as the camaraderie— and competition—that develops among troops stationed together in a remote location when the whole world is at war. It’s an easy-to-read and enjoyable novel with an interesting premise and a lot of promise for the series, and I look forward to discovering what mysteries the Magic Men may solve next.

Kristina Blank Makansi

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MAGGIE BRIGHT: A Novel of Dunkirk Tracy Groot, Tyndale, 2015, $24.99, hb, 368pp, 9781414383231 Tracy Groot packs a powerful punch with her compelling story of characters coming together during terrible times, featuring the Maggie Bright, a little boat that brings hope to all it touches.

The novel starts off with seemingly unrelated characters: Clare, a simple woman who wants to learn how to sail her new boat; Jamie, a soldier who wants to do his duty and save England and a captain; Murray, a cartoonist wanting to bail his priest out of jail; and William, a detective wanting to avenge cruelty. Somehow the author makes these simple characters explode onto the pages with several moving plots that climax at the famous Dunkirk evacuation of 1940.

Clare and Detective William begin to work together to find a way to prove certain atrocities, but World War II is about to happen on their doorstep. The very idea of an evacuation is far from anyone’s mind, and the realization of the effects of Germany’s advances is portrayed vividly throughout each character’s story. These are unforgettable characters put in an untenable situation, but they manage to persevere and show us that humanity exists for a reason (keep tissues handy).

Much like Tracy Groot’s last novel of wartime (The Sentinels of Andersonville), Maggie Bright is a page-turner that will stay with you long after you are finished. The portrayal of war and all its ugly facets is written to avoid shock value, but to give the reader a clear vision of why we have to fight in the first place. Without a doubt, Maggie Bright is a favorite novel of 2015.

Marie Burton THE DRESSMAKER Rosalie Ham, Penguin, 2015, $16.00/C$18.00, pb, 275pp, 9780143129066 Tillie Dunnage returns to her small, rural Australian town to care for her mentally ill mother.

Something mysterious happened many years ago that makes the residents of Dungatar loathe Tillie.

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She is called a bastard and a murderer, a whore’s daughter. The reader doesn’t know what happened, where Tillie’s been or for how long she’s been gone.

Tillie keeps to herself, cares for her mother (who berates and abuses her), and begins to be wooed by the son of the garbage dump keeper. Tillie’s mail, opened by the postal official, shows that she must have lived in Spain and Paris, France. Her boxes are filled with herbal mixtures, fancy material, patterns, and fashion magazines. When Tillie makes a wedding dress for a local girl, the women of the town realize that she has a talent they can make use of. In need of money and hoping for acceptance, Tillie is obliging.

Dungatar is filled with vile and quirky characters: an old-maid peeping-Tom gossip, a male policeman who dresses in women’s clothing, a lesbian postal officer who goes through everyone’s mail, and a pharmacist who does not believe in treating “sinners” with functional medicine, to name a few.

Ham’s descriptions of the materials, colors and fashions of the 1950s are detailed and fun. Tillie’s secrets are revealed slowly and skillfully, and the final scene is brilliant and satisfying. This is a novel of dark humor, revenge and high fashion.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt CAFÉ EUROPA Ed Ifkovic, Poisoned Pen Press, 2015, $24.95, hb, 278pp, 9781464200489 Set on the eve of World War I, Café Europa is the newest installment in the Edna Ferber mystery series. This time, Edna finds herself in Budapest with Winifred Moss, a British suffragette, in a rundown hotel frequented by ex-pats and American tourists. The crux of the novel focuses on Edna’s time in the hotel’s café, Café Europa, and the offbeat cast of characters that inhabit it, including Hearst journalist Harold Gibbon, who is certain that Europe, the Austrian empire specifically, is on the verge of war; he wants to be there when it all collapses. He does everything he can to insinuate himself into everyone’s business, including Edna’s, but, unlike everyone else, she finds Harold somewhat endearing. When the American socialite Cassandra Blaine is found murdered, Edna and Harold begin their quest to discover who did it.

Like the assassination of the Archduke in Sarajevo, the reader learns that Cassandra’s murder is a catalyst toward war.

Ed Ifkovic blends fictional characters along with real life personas – Edna Ferber and the Hungarian artists Bertalan Por and Lajos Tihanyi – into a briskly paced murder mystery set in a turbulent Hungary. Though this is the sixth book in the series, there is no need to have read any of the previous installments (I hadn’t) to enjoy this jaunt into history and fiction.

Bryan Dumas THE LAST SUMMER AT CHELSEA BEACH Pam Jenoff, MIRA, 2015, $14.95/C$17.95, pb, 384pp, 9780778317548

Adelia Monteforte was a teenager in 1941 when her mother and father sent her from their home in Italy to stay with an uncle in America.

Scared and confused, Addie only begins to enjoy her new home after meeting the Connally family, a rambunctious group of four brothers and their parents, who fold Addie into their family and give her a new understanding of home. Addie’s relationship with the Connallys dictates her choices over the course of the war, taking her back to Europe, where she meets Claire Churchill, niece of Winston Churchill, and finds more new friends and complications.

The story is compelling and Jenoff evokes the time period with well-placed details. I wanted to like Addie more than I did, though. I found it frustrating to watch her make silly decisions for no evident reason, so perhaps giving her more of a life outside of the Connally connection would have been helpful in understanding her motivations.

Or even if I did not understand Addie’s choices, I would have liked to have seen more evidence that she understood them, either before or after they occurred.

Some of the shifts back and forth through time were difficult to follow, but for the most part the book is structured well. Claire Churchill is a fascinating fictional character who deserves a book of her own so that we can follow her adventures more closely.

Overall, the book is worth reading, though I did not fall in love with it as I did with one of Jenoff ’s previous works, The Kommandant’s Girl.

Amy Watkin VILLA AMERICA Liza Klaussmann, Picador, 2015, £12.99, hb, 469pp, 9781447212089 / Little Brown, 2015, $26.00, hb, 432pp, 9780316211369 Liza Klaussmann’s novel promises to be a good read, a fictional depiction of Gerald and Sara Murphy, the golden couple who hosted, among others, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway in their French villa and appeared as characters in various novels as a result. It did not disappoint.

Klaussmann’s prose, like her main characters, sparkles with exuberance: “It was love, the riproaring, ecstatic, rejoicing, fear-inducing, allconsuming kind”. While the prologue (and history) makes it clear that the ending will not be a happy one, it is easy to get caught up in the exuberance and the parties, making the denouement all the more painful and bittersweet.

The only criticism I had of Villa America is the fact that the characters, and Gerald in particular, do not appear to develop but instead react to each event in the moment. As a young boy, Gerald shows great determination: “he followed it through to the end, because that’s how things get done”.

But afterwards, there is no further reference to the event or to Gerald’s determination. In later life, Gerald does not appear particularly determined at all. Likewise, Sara is concerned that she is unmarriageable, but is much sought after in later HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Reviews | 41

life. The older Sara does not, as one might expect, reflect on this change in circumstances. Indeed, Sara is somewhat of an enigma throughout. This may be a consequence of writing a novel based on history; Klaussmann is aware that certain events happened in her characters’ lives, and includes them in her novel, but does not know the cause or effect of those events, and so they remain separate and distinct from one another. However, this is a minor criticism of an otherwise excellent novel that added greatly to my knowledge of the European lives of the Lost Generation.

Laura Shepperson IMPERIUM: A Fiction of the South Seas Christian Kracht, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015, $22.00, hb, 160pp, 9780374175245 In the early 20th century, August Engelhardt leaves Germany aboard a ship headed to a colonial island in the South Pacific. During the voyage, the philosopher and ardent vegetarian draws bemused curiosity from fellow travelers as he subsists on fruit and a dirt pudding mixture, and lounges on the ship’s deck, fantasizing about the utopian nudist community he hopes to create. Upon disembarking from the ship, he buys a small island inhabited by natives and establishes a coconut plantation. The coconut soon becomes the center of his universe, as he views it as the most godlike and spiritual of all foods. Eventually he becomes a cocoivore, surviving entirely on coconuts.

Engelhardt’s dream of an idyllic, nudist, sunworshipping, cocoivore community is never fully realized. Followers do arrive on the island, enticed by the treatises Engelhardt sends back to Germany, but the followers never exhibit the same fervor or values as their leader and are eventually sent away from the island. Malnourished, suffering from leprosy, and alone except for an island boy who befriends him, Engelhardt loses his grip on reality and becomes more and more deranged.

The fictional August Engelhardt is based on a real man who tried to establish a utopian community. Kracht blends fact and fiction until the lines completely blur. The reader is left unsure which characters and events were real and which are part of Kracht’s bizarre island world. A dark little novel, smart and infused with dry humor.

Janice Derr THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, VOLUME 1: Search for My Heart Larry Kramer, Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2015, $40.00/C$45.99/£28.00, hb, 880pp, 978037410439 Larry Kramer wonders at the masochistic tendencies of Americans, to have invited the likes of Cotton Mather and John Winthrop to judge us so harshly and to instill in us an abiding shame over everything that makes us human. He seems to count on that masochism, however, to imagine people will read this book, 800+ pages of painful and ugly history tracing the origin of both America and what he calls the UC: the Underlying 42 | Reviews |

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Condition, HIV/AIDS. The conceit here is that Kramer’s alter ego, Fred Lemish, is writing this history, and he collects around him a cast of oddball characters who contribute their knowledge and scholarship to the effort. Lemish starts this history in pre-human times to argue that the UC has been with us always, biding its time. We even hear directly from the UC, self-aware and plotting its own advancement.

The volume simply quits sometime after WWII. Presumably Volume II brings us into present day.

This book wants to grab Americans by their lapels, shake them, and bellow, “Stop with the blind hero worship, the whitewashed legends of this country! Stop imagining that it was noble and high-minded! It was ugly! It’s still ugly! Stop ignoring all the evidence that’s right in front of you!” But Kramer can’t have it both ways. He argues that only heterosexuals or closeted gays have written history, chronically hiding unpleasant truths, but here he is hiding his version of history inside of a novel, thereby letting himself and his readers off the hook.

It’s odd that Kramer calls this “Search for My Heart,” since he hammers home an image of an America that is heartless, brutal, rapacious, and cruel. This is the book that only Kramer could write, but for whom has he written it?

Jennifer Bort Yacovissi FALL OF MAN IN WILMSLOW: The Death and Life of Alan Turing David Lagercrantz (trans. George Goulding), Quercus, 2015, £18.99, hb, 366pp, 9780857059895 The focus of this novel is the life and death of Alan Turing, the mathematician who was instrumental in cracking the German Enigma codes for the Allies in the Second World War at Bletchley Park. But this is not a conventional fictional biography of Turing, for the unhappy circumstances of Turing’s demise are covered from the perspective of the investigations of Detective Constable Leonard Corell, the police officer who is called to Turing’s house after his suicide. Corell seems to be a typical Scandinavian contemporary fictional/television cop transferred to 1950s austere England. He is a loner, brighter than his boorish colleagues and seems detached from the spirit of his job in tracking down crime in Wilmslow, a generally law-abiding town near Manchester.

Corell has his own issues and difficulties to contend with, which seem to be brought to a head

by Turing’s unhappy death following his conviction for homosexuality. This raises all sorts of miserable memories for Corell, from his wretched time at Marlborough school and the early death of his father. Corell seems to get more eccentric and disturbed as the novel progresses. He is fascinated with Turing’s life and his genius for mathematics, and understands that Turing was doing some mysterious war work; from his interviews with Turing’s colleagues and his research, he was able, despite the secrecy surrounding the project, to gain some awareness of the astounding work he did in

Station X at Bletchley Park.

This is a fascinating story, of a subject told from an unusual perspective. It is an engaging tale, but occasionally I found the narrative slightly irregular, the characters doing and saying rather odd things, or the sentences unusually or sloppily constructed – which may, of course, be primarily an issue of the translation from the original Swedish.

Douglas Kemp A FATAL FREEDOM Janet Laurence, The Mystery Press, 2015, £9.99, pb, 350pp, 9780750963022 Set in London in 1903, this is a sequel to Deadly Inheritance, which is referred to occasionally in this novel with such phrases as her ‘tragic stay in the west country’ without telling a new reader why it was tragic. A good ploy to get the reader to buy the first novel, but one I rather resent.

Ursula Grandison is an American with two jobs – one as a part-time secretary to Mrs Bruton and the other as a part timer at a beauty salon called Maison Rose. A woman she knows is accused of killing her husband. Believing her to be innocent Ursula and Thomas Jackman, an ex-copper who is now a private detective, pursue the case.

While it is competently written, and the historical background well-drawn, after a while I found the author’s trick of completing a previous section later in the book, so that the story is constantly going back in time and then catching up to the present, annoying. And it leads to inconsistencies – for instance, over which days Ursula works for Mrs Bruton.

There are some surprises, but due to the detailed descriptions, for me it lacked tension. However, the differences between American society mores and English is well done, and I would not discourage anyone from buying it. jay Dixon

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THE INVESTIGATION J.M. Lee (trans. Chi-Young Kim), Pegasus, 2015, $24.95, hb, 336pp, 978160598467 In 1944, most Japanese men are conscripted to fight in the Pacific War. Young Watanbe Yuichi is taken from the refuge of his mother’s bookshop and assigned to a post as a guard in Fukuoka Prison.

He works in Ward Three, home to the “the most vicious— Koreans, traitors and Communists”. When Sugiyama Dozan, a fellow guard notorious for his cruelty, is found murdered with no clue but a poem in his pocket, Watanbe is assigned to investigate.

Most of the Korean prisoners had fallen beneath Sugiyama’s club at one time or another and are suspect, but when Watanbe interrogates them, he begins to question what he thought he knew. What 20th Century

drove Sugiyama’s violence? Was he as blindly brutal as he seemed? Who is truly dangerous at Fukuoka?

The investigation becomes less about finding Sugiyama’s killer and more about finding Sugiyama himself. With each interrogation, another piece of his story emerges, another connection to someone at Fukuoka Prison. A nurse who coaxes beauty from an old piano. An activist determined to escape. A lonely girl whose kite breeches the prison wall. A poet who gives voice to prisoners who thought theirs silenced.

The Investigation is inspired by the life and death of Korean poet and dissident Yun Dong-ju.

It offers a different viewpoint on World War Two, one not often found in Western literature, but this is not the only reason to read it. What begins as a murder mystery becomes a story of heartbreak, of poetry, of humanity triumphant. It celebrates the power of words, in expressing hope, in giving voice to frustration and longing, in lending strength.

Though the work of a prolific Korean author, the prose suffers no awkwardness through translation.

It glows. Highly recommended.

Jessica Brockmole THE FOUR BOOKS Yan Lianke (trans. Carlos Rojas), Grove, 2015, $27.00, hb, 400pp, 9780802123121 This is an allegorical novel set during Mao’s Great Leap Forward in the 1950s, in a labor and reeducation camp for intellectuals. Musician, Scholar, Author and Theologian are gathered together with others of their kind in the “ninety-ninth district,” a barren wasteland, and assigned impossible tasks.

They are expected to smelt iron from sand, using, for fuel, the few remaining trees and pick and shovel labor. They must also grow bumper crops on fields of sand, which task, in desperation, leads one man to open his veins in order to enrich the soil. Driven by constant hunger and fear, the desire to escape becomes overwhelming. Any remaining bonds between friends and lovers are severed as people turn upon one another to earn the precious paper stars that will gain them release. This grotesque exercise is overseen by a preadolescent fanatic, whose purity of belief and simple- (and single-) mindedness are unique qualifications for the task of government overseer.

The author, a famous Chinese satirist whose works are frequently banned, was a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize and has also won the Franz Kafka Prize. The translation delivers the pain, rage and black humor of the original, as Yan Lianke sets Maoist mythology beside mythologies of the West, prominently, that of Sisyphus.

The Four Books is a tough but rewarding read, supremely relevant in a modern world increasingly beset by the madness of fanaticism.

Juliet Waldron THE LAUNDRY ROOM: Israeli Resistance in 1946 Lynda Lippman-Lockhart, Penmore, 2015, $17.50, pb, 392pp, 97811942756101 20th Century

Laila, age 18, feels a blast of heat and is catapulted over her falafel stand only to land on a dead body and next to a young married woman who loses a child. This 1942 attack occurred at the King David Hotel by the Irgun, a subdivision of the Haganah, the “fledgling secret service of the Jewish resistance.” The goal was to hurt as many British leaders and military as possible. However, over ninety people died that day, and many people, like Laila, are angry enough to do something about the situation.

This, then, is the account of Laila, Zarah and Avraham, Ezra, Itzhak, Ari Bitterman and many other young Jewish men and women who will begin to shape a thriving kibbutz far from the main city of Jerusalem. The British are planning to leave Palestine soon, and the community members of “Ayalon Institute” are determined to be ready for the battles they know lie ahead in their fight for independence and survival. Pioneers are often portrayed as tough, formidable characters who fear nothing and are always on the offensive as well as the defensive stance. This novel brooks no nonsense but powerfully dramatizes the fears, doubts and nervousness about what they are undertaking.

They are individuals who find strength in their group to dig deep and carry out the creation of an armaments factory below the laundry room of their kibbutz. The battles are fierce, as the members face attacks by both British and Arab enemies.

The author has crafted a gritty, tender, tumultuous and carefully organized story about very dynamic characters worthy of Israeli history – based on actual events. Highly recommended historical fiction!

Viviane Crystal PASTEL ORPHANS Gemma Liviero, Lake Union, 2015, $10.99, pb, 352pp, 9781477830147 In 1931, in Berlin, five-year-old Henrik lives idyllically with his middle-class parents, Karolin and Emmett. He plays with his newborn sister, Greta. However, their living conditions gradually deteriorate. Emmett loses his job and becomes sick and bedridden. There is less food on their table, and their housemaid is released. Henrik is confused by these changes as well as other incidents, which he questions incessantly. Weird yellow stars appear on shops, and their windows are smashed by rioters.

Henrik is called a “Jew” in school and, following a fight, is expelled. Henrik finally learns that while Emmett is Jewish, Karolin is Catholic. Their friends are forced from their homes to “temporary placements.” By 1939, Karolin, distressed, flees using forged papers, taking Henrik and Greta to her sister’s farm in Poland and leaving Emmett behind. Germany invades Poland, and little blonde-and-blue-eyed Greta is taken away by the Nazis. When Karolin tries to interfere, an officer whips her, and she falls unconscious. Young Henrik, witnessing the abduction, vows to find and bring his sister back.

Gemma Liviero has set this story during Hitler’s

Generalplan Ost. While the historic details of that plan, where “Aryan-looking” children were abducted and “Germanized,” are known, Liviero has chosen a unique way of presenting the narrative. Since it was the children who suffered the most, the account is aptly told through the first-person viewpoints of three children. Through them, we not only learn about their pain and suffering, from the atrocities committed by the Nazis, but also the anguish and grief of the grown-ups. At times the descriptions of the brutality are too appalling to make this novel suitable for young readers. The futility of racial intolerance, hate, and war are vividly brought to life, particularly by the attention-grabbing ending.

Recommended.

Waheed Rabbani THE SILENT HOURS Cesca Major, Corvus, 2015, £12.99, pb, 306pp, 9781782395683 On 10 June 1944, the village of Oradoursur-Glane was targeted by the SS. The shocking ordeal which followed forms the climax of this remarkable novel. The story follows three people whose lives are intertwined – Adeline, a mute who has taken refuge in a convent; Sebastian, a young, naïve, Jewish banker; and Tristin, a nine-year-old boy. The story follows them as the war slowly encroaches on their peaceful, almost idyllic lives.

Do not be put off by the front cover, which gives, in my opinion, the wrong message. Although promoted as a story of love and loss, it is so much more than that. The chapters are small, some only one page, showing the lives of each individual, yet slowly and inexorably taking the reader forward to the horror which awaits in the final pages. There is a love story between Sebastian and Isabelle, but there is also anti-Semitism, childish innocence destroyed, and forcible deportation all lurking beneath the summer sunshine. The end is shocking, but not gratuitous, and I challenge you not to be moved. This is historical fiction at its best, and a notable debut novel. Highly recommended.

Mike Ashworth FIRST TIME SOLO Iain Maloney, Freight/Trafalgar Square, 2014, $13.95/C$16.95/£8.99, pb, 215pp, 9781908754615 Maloney drew on his grandfather’s experiences to create this story of a young man’s journey to become an RAF pilot in 1943. Jack Devine is an enthusiastic fan of jazz. When he leaves Inverayne for London, he takes his trumpet along. He meets fellow recruit Joe Robertson on the train, an avowed Communist who’s fond of pub fights, and a drummer. Jack is leery of Joe’s tendency for trouble, but circumstances throw them together during their training. They form a jazz group with Welshman Terry. But the war looms close when they witness fellow trainee pilots being strafed, and children killed when a church is bombed. When he at last is allowed to sit in the cockpit of a plane, Jack is elated by the freedom of flight. But when HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Reviews | 43

Joe’s class hatred for another pilot may be the cause of a tragic incident, Jack must choose whether to be loyal to his mate, or report him.

The story touches on the social changes the war brought about in Britain. Jack is exposed to bebop, a new form of jazz introduced by African-American soldiers. Joe relishes class conflict, women are working in nontraditional roles, and now that he’s escaped, Jack doesn’t want to return to the farm after the war is over. The depiction of military life rings true: waste and boredom, with short bursts of violence. A reader picking up a coming-of-age war story may expect some romance, but Maloney leaves that offstage. I didn’t think the author’s style always worked: “More flights. Terry went solo.

Guard duty. Waiting,” yet I still found the book hard to put down. While I was a bit disappointed about the way Maloney ended the story, he left me wanting more, always a good thing in a novel.

B.J. Sedlock SEPARATION Carole McEntee-Taylor, GWL Publishing, 2015, £12.99, pb, 438pp, 9781910603031 Lives Apart is a WWII story of which Separation is Book One and covers the period from September 1938 to July 1940. Three sets of people, very different from each other, are caught up in the outbreak of war, and the book tells of their various experiences. There is Peggy, a nurse, and her fiancé, Joe; Olive, a Council switchboard operator, and her German-born friend, Kurt Ritter, who goes off to fight with the German forces. Then there is a French family whose son, Louis, is keen to join the French army, and his girlfriend, Brigitte, all surrounded by friends and other family members.

The cast is quite extensive.

The author tells us that although the characters in the story are entirely fictitious, it is based on the experiences of her in-laws. I read this book with interest as my father and several uncles served in WWII, and I was sympathetic to the characters, their problems and relationships, but for me it was too disjointed. No sooner had I started to read about one pair when the episode closed, and I was faced with one of the others, rather like a TV production where the scene changes are rapid – as if the director is pandering to the conception that people nowadays have very short concentration spans. I found this disconcerting. The book goes as far as July 1940, so I assume Book Two will follow and continue the story.

Marilyn Sherlock CIRCLING THE SUN Paula McLain, Ballantine, 2015, $28.00/C$32.00, hb, 384pp, 9780345534187 / Virago, 2015, £14.99, hb, 384pp, 9781844088287 Paula McLain, author of the highly successful novel The Paris Wife, returns in Circling the Sun with another fictional biography. This is story of Beryl Markham (née Clutterbuck), a highly unconventional young woman growing up in early 20th-century Kenya. Beryl, abandoned by her 44 | Reviews |

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mother at the age of four and brought up by her horse-trainer father, has an unusual childhood, running barefoot and hunting with a boy from a local tribe, who becomes a life-long friend.

As Beryl grows up, however, the struggle between her independent nature and society’s expectations becomes the main focus of the novel. She is a free spirit in the conventional world of colonial society and, although she marries twice, the real love of her life is neither husband, but game hunter and aviator Denys Finch Hatton, who is already in an intense relationship with Karen Blixen, author of Out of Africa. Beyond her personal life, Beryl is a remarkable and determined character. She becomes the first female certified horse trainer in Kenya at a very young age and has many successes racing her horses. An early aviator, she was the first woman to make a solo trans-Atlantic flight.

Although beautifully written and engrossing, Circling the Sun somehow lacks the emotional appeal of The Paris Wife. Beryl’s character is not always sympathetic, and the love triangle between Karen, Denys and Beryl lacks passion and drama, perhaps because it is only told from Beryl’s point of view from some unstated future point.

Kate Braithwaite SCENT OF TRIUMPH Jan Moran, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2015, $15.99, pb, 367pp, 9781250048905 This novel begins in September 1939. Danielle Bretancourt and her husband, Max, have left their young son, Nicky, with his grandmother in Poland and are devastated when they hear news of Hitler’s invasion. As the months unfold, a series of tragedies, combined with the threat of being exposed as a Jew, force Danielle to abandon her search for Nicky and escape with what’s left of her family to America. In Hollywood, Danielle draws on her skills as a perfumer and clothing designer to get a start, gradually earning enough to establish her own business. What keeps her going is the belief that Nicky is alive and the steadfast support of Jonathan Newell-Gray, a British shipping heir and Royal Navy officer.

Jan Moran brings her knowledge and love of perfume to the forefront of this novel and offers readers many twists and turns as the story unfolds.

For this reader, Scent of Triumph felt melodramatic rather than dramatic and, with so many points of view, the central characters – Danielle and Jonathan – are not as fully developed as they might have been.

M. K. Tod MARCEL Erwin Mortier (trans. Ina Rilke), Pushkin, 2015, $14.95, pb, 129pp, 9781782270188 When a European family’s history encompasses World War II, secrets take on special meaning.

That’s the premise of Belgian author Erwin Mortier’s debut novel, told from the point of view of a young boy who has a strong physical resemblance to his dead relative, Marcel. Given

the time, the setting, and the dark premonitional writing, it comes as little surprise to the reader when the boy discovers his revered relative fought with the Nazis. What makes the novel exceptional is the writing, some of which was so mesmerizing I found myself rereading sentences and phrases before I could go on.

The narrative point of view is very strongly realized, with its boyishly puerile emphasis on the strangely seductive qualities of his teacher, Miss Veegaete, and the almost alien quality of a child moving through the adult world of memory and secrets. The matriarch of the family, dressmaker Andrea, is referred to as “The Grandmother,” as if the relationship were a title and, in fact, the grandmother does function as a kind of queen, holding the family together and, more importantly, tending and maintaining the family memories and secrets, represented by the frequently dusted row of photographs on the mantel.

The descriptions and characters in this novel are darkly memorable; the reader is challenged to imagine all that is not told in this brief narrative, much as the child must piece together the truth of his own family from what is not said. A sometimes difficult read, but a worthwhile one.

Jeanne Mackin A MASTER PLAN FOR RESCUE Janis Cooke Newman, Riverhead, 2015, $27.95/ C$33.95, hb, 336pp, 9781594633614 At the instant his family hears that Japanese bombs have hit Pearl Harbor, 12-year-old Jack’s perfect, secure life shatters – and not because of the war. A sudden loss of eyesight and then, soon after, his father in a freak accident send him on a quest that leads him, eventually, to Jakob, a German Jew hiding in New York City. The bond between the pair and the treacherous “master plan for rescue” on which they embark form the nucleus of this beautiful, engaging coming-of-age tale replete with mystery, love, magic – and magical thinking.

Although nearly blind, Jack can “see” the scenarios depicted in radio shows as though he were watching television (which hasn’t been invented yet), and can discern from the sound of people’s voices the true meaning of what they’re saying – including whether they’re lying. Jakob can repair anything, effortlessly, except the enfeebled heart of the doomed Jewish woman he loves. Although their gifts do nothing to help them recover the loved ones they’ve lost, their belief in magic enables them to pull off a courageous, spectacular act of derring-do, and to come to peace with what they cannot change.

The skillful characterization and superblypaced plotting would be enough on their own to recommend this book to anyone with an interest in World War II-era literature. But Newman’s descriptive and insightful writing punctuates the pleasure with “aha” moments of recognition and delight. “For neither of us were strangers to all the leaps of logic and imagination in which grief can make you believe,” Jack says. It’s a power which, as 20th Century

Newman’s new book demonstrates, fiction holds, too.

Sherry Jones A DECENT WOMAN Eleanor Parker Sapia, Booktrope, 2015, $16.95, pb, 265pp, 9781620154007 Because it provides a credible career option for independent women of the past, midwifery is a natural subject for female-centered historical novels. Ami McKay’s The Birth House and Patricia Harman’s Midwife of Hope River, to name two, speak to women’s struggles to pursue this timehonored practice after the advent of modern medicine, a male-dominated field. Parker Sapia’s passionately written debut also fits this description – and its heroine faces more barriers than most.

In 1900, Ana Belén is the only midwife in the village of La Playa in a newly American Puerto Rico. She has an impeccable track record, but she’s illiterate and lacks the necessary credentials at a time of increasing regulation. She does have allies, such as young Serafina Martínez, with whom Ana forms a lifelong bond after delivering Serafina’s first baby during a fierce storm. Over the next two decades, their stories diverge and reunite as they fight to live a life of their choosing, avoid scandals, and find worthy life partners. The latter is especially difficult; most of the male characters are chauvinists, adulterers, or worse.

In addition to the uncommon setting, Ana’s multicultural background makes the novel stand out. A Cuban former slave with a past full of turmoil, she wears a rosary of poisoned seeds and makes regular offerings to Yorùbá gods and goddesses. The author doesn’t make the mistake of making either her or Serafina too feisty: both are kind, respectable women with whom readers can identify. Parker Sapia writes with strong illustrative powers, with striking imagery of street fiestas, a society ball, and blood-soaked deliveries. There are a few weaknesses: the narrative jumps around in parts, and there are numerous copyediting mistakes. In all, it’s worth reading for its warm portrait of women’s supportive friendships and its perspective on early 20th-century Puerto Rican society.

Sarah Johnson IF YOU GO AWAY Adele Parks, Headline, 2015, £16.99/A$29.99, hb, 496pp, 9781472205483 Adele Parks is best known for contemporary novels often described as “chick-lit”, so I approached this venture into historical fiction a little warily. But I needn’t have worried, as this novel competently tackles serious themes in the crumbling days of England’s established order, when conformity was all that mattered and daring to have a mind of your own was despised, and when the lives of most young people were governed by duty to their elders, their class and, above all, their country.

Howard Henderson is a successful London playwright who thinks war is an obscenity. As 20th Century

companion to a war correspondent, he witnesses a year of its brutality firsthand. When conscription comes in, he is imprisoned as a conscientious objector, and it is only through his connection to Aubrey Owens that he avoids the noose and is sent to work on his farm.

Aubrey’s young wife, Vivian, is initially destined for an aristocratic marriage. When she commits an error and her reputation is tarnished, her snobbish parents force her to accept lesser-catch Aubrey, even though they are ill-suited. After he goes to war, Vivian moves to the farm and begins to blossom as an individual in her own right. Howard both puzzles and fascinates her, but their mutual attraction is immediate, and its repercussions will be profound.

The historical and social backgrounds are well described, as well as the graphic reflections of war.

Howard’s self-righteousness and Vivian’s neediness can seem excessive at times, but like all well-written characters with flaws, they retain their vitality for the reader and contrast well with bland Aubrey and Howard’s free-spirited mother, Enid. The ending feels a little rushed with some predictable elements, but the topic of conscientious objection makes this a rewarding and thought-provoking contribution to popular titles in WW1 romantic fiction.

Marina Maxwell

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TIN SKY Ben Pastor, Bitter Lemon, 2015, $14.95/£8.99, pb, 410pp, 9781908524515 Tin Sky is the 4th in Ben Pastor’s Martin Bora mystery stories and my first acquaintance with this aristocratic young Abwehr major.

I can say at the outset that I look forward to the next in the series, because Tin Sky is a very good read.

The story is set in 1943, in the fictional town of Merefa, in northeastern Ukraine. It begins with the discovery of a decapitated corpse in a nearby ravine: Krasny Yar, a place locals fear and avoid. But this is not Bora’s problem. His assignment in Merefa is counterintelligence. And his two prize prisoners have been murdered while in custody. There is an easy political route he can take to avoid responsibility, or he can hunt the killers down. He chooses the latter.

Pastor does a fine job weaving the web of internecine rivalry, deception, and cruelty of men at war in which Bora must maneuver to track his prey. Her plot is satisfyingly complex, and the hairraising resolution is worth the 300 pages it takes to get there. The story’s characters, especially Bora himself, are finely drawn.

Tin Sky demands a lot of patience from the reader. Although there are plenty of twists and surprises, this is not a James Patterson or Kathy

Reichs adventure mystery. There are beautiful literary passages to savor and opportunities to reflect with Bora in his search for a moral compass in time of war. I don’t think it would be overstating to say that Pastor’s conclusion is worthy of Camus or Beckett. It’s that good.

Lucille Cormier ON SHIFTING SAND Allison Pittman, Tyndale House, 2015, $14.99, pb, 385pp, 9781414390444 Nola Merrill lives in a parched world. The 1930s drought is blowing Oklahoma away with each gritladen windstorm, and throughout Nola’s life, her father withheld affection from his family, shriveling their souls with punishment and rejection.

Even after Nola marries Russ Merrill, she feels something is missing. She has two lovely children and her husband is well liked by his dwindling congregation. However, deep down, Nola knows that while Russ loves her deeply, she married him to escape.

Then Russ invites an old college friend to dinner. Jim Brace lost an arm in World War I and, like so many others, Jim was left homeless and impoverished by the Depression. Despite his handicap, Nola’s attraction to him is immediate.

When her husband offers Jim a room and meals in return for minding their hardware store, Nola wonders if she will be able to withstand temptation.

Allison Pittman’s On Shifting Sand is indeed a tale of temptation, but also of survival and redemption. When Nola and Russ find her father near death in his dust-filled farmhouse, they take him in. Will Nola be able to forge a healthy relationship with him? After she succumbs to Jim Brace’s charms, can Nola rekindle her love for her husband? Try Ms. Pittman’s heartfelt story to find out, and if you are like me, you will enjoy every word.

Jo Ann Butler WHEN SOMEBODY KILLS YOU: A Rat Pack Mystery Robert Randisi, Severn House, 2015, $27.95, hb, 192pp, 9780727885166 In this tenth installment of Randisi’s fun Rat Pack Mysteries, our favorite pit boss, Eddie Gianelli, is asked to help out yet another friend of Deano and Frank: Miss Judy Garland. Judy feels as though she’s being followed, so Eddie steps in to keep an eye on her, enlisting his good buddy, Jerry Epstein, to help him discover what’s really going on. It doesn’t take long for Eddie to become skeptical of Judy’s newest fiancé, and to wonder if perhaps the young actor is out for more than just Judy’s companionship. Unfortunately, Eddie also has his own big problem: it seems someone in Las Vegas has put out a hit on him, and it’s not clear just which powerful figure has decided to take him out. Could it be mobster MoMo Giancana, or someone related to the Kennedys? Or someone else entirely?

This novel, like the other mysteries in the series, HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Reviews | 45

is good fun that weaves real people and events effortlessly around a mystery that is plausible enough to have happened just that way. Eddie always seems to get himself involved in serious problems despite his best efforts, and his usual cast of cohorts is there to keep him alive while he figures out what’s going on. Randisi is an expert in bringing the era to life, using the Rat Pack members fully and giving Old Vegas a personality all its own. This book is just as good as the others in the series, and is recommended as quality escapism and intriguing mystery at their best.

Tamela McCann RULE OF CAPTURE Ona Russell, Sunstone Press, 2015, $24.95, pb, 340pp, 9781632930477 Rule of Capture is the third book in Russell’s series featuring Ohioan Sarah Kaufman in the 1920s. Sarah works as a probate officer in Toledo but is currently in Los Angeles, ostensibly attending a conference, but instead avidly following the trial of the Julian Petroleum Corporation, which swindled Sarah and countless others out of their savings.

Los Angeles in 1928 is a far cry from Sarah’s hometown. The trial evokes a veiled anti-Semitism, and when Sarah gets drawn into the murder of a Mexican woman whom she had briefly met, racism enters the picture as well. Encountering Carlos Martinez in the courtroom, she finds him a sympathetic ear and soon more as she’s drawn into an affair with him, ignoring calls from her reporter lover in Toledo. Carlos has his own reasons for keeping Sarah close, but, in private, has no small amount of scorn for Jews.

This is a dense but fascinating book. It’s not just the Ponzi scheme of the Julian trial but the prounion activism of Carlos, accompanied by sabotage, the references to Sarah’s possible drinking problem, and then the out-of-nowhere denouement, which still made sense, as startling as it was. Sarah is an all-too-human character, wanting revenge, seeking justice, making poor decisions, but using her head to figure things out. I look forward to Russell’s fourth in the series and intend to find the first two.

Ellen Keith A BULLET APIECE John Joseph Ryan, Blank Slate Press, 2015, $15.95, pb, 226pp, 9781943075010 It is 1960, and Ed Darvis is a PI in suburban St. Louis. When chaos erupts at the preschool across the street from his office, he just can’t help but get involved. A little girl has been kidnapped, and when the girl’s mother comes into his office the next day, he’s officially on the case. While he tries to find the girl, Darvis become intertwined in a second case, this time the murder of a former boxer, The Beef, outside a dive bar that Darvis frequents. Juggling the two cases, Darvis learns that the missing girl’s father is operating a baby farm in Columbia and that the once Boxer had disgraced the barmaid’s family. Darvis has to skirt the law, avoid being 46 | Reviews |

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killed—repeatedly—and ultimately survive long enough to clear his own name.

A Bullet Apiece is a hardboiled detective novel if there ever was one. It stays true to the noir genre, almost to the point of over-clichéd. Darvis is your typical slobby, drunk, chain-smoking detective who just can’t keep his nose out of trouble. There are crooked cops and beautiful women. Ryan gives Darvis a witty, quick personality that helps pace the book, and Ryan’s writing is good and he knows his genre. I’m not sure what the purpose of the kidnapping plot was, as it had no relationship to The Beef plot line, and the kidnapping was resolved midway through the book with little work

by Darvis. As I read, I hoped that Ryan would tie the two cases together in some unique twist, but it never materialized. If you are a fan of the hardboiled detective noir genre and are looking for a quick read, you will enjoy this book.

Bryan Dumas HEARTS OF STONE Simon Scarrow, Headline, 2015, £18.99, hb, 384pp, 9780755380220 1938. It is an idyllic summer on the Greek island of Lefkas. Three young people – Peter, who is German, and Andreas and Eleni, both Greek – have formed a close friendship during an archaeological dig supervised by Peter’s father.

Unfortunately, the dig is called off when the German members are recalled to Germany. In 1943 war comes to paradise. Andreas and Eleni join the resistance to rebel against the German invasion. Peter returns as an Intelligence Officer, ostensibly to use his knowledge of the island to suppress the resistance; however, he has a deeper, darker role to play. A friendship formed in peace will turn into a battle between bitter enemies with tragic consequences.

As you would expect from a writer of Scarrow’s quality, this is well-written and researched. The plot is taut, and the characters are well defined.

He evokes the drama and horror of 20th-century warfare, while connecting through to today and the ongoing reverberations, in a compelling and exciting read. This is a real treat for fans of Scarrow, a fast-paced page turner. Recommended.

Mike Ashworth CODE NAME: Infamy (Aviator Book 4) Leland Shanle, Blank Slate Press, 2015, $15.95, pb, 232pp, 9781943075003 This WWII thriller novel opens much like a war movie might. A lone figure in the black leather uniform of a German SS officer walks through a dark forest. The title across the screen identifies the date and location: 28 January 1945, Kernphysik Command, Ohrdruf, Germany. Arriving at the gates of the barbed wire fence around the nuclear facility, the guards let the officer in immediately, for he is Generalleutnant von Bassenheim, Director of Germany’s Nuclear Weapons Program. He sits at his shiny steel desk, down in the seventh-floorunderground office, and opens a file. He stares

at the intelligence report in disbelief. Operation Unternehmen (Battle of the Bulge) has failed. It’s only a matter of time before the Allied forces will overrun Germany. But von Bassenheim plans to make one last desperate attempt to save the Third Reich. In partnership with the Japanese, he has been developing a top secret weapon: a nucleararmed submarine aircraft carrier that is almost ready for deployment to obliterate American cities.

He code-names the mission Infamy. However, an American OSS team is out to search and destroy this mission.

Leland Shanle, a former Lieutenant Commander in the USN, has put his practical knowledge of ships, seaplanes, and submarines, and his first-hand battle experience in Iraq and elsewhere, to good use in penning this thriller. The operational aspects of both the German and Allied forces are described realistically. Although this is the fourth novel in a series, it can be read as a standalone, provided one doesn’t look for too much background information about the characters.

Apart from the usual action-oriented battle scenes, there are many human elements in the novel. The characters show doubts about their mission, party, and fall in love. Recommended.

Waheed Rabbani THE BOOK OF ARON Jim Shepard, Knopf, 2015, $23.95/C$27.95, hb, 272pp, 9781101874318 / Quercus, 2015, £13.99, pb, 256pp, 9781848667396 In 1940, the Germans forcibly moved all Jews in Warsaw to a designated area, and built a fence to prevent them from leaving. Life in the Ghetto was difficult, and became harder with every passing day.

This is the story of young Aron, a troubled child even before the German invasion; he did poorly in school, didn’t get along with either his family or other children, and was generally unpleasant to be around. Piece by piece, Aron’s life is stripped away: his brother and father are rounded up and taken to a work camp; his mother contracts typhus; his miscreant companions are caught smuggling and disappear. These dire circumstances force him into the orphanage run by real-life children’s rights activist Janusz Korczak, who somehow takes a liking to Aron, and who is the real, perhaps only, heart in this story of fear, deprivation, and death.

There’s very little in this book to like; the Ghetto, and the Nazis, weren’t known for bringing out the best in people, and Shepard excels at showing us the worst. The sights, sounds, and smells are dirty, jarring, and unappetizing, with no relief except for the dark humor inherent in Aron’s amoral behavior. Even Korczak is difficult to face, as his idealism causes pain. Yet Shepard keeps the reader entranced with his attention to detail—never have so many words been devoted to the watching and killing of lice, for example—and in those details we experience life as it must have been for countless Jewish children. In their lives, Korczak was the only adult who, until the very end, taught that children have the right to respect, and the right to make 20th Century

mistakes. His perspective adds a tiny glimmer of hope to an otherwise very dark story.

Helene Williams

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BACKLANDS Victoria Shorr, Norton, 2015, $25.95, hb, 304pp, 9780393246025 To be part of Lampião’s gang of bandits, who roamed the backlands of Brazil between 1922 and 1938, was to be an important part of the fabric of life in this arid but beautiful land known as the Sertão.

The words of one of his marching songs, “You teach me to make lace and I’ll teach you to make love,” provide insight into the folkloric popularity of both Lampião and his woman (the renowned beauty, Maria Bonita). Born Virgulino Ferreira da Silva, Lampião was 21 years old when his father was murdered. Denied justice by the local judge, he left his family’s ranch and embraced the life of banditry, succeeding so well that he soon gained notoriety as the “Bandit King.” Lampião could be both cruel and compassionate. His arrival in any village would usually herald the death of a few and the enrichment of many.

This powerful novel, written in a voice that draws one deep into Lampião’s world, tells not only the story of the King and Queen of the Bandits but also of the land and the people (both of whom are characters in their own right). The main thread follows the life-and-death struggle between the bandits and the police, but this combat is superbly set in relief against the backdrop of the constant battle for survival in a land dominated by cycles of rain and drought.

There is a third conflict woven subtly into the story that brings the writing to the level of genius, and that is the fight to hold on to a beloved culture in the face of the relentless pressure to join the modern world. When Lampião and Maria Bonita meet their inevitable fate, the author brilliantly portrays their deaths as markers of the end an era.

Highly recommended.

Nancy J. Attwell A HARVEST OF HOPE: Song of Blessing, v.2 Lauraine Snelling, Bethany House, 2015, $14.99/ C$17.99, pb, 348pp, 9780764211058 Miriam Hastings, a nursing student, is an intern at a North Dakota hospital. She can’t decide if she should return to her family in Chicago or stay out west to start a new life with Trygve Knutson, the man who loves her.

There are nineteen names in the first three pages, and many more in almost every chapter. Many of the names are Norwegian (like Trygve, which is difficult for English speakers to pronounce) or Native American, so the gender of some characters 20th Century

isn’t immediately apparent unless there’s a nearby pronoun.

The novel doesn’t follow normal storytelling rules, like hero, heroine, villain, character flaws, conflict, rising action, more conflict, and finally, resolution of the problem. In fact, there’s no real problem, and no clearly defined bad guy. There’s a banker, but he’s not the antagonist of the presumed hero. There’s also nothing historical about it. It’s just a nice little narrative about typical life on the plains in 1905 and how people help each other through difficult times.

There are so many names. This is one of those novels that you have to read in only one or two sittings or you’ll lose track of who everybody is. For this reviewer, it was not an easy read.

Kevin Montgomery GIRL WAITS WITH GUN Amy Stewart, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015, $27/C$36, hb, 416pp, 9780544409910 Horticulturist Amy Stewart turns from the world of plants (The Drunken Botanist, 2013) to that of 20th-century crime. The title, a headline from the Philadelphia Sun on November 23, 1914, refers to Constance Kopp, 35, a real woman at war with corruption.

In 1914, Constance and two younger sisters live quietly on a small New Jersey farm, driving into Paterson when they need supplies. When an automobile belonging to wealthy mill-owner Harry Kaufmann hits their buggy, the Kopps expect compensation, but Kaufman refuses.

Constance, who is hiding a checkered past, calls on the man to avoid involving the police. The working conditions in the Kaufman mill are abysmal, but when Constance tries to help Lucy, a frightened employee, Kaufman warns her to stay away. First, there’s a brick through a window, then a fire, then an attack on the Kopp farm.

Constance’s concern for her reputation is overcome by fear for her sister’s safety, her desire to save Lucy, and memories of her younger self.

Drawn into a criminal investigation, she takes part in surveillance and stakeouts – carrying a gun – and gives evidence in a sensational trial. The county sheriff even suggests Constance would make a good deputy.

Conditions in mid-Atlantic mills, as described in Girl Waits with Gun, lasted well beyond the war.

Although Lucy is a fictional character, her case was not unique. Constance, her family, the county sheriff, and other characters, who are based on real people, are fascinating as well as believable.

More “cozy” than coldblooded, Girl Waits with Gun is recommended for readers who prefer crime without violence.

Jeanne Greene A FLYING AFFAIR Carla Stewart, FaithWords, 2015, $15.00/ C$17.00, pb, 320pp, 9781455549993 The 1920s was an exciting era of human endeavor. In A Flying Affair, set in 1927, Mittie

Humphreys joins the many women who are seizing their freedom both at home and in the sky. Mittie helps manage her family’s American Saddlehorse farm near Louisville, Kentucky, but her heart’s desire is to learn to fly. With the help of two pilots, Ames Dewberry and Bobby York, Mittie becomes not only a skilled aviatrix but a wing walker as well.

On the home front, Mittie is torn between her desire for independence and her responsibilities to her family. This is the weakest part of the story.

Several of the characters seem to exist solely to integrate this novel into a series, and Mittie’s interactions with them feel trivial. This slight flaw aside, the many period details are so smoothly integrated into the story that the reader is drawn into the world of an aviatrix in the years when flying was novel and the pilots competed with one another to push the limits of what they could accomplish. The backdrop of the competitive world of show horses adds an additional layer of richness.

Altogether, A Flying Affair is a very enjoyable romantic adventure.

Nancy J. Attwell GHOST OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS Nellie P. Strowbridge, Flanker Press, 2015, $19.95/ C$19.95, pb, 342pp, 9781771173247 Inspired by true tragic events, Strowbridge’s multi-generational tale brings to life the small coastal communities of Newfoundland at the turn of the 20th century. Fishing, sealing, and mining were the main industries, and all were dangerous; it was a rare family who had not lost a loved one to the sea or the mines.

In Foxtrap, nine-year-old Maggie Taylor watched her father sail away each day, to fish or cut wood on Kelly’s Island. Every night she’d be on the beach, awaiting his return. When he didn’t come back after a storm, Maggie’s stepmother shipped her off to work for an aunt and uncle in a different tiny town. Her friend Elizabeth Maley watched her go, then years later left Foxtrap as well, to join her husband in Hibb’s Cove. Each of these outposts clung to the edges of the sea, the inhabitants fighting nature to survive; Strowbridge creates vivid images of the tenacity of spirit, and the joys in small victories in these communities.

Maggie and Elizabeth are reunited as adults, when Maggie is engaged to Elizabeth’s brother, Jamie. Despite the danger, Jamie is intent on going sealing during the winter of 1914, to earn enough to build a house. A disastrous blizzard strikes when his ship, the Southern Cross, is due to come home. The aftermath affected families all along the coast, and generations later, people still talk about the incredible loss.

Maggie and Elizabeth find different ways to carry on, and the daily hardships they endured to survive are at the core of this sad story. Strowbridge weaves together family, cultural, and economic history for today’s readers. Her writing is an ode to the strength of human will and family ties, as well as to the irresistible call of the sea.

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GOOD NIGHT, MR. WODEHOUSE Faith Sullivan, Milkweed, 2015, $26, hb, 439pp, 9781571311115 Nell Stillman, a schoolteacher widowed after an unhappy marriage, has a son who returns from WWI shell-shocked. Events like the sinking of the Lusitania and the stock market crash intrude on the lives of her small town’s residents. Nell’s teaching job is threatened when her live-in baby sitter disappears to have her own baby. Turning to literature to console herself, she works her way through Austen, Balzac, Twain, Hardy, Henry James, George Eliot, and Trollope before finding her true love in Love Among the Chickens, one of Pelham Greenville Wodehouse’s early novels. His cheerful optimism, verbal mastery, and intricate plots leading to inevitable happy endings brighten what could be an otherwise dreary life. (I recently took the advice of the Times Literary Supplement and cured a case of the flu by taking to my bed with a Wodehouse novel.) Nell gives and receives his books as presents and follow his prolific career novel by novel, going through Blandings Castle and arriving at Bertie and Jeeves.

The subject matter and tone of this novel are completely opposite to Wodehouse’s self-described musical comedies written as novels. Literature about literature usually takes the form of sensitive young men like Stephen Dedalus or Proust’s narrator discovering themselves as novelists. Here the reader is the center. I strongly recommend this unusual novel, but if you haven’t read Wodehouse, I would suggest you start with him, perhaps with How Right You Are Jeeves.

James Hawking THE WAY THINGS WERE Aatish Taseer, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015, $28.00/C$32.50, hb, 576pp, 9780865478244 / Picador, 2015, £16.99, hb, 560pp, 9781447272458 Skanda, a Sanskrit scholar, travels from Manhattan to Switzerland to be at the deathbed of his father, Toby, a former maharaja of an Indian state, who chose a Western academic life. Upon Toby’s demise, Skanda is entrusted to accompany the body alone to India for the funeral. Neither Toby’s former wife, Uma, Skanda’s mother, nor his present wife, Sylvia, wishes to be at the cremation.

Later, in posh Lutyens’ Delhi, Skanda decides to stay on awhile in his ancestral home. There he has the opportunity not only to reunite with his old family and friends, but also to reminisce about his father’s life, loves and marriages. He recalls several generations of his family’s history, particularly during a tumultuous period in India’s recent times, from the 1975 ‘Emergency,’ to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots following Indira Gandhi’s assassination and the ethnic violence following the destruction of the centuries-old Ayodhya Mosque in 1992. A shocked Toby had left India, and his son tries to unravel the impact of these upheavals on his family and on India as a whole.

In this sprawling epic, Aatish Taseer has wordpainted an immense canvas of modern Indian 48 | Reviews |

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history: its peoples, cultures and languages. The three calamitous events, which occurred following the 1947 Independence and Partition, and their impact in shaping family members’ lives, are aptly narrated, although the constant shifting of time frames, scenes and thoughts requires careful reading. Apart from history, the novel examines the roots and cognates of common words in Sanskrit, the ancient Indian language, with other languages, and, in bringing it to life, presents an allegory for India to seek out its glorious past in the so- called Hindu Renaissance, while cautioning us about modern society’s penchant for seeking out greed over intelligence. An enlightening novel. Highly recommended.

Waheed Rabbani ONLY WOUNDED: Stories of the Irish Troubles Patrick Taylor, Forge, 2015, $25.99/C$29.99, hb, 304pp, 9780765335203 It seems fitting that this book, a collection of connected short stories, is written by a physician, since it deals with both the physical and psychological wounds inflicted upon all Irishmen during Northern Ireland’s “troubles” between Catholic and Protestant citizens.

Taylor, a New York Times bestselling author, tells the story of the religious wars between the two factions not in terms of the governments (Irish Republic, Northern Ireland, and Great Britain) involved, or their politics, but brings the violence down to a personal level. The reader learns of innocent citizens, walking with their children, shopping, or loitering in a favorite pub, whose lives are suddenly snuffed out by indiscriminate bombs. There are stories of young British soldiers caught in peacekeeping duties and despised by Catholics and Protestants alike. And always there are the idealistic young men who commit murder in the name of patriotism and are indelibly scarred forever by their actions.

Throughout the collection are several stories relating the strong friendship between Pat and Neil, Catholic and Protestant, which offer a glimmer of hope for the future of a Northern Ireland in which all people, regardless of their religion, can live in peace.

This book is highly recommended.

John Kachuba

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DAUGHTER OF THE HOUSE Rosie Thomas, Harper Collins, 2015, £12.99, pb, 503pp, 9780007512058 / Overlook, 2015, $27.95, hb, 448pp, 9781468311747 Daughter of the House is the eagerly awaited follow-up to Rosie Thomas’s incredibly successful The Illusionists, and although it is a sequel, the book can quite easily be read as a stand-alone novel. It tells the story of Nancy Wix, daughter of the great theatre impresario, Devil Wix, and his melancholic wife, Eliza. Nancy discovers at a young age that she has psychic abilities but is at pains to keep “the uncanny” hidden from her family, though she

struggles to do so when she is approached by another psychic after a boating tragedy. This man will haunt Nancy for many years.

As the middle child, Nancy is often the buffer in a house of large personalities: when her brothers go away to war, she must stay to hold her parents together. She joins the suffragettes, briefly finds work at a printing house, and longs to find her own place in the world. Through her psychic abilities, she finally finds her path, begins to let go of just being a daughter, and starts learning to be herself.

This is a wonderful coming-of-age tale set in a time of upheaval and social change. It is a story of the lives of women and the choices they face, and it is a wonderful evocation of the past. Thomas has made meticulous use of her research, brilliantly bringing to life the end of the music hall era and the rise of spiritualism in the 1920s. I highly recommend this smart, gothic, and romantic pageturner.

Lisa Redmond

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DUET FOR THREE HANDS Tess Thompson, Booktrope, 2015, $19.95, pb, 348pp, 9781620157183 Duet for Three Hands is a new novel that explores the nature of love and race in the early 20th-century South.

The story is focused on the Bellmont family, an Old South family that has been able to remake its fortune on the back of new enterprise. But beneath the glittering façade there is trouble. Patriarch Frank Bellmont is a brutish drunk, while his wife, Clare, though as kind and loving as she is beautiful, often suffers his wrath. Their children, Frances and Whitmore, are as different as night and day. Frances, a spoiled, deluded beauty who courts scandal at every turn, lures a brilliant concert pianist into marriage.

Whitmore is a sensitive dreamer who must hide his growing feelings for Jeselle, his best friend and the family’s black servant girl.

Tess Thompson has created a masterwork of Southern literature. Told from various points of view, Duet for Three Hands is a little slow to start as the various characters are introduced. The addition of Nathanial Fye and Lydia, his eventual protégée, seems nonsensical in the beginning, but all the threads come together by the end. The setting, however, is brilliantly captured, and practically palpitates with the tension of a sultry afternoon.

Thompson does not shy away from depicting the 20th Century

cruelty of some Southern whites, but she does not condemn them all as miserable bigots, which is refreshing. While great brutality is often present, it is juxtaposed against selfless acts of kindness and sacrifice, leaving the reader with a full picture of life during this turbulent time period. Lovers of Southern fiction and general historical fiction will find Duet for Three Hands a welcome respite to the glut of beach reads this summer. Highly recommended.

Caroline Wilson THE NIGHT STAGES Jane Urquhart, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015, $27.00, hb, 401pp, 9780374222192 As an epigraph to The Night Stages, Jane Urquhart uses a line from Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night: “As if I were the ghost of the fog.” While fog plays an important role in stranding Urquhart’s protagonist, Tamara, in Newfoundland’s Gander airport in the late Fifties, where she ponders a mural, the fog is also a great metaphor for the challenges faced by the characters of this novel.

Tamara, an Englishwoman with a privileged upbringing, served as an auxiliary pilot during the war and fell in love with a married Irishman; she fails to see her relationship with Niall clearly. Niall, a meteorologist in a small Irish town, struggles to – and can’t – find happiness with his wife and family or with Tamara because of the “fog” of his lost brother Kieran’s disappearance years before, which continues to haunt him. Kieran represents Irish culture and its erosion; educated by Irish men and women who live close to the land, he respects Irish myths and traditions that, like his mentors, are dying.

Like her other works, The Stone Carvers for example, Urquhart inserts the journey of an artist in his creation of an important piece of Canadian art. Whereas in The Stone Carvers she explored Walter Allward’s design and construction of the Vimy Memorial, in The Night Stages she examines Kenneth Lochhead and his mural, Flights and Its Allegories, created for the Gander airport. This novel is a fine exploration of the importance of home and the metaphorical fog that can challenge relationships. The scenes in which Kieran prepares for the bicycle race that occurs at the climax of the novel are especially rewarding for their imagery of the Irish countryside.

Terri Baker

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ORPHAN #8 Kim van Alkemade, William Morrow, 2015, $14.99/C$18.50, pb, 416pp, 9780062338303 The tale of how medical experiments were performed upon orphans during the 1920s is simultaneously fascinating and horrifying, particularly as the underlying facts are grounded in truth. The narrative weaves back and forth in time, with Rachel Rabinowitz telling her current story in the first person, while in the third person, 20th Century

the reader learns about Rachel as a young girl.

After a tragic event, Rachel and her brother are sent to a Jewish orphanage on New York City’s Lower East Side in 1919, when she is only about four years old. Desperate for love and a maternal figure, Rachel clings to any attention she can get. It comes in the form of Dr. Mildred Solomon, who wants to contribute to medical science by experimenting with X-rays.

As Rachel has no parents who need to signal their consent, she becomes a convenient subject.

As an adult several decades later, Rachel is convinced that she has ill effects as a direct result of the radiation exposure. In a twist of fate, the doctor who performed life-altering experiments on Rachel is now dying, and Rachel, now a nurse, is charged with her care. That scenario sets up an incredible conflict within Rachel’s psyche.

This book is utterly unputdownable. At once atmospheric, disturbing and absolutely engrossing, it poses a host of moral questions; I fully anticipate that it will become popular with book clubs.

Hilary Daninhirsch

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MAUD’S LINE Margaret Verble, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015, $23.00, hb, 304pp, 9780802405760 Maud Nail, growing up on the Cherokee allotment lands in the 1920s, shares a tiny shack and a hard life with her father, Mustard, and her brother, Lovely. A straight-up delight, she shines like a free spirit: “At eighteen, she was fit, dark, and tall like the rest of her mother’s family and most of her tribe.

She was more of a willow than an oak, and her figure and personality had grown pleasing to every male within a twenty mile radius, to some of the women, too, and to most of the animals.” She loves Dickens; she craves a wringer washing machine.

But she seems doomed to the same grim, desperate life as her mother, dead of snake bite. Then she meets a white peddler, just passing through, and she sees a way to escape.

Underlying all this is a strenuous and unsentimental examination of the tensions between Maud’s traditions and the white society, a clash of values that shapes her life as surely as her endless chores and the hard country she lives in. In clean, spare prose, Margaret Verble describes a people’s struggle to maintain a culture and an identity that both sustains and imprisons them.

Her observations of the beauty and anguish of this life, and her vivid heroine, make this as good a novel as I’ve read all year.

Cecelia Holland TINY LITTLE THING Beatriz Williams, Putnam, 2015, $26.95/C$31.00, hb, 356pp, 9780399171307 Beatriz Williams’ novels are deliciously addictive.

Although her latest is a less complex story than The Secret Life of Violet Grant, it has the same winning combination of intriguing characters, zippy prose, and realistic dialogue.

Unlike her exuberant younger sister Vivian, one of the previous book’s heroines, Christina “Tiny” Hardcastle had been groomed to be the perfect hostess and spouse. By marrying handsome Frank, an aspiring Congressman, she has achieved her and her family’s goal – yet feels the weight of responsibility upon her petite shoulders. She appears to have the support of her husband and his formidable family, especially after her recent miscarriage, but in the summer of ’66, which the Hardcastles spend together, Kennedy-style, on Cape Cod, Tiny’s perfect world starts falling apart.

First an incriminating photo and blackmailed threat arrive in the mail, and then her secret former lover, Frank’s cousin Caspian, returns from Vietnam a war hero and helps bolster Frank’s first political campaign. Caspian seems honorable and trustworthy, so Tiny can’t imagine he’d be blackmailing her – but how did the photos he took get into someone else’s hands? And thanks to a reporter’s questions and her own intuition, she suspects Frank’s hiding something, too. Providing unexpected moral support is Tiny’s beautiful sister, Pepper, whose adventures in the forthcoming Along the Infinite Sea promise to be most excellent Novels showing the downsides of life amongst the glamorous elite are hardly new, but Tiny’s sympathetic and engaging voice, even addressing the reader on occasion, ensures she isn’t a cliché.

The plight of returning Vietnam soldiers is touched upon only lightly, and Caspian feels a bit idealized, but in showing the pressures endured by celebrities of both genders, the novel sends a heartfelt message about the struggles everyone faces between our public and private selves.

Sarah Johnson THE OTHER DAUGHTER Lauren Willig, St. Martin’s Press, 2015, $25.99/ C$29.99, hb, 320pp, 9781250056283 Rachel Woodley is working as a governess in 1920s Paris when she receives word that her mother is very ill, so she rushes home only to be devastated that her mother has already passed. As she goes through her mother’s meager possessions, she makes a startling discovery: her father, whom she’s long thought dead, is not only alive, but also an Earl with two other children. Stunned by the news that she is not only illegitimate, but also forgotten, Rachel decides to somehow HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Reviews | 49

unveil her father’s perfidy. With help from new acquaintance Simon, Rachel sets herself up in London, insinuating herself into the party crowd of Bright Young Things and coming into contact with her half-sister, Olivia. But naturally things are not quite as simple as they seem, and Rachel soon realizes that perhaps there are two versions of the truth, and maybe her newfound family is not quite as unfeeling as she’d assumed.

Willig is a wonderful storyteller, and The Other Daughter sets up Rachel’s indignation at her father’s betrayal quite well. It’s very easy to understand why she feels so stricken, especially when faced with memories of a loving father who had supposedly died years before. The story itself plays out well, and the ending is satisfying. However, the “love” story aspect is disappointing, as Simon is meant to be mysterious and secretive but instead comes across as arrogant and irritating. Despite that problem, the novel is very intriguing, and Willig brings the Roaring ´20s to life with her dazzling descriptions and tales of constant partying. A very interesting story that has its share of surprises.

Tamela McCann THE UNINVITED Cat Winters, William Morrow, 2015, $14.99/ C$18.50/£8.99, pb, 368pp, 9780062347336 Ivy Rowan and her mother tend to see “the uninvited” dead just before someone dies. So, in 1918, it’s no surprise that 25-year-old Ivy, who has been struck down by the Spanish Influenza, sees her dead grandmother. Her family has only recently received word of her brother’s death, in the war in Europe, and her old friends and neighbors in the small Illinois town where she lives are dying by the scores. Then Ivy’s brother and father stagger into the house after killing an innocent German immigrant shopkeeper. The American Protective League’s propaganda has made them into murderers. The senseless killing is more than Ivy can bear, and even though she is still wracked with the effects of the flu, she leaves her lifelong home.

Except for when she’s suddenly competent, mostly Ivy impotently protests the tragedies pulling her world apart: her father’s brutality, her one brother’s death in the war, and so many dying of the flu. When she begins to see the dead here and there, she knows that all that’s come before is just a prelude to even worse. (She’s right.)

Winters is a talented writer who takes her readers on an audacious ride with this book, her first novel written for an adult audience. The plotting is near perfect. The closer I got to the book’s denouement, the more I could see why Ivy had behaved as poorly as she did. That said, Ivy is exasperatingly immature, and both her actions and love affair are hard to swallow, at least in the beginning. Once the reader understands what Ivy’s up against, however, the book is so much fun that these complaints don’t feel as important. And the jazz club is a divine creation, worth the price of admission.

Kristen Hannum 50 | Reviews |

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DIAMOND HEAD Cecily Wong, Harper, 2015, $25.99/C$31.99, hb, 320pp, 9780062345431 A red string binds a man and a woman to a perfect destiny. But if the man or woman thwarts the tying and binding of that string, it doesn’t separate. Instead knots form in the string, knots that pass between the intended couple, those who come in between them, their children and grandchildren. This is destiny, so where lies the option of choice, and what flows from the clear or knotted string?

This is the story of a family living in Hawaii on the island of Diamond Head. It begins with Frank Leong having a child, Bohai, by a concubine in Guangdong, China, and another child, Kaipo, who is born to his wife, Lin, in Hawaii. Lin begins to plan Kaipo and Bohai’s futures, although Bohai is a recluse who seems powerless to be what Lin wants him to be. When Lin arranges his marriage to Amy, she has no idea what disaster that union will reap. Lin and Amy will pay an enormous price for attempting to shape the future. As both now attend Frank’s funeral, they are forced to remember every audacious moment from the past that led to this devastating moment.

The time of this novel spans from the Boxer Rebellion, told from a very different point of view than readers usually find in history books, to the 1960s, including the shocking attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor. This novel is crafted in singular prose, with poetic, stunning descriptions of scenery and dialogue on every page. Chinese and Hawaiian legends are beautifully woven into the plot with deft foreshadowing that will rivet readers’ attention and will make them hunger for more.

Diamond Head is beautifully written historical fiction.

Viviane Crystal UP THE HILL TO HOME Jennifer Bort Yacovissi, Apprentice House, 2015, $35, hb, 477pp, 9781627200561 Up the Hill to Home follows the vicissitudes of three families, united by marriage into one, who call Washington, DC home from 1895 to 1939.

Like the city itself, the Millers, Becks, and Voiths recover from World War I, grow, endure, survive the Great Depression, and, inevitably, prepare for another war.

The author uses a diary based on that of her own grandmother to introduce Lillie Voith, who is the heart and mind of the family in 1933. Lillie’s days are filled with the myriad responsibilities associated with raising nine children, leaving little time for reflection. When she reaches for the box that contains her memorabilia, her husband Ferd, who has a sixth sense about these things, knows Lillie is pregnant.

Then Lillie suffers a fall, which leads to serious illness. With Lillie confined to her bed, the frightened family is forced to put aside their petty differences and manage without her. Meanwhile, in Lillie’s mind, the pages of her mother’s diary turn

back as well as forward: the present alternates with events when she was well and throughout family history, not always in chronological order.

For a first-time novelist, Yacovissi handles the unconventional organization with aplomb.

Chapter headings prevent confusion, as the lives of the Millers, Becks, and Voiths for the last 40 years are described in detail (some may say too much detail). Although the personal tragedy of those who prepare for loss is touching, this is not a sad book. There are humor and happy times and good news. Up the Hill to Home is a novel of complex relationships and complicated people who make up one variety of the “average American family” over time.

Jeanne Greene WAVELAND, One Woman’s Story of Freedom Summer Simone Zelitch, The Head & the Hand Press, 2015, $18, pb, 212pp, 9780989312585 Waveland centers on the recollections of Beth Fine, a white Jewish girl recruited by the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the summer of 1964. Posted to Mississippi, Beth is eager to work the front line, locating black voters and driving them to the courthouse to register.

A highly-strung and truly ‘engaged outsider’ who knocks intellectual heads with her black supervisor, Larry, Beth soon becomes disenchanted by the menial tasks of copying, typing, and shelving donated books. She hadn’t anticipated the massive paperwork action campaign. For her it’s about physical action! In Greenwood she meets Ron Beauchamp, a black Mississippian Freedom Rider with whom she has a child in 1965. After the Waveland conference, SNCC moods wavered and shifted, and whites were no longer welcome in the movement.

The content of this novel was mostly unfamiliar to me, but I was quickly swept into an intense and explosive period in history. What felt comfortingly familiar, throughout the narrative, were aspects of life in the ‘60s. Many of Beth’s memories are related through stories told to her daughter, Tamara, who grows up identifying passionately with her black genes. What I found particularly engrossing was the front-and-centre placement of the delicately complex and volatile nature of both the volunteers’ relationships and the movement itself. One might assume that the largely white volunteers (90%), who signed up that summer, thought their contribution would be enthusiastically welcomed – perhaps that their idealism alone would carry the day. But the inevitable shift from a passive, non-violent stance towards the Black Panther ideology is, at least partly, indicative of a movement which became impossible to control. As Larry muses nostalgically – it was easier when we knew everyone and had those midnight meetings. A must-read for ‘60s Civil Rights enthusiasts, and recommended for those who aren’t.

Fiona Alison 20th Century

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GOLDEN EARRINGS Belinda Alexandra, Gallery, 2015, $16.00/ C$21.00, pb, 512pp, 9781476790336 / Simon & Schuster, 2013, £6.99, pb, 528pp, 9780857208880 In 1970s Paris, a dejected ballet dancer, Paloma, is living with her grandmother, Mamie, in a townhouse-cum-ballet school. One morning she is confronted by a ghost in the courtyard who, looking like a “great étoile of the Paris Ballet,” soundlessly drops a pair of exquisite golden earrings into Paloma’s palm – and disappears. Young Paloma is dumbfounded. She knows only that her family are Spanish refugees, having fled Catalonia following the Civil War. Her father remarried after her mother’s death and lives in another part of the city.

In her attempt to solve the mystery of the earrings, Paloma learns of la Rusa, a renowned flamenco dancer who had committed suicide. Following hints from others that lead her nowhere, Paloma finally turns to Mamie and implores her to disclose their family’s secrets.

Belinda Alexandra’s family saga is written from the first-person viewpoint of three different women who lived in Barcelona during the Civil War and in 1970s Paris. However, the plot is coherent, for Alexandra has followed the ‘rules’ for this type of novel by distinguishing each character’s point of view through dated chapters. The novel offers much. Not only is it a superb story of love, hate, and betrayals during those violent times, but it also presents interesting insights into Catalan and gypsy culture and folklore, as well as the niceties of ballet and flamenco dancing. While historical fiction aficionados will enjoy reading about the somewhat obscure Spanish Civil War and 1970s Parisian life, they might find some of the supernatural elements improbable, such as a ghost giving a physical object to a real character. That notwithstanding, the romance, melodrama, and unravelling mystery of the narrative move along at a decent pace to keep us engrossed through the ending of this long novel.

Waheed Rabbani THE DEBT OF TAMAR Nicole Dweck, St. Martin’s, 2015, $25.99/ C$29.99, hb, 304pp, 9781250065681 This is a generational story that begins in Portugal in 1544. The wealthy merchant family of Mendez is honored by the Queen, who is trying to arrange a marriage between her cousin and the Mendez’ daughter, Reyna. Since the Mendez family are secret Jews, they are forced to flee to Turkey, where the family is welcome and thrives as merchant bankers. They are friends with the Sultan, whose grandson, Murad, falls in love with José Mendez’s daughter, Tamar. He gives her a ruby ring, but it is a dangerous match.

Four centuries pass, and it is 2002 in Istanbul.

The hero, Selim, is the last survivor of the Multi-period

Ottoman family who had ruled Turkey until 1922. Selim is handsome and wealthy, a bit of a playboy with a movie-star mistress. Suddenly, he receives bad health news and goes to a hospital in New York City, where he meets Hannah, the daughter of his roommate, David Herzikova. The story now goes back over sixty years, to Paris in 1941, to explain David’s history. After her father dies, Hannah continues to visit Selim, and they develop a friendship, especially after Selim reads the inscription in Hannah’s ruby ring.

The author writes beautiful, descriptive prose. For the most part, the characters are onedimensional, and while their motivations are clear, the plot lacks urgency. This may be the result of the various changes in time periods. In any event, this novel provides interesting historical reading but is not a page-turner.

Audrey Braver TROUBLE IN ROOSTER PARADISE T.W. Emory, Coffeetown Press, 2015, $14.95, pb, 248pp, 9781603819961 Gunnar Nilson, erstwhile PI in Seattle in the 1950s, finds himself recounting one of his cases to a sympathetic caregiver in 2003, when he’s laid up in an assisted living home with a broken leg. He warns her that his tale takes place in a time when “being correct politically had to do with how you cast your ballot and not how you spoke.”

In June 1950, Nilson is summoned to the scene of a murder. The female victim had his business card because he met her the night before at the movies and had given her a ride home when she told him she thought she was being followed. And indeed, driving her home, he shook a tail. Now she’s dead, and that would be the end of it, except that wealthy businessman Rikard Lundeen hires him to investigate. Christine Johanson, the victim and a saleswoman at Fascine Expressions, was the girlfriend of Lundeen’s godson. Lundeen wants the young man cleared, as he and Christine had argued before her murder.

Nilson’s investigation takes him into Christine’s swanky workplace, aka the rooster paradise of the title. Wealthy men shop there in hopes of making “friends.” Emory skillfully evokes this era of class distinctions and gender inequity. The murderer’s motive is inspired by both of these inequalities.

The tale is peppered with recognizable 1950s characters—the world- weary waitress, the damaged World War II veteran, the thwarted career woman. I felt the framing device was less effective. I was happy to be plunged into Nilson’s tale in the 1950s, less happy to be pulled out of it.

Emory doesn’t need to rely on it for Nilson’s next adventure.

Ellen Keith THE GIRL WHO WROTE IN SILK Kelli Estes, Sourcebooks Landmark, 2015, $14.99/C$19.99, pb, 400pp, 9781492608332 In 1886, Mei Lien, a young Chinese-American, is rescued from the freezing waters of the San Juan

Islands by the tender-hearted Joseph, who nurses her back to health and asks her to marry him.

This mixed-race marriage, particularly to an Asian woman, is shunned by the residents of Orcas Island, and the couple endures unnecessary hardship as they are ostracized by bigoted neighbours. When a freak accident kills Joseph, and Mei Lien realises she is dying, she must race against time to preserve and safeguard the future of their 7-year-old son.

Inara Erickson, daughter of a shipping magnate, inherits an Orcas Island estate, originally built by her great-great-great-grandfather. She falls in love with the property on sight and, as she is considering its conversion to a hotel, she comes across an embroidered silk sleeve hidden beneath a loose stair tread. The intricate pictures appear much more than random, and she enlists the help of an expert in Asian studies to research the sleeve’s origins – who embroidered it? Why cut it from the original garment? Why hide it? As the stories in the embroidery unfold, Inara discovers deep connections with its owner and works to right a long-forgotten wrong.

With anti-Chinese sentiment running high in the latter half of the 19th century and the introduction of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and 1892 Geary Act, many white citizens from southern California to Washington State felt justified in forcibly ejecting the Chinese (including legal US citizens) from their homes. This touching dual narrative is full of compassion and hope while providing vivid details of the inhumane treatment of the Chinese, upon whose backs the railroads crossing America were built. Mei Lien’s story is compelling, and her tragic history resonated with me long after, but sadly I found Inara shallow and easily forgettable. A worthy debut about an underrepresented period of Chinese-American history.

Fiona Alison PATERNOSTER Kim Fleet, The Mystery Press, 2015, £9.99, pb, 303pp, 978075096388 I am a natural to review this book. The locations are mostly just a short walk from where I live. This is Fleet’s first Cheltenham novel, introducing her female detective, Eden Grey. If her series gets going, as I hope it will, Cheltenham will soon rival Oxford as a murder-mystery hot spot, with the river Chelt as full of unexplained corpses as the Cherwell.

Paternoster is an historical novel in the ‘conspiracy’ genre, with a present-day investigator uncovering an historical secret, with two stories told in parallel, one contemporary and the other in the past. The historical thread is set in the 1790s, in Cheltenham’s early days (we don’t have much history here). The present-day conspiracy, which reaches back into the past, is of a very modern type, centring on corruption in the Borough Planning Department, but it also involves two murders, human trafficking and, of course, a secret cult.

The Mystery Press is an imprint of The History Press, the well-known publisher of popular nonHNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Reviews | 51

fiction history, and is a fairly recent venture into historical fiction.

Edward James THE GIRL FROM THE GARDEN Parnaz Foroutan, Ecco, 2015, $26.99/C$33.50, hb, 288pp, 9780062388384 In present-day Los Angeles, Mahboubeh, an elderly woman, sits in her picturesque garden and, while looking through photographs, recollects her family’s lives in the Iranian cities of Kermanshah and Tehran. Born into a wealthy Persian Jewish family in the early 20th century, and the only surviving daughter, Mahboubeh had left Tehran in 1977, “before the students took to the streets.”

However, her family’s downfall was mainly due to her Uncle Asher’s decision to remarry a woman his cousin had divorced. Asher, the head of the family, was led to that fateful decision because his young wife, Rakhel, was unable to conceive, which at that time was the measure of a woman’s worth.

Rakhel grew jealous and vindictive, taking strong measures to protect herself and her prestige within the family. Through Mahboubeh’s memories and flashbacks we learn of their complex family chronicle and malicious interactions, particularly between the brothers and their wives.

Parnaz Foroutan, an LA resident and PEN USA’s Emerging Voices award winner, has adroitly constructed this candid narrative that, as she acknowledges, is inspired by events in her own family’s history. It provides a fascinating look at the lives of Iranian Jewish families, a minority which, years ago, had lived and prospered successfully alongside the Muslim majority. The folklore, religious traditions, and customs of old Jewish Iranians are presented insightfully. The storyline requires careful construing due to its frequent flashbacks and the reminiscences used to depict this tale of family feuds, sacrifices and betrayals.

Furthermore, Foroutan’s poetic writing style does take a while to get used to, but it subsequently becomes a pleasurable reading experience. Highly recommended.

Waheed Rabbani THE RESCUED Marta Perry, Berkley, 2015, $15.00, pb, 352pp, 9780425271421 The second book in the Keepers of the Promise series, this sweet Amish story follows Judith Wegler in modern-day Pennsylvania and her life with her husband, Isaac, her children, and Isaac’s brother, Joseph. Her husband has stored up a great deal of guilt and anger, having saved his infant brother from a house fire that took the lives of the rest of their family 13 years ago. Not excited about farming the family land, Joseph hopes to apprentice in a trade, creating more friction between the brothers. As Isaac pushes the now-teenage Joseph away, he also pushes away Judith. She finds strength to fix things while reading letters dating from 1953 that she discovers in an old desk. The letters were 52 | Reviews |

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written by a widow, Mattie Lapp, who defies the county by keeping her daughter home rather than having her attend public school, as mandated by a new law. Mattie finds that her late husband’s cousin is a great help and support to her, and they come to realize that their feelings for one another grow over time.

As we follow both women’s stories, they seek resolution by finding strength in their faith to make the right choices for their families. The Rescued touches on characters that we met in The Forgiven: Judith’s two cousins. I like how the author understands the minds and ways of the Amish women, often using familiar expressions and terms in their dialogue, which gives her works a genuine feel. I look forward to finding out how cousin Barbie Lapp’s life proceeds in the third book.

Beth Turza MRS. SINCLAIR’S SUITCASE Louise Walters, Putnam, 2015, $26.95/C$31.00, hb, 271pp, 9780399169502 / Hodder, 2014, £6.99, pb, 320pp, 9781444777451 In present time, shy Roberta works in a bookstore in England, collecting bits and pieces of items she finds in various books. When her father gifts her with an old suitcase, which belonged to her grandmother Dorothea, Roberta is surprised to find a letter to her grandmother inside the suitcase.

It is from Jan, her Polish grandfather. Mysteriously though, the letter is postmarked after he supposedly died during WWII. Roberta decides to track down the story behind the letter, and to figure out what secret Jan references in the letter.

Mrs. Sinclair’s Suitcase is mainly Dorothea’s story.

Readers learn about her childhood, her unhappy marriage, and her life during the war. When an airplane crashes in the field behind her house, she rescues Squadron Leader Jan Pietrykowski from the flames. The two quickly become fast friends, and lovers. But in wartime, nothing is ever permanent, and soon Jan must leave. Then, something happens that changes Dorothea forever. It’s this secret that Roberta, in the present, is slowly unraveling.

Dorothea’s story riveted me from the start.

Walters has a very artistic ability with her words, bringing both history and characters alive.

However, I didn’t really like how the chapters alternated between past and present. Roberta’s story was much less engaging and didn’t do much for the overall plot. Also, randomly inserted at the beginning of each chapter were snippets from items Roberta finds in books in the bookstore. This was a bit jarring and had nothing to do with the story.

All in all though, I remain impressed with Walters’ debut and am greatly interested to see what she comes up with next.

Rebecca Cochran

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THE MEMORY PAINTER Gwendolyn Womack, Picador, 2015, $26.00, hb, 336pp, 9781250053039 Bryan Pierce, a world-famous artist, hides a secret: his talents – from painting to chess to languages – all come from his dreams, dreams he can’t control. Or are they his memories? When Linz Jacobs, a brilliant neuroscientist, comes across one of his paintings at her friends’ gallery, she is stunned. The painting depicts the same dream she’s had since she was a child – the dream of a woman being burned at the stake.

After Linz and Bryan meet, Bryan dreams about an explosion at the lab of a group of scientists on the verge of curing Alzheimer’s and is convinced both he and Linz are among those who were murdered. But why were they killed, and how far back are their lives intertwined? And is the killer still out there, determined to kill them all over again?

A fast-paced thriller with a love story that spans continents and stretches back 10,000 years, The Memory Painter is a little sci-fi, a little historical fiction, a little fantasy, and a lot of romance with a murder mystery thrown in for good measure. As an intriguing and ambitious debut novel, it takes on questions of past memories and future destinies, the endurance of love and the cost of grief and delivers a roller coaster ride along the way.

Kristina Blank Makansi

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ONCE UPON A CRIME P.J. Brackston, Pegasus Crime, 2015, $24.95, hb, 256pp, 9781605988122 Once Upon a Crime is set in the fictitious 18thcentury town of Gesternstadt, Bavaria, where the Brothers Grimm characters continue to live on, but without the happy-ever-after life factor. Gretel is all grown up, enjoying far too much hearty food, which is well-prepared by her beer-guzzling and slow-witted brother, Hans, indulging in the latest fashion garbs, and trying to make ends meet by working as a private investigator. Gretel would much rather solve the murder of the person found in the burned down workshop of the local cart maker but instead is hired by Frau Hapsburg to find three of her many cats. Gretel’s inquiries and investigation, however, leads her into many mishaps. She is accused of kidnapping the princess, twice locked up in the cells of the king’s castle, confronted by an amorous troll, strapped to a rack in the castle’s torture chamber, forced to flee from not one but two murder charges, and attracted to General Ferdinand Von Ferdinand, the hottest general she has ever laid eyes on and who likes his women whole and robust.

Once Upon a Crime is a Brothers Grimm Mystery and the prequel to Gretel and the Case of Multi-period — Historical Fantasy

the Missing Frog Prints. P.J. Brackston has taken fairytale characters, fleshed them out with real life experiences and human frailties and foibles, dropped them into storybook-perfect towns, added a whole lot of humour and created a rollicking and entertaining novel. Gretel, the only character with a brain, is thoroughly enjoyable and relatable.

Once Upon a Crime is a light, refreshing, and humorous take on the fairy tale characters and stories that we all grew up on, with a generous splash of mystery and murder. I look forward to reading the further mishaps of Gretel and the world that P.J. Brackston created for the series.

Francesca Pelaccia THE PRINCESS OF PROPHECY: Heroes of the Trojan War, Vol. II Aria Cunningham, Mythmakers, 2015, $15.99, pb, 459pp, 9780991420148 The beautiful Helen and her Trojan rescuer, Paris, have escaped the abuses of Mycenae and, in this second volume of a series, veer off course to the Nile. Court intrigue involving Nefertiti and a mercenary (“sell-sword”), hired by Clytemnestra to reclaim her sister, pursue them. Of course, several myths give the lovers a pre-Troy stay in Egypt.

Euripides holds that she spent the whole ten years’ war in that balmy climate and that only a statue took her place on the besieged walls to taunt the uneasily unified Greeks. Happily ever after.

Sadly, this recreation animates idol-like characters all around. The romance is the twodimensional affair so often recreated in the shallowest Harlequin paperback. Belief, whether Egyptian or Greek, has the same rigor of hipsters dabbling in yoga studios. Prophecy is at the level of knowing that the local McDonald’s will be serving burgers today; the “princess” may appear at the next Disney viewing. Unfortunate for an author with the credentials in underwater archaeology as this one.

Ann Chamberlin THE DEAD ASSASSIN Vaughn Entwistle, Minotaur, 2015, $25.99/ C$29.99, hb, 352pp, 9781250035066 This novel is set in Victorian London, amidst the fog and industrial machines of the day. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, doctor and author of the famous Sherlock Holmes stories, along with his friend, playwright Oscar Wilde, is summoned by Scotland Yard to help with a gruesome series of murders. A witness to the first of these murders identifies the murderer as Charlie Higginbotham.

Case easily solved.

Except that Charlie Higginbotham had been hanged two weeks before the murder he supposedly committed. Following leads ranging from ominous toymakers to flamboyant aristocrats, Doyle and Wilde discover nothing less than a plot to overthrow the British government, assassinate Queen Victoria herself and stir the country into complete chaos. And, much to their horror, they Historical Fantasy

also stumble upon someone who has the skill to reanimate the dead, a skill which requires a ritual sacrifice.

In a novel that’s part steampunk, part Victorian, part mystery and part supernatural, Entwistle weaves these genres into a hybrid. And, like the steam engines and gears and shafts that permeate the story, somehow the disparate parts work together to produce an intriguing work.

Anne Clinard Barnhill

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THE BURIED GIANT Kazuo Ishiguro, Knopf, 2015, $26.95, hb, 317pp, 9780307271037 / Faber & Faber, 2015, £20.00, hb, 352pp, 9780571315031 / Knopf Canada, 2015, C$29.95, hb, 352pp, 9780345809407 In considering the synopsis of his seventh novel, The Buried Giant, long-time fans of Kazuo Ishiguro’s restrained and alwayscompelling prose may find themselves puzzled at what seems like a departure for him: in 6th-century Britain, in a primitive land of fog, rain, ogres, and dragons, an old married couple decides finally to visit a son they haven’t seen in years. They cannot remember what caused their separation, and they’re not even sure which village he lives in. In fact, none of their fellow villagers seem able to form or keep memories, nor do they notice the lack. Nonetheless, Axl and Beatrice are determined to overcome the fog of forgetfulness as they set out on a fraught journey. Along the way, they pick up travelling companions who are on quests of their own, and begin to recover fragments of their lost memory, little of it comforting.

Together, they find answers to the mysteries that have plagued them and their country for an age, though the discovery seems destined to unleash even greater woe. This is an Arthurian fairy tale for grown-ups, and one that asks quietly pointed questions, such as how much of a person’s identity is held in the memories she carries, or whether, when it comes to seeking justice—or is it simply vengeance?—for a great wrong, it isn’t better for everyone to let sleeping dragons lie.

In Ishiguro’s hands, the tale seems less fantastic than simply of another time, when ogres and pixies were part of the natural landscape, much like wooly mammoths on the ancient Siberian plain.

Characters interact with a formality that seems almost Kabuki-like, but it feels organic to the time and place. And by now, Ishiguro’s fans should no longer be surprised at how he can still surprise us.

Jennifer Bort Yacovissi DEAD MAN’S REACH: The Thieftaker Series D. B. Jackson, Tor, 2015, $27.99/C$32.50, hb, 304pp, 9780765371140

This fourth in series returns with Ethan Kaille, a career ‘thief-taker’ in the backstreets of 1770s Boston and a powerful conjurer. An ethical man, protective of his lover and his friends, and everconscious of his dangerous lifestyle, he is infinitely cautious about using magic, except to heal. But now an old foe has arisen, literally from the dead, and is using Ethan’s power as a magical conduit to wreak havoc in the city. Despite fruitless efforts to find the culprit, the conjurings continue, inciting fighting and riots in the streets and culminating in the shooting death of 11-year-old Christopher Seider. Tensions between British soldiers and the Patriots continue to rise. When Ethan locates his enemy, he teams up with a rival thief-taker on a hunt which results in an unearthly battle of epic proportions.

Peppered with real-life events and compelling characters, this is a well-crafted urban fantasy with a cleverly plausible, supernatural explanation for the lead-up to the Boston Massacre. The reader is pulled inexorably into Ethan’s dilemma. Although it is an excellent stand-alone, I am sorry I hadn’t come across the first three before. The best of historical fantasies are founded in real-life events, and this is a very fine example.

Fiona Alison THE WATCHMAKER OF FILIGREE STREET Natasha Pulley, Bloomsbury, 2015, $26.00/ C$30.00, hb, 336pp, 9781620408339 / Bloomsbury Circus, 2015, £12.99, hb, 336pp, 9781408854280 Natasha Pulley’s debut is part steampunk (with the obligatory octopus featured as a clockwork character, and other steampunk elements such as gaslights), part Sherlock, and part alternate history, historical fantasy, and/or speculative fiction. Yes, more parts than usual in a whole, but that’s how this wry novel works.

Set in 1880s London, it features three main characters: Grace Carrow, Baron Keita Mori, and Thaniel Steepleton. Grace is a university student trying to prove the existence of ether, not the chemical compound we are familiar with today, but the “luminiferous aether” or light-bearing aether, thought to be the medium through which light traveled. Mori is a brilliant and mysterious figure, a watchmaker, who seems to be able to predict the future. Mori has made a watch for Grace, “whose filigree rearranges itself into a swallow when the lid is lifted.” Thaniel, around whom the others are entwined, is a telegrapher at the Home Office whose life is saved from an Irish nationalist bombing by a strange gold pocket watch, also made

by Mori.

The plot revolves around the watchmaker and the hunt for the bomber. Is Mori dangerous? Could he be an accomplice to murder? What are the implications for the present when someone knows the future? In an interview for Alt Hist magazine, Pulley says the arcane plot came to her through a HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Reviews | 53

combination of Dr. Who and the London Illustrated News.

Clever and original, this novel will be of special interest to fans of steampunk and alternate history.

Pulley says the book is part of a series featuring Gilbert and Sullivan, a clockwork octopus and some suffragists, “although possibly not all together.” Fans should happily await the next installment.

Lorraine Norwood THE PHILOSOPHER KINGS Jo Walton, Tor, 2015, $24.99, hb, 320pp, 978076533267 In this follow up to Walton’s highly acclaimed The Just City, Apollo is still living as Pytheas in the Remnant when his love, Simmea, is killed.

Pytheas believes his rival, Kebes, may be involved.

Kebes left on a ship a decade earlier and has not been seen since. Pytheas proposes a sea voyage, for exploration (old men and children are on board), not vengeance (of course he seeks vengeance).

Having not read The Just City, I was 100 pages in before piecing together the setting-concept: Athena snatched philosophically-minded people from various time periods and placed them on the island of Atlantis in an attempt to create Plato’s Republic. (I think.) This is never clearly explained. If I hadn’t been reviewing this book, I wouldn’t have kept reading. I did, and I’m glad.

The Philosopher Kings is a fascinating story. Some scenes are suspenseful, but this is a philosophical narrative. Apollo, Arete (his daughter) and Maia (her teacher) narrate their thoughts, conversations, actions, with everything hinging on the idea that their lives are for the pursuit of excellence. Is excellence possible for humans? Recommended for those who read and enjoyed The Just City.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt CLASH OF IRON: The Iron Age Trilogy, Book 2 Angus Watson, Orbit, 2015, £8.99, pb, 529pp, 9780356502625 This book is described as ‘the blood-thirsty, battle-ready sequel to the most action-packed epic fantasy debut of recent years’, being the second novel in this author’s Iron Age trilogy. Set in the time of the ancient Britons before the Roman invasion, the action takes place in Britain, Rome and Gaul. Maidun Castle has been captured and must now be defended at all costs.

Needless to say, what really happened is purely in the mind of the author as there are no written records of the period, and stories passed down from one generation to another will have been lost in the mists of time, superceded by 400 years of Roman occupation. Various views on the first book in the series describe it as ‘blood-soaked’, ‘earthy’, and ‘profanity-laden’, and this, the sequel, would amply qualify for the same epithets. I suspect that this is more of a ‘man’s book’, if one can say that sort of thing in this PC day and age, and I found it very difficult to get into; the characters did not really come alive for me, and I have no urge to read 54 | Reviews |

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either the preceding book or the final one in the trilogy, which is still to come. It will no doubt have its admirers, but it was not for me.

Marilyn Sherlock THE WATCHMAN OF ETERNITY Paul Witcover, Bantam Press, 2015, £18.99, hb, 360pp, 9780593070765 It’s 1752, and Jacobite agent Thomas Aylesford is trying to bring to Paris the Hunter, a mysterious, clock-shaped weapon that could turn the fate of England, Scotland and France for good. With him is an envoy from the subterranean counterpart of London – with an agenda of his own. And if mutual distrust, the worst storm in years, and Aylesford’s dangerous lack of balance weren’t enough, there are all sorts of enemies eager to intercept the travellers: the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, deceptively foppish lords, famous clock-thieves, enigmatic girls – not to mention that the Hunter has a mind of its own, and not an especially benevolent one. All of this should make for breathless adventure, but the many repetitions, flowery writing and extensive use of phonetically spelt dialects and accents did much to bog it down for me. What is worse, though, is the dim sense of time and place that makes this historical fantasy rather thin on the historical side.

Chiara Prezzavento

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THE MADAGASKAR PLAN Guy Saville, Hodder & Stoughton, 2015, £19.99, hb, 517pp, 9781444710694 / Henry Holt, 2015, $35.00, hb, 480pp, 9780805095951 1953. The Allies have capitulated after Dunkirk, and Hitler’s Reich covers half the planet. There has been no Holocaust, but six million Jews have been exiled to the island of ‘Madagaskar’, where revolt is simmering under the sadistic rule of Odilo Globocnik. The U.S. preserves a queasy neutrality under a president whose powerbase relies on the Jewish lobby.

Into this powder keg step former soldier, Burton Cole, and his nemesis, Walter Hochburg, who first appeared in Saville’s The Afrika Reich. Having returned home from the unsuccessful mission to kill Hochburg, which drives that novel, Cole finds his pregnant lover, Madeleine, has gone missing.

His search for her takes him back to Africa, to Madagaskar, to Hochburg and the chilling archvillain, Jared Cranley, Madeleine’s former husband.

Although a sequel to his debut and marked by his same trademark set pieces of flamboyant and

perfectly choreographed violence (a stampede of pigs, a burst dam, an exploding cruise ship), this book also works well as a standalone, fast-paced and ingeniously plotted alternative history thriller.

But it is so much more. It is politically astute, packed with memorable characters and written in a rich style full of cinematic, painterly, and even culinary allusions, musical motifs and dialogues with poets as various as Homer and Dylan Thomas. Though its principals tell us repeatedly they are motivated by hatred and revenge it is, above all, a profound love story which eschews easy answers and, ultimately, poses the question, can human love thrive at all, or is it always condemned to destruction by individual hubris and egotism?

A wonderful novel, funny and bleak, poetic and violent, action-packed and sensual. Very highly recommended, and not just to thriller enthusiasts.

Sarah Bower CLASH OF EAGLES Alan Smale, Del Rey, 2015, $27.00, hb, 432pp, 9780804177221 / Titan, 2015, £7.99, pb, 400pp, 9781783294022 1218 AD. The Roman Empire, having withstood the barbarian hordes and moved on to conquer most of terra firma, including the redoubtable Norsemen, has turned its eyes across the Atlanticus. Praetor Gaius Marcellinus, heading the 33rd Roman Legion, has disembarked on this new world to gather still more gold and land for his Emperor. Before him is a continent of unknown size and civilizations.

Roman strategies that have worked so well in the old world are unable to withstand the unimagined weapons and tactics of these new enemies. Marcellinus finds himself the sole survivor of his legion, and a captive of the city-state of Cahokia, deep within the interior. His loyalties and newfound friendships are tested as he must decide exactly how he fits into this new world, and what he will do when the next Roman force arrives on these shores.

Smale drops the reader in the middle of Marcellinus’s westward march across the continent, and does a wonderful job of getting the reader caught up to speed with how first contact has gone – and how the Empire has survived and flourished through the last millennium. Roman tactics and mindset, even accounting for advances in doctrine and technology, feel authentic. He breathes life into the New World civilizations and offers up a compelling view of what might have happened had these two continents collided in this fashion.

Marcellinus is a tremendously sympathetic character, as are the many Cahokians he interacts with. Though Smale takes some liberties with New World kite and ballooning technologies, I found the New World of 1218 AD fascinating. I look forward to the next installment.

Justin M. Lindsay JOE STEELE Harry Turtledove, NAL, 2015, $27.95/C$32.95, Historical Fantasy — Alternate History

hb, 438pp, 9780451472182 Harry Turtledove is known as the “Master of Alternate History.” He asks the question “What if?” and then gives us his version. In Joe Steele, the “what if ” explores a terrifying future for the U.S. following the suspicious death of Democratic presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt. Joe Steele, the son of a Russian immigrant laborer, is elected president.

Steele pushes through reforms, but at a price for freedom. His enemies find themselves in work camps; his friends find themselves rewarded. The American people, desperately impoverished after the Great Depression and pessimistic about the future, are delighted with Steele’s strong leadership and cast a blind eye toward Constitutional mischief.

Two brothers, Mike and Charlie Sullivan, are covering Steele as newsmen with the New York Post and the AP respectively. Both are impressed by his rise to power, but only one sees Steele for what he is—a dangerous man who will stop at nothing to achieve what he wants. The other brother, completely enamored of Steele, soon becomes a key element in the White House press spin.

The brothers’ conflict is played out against historical events that are familiar, but turned upside down. Familiar faces crop up as well, including a nefarious and power-mad J. Edgar Hoover who functions from the Oval Office.

Joe Steele is a cautionary tale, but with little emotional depth or character development. That’s not the point, really. The alternate reality device is foremost, and Turtledove’s ability to re-imagine world events and treat them as reality provides clever food for thought.

Lorraine Norwood

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children & young adult

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THE TIGHTROPE WALKERS David Almond, Candlewick, 2015, $17.99/ C$20.00, hb, 336pp, 9780763673109 / Penguin, 2014, £8.99, pb, 288pp, 9780241003237 Dominic Hall is growing up in a pebble-dashed home in northern England in the post-WWII years. His father, a caulker in the shipyards, is a tough but fair and loving man. After the war, England has changed, and opportunity exists for Dominic, who is well-behaved, does well in school, and has fluency as a wordsmith that gets him noticed. Dom and his best friend, Holly, are admitted to a good school that will prepare them to be the first in their families to attend university.

After a circus visits, Holly and Dominic put up a tightrope and Dom’s mother shows them how to balance and walk the wire. Holly paints and Dom writes poetry, and both succeed admirably in school, but an animal part of Dom lies untended.

The boy feels a pull toward the local delinquent, Vincent McAlinden, with whom he begins to thieve, kill small animals, and create mayhem. Dom Alternate History — Children & YA

walks a tightrope, both literally and metaphorically.

In which world does he belong?

Almond’s writing is crisp and beautiful. From the slang of the shipyard to recitations in the poetrybookshop, Almond shows through language the dichotomy that exists in Dom. The Tightrope Walker has clever symbolism and handles big ideas, but the plot moves slowly in places. Although I don’t agree with Almond’s conclusions about what it means to be human, I admire his literary finesse with the question. Dom’s struggles to understand who he is and who he could become will ring true to many adolescents.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt THE DISAPPEARANCE OF TOM PILE Ian Beck, Corgi, 2015, £6.99, pb, 267pp, 9780552567763 In 1900, on a bitterly cold night, a young boy disappears from the forest close to the small, quiet village of Litton Cheney, Dorset. He is never found, but the man who was with him claims he was snatched by angels. Forty years later, mysterious lights are again spotted. The villagers suspect German bombers. Colonel Jack Carmody is sent to investigate by his boss, Captain Holloway. Both are part of a secret government department that delves into the unexplained, strange and supernatural.

They believe something more intriguing is going on, especially when a boy appears in the graveyard, convinced it is the year 1900.

This double time-slip novel, so popular at the moment, is the first children’s book by author and illustrator, Ian Beck. It certainly lives up to the accolade from Philip Pullman that it is: ‘A cracker . . . Utterly convincing’. A mixture of sci-fi, supernatural and thriller, it is gripping to the last page. The voices are authentic, both in the firstperson narration by Jack Carmody, as well as in the witness testimonies from both time periods.

Meticulously researched, the story expresses the concerns of the populace in both time periods – the rise of interest in spiritualism, angels and all things paranormal at the turn of the 19th century, and the concerns and anxieties about the Germans in the 1940s. The authenticity is enhanced by the author’s re-creation of photographs from the time periods and drawn facsimiles of old letters and other archive material, which the paperback version does not do justice to.

This is the first mystery in the Casebooks of Captain Holloway. I look forward to the next. It is suitable for ages 11+, and highly recommended.

Linda Sever ONE FOR SORROW Philip Caveney, Fledgling Press, 2015, £6.99, pb, 217pp, 97818905916955 Philip Caveney continues his time-travelling series with a well-plotted, fast-paced story that sees our hero, Tom Afflick, returning to 1882 Edinburgh to encounter the writer Robert Louis Stevenson. The novel hinges on the concept that Tom’s interventions are crucial to the publishing

of Treasure Island in book form. Tom’s encounters with previous characters – his soul-mate, Catriona McCallum, and the evil MacSweeney, the ‘Plague Doctor’ – give new impetus to the continuing themes of the series, in which Tom must defeat MacSweeney and protect Cat. Threaded around is a present-day story-line in which Tom comes to terms with the presence of a new step-dad.

The story plays engagingly with the tropes of fictional time travelling: are the people of the past ghosts or truly alive, can events be changed without affecting history, and is time linear or circular? To this reviewer’s mind, Caveney negotiates these pitfalls with a sure foot, and produces an exciting read which somersaults with increasing chaos between an endangered present and a threatening past. The end is resolved yet left open to a sequel in good, time-honoured fashion. Robert Louis Stevenson would be proud.

The story is told from Tom’s sometimes confused perspective in sturdy prose and crisp dialogue. Evil is done well: ‘He could feel the deadly grip of bare bones beneath the leather gauntlet.’ The relationship with Cat is moving and unusual, in that in this episode Cat is an aged woman, and Tom is cursed with knowledge of the date of her death.

The author enjoys playing with the anomalies of disrupted time: put on the spot by Stevenson’s hostile step-son, Lloyd, Tom picks up a guitar and sings Wonderwall, having the crowd ‘virtually eating out of his hand’ by the end. A fun read for 8 – 14 year olds.

Jane Burke THE CHOICE Kathy Clark, Second Story Press, 2015, $14.95, pb, 200pp, 9781927583654 Written for middle school and up, this story takes place during the Holocaust in Europe, and most specifically during the ten months from November 1944 through August 1945. Outwardly it is the story of two thirteen-year-old boys whose lives are intertwined: friends, and yet potential enemies.

Jacob, but called Hendrik at the beginning of the story, is living with his Jewish family in the nonJewish section of Budapest, Hungary, with false identity papers. The other boy is Ivan, whose father is an officer with the Arrow Cross, the Hungarian arm of the Nazi party. Ivan and “Hendrik” have become best friends, but on the day when Hendrik/ Jacob furtively slips into the Jewish ghetto to bring food and supplies to his aunt, he is discovered by Ivan’s father, thus revealing his true identity.

As Jacob, his cousin, and aunt are headed toward a crowded freight car carrying the Jews away to a forced labor camp, Jacob spies Ivan, and their eyes lock, but Ivan turns away. The remainder of the story documents how Jacob manages to stay alive among the horrors of the Auschwitz camp, fueled by his hatred of Ivan’s betrayal. The ending of the story brings both validation and realization of how the human spirit can triumph even under unfathomable atrocities, and how the choices we HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Reviews | 55

make in life can change everything. The character of Jacob is based upon the life of the author’s father.

Linda Harris Sittig FREEDOM’S SCHOOL Lesa Cline-Ransome & James E. Ransome, Hyperion, 2015, £12.99/$17.99, hb, 32pp, 9781423161035 Lizzie and her brother, Paul, are the children of freed slaves. Until the Emancipation Proclamation, Lizzie gets by on scraps of learning from the preacher and her parents, but now, with freedom, comes the chance of an education. A plain, unpainted schoolhouse is built by the former slaves.

Lizzie and Paul make the long and often dangerous walk to school. Here they are taught by Mizz Hammond, an African-American teacher, and they hope for a better future. Old prejudices and racial hatred persists, though, and the schoolhouse is burnt down. The story ends with the rebuilding of the school and a note of hope for the future.

Freedom’s School is a picture book with a serious message – the importance of freedom and education. Slavery and racism are dealt with gently as befits a book for younger children. The story is told in the first person by Lizzie, which makes it very child-friendly and engaging. The illustrations are beautiful and full of warm, rich colours and appealing characters. Though this book is set in 19th-century America, it has relevance to children everywhere and serves as an early introduction to the concept of human rights. A lovely book.

Pat Walsh

WORLD WAR II TALES, 1: The Apple Spy Terry Deary, Bloomsbury, 2015, £4.99, pb, 64pp, 9781472916211 This is another in Terry Deary’s series of World War II stories based on true events. The Apple Spy features the discovery and arrest of three German spies who land in the remote Scottish village of Port Gordon in 1940. This must have been the most exciting thing ever to have happened to Port Gordon, and Deary makes good use of all the twists and turns of the real event in this exciting adventure for children of age 7+.

The story is told from the viewpoint of a young girl, Marie Bruce, who, with her brother, Jamie, plays an important part in the action. Deary skillfully evokes what life in the war was really like for children in the 1940s: ‘Snow White didn’t live in war time like we did. We would have eaten a barrel full of apples,’ Marie reflects, referring to food shortages. Details of the time are beautifully integrated into the story: Jamie’s short grey trousers flap about his legs, the station name signs have all been removed to confound any German spies, a soldier’s steel-studded boot strikes a spark at a tense moment. We smell the soot, feel the draughts and see the old-style locomotive with its corridors and faded brown blinds, as one escaping spy flees to Edinburgh pursued by the children.

The plot is pacey, the language level ageappropriate yet expressive, and the black and white illustrations by James de la Rue add clarity as well as humour.

If I were forced to find a duff note in this 56 | Reviews |

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otherwise immensely enjoyable read, it is the stereotyped teacher with her ‘mouth wrinkled like a breakfast prune’ who appears on page one. Beware alienating older women who buy books, I say!

Marion Rose WORLD WAR II TALES, 2: The Bike Escape Terry Deary, Bloomsbury, 2015, £4.99, pb, 64pp, 9781472916242 London, 1939. Britain is at war and London children are being evacuated to the country. Young Harry is always in trouble at school, and things at home aren’t easy as his Dad’s in gaol. Even so, he hates the idea of going to the alien countryside. But he has no option. When, inadvertently, he gets into trouble in his new home, he is determined to get back to London – no matter what. He steals a bike and sets off. But he hasn’t reckoned on the effects of the blackout, fast lorries, suspicious policemen and atrocious weather…

Harry’s adventures are based on a true story and, together with James de la Rue’s lively illustrations, give young readers an exciting but realistic look at how evacuee children coped. Deary, subtly, also gets across the emotional problems. Many children from London’s East End were traumatized by the uprooting – and country people were shocked by the children’s ragged state. Fortunately, the kind but firm Miss Pimm who takes Harry in is sympathetic. The reader can see that living with her would be better for Harry than life with his feckless mother – if only he would stay there.

Children aged 6-8 should enjoy this book.

Elizabeth Hawksley WORLD WAR II TALES, 3: The Barrel Burglary Terry Deary, Bloomsbury, 2015, £4.99, pb, 63pp, 9781472916273 The Barrel Burglary is one of a series of World War II tales of ‘exciting, funny stories based on true historical events’.

In The Barrel Burglary, the Home Guard and two boys, Jack and Tommy, do their bit for the war effort. Together with Jack’s granddad, the boys believe that a local treacle factory, which looks like an oil dump, is in danger of being bombed, putting everyone in Sunderland at risk. Soon the boys find themselves involved in a daring plan to remove any empty treacle barrels looking like oil drums to save both the factory and the town from bombing. The barrels are then used as sand containers for Fire Precautions.

The Barrel Burglary is not only an easy read for a reviewer (I well remember similar naughtiness with my friend Colin on the way home from Cubs in 1943), it is also a small, easy-to-read book for children of 7 and over. It gives children a good view of the war as it affected families, as well as looking at the everyday deprivations of living in an industrial town like Sunderland in war-time. The book is clearly illustrated with lively line drawings by James de la Rue, and I highly recommend it.

Geoffrey Harfield WORLD WAR II TALES, 4: The Phantom Farm

Terry Deary, Bloomsbury, 2015, £4.99, pb, 62pp, 9781472916303 This title is from a new series by the much loved Terry Deary, of Horrible Histories fame. The series offers exciting stories from World War II, set on the Home Front. In chapter book format, with black and white illustrations, the stories are perfectly pitched to the over sevens. A short epilogue gives some of the factual background.

The Phantom Farm is set outside Portsmouth and delves into some dodgy dealings on the black market. The tale is told from the viewpoint of Rose, a feisty young girl whose father runs a pub. Her sharp eyes note the unlikely presence of a London spiv, Slick Sam, at a local farm. Rose and Special Constable Latham investigate the strange noises and goings-on – with intriguing revelations.

What I particularly liked about this story was that it highlighted the complexity of the moral issues faced by ordinary people during wartime.

The black-marketeers are selling fresh meat to the rich, which is clearly abhorrent when the rationing system is meant to ensure everyone gets a fair share.

And yet, the likeable Rose and her family have already enjoyed a fresh chicken from the same farm in exchange for three pints of beer. As Rosie’s Dad puts it, ‘Everybody cheats a little’.

The characters are deftly and humorously drawn. Slick Sam’s lapels ‘almost touched his arms’, while Special Constable Latham is rigidly moral - except when a glass of Golden Ale is available out of hours! The story rolls along and Deary’s accomplished story-telling skills could be summed up in the lines he quotes from an old song I picture the scene on a cold winter’s night With the blackout, the bombs and the Blitz.

The world might be tragic, but inside there was magic With the audience rolling in fits.

Marion Rose BOMBER Paul Dowswell, Bloomsbury, 2015, £6.99, pb, 279pp, 9781408858493 Bomber is the story of 17-year-old Harry Friedland, a ball turret gunner on a B-17 bomber, the so-called Flying Fortress. Starting powerfully with the crew witnessing a badly damaged bomber crash on their East Anglian airbase, the action never lets up. Despite the easy camaraderie among the different characters, the novel is pervaded by a sense of despair that they’ll not survive, combined with a fierce determination to fight the Nazis, come what may. Harry’s guilt that he survived polio as a child while his brother didn’t, a disease which struck at random, is a perfect analogy for the risks taken by the crew – will I die today or will it be the next man?

Effortlessly transported back to WW2, the reader gets a real insight into the lives of the American airmen, from the airbase ritual of gathering by the control tower to count how many planes return from a mission, to getting to know ‘the Limeys’ at a local fair. The issue of race is raised in the treatment of black GIs by some fellow Americans, and there’s even a gentle romance between Harry and local girl Tilly.

Children & YA

The action is seen mainly through Harry’s eyes but also briefly from the POV of a German fighter pilot and a woman in the French Resistance.

Although fear affects the crew in different ways, with some becoming talkative while others are quiet, Harry’s particular fears are compounded by the fact that he’s Jewish.

The story is meticulously researched, even providing a cross-section of a B-17 at the back of the book, and is written in very accessible UK English but with spot-on American dialogue. Despite it being an easy read, the novel is shockingly brutal in places and best recommended for boys and girls aged 13+.

Henriette Gyland THE WORLD WITHIN: A Novel of Emily Brontë Jane Eagland, Arthur A. Levine Books, 2015, $18.99/C$20.99, hb, 336pp, 9780545492959 Author Emily Brontë’s awakened muse is examined in this highly readable and emotionally charged re-imagining. On the cusp of womanhood, Emily has already suffered the devastating loss of her mother and two eldest sisters. Extremely introverted, Emily has an aversion to people, keeping close to her home in Haworth in Yorkshire.

Her father, a clergyman, runs the somewhat strict household along with an unmarried aunt, though curiously allows the four Brontë children to read a wide range of books and magazines. Their imaginations thus ignited, each has a propensity for writing, collaborating to create fictional worlds.

When the girls are offered the chance to attend a finishing school, Charlotte and Anne are excited, while Emily is dismayed. Her idyllic life— walking the moors, playing piano, and spending hours writing—comes to an end as she must join the structured world of formal education.

These changes help transition Emily from writing fantastical adventure stories to the more characterdriven Wuthering Heights.

As a case study of a famous writer, this is an exceptionally intelligent read. Eagland’s version of Emily presents a beautifully flawed and wellrounded character. The writing style flows naturally, and the timeline is spaced nicely, giving readers a view into the protagonist’s life during important events that are historically documented.

Familiarity with the Brontës or their novels is not required to enjoy this book, and it is highly recommended for young readers and adults alike.

Arleigh Johnson THE DRAGON LANTERN: A League of Seven Novel Alan Gratz, Tor, 2015, $17.99/C$19.50, hb, 336pp, 9780765338235 This is an action-packed race in an alternate, steampunk America of 1875, and it’s full of fun ideas. Archie, Fergus, and Hachi comprise part of the fabled League of Seven – seven heroes who will fight the very terrifying and evil Mangleborn beasts. In this second book in this middle grade series (readers needn’t start with the first book), Hachi wants to find out who slaughtered her father along with 99 other men years before, and Archie Children & YA

is keen to understand his roots (does a superstrong boy made of stone have a pedigree?). To get answers, they must get their hands on the magical Dragon Lantern, which means tracking down the crafty, shape-shifting, wolf-eared girl who’s stolen it. Along the way, they’ll make use of a buildingsized metal steam “man” (the descriptions of its innards are fascinating!), board a huge floating city, and come across a human-like robot outlaw named Jesse James, whose mission is to free all robots from human oppression. There are some juicy twists along the way, as well as colorful details of historical places and figures that have been drastically altered (Alcatraz, General Custer). It’s an imaginative and wild ride, and the ending will definitely leave you wanting more.

Traci Cothran THE DETECTIVE’S ASSISTANT Kate Hannigan, Little Brown, 2015, $17.00/ C$19.00, hb, 368pp, 9780316403511 The recently orphaned Nell Warne arrives on her Aunt Kate’s doorstep hoping they can put the past behind them. But Kate is angry with Nell’s deceased father for killing her husband and has plans to ship Nell off to Chicago’s Home for the Friendless—unless Nell can prove her worth and convince her aunt that family belongs together.

Spunky and helpful, Nell quickly learns her “picked onion” aunt’s seemingly boring life is actually filled with secrets. When Kate grudgingly lets Nell tag along, Nell finds herself caught up with the Pinkerton Agency and their first-ever female detective—Aunt Kate—as they solve murders and even save the life of Abraham Lincoln.

This book is based on the true story of Kate Warne and is filled with mini-adventures and clever disguises. It moves smoothly, with a good hook, although at times the conversation tends to feel oversimplified. Through letters from her best friend Jemma, who has escaped from slave catchers, we learn about Nell’s past, which helps in solving a family mystery. Nell and Jemma enjoy talking in code, so don’t look at the back of the book for the key unless you’re really stumped!

Holly Faur POPPY IN THE FIELD Mary Hooper, Bloomsbury, 2015, £6.99, pb, 269pp, 9781408827635 December 1915. Poppy Pearson loves working as a V.A.D. at Netley Hut hospital in Southampton, nursing wounded soldiers brought back from France. But then comes the news that Freddie de Vere, the man she thought loved her, has become engaged to someone else. She is devastated and applies to become a V.A.D. in France, in a hospital near the front line and far more dangerous, but at least she’ll be away from all the painful memories of home.

But her new job has its own problems. Sister Sherwood, in charge of Poppy’s ward, is spitefully determined to pick on her, and hospital conditions are far worse than in England. The men are brought straight from the battlefield, filthy, covered in mud, blood and lice, and with terrible wounds, and Poppy begins to wonder how long she can keep

going. However, life begins to look up when she meets two lively American nurses and a certain Dr Michael Archer…

I enjoyed this book. I like the way that Mary Hooper depicts a real 1915 world with contemporary social mores and attitudes. The V.A.Ds are low in the pecking order and there are strict regulations concerning where they are may go and with whom they are may socialize; the authorities are determined that the nurses’ behaviour should at all times be irreproachable.

Poppy is a believable and sympathetic heroine, and the author does not gloss over the appalling conditions on the front line. Terrible things happen, and both the reader and Poppy are shocked by the sights she sees. But, on the ward, underneath it all there is understanding and compassion. This would be an excellent introduction to life and death on the Western Front in the lead-up to the Somme offensive of 1916. Recommended for girls aged 13+.

Elizabeth Hawksley WHISTLING IN THE DARK Shirley Hughes, Walker, 2015, £9.99, hb, 237pp, 9781406360295 Whistling in the Dark is a story of friendship and loyalty, set against the backdrop of the Liverpool Blitz. Thirteen-year-old Joan Armitage and her family deal with curfews, food rationing and the horror of the air raids on the Liverpool docks.

There are mysteries to be solved: who is the stranger lurking in the dark outside Joan’s house? And who is stealing food and selling it on the black market?

Tragedy and loss are never far away, and Joan has to deal with situations far beyond her years.

The book has an old-fashioned feel, but this does not detract in any way from its charm and warmth. Shirley Hughes has drawn on her own memories of a wartime childhood, and this gives the story a satisfying depth. The realities of war are dealt with sensitively. There is no overt horror, but Hughes does not sugar-coat what happened in Liverpool in the early years of the war. For those who thought the Blitz only took place in London, this is a sobering reminder that this was not the case.

This is Shirley Hughes’ second novel for older children. The first, Hero on a Bicycle, was shortlisted for the Blue Peter Award. The chapter headings are illustrated with black and white sketches in Hughes’ familiar style.

Whistling in the Dark is an interesting glimpse into what life was like for people on the Home Front during the Second World War. Joan and her family come across as real people who struggle at times to deal with lives narrowed by blackouts, food queues and the terrifying uncertainties of almost nightly bombings, and the resulting death and destruction. This would suit readers aged 12+ and, with the strong female main character, it might appeal more to girls. Highly recommended.

Pat Walsh DARKMERE Helen Maslin, Chicken House, 2015, £7.99, pb, 344pp, 9781910002346 HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Reviews | 57

This YA time-slip novel is a mixture of contemporary romance, horror/mystery and ghost story, moving between 1825 and the present day. In the present, Kate goes to spend her summer holidays with a group of teenagers at a remote castle recently inherited by the boy she’s in love with – Leo. It’s a crumbling, seriously creepy place, but Leo is an indomitable character who relishes his new position as master of Darkmere Castle. The group have brought alcohol and drugs, and enjoy a hedonistic lifestyle for a few weeks, but strange and spooky happenings set everyone’s nerves on edge. And Kate begins to realise she didn’t know Leo as well as she thought...

In the past, Leo’s ancestor St Cloud marries the very young Elinor in whirlwind fashion. Soon, she’s a virtual prisoner at Darkmere Castle, where everything is ruled by her husband, including her. All attempts at rebellion result in misery for her and those she loves, and Ellie becomes ill after a miscarriage. Then her sister – embittered because of an accident that scarred her for life – comes to stay, and Ellie’s childhood friend Nick visits, triggering her determination to escape. But is there a way?

This story is compelling and fascinating. The modern parts pull no punches, and the reader can feel the fear along with Kate as the castle casts its spell over the group of holidaymakers. The historical parts were also engrossing, although the sense of doom almost made me not want to read on – truly a Gothic tale! Ultimately, this is an excellent story which is only let down slightly by not having all the loose ends tied up at the end. I was left with several questions and a feeling that I had missed something. Teenage girls of 13+ should enjoy this book.

Pia Fenton THE YEAR IT ALL ENDED Kirsty Murray, Allen & Unwin, 2015, £6.99, pb, 243pp, 9781743319413 November 1918, Melbourne, Australia. Tiney Flynn and her sisters are celebrating both Tiney’s 17th birthday and the end of the Great War. Soon, surely, their brother Louis will return from the war and things will be back to normal. None of them have any idea how painful and challenging Peace will prove to be.

What I enjoyed about this book was its examination of World War I from an unusual angle, that of those left at home to cope with the tragedy of young lives snuffed out and a new world which is nothing like the ‘land fit for heroes’ promised by the politicians.

Tiney finds herself in a barren world where everything is in short supply. Where are the sisters’ future husbands to come from now that an entire generation of young men is buried in the bloodsoaked fields of Northern France? Her parents, too, are feeling the financial pinch, and jobs for girls are few and far between – and not paid well either.

Kirsty Murray doesn’t hesitate to show us what life was really like in those early post-war years. I hadn’t fully taken on board, for example, that there were hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers’ bodies lying in Flanders mud – and they all had to be unearthed, identified if possible and 58 | Reviews |

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given a proper burial. It was a horrifying job and dangerous, too, as unexploded bombs were a constant threat.

I found myself completely absorbed in Tiney’s life as she struggles towards some kind of realistic future in which she can move forward and, we hope, find happiness. The Year it All Ended is a brave and moving book and Kirsty Murray doesn’t pull her emotional punches. I’m sure that thoughtful girls of 13+ will be as much involved with Tiney as I was. Recommended.

Elizabeth Hawksley

is loosely based on real-life stories of the courage and determination of animals in war-time who brave long journeys to reach their loved ones. She was inspired by an elephant who really did work on a farm in the early twentieth century. I particularly enjoyed learning about the ways in which elephants can communicate across huge distances, as Shanti and Tara try to do.

Children of 8+ who enjoy animal stories will enjoy this variation on Megan Rix’s usual animal journey theme.

Elizabeth Hawksley

DOLLS OF HOPE Shirley Parenteau, Candlewick, 2015, $16.99/ C$21.99, hb, 336pp, 9780763677527 Dolls of Hope is a charming middle-grade novel based on the real Friendship Dolls exchanged between students in the US and Japan in the 1920s to foster understanding and peace between the countries.

In this story, eleven-year-old Chiyo is a farm girl living in Japan in 1927 who is sent by her wealthy prospective brother-in-law to an elite boarding school. She is expected to honor her family by being a good student and mastering social graces for girls, such as walking with small steps, showing no emotion, and not speaking one’s mind. These things don’t come easily to Chiyo. She travels for the first time to Tokyo with her choir to sing a welcome song for America’s Friendship Dolls, and finds herself a sudden celebrity/ambassador— with an actual Friendship Doll to bring back to her school. However, the jealous school bully has other plans and cleverly gets Chiyo expelled. Determined, Chiyo won’t let that stop her, and ventures out on her own to try to remedy the situation and restore her reputation.

This is an engaging story about a girl’s comingof-age within a traditional society where roles for women were being challenged. Chiyo is caught between wanting to be an honorable girl and being true to herself. Japanese culture and politics are integral to this story, and Japanese words are sprinkled throughout, with a glossary. Readers’ interest will be piqued about this little-known, historic cultural exchange (hint: many of the original Friendship Dolls still exist!).

Traci J. Cothran

I absolutely loved this book; it was amazing!

I thought the plot was really good and very interesting, I love the characters especially Tara, the cheeky baby elephant. It’s a very gripping story and it contains everything I love: Beatrix Potter, elephants, farms and sheep dogs! Although I think it’s amazing, I also think it could be improved by going into more depth about the human characters and maybe explain how or why they actually came across Tara and Harvey since, at the moment, it is quite vague. Lastly, I think the book could be prolonged a bit!

Louis McNulty, aged 12

THE RUNAWAYS Megan Rix, Puffin, 2015, £5.99, pb, 229pp, 9780141357645 England, 1917. The country is at war and more men are needed at the Front, so Cullen’s Circus must close and the animals be sold. But who will take Shanti, the Indian elephant, and her two-yearold baby, Tara? Mr Jones, who once worked with elephants in Ceylon, decides to buy Shanti to help him with the heavy work on his farm, now that the army has taken his horses.

Shanti and Tara are devastated to be parted.

The old collie, Harvey, knows that Tara will die without her mother’s milk, so together they set out on a long trek through the Lake District to find her.

But will they be in time?

Like Megan Rix’s previous books, The Runaways

TERESA OF THE NEW WORLD Sharman Apt Russell, Yucca, 2015, $14.99, hb, 186pp, 9781631580420 In 1528 Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca is among three hundred Spaniards who undertake a treasure hunt in La Florida. Instead, they find disease, starvation, and hostile Indians, and the decimated crew is cast away near Galveston. Eight years later, four ragged survivors stumble across Spanish slavers near the Gulf of Baja, California.

The shipwrecked De Vaca was rescued by Indian tribes on the Texas coast. In Teresa of the New World, he becomes a father there. Teresa has seen but four winters when de Vaca picks up his little girl and sets off into the desert to rescue a handful of enslaved countrymen. They are called “children of the sun” by Indian tribes—able to heal by touch alone. Alien to all and enemy to none, they trade their way across northern Mexico to the Pacific coast, where at last they meet fellow Spaniards who rule Central America. De Vaca then abandons his daughter, for the mixed-race child has become an encumbrance.

This is where Teresa of the New World becomes truly magical. Teresa can talk to some animals, and when she was a little girl, the earth spoke with her.

Years ago, while crossing the arid mountains with her father, a wise old woman promised Teresa that what she had lost will be restored to her. Teresa, who has lost everything, begins retracing her steps with the help of a jaguar-boy and a conquistador’s horse. Steeped in Mesoamerican history and mythos, Ms. Russell’s engaging, mystical story is meant for ages 12+ but is also very enjoyable and highly recommended for adults.

Jo Ann Butler THE HIRED GIRL Laura Amy Schlitz, Candlewick, 2015, $17.99/$23.99, hb, 400pp, 9780763678180 Children & YA

The Hired Girl is a completely delightful story of Joan Skraggs, younger sister of Matthew, Mark and Luke. She lives a wretched life on a Pennsylvania farm in 1911, where her cruel father works her without mercy. Motherless from age nine, Joan longs to escape her hardscrabble world to someplace better—someplace like the ones she’s read about in books her beloved teacher, Miss Chandler, has given her. Miss Chandler sees more in Joan than just a farm girl. She sees a smart kid about to be lost to the vagaries of fate.

In her memory, Joan’s mother tells her to learn, go to school, and become a teacher so she will be able to support herself in a dignified manner. It seems a distant dream until Joan’s father burns the books Miss Chandler has given her. It is then Joan decides she’s had enough, and she leaves home.

But now what? She finds some secret money and buys a train ticket to Baltimore, where she is rescued by a wealthy Jewish family. As she learns the traditions of Judaism that are unusual to her, and gains access to Mr. Rosenbach’s extensive library, Joan—now Janet—begins to get her “real” education.

I fell in love with this irrepressible, 14-year-old girl; she is funny, brave, feisty, curious and, most of all, guided by a strong moral compass. Her voice is authentic and very believable.

Anne Clinard Barnhill IN HER HANDS Alan Schroeder, Lee & Low, 2014, £7.99, pb, 48pp, 9781600609893 This attractive picture book tells the true story of an African-American sculptor who was a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1930s. The main focus is on Augusta Savage’s early life in Florida, where there was an open clay pit behind the family home. This clay was perfect for modelling, and Augusta spent hours sculpting birds and animals. Her father disapproved, but Augusta’s determination and skill won her friends who encouraged her to think of herself as an artist.

Even so, she was 27 before she left home and moved to New York to seek training. The story ends when she gains a place at the free Cooper Union School.

It can be difficult to make fiction out of a true story, but this book succeeds. It covers a long span of time, and the author has chosen to leave out altogether the details of Augusta’s complicated personal life as an adult. Having found out more about her on the internet, I can understand why this was done, but it does create the impression of an adult who led a rather restricted life until she was nearly thirty – which was not the case.

However, children won’t worry about this. They will be inspired by an accessible and well-written story in which the focus is on the childhood ambition and inner life of a brilliant sculptor and her joy in her life’s work.

An afterword gives more information for teachers and parents. And bold, earthy-coloured illustrations by JaeMe Bereal add child appeal to the story. Recommended for readers of 7+.

Ann Turnbull

Children & YA — Nonfiction

ARCTIC SHADOW Joanne Sundell, Five Star, 2015, $25.95, hb, 278pp, 978143830083 In 1909, the All Alaska Sweepstakes dog race has ended in defeat for 14-year- old Anya, a Siberian girl from Chukchi, who arrived in Alaska after stowing away aboard ship. Her young Siberian huskies are defeated, and lead dog Zellie dies mysteriously before the finish. Rune Johansson, a 16-year-old seaman of Viking lineage, now tries to help Anya against an unknown force, knowing that the Viking gods and the gods of Chukchi protect them and their dogs.

Meanwhile, an imprisoned golem is able to call on the dark spirits to go after Anya and her dogs.

He wishes for the annihilation of the Chukchi, their breeders and their dogs. Anya and Rune realize they must fight these dark spirits led by Raven, who is subject to the will of the golem.

This novel is Book Two in the Watch Eyes trilogy. The author has spun a tale of adventure in Alaska in the early 20th century, together with fantasy regarding the ancient religions of the Vikings and the Siberian Chukchi. The first book in this trilogy brought Anya, along with her Siberian huskies, to Alaska, entering the All Alaska Sweepstakes. Rune, who becomes a love interest to Anya, had transported Anya and her dogs from Siberia.

This is an absorbing mix of fantasy and history.

The author blends together those two extremes very well. Writing with rich historical detail related to the peoples of Alaska, the author paints a broad picture of life and times during this tumultuous period in history, and molds the characters through exciting scenes, with page-turning chapters that kept this reader engaged until the end. A thoroughly enjoyable read, and highly recommended.

Jeff Westerhoff THE SOUND OF LIFE AND EVERYTHING Krista Van Dolzer, Putnam, 2015, $16.99/ C$18.99, hb, 266pp, 9780399167751 Ella Mae Higbee’s family still mourns the loss of her brother and her cousin in World War Two. When her aunt Mildred claims to have found a scientist who can bring her cousin Robby back to life from the blood on his dog tags, Ella Mae is sceptical. But she watches a living, breathing boy step out of the scientist’s pod. The problem is, he’s not Robby. And he’s Japanese. In 1950s smalltown California, the Japanese are still regarded with suspicion. Not knowing who he is or why his blood was on Robby’s dog tags, Aunt Mildred assumes the worst, but Ella Mae’s mother brings him home, giving her a new friend and a quick lesson in how deep-seated prejudice could be. A powerful message about family, tolerance, and finding strength after loss, told in Ella Mae’s lively, engaging voice.

Jessica Brockmole The Sound of Life and Everything is probably one of the best historical fiction books that I have read. It is a mix of history, fantasy, science, realism, and fiction. I like this book because it is a story of friendship, the aftermath of war, and fantasy

science.

This book is about a twelve-year-old girl named Ella Mae Higbee. The story takes place right after World War Two. A scientist is known for being able to bring people back from the dead. But when a mistake occurs, Ella Mae’s life changes forever.

In a way The Sound of Life and Everything is the fantasy science of the historical fiction genre. The imagery was also very good. I could picture how a lot of the scenes looked. The author also did a very good job at making each character unique and different in their own way. I would recommend The Sound of Life and Everything to people of all ages.

Ellen Brockmole, age 11 THE EMPEROR OF ANY PLACE Tim Wynne-Jones, Candlewick, 2015, $17.99/ C$21.00, pb, 336pp, 9780763669737 Evan is a teenager who has just attended to his father’s burial when he discovers the leather book his father was reading when he died. Evan has never seen the book before and, as he begins to read it, discovers a story so strange and disturbing that he begins to dream about the characters.

The story concerns two soldiers—one Japanese and one American—thrown together on a deserted island in the Pacific during WWII. As Evan continues to read the book, he discovers that his own estranged grandfather also appears in the story after the American has been rescued, but the Japanese soldier has remained on the island. Life becomes more complicated when the grandfather arrives at Evan’s home and demands that the book is his property and wants it returned. As Evan continues to read the book he begins to suspect that his grandfather is most likely a murderer.

This novel takes place in modern times with flashbacks of life on the island, and contains elements of ghosts and monsters, which surprisingly fit the plot. I found myself returning to the book again and again to find out what really happened on the island. This book should be a hit with YA audiences.

Linda Harris Sittig

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GLOBE: Life in Shakespeare’s London Catharine Arnold, Simon & Schuster, 2015, £16.99, hb, 312pp, 9781471125690 This book combines the history of London, Shakespeare and the Globe Theatre in an absorbing account of their respective cyclical fortunes. It is the fascinating story of how acting came of age and Arnold deftly weaves the different strands of history together. We have James Burbage, an extravelling player or “strutter” to thank for his vision in opening a playhouse (called The Theatre) in 1576. Burbage endured financing headaches just as modern theatres do. But he also faced other more robust threats: plague, politics, fire and violence.

Arnold devotes much of the book to exploring Shakespeare’s plays in the context of the time and the impact their live performances would have had.

She also looks at the development of different roles HNR Issue 73, August 2015 | Reviews | 59

within the theatre, such as the Tire Man, who was in charge of costumes and torches. It is a tale of tragedies, both personal and for The Globe itself which was destroyed by fire, and though rebuilt, was then destroyed by Cromwell. Yet, in triumph, it rose again in the 20th century. A wonderful read.

E.M. Powell

Goldstone’s style is witty and informal, although at times her habit of inferring particular emotions and motivations to historical figures can lend the book more of the air of a novel than non-fiction.

However, overall it is an entertaining read and fascinating account of two intriguing women.

Charlotte Wightwick

HOW THE FRENCH WON WATERLOO (Or Think They Did) Stephen Clarke, Century, 2015, £14.99, hb, 237pp, 9781780893082 In this witty look at two hundred years of rearranging history and reality, Stephen Clarke demonstrates how the French persist in believing that they won the battle of Waterloo, in spite of their defeat and Napoleon’s exile. There is something in the French psyche, Clarke argues, which cannot bear Napoleon’s name to be associated with losing.

The rewriting of history by vociferous Bonapartists began as soon as the battle ended, and the restored Bourbon kings and, later, Louis-Napoleon’s behaviour, only highlighted Napoleon’s charisma.

French historians argue that if it hadn’t been for the appalling weather, the agony of Napoleon’s piles, the disobedience of his generals, and the unsporting way that the Prussians (Britain’s allies) weighed in at the eleventh hour, Napoleon would have won. Even a twenty-first century French Prime Minister declared, ‘This defeat shines with the aura of victory.’

I found myself thinking that we British similarly re-write the 1940 military disaster of Dunkirk; the heroism of the little ships crossing the channel to bring back the stranded soldiers has almost obscured reality there, too. However, in some ways, the French are right. Napoleon may not have won the battle of Waterloo, but he certainly triumphed in the publicity stakes.

Elizabeth Hawksley

BORN SURVIVORS: Three Young Mothers and Their Extraordinary Story of Courage, Defiance, and Hope Wendy Holden, Harper, 2015, $26.99, hb, 400pp, 9780062370259 This is the true story of three women who not only survived the Auschwitz concentration camp, a Freiburg slave-labor camp, and the Mauthausen death camp, but gave birth while there. I have read many books about the Holocaust, but none affected me quite as deeply as this one, because I felt as though I actually knew these three women.

Readers get to know each young woman and her family before the war, great detail about their lives and thoughts during the war, and receive a satisfying follow-up about their lives and families after the war. Holden uses past interviews and journals to give us first-hand accounts from these three women, provides photos of them and their environments, and weaves in fascinating historical information about battles, bombs, SS officers, and the camps. You will devour this book as you would a novel, but you will remember it long after as you would the heartbreaking life story of a friend. It is one of the most touching and important books I have ever read.

Amy Watkin

THE RIVAL QUEENS: Catherine de’ Medici, her daughter Marguerite de Valois and the Betrayal That Ignited a Kingdom Nancy Goldstone, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2015, £20, hb, 448pp, 9780297868637 / Little, Brown, 2015, $30.00, hb, 448pp, 9780316409650 Goldstone paints an enjoyable account of the lives of two queens of her title: Catherine de Medici of France and her daughter Marguerite, who became Queen of Navarre through marriage to her cousin Henry. Marguerite is perhaps most familiar to modern readers as La Reine Margot, the eponymous heroine of Dumas’ 1845 novel.

Her wedding was the occasion of the infamous St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, in which thousands of Protestants died, believed to be at the instigation of Catherine and the bride’s brother, King Charles IX. Goldstone’s book rightly goes into some detail of the massacre, but also ranges much more widely.

She investigates how Catherine transformed herself from a politically insignificant and overlooked wife at her husband’s court, to a force who dominated French politics for decades. And she explores Marguerite’s attempts to make a political and personal life for herself despite multiple betrayals by her mother, brothers and husband.

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THE AUDACIOUS CRIMES OF COLONEL BLOOD Robert Hutchinson, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2015, £20, hb, 368pp, 9780297870180 This is the truly astonishing story of one man and his many adventures. The 17th-century soldier and spy Colonel Thomas Blood is perhaps most famous for his attempt to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London, but it was only one incident in his action-packed and stranger-thanfiction life. Blood fought for both sides in the English Civil War, was a double agent, an assassin, a conspirator and latterly, a political hack for hire.

Popular historian Robert Hutchinson has written this book as part biography and part quest novel, such are Blood’s adventures and the vividness with which the author narrates them.

In this carefully researched book which uses primary sources skilfully, Hutchinson succeeds in producing a rounded portrayal of a bold and fascinating man. He doesn’t, however, shy away from his subject’s unattractive personality. Blood’s whole life was driven by his thirst for revenge for perceived slights to his honour or his ambitions.

The Restoration period is also brought expertly to life by Hutchinson creating a context which partly explains the exploits of Colonel Blood, a man that was as much of his time as the Merry Monarch.

Gordon O’Sullivan

Deborah Lutz, W. W. Norton, 2015, $27.95/ C$33.00, hb, 310pp, 9780393240085 This unusual biography of the Brontës links some of their well-known and personal items, weaving them into both their personal and writing lives and giving distinctive insight into the existence of Branwell, Emily, Anne, and Charlotte. Lutz considers how nine objects had direct influence on how and what they wrote. Living on the moor, the Brontës were prodigious walkers, hence the inclusion of Branwell’s walking stick. The family was not wealthy yet devoured scraps of paper for their miniature books. They were known pet lovers; it’s not far-fetched for Lutz to have included the Brontës’ dog’s collar in this inventory.

In Charlotte’s novel Shirley, the cleric, Mr. Malone, uses a similar walking stick. Anne’s Agnes Grey has a workbox (also one of the discussed items) she fidgets with, allowing her to show her character’s agitation, “stabbing one’s finger with a needle.” Lutz brings up many connections between the objects and Charlotte’s Catherine in Wuthering Heights from longs walks to talking books. It’s quite remarkable how these stagnant objects are viewed with vivid emotion, and the Brontës become vivaciously real when one’s perspective is changed.

Wendy Zollo A VERY DANGEROUS WOMAN: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia’s Most Seductive Spy Deborah McDonald and Jeremy Dronfield, Oneworld, 2015, $29.99/C$41.50/£20, hb, 368pp, 9781780747088 Moura Budberg didn’t photograph well. The lover of spy R.H. Bruce Lockhart, Maxim Gorky, and H.G. Wells used her charismatic appeal to survive the Russian Revolution on her own terms – but the glowing descriptions of her beauty are only glimpsed at in the earliest photos of her.

Authors McDonald and Dronfield’s account of her life reveal that same intangibility. In objective terms, she was a manipulative liar, an absent mother, a woman who loved only the man who wasn’t loyal to her, and a careless translator. Her letters to the faithless Lockhart don’t even read that well in the cold light of day: “my baby boy,” she calls him. (Perhaps that sounds better in Russian.)

She drank far too much vodka, and she was almost certainly a spy for the Cheka and Stalin – to whom she once gave a violin.

And yet there is allure. Moura was fierce, charming, and intelligent, qualities she put to use surviving and remaking herself into what she wanted to be. Her best quality was how she picked herself up after every fall with humor, grit, and even elegance.

A Very Dangerous Woman pulls together all the chimerical threads of Moura’s life into a wellwritten and carefully annotated biography that often reads like a romantic thriller – with photos of all the key real-life characters. I’d recommend it to anyone, especially those interested in the Russian Revolution, its soiled aftermath, or the elusive Moura.

Kristen Hannum

THE BRONTË CABINET: Three Lives in Nine Objects Nonfiction

© 2015, The Historical Novel Society ISSN: 1471-7492 | Issue 73, August 2015