Historical Novels Review, Issue 84 (May 2018) by The Historical Novel Society

H I S T O R IC A L

NOV EL S REVIEW

ISSUE 84

May 2018

A SUPREME MASTER

FEATURED IN THIS ISSUE ...

More on page 8

A New Interest in Cuba? The Recent Popularity of Cuban Settings

Lucinda Byatt examines Michael Ondaatjeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s writing process, and his latest novel, Warlight

Page 10

A Bear Named Cuff Reckoning with Antebellum Family History Page 12

Philadelphia, 1918 Novels by Susan Meissner and Mindy Tarquini Page 12

Missing from History Women Composers Page 14

My Dear Hamilton New Fiction on Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton Page 15

Historical Fiction Market News Page 1

New Voices Page 4

Red Pencil Page 6

A publication of the Historical Novel Society | www.historicalnovelsociety.org

H I S T O R IC A L

NOV EL S REVIEW ISSN 1471-7492

PUBLISHER Richard Lee

Linda Sever

<LSever@uclan.ac.uk> Publisher Coverage: All UK children’s historicals

Karen Warren

<worldwidewriteruk@gmail.com> Publisher Coverage: Accent; Birlinn/Polygon; Bloomsbury; Duckworth Overlook; Faber & Faber; Granta; HarperCollins UK; Pan Macmillan; Penguin Random House UK (Michael Joseph, Penguin General, Penguin Press, and their imprints); Short Books; Simon & Schuster UK

REVIEWS EDITORS, USA Rebecca Cochran

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

<CochranR95@gmail.com> Publisher coverage: Amazon Publishing; Hachette; Hyperion; Pegasus; and WW Norton

EDITORIAL BOARD

Bryan Dumas

Houston Cole Library, Jacksonville State University 700 Pelham Road North Jacksonville, AL 36265-1602 USA <blatham@jsu.edu> Publisher Coverage: Simon & Schuster US (all imprints)

Ilysa Magnus

Managing Editor: Bethany Latham

Book Review Editor: Sarah Johnson

6868 Knollcrest Drive, Charleston, IL 61920 USA <sljohnson2@eiu.edu> Publisher Coverage: Bethany House; Five Star; HarperCollins; Henry Holt; IPG; Penguin Random House (all imprints); Severn House; Trafalgar Square; university presses

Features Editor: Lucinda Byatt 13 Park Road, Edinburgh, EH6 4LE UK <textline13@gmail.com>

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

REVIEWS EDITORS, UK Alan Fisk

<alan.fisk@alanfisk.com> Publisher Coverage: Aardvark Bureau, Black and White, Bonnier Zaffre, Crooked Cat, Freight, Gallic, Honno, Impress, Karnac, Legend, Pushkin, Oldcastle, Quartet, Sandstone, Saraband, Seren, Serpent’s Tail

Edward James

<busywords_ed@yahoo.com> Publisher Coverage: Arcadia; Atlantic Books; Canongate; Head of Zeus; Glagoslav; Hodder Headline (inc. Coronet, Hodder & Stoughton, NEL, Sceptre); John Murray; Pen & Sword; Robert Hale; Alma; The History Press

Doug Kemp

<douglaskemp62@gmail.com> Publisher Coverage: Allison & Busby; Little, Brown; Orion; Penguin Random House UK (Cornerstone, Ebury, Transworld, Vintage, and their imprints); Quercus

<bryanpgdumas@gmail.com> Publisher coverage: Algonquin; Kensington; Other Press; Overlook; Sourcebooks; Tyndale; and other US/Canadian small presses <goodlaw2@optonline.net> Publisher Coverage: Bloomsbury, FSG; Grove/Atlantic; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Minotaur Books; Picador USA; Poisoned Pen Press; Soho Press; St Martin’s Press; and Tor/Forge

Arleigh Ordoyne

<arleigh.johnson@att.net> Publisher coverage: US/Canadian children’s publishers

REVIEWS EDITOR, INDIE Richard Lee

<richard@historicalnovelsociety.org> Publisher Coverage: all self- and subsidy-published novels

EDITORIAL POLICY & COPYRIGHT 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. 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.

MEMBERSHIP DETAILS THE HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY was formed in 1997 to help promote historical fiction. We are an open society — if you want to get involved, get in touch. 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, please see: https://historicalnovelsociety.org/members/join/

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Interested in receiving copies of new and forthcoming historical novels and sharing your thoughts with other historical novel enthusiasts? We’re looking for reviewers for all eras and subgenres of historical fiction. Please email me at sljohnson2@eiu.edu for the guidelines. Especially sought are UK reviewers and those who can read from e-format. New writers are welcome.

ISSUE 84 MAY 2018 COLUMNS 1

Historical Fiction Market News

Sarah Johnson

New Voices Profiles of debut historical fiction authors Carys Davies, Imogen Hermes Gowar, Tadzio Koelb and Daniela Tully | Myfanwy Cook

Red Pencil Christmas at Carnton |

Cindy Vallar

FEATURES AND INTERVIEWS 8

HISTORICAL FICTION MARKET NEWS

A Supreme Master Michael Ondaatje’s New Novel, Warlight by Lucinda Byatt

10 A New Interest in Cuba? The Recent Popularity of Cuban Settings by Claire Morris 12 A Bear Named Cuff An Author Reckons with Her Family’s Antebellum History by Kristen Hannum 12 Philadelphia, 1918 New Novels by Susan Meissner and Mindy Tarquini by Sarah Johnson 14 Missing from History Women Composers by Mary Sharratt 15 My Dear Hamilton Co-authors Stephanie Dray and Laurie Kamoie on Alexander Hamilton’s wife, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton by Janice Ottersberg

REVIEWS 16 Book Reviews Editors’ choice and more

NEW BOOKS BY HNS MEMBERS Congrats to the following authors on their new releases! If you’ve written a historical novel or nonfiction work published (or to be published) in 2018 or after, please email the following details to me at sljohnson2@eiu.edu by July 7: author, title, publisher, release date, and a blurb of one sentence or less. Details will appear in August’s magazine. Submissions may be edited for space reasons. Faith A. Colburn’s debut The Reluctant Canary Sings (Prairie Wind Press, Aug. 3, 2017), set in Cleveland, Ohio, begins during the second dip of the double-dip Depression (1937-1941); the only way Bobbi could save her family was to sing, but that made her a target in unexpected ways. K. M. Sandrick’s debut The Pear Tree (IngramSpark, Aug. 27, 2017), a recent Global Ebook Award nominee, tells about the Nazis’ destruction of the small Czech town of Lidice in response to the killing of the head of Occupied Czechoslovakia; the execution of the town’s men; the separation and racial profiling of Lidice’s women and children; and survivors’ efforts to overcome fear and betrayal, seek the truth about lost loved ones, and find hope. Preston Fleming’s Maid of Baikal (PF publishing, Oct. 15, 2017) is a richly imagined speculation on the Russian Civil War that answers the question: What if a Siberian Joan of Arc had rescued the White Armies at a critical point of the Russian Civil War in 1919? In Rivers of Stone (Amazon Kindle, Nov. 19, 2017), Book 3 of Beth Camp’s family saga, Catriona McDonnell, disguised as a boy and employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company and artist Paul Kane, crosses Canada in the 1840s in search of her husband. Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit by D.M. Denton (All Things That Matter Press, Nov. 27, 2017) gives us Anne Brontë: a courageous, committed, daring and fiercely individual and a writer of remarkable insight, prescience and moral courage. Friendships deepen, romances blossom, and mysteries unfold in Julie Klassen’s The Ladies of Ivy Cottage (Bethany House, Dec. 5, 2017), Book 2 of Tales from Ivy Hill. Steven Neil’s The Merest Loss (Matador, Dec. 15, 2017) is a story of love and political intrigue, set against the backdrop of the English hunting shires and the streets of Victorian London and postrevolutionary Paris. Set against the tumultuous backdrop of the longest running theatrical riot in British history, Carol M. Cram’s The Muse of Fire

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(Kindle Press/New Arcadia, Jan. 9) features a young actress who makes her debut at the famed Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, and becomes ensnared by intrigues and setbacks that mar the pathway to stardom she craves.

Press, Mar. 1) tells a story of conflict through the life of a stalwart woman, Comfort Bradford, daughter of Gov. of Plymouth, who fights against the intolerance, both religious and cultural, that shaped American values.

In Christy Nicholas’s Misfortune of Vision, #4 in The Druid’s Brooch Series (Tirgearr, Jan. 10), set in 12th-c Ireland, Orlagh is Seer to her Chief, but she is determined to fulfill her own quest: to find a worthy heir for her magical brooch.

In Animal Dances by Jim Saunders (Shorehouse, Mar. 1), Harry Edwards is conscripted into the Great War and discovers a new and unrealized capacity for decisiveness and action in the face of danger, while back home, Fannie, his girlfriend, struggles to remain faithful, and his family must deal with a killing flu.

Tamar Anolic’s novel Triumph of a Tsar (CreateSpace, Jan. 11) explores a world in which the Russian Revolution is averted and the hemophiliac Alexei, son of Tsar Nicholas II, comes to the throne. In Paul W. Feenstra’s For Want of a Shilling (Mellester Press, Jan 21), about the mysterious Russian invasion hoax that shook colonial New Zealand, what begins as a local murder investigation turns into a plot of global proportions. She wants her home; he wants control; the Fascists want both. This is the premise of Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger’s No Man’s Land: Reschen Valley 1 (CreateSpace, Jan. 25). Christine Hancock’s Bright Sword: The Byrhtnoth Chronicles, Book 1 (The Book Guild, Jan. 28), set in the 10th century, centers on a boy who searches for a sword—but only when he defeats his own fears and becomes a man, can he claim it, and become Byrhtnoth, a great Anglo-Saxon warrior. In Tiernan’s Wake (AudioArcadia, Jan. 30) by Richard T. Rook, an artist, lawyer/genealogist and historian use their different skills to locate the first identifiable portrait of the 16th-century Irish Pirate Queen Grace O’Malley—and discover that Grace was close to finalizing a deal with England’s Queen Elizabeth that would have altered the course of European history. In Sara Dahmen’s Widow 1881 (Sillan+Pace+Brown, Feb. 14), a very proper Boston widow hides an unexpected pregnancy under layers of lies by heading to Flats Junction, Dakota Territory, only to discover her physician employer threatens to upend all her best laid plans. Set in the 13th century, as England and France struggle over territory, Erica Laine’s Isabella of Angouleme: The Tangled Queen Part 2 (SilverWood, Feb. 14) follows King John’s widow, Isabella of Angoulême, as she moves back to France to claim her inheritance amid forceful men who would stop her. C.J. Heigelmann’s An Uncommon Folk Rhapsody (Common Folk Press, Feb. 23) is about an orphaned Asian boy who is adopted and grows up to fight in the American Civil War, where he falls in love with a slave. Marilyn Pemberton’s debut The Jewel Garden (Williams & Whiting, Feb. 23) tells of one Victorian woman’s physical, emotional and artistic journey from the East End of London to the noisy souks and sandy wastes of Egypt via the labyrinthine canals of Venice, and her fictional relationship with Mary De Morgan, a writer of fairy tales and one of William Morris’s circle of friends. The Mark of Wu: Hidden Paths by Stephen M. Gray (Helu Press, Feb. 28) is an exotic action-adventure story set in ancient China with palace intrigue, epic battles and an emerging hero. Set in New England and London in 1630-1677, Judith Guskin’s Longing to Be Free: The Bear, The Eagle, and The Crown (WonderSpirit

COLUMNS | Issue 84, May 2018

Set in 1585, in an England beset by foreign enemies and swirling rumours of Catholic plots, Forsaking All Other by Catherine Meyrick (Courant, Mar. 12) tells the story of a young woman’s struggle to avoid an arranged marriage at a time when duty and obedience were valued above personal wishes. A reluctant aristocratic sleuth finds she’s investigating her own family in Jane Steen’s Lady Helena Investigates (Aspidistra Press, Mar. 14). In The Breach: Reschen Valley 2 by Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger (CreateSpace, Mar. 15), burying the past comes at a high price. The Lace Weaver, the debut novel from Lauren Chater (Simon & Schuster Australia, Mar. 19), is a sweeping tale of love and loss set in 1940s Estonia. The Blood of Princes, second in Derek Birks’ Craft of Kings series (CreateSpace, Mar. 31), is a savage tale of love, treason and betrayal surrounding the “Princes in the Tower.” Penny Ingham’s The Saxon Plague (Nerthus, Apr. 2) is set in 5thcentury Britain: When Vortigern recruits Hengist’s Saxon warband to subdue the northern tribes, he unwittingly unleashes a reign of terror, treachery and bloodshed; and when he forces Hengist’s sister Anya to marry him, only the gods can foresee the devastating chain of events set in motion. In Misfortune of Song by Christy Nicholas, #5 in The Druid’s Brooch Series (Tirgearr, Apr. 4), set in 12th-c Ireland, Maelan must decide between his own honor and his headstrong granddaughter’s happiness. In Michal Strutin’s Judging Noa: a Fight for Women’s Rights in the Turmoil of the Exodus (Bedazzled Ink, Apr. 10), based on brief biblical verses, Noa pursues justice for her sisters and herself to escape bondage in the face of family squabbles, political tricksters, and deadly religious fanatics set against the sweeping turbulence of the Exodus. The Scarlet Pimpernel meets Gone with the Wind in Jessica James’s The Lion of the South: A Novel of the Civil War (Patriot Press, Apr. 12), a suspenseful novel that leaves the lives of two men—and the destiny of a nation—in one woman’s hands. In Ghosts and Exiles by Sandra Unerman (Mirror World Publishing, Apr. 17), set in 1930s London, Tilda Gray and her family fight the ghosts which threaten a young friend and spirits whose powers they do not understand. In J. G. Harlond’s A Turning Wind (Penmore, Apr. 23), set in 1640, from the trading colony of Goa to the royal courts of England and Spain, the wily Ludo da Portovenere fulfils dangerous secret commissions on his own terms and for his own reasons. An Unwilling Alliance by Lynn Bryant (indie, Apr. 30) is a novel of war

and romance set during the Copenhagen campaign of 1807. The Game of Hope by Sandra Gulland (Penguin Canada, May 1; also Penguin US, Jun. 23) is a YA novel based on the teen years of Hortense de Beauharnais, Josephine Bonaparte’s daughter and Napoleon’s stepdaughter. Karen Lee Street’s novel Edgar Allan Poe and the Jewel of Peru (Pegasus, May 8) is set in Philadelphia in 1844: as violent tensions escalate between nativists and recent Irish immigrants, Edgar Allan Poe and his friend C. Auguste Dupin strive to unravel a mystery involving old enemies, lost soul-mates, ornithomancy, and the legendary jewel of Peru. Kate Heartfield’s Armed in Her Fashion (ChiZine, May 17), set in Flanders in 1328, follows a widow who leads a raiding party into the mouth of Hell to claim her inheritance and protect her daughter. Set in England in 1176, E.M. Powell’s The King’s Justice (Thomas & Mercer, Jun. 1), first in a new medieval mystery series, features Aelred Barling, esteemed clerk to the justices of King Henry II, who is dispatched from the royal court with his young assistant, Hugo Stanton, to investigate a brutal murder in a village outside York. In Mark Scott Smith’s The Osprey and the Sea Wolf~The Battle of the Atlantic 1942 (CreateSpace/IngramSpark, Jun. 3) a seasoned U-boat captain and a rookie Mexican-American B-25 pilot engage in a hit and run battle off the coast of North America and deal with love, betrayal and loss on the home front. Set in 1810 England, The Thieftaker’s Trek by Joan Sumner (Bastei Lubbe AG - Bastei Entertainment, Jun. 12), tells a tale of revenge, blackmail, and murder. Frobisher, the thieftaker, is hired to rescue a 5-year-old boy abducted from Spitalfields to work with child slaves in a cotton mill, while murder is investigated by a Bow Street detective in London; is this coincidental or linked? Give Up the Dead (The Mystery Press, Jul. 5) the fifth book in C.B. Hanley’s medieval mystery series, sees Edwin Weaver travelling with an army to repel a French invasion; however, he soon realises that danger is nearer at hand, and that the French aren’t the only ones trying to kill him. In Last Dance in Kabul by Ken Czech (Fireship, Aug 2), British army captain Reeve Waterton tries to warn of an impending insurrection in 1841 Afghanistan, but the only one who listens is Sarah Kane, who not only detests him, she is also betrothed to his bitterest rival. In The Eyes That Look: The Secret Story of Bassano’s Hunting Dogs (Universe Press, Oct), Julia Grigg’s richly-imagined coming-of-age adventure, Francesco Bassano sets out to unravel the mystery of the portrait which his father, Jacopo, painted and furnish Giorgio Vasari with information entertaining enough to guarantee a favourable mention in his Lives of the Artists.

NEW PUBLISHING DEALS Sources include author submissions, Publishers Marketplace, The Bookseller, Publishing Perspectives, Publishers Weekly, and more. Singapore Sapphire by A. M. Stuart, in which a British former suffragette attempts to gain financial independence as a private secretary in colonial Singapore in 1910 and gets drawn into a web of secrets after her first client is murdered, sold to Michelle Vega at Berkley via Kevan Lyon at Marsal Lyon Literary Agency.

Two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward’s as-yet-untitled new novel, about an enslaved woman sent from the Carolinas to New Orleans, where America’s largest slave market is located, sold to Kathy Belden at Scribner via Rob McQuilkin at Massie & McQuilkin. A Good Deliverance by Toby Clements (author of the medieval Kingmaker series), about the life and exploits of Thomas Malory and his creation of Le Morte Darthur, sold to Louisa Joyner at Faber & Faber by James Gill at United Agents. The Women of Chavaniac by Stephanie Dray, set in a castle in the French mountains during three eras (the French Revolution, WWI, WWII), and following three extraordinary women during wartime, sold to Amanda Bergeron at Berkley by Kevan Lyon at Marsal Lyon Literary Agency. Bestselling novelist Kate Mosse sold her new historical series, beginning with The Burning Chamber, set in 16th-c France (and reviewed in this issue from the UK edition), to Catherine Richards at Minotaur in the US, via agent George Lucas at Inkwell on behalf of Mark Lucas at LAW Literary Agents in London. Imogen Hermes Gowar’s debut novel The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock (an Editors’ Choice selection this issue), set in 18th-century London, sold to Jonathan Burnham and Erin Wicks at Harper (US), for Fall 2018 publication, by Anna Stein at ICM on behalf of Karolina Sutton at Curtis Brown. Girl in Disguise author Greer Macallister’s Woman Ninety Nine, in which a wealthy young woman tries to save her older sister from a Northern California asylum by following her inside, and discovers the truth about the inmates’ situation, sold to Shana Drehs at Sourcebooks, by Elisabeth Weed at The Book Group. The Ghost Bride author Yangsze Choo’s second novel The Night Tiger, an imaginative and magical story set in 1930s Malaysia, sold to Quercus fiction publisher Cassie Browne via the Bent Agency’s Sarah Manning, and to Amy Einhorn and Caroline Bleeke at Flatiron Books via Jenny Bent at the Bent Agency. The Jade Lily by Kirsty Manning, newly out from Allen & Unwin (Australia), focusing on Jewish refugees in WWII-era Shanghai and intertwined with a present-day search for the truth from the past, sold to Tessa Woodward at William Morrow, at auction, via Stacy Testa at Writers House, on behalf of Clare Forster at Curtis Brown Australia. For forthcoming novels through mid-2018, please see: https:// historicalnovelsociety.org/guides/forthcoming-historical-novels/

COMPILED BY SARAH JOHNSON Sarah Johnson is Book Review Editor of HNR, 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.

A publication of the Historical Novel Society | www.historicalnovelsociety.org

NEW VOICES Introducing us to history’s thrilling hidden stories are debut novelists Carys Davies, Imogen Hermes Gowar, Tadzio Koelb and Daniela Tully. credit: Mandy Lee Jandrell

Carys Davies

Tadzio Koelb

Imogen Hermes Gowar

Daniela Tully

While exploring a bookshop, Carys Davies, author of West (Granta/ Simon & Schuster, 2018), uncovered a startling fact that stirred her imagination. She explains: “Back in the 1990s, in a secondhand bookstore on Long Island, I picked up an old edition of the journals of the 1804-1806 Lewis and Clark expedition to find and map a route from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. For years the journals sat, unread, on a high shelf in my study at home in the north of England, until one day I got them down and began to read. What really snagged my imagination wasn’t the account of the expedition, though—it was a brief reference in the introduction to the piles of enormous bones which, throughout the 18th century, had been turning up in a Kentucky swamp, and the speculation that the mammoth creatures the bones belonged to might still be alive somewhere in the West, in the uncharted expanses beyond the frontier.” It was, according to Davies, “one of those thrilling details that drops you straight into the head of someone from another time, that allows you to see the world as they saw it, in all its undiscovered strangeness.” The consequence of this discovery was that she was also “dropped” into the United States of the early 1800s, “plunged into a world that was being settled by Europeans, a world where the indigenous population was being driven out of their ancestral lands in the east— driven, as would later become apparent, towards extinction.” At that “fascinating moment in history,” she says, her novel West “began to emerge. As I began to write, both ideas—the bones and the expulsion of the Native American tribes—became entwined in a story

COLUMNS | Issue 84, May 2018

which sees my hero, Cy Bellman, a British settler and Pennsylvania farmer, set off alone in search of the giant animals, leaving his young daughter, Bess, behind.” As Davies wrote, she “continued to read, diving into the amazing archives of the New York Public Library, where I found handwritten diaries and letters (of settlers, government officials, palaeontologists alike), lists of goods offered by the US government in exchange for Native American lands, copies of treaties, original contemporary maps of the early 1800s, and rare published travelogues from the period.” What emerged from her research is a story about a widowed mule breeder from Pennsylvania, Cy Bellman, colossal ancient bones in a Kentucky swamp, giant monsters, and Bess, the daughter he leaves behind with his uncommunicative and morose sister and nothing but a promise to return after two years and a gold ring. Davies describes the novel as “a story about wonder and curiosity, love and faith; a tale of greed and loss, betrayal and revenge, of hope and faith.” Daniela Tully’s inspiration for her novel Hotel on Shadow Lake (Legend/Thomas Dunne, 2018) grew out of a moment that she has never forgotten. This was, she says, “a day in which I saw my own grandmother at her most vulnerable and fragile. It was the year 1990, and I just arrived home from school, where I found my grandmother sitting in our kitchen, sobbing into my mother’s arms. Her trembling hand clutched a yellowed envelope. Adolf Hitler’s face, in the upper right corner, was the first detail that jumped out at me. “The date on the stamp read December 1944. It turned out that the letter inside was from her twin brother, who had died in WWII. In it, he bid my grandmother and his mother, my great-grandmother, farewell, feeling that he wouldn’t survive the war.” About this unexpected gift from the past, Tully reveals: “As happened with several other letters sent from the eastern part of Germany shortly before the end of WWII, this one, too, had been imprisoned behind one of history’s darkest dividers, only to be set free after the fall of the Berlin Wall.” Starting from this emotional family event, Tully was able to create her main protagonist. “Martha Wiesberg (my grandmother’s first name) receives such a letter, except that hers contains much more than a simple farewell—instead, it opens old wounds, and unearths long-buried secrets.” The central character’s quest is like a treasure hunt from 1930s Germany to the forests of America today, which ultimately leads to the Montgomery Hotel, with the unusual family that owns it and the “spirits that live on in deep surrounding wilderness.” Secrets and ideas can lie dormant in our minds, as if waiting for the right moment to be used creatively. Imogen Hermes Gowar, author of The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock (Harvill Secker, 2018) had one such idea, as she explains. “It sounds absurd to say that I wrote The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by accident, but it’s almost true. A tiny gem of an idea—a merchant, a courtesan, and the terrifying mermaid that draws them together and almost tears them apart—had lurked in the back of my mind for a long time. I’d even written a short story about it, but, wrangling with a different novel I considered to be serious and weighty and worthwhile, I dismissed it. When I eventually started

writing it, it was as light relief from that Proper Novel: I’d altogether forgotten that writing can be (ought to be!) fun, but this story came to me swiftly and joyfully, and what made it extra pleasurable was that I already loved the period.” Eighteenth-century London was one of great contrasts and great excess, from the poverty of Gin Lane as captured by the artist William Hogarth, to the Marie-Antoinette style picnics arranged to amuse the aristocracy. However, Gowar believes that “For all its hypocrisy and filth, the Britain of the 18th century had a cartoonish, dynamic joie-de-vivre which I still find irresistible: the language was baroque, singular, pungent, the colours bright, the sex dirty. The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock is a curation of all the things that delighted me most about 18th-century London, where a courtesan might eat a bank-note between two slices of bread, and where scientific enquiry was hobbled by the vastness of the world and the briefness of life. Mermaids of the sort Mr Hancock acquires really were exhibited in London, and bawds like Mrs Chappell really did throw eye-popping orgiastic parties in lavish brothels.” However, Gowar points out that “Like most novels-in-progress, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock still presented me with plot headaches, timeline snags, and the odd existential crisis, but the research carried me through. I did not resent returning to my desk because the 1780s was a place I loved to be. I hope my version of it is as pleasurable to read as it was to write.”

our own, but lacking the (admittedly still meagre) resources now available to gender-fluid people; in short, I wanted Kunstler to be a perfect outsider, one who could therefore represent all outsiders, and indeed the outsider in each of us. By setting his story against America’s 20th century wars, I was also able to allow the character’s rise and fall to mirror the country’s as it sank from the elation of the Greatest Generation to the defeats (military and moral) of Vietnam.” While carrying out his research, he says, “I was aided by a community of ‘industrial archaeologists’ who taught me about previous methods of wire-rope manufacture; by the U.S. Army Center of Military History; and by The Taxi-Dance Hall, a study published in 1932 by sociologist Paul Cressey. What might prove to have been my most important resource, however, is the enormous archive of radio programmes available on-line, which allowed me to hear how people talked and to learn what it interested them to talk about.” Historical fiction writing at its best seamlessly integrates facts with settings, plots and characters that will intrigue and thrill their readers. Davies, Gowar, Koelb and Tully have all aspired to achieve this. They followed and transformed their initial sparks of inspiration by carrying out detailed research into the periods they have set their novels in, before blending the “might have been” with intriguing historical backdrops created to entertain and enlighten their readers.

In Trenton Makes (Doubleday, 2018), Tadzio Koelb’s main character wants their share of the American dream, but in Trenton, New Jersey, achieving this dream isn’t simple. Koelb explains: “There are many motivations that might lead an author to choose an historical setting. In my case the choice was suggested by the material that inspired me, but it was cemented by thematic concerns. “Abe Kunstler, a woman who kills her husband and steals his identity, was triggered by the liner notes to an album of music by Billy Tipton, a jazz pianist who was discovered at death to be biologically female. Tipton had ‘married’ twice (once to a stripper) and adopted children, and I began to imagine the enormous difficulties he would have faced in having to keep his body—the inescapable fact of his person—a secret.”

WRITTEN BY MYFANWY COOK Myfanwy Cook is a prizewinning short story writer, Associate Fellow at two British Universities, researcher and workshop designer. Please do email (myfanwyc@ btinternet.com) if you discover any debut novels you would recommend.

Koelb was faced with a challenge. “In order to highlight these difficulties, I wanted to set the story in a period not so different from A publication of the Historical Novel Society | www.historicalnovelsociety.org

RED PENCIL In her final Red Pencil column, Cindy Vallar examines the collaboration between author and editor in Tamera Alexander’s Christmas at Carnton. When Tamera Alexander first began working with editors, the collaboration was a challenge. “[N]o one enjoys having all their mistakes or weaknesses pointed out.” Now, she eagerly awaits her editor’s comments “[b]ecause I know [her] suggestions and catches are going to make my story so much better than it would have been on my own.”

Christmas at Carnton, the novella that launches Alexander’s new trilogy, The Carnton Novels, takes place in Franklin, Tennessee, at a historic plantation at the end of 1863. Jake Winston, a captain in the Confederate Army, and Aletta Prescott, a pregnant widow with a young son, are at “crucial turning points in their lives.”1 Thomas Nelson, her publisher, hired freelance editor Ami McConnell to work with Tamera. Ami spent more than two decades, she says, “acquiring and editing books, most recently as Editor-in-Chief at Howard Books / Simon & Schuster,” before opening her own business. When Ami approaches an edit and the world the author has conjured, she “tread[s] carefully, poised for any possible bump or diversion. If I detect a word, image, or phrase that might make a reader slow down or (God-forbid) leave the created story-world, I flag it for the author. Ultimately we want readers to be completely spellbound — to be so moved by the book that the ‘real’ world falls away.” Why does an author need an editor? “Novelists take incredible pains to get storytelling right, but it’s impossible to have true objectivity when you’re in that deep.” Although writing the draft of a manuscript “is almost always torture for me, with very few moments of epiphany and joy,” Tamera eagerly awaits the substantive edit. When it arrives four to nine weeks after submission, “[I]t’s party time!” She gets “to really dig [in] and add [the] depth of emotion and nuance of character and setting” that were initially missing. After reading the first three chapters, Ami wrote, “Are we getting to[it] quickly enough? I know you’re not a Meet Cute kind of writer, but I feel like we’re not meeting Jake quickly enough. Consider a scene from Jake sooner?” In reading the opening chapters “with a fresh eye,” Tamera agreed. Those scenes were “too focused on Aletta,” so she inserted a scene into chapter two. This “helps set the tone for his struggle and conflict through the story,” as well as giving the beginning “a much more balanced perspective.”

“Hold still for me, Captain Winston.” The steel scalpel cold against his temple, Jake obliged as the doctor cut the bandages from around his eyes. “I take it you’ve done this before, Doc.” The army surgeon laughed beneath his breath. “Nope. You’re the first.” Hearing the teasing in the older man’s voice, Jake smiled to mask the tightness in his chest, trying his best not to let his thoughts go where the deliberately imposed darkness of the past seven days had threatened to take them. “I consulted with another surgeon, Captain, who agreed with my diagnosis. Allowing your eyes to rest for the past few days, especially with that salve on them, should have advanced the healing process. Once I remove the

COLUMNS | Issue 84, May 2018

bandages, I want you to keep your eyes closed.” With the cloths removed, the coolness of the air intensified around Jake’s eyes. Even with them still shut, he sensed the brightness inside the hospital tent, which wasn’t a surprise. He wasn’t blind, after all. The whack on his head he’d suffered after being shot had simply blurred his vision a little. “I’m handing you a warm compress, Captain . . .” Jake opened his hands. “Press it gently to your eyes. It will help dissolve whatever salve remains.” Jake complied, the warmth and moisture feeling good. He rubbed carefully, the ointment’s once-pungent scent, smelling a little like bitterroot and rosemary, all but gone. “Now, still holding the cloth up to your eyes, I want you to open them a little at a time. Let your eyes adjust to the light.” Jake squinted, then winced. Even the dimness of the tent seemed overbright. Finally, after a moment or so, he managed to open his eyes fully. He blinked as his immediate world came into view. “How do things look, Captain Winston?” Jake held his hand out in front of him. “So far, so good, Doc.” The physician handed him a book. “Try reading for me.” Jake opened the cover and flipped over a few pages – and felt that unwelcome tug on his thoughts returning again. He squinted. “I can read the words. But they’re a mite fuzzy.” “That could be due to some lingering salve.” Jake nodded, but he didn’t think so. He’d wiped the ointment clean. “Try your rifle sight next.” The doctor crossed to the entry of the tent and pulled back the flap. The cold followed quickly on the heels of a dull sun as Jake pulled the sight from his pocket and peered through. His pulse edged up a notch. He closed his right eye, then opened it again, trying to focus. But couldn’t. He swallowed hard. “Don’t be discouraged, Captain. Similar to the wound in your shoulder, your eyesight needs time to heal. At this point, we still have every reason to believe your full sight will return.” Again Jake nodded. But the apprehension in the surgeon’s expression, and how the man looked away when he spoke, told him a different story. A story no sharpshooter ever wanted to hear. Ami also questioned Aletta’s action in another scene. “Pregnant chopping wood and actually building nativity – at six to seven months pregnant . . . [C]an she be doing something else? Or doing smaller wood work?” Discovering how little wood was left in the bin, she retrieved the axe, situated a log atop the old oak stump and brought the axe down with practiced force. She chopped wood until the bin was stocked for several more days then, breath coming heavy, carried an armful into the house. The crackle of dry wood succumbing to flame filled the bedroom, and the warmth felt good on her skin.

Tamera understood Ami’s perspective, but “felt strongly about not toning down Aletta’s physical struggle . . . . I wanted to stay true to the challenges that women of that time period endured when all the males in the family were off fighting the war and there was no one else who could step in and do all the ‘man’s work.’” To address this concern, Tamera elevated Aletta’s pain and anxiety and highlighted her unconventional skill – “a catalyst for conflict between her and Jake. This is just one of the things I love about rewrites – the way the layers of the plot and the characters become woven more fully into the fabric of the story.”

Jake didn’t share his humor. “Wouldn’t it be easier, sir, just to tell the women to donate their money and valuables and be done with it? Would save us all a lot of time. After all, the gentler sex has no place in matters of war, sir. They’re best shielded from war’s cruelties. Better for them to stick to hearth and home.”

Tamera hopes her readers will “fall in love with the characters,” but Ami had the opposite reaction in this scene with Jake and his commanding officer.2

Tamera advises new authors to embrace the editing process. “I believe my books are far better because of the collaboration with my editors . . . than if I’d attempted to write the book without the benefit of their shared experience.” Ami helped her “to see the individual trees in the massive forest [I] planted (in which [I] often lose [my] way).”

Stratton smiled. “You sound like that letter to the editor I read yesterday.” “Sir?”

Stratton reached for the newspaper buried beneath the piles on his desk and pushed it toward him. “Fellow wrote in and lambasted the editor for Discovering how little wood was left in the bin, she retrieved the ax, situated a suggesting that some women were actually fighting, even now, alongside the log atop the old oak stump, and brought the ax down with practiced force – men. As if we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.” something she wouldn’t be able to do much longer. The log split clean down the middle. Since her parents had never had a son, she’d been forced to learn Jake unfolded the paper, found the editorial page, and scanned the letter. unusual skills for a woman. Skills that had proven helpful over the past two years since Warren had left. Not to say she hadn’t missed Warren. She had, “Next thing you know, Captain, they’ll be saying we ought to allow women to terribly. But she hadn’t been quite so lost in certain ways as some of her friends hold command.” Stratton laughed. “Can you imagine?” had been. Jake finally looked up and managed a smile. The wording in the letter was She chopped wood until the bin was stocked for several more days, then, overly harsh, but he couldn’t say he disagreed with the opinion overall. The breath coming heavy, carried an armful into the house. The crackle of dry way he looked at it, it wasn’t so much that women lacked the constitution for wood succumbing to flame filled the bedroom, and the warmth felt good on war as much as that men had a God-bestowed duty to protect them from the her skin. horrors of it. He laid the paper aside.

Stratton reached for the newspaper buried beneath the piles on his desk and pushed it toward him. “Fellow wrote in and lambasted the editor for suggesting that some women were actually fighting, even now, alongside the men. As if we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.” Jake unfolded the paper, found the editorial page, and stared.

You can learn more about Tamera and Ami at their websites, tameraalexander.com/ and https://amimcconnell.com, respectively.

“Next thing you know, Captain, they’ll be saying we ought to allow women to hold command.” Stratton laughed. “Can you imagine?” Jake finally looked up and managed a smile. “Mind if I keep this, sir?” Stratton shook his head. “So while I agree with you most wholeheartedly in your opinion, Captain . . . There is still the matter of General Bragg’s request.” His mind still on the editorial letter, Jake nodded . . . He glanced at the newspaper again before slipping it into the haversack as well, still not believing the journalist had published his letter. It was something, seeing his own words in print. In an actual newspaper. All this time sitting around waiting to mend, putting those compresses and poultices on his eyes, was convoluting his mind. He’d penned the letter late one night after reading the editor’s statement about females and war, and about how women ought to be allowed to take part. Absurd. But as it turned out, the writing had proven to be cathartic. Much like his sketching. Ami wrote: “grrr . . . Best for him to have actually written it? As it is, he could merely agree with it . . . Maybe a sketch from him accompanies a letter to the editor written by someone else? I know you’re setting Aletta and Jake up for reconciliation, but his stance makes me dislike him . . . and I’ve just met him.”

REFERENCES

1. Tamera Alexander

Borrowed from “A Personal Note” that appears on the About Tamera page of her website, http://tameraalexander.com/about

2. Ibid.

WRITTEN BY CINDY VALLAR A freelance editor and novelist, Cindy Vallar hopes you have enjoyed her column, which has been an HNS mainstay since 2005. You can visit her at www.cindyvallar.com.

Initially reluctant to change this, Tamera “looked at Jake from a reader’s perspective – a person who doesn’t already know and love Jake like I do –” and discovered she agreed. A publication of the Historical Novel Society | www.historicalnovelsociety.org

A SUPREME MASTER Michael Ondaatje’s new novel, Warlight

the Center’s director, Stephen Enniss, Ondaatje elaborated on his writing process. Each novel is the product of four handwritten drafts, followed by more versions rewritten on a typewriter or computer. After that, he says, he focuses on “reworking it, printing it out, rewriting it by hand.”2 The craft of editing, the shaping of the book, is an essential part of the writing process. Hints of the writer’s craft appear in the storylines, too. This is the case of his 1992 Booker Prize-winning novel The English Patient (Knopf, US / Bloomsbury, UK), which was later adapted into an award-winning film by Anthony Minghella. Hana thinks that “[I]f she were a writer she would collect her pencils and notebooks and favourite cat and write in bed.” Lying in the former convent of Villa San Girolamo, outside Florence, the English patient himself has such a notebook beside his bed, also filled with cuttings, maps and drawings. Ondaatje may have been thinking of his own notebooks – and possibly those of other authors, too – Muriel Spark, for one. Ondaatje’s include photos and other images, which intersperse the draft of the novel with what he describes as “a few visual breaks along the way.” Occasionally, these might exert some “subliminal influence” on a particular scene: the covers of his notebooks for The English Patient reveal hints of these associations. The title of his latest novel refers to a specific quality of muted light produced by blackouts and curfews during the War: especially that half-light in the last months of the war when the full blackout was replaced by a “dim-out” and man-made light was permitted so long as it did not exceed the level of moonlight. In London, full lighting was restored in April 1945. In Ondaatje’s title, warlight also has moral and intrinsic qualities: it is that half-light into which figures vanish or re-emerge, morals are cloaked – maybe absent – a son discovers his mother’s code name, and all actions work to hidden agendas.

Notebooks containing the first draft of Michael Ondaatje’s novel, The English Patient. Photo credit: Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. © Michael Ondaatje.

Michael Ondaatje needs little introduction. Born in Sri Lanka and partly educated in London before emigrating as a teenager in the early 1960s to Canada, where he still lives, he is a writer of international calibre whose works are widely read and praised. In 2007, when Divisadero (McClelland & Stewart, Canada / Knopf, US / Bloomsbury, UK, 2007) won him the eminent Governor-General’s Literary Award for the fifth time, Ondaatje said he did not have any great expectations of the book, which took him a “quicker than normal” five years to write and is set in California and France.1 Normal for Ondaatje is around seven years, and indeed Warlight (Knopf, US / Jonathan Cape, UK, 2018) appears about seven years after The Cat’s Table (Knopf, US / Jonathan Cape, UK, 2011). Last year Ondaatje’s notebooks were acquired by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. In an interview with

FEATURES | Issue 84, May 2018

In 1945 the parents of fourteen-year-old Nathaniel Williams and his sister Rachel ostensibly leave London to travel to Singapore for work. The children feel that they have been abandoned to the care of two men “who may have been criminals.” One of them, their guardian, is an enigmatic figure they call The Moth; the other is an ex-boxer, The Pimlico Darter. Their home is gradually peopled by a “table full of strangers” and they start to lead a double life, skipping school and eating takeaways from the nearby street market. The story is a cross between a coming-of-age tale, a spy story, and love stories, not least the love between mother and son. Ondaatje peoples the novel with an extraordinary cast, most of whom have nicknames – the Beekeeper, Agnes Street, as well as the children themselves, Stitch and Wren. No one is quite whom they seem. When talking about his books, Ondaatje says: “There’s no subject when I begin. I really begin with a fragment. It’s often an image. Gradually as I stay with that image, that situation, a story will gradually emerge.” It’s not just place that engenders plot, but also historical time. Ondaatje was unable to respond to an interview for this article, citing a reluctance to focus on the historical aspects, but they clearly matter to him. In the interview with Stephen Ennis, Ondaatje said: “I need to ground myself in a precise location or time period — a farm in California, Louisiana in 1912 — in order to let the book evolve without drifting off into something surreal or unstructured … the story takes place then, there… it could be a convent where strangers meet and are altered.”3

WARLIGHT also has moral and intrinsic qualities: it is that half-light into which figures vanish or re-emerge, morals are cloaked — maybe absent... In Warlight the detail is punctilious: Nathaniel works as the Darter’s accomplice, nosing their way on a barge through London’s web of canals and along stretches of the Thames; now, with Nathaniel, the Darter is smuggling racing greyhounds, but a few years earlier, during the War, he had piloted munition barges. Those activities were part of a massive underground operation, also involving secret lorries that hurtled across London with the nitroglycerin manufactured at Waltham Abbey. Many of the characters in the novel have links to Marsh Felon, a naturalist with a deep knowledge of art and maps. Nathaniel hears him talk on the radio as a boy, but at the time he is unaware of the significance of this figure in his mother’s life. Such fragments of childhood memory haunt him as an adult. It might seem paradoxical, but for Ondaatje, whose work has been described as the epitome of a nomadic and cosmopolitan existence, a sense of place is essential. His most lyrical descriptions are of landscape or cityscapes. In Warlight, Nathaniel discovers the hidden landscape of the Saints, a secretive group of villages where his mother grew up in deepest Suffolk. This coastal area became sign-less overnight in the War in order to confuse potential invaders. When Nathaniel returns to the Saints as an adult, there is a sense that the scale of his life diminishes. At work he moves among the cabinets of the secret archives, while at home he delves into the secret walled garden of the house he has bought and penetrates the dark workings of the beehives there. Nathaniel’s search to make sense of his childhood is a key theme of Warlight: the ghosts of childhood return, singing out warnings like the “nightingale” floor in the hall of his mother’s old home. Facets of Warlight draw on the same rich vein that inspired his earlier masterpiece, The English Patient. Both novels are set in the damaged post-war years, where many individuals struggle to realign their damaged lives and threats persist long after the actual enemy has withdrawn. In The English Patient one of the physical threats is the mines that Kip, the Sikh sapper, identifies and defuses around the villa. In Warlight, the damage is to the two children’s lives and to those who protect them. Revenge can be set in motion across borders and across generations. In his late twenties Nathaniel works on the fringes of the “Service” and finds himself searching for clues in the warrenlike basement of the archives that might help him to trace his mother’s wartime activities. Technically, Nathaniel’s job is to destroy evidence that somehow escaped the initial wave of censorship in the closing stages of the War. Ondaatje cites the factual event of February 1946 when the Baker Street offices of the Special Operations Executive were damaged by fire, resulting in the large-scale destruction of their archives. It seems fitting that maps play an important role, echoing the book’s epigraph: “Most of the great battles are fought in the creases of topographical maps.” We have to be most alert when the lines don’t match up, when gaps mask reality. Nathaniel recalls a map that he saw as a boy which showed his father’s company offices spread across the globe; as an adult, he wonders whether the map didn’t show something quite different. Recall plays a key part in Nathaniel’s patient reconstruction of his mother’s activities, too, using fragments of memory, maps and records. In Divisadero, Ondaatje wrote that “we live permanently in the recurrence of our own stories, whatever stories we tell.”

Olive Lawrence is one of the few “un-nicknamed” strangers whom Nathaniel and Rachel meet during the years they are living with The Moth. An expert on winds and weather, she thrills them with her knowledge of night-time walks through the woods, lenticular clouds and Saussure’s cyanometer, which is used to classify the various blues in the sky. In Warlight, Ondaatje applies a similar spectrometer to the shades of human identity and loss – like warlight, the boundaries are indistinct, blurred, but the importance for the planning of wartime flights is clear. This spectrum of blue also charts another evolution: time. Ondaatje began his writing career as a poet and won the Governor-General’s Literary Award twice for poetry before turning to fiction. Although completely different in form, the poet’s finely tuned ear has influenced his prose. In the poem “Untitled,” Ondaatje writes about a poet who has passed through “wars and eras of love,” but the “precise pitch” of his poems are “unaffected by time.” “What,” he concludes, “could we learn by leaving the color blue for another?”4 Ondaatje’s mastery of style and language will earn him further prizes, but it is his storytelling and his portrayal of character and human nature that profoundly touch and enrich his readers.

REFERENCES

1. Michael Posner

“Ondaatje ties MacLennan for most G-Gs.” The Globe and Mail, 28 November 2007. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/ ondaatje-ties-maclennan-for-most-g-gs/article1090486/

2. Stephen Enniss

“A nomad’s writing finds a home.” Ransom Center Magazine, 25 September 2017. http://sites.utexas.edu/ransomcentermagazine/2017/09/25/anomads-writing-finds-a-home/

3. Ibid. 4. Michael Ondaatje

“Untitled.” The Threepenny Review, No. 138 (Summer 2014), p. 18.

WRITTEN BY LUCINDA BYATT Lucinda Byatt is Features editor of Historical Novels Review and translates mainly non-fiction from Italian into English. A World of Words: https://textline.wordpress.com/

A publication of the Historical Novel Society | www.historicalnovelsociety.org

A NEW INTEREST IN CUBA? Claire Morris examines the recent popularity of Cuban settings

Obama went to Cuba. Although current FSG staff can’t comment on whether the company’s decision to publish Padura’s most recent two novels was linked to politics, it seems clear that it had more to do with sharing wonderful translations of a talented novelist’s work with an English-speaking audience. Author Chantel Acevedo’s latest novel, The Living Infinite (Europa Editions, 2017), was the second book I looked at for this piece. Following the life of Eulalia, Infanta of Spain in the late 19th century, this literary novel is set only partially in Cuba, which the princess visited en route to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. When I asked Acevedo whether she felt the recent shift in US-Cuba relations has resulted in an increased interest in novels set in Cuba, she commented: “In general, I think there have been novels set in Cuba coming out pretty regularly. When The Distant Marvels (Europa Editions, 2015) came out right around the time that Obama visited Cuba, friends thought my editor and I had “timed” it, but it was just a coincidence. Cuba is compelling, partly because there’s a whiff of the forbidden about it, for Americans at least, and partly because it’s so tantalizingly close [to the US].” Since all Acevedo’s adult novels have had Cuba as at least a partial setting (and there have been four of these in the past 12 years), it’s evident that the political climate did not influence her choice of setting or subject matter for The Living Infinite. In fact, only one fifth of this roughly 300-page novel is based in Cuba. She says she fictionalized Eulalia’s story because she found it compelling. But the writing is one thing. What about the readers? Are US readers more interested in novels linked to Cuba these days?

It was impossible to miss the travel articles on Cuba. In 2016, it seemed every publication with a US audience was putting out a piece encouraging readers to “get there now.” The reason for this frenzy appeared to stem from Barack Obama’s visit to Cuba in the early part of that year, the first by a sitting American president in nearly a century. Travel restrictions had recently been loosened for US citizens. Perhaps, then, it was natural to ask whether US-based publishers of historical fiction were also seeing Cuba as the next thing. When four novels set partially in Cuba appeared on lists in late 2017, I took on the task of investigating. Leonardo Padura is possibly the best-known writer living in Cuba today, and it’s important to point out that not only was his novel Heretics (translated by Anna Kushner; Farrar, Straus & Giroux (FSG), US / Bitter Lemon Press, UK, 2017) originally published in 2013 in Spanish, but also that it is one of several featuring his detective Mario Conde. Focusing on a stolen Rembrandt painting and the turning back of the St. Louis and 900 Jewish refugees from Havana harbour in 1939, Heretics is a literary mystery set in Havana from the 20th century through to the present day, and also Amsterdam in the 1600s. The novel Padura penned immediately prior to Heretics, The Man Who Loved Dogs, is also set partially in Cuba and, like Heretics, was published in English by FSG. But this was in early 2014, well before

FEATURES | Issue 84, May 2018

Rachael Small, Director of Publicity for Europa Editions, says: “Obama’s ‘Cuban thaw’ certainly brought about a rising interest in Cuban voices or stories about Cuba. . . . The Distant Marvels was one of our best-selling novels of 2015 and has continued to find new readers. It’s highly likely that the rising interest in Cuba due to current events at the time that the book was released helped push it into the hands of readers and reviewers, and [Acevedo’s] brilliant storytelling and gorgeous writing sustain it.” Kate Seaver, the editor who acquired Next Year in Havana (Berkley, 2018) by Chanel Cleeton, believes that US readers have always had an interest in Cuba, but as the possibility to travel to Cuba more easily seemed like an option, that interest grew. “And as that interest grew, I think it heightened interest in books like Chanel’s that explore what it means to be Cuban and Cuban-American,” she says. “When diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States began to improve during the Obama administration, it heightened American interest in Cuba. Like many Americans, I’ve always been intrigued by the political relationship between the US and Cuba, but my interest was further piqued when it seemed relations were improving. So when Chanel came to me with her idea about a novel that explored two generations of women in a Cuban family — one woman’s life in Cuba before and during the revolution intertwined with her Cuban-American granddaughter’s experience visiting Cuba for the first time today — I knew it would appeal to all those readers like me who are curious about Cuba, both past and present.”

THE VERDICT seems to be that Cuba has always been, and will continue to be, a setting that draws writers, particularly historical fiction writers, thanks to its turbulent history. This novel is inspired by true events, following a Cuban-American writer who visits Havana for the first time and relating the story of her grandmother, who had to leave suddenly in 1959. Like Acevedo, Cleeton is an American born into a Cuban family. Her inspiration for Next Year in Havana stemmed indirectly from the easing of travel restrictions for US citizens to Cuba. She shared the story of how it came about: “When diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States began to improve under the Obama administration and there was talk of opening up American travel opportunities to Cuba, my family planned on a reunion for the summer of 2017 for about sixty of us to travel to the island. At that time, we began discussing the places we wanted to visit, and when we talked about seeing our old family home, my father told me the story of a buried box of valuables that my family hid in the backyard when they left Cuba in 1967. That story sparked the inspiration for Next Year in Havana and was one I’d never heard before. The possibility of travel to Cuba lit a creative spark within me and also opened up a new dialogue within my family about our history and the effect the revolution had on those family members who lived through it.” Despite her personal experience of increased buzz in Cuba as a novel setting, Cleeton agrees with Acevedo that there has always been an interest in Cuba among US readers. “[This is] largely in part to the dichotomy between [Cuba’s] close geographic proximity to the United States and the sense of distance that has been created by sanctions and strained diplomatic relations. Despite being only 90 miles from the United States, most Americans have never had an opportunity to travel to Cuba. The hope that relations would improve and travel would become possible certainly brought a heightened interest in Cuba, and I’ve been thrilled by how many readers have expressed a desire to learn more about Cuban history and culture.” Robin Lloyd’s Harbor of Spies (Lyons Press, 2018) follows in the grand tradition of adventure on the high seas, and is his second novel. It’s an intricately delivered tale of a Yankee who finds himself in Havana, where he becomes a blockade runner during the US Civil War. Lloyd’s first novel, Rough Passage to London (Sheridan House, 2013), is of the same sub-genre but not set in Cuba. When asked if the Cuba connection influenced the decision to acquire Harbor of Spies, Eugene Brissie, Co-Editorial Director for Lyons Press, responded, “No, it was simply the next novel Robin wanted to write, and we were delighted to take it on. There is a nexus of intrigue and events concerning the US Civil War and attendant blockade-running, along with spies and murder in Havana at the time.” Brissie said he didn’t know whether there was a heightened interest in Cuba among US readers these days, but that there is interest in historical maritime fiction. “Robin’s novels are full of the kinds of historical detail that these fiction readers enjoy.” As a former foreign correspondent for NBC News, Lloyd knows Cuba well; in fact, he shared with me that some of his personal experiences there were woven into Harbor of Spies, such as being followed by unknown “watchers.” Politics did not dictate his choice of setting. “My research of blockade-running pointed me in the direction of Cuba,” he explains. “I had presented the idea for the novel to Rowman & Littlefield (of which Lyons Press is an imprint) in 2014 and began further research for a full year before starting to write in 2015.

“That being said, I think everyone recognized that Cuba was a popular topic. To be honest, the research on historical Cuba is what was so compelling to me. And the unsolved murder of the actual British diplomat appealed to me as a reporter. In effect, I allowed my fictional characters to determine w h a t happened in the novel. I had spent so much time in the ‘80s in Cuba that I found the research on colonial Cuba to be fascinating.” The verdict seems to be that Cuba has always been, and will continue to be, a setting that draws writers, particularly historical fiction writers, thanks to its turbulent history. Whether US readers are more prone to picking up a novel set in Cuba today than they might have been four years ago remains a matter for debate. What is clear is that English-language readers everywhere can delve into these four noteworthy novels, all of which provide insight into distinct eras of Cuba’s past.

WRITTEN BY CLAIRE MORRIS Claire Morris is the HNS Web Features Editor. She served as the Managing Editor of Solander from 2004 to 2009, and she helped start the HNS North American conferences.

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A BEAR NAMED CUFF BY KRISTEN HANNUM An author reckons with her family’s checkered antebellum history The cub is one of the vivid characters in Linda Spalding’s new book, A Reckoning (McClelland & Stewart, Canada / Pantheon UK, 2018). However, much of the action in A Reckoning, as in its precursor, The Purchase, though inspired by Spalding’s own family’s nineteenthcentury history, ventures away from the sparse outlines the author found in family records. “My problem was if you want them to have fun or be interesting you have to put them in situations they wouldn’t want to be seen in,” Spalding said in a telephone interview. She went so far as to warn cousins that they were going to be mad when they read The Purchase (McClelland & Stewart, Canada, 2012 / Pantheon UK, 2013). That novel tells the story of Spalding’s ancestor Daniel Dickinson, a widower who moves to backwoods Virginia in 1798 and trades his horse for a slave, betraying his Quaker values. The book won Canada’s Governor-General’s Literary Award for fiction, an award similar to the US National Book Award. Spalding, 74, born and raised in Kansas, has been a Canadian for many years. A Reckoning continues her family’s story as Daniel’s two sons are ruined in Virginia. One of the sons, his wife and children trek west — together with a bear cub, rescued by the 13-year-old son Martin Dickinson, Spalding’s great-grandfather. Concurrently, one of their former slaves makes the dangerous journey north to Canada. A reviewer from The Globe and Mail described it as “a dark, mythopoetic novel,”1 something that pleased Spalding. “I was a little aiming for that,” she admitted. “I feel like the American experience is pretty mythopoetic.” Spalding knew her characters would leave Virginia in about 1856. “I knew they got on a paddleboat and that charmed me. Who knew that covered wagons were carried across Missouri in those boats?” Some of her most enjoyable research for the book was at the Arabia Steamboat Museum in Kansas City, which houses the 200 tons of pre-Civil War artifacts — thimbles, Ironstone china, and prebuilt windows for frontier homes — recovered from the 1856 sinking of the Arabia steamship. “I was besotted with it,” said Spalding.

Her acknowledgements in A Reckoning give a glimpse of the polishing the book was given, beginning with a thanks to “beloved Michael for his encouragement and advice during the years I worked on this story, for reading it gently and believing in it fiercely...” Michael is Michael Ondaatje, the Sri Lankan-born novelist and filmmaker, recipient, like Spalding, of the Governor General’s Literary Award. The couple live in Toronto. A Reckoning reads effortlessly. It’s hard to put down and yet every chapter offers invitations to savor its passages, moving through the rough landscapes of longing, regret, and hope. Nature, in its vastness, is a character as vivid as the bear. “If you’re writing about America, historically it’s what we’re about. It looms large in our psyches,” Spalding said. A core theme is the stain of slavery in American history. That is something Spalding wrestled with from an early age, when she learned her family had owned other human beings. Her father, Jacob Alan Dickinson, was the president of the Topeka Board of Education during the time of the Supreme Court desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. “I grew up in a flaming civil rights household,” she said. “Then, when I found out my ancestors had been slave owners, I couldn’t figure out how we could be good guys and bad guys at the same time.” Her father told her not to worry. “We freed them,” he told her. She remembers being on a car trip and her father telling her, “We gave them each a mule.” Working through the uncomfortably close webs of the sin of slave holding was just one of Spalding’s challenges as a writer. There was also the bear. Her dilemma was what to do with Cuff. “Should I write the thing that makes American sense and kill the bear, or do something different?” she asked herself. It shouldn’t give away too much of the plot to note that Spalding has always taken the different path. Kristen Hannum is a journalist based in Portland, Oregon. REFERENCES: 1. Donaldson, Emily. “Review: Linda Spalding’s A Reckoning is a dark, mythopoetic novel” The Globe and Mail. 27 Oct 2017.

She also read histories, books about Quakers, the Missouri River, and the Ohio River, and she scoured maps charting the wilderness roads of Kentucky in the 1840s. She used the research to bring the era uniquely alive with spare details and insights in a rich plot that is always driving westward, northward.

PHILADELPHIA, 1918

Spalding doesn’t claim a philosophy of writing, although she does believe that writers have a responsibility to seek out questions, but not to answer them.

BY SARAH JOHNSON

As for her technique, “I edit a lot,” she said. “It’s the excision of extra decorative flourishes. Maybe we don’t need to know about that picture hanging on the wall.”

The 1918-19 influenza pandemic claimed an estimated 50 million lives worldwide. For its centennial remembrance, Susan Meissner

FEATURES | Issue 84, May 2018

Susan Meissner and Mindy Tarquini discuss their new novels

and Mindy Tarquini have written novels set in Philadelphia, the American city that was hit the hardest. Meissner’s As Bright as Heaven (Berkley, 2018), narrated by Pauline Bright and daughters Evelyn, Maggie, and Willa, movingly depicts how the family’s lives are transformed through loss, love, and hope. The Infinite Now (SparkPress, 2017), Tarquini’s quirky historical fantasy, features Fiora Vicente, a 16-year-old Italian immigrant orphan, a magical curtain, and a spell Fiora casts, creating a bubble that halts time. Although many Americans have family stories about the Spanish Flu, it remains little-known. Reasons include the pandemic’s speed and reduced media coverage, Meissner says, adding: “Perhaps the most telling reason is that the world was already so weary of the loss of life because of the war… maybe it was fatigue of the soul that caused its survivors to push the memory of this pandemic to the darkest corner.” Historical records preserve details about the many lives lost. “During a bout with family genealogy, I discovered my grandfather suddenly alone, abandoned in an orphanage outside Philadelphia… he was twelve years old,” Tarquini relates. “I’d had a vision a few months earlier of a girl being left at an old man’s door. She’d been recently orphaned, was feared by the villagers, and had no idea what she would do next. Suddenly her plight became my grandfather’s. But why were they orphaned?” Searching for information on her greatgrandmother, and finding pages of death certificates mentioning influenza, she says, “I had the framework from which to hang my heroine’s story.” The Infinite Now brings Philly’s bustling Italian-American community to life. From her cultural background, Tarquini knew her characters as well as “fish and pasta on Fridays,” but more research was necessary. “I needed to find out everyday kinds of things, needed to know when the [Ninth Street] Market had developed and why, when houses were built, why all the Italians had aggregated in the same neighborhoods. Photo archives, newspapers and plat maps provided many answers.” Similarly, an afternoon in the Free Library of Philadelphia’s map room proved fruitful for Meissner. “Although I had walked the downtown streets block by block to get a feel for the city my characters had lived in, what I’d felt had been mere echoes because while many buildings remain from a century ago, the landscape of downtown Philly has

changed – all major downtown cities do. In the map room, though, the city maps from one hundred years ago – laid out for me on a large wooden table – showed me what the city looked like then, street by street, building by building... It was like traveling back in time.” Despite warnings, the city’s Liberty Loan Parade went ahead on September 28, 1918, and the large turnout encouraged influenza’s spread. Both authors took care to describe their parade scenes accurately. “I was able to read online, via the wonderful Free Library’s digital archives, every daily issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer during fall 1918. The media coverage of this hopeful and highly patriotic event was front-page material,” says Meissner. “There are also surviving photographs that show how close the people were standing – shoulder to shoulder – and that the sidewalks were packed with people showing their support to fund and end the war.” Tarquini consulted newspaper archives and incorporated personal experience: “I’ve spent many a New Year’s Day enjoying the annual Mummer’s Parade. I know how very close those sidewalks become and how narrow Broad Street can feel during such events.” Finally, both authors shared their writing motivations and approaches. Alongside its whimsical elements, Tarquini’s historical atmosphere feels somber and very real. “My protagonist is a sixteenyear-old girl thrust into an impossible situation. People that age are hardwired for life, for love, for adventure. They are not yet convinced of society’s constrictions,” she explains. “I decided to use the curtain as the tangible manifestation of those inner conflicts.” Amid sorrow and tragedy, the bubble Fiora creates becomes “a safe place where [she] can cushion herself from life’s insecurities.” Meissner’s powerful novel emphasizes that everyone’s story matters. “I read so many sad accounts of lives lost, but not very many that expounded on the impact of that loss,” she says. “I was inspired to give the fifty million people who perished because of the flu a

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voice, if you will, through the pages of a historical novel… Those who survived the horror of this pandemic chose to recover by forgetting. We are a century past the recovery stage. We can have a different response to the Spanish Flu of 1918; we can choose to remember it. And I think all those whose lives were taken deserve that remembrance.” Sarah Johnson is the Historical Novels Review’s Book Review Editor.

MISSING FROM HISTORY: WOMEN COMPOSERS BY MARY SHARRATT To a large extent, women have been written out of history. This seems especially true in the male-dominated world of classical music. When asked to name a single female composer, many people draw a blank. This isn’t because they’re ignorant, but because women’s music has been buried and neglected for far too long. Even pioneering women composers themselves lived and worked in ignorance of their foremothers. Clara Wieck Schumann, wife of Robert Schumann, composed her first piano concerto at the age of fourteen and wrote a significant body of work in her early life. Mother of eight children and family breadwinner, she became the foremost concert pianist of nineteenthcentury Europe. In her sixty-one-year performance career, she interpreted the work of contemporary composers such as Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms. Yet when it came to composing in her own right, she was crippled with self-doubt. “I once believed that I had creative talent, but I have given up this idea,” she wrote in her diary in 1839. “A woman must not wish to compose — there never was one able to do it.”1 She was only twenty when she wrote these words that condemned her music to obscurity. What a difference it could have made for Schumann had she only known about the women composers who had lived before her, such as Hildegard of Bingen, the first composer for whom we have a biography. A twelfth-century visionary abbess, Hildegard composed seventy-seven sacred songs, as well as Ordo Virtutum, a liturgical drama set to music — a sort of proto-opera. Her soaring ethereal melodies were completely unlike the plainchant of her era — or anything composed since. Schumann would have also rejoiced to learn about the early Baroque composer Francesca Caccini who wrote music for the Medici court, including the first known opera by a woman. And she surely would have been inspired by the later Baroque composer Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, who composed ballet, opera, cantatas and sonatas.

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But evidently Schumann knew nothing of her female forbears. This is the greatest tragedy of women’s history — namely that it keeps being erased. Each generation of creative women believe they have to reinvent the wheel all by themselves. Schumann’s contemporary Fanny Mendelssohn composed over 460 pieces of music, and yet her identity as a composer was nearly lost to history. Her brilliance was overshadowed by her younger brother, Felix. Much of her work was published under his name — Felix refused to give her his blessing to publish in her own name. Most of her legacy was discovered posthumously and even then attributed to her brother. Fast forward to turn-of-the-twentieth century Vienna. A new era of opportunity was dawning for women. Surely now a woman composer could make her mark. Young Alma Maria Schindler composed lieder under the guidance of her mentor and lover, Alexander von Zemlinsky. Her songs were arresting, emotional, and highly original and could be compared with the early work of Zemlinsky’s other famous student, Arnold Schoenberg. But her burgeoning career was cut short when Gustav Mahler proposed to her and demanded she give up her music to serve his greater genius. Alma, alas, reluctantly consented. But Alma’s story of artistic self-sacrifice had a twist in it. Her adulterous affair with Walter Gropius awakened Mahler to her anguish, and at last Mahler urged his wife to compose again. Alma published fourteen songs during her lifetime. Three other lieder have been discovered posthumously. We do know that, according to her early diaries, Alma composed or drafted more than a hundred songs, various instrumental pieces, and the beginning of an opera.2 These “lost” works may have been destroyed in World War II after Alma fled Austria and left most of her belongings behind, or she may have destroyed them herself. We will never know. Today Alma’s work is regularly performed and recorded — an outcome she could not have imagined during her lifetime. Yet even so, she is remembered more for her love affairs and sexuality than for her music, just as Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn remain footnotes in the history of the famous men in their lives. The only way to correct this is by making them the center of their stories. By remembering, performing, and recording their work. By making them part of the canon. It is my fondest hope that a new generation of aspiring women composers will know who their foremothers are and can build on their legacy. Mary Sharratt’s novel, Ecstasy, about Alma Schindler Mahler, is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Writing Women Back into History: REFERENCES: 1. Nancy B. Reich, Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2001), pp. 327-28. 2. Alma Mahler-Werfel: Diaries 1898-1902, selected and trans. by Antony Beaumont (London: Faber and Faber, 2000), pp. 473-474.

SHE WITNESSED political maneuverings, dissent, and treachery among America’s Founding Fathers, and her husband was involved in America’s first political sex scandal.

MY DEAR HAMILTON BY JANICE OTTERSBERG Co-authors Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie have written their second colonial American novel about Alexander Hamilton’s wife, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, titled My Dear Hamilton (William Morrow US / Piatkus UK, 2018). Their first authoring partnership was America’s First Daughter (William Morrow US / HarperCollins UK, 2016) about Thomas Jefferson’s oldest daughter, Martha “Patsy” Jefferson Randolph. We know that history has either forgotten women or pushed them into the shadow of husbands, fathers, or sons. In both of their coauthored books, Dray and Kamoie have successfully given a voice to two women, Patsy Jefferson and Eliza Hamilton, who bore witness to significant historical events and were influential in the shaping and founding of America. Eliza was the daughter of the prominent revolutionary general Philip Schuyler and traveled into the wilderness to attend Indian conventions with him. She fell in love with Washington’s aide-de-camp, Alexander Hamilton, and they married. She interacted with numerous important figures of the American Revolution, including at least twelve of the first sixteen presidents. She witnessed political maneuverings, dissent, and treachery among America’s Founding Fathers, and her husband was involved in America’s first political sex scandal. Eliza’s influence in Alexander’s career has been understated. She supported her husband and assisted him in many of his writings – most famous, the Federalist Papers and President Washington’s farewell address. My Dear Hamilton is such a well-written, cohesive novel that it reads as if authored by only one person. I asked Dray and Kamoie about their collaborative process and how they were able to pull off such a unified and seamless book. “We plotted the book together using the known chronology of Eliza’s life, and then we chose which scenes each of us would write. As we finished a section of writing, we would hand it off to the other, and she would edit/revise/add freely. The vast majority of the time, we would agree with each other’s changes and just accept them. And on those rare occasions where we disagreed, we’d hash it out and always come up with a third solution far superior to anything we’d done on our own.”

to Eliza’s life no longer exist, they were able to visit a few, including Eliza’s family home, the Schuyler Mansion, overlooking the Hudson River; the Hamiltons’ country estate, The Grange, now located in Harlem; and Trinity Church in New York, where they worshiped and are buried. In the supplemental material at the end of My Dear Hamilton, Kamoie states, “That graveyard is where our original idea for a plucky historical heroine turned into something darker and deeper. Where we began to hope our words could be another sort of monument for Eliza.” The little that historians have written about Eliza has been deduced from the men around her. Dray’s and Kamoie’s extensive research gave them the context to understand what Eliza would possibly have said or done in certain circumstances and to build a narrative to portray her personality and emotional life, which makes the novel more engaging and believable. They address this in their “Notes from the Authors” at the end of the book. “Thankfully, fiction can go where historians fear to tread. And as novelists we were honored to look at the historical pieces of the puzzle and imagine the rich inner life that the historical fragments leave unspoken. We attempted to craft plausible answers to questions about Eliza’s reaction to her husband’s adultery. How she balanced her deep religious faith with disillusionment and worldly practicality. And how she might’ve come to terms with both the man — and the country — that she sacrificed for and which sometimes disappointed her.” They go on to say: “As for her personality, her contemporaries describe her as impulsive and vivacious.” Dray and Kamoie have written a book that stands as a real tribute to Eliza, one of America’s founding women. Their immersive research has rewarded the reader with a truly immersive read. Right now, they are each working on individually authored novels and will, hopefully, one day join together for another collaboration. Janice Ottersberg is a reviewer for Historical Novels Review and a devoted fan of historical fiction. REFERENCES: 1. Founders Online (https://founders.archives.gov/) has digitized and transcribed tens of thousands of letters to and from the Founding Fathers of the United States.

The research that went into My Dear Hamilton is evident. Dray and Kamoie told me what that involved. “Our primary research for My Dear Hamilton was extensive and largely based on the Founders Online database on the National Archives website, which holds over 8,000 of Alexander Hamilton’s letters (and a few hundred of Eliza’s).1 We also did archival research at the New York Public Library, where the Schuyler papers are, and at the New York Historical Society, where we read letters that described Eliza’s life after her husband died by duel in 1804.” Although many of the historical sites relevant

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REVIEWS ONLINE EXCLUSIVES Due to an ever-increasing number of books for review and space constraints within HNR, some selected fiction reviews and all nonfiction reviews are now published as online exclusives. To view these reviews and much more, please visit www.historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews

ANCIENT HISTORY

THE GOLDEN HAIRPIN

Qinghan CeCe (trans. Alex Woodend), AmazonCrossing, 2018, $14.95, pb, 300pp, 9781503952188.

Huang Zixia is a remarkable young Chinese woman with a penchant for solving complex murder mysteries; a skill she has displayed since she was a child in ancient China. She’s now in exile, having been accused of poisoning her family to escape an unwanted marriage. She’s determined to discover the true killer and seek revenge. But circumstances interfere when she meets Prince Li Shubai, an enigmatic personality attracted to her. For his own reasons, he decides to help her solve the mystery as well as another involving a serial killer. This storyline begins when Li Shubai chooses a bride to be, a pretty woman who suddenly disappears from the court and eventually winds up dead. Li Shubai convinces Huang Zixia that to help figure out the mystery, she needs to disguise herself as a court eunuch. She settles into this role quickly and effectively. The clues are artfully placed, with none of the annoying repetition that frequently belabors crime novels. The reader gets so involved in the mystery that one doesn’t really care if it is ultimately solved, but instead just enjoys the puzzle parts of the plot. Huang Zixia and Li Shubai become closer as they unravel a plot about rebel forces determined to overthrow the royal family. Huang Zixia has more power than an ordinary eunuch of her class but seems to escape the normal intrigues of those dependent on both rulers and other eunuchs for their advancement and success. The Golden Hairpin is a finely crafted historical mystery certain to engage and satisfy all readers. This is the first of a series, so there’s more to come and enjoy! Viviane Crystal

CLASSICAL

THE ATHENIAN WOMEN

Alessandro Barbero (trans. Antony Shugaar), Europa, 2018, $17.00, pb, 208pp, 9781609454197

Alessandro Barbero’s The Athenian Women

is a complex tale highlighting the class struggles of women subjugated under a patriarchal system and of common citizens defending their democratic principles. It is set toward the end of the Peloponnesian War during the Athenian coup of 411 BC, when a short-lived oligarchy replaced the democratic government. The story centers around two humble farmers, veterans of the infamous battle of Mantinea, and their two daughters. When the men travel to Athens to see Aristophanes’ latest comedy, their daughters secretly accept an invitation by the son of a wealthy nobleman to visit his house. The story alternates between scenes depicting the enactment of the play by actors dressed as women to protest against misogyny and war, and the abuse carried out by three young noblemen on the two girls. These seemingly unrelated scenes and chance encounters ultimately tie together in a satisfying climax with unexpected twists. Barbero masterfully uses the omniscient point of view to capture the universal message that common men can rise to defend their freedoms and effect change. It is also a compelling story of women’s valiant struggles to maintain their dignity in a misogynistic society. The author skillfully weaves the ancient Athenian culture and political backdrop into the dramatic storytelling. The scenes of the noblemen’s mistreatment of the two girls are at times disturbing and incite raw emotions, but leave a powerful impact for embracing the theme that oppressed men and women can find the courage to fight against the status quo. The story has modern-day relevance in which we must continue to defend our democratic principles against the corruption of power and wealth. The Athenian Women is highly recommended for readers who enjoy compelling ancient historical fiction. Linnea Tanner

CIRCE

Madeline Miller, Bloomsbury, 2018, £16.99, hb, 336pp, 9781408890080 / Little, Brown, 2018, $27, hb, 336pp, 9780316556347

Madeline Miller returns to the Homeric epics for the inspiration for her second novel, Circe. While the first, The Song of Achilles, focuses on the Iliad, the second turns its attention to stories told through the Odyssey. But it is much more than a simple retelling. Miller’s novel tells the story of Circe, daughter of the sun-god Helios.

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Shunned by her divine family from birth, Circe is an outsider with a mortal’s voice. When she discovers a power that the other gods fear— witchcraft—she is banished to a remote island. In exile, she develops her arts, becoming more powerful until she can protect her island and those she loves even from the wrath of Athena. Ultimately, however, the real threats to Circe’s happiness come not from the gods, but from her own guilt and fears. Circe encompasses some of most famous myths in Western literature: the punishment of Prometheus; the Minotaur; Jason, Medea and the Golden Fleece. And of course Odysseus and his crew, returning home from Troy via Circe’s island. Miller’s novel is beautifully written and sumptuous in its depiction of a world which seems both a far-off mythical creation and intimately familiar. Circe herself is a sympathetic protagonist, fitting neither into the divine nor the mortal worlds and often seeking what she cannot have. The author is not afraid to debunk the glory of the traditional heroes: Jason is unpleasantly weak, and Odysseus’s famed “trickery” is exposed as little more than treachery and inhumanity. This is a tremendously enjoyable and emotionally powerful book. It successfully harnesses the themes that have always been present in Greek mythology, and which make these stories sing to us centuries after they were first created: thwarted love, jealousy, passion, bravery and brutality; all the beauty and fragility of human life. Highly recommended. Charlotte Wightwick

THE THRONE OF CAESAR

Steven Saylor, Minotaur, 2018, $27.99/C$38.99, hb, 392pp, 9781250087126 / Constable, 2018, £20.99, hb, 400pp, 9781472123626

Here is the long-awaited next installment of Saylor’s Roman mystery series, featuring Gordianus the Finder, that deals with Julius Caesar’s assassination. After three prequels about the young Gordianus, Saylor returns to the main timeline of the series. In March 44 BCE, after years of solving crimes, Gordianus has retired, or so he thinks. Cicero and Caesar himself call on him, separately, to ask him to discover the details of a suspected plot against Caesar’s life. Gordianus is not certain of Cicero’s motives—whether he wishes to save Caesar or to join in the plot— but he agrees to investigate. He must learn the identities of the conspirators before the Senate meets on the Ides of March, because Caesar plans to leave Rome to conquer the Parthian Empire. And, in order to honor Gordianus’s son Meto, who has been one of Caesar’s strongest

supporters, Caesar plans to make Gordianus a senator on the Ides. Saylor does an outstanding job at keeping up the reader’s suspense, even though you know what will happen on the Ides of March. Gordianus obviously will not discover the plot in time to prevent Caesar’s assassination. But what will keep him from doing so? And will Gordianus be made a senator or not? Actually, it is another murder, not Caesar’s, which will become the focus of Gordianus’s investigation: that of his friend Cinna the poet who was, famously, torn limb from limb by an angry mob following Caesar’s assassination. Was Cinna the victim of a tragic case of mistaken identity, as Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar would lead you to believe? Or was something more sinister going on? Saylor offers a fresh perspective on these well-known events. And fans of Gordianus will be glad to know this is not the end of the series. Vicki Kondelik

1ST CENTURY

PANDORA’S BOY

Lindsey Davis, Hodder & Stoughton, 2018, £18.99, pb, 385pp, 9781473658639 / Minotaur, 2018, $27.99, hb, 320pp, 9781250152688

This is another story in the Falco series set in Rome in the first century AD. It concerns Falco’s daughter, Flavia, who has taken over the detective work from her father. Flavia is recently married to Manlius Faustus, recovering from being struck by lightning on their wedding day. He was married before, and his ex-wife suddenly arrives to offer Flavia a job. A young girl, Clodia Volumnia, has died. Was it through a love potion, a broken heart because her parents would not arrange a marriage to a local boy for her, or something else? Flavia says she will not take the case, but on the same day as she is offered it, Manlius disappears. Why? Was it something to do with the lightning strike? Short on money and not knowing if she will ever see Manlius again, Flavia decides to take the job after all. Lindsey Davis’s knowledge of ancient Rome, its geography and customs, is deep and excellent. Her characterisation is good, and the story twists and turns until all the facts are thoroughly known. She has written many books set in Rome, and her Marcus Didius Falco series is very popular. I have read and enjoyed many of them. This, however, is the sixth book in this follow-up series concerning Flavia and I am not particularly impressed. To me, they ramble, and the author takes time to get to the point. I remember the original Marcus Falco books as more precise, which sped up the story and kept the pages turning. Marilyn Sherlock

THE TRANSMIGRANT

Kristi Saare Duarte, Conspicuum, 2017, $12.99, pb, 312pp, 9780997180701

Uneducated but passionate with love for God, the young Jesus yearns to be a teacher, a Rabbi, to touch others with the oneness he

knows with the Divine. But he is the son of Joseph, a talented carpenter, and is expected to sit in silence and learn from those teachers wiser than he is. His questions and comments only inflame his family and neighbors. After meeting a monk who tells him that anyone can be a monk and teacher, Jesus begins the journey of his so-called “lost years.” Traveling through Asia, Jesus learns and practices the teachings of various sects of Buddhism and Hinduism. The outstanding features of this account focus on the coming-of-age of Jesus, as he confronts his all-too-human desires and foibles, learns to transcend them, falls back into them, and believes that he has a unique understanding because of these valuable spiritual lessons. The reader will be left with complex questions: How does Jesus live in Oneness with all but be so misunderstood and rejected by those who call themselves knowledgeable and righteous? Why cannot that Spirit of Oneness that Jesus learns penetrate past the hardest hearts who reject him? Kristi Saare Duarte has written an account that is very human and divine in nature, in moving language that provokes both conversation and meditation. The Jesus she depicts is at home everywhere and nowhere, a man who finds comfort only in God and in sharing that wealth throughout his brief passage into the hearts and spirits of humanity. Well-researched, focused, credible and inspirational historical fiction! Viviane Crystal

THE SOLDIER WHO KILLED A KING

David Kitz, Kregel, 2017, $14.99, pb, 247pp, 9780825444852

It’s Holy Week of AD 30 in Jerusalem. Roman centurion Marcus Longinus, on remote duty along with his wife and children in the Jewish capital, is having a rough spell at work. It begins on Sunday during Passover. Marcus has never seen crowds of Jews so large and adoring as on this day. A prophet from Nazareth in Galilee arrives, riding on a donkey past multitudes of cheering common people. Though unassuming yet commanding in presence, He is greeted like a King. Marcus is immediately concerned until their eyes meet. The Roman hears a clear voice: “I have a future for you.” Marcus’ anxiety is well founded. For the Romans, any talk of a “King of the Jews” threatens their occupation. They only allow approved tetrarchs like “King” Herod. And neither Herod nor the Jewish religious establishment under high priest Caiaphas want to see their lofty positions endangered. Jesus the carpenter has also earned the wrath of the merchant class by angrily ejecting them from the grounds of the city’s holy temple. So Caiaphas convinces the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, to try Jesus for crimes against Rome. Pilate wants no part of this Jewish intrigue, but a rigged crowd of merchants

and religious hierarchy ensures a certain end. The centurion is there for it all: the trial, the scourging, the gruesome crucifixion and the miraculous resurrection. This novel is told in the first-person perspective of a professional military officer, and it works superbly. The Romans and some of the Jewish establishment are presented harshly, but it’s clear most of the Jewish people and even some of the Roman soldiers and their families are simple and honorable. A genuine and fresh insight into a classic, magnificent story. Well done! Thomas J. Howley

CALIGULA

Simon Turney, Orion, 2018, £14.99, pb, 454pp, 9781409175193

Everyone knows his name, and everyone thinks they know what he did while Emperor. This is an account from his youngest sister, Julia Livilla, of what made the monster. Seen through loving, sisterly eyes, he is the canny, funny yet preternaturally political animal who looked to “the long game”. While unwilling guests at the luxurious retreat of Tiberius on Capri, the whole family were under threat from the Emperor himself; they were distant relations of the Emperor and close relations of the universally admired Germanicus. Considering their mother and two eldest brothers were allegedly starved to death in exile, that they daily witnessed people being thrown over the cliffs of the Emperor’s domain, that they knew they were at the whim of an insane despot, they were against a spoiled heir-apparent in Gemellus, is it any surprise that the remaining “elder” of the family, Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus—known by many as Caligula—decided to act? In fairness, this is a well-written fictional account of the infamous Emperor’s early years. It does not try to whitewash or retell history but puts his madness into context. Why did he do what he did? Why did he go the way of paranoia and madness? Even the infamous “making his horse a senator” legend is explained with sense. Don’t expect revelations but, using fiction, this puts him into context—not cleaner, but clearer. Alan Cassady-Bishop

2ND CENTURY MEMENTO MORI

Ruth Downie, Bloomsbury, 2018, $28.00, hb, 432pp, 9781620409619 / CreateSpace, 2018, £7.99, pb, 432pp, 9781985711877

Ruso, a Roman army medic living a life of bucolic domesticity with the family of his British wife, receives a desperate plea from a friend. This friend, fellow medic Valens, has been accused of the murder of his own wife, who was found stabbed to death and floating in the sacred waters of Aquae Sulis (Bath, England). With no authority to investigate, and not certain of his own friend’s innocence, Ruso must sort out the truth, all the while grappling with hostile officials, a grieving

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family, and unhelpful priests. If not Valens, who killed the woman? Her lover, a local priestess, or some other looming unknown killer? Valens’s life and the future prosperity of Aquae Sulis are at stake. This is Downie’s eighth installment in her wonderful Medicus series. It has all the twists and turns we would expect from a top-notch murder mystery, all while nestled deep into the world at the fringes of Imperial Rome. Though not needed to enjoy this novel, I’d recommend reading the first books—they’re worth it. Recommended. Justin M. Lindsay

7TH CENTURY

THE CROSS AND THE CURSE

Matthew Harffy, Aria, 2017, £18.99, hb, 462pp, 9781786693150

North East Britain, the Dark Ages. Ancient paganism battles with new faith. Rival cultures jostle for supremacy. Kings plot to establish new nations. Into this heady mix strides Beobrand, a particularly able Anglo-Saxon warrior equally skilled at applying violence and making enemies. In the service of newly crowned King Oswald, he wins honour, his own land and the girl of his dreams, but a dark curse from the past threatens to take it all from him. This tale is very similar to the Last Kingdom series by Bernard Cornwell, recently dramatised on television. It’s set much earlier but it’s in the same geographic area with much the same cultural mores and technology. Beobrand is an interesting protagonist, a thinker as well as a fighter, but not a superman, although he does have the typical hot headedness that seems to be de rigueur for heroes in this sub-genre. It’s very entertaining, if a bit disjointed. Martin Bourne

9TH CENTURY SONG OF ISABEL

Ida Curtis, She Writes, 2018, $16.95, pb, 350pp, 9781631523717

Lady Isabel, daughter of Lord Theodoric of Narbonne, is twelve years old when she is attacked by soldiers and rescued by a stranger whose face she does not see. Eight years later, the stranger returns, this time with a name attached: he is Lord Chetwynd, a friend of her long-absent brother. Although Chetwynd had intervened before the soldiers could do their worst, the attack damaged Isabel emotionally and she has used it as an excuse to avoid the marriages her family has attempted to arrange for her. Her desire now is to visit the royal court to see her brother and if possible avoid being sent to a convent. For reasons that don’t bear up to too much scrutiny, Isabel and Chetwynd marry so that she can travel to court with him. Marriage also serves as cover for him as he extricates himself from some sort of relationship with 18

the queen. They agree to have the marriage annulled as soon as convenient. Needless to say, the two are thrown together in every way imaginable in the course of their journey. They share a bed in order to avoid suspicion and ride together in physical contact. He tries to master sexual temptation in order that she will be untouched and able to marry again, while she demonstrates ingenuity in dealing with the intricacies of court and in freeing herself from kidnappers. The setting is 9th-century France, shortly after the death of Charlemagne, although the basic dynamics of the relationship could have taken place in any number of eras. From the first pages, it’s pretty clear how the book will end. That said, I kept wanting to read, and the story was in the end satisfying if somewhat predictable. Martha Hoffman

10TH CENTURY KIN

Snorri Kristjansson, Quercus, 2018, £8.99, pb, 320pp, 9781784298074

This novel’s cover shows an archaeologicallycorrect-looking longhouse. It’s a tale about Vikings, and it reads like a saga of old! The setting is a family gathering: three brothers and a sister with their families, going home to the farm for a visit to their mother and father. Also present is the much younger adoptive daughter—Helga Finnsdottir, the narrator— and a couple of old family retainers. All starts peacefully enough, but childhood rivalries, skeletons in the family closets, and just plain personality clashes soon combine with power plays and money lust to form a powerful mix. First one brother, then another, is murdered; and the only people who are present are the family. Who could have murdered kin, and why? This book is a relatively fast read. It is a satisfyingly crafted whodunit, with the reader unsure right to the very end who committed the double crime, but the clues are all there, and subtly placed. The narrator’s character arc is interesting, too. She starts as a passive, and rather innocent, observer, and by the end has taken on an active role, forcing the confession in true whodunit tradition. I enjoyed this book, with its larger-than-life characters and disputes. It looks like Helga has a further career ahead of her; I may well become a follower. Nicky Moxey

11TH CENTURY PILGRIM’S WAR

Michael Jecks, Simon & Schuster, £20/$28, hb, 552pp, 9781471150005

2018,

Pilgrim’s War begins in France in 1096, when a hermit promises the townspeople that Christian soldiers who march to Jerusalem will be rewarded with redemption. What Jecks shows, though, is that many of these “soldiers” were anything but: they included

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laypersons taking up swords for the first time; the prostitutes who marched alongside them, seeking to have their sins forgiven while still relying on their profession to feed themselves; and ordinary parents with their children, looking to set up businesses and make their fortunes in Jerusalem. All will have to find great strength to complete their journey, and disappointment, violence and death is inevitable. Jecks has chosen breadth over depth in his portrayal of the pilgrimage. Some characters’ stories receive more attention than others, especially those of Fulk, the young blacksmith, and his brother Odo, a burgeoning fanatic. However, the wide cast of characters and the sudden shifts from one story to another mean that even these key characters are not explored in any depth. There are no real surprises in this story: everyone does what would be expected of him or her in a broad tale, like the hardened prostitute who falls for a client, or the soldier who kills innocents only to be tortured by their cries. In contrast, the fights and battle scenes are described clearly, in great detail. There are depictions of rapes, which are sometimes graphic although not overly gratuitous. The prose is competent. Chapters often end on a single dramatic sentence, such as “For the first time in his life, Fulk felt truly alone”, a technique which loses its effect as it is repeated so often. This book will appeal to those readers looking for an action story with a light touch of family drama and romance on the side. Laura Shepperson

12TH CENTURY

JOANNA CRUSADER

Hilary Benford, WordFire, 2017, $18.99, pb, 370pp, 9781614755173

In this second in the series after Sister of the Lionheart, Joanna is now a widow, journeying with her brother on the Third Crusade. Almost as tough as the legendary Richard, Joanna’s sole goal is to see Jerusalem. She ultimately becomes the first woman to do so at a time when the Saracens hold power, and as Richard dangles Joanna as a formidable match for Saladin’s brother, one swiftly rejected by Joanna. At the same time, Joanna and Berengaria, Richard’s long-suffering wife, form an inseparable bond of sisterhood and eventually return to France, together facing the years of Richard’s imprisonment by the Holy Roman Emperor. On crusade, Joanna and Raymond, Count of Toulouse, begin an intensely powerful adulterous romance, ultimately evolving into a love-match marriage producing three children. Joanna is a headstrong figure, and as Raymond’s fourth wife, she learns that his attention span when it comes to marriage is short. As quick a read, and as filled with historical events as this is, I found my attention waxing and waning as it had not done in the first volume. Some of the sieges are interminable,

and Joanna is often to the point of absolute desperation to see Richard. That having been said, there is only so much known about Joanna, and Benford does an extraordinary job of making her flesh and blood. This is a worthy conclusion to the Joanna series. Ilysa Magnus

MISFORTUNE OF VISION

Christy Nicholas, Tirgearr, 2018, $5.99, ebook, 248pp, B077DC2FKW

In this 4th book in the Druid’s Brooch series, it’s 1177 A.D. in Ireland, it appears Norman invaders are on the march from their strongholds around Dublin northward towards the clan holdings of the Dun Sléibhe in Ulster. In her sixties, Orlagh is the clan’s healer with the gift of future vision. With a foot in both Christianity and Celtic Paganism, Orlagh wisely never reveals whence her visions come. Some church leaders view her suspiciously while others respect her. Orlagh is having trouble convincing her chief of the approaching threat. She also has a secret which requires her completing a difficult and urgent mission. She must find a worthy heir to bequeath a magical brooch before she becomes too old and feeble. Orlagh searches for her grandson, who turns out to be a rather weak and greedy young man called Declan. To complicate matters, Declan has become close to a Viking girl who has been trying to help him. Orlagh is accompanied by an old warrior who is a good friend on her quest and occasionally by a fosterling, a very young girl called Clodagh. An ancient wizard named Adhna adds to the cast of characters as the slow start tensely builds to a dynamic and otherworldly ending. Thoroughly researched, the novel brims with a magnetic appeal to lovers of Irish medieval history. The characters are keenly developed and mostly likable, especially Orlagh and Adhna. The Gaelic words might be challenging to some, but were charming and musical to my ears. I found the presence of so many Vikings a bit distracting at the late date of 1177. Describing the Norman advance, the author presciently illustrates some examples of how the Christian Normans would eventually become rather easily absorbed by the people they were trying to invade. Another magical book by Christy Nicholas. Thomas J. Howley

13TH CENTURY TEMPLAR SILKS

Elizabeth Chadwick, Sphere, 2018, £16.99, hb, 488pp, 9780751564976

1219, England. William Marshal, England’s greatest knight, is on his deathbed. He has sent a trusted servant to fetch the precious Templar silks he brought back from Jerusalem thirty-five years before; they will be his shroud. We follow him back to his youth in Jerusalem in 1183. He was there to fulfil a vow to his late master, Henry, son of Henry II. William expects the Holy Land to be—

well—holy, but the internecine politics are treacherous as different factions manoeuvre to take over when the leprous King Baldwin of Jerusalem dies. William becomes dangerously involved with the beautiful Paschia de Riveri, mistress of Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem. Furthermore, he distrusts Guy de Lusignan, his arch-enemy and Baldwin’s brother-inlaw, who is well-placed to be the next King. William knows that Guy wants him dead. Can he navigate the double-dealing and return home safely? My one niggle was that I didn’t get why William was so guilt-ridden about sleeping with Paschia. He’d viewed sex with a woman earlier in Templar Silks as mere fornication—a minor sin. So why was it different with Paschia? She was Heraclius’s mistress, but neither of them was married, so they weren’t committing adultery; and Heraclius, a man in Holy Orders, had no business to have a mistress, anyway. Still, Templar Silks is, as one would expect from Elizabeth Chadwick, a terrific story. She has an excellent eye for the period: the sights, sounds, smells, splendours and horrors of 12th-century life in Outremer. I discovered a lot about who was who and what they wanted, as well as learning about the management of horses: war horses for soldiers and palfreys for ladies, etc. I swiftly became immersed in the time, place and action, and was happily gripped by a master storyteller. Elizabeth Hawksley

MEGGE OF BURY DOWN

Rebecca Kightlinger, Zumaya Arcane, 2018, $15.99, pb, 252pp, 9781612713472

In Kightlinger’s debut novel, Megge is a girl of Bury Down, a small village in the medieval Cornish countryside. To an outside observer, her life may seem ordinary enough. She lives with her mother, aunt, cousin, and great aunts, working as healers and tending their sheep. However, she is actually the latest in a long line of hedge witches. When it is Megge’s turn to learn the secrets of her mother’s magical book on her sixth birthday, it calls her a murderer. Terrified, Megge refuses to have anything to do with her family’s traditions. Instead, she learns the trades of weaver and herder. However, when a horrific event takes place, Megge is forced to follow tradition and fight to keep the book out of the hands of wicked people. There are many things to enjoy in this novel. The main characters all have depth and complexity, though a bit more character development is warranted since the novel covers many years. The descriptions of medieval life are adequate, but better fleshed-out detail would have added to the atmosphere. The recurring theme “What people can’t see, they fear; what they fear, they hurt” is woven skillfully throughout the narrative. The plot, unfortunately, is quite slow-moving. While this is not a problem in itself, it is when nothing really advances the storyline. A lot of backstory doled out

piecemeal makes for a somewhat choppy read. Another quibble I had was the age range for the book. Megge is six when we meet her, and 13 by the end. Based on the characters’ ages, I’d say this is suitable for middle-grade readers, but given the violent content and slow pacing, the book is for adults (and is marketed as such). However, many adult readers may struggle to identify with such a young protagonist. The novel is enjoyable enough, but ultimately, I wanted to like it more than I actually did. Kristen McQuinn

15TH CENTURY

BOTTICELLI’S MUSE

Dorah Blume, Juiceboxartists Press, 2017, $24.95, pb, 511pp, 9780998131603

Botticelli’s Muse, the first in Dorah Blume’s trilogy set in Renaissance Florence, begins in 1477, when the artist Sandro Botticelli is dismissed by his friend and patron, Lorenzo de’ Medici. Forced to work for Lorenzo’s fifteen-year-old cousin, Piero, Sandro runs out of ideas for his art until he meets Floriana, a Jewish weaver imprisoned in his sister’s convent. Sandro and Floriana are attracted to each other, and she becomes the inspiration for his masterpiece La Primavera. But, because of the difference in their religions, they cannot marry. When church officials threaten to force Floriana to convert, she goes into hiding. Meanwhile, the young Dominican friar Savonarola sets out on a mission to save souls. He knows of a secret in Floriana’s past and threatens to keep her and Sandro apart. Sandro learns of a plot to overthrow the Medici family, and has to choose between his love for Floriana and his loyalty to his patrons. The novel is beautifully written, with great insight into the life of an artist, and what inspires artists to choose their subjects. Blume is an artist herself, and her delightful illustrations illuminate the story. The characters are believable, with Sandro and Floriana as an appealing hero and heroine. Savonarola is portrayed as a complex character with a violent past, but not entirely unsympathetic, as the reader learns what motivates him. Blume includes some loveable fictional characters, such as Sandro’s sister Oslavia and young Piero’s generous nursemaid, Poppi. But I was surprised to find some glaring anachronisms in an otherwise meticulously researched novel. These include a mention of tomatoes, which could not have been available anywhere in Europe before 1492, and references to the Via Cavour, which did not exist until the 19th century. I hope these will be corrected in later editions. Vicki Kondelik

THE COLOUR OF MURDER

Toni Mount, MadeGlobal, 2018, £11.99/$14.99, pb, 288pp, 9788494729850

This is book five in the Sebastian Foxley Medieval Mystery series. Don’t be concerned

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if you haven’t read the previous four books as The Colour of Murder can be read as a stand-alone historical novel. An academically qualified British history teacher, Mount has published a number of non-fiction works on medieval Britain. In 2016 she ventured into writing historical fiction with The Colour of Poison, the first in this medieval “who-dunnit” series, introducing Seb Foxley, medieval portrait artist and amateur sleuth. The Colour of Murder is set in London in February 1478. Seb is painting a portrait of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, brother of the reigning king, Edward IV. Richard is distracted, as King Edward has thrown their brother, the Duke of Clarence, into the Tower of London for treason. Richard manages to obtain permission for Seb to visit the Tower to sketch his imprisoned brother. The visit doesn’t go to plan, and Seb’s life is threatened as he becomes embroiled in a royal murder plot. Meanwhile Seb’s household is on the verge of imploding as more than one of its inhabitants grapple with secrets and lies. A complex array of Mount’s fictional characters interacts with real people in this treacherous period of British royal history. Until quite recently, history and literature weren’t kind to the Duke of Gloucester (later to become the infamous Richard the Third). Mount places herself firmly in the pro-Richard camp with The Colour of Murder, showing how he tried to plead for his condemned brother while maintaining loyalty to king and crown. The author uses her extensive knowledge of this period and speculates what might have happened, from the safe confines of a fictional narrative. The Colour of Murder is an engrossing read with a different twist on familiar London sites and medieval royals. I couldn’t put it down. Christine Childs

16TH CENTURY

KNIVES IN THE SOUTH

P. F. Chisholm, Head of Zeus, 2017, £25, hb, 807pp, 9781786694720

1592. Knives in the South is the second chronicle of the adventures of Sir Robert Carey, swashbuckling dandy and cousin to Queen Elizabeth. It brings together three novels in one volume. Carey is recalled to London by his father from his post as Deputy Warden of the West March in Carlisle. With the aid of his redoubtable henchman, Dodd, the lacecollared, pearl-sashed courtier, finds himself trying to find a missing brother, identify a badly decomposed body which has been washed up on the Queen’s privy steps, and investigate a murder from thirty years before—a murder which has links to the throne. The three books cover a period of three consecutive weeks, and the plots flow seamlessly together to make one complete enjoyable Elizabethan romp. The characters are strong, and the plot moves along swiftly, while the culture and times of the Elizabethan court are effectively portrayed in a subtle, understated way. There is a seam of humour 20

which flows through all three stories, acting as a counterpoint to the murderous politics of the Elizabethan court. Well written, this is a pleasure to read. Pour your favourite tipple, settle down and enjoy. Recommended. Mike Ashworth

THE CURSED WIFE

Pamela Hartshorne, Pan, 2018, £7.99, pb, 362pp, 9781509859320

As the wife of a successful London merchant, Mary lives a contented life. Loved by her husband and respected by her neighbours, she can sometimes forget that her life is built on a lie. That is, until the return of her childhood friend, Cat, who knows far too much about Mary’s past, including the curse placed on her when she was a child, which predicts she will end her days in a noose. Having fallen on hard times, Cat sees a chance to manipulate Mary to gain money, friendship and love at her old friend’s expense. Mary has fought hard for the life she has, and she won’t give it up easily. This is a fast-paced tale of Tudor London, from the houses of wealthy merchants to the heaving markets and dockside taverns. This is a tale of revenge, manipulation, murder and lies, in which cruelty hides behind smiles and darkness behind innocence. It is thrillingly told and features two intriguing heroines whose fates are intertwined. Pamela Hartshorne has built a solid reputation as an author of time-slip fiction which makes use of her historical expertise. However, The Cursed Wife is a departure for her. Darker in tone than her previous work, this novel is set entirely in the Tudor era, with none of the romantic feel of her earlier books. However, the departure is most definitely a success. The characters are vivid and the storytelling thrilling. It’s perfect for fans of Hartshorne’s previous work and also for lovers of Kate Mosse, Jessie Burton, and Katherine Stansfield. Lisa Redmond

SEARCHER OF THE DEAD

Nancy Herriman, Crooked Lane, 2018, $26.99, hb, 336pp, 9781683315384

It’s 1593, and since fleeing Elizabethan London after her husband’s murder, Bess Ellyott has been living in her brother’s house in Wiltshire. One evening, their sister arrives at the door fearing that her husband, who left that morning for business in another town, is in grave danger. The next day, his body is found hanging from a tree. While the coroner and jury pronounce the death a suicide, Bess spots

REVIEWS | Issue 84, May 2018

a suspicious mark on her brotherin-law’s body. As Bess begins investigating, she’s quickly reminded of her own husband’s tragic demise. Has a murderer followed her from London? Or is the shadow that edges around the periphery of her investigation a different threat to her family and friends? Early on, Herriman’s level of historical detail pulled me in and never let go. Gramercy, how the dialogue sets the tone with finesse! I loved how immersed in time and place I felt. From patterns of speech, to details in homes of the poor versus the wealthy, to 16th-century law, the research Herriman has done is marvelous. The pacing is great, and I found myself glued to the pages. To my delight, on top of an intriguing mystery, the historical depth and the welldeveloped characters make this an extremely satisfying read. Certes, fans of Ariana Franklin will devour this book! I eagerly await more Bess Ellyott mysteries. Highly recommended! J. Lynn Else

THE PAINTER’S APPRENTICE

Laura Morelli, The Scriptorium, 2017, $16.49, pb, 396pp, 9781942778929

M a r i a Bartolini, the daughter of a master gilder in Venice in 1510, wants to follow in her father’s footsteps. But when he finds her with her lover, a half-Saracen man who works as a gold beater in the workshop, he sends her away as an apprentice to Master Trevisan, a famous painter. Soon Maria discovers she is pregnant. When plague breaks out in her father’s neighborhood, no one is allowed to enter or leave the area. A maid and a treacherous boatman discover Maria’s pregnancy and extort money from her to keep her secret. Maria thinks the painter and his wife will turn her out of the house when they find out she is pregnant, but without a way to get word to her lover, she is desperate. And every day she is afraid her father and her lover will fall victim to the plague. A place in her aunt’s convent might solve her problems, and even allow her to see her child, but she would not be allowed to practice the art she loves. What will Maria be prepared to sacrifice for the sake of her art? Normally I do not care for historical fiction

written in the present tense, and the writing has to be extraordinary for me to enjoy it very much. Sarah Dunant is one exception, and Laura Morelli is another. She brings 16thcentury Venice to life in loving detail, and her descriptions of the artists’ craft are exquisite. This was a time when art was rapidly evolving from gilded paintings on wood panels to oil on canvas, and Maria knows her art is a dying one, but it was what she was born to do. This is an outstanding story of a woman with the courage to pursue both her forbidden love and her art. Vicki Kondelik

THE BURNING CHAMBERS

Kate Mosse, Mantle, 2018, £20.00, hb, 576pp, 9781509806836

In Carcassonne in 1562, bookseller’s daughter Minou Joubert is baffled and unnerved when she finds an anonymous note addressed to her pushed under the door of her father’s shop, warning her that “She knows that you live”. Her father has been acting strangely ever since his return from a business trip, and she suspects the two things are related. Meanwhile, Huguenot convert Piet Reydon is in Carcassonne on a dangerous mission for his cause—one that imperils his life but throws him into contact with Minou. But as Piet and Minou struggle to stay one step ahead of their hidden enemies, religious tensions are rising, threatening to boil over into civil war. I admit this is my first Kate Mosse novel, but I can see why she is so popular. Minou in particular is an engaging heroine: warmhearted, courageous, and liberal-minded in a period when the slightest suspicion of heresy could lead to denunciation and the Inquisitional prison in Toulouse. The secondary characters are deftly sketched in, like Minou’s siblings: resourceful seven-yearold Alis and mischievous, restless teenager Aimeric. I also like the fact that the two central villains (whose identities I refuse to disclose) have plausible reasons for becoming so warped and dangerously obsessed with religion and power, having suffered from abusive or underprivileged childhoods. The plot twists and turns, with some clever use of dramatic irony to heighten the tension, when the reader is privy to information that has not yet been revealed to the protagonists, thus putting them in danger of trusting the wrong people. This is billed as the first of a series of novels, chronicling the ongoing feud between two families over the generations, from the 16th to the 19th centuries. I’m looking forward to the next book in the series. Jasmina Svenne

JANE SEYMOUR: The Haunted Queen

Alison Weir, Headline, 2018, £18.99, hb, 502pp, 9781472227676 / Ballantine, 2018, $28, hb, 576pp, 9781101966549

Set in Tudor England, this novel is about the third Queen to Henry VIII. Katherine of Aragon is divorced for failing to provide a living, healthy son and Anne Boleyn is executed for much the same reason and her accused

treason. Jane Seymour becomes Queen of England only ten days after the death of Anne and is said to be the only Queen that Henry really loved. She died shortly after giving birth to a boy, later to become Edward VI. This third book in Alison Weir’s series on the six wives of Henry VIII tells us much of what we didn’t know about her life before becoming Queen. Although this is a work of fiction, Alison Weir is a much-respected historian; she has done an enormous amount of research on the families involved and the lives they would have lived in the 16th century. Childbearing was a very risky business back then, and various reasons why Jane died have been given over the centuries, but there seems to be little doubt that Henry loved her for herself as well as for giving him the son he craved. The story is woven around the families and events of the day and very plausibly told. I found this to be a first-class novel and have great respect for Alison Weir’s ability to create a fascinating story out of very little surviving documentation. She calls Jane an enigma, which adds to her fascination. Jane is the only queen to die naturally while still married to Henry, and Weir has given us a great story from a turbulent age. Marilyn Sherlock

17TH CENTURY

LORD OF FORMOSA

Joyce Bergvelt, Camphor Press, 2017, £14.99, pb, 442pp, 9781788691390

This story moves between the new Dutch colony on Formosa (Taiwan), and China, as the invading Manchus destroy the Ming dynasty. Koxinga, the last defiant Ming warrior, is forced to flee with his fleet. Believing a prophecy that he will drive foreigners from an island and become its ruler, he sails to Formosa. So the siege of Fort Zeelandia begins. The first half of the book combines a history of the Dutch settlement set against Koxinga’s adolescence and his rise to warrior-hero. The result is a collection of facts peopled by such a wide spread of Dutch and Chinese characters that few are strongly established. Even Koxinga and Coyett, the Dutch Governor, seem more like chess pieces. In the second half, the novel takes off, pitting Koxinga against Coyett. With no assistance from his superiors in Java, Coyett is left to defend the Dutch not only from the attacking Chinese but from the Chinese settlers and aboriginal Formosans. As the tension builds, the characters take on greater dimensions. Will the Dutch survive or be massacred? Is Koxinga a noble hero of Chinese history or just a vicious thug verging on insanity? Despite a regrettable lack of local colour, Bergvelt’s well-researched novel deals with an unfamiliar period of Asian history and eventually brings it to life. A map and more details about the island and its original inhabitants would have been interesting and helpful. Lynn Guest

THE JUDGE HUNTER

Christopher Buckley, Simon & Schuster, 2018, $26.95, hb, 368pp, 9781501192517

Balthasar de St. Michel (Balty) is the shiftless brotherin-law of Samuel Pepys and is sent off by him to the American colonies under the guise of hunting two regicides hiding somewhere in New England. In The Judge Hunter, Buckley (The Relic Master) has turned his quick wit and sharp writing focus on the 17th century in this 2nd book in his historical fiction series. In Balty, Buckley has a bumbling, chaffing protagonist who proves the perfect foil for the uptight social constructs of colonial New England. Though Pepys believes that Balty’s job hunting the regicides is more just a means for King Charles II to infuriate the colonists, Balty winds up entangled in a deeper plot that may just start a war with the Dutch. Helping Balty in the colonies is a former militia captain named Hiram Huncks who uses Balty’s royal commission as a cover to prepare for a war with New Netherlands. Peppered with historical characters— Peter Stuyvesant, John Winthrop II—and cleverly using Samuel Pepys’ famous diaries, Buckley masterfully weaves a fictional story with historical fact. Two subplots, involving Samuel Pepys getting arrested for sneaking a peek at a secret document and a young Quaker woman needing rescue from zealous Puritan authorities, help to create a rich story ripe for Buckley’s humor and pointed satire on Puritan ideals, royal peccadillos, and political intrigue. The Judge Hunter is an absorbing mystery/ thriller with humorous dialog and characters that resonate and draw in the reader. Buckley’s ability to fuse fact with fiction makes this book a must for not just fans of historical fiction but anyone looking for a great read. Bryan Dumas

THE COFFIN PATH

Katherine Clements, Headline, 2018, £16.99, hb, 372pp, 978147220427

The Coffin Path is a gothic historical novel, reminiscent of Daphne du Maurier and as good as Sarah Waters. It is set in Northern England’s moorlands during the late 17th century, 20 years after the English Civil War. Scarcross Hall, situated by the Old Coffin Road from village to moor-top, is cursed. Mercy Booth, the novel’s heroine, loves her home. With her aging father obsessively distressed about the loss of three ancient coins, keeping secrets and losing grip on reality, she tries to preserve her inheritance. As ‘the mistress’ she

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accepts help with her sheep from an aloof stranger, Ellis Ferreby. Their stories entwine. Many people believe in witchcraft and the parish church is ‘a wasp’s nest of rumour and gossip.’ As strange events occur around Scarcross Hall, they turn against Mercy. She becomes isolated and threatened, without help on her farm apart from Ellis, with whom she has an uneasy relationship. Survival becomes untenable as winter sets in, her father and the boy, Sam, oddly possessed and the Hall more dangerous. The author’s research is impeccable, her sense of place hauntingly atmospheric. The plot is affected by the recent Civil War, but although pinned down in time it possesses a sense of timelessness, reflecting man’s isolation, his struggle with nature and the unknown. The ominous presence of standing stones, the austerity of the landscape, the harsh weather and the inhabitants who live their lives in a place that feels its otherness, cut off from a wider world, makes this story gripping and page-turning. Above all, the characterisation is superb, including the supporting characters. Mercy, no innocent, is determined. Her father’s secret affects her future. The best secret of all is held by Ellis Ferreby, the stranger who refuses to leave. This is a beautifully written historical thriller, highly recommended. Carol McGrath

THE GLOVEMAKER’S DAUGHTER

Leah Fleming, Simon & Schuster, 2018, £6.99, pb, 422pp, 9781471141003

The novel opens with an account of the persecution of Quakers in 17th-century England, set out in the journal of Rejoice (or Joy) Moorside. Joy’s parents died on the day of her birth after a period of harsh imprisonment, and she is raised by her Quaker uncle and aunt on a farm in the Yorkshire Dales. She frequently struggles with dilemmas arising from her passionate nature and the sober constraints of her faith. She sails for Philadelphia with a group of Friends who are intent on founding a new community, where they will be able to live according to their beliefs. On the voyage, Joy encounters another temptation she must resist: the attractive British officer, Captain Thane. Fleming tells the moving story of hardships suffered by the pioneers as they build their community in Pennsylvania and survive through harsh winters. She draws an evocative picture of the Lenape, the gentle neighbouring Native Americans who would 22

eventually be wiped out by the incomers in a series of epidemics and massacres. A shadow is cast over Joy’s new life when a conman she met in Yorkshire arrives in the community and aggressive Native Americans begin to threaten the pioneer communities. The plot has a multitude of twists and turns, but the pace is sometimes listless. This is a novel nominally set in two time periods, the present and the 17th century. However, the present story is slight and merely provides a framing device for the discovery of the 17thcentury journal in the wall of the Quaker Meeting House in the town of Good Hope. The novel would have been none the worse without this present-day story. Fleming gives us a wellresearched glimpse into this slice of history. Tracey Warr

THE POISON BED

Elizabeth Fremantle, Michael Joseph, 2018, £12.99, hb, 394pp, 9780718180485

At the heart of one of the most notorious murder cases in the reign of James I lurks the ultimate Jacobean power couple: Frances Howard, whose aristocratic family have found themselves in and out of favour during the previous turbulent decades, and her husband, Robert Carr, who, despite his relatively humble background as the orphaned son of a minor Scottish laird, has risen to become the King’s favourite. But, as Robert’s popularity wanes and the scandal breaks, they both find themselves imprisoned in the Tower of London, retracing the steps that have brought them here in the hopes it might save their lives. The narration of this deliberately dark and claustrophobic novel is split equally between the two central protagonists. At times they give radically different accounts of the same scene, forcing the reader to question which, if either of them, is the more reliable narrator. In fact, I was almost disappointed that Fremantle didn’t carry the ambiguity right through to the end (although there is a delicious little sting in the tail of the very last scene that will probably send readers unfamiliar with the true story scurrying to find out what happened next). On the downside, some readers might feel that the sporadic use of modern idioms, particularly in the dialogue, jolts them out of the 17th-century atmosphere. However, this is a clever piece of historical noir, the sort of book that would probably repay a second reading, so as to put all the pieces together. Jasmina Svenne

TRAITOR

David Hingley, Allison & Busby, 2018, £19.99, hb, 384pp, 9780749021146

Mercia Blakewood has returned to England, having successfully concluded her assignment in New York on behalf of King Charles the Second. Surely now he will give favourable consideration to her claim on Halescott Manor, her ancestral home? Her uncle, Francis Simmonds, has taken possession and wants Mercia dead, but at least he is an open enemy. The King proposes one more task for Mercia

REVIEWS | Issue 84, May 2018

before dealing with her claim on the manor. A spy is at large, working for England’s greatest enemy, the Dutch, who are growing in power with a formidable navy whose overt ambition is a successful invasion and conquest of England. Out of five possible women at King Charles’s court, Mercia’s task is the identification of the spy and traitor known as “Virgo”. From the start, Mercia is in danger as her enemy demonstrates power, and in one terrifying sequence she undergoes interrogation in the Tower of London. All this, against a background of extravagant frivolity and outrageous fashions at court and London’s dark underworld of casual murder. There are even whispers of the Plague. Readers will be rewarded with a splendid dual-climax of naval battle where even those watching from the shore will be far from safe. This was a period when England’s whole future was in doubt, a simmering cauldron of possibility. The author, with boisterous enthusiasm, has seized on this promising situation, making the most of it by writing this exciting novel. Nancy Henshaw

DOUBTING THOMAS

Heather Richardson, Vagabond Voices, 2017, £11.95, pb, 301pp, 9781908251879

On 8 January 1697, a young student at Edinburgh University, 20-year-old Thomas Aikenhead, was executed for blasphemy. This was the last execution in Britain for such an offence. Richardson’s novel is based around this historical event, but Aikenhead is merely one of four major characters. We first meet young Thomas as a boy of six, when the lives of his family and those of Dr Robert Carruth and his wife Isobel first intersect. After an interval of 14 years, their paths cross again, and this turns out to have a major impact on the doctor and his wife. The novel is constructed of two parts, each with alternating narrative voices recounting the story: Dr Carruth and young Thomas in the first part; Isobel Carruth and the morally ambiguous Mungo Craig, Thomas’s university friend, in the second. The first chapter is superbly written, portraying in a striking manner the autopsy of a pregnant woman by Dr Carruth and his senior colleague. Thus the reader is drawn into the action and engaged in the lives of the characters in a unique way. Overall, the novel provides a vivid portrayal of 17th-century Edinburgh, the religious tensions of the times and the strict control of the kirk over every aspect of people’s lives. It is pre-Enlightenment Scotland, still in thrall to religious fanaticism, where ownership of atheistic books and any questioning of religious doctrine can lead to severe punishment, even death. The characters are well drawn and sympathetic; however, the supposed tensions between Dr Carruth and his wife Isobel, emphasised in the summary on the back cover, are never realised in any depth and only vaguely alluded to. Indeed, their relationship is neither fully nor convincingly drawn. This, however,

makes for a small flaw in an otherwise well written and compelling novel. Ingibjörg Ágústsdóttir

THE FIRE COURT

Andrew Taylor, HarperCollins, 2018, C$22.99/£14.99, hb, 448pp, 9780008119139

In this sequel to The Ashes of London, Taylor returns to London, rebuilding after the 1666 fire that destroyed much of the city. James Marwood, son of the traitor Nathaniel Marwood, recently released from prison, listens to his rabidly devout and demented father recount his day following his late wife, Rachel, into Clifford’s Inn, only to find a dead whore in one of the rooms typically maintained by lawyers. Within a day, Nathaniel has been run over and killed. This is just the beginning of a well-plotted, often convoluted and multilayered mystery. All roads appear to converge in Dragon Yards, where two competing developers are vying for consent by the Fire Court—justices empaneled to resolve disputes arising out of the Great Fire—to rebuild. Who has prior land holdings? How many residences can be built? What should be straightforward becomes increasingly complex as the bodies pile up and there are more fingers in the pot. There must be a connection between all these murders, and perhaps they all begin with the purported whore Nathaniel Marwood finds in Lucius Gromwell’s rooms at Clifford’s Inn. Taylor’s historical mysteries have always grabbed me and held me. They are intelligent, creative, multi-leveled, and filled to the brim with historical details, an observant eye about issues of the time, and the creation of great characters. Despite the fact that this installment is a stand-alone in my view, I look forward to back-tracking now and reading Ashes, which is on my TBR pile and which introduces the character of Cat Lovett, aka Jane Hakesby. An admirable entry by an extremely talented writer. Ilysa Magnus

18TH CENTURY

THE CAPTAIN’S NEPHEW

Philip K. Allan, Penmore, 2017, $19.50, pb, 346pp, 9781946409362

During the 1790s, fighting between England and France on the Atlantic become continuous battles. At this time, HMS Agrius, captained by Percy Follett with First Lieutenant Alexander Clay as his second in command, is leading a convoy of merchant ships for the East India Company on the first leg of their journey to India. Once the convoy reaches Madeira, new orders are to be issued to the Agrius. One evening, enjoying dinner aboard one of the ships in the convoy, the Earl of Warwick, Clay meets and falls in love with one of its passengers, Lydia Browning. Unfortunately, she is of a higher class than the Lieutenant, and he is eventually forced to end

the relationship by his captain and the young lady’s aunt. As the Earl of Warwick continues its trip to India, the Agrius is assigned to intercept a French warship carrying troops and supplies to the Caribbean. During the chase, Clay is learning his lack of social status is creating a difficult relationship with the captain. Captain Follett favors his nephew, the inept Second Lieutenant Windham, and gives him credit for decisions made by Clay while failing to discipline Windham for poor behavior. Well-researched regarding nautical terms and dialect, this is the first novel in the Alexander Clay series. I enjoy English nautical books like those written by Alexander Kent and find this series much like his novels. The author includes several of the many crew members in his story, which helps to define and add depth to each of them. Their social status of each plays an important role. I look forward to the next issue in this new series. Jeff Westerhoff

MY DEAR HAMILTON: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler

Stephanie Dray & Laura Kamoie, William Morrow, 2018, $16.99/C$21.00, pb, 672pp, 9780062466167

Hamilton, the smash Broadway musical, was the authors’ inspiration for this sweeping novel about Alexander Hamilton’s wife, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton. The writing duo also authored America’s First Daughter, about Martha “Patsy” Jefferson. The book shines a very different light on the Eliza the public has come to know through the musical. Extensive historical research resulted in this lively account of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, an extremely accomplished woman who, in addition to her marriage to Alexander Hamilton, made her own mark on society as the co-founder of New York City’s first private orphanage. But long before that, she was the daughter of Philip Schuyler, a Congressman, and later, the wife of the first Secretary of the Treasury. Elizabeth, later nicknamed Eliza, was the backbone behind her husband’s political career and contributed to some of his important writings. She also suffered greatly, enduring the unspeakable heartbreak of losing a child and suffering through her husband’s infidelities, as well as his untimely death. She is portrayed as a strong woman when women were not expected to be much more than wives and mothers, one who held the family together in times of tragedy. Although the book is nothing like the musical, fans of Hamilton may find many familiar scenes and characters that graced the Broadway stage. The authors also incorporate a slew of fascinating additional information that rounds out the book. The book is quite detailed, but my interest never waned because the story is so engaging. Though the story focuses on Eliza and her relationship with Hamilton, the historical background that provides the framework

is a compelling look at the founding of our country, and for that alone, the book provides for fascinating reading. Hilary Daninhirsch

THE MERMAID AND MRS. HANCOCK

Imogen Hermes Gowar, Harvill Secker, 2018, £12.99, hb, 494pp, 9781911215721 / Harper, 2018, $28.99, hb, 496pp, 9780062859952

Too many times I have read a book, very often by a first-time published writer, that has been stratospherically praised by the media, only to be rather disappointed. This book has also received a high degree of publicity and many plaudits, and for once it is indeed fully deserved. For this is an entrancing novel that grasps the reader from the very beginning. London in the autumn of 1785. Jonah Hancock is a trader, a widower, waiting upon the return of a prized vessel, the Calliope, to advance his wealth. He is nonplussed when its captain returns, having sold the vessel in exchange for an ugly dried sea-creature that he claims is a mermaid. Meanwhile, Angelica Neal is a high-class courtesan, whose rich benefactor, a duke, has just died, leaving her once again to find her own way in the world and rely upon her not inconsiderable beauty and charms. The reader knows that very soon in the novel (the title gives it away, mayhap) that they will meet and the outcome. Jonah and Angelica are faced with challenges and discover that sometimes you need to be careful what you seek and wish for. Gowar’s ear for dialogue is pitch-perfect, rendering delightful and credible late 18thcentury conversation. The book is also very funny at times, full of engaging, thriving characters, that the reader connects to and does not wish to book to finish, a mark indeed of a very good tale, as we wish to linger a little longer in the company of these delightful characters. The cover is a thing of beauty too. Douglas Kemp

THE OPTICKAL ILLUSION

Rachel Halliburton, Duckworth Overlook, 2018, £16.99, hb, 384pp, 9780715651971 / Overlook, 2018, $28.95, hb, 352pp, 9781468316292

Based on a real-life scandal in 1797, this novel is concerned with Ann-Jemima Provis and her father, who want to present (and sell) an artistic revelation from Venice revealing the secrets of Titian’s success with colour and technique. Suffering from the painting equivalent of writer’s block, Benjamin West, current President of the Royal Academy, is only too keen to get his hands and brushes

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onto this valuable asset. However, making him pay up for the knowledge and assistance is another issue. The plot is slow-moving, very much of its time and place, and the research is impeccable. The reader becomes totally immersed in the society and culture of the time: clothes, speech, idioms, descriptions of place all serve to help the reader imagine the scenes. Key themes are the nature of art, the question of identity, and the role of women, specifically how female artists have been painted out of history, denied recognition despite talent. Of course, this is a theme which is very much still resonant today. In the world of 1797, one of the current debates was whether women were even worth educating, and Mary Wollstonecraft has a small but significant part in voicing and undercutting the male assumptions about the talents and abilities of Ann-Jemima. Readers looking for high action may be disappointed, as this is more of a novel to savour. However, fans who enjoyed literary novels such as Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries and Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent will be content. Ann Northfield

TOO WILDE TO WED

Eloisa James, Avon, 2018, $7.99/C$9.99, pb, 384pp, 9780062692467

This is the second of “The Wildes of Lindow Castle” series. 1778. Lord Roland Northbridge Wilde is the future Duke of Lindow: wealthy, handsome, and jilted. Upon returning from his military service in the colonies, he finds his former fiancée, Lady Diana Belgrave, ensconced in the family manse as the governess to his youngest sister, Artemisia. Her powered wig, wide panniers, and lip paint are gone, replaced by a mob cap, a worn black dress, and a grubby apron marked by child-sized handprints. What happened to the fashionable lady who had broken his heart? And who was the father of Godfrey, the toddler boy sharing the nursery with Artie? Embarrassed to be discovered at his home, Diana defends her employment, but she is close-mouthed about Godfrey’s parentage. As their romance rekindles, North and Diana must learn the value of honesty and the importance of being themselves rather than creatures of society. Eloisa James has a talent for both characters and plot, which makes her novels a joy to read, no matter the period in which she sets her story. Her research is flawless and subtle, and the storyline is both fun and thought-provoking. I recommend this series to anyone who enjoys historical romance. Monica E. Spence

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND THE QUAKER MURDERS

John Harmon McElroy, Penmore, 2018, $18.95, pb, 299pp, 9781946409102

Captain James Jamison, a Revolutionary War veteran, is summoned one evening in 1785 to the home of Benjamin Franklin. A 24

recent murder in Philadelphia has intrigued the elderly statesman. A stone-cutter named Jacob Maul has been arrested for the murder of his sister-in-law, Elizabeth, her body found wrapped in canvas and stuffed down an abandoned necessary (toilet). Years before, Maul’s wife was discovered dead beside her sleeping husband, but he was never tried for that suspected crime. Maul, a Quaker who refused to assist in the revolution due to his beliefs, is an unpopular man, though many say he is gentle and kind. Franklin knew Maul and can’t accept the accusation. In failing health, Franklin asks James to be his “legs” in the investigation. Franklin also attempts to solve the death of Maul’s wife. James learns that Elizabeth was a flirt, and several men— including two Hessian soldiers quartered at the Maul residence during the war—become suspects in her demise. The novel starts out with long lectures and telling of events, which slows the narrative, but once the inquiry begins, the intricate plot and descriptions of 18th-century Philadelphia drew me in. While Jamison should have had more doubts at being turned into a detective, Franklin, his astute deductions, and his quirky home, Franklin Court, are fascinating. Most characters, except Maul himself, are wellfleshed out. And some of Jamison’s travel details could have been omitted, as they have nothing to do with the story. McElroy’s excellent research, Franklin’s wit, the events leading up to the murder of Elizabeth, and the suspicious death of Maul’s wife should keep readers engaged. Diane Scott Lewis

THE KING’S SALT

David More, Trafford, 2018, $20.99, pb, 378pp, 9781490786988

In Book Four of the Smithyman Saga, it is 1778, and Sir Thomas Smithyman and his comrades remain loyal to the Crown. They lose everything in New York State during the American Revolution and must forge new lives in a Canada that is not always supportive of them. As an upstate New Yorker and former Mohawk Valley resident, I have a deep personal interest in the history covered in the Smithyman books. Unfortunately, the author conflates what he calls in his foreword his “real” and “not real” history. He tacks fictitious names onto well-known historical figures; Sir Thomas Smithyman is John Johnson, Matthew Silverbird is Thayendanegea (Joseph Brant), and so forth. This makes for confusion and irritation, as the reader must constantly research what is true and what isn’t. I did find that the historical backdrop seemed accurate for the most part, although More’s densely detailed prose made for a laborious read when combined with the need to constantly fact-check. I think it is unfair to treat revered historical figures in this manner. It cheapens their legacy. One example: Matthew Silverbird is portrayed as an angry drunk in one scene. Yes, it is “fiction” by More’s rules. But Matthew

REVIEWS | Issue 84, May 2018

is so obviously Thayendanegea, that the scene seems disrespectful to his memory. It was interesting seeing the Loyalists’ story from a Canadian viewpoint, and scenes of them becoming established in Canada were among the best in the book. Elizabeth Knowles

FEAR AND HIS SERVANT

Mirjana Novakovic (trans. Terence McEneny), Peter Owen/Trafalgar Square, 2018, $14.95/£9.99, pb, 272pp, 9780720619775

In 18th-century Serbia, Count Otto von Hausburg visits Belgrade with his servant, Novak. Von Hausburg is not what he seems— or perhaps exactly what he seems—he is the Devil. In Belgrade, young Princess Maria Augusta is prematurely grey, suffering from a broken heart. She, von Hausburg, three commissioners sent by the Austrian emperor, and Serbian mercenaries set out from the mistshrouded city in search of ominous whispers in the countryside: vampires. This literary work is told in alternating narratives through the Devil and Maria Augusta. Neither are reliable, the Devil because he is the Great Deceiver (obviously) and Maria Augusta because her narrative is a flashback viewed through an aged and hazy mind. The point-of-view shifts can be disorienting; they are in no way demarcated—one often reads a couple of paragraphs before realizing which character is speaking. These two versions of the same events diverge so widely towards the end that this multi-layered story is never completely elucidated. The vampire storyline is not the focus. Rather, it is the characterization, especially of the Devil, that fascinates; this is no superior being, but a frightened, selfish, supercilious individual who comes across as all too human. The Devil’s narrative jumps back and forth in time with anachronistic literary allusions thrown out all over the place. A reference to Moby Dick appears while the Devil waits for Mary Magdalene in a Jerusalem tavern three days after the crucifixion—the Devil resides in no particular time or place. Perhaps the most appealing aspect of the novel is the Devil’s relationship with Novak. Their verbal sparring provides both amusement and a great deal of depth. If you’re looking for a Gothic vampire tale, this isn’t the novel to provide it; come in with no expectations, and the unsolved puzzle can make for quite an enjoyable read. Bethany Latham

SAVAGE LIBERTY

Eliot Pattison, Counterpoint, 2018, $26.00, hb, 400pp, 9781619027213

In 1768, the English merchant ship Arcturus, arriving from London, explodes in Boston harbor, killing 37 men on board. Upon examination of the destroyed vessel and its contents, it’s determined that something of great value to the Sons of Liberty and the English government is missing. American woodsman Duncan McCallum feels he is obligated to avenge the deaths by finding the

culprit and locating the missing document. Duncan is soon on the run from the English with a price on his head after being falsely accused of murder and treason. As he travels north from Boston on the trail of the killer, he learns that two men who fought with Robert Rogers in the famous St. Francis raid during the French and Indian War, have been murdered. Followed by bounty hunters and a crazed British officer, Duncan obtains the help of Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys, while learning the invaluable lesson of what it means for freedom in the American colonies. This is the second book I’ve read in the series, but this book can be read as a standalone. Prepare to be immersed in this story of early America. The author’s research of the pre-revolution American colony provides an accurate depiction of this time period, with those who are against British rule and those who welcome it. This is historical writing at its best, with plenty of action and suspense. It’s difficult to put down. The historical characters, such as Sam Adams and John Hancock, blend in well with the fictional ones. I can’t wait for the next release in the series. Jeff Westerhoff

THE BALLADE OF MARY REEDE

Norman Schell, Moonshine Cove, 2017, $14.99, pb, 208pp, 9781945181184

John Tanner, a young Englishman trained as a ship’s carpenter and groomed for command of a merchant vessel of his own in the early 18th century, has the good favor of important men in the bustling Atlantic and Mediterranean trades. On one star-crossed voyage to the West Indies, Tanner’s ship runs afoul of the fearsome pirate Calico Jack Rackham. Forced into service aboard the pirate vessel, Tanner must fight for life and eventually for love on a sea where every man’s cutlass seems to be against him. With a sure hand, obviously the product of meticulous research, author Norman Schell infuses the twilight of the Pirate era with vivid and realistic life. More than that, though, he captures that world through the eyes and clear voice of Tanner in a way that makes readers feel they are sitting across a rough table from an old shipmate in a Bristol grog shop. The tale is not a mere swashbuckler but the poignant recounting of the defining adventure of one man’s life, in which he is caught in the inexorable grip of a fate that he can only rail and struggle against. Loyd Uglow

THE BEACHCOMBER

Ines Thorn (trans by Kate Northrop), AmazonCrossing, 2018, $14.95, pb, 246pp, 9781542048959

In 1711, on the Isle of Sylt on the North Sea coast, Jordis and her grandmother are considered outsiders due to their Icelandic heritage. Jordis risks her life beach-combing, raiding wrecked ships for whatever can be

salvaged, while her grandmother reads the runes. But on Jordis’s sixteenth birthday, Inga, the parson’s daughter and Jordis’s only friend, learns of the love Jordis has for the young blacksmith Arjen, and jealousy wins out. Inga steals Jordis’s future. Jordis faces more challenges when villagers begin to suspect her and her grandmother of witchcraft, and these suspicions eventually lead to terrible consequences. Stripped of everything she holds dear, Jordis is forced to remake her life on the unforgiving windswept coast of this isolated island. Can she survive this test with her heart and her ability to love unscathed? This romantic novel, the second in a trilogy set on the Isle of Sylt, can easily be read as a standalone, although I confess I now want to read the first volume in the series, The Whaler. I enjoyed The Beachcomber’s unusual setting and the well-drawn characters. The plot moved unpredictably to the conclusion, keeping me intrigued. Some interesting subplots, and one in particular, made me curious about the not yet released third volume of this trilogy. Ines Thorn is a multi-published author in Germany, and Northrop’s English translation does Thorn’s clear prose justice. Recommended for readers who enjoy unusual settings, those who enjoy sweet romances, or for anyone wanting an escapist read. Susan McDuffie

TREASON’S SPRING

Robert Wilton, Corvus, 2017, £18.99, hb, 404pp, 9781782391951

Paris, 1792. The Revolution is entering its bloodiest phase. The mob rampages through the streets of Paris; the wrong word, or even a look, can have deadly consequences. Into this maelstrom of senseless violence, a stranger arrives to meet a friend, only to find that he has disappeared. Amidst the chaos and political jockeying for power, the spies of England, France, and Prussia are fighting their own deadly war. Somewhere in Paris there is a hidden trove of royal secrets which all sides are desperate to find for their own use—whether destruction or political gain—while others look to take advantage of the chaos to enrich themselves. The stranger finds himself at the centre of a web of conspiracy, a player who has no idea of the deadly games being played. Readers looking for a modern version of The Scarlet Pimpernel will be disappointed; this is much darker and dangerous. Historical characters such as Fouche and Danton figure prominently along with the main fictional characters. This is a story of political intrigue, self-aggrandisement, murder, espionage, self-sacrifice and simple survival. The multiple plot lines and characters are strong, and the actual political machinations form an effective backdrop to the action. This is quality, and very enjoyable, historical fiction. Highly recommended. Mike Ashworth

19TH CENTURY

JACK WATERS

Scott Adlerberg, Broken River, 2018, $16.99, pb, 242pp, 9781940885421

Jack Waters is a professional gambler, the indolent son of a Confederate war hero who died at Shiloh when Waters was a baby. The shallow Waters lives by only two moral principles: never allow cheaters to go unpunished, and never fail to pay a gambling debt. Adhering to the first by stabbing to death a young man who cheated at poker turns Waters into a fugitive from the law. Fleeing to an anonymous island in the West Indies, Waters beats the despotic ruler of the island in a game of poker, but the man refuses to pay his debt. Waters joins with a rebel insurgency to try to reclaim his money from him. The novel is based on an interesting storyline, but it never fully delivers. Much of the action is off-page. A crucial part of the story, in which Waters and the wife of the American ambassador are in danger of losing their lives by rejoining the rebels, never appears on the page; all the reader sees is the aftermath of their decision without knowing what happened. There are also some intriguing puzzles whose answers are, again, off-page. Examples of this are the scenes in which Waters and the rebel leader give each other naked massages. These scenes more than hint at homosexual relations, but that theme goes unexamined. The elements of an engaging novel are all here, but the work suffers from a lack of content editing. Tighter editing in that regard would have created a more gripping narrative. John Kachuba

MAD BOY

Nick Arvin, Europa, 2018, $17.00/C$22.00, pb, 240pp, 9781609454586

Poor Henry Phipps is a young boy whose mother is accidentally killed when the roof of their hovel falls in upon her. He also learns that his older brother, Franklin, has been reportedly executed by firing squad for attempting to desert from the American army in Maryland. His father has been in debtor’s prison in Baltimore, so Henry is all alone. Henry hears his mother’s voice telling him to take her to his father and bury her near the sea near Baltimore. Unfortunately, the British Army is on the attack and is presently outside Washington D.C. preparing to battle the American militia at Bladensburg. Henry stuffs his mother in a barrel of pickled brine, loads her onto a small cart, and heads for Baltimore to free his father, check on his brother’s body and bury his mother. This is an aptly named novel of a young boy who hears voices and is called crazy by those he meets in his travels. Several interesting characters fill the pages, including an English deserter Henry befriends looking for loot in abandoned homes, runaway slaves, and Suther, the owner of the local plantation who wants the missing coins stolen from his home and feels that Henry knows their location. The pace of the story is unrelenting, with new

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characters and new problems for Henry to deal with. The author mixes in historical facts concerning the War of 1812 with his fictional characters trying to survive during and after the battles fought in Maryland. Read it to become absorbed in a fascinating and sometimes comical adventure.

around. This pleasant, formulaic Regency romance hits all the right beats, including a satisfying wedding night, and sets the reader up for sister Juliette’s quest in installment three.

Jeff Westerhoff

Simon Beaufort, Severn House, 2018, $28.99/£20.99, hb, 192pp, 9780727887627

SOMEONE TO CARE

Mary Balogh, Jove, 2018, $7.99/C$10.99, pb, 384pp, 9780399586088

A lady and a gentleman meet by accident at a country inn, and both decide to run off together for a brief affair, an escape from the burdens that the world has laid upon them. Unfortunately, the world tracks them down before they are ready, and the pair spend the rest of the time working their way painfully towards a happy ending. This is the bare bones of the plot: the first part focuses upon the state of mind which drove the protagonists to act so impetuously; the second upon the healing process both undergo at a personal and social level. The fourth in the Westcott series, which explores the impact upon his family of the late Earl of Rivendale’s bigamous marriage, focuses upon Viola Kingsley, who believed, mistakenly, she was his legitimate wife. Family have rallied around, but the wounds of betrayal run deep, and she is on the verge of a breakdown when she meets Marcel Lamarr, Marquess of Dorchester. They had been attracted to each other years ago, but now the flame rekindles. He, however, has his own wounds. Another wise and insightful Regency romance from one of the finest authors in the genre. Highly recommended. Ray Thompson

THE DUKE OF HER DESIRE

Sophie Barnes, Avon, 2017, $7.99, pb, 378pp, 9780062566829

This sweet, sedate sequel to An Unlikely Duke turns to Lady Amelia, suddenly elevated from the slums of St. Giles after her brother inherits a dukedom. The Duke of Coventry, her appointed escort, won’t act on his attraction to his friend’s sister because his special needs child deserves his time and full attention. Amelia, though she fell for Coventry at their first dance, decides to establish a charitable school and buys a house that turns into a money pit, requiring her to seek Coventry’s assistance. The action is decorous throughout, despite the fistfights, stabbings, fires, and compromising of ladies; even the laborers and criminals talk like dukes. Despite Amelia’s rough background, readers won’t find any Eliza-Doolittle-at-the-races moments here. High society accepts Amelia immediately; her suitors compete to deliver fulsome compliments and charitable donations; and Amelia has a knack for communicating with special needs children. Barnes is most at home in the indoor settings of balls, parlors, and carriages, and tenderly sketches Amelia’s longings as she waits for her adorably dense duke to come 26

Misty Urban

MIND OF A KILLER

In London in 1882, Alec Lonsdale, a reporter for the Pall Mall Gazette, stumbles upon a house fire and investigates in hopes of a good story. Having left the Colonial Service in Africa and in need of making his living, he’s trying to win the confidence of his editor and gain a full-time position. The burning house proves both fruitful and confounding. The dead body inside reveals something alarming during the autopsy: someone neatly removed part of the brain. And then others die, and more brains go missing. But the police squelch Alec’s inquiries, and they dismiss the connections he’s drawing. This novel is both gruesome and intriguing. If the misuse of Darwin and other Victorian intellectual misadventures captivate your more ghoulish sense of history, then I recommend this mystery. Beaufort weaves together Victorian scientific thought, emerging forensics, the hard realities of poverty in 19th-century London, the suffocating roles allowed for women and some sick criminals. That’s quite a brew, and it will keep you guessing. Alec is a likeable, upperclass man with broad enough life experience that he thinks in unconventional ways. He treats unorthodox women and others with respect and the villains with a strong fist to the face. Beaufort effectively binds his reader to this amateur sleuth so that the life and death situations keep the pages flipping. An enjoyable, on-the-dark-side, Victorian mystery. Judith Starkston

CARNEGIE’S MAID

Marie Benedict, Sourcebooks, 2018, $25.99, hb, 288pp, 9781492646617

Clara Kelley finds her way from an impoverished village in Galway to the bustling streets of Pittsburgh, determined to secure a position in America and send money home to her struggling family. Mistaken for another Irish girl of the same name, she is offered a coveted position as a lady’s maid in the home of the Carnegies—an up-and-coming family soon to be among the wealthiest in America. But as Clara adapts to her new duties, she must maintain her false identity as a Protestant with experience serving in the elegant homes of Dublin. And as the dashing son of the household, Andrew Carnegie, begins to take an interest in her, Clara must decide whether she is willing to risk her position – and her family’s safety—for a chance at something more. Andrew Carnegie may have come from a modest immigrant background like her own, but he is quickly becoming one of the most ruthless industrialists in history. And as the household cook warns her, “[I’ve] seen

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too many masters and servants crossing the boundaries... It never ends well for the servant.” Benedict paints a chiaroscuro picture of 1860s Pittsburgh, with the opulence of fine gowns and banquets alternating with the black soot of poverty. Occasionally the moral lines become a little too tidy and character motivations a little too noble. Several chapters drop off at cliffhanger moments—will the illicit relationship be discovered?—only to skip ahead weeks or months with little resolution. The relationship between Clara and Andrew Carnegie never quite moves into the realm of real equality, or real love. But in the end, Benedict salvages this with a refreshing dose of reality, reminding us that some unfortunate truths of history cannot be rewritten. Ann Pedtke

AN IRREGULAR REGIMENT

Lynn Bryant, Amazon, 2017, £2.99/$4.17, ebook, 314pp, B073KB7HQ4

The setting is the Napoleonic Wars, and the subtitle is: A Novel from the Battle of Bussaco to the Battle of Sabugal, which is about as much plot as you’re going to get from me on this one. As the novel opens, Major Paul van Daan, his new wife, Anne, and his regiment, the 110th, are given a new assignment by General Wellington, and it sounds dead boring: coordinating supplies and men to ensure that Wellington’s army can keep fighting the French. But when Paul enters a story, boredom promptly exits as fast as possible. Instead of major battles, Paul finds himself fighting a very different kind of campaign, as he must serve under one of the army’s worst commanding officers, and learns that etiquette has its place, just as cannon have theirs, and that “diplomacy” and “compromise” are also weapons. Between skirmishes, battles, the arrival of an old enemy, trying to train new officers in his own style of leadership, and, on the social front, fighting malicious gossip and sneers at his wife (who is a very skilled surgeon—and Anne thought stitching those samplers was a total waste of time!), Paul’s got his hands full. Paul’s is a very irregular regiment indeed—and despite occasionally awkward writing and a relatively slender plot, the book’s an enjoyable read. India Edghill

A BORROWED DREAM

Amanda Cabot, Revell, 2018, $15.99, pb, 352pp, 9780800727574

In 1881, Austin Goddard comes to Cimarron Creek, Texas with a secret: he’s a noted plastic surgeon from back East, but must hide that fact. He and his small daughter, Hannah, are on the run from a criminal who threatened the Goddards after Austin refused to perform surgery on Enright’s face to alter his appearance and evade the law. Posing as a rancher in Cimarron, Austin becomes attracted to Catherine Whitfield, Hannah’s teacher. However, Catherine is contemptuous of doctors because the local man’s archaic methods hurried her mother’s death. Just

as she softens towards Austin, Catherine inadvertently starts a chain of events that gives Enright a clue to Austin’s whereabouts, and puts them all into danger. This is the second volume of the Cimarron Creek series. Cabot’s plot choices give the couple good reasons for remaining conflicted about their relationship, which maintains suspense. I liked the danger scene where a female character acts to rescue herself instead of waiting for male help. I was a bit skeptical about “plastic surgery” being used in 1881, but in an author’s afterword, Cabot makes a convincing case for the long history of the profession and use of the term. A fine inspirational novel. B.J. Sedlock

A FALLEN WOMAN

Nancy Carson, Avon, 2018, £1.99, ebook, 464pp, 9780008134884 / also $14.99, pb, 464pp, 9780008173555

Though a saga in length, Carson’s sequel reads like a soapy melodrama as it follows the characters from A Country Girl in their sexual misadventures, child-bearing, and other misfortunes in business and love in England’s Black Country in 1892. Lovely, unfaithful Aurelia Sampson, the fallen woman of the title, connects the characters of this ensemble cast in which men are measured by their financial success and women judged by their beauty. Her faithless spouse, Benjamin Sampson, neglects his failing business to romp with his mistress while initiating a divorce; Algie Stokes builds a competing business and denies his attraction to Aurelia to preserve his marriage to Marigold, Aurelia’s half-sister; and Clarence Froggatt, Aurelia’s ex-fiancé, weds plain Harriet Meese and inherits an unexpected fortune. A lively subplot features Benjamin pursuing the gorgeous Kate Stokes, a highstepping chorus girl. The prose is as stiff as a whalebone corset in some spots, but the dramatic action of bedroom and courtroom, shop floor and office, grand home and hovel keeps the pace moving. Carson’s late Victorian world of industry and commerce mixes a touch of Dickensian grit with Downton Abbey’s fashionable gloss, never letting its characters suffer more than they can stand. Misty Urban

PLAGUE PITS & RIVER BONES

Karen Charlton, Thomas & Mercer, 2018, $15.95, pb, 348pp, 9781542048392

Detective Stephen Lavender and Constable Ned Woods of Bow Street are struggling with the extra workload assigned to them. In an effort to earn additional funds for remodeling and expanding the police station, Magistrate Read is sending the principal officers far and wide to investigate crimes at the request of wealthy citizens willing to pay for the service. Nonetheless, when a shoe containing a

severed foot washes up on the shore of the Thames, Lavender becomes determined to solve the mystery, despite the magistrate’s order. He and Woods quietly squeeze this potentially futile investigation into their already full schedules. Lavender travels to meet with an aristocratic couple robbed on the highway after attending an upper-class party. While he is away, a purse snatcher attempts to target Lady Caroline, a good friend of Lavender’s wife. Soon afterwards, a guest at Lady Caroline’s soiree is found dead. The man’s body has been brazenly dumped in one of the old plague pits recently uncovered at Bow Street Station during construction work. The magistrate requires Lavender to spend hours surveilling a disgruntled man who has become a nuisance to a Member of Parliament. However, the detective would much rather investigate a shadowy new criminal gang his informant says has moved to London from the north of England. Once Lavender discovers the connection between all these seemingly unrelated cases, his life is in imminent danger. Suspense soars when an enigmatic new adversary lures Lavender into a deadly trap. This fourth book in the mystery series combines a well-crafted plot and a set of likeable core characters. It also includes some gripping developments that surpass the routine crimes Bow Street principal officers typically handled, as well as a notorious historical event from 1812 interwoven with the story’s fictional strands. Cynthia Slocum

THE BEST OF SISTERS

Dilly Court, Arrow, 2017, £6.99/$15.99, pb, 534pp, 9781784752545

Having accidentally killed a man, Bart Bragg, a Thames waterman, is forced to flee England, abandoning his 12-year-old sister, Eliza, to the cruel guardianship of their uncle, a Wapping chandler. Life in the chandlery is very hard; only her hopes for Bart’s return comfort Eliza. When her uncle throws her onto the street in rags and barefoot, she is taken in by a kind sailmaker and his wife. Eliza finds a job, and life seems promising, but there are many challenges to come. The novel splits between Bart’s adventures in the New Zealand goldfields and Eliza’s struggles in the East End slums. A natural storyteller, Court skilfully paces the Braggs’ crises and triumphs—and there are many— keeping the reader gripped over 500 pages. Eliza is a three-dimensional heroine: a convincing product of 19th-century poverty and prejudice. London’s East End with its hardships and violence is well drawn, as are its variety of residents. A very entertaining read. Lynn Guest

THE RIVER MAID

Dilly Court, HarperCollins, 2018, £7.99, pb, 498pp, 9780008199609

The River Maid series is a new departure

for the historical romance writer, Dilly Court. In this first book in the series, set in the mid-1800s, Court tells the story of Essie, a young woman working in a man’s world as a Thames boatman, filling in for her ill (and drunken) father. Her life changes when she ferries a mysterious stranger to the docks. Cue a dizzying read of a story, which ranges in location from London’s Limehouse Docks, to country houses, Portugal and all the way to Australia and back again (twice over). Whilst the docks and London generally are well described, I was less convinced by the descriptions of Australia. For historical romance enthusiasts it has everything: a mysterious stranger, a tall dark handsome sweetheart, gold mining, a ghost, childbirth and marriage. But Court, as in her previous novels, pays real attention to the struggles of ordinary people, making their way in the world without protection. She also writes eloquently about the extra challenges women faced, with Essie fully aware that “women’s work was to stay at home, marry, keep house”. Essie is even attacked by an acquaintance when visiting the docks, saying: “I’ve been waiting too long for a bit of satisfaction from this tease.” Thankfully Essie is not only rescued, but also prospers in a man’s world. At times, although I enjoyed this generoushearted book, I wondered if it was constrained sufficiently by historical facts, as Hilary Mantel urges of writing fiction set in the past. At times I felt I had to suspend disbelief in order to enjoy this rags-to-riches story. Nevertheless, it was a compelling read, as a textured historical romance, that does not forget that ordinary peoples’ lives are as important as those of people born into wealth. Katharine Quarmby

THE MUSE OF FIRE

Carol M. Cram, New Arcadia, 2018, $16.99, pb, 288pp, 9780981024141

Regency romance meets backstage drama in a novel that is long on plot twists, but a little short on emotionally believable characters. Grace Johnson, a pragmatic but extremely naïve beauty, flees her abusive father in the first page and meets the usual unpleasantness in the dark alleys of 19th-century London. She is rescued by Ned Plantagenet, the young stage manager of the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden, who is as improbably chivalrous as his name implies. She is welcomed into the company as a chorus girl just in time to join the company’s summer tour to Bath. Readers looking for the drawing-room wit of typical Regencies will find that Grace is a heroine more in the Brontë vein: conflicted, prickly, and prone to having inappropriate feelings for ineligible men. She also has the misfortune of joining John Kemble’s celebrated company just as it experiences the devastating 1808 fire that destroyed the Theatre Royal, followed by the Old Price Riots that delayed the reopening of the rebuilt Theatre for months. Grace’s personal life is no less chaotic, as she clings to her

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dream of acting in spite of a malicious aunt, disinheritance, a marriage of convenience, family shame, and a predatory leading man. It’s an entertaining read for the first half, before the reader begins to tire of the paper-thin characters, but Cram is a good storyteller and knows how to propel her plot past coincidental meetings, unnecessary secret-keeping, and the frustrating stubbornness of her heroine. Kristen McDermott

THE WHICH WAY TREE

Elizabeth Crook, Little, Brown, 2018, $26.00, hb, 279pp, 9780316434959

Back in 1857, El Demonio de Dos Dedos— The Demon of Two Fingers—didn’t know that he was starting serious trouble. The hungry panther thought he had an easy meal when he ambushed six-year old Samantha Shreve in Texas hill country, but her mother, Juda, a toughened exslave, was not about to lose her daughter without a fight. Wielding a hatchet, Juda threw herself at that panther as he climbed a pecan tree with her daughter in his jaws. The big cat lost two hind toes, but escaped. Juda lost her life, and Samantha’s face was horrifically scarred. Six years later, Samantha and her fourteenyear old half-brother, Benjamin, doggedly scratch out a hungry existence after their father dies. The girl raises goats, and when two are taken by a predator, the children study the scene to see what sort of animal stalks their farm. It’s a panther—a big one—missing two toes. Benjamin reckons that two kids in a shoddy house, with only “bat shat” for gunpowder, are helpless; but Samantha grimly sets a trap for her mother’s killer. Benjamin describes this, and much more in The Which Way Tree. It’s the ultimate hunting tale wrapped in rich Western lore written by the multi-award-winning Elizabeth Crook. Her wry story is told in a Twain-esque, easyflowing vernacular that is a joy to read. Even better is Ms. Crook’s amazing Samantha, who won’t let hunger, exhaustion, or a murderous Confederate renegade slow her quest for vengeance. Ms. Crook’s tale is fast-paced and uniquely entertaining, so I had trouble slowing down enough to savor The Which Way Tree. Dang, now I have to read it again, and I recommend that you do too. Jo Ann Butler

THE PRINCE & THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS

Saul David, Hodder & Stoughton, 2018, £8.99, hb, 294pp, 9780340953686

After an eight year wait, here is a further

instalment in the adventures of Major George ‘Zulu’ Hart, hero of Queen Victoria’s ‘little wars’. However, this time Hart is not at an outpost of the empire but in the East End of London solving the ‘crime of the century’, the Jack the Ripper murders (1888). Saul David is a distinguished military historian as well as a storyteller, and I was disappointed that Hart was not going back to war. Besides, isn’t Jack the Ripper rather done to death by novelists? But David cannot write a boring story, and I am sure you will enjoy this as much as Hart’s earlier adventures. Jack the Ripper would not be half so famous had he been caught. The fascination of the murders is that they are unsolved. Early on, crime writers seized on the thesis that the killer was an eminent personage whose identity was hushed up by his Establishment colleagues. The idea that Victoria’s grandson, Prince Albert (Eddy), was involved was first mooted in 1970. David takes the opposite view, and his book is the story of how Hart proves the Prince’s innocence. Hart becomes Eddy’s covert ‘minder’ when the Prince of Wales, alarmed at the louche company his son is keeping, appoints Hart to his son’s regiment. The Prince’s forays into the East End for forbidden pleasures soon put him under suspicion as the serial killer: the only way Hart can avert a royal scandal is to find the true killer himself. Needless to say, he succeeds, but of course the killer is not brought to justice. Instead he meets a deserved but unpublicised end. A fine Victorian crime novel. Edward James

WEST

Carys Davies, Scribner, 2018, $22.00/C$28.00, hb, 160pp, 9781501179341 / Granta, 2018, £12.99, hb, 160pp, 9781783784226

This slim volume houses a simple “journey” plot within an incredibly n u a n c e d presentation. Sometime after the Lewis and Clark Expedition, widower Cyrus Bellman comes across an article about gigantic bones found in Kentucky. Obsessed with discovering the live animals he is certain still roam in the great wilderness of the Northwest, he leaves behind his mule farm and ten-year-old daughter, setting out on the route taken by the expedition, picking up a Native American guide along the way. Meanwhile, back in Pennsylvania, Bellman’s daughter awaits his return as unsettling events unfold. More than one man begins formulating dreadful designs against the child, beneath the very nose of the oblivious aunt to whose care she has been

REVIEWS | Issue 84, May 2018

entrusted. Will Bellman survive to return, and if he does, will it be in time? Davies drips pathos from the very first pages: the modern reader already knows the Kentucky bones are fossil remnants of Ice Age megafauna that haven’t walked the earth for millennia—Bellman’s quest is futile, all that occurs afterwards needless and avoidable. The characterization here, from the primary to the minor, is superb, a perfect example of how to craft beings that come to life on the page through show, not tell. Immersion in these characters’ perceptions of each other and their world is complete. This novella has a fantastic quality that can make it read like a fable; it is highly imaginative, and the author’s capacity with language is enviable. In sum: an immensely satisfying way to spend an hour or two, a very promising debut, and definitely an author to watch. Bethany Latham

CIRQUE

Mary Ellen Dennis, Five Star, 2018, $25.95, hb, 266pp, 9781432845001

In 1851, Bernadette McCoy meets her end at the paws of her seven cats, or so it appears. The fact that her niece Angelique is missing, though, points to a more human cause of death. The police chief launches an investigation. But first the tale is rolled back ten months to Sean Kelley, son of a reprobate, who sees the lovely Angelique on the high wire at Paris’s Cirque de Délices. Smitten, he pursues her and in typical romantic fashion, loses her due to a misunderstanding. When Angelique emigrates to America, Sean follows determined to do two things: get Angelique back and start his own circus. The latter goal is aided when he falls in with P.T. Barnum. Meanwhile, Sean’s reprobate father has also come to America, attracted by the California Gold Rush and a winsome lass who shares his predilection for fleecing people. If all this sounds rather convoluted, that’s because it is, but only in the most quirky and engaging manner. The author has an undeniable talent for creating vivid, fallible, deeply flawed—and deeply hilarious— characters. Though the story progression is a bit disjointed, the reader is swept along by the sheer delight experienced on every page. Whether it is from unexpected and amusing language, such as “vomitous swoon,” roguish, morally gray characters, or the offbeat story style, you’ll undoubtedly find this book a keeper. Highly recommended. Xina Marie Uhl

WITHOUT THE VEIL BETWEEN: Anne Brontë—A Fine and Subtle Spirit

DM Denton, All Things that Matter Press, 2017, $16.99, pb, 212pp, 9780999524336

This novel about Anne, the youngest and least-known of the Brontë sisters, deals sensitively with the trials of a young woman who struggled through a difficult life. It reveals

Anne as a combination of poetess in the style appropriate for an English lady and as an early feminist writer keenly aware of her submissive role as a young lady in Victorian society. Anne’s poems are lyrical, illustrative of the depth of her feelings. As befits the daughter of an Anglican clergyman, they also demonstrate her belief in the closeness of God. Yet Anne Brontë is known as one whose beliefs about the role of women in many ways formed the basis of the later feminist movements. This book illustrates the life of Anne the sister and daughter. It reveals her despairing affection for her brother Branwell, with his Byronic good looks and gradual descent into alcoholism. Her sisters, too, are well characterized—Charlotte, the eldest, practical, bossy and dismissive of Anne’s talent as a writer; and the warm-hearted Emily. Anne’s adult life is shown as she progresses from unhappy governess—a role appropriate but unsuited to her—to published poet and novelist. Her two novels Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall are less well known than her sisters’ novels but demonstrate no less talent and insight. Denton has clearly researched Anne Brontë’s writing in all forms. The quoted poetry and prose in the endnotes add depth to the whole. The scenes of Anne and her sisters are sensitively imagined and show a sisterly mix of affection and irritation. Despite the overly lengthy title and the unattractive cover art, it is worthwhile to open the book to discover more about Anne, the least appreciated of the Brontë sisters. Valerie Adolph

THE KATIE DUGAN CASE

William Francis, Moonshine Cove, 2017, $15.99, pb, 316pp, 9781945181252

Widower detective David Drummond has returned to his home and job in Wilmington, Delaware in October 1892, following two months with his son and his family after the loss of his wife. There is no easing back into work for him. He’s assigned the murder case of Katie Dugan and is partnered with Adelia Bern, the first woman detective on the Wilmington police force. Bern had been a Pinkerton detective in Chicago before moving to Delaware, and Drummond is one of the few men to accord her the respect she deserves. Francis has a great love for Delaware’s history, which he imparts through his protagonist. As Bern is a newcomer to the state, there’s an excuse for the exposition, but it’s exposition just the same. The structure of the book is somewhat choppy—it’s a whopping 79 chapters, and each chapter is short, often ending on an unfinished note, with the next chapter picking up in another place. This may be because there is no end of suspects in the stabbing death of Katie Dugan, whose autopsy reveals that she was pregnant. Drummond lights on suspect after suspect, making enemies in the process. Among them is the powerful DuPont family. Drummond connects Dugan’s murder to the

suicide of Louis DuPont, but this famous event and family is shoehorned in a bit too late in the tale to be effective. Francis expertly captures the tension between career politicians and detectives like Drummond and Bern who care about justice, but there are too many disparate threads to make the book effective as a whole. Ellen Keith

VARINA

Charles Frazier, Ecco, 2018, $27.99/C$34.99, hb, 368pp, 9780062405982.

At Saratoga Springs in 1906, the widowed Varina Howell Davis relates pieces of her life’s journey to visitor James Blake (aka “Jimmie Limber”), a black orphan she rescued in wartime Richmond. Teenaged Varina had few marriage prospects in Mississippi, so she chose to wed the much older Jefferson Davis as his second wife, expecting security and a stable plantation life. Upon her marriage and moving to The Hurricane, she discovered that she not only had to deal with the memory of Jeff’s beloved first wife, but also with contentious inlaws. Escaping from Mississippi as a freshman senator’s wife to Washington, the intelligent, witty Varina, whose opinions and attitudes did not always match her husband’s, was swept up in the political turmoil of the era. When the nation was torn apart and her husband became president of the Confederacy, their lives entered a dark and tumultuous period in America, and were forever altered. I enjoyed the author’s portrayal of Varina as a strong, somewhat unconventional and complicated woman who recognizes that “being on the wrong side of history carries consequences.” However, I found his writing style disjointed and choppy, the novel more a series of vignettes than a continuously flowing narrative. The segment detailing her flight from Richmond to Florida I thought tedious and overlong, while major events in antebellum Washington or in the Confederate White House or her more personal relationships are given short shrift. His lyrically written but slow-moving passages paint a memorable picture of a grindingly devastated South at war’s end, although some sections, especially the Davises’ lives at Beauvoir and Varina’s life after Jeff’s death, seem a bit rushed. A gallant attempt to bring the shrouded Varina into sharper focus, but it felt uneven, untidy, and ultimately unsatisfying. Michael I. Shoop

TROUBLE THE WATER

Jacqueline Friedland, SparkPress, $16.95, pb, 346pp, 9781943006540

2018,

Charleston, South Carolina, is a colorful place in 1845: a bustling harbor, beautiful flowers and orchards, young women in bright dresses. What strikes teenager Abigail Milton, however, newly arrived from the small town of Wigan, outside Manchester, England, is that slavery is still legal in the United States, and that casts a pall over her impressions of her new life. That, and her host Douglas Elling,

her father’s best friend from childhood, is a grumpy, unwelcoming man. Abigail’s parents sent her to Charleston in the hopes that the wealthy Elling would provide her a better life than they can, as they struggle with debt and poor health. Abigail does blossom under the tutelage of governess Larissa, though she also rails against the airs and facades expected of young women. She also discovers the truth behind Elling’s behavior, brought about by the devastating deaths of his wife and daughter three years earlier. Friedlander’s debut novel tackles some big issues, from slavery and abolition to a young woman’s sexual trauma. These are worthy themes, but Friedlander tends to tell, rather than show, what her characters are thinking and feeling, making for abrupt shifts in tone and mood as well as less-than-believable actions. Secondary characters, especially, are not drawn with any subtlety, and most come across as unlikeable caricatures with no redeeming qualities meant to represent entire social classes. In marked contrast is the subplot of a runaway slave, in which the secretive and quiet assistance along the road to freedom is portrayed with far more depth in fewer words. Readers will get a mixed picture of the time and the people in Charleston and Wigan, with occasional beautifully rendered moments. Helene Williams

WHY KILL THE INNOCENT

C.S. Harris, Berkley, 2018, $26.00/C$35.00, hb, 352pp, 9780399585623

In 1814, the last Frost Fair was held on the Thames, and London was in the midst of the cruelest of winters. Men and boys quaked at the sight of press gangs scooping up the unwary for service in the Royal Navy, while their parents and wives wondered what happened to loved ones who did not return. Returning home after speaking to the young wife of an impressed cooper, Hero Devlin, wife of Viscount Sebastian St. Cyr, is caught in a storm. She trips over an object hidden in a snowdrift: the body of Princess Charlotte Augusta’s piano teacher, Jane Ambrose. But why would anyone kill the musician, who by all accounts was well-liked? Despite their knowledge that any examination linking the palace to such unpleasantness will rapidly be dismissed by authorities, Hero and Sebastian work together, determined to discover the culprit. As the suspects increase, the enterprising Devlins find themselves blocked from easy answers by those in power who have much to lose. The Regent grows testy, the Princess sadder and more isolated, and Caroline of Brunswick, the Regent’s estranged wife—well, she has more than a few things she would love to say to him. Combining historical personages and little-known facts with her fictional characters makes C.S. Harris’s St. Cyr mysteries (this is the thirteenth) so rewarding. Sebastian is a brilliantly flawed man with a powerful sense

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of justice for the common man, and his beloved Hero is his equal in intellect and intensity. One final note on the meticulousness of the setting. Just how does the author convince readers they are actually feeling that frigid atmosphere of eternal snow, cutting ice, and biting wind? Rarely have I ever felt as cold while reading a novel. I hope her next novel will be set in the summer, but even so, this book was a joy! Monica E. Spence

THE FRAMINGHAM FIEND

Gregory Harris, Kensington, 2018, $15.95/ C$17.95, pb, 311pp, 9781617738913

In Victorian London, several prostitutes are found murdered and viciously gutted. Detective Colin Pendragon, along with his trusted companion Ethan Pruitt, is called upon by Scotland Yard to assist in finding this heinous criminal. The citizens of London fear this is the work of the Ripper, although a man claiming to be the Ripper had been captured several years earlier. Colin is recuperating from a gunshot wound obtained on his previous assignment. Therefore, Ethan must now work alone at first to help Scotland Yard in the investigation. Along with these grisly murders, a son of a wealthy client is murdered and the only item that can lead to his capture is the pair of expensive shoes worn by the killer. The investigations eventually lead these two sleuths into opium dens and visits to the local morgue for the examination of the corpses and dealing with uncooperative coroners. The sixth entry in the Colin Pendragon Mystery series. My favorite detectives in Victorian England are at it again, attempting to find and arrest a monstrous killer. The details of everyday life of the inhabitants of London town—the destitute and the rich, the hungry and the well-fed—are eloquently described, giving a fascinating glimpse of the Victorian period. I probably would have benefited from reading the previous book to learn more about Colin’s injury and his near-death coma, although not having this knowledge did not take away from the enjoyment of reading about their new crime story. An excellent, wellwritten mystery novel, and I look forward to the next entry in the series. Jeff Westerhoff

ONLY KILLERS AND THIEVES

Paul Howarth, Harper, 2018, $26.99, hb, 336pp, 9780062690968 / Pushkin, 2018, £16.99, hb, 416pp, 9781911590033

Two Australian teenagers, Billy and Tommy McBride, return to their parents’ cattle ranch one afternoon in 1885 to find their mother and father murdered and younger sister gravely wounded. Suspicion falls on an Aboriginal hired hand who once worked there; his pistol lies in the dirt. A wealthy neighbor who seems to own everyone and everything hires a posse led by Noone, a police officer, and pushes the McBride boys to join. Sixteen-year-old Billy, 30

pigheaded, impetuous, and unwilling to admit a fear or tender feeling, is all for it. But Tommy, nearly fifteen, has his reservations, though he goes along, seeing little choice. I like how the brothers’ interplay mirrors the terror their acquiescence sets in motion, and Howarth’s prose makes the rocks and droughtridden scrub speak eloquently of wanton violence, desperation, and isolation. The boys’ characters carry the narrative, but Noone has his moments as a cold-blooded theoretician who thinks he can justify sociopathic behavior as utterly rational. The wealthy neighbor, however, lacks depth, and the Freudian cliché that’s supposed to explain why he’s so intent on throwing his weight around undermines Howarth’s otherwise clear-sighted approach. The climax is startlingly talky (including Nietzschean speeches by Noone), a contrast to the taut, laconic narrative up to then. But Only Killers and Thieves remains an extraordinary first novel from an author to watch. Howarth has captured the time and place as naturally as breathing, and his narrative proves that a literary story need not lack for tension. One note of caution: The novel lives up to its title, and several scenes demonstrate graphically how men with guns can hold human life very cheap. Larry Zuckerman

A BRUSH WITH SHADOWS

Anna Lee Huber, Berkley, 2018, $16.00, pb, 384pp, 9780399587221

In July 1831, Sebastian Gage has come home to Langstone Manor in Scotland. Surrounding his home are beautiful and bleak moors and bogs, in which one could die during the frequently changing weather conditions. Upon his return from Ireland with his new wife, Kiera, Gage finds that his grandfather, the Viscount Tavistock, is gravely ill and his cousin, Alfred, has been missing for several weeks. Mysteries galore fill this dark and gloomy home, and Gage has nothing but sad and angry thoughts about it. Kiera can’t figure out if cousin Roland Trevelyan is friend or foe. Also feeding fuel to the fire of concern is a woman described as a “viperous” aunt, a woman who provides herbal remedies which earns her the name of “witch,” a father who practically hated Gage, the unexplained deaths by poisoning of three family members, and some incorrigible servants who may just be playing pranks on Kiera or be part of a murderous plot. Add to the mess a bevy of superstitious beliefs that are conveyed among the villagers as curses or the work of pixies. A rebellion against those using threshing machines is beginning to grow, which only contributes more to the suspicions that rarely subside. All in all, despite being rather dragged out in scope, A Brush with Shadows is a suspenseful gothic mystery in which a dying man and others with malign desires seek to thwart the mission Gage and Kiera now fully embrace. A good read, but with little historical context.

REVIEWS | Issue 84, May 2018

Viviane Crystal

AN INCONVENIENT BEAUTY

Kristi Ann Hunter, Bethany House, 2017, $14.99, pb, 381pp, 9780764218279

Griffith, Duke of Riverton, decides to follow rational principles when he selects a bride, but his choice, Miss Frederica St. Claire, not only proves surprisingly evasive, but keeps leaving him in the company of her cousin, Miss Isabella Breckenridge. Since the latter is intelligent as well as strikingly beautiful, he finds himself falling in love with her; she, however, rejects his suit, preferring to flirt with a crowd of less eminent rivals. Though the plot seems a bit forced, both ladies have reasons for their mystifying behavior (he is a duke and eligible), but it takes considerable time and effort to reach the happy conclusion one expects from a Regency romance. When the author allows her characters to relax in the company of friends and family, the interaction is humorous and lively. Such interludes are overshadowed, unfortunately, by the stressful situations in which they find themselves and the misery and guilt that result. Although the protagonists keep reminding themselves to trust that God will work things out for the best, this brings them more frustration than comfort, as can often be the case in inspirational romances. It is a reaction some readers will share. Learning patience is not easy. Ray Thompson

HOLDING THE FORT

Regina Jennings, Bethany House, 2017, $15.99, pb, 352pp, 9780764218934

When Louisa Bell arrives at Fort Reno, Oklahoma in 1885, she’s got to tread carefully. An unemployed dance hall singer with a ne’erdo-well brother in the cavalry, she’s pretending to be a governess while she figures out how to reinvent herself. Louisa is nothing if she’s not adaptable—though audacious may be a better way to describe her—so she takes on the challenge of educating the dashing but stern commanding officer’s two wild young daughters. The problem is that her formal education is lacking, and behaving like a respectable woman is quite the challenge when she has been raised in less-than-respectable venues. She manages it only after a slew of misadventures. Louisa’s character is by turns hilarious, charming, and inventive, and it is this winning combination that endears her to Daniel Adams, the commander of the fort, and his daughters. This good-natured tale evolves naturally and treats matters of faith with a light, heartwarming touch, making it a perfect read for lovers of historical romance. Xina Marie Uhl

THE LONG SHADOW

Beth Kanell, Five Star, 2018, $25.95, hb, 300pp, 9781432837631

This is book one of the Winds of Freedom series. It is March 1850 in northeastern

Vermont, and teenaged Alice Sanborn works hard helping her parents both in the house and with the farm chores outside and in the barn. She and her best friend, Jerushah, have taken twelve-year-old Sarah under their wing. Sarah is a runaway slave, assisted by the Underground Railroad to escape Virginia and seek a better life in the North. Alice’s relatives are abolitionists, although they argue about the best way to free the slaves considering the political and socio-economic climate of the times. In trying to help fellow abolitionists avoid a bounty hunter looking for escaped slaves, Alice inadvertently puts herself, Jerushah, Sarah, and others of their friends in a good deal of danger. As they battle the brutal late winter weather of northern Vermont, their very survival is in doubt. Gritty Alice, almost as rock-ribbed as her Vermont hills, copes with aplomb, although other characters are not as strong as she is. It is chilling to think that even in Vermont near the Canadian border, runaway slaves could still be captured and returned to their southern masters. This story gives a realistic picture of women’s lives at that time—the endless, grinding drudgery, the difficulties entailed in domestic life, outdoor work, and pregnancy and childbirth. Mostly it is a reminder that freedom is not free. There were many struggles and sacrifices along the way before slavery was abolished and all Americans were emancipated. I read this book in one sitting just before the Martin Luther King Day holiday, and while the story is entertaining, it sends an important message about cherishing and safeguarding our liberties—liberties for all of us. Elizabeth Knowles

BREWER’S REVENGE

James Keffer, Penmore, 2017, $19.50, pb, 340pp, 9781946409287

Commander William Brewer is reveling in his first opportunity to captain a ship. To be sure, the HMS Revenge is a smaller ship than he had hoped for, but he is both excited and nervous to be taking on the challenge of captaining one of His Majesty’s ships. HMS Revenge has been won from the pirate Jean Lafitte in battle. She has been re-fitted with 20 guns and is stationed in the Caribbean in the early 19th century. Her crew’s purpose is to seek out pirates and “blow them out of the water.” Captain Brewer has faced pirates before, and he is seeking personal revenge. He does his best to captain his ship as effectively as experienced captains like Admiral Horatio Hornblower. Brewer had been Hornblower’s aide on St Helena during Napoleon’s imprisonment. His knowledge of Napoleon enables him to establish valuable friendships with captains of the French fleet who are also in the Caribbean trying to rid it of pirates. On the Revenge, though, Brewer is facing problems. The ship’s doctor is drinking heavily. One of the seamen is a malcontent,

making trouble. A seaman falls to his (or her) death from the rigging, and the captain feels responsible. And then, of course, he faces the battles with pirates. This novel about pirate hunting in the time of George IV moves along swiftly and surely through the mixing and mingling of several national interests and their all-encompassing motivator: greed. It presents a clear view of the complexities of both the responsibilities of command and of the politics of naval life. The author gives his readers an in-depth view of life aboard a sailing ship and of strategies for outwitting pirates. It’s an interesting read for anyone who finds stories of ships and the men who sail them intriguing. Valerie Adolph

THE UNLIKELY MASTER GENIUS

Carla Kelly, Camel, 2018, $15.95, pb, 249pp, 9781603816830

It’s always time to rejoice when a new Regencyset series debuts from the imagination of Carla Kelly. This time, we have Mr. Chips in the form of the polymath genius with the strangely apt name of Durable Six, who can’t remember to keep his hair combed. Never fear, he has a keeper in the form of his new bride, Meridee, an on-theshelf spinster with no dowry but endless game and love for her troubled, baffling new husband. Add a school full of the boys of St. Brendan’s, who, like their new math and seamanship master, are former ill-used workhouse foundlings. Place them all in a fragile, peaceful respite (during the 1803 Truce of Amiens) during the Napoleonic Wars, and a compelling story ensues. The love scenes are beautifully rendered and bound to keep romance readers enchanted. Carla Kelly is a treasure for all who enjoy great storytelling. Enough mystery and forward motion remain to anticipate the next book in the St. Brendan Series with delight. Highly recommended. Eileen Charbonneau

THE LADIES OF IVY COTTAGE

Julie Klassen, Bethany House, 2017, $15.99, pb, 444pp, 978076421815

Klassen’s sweet, Regency-set historical takes up where Tales From Ivy Hill left off, returning to the quaint Wiltshire village of Ivy Hill and illuminating the inner lives of Jane Bell, the widowed proprietor of The Bell coaching inn; spinster Mercy Grove, running a girl’s school from Ivy Cottage; and Rachel Ashford,

an orphaned gentlewoman whose need for self-support leads her to open a circulating library using her father’s books. While these three women pursue their dreams, they also run into entanglements of the heart. The return of her former farrier, Gabriel Locke, makes Jane wonder if she can put aside her grief over several miscarriages. Mercy finds her prospects enlarged with the guardianship of a young pupil, Alice, and an unexpected suitor. And Rachel has to decide if she is free to accept Nicholas Ashford’s proposal, or if her heart belongs to Sir Timothy Brockwell. Klassen adds texture to the muchbeloved scenes-of-English-village-life genre with reference to contemporary authors, a mystery or two to untangle, and the unspoken heartbreaks that run beneath the exterior of a placid village and its respectable citizens, with special compassion toward the plight of unmarried women in this very conventional world. Klassen’s prose is as mild and gentle as her kind-hearted characters, who take comfort in their Christian faith. The action unfolds on the inward, emotional scale of significant looks and small gestures, and the leisurely setup of the first half builds to several moving surprises by the end, with the fates of two of the three main characters left open for the next books. This installment in the Tales from Ivy Hill series should deeply satisfy existing Klassen fans and gain her some new ones. Misty Urban

PERCEPTION AND ILLUSION

Catherine Kullmann, CreateSpace, 2017, £0.99/$2.99, ebook, 350pp, B06XRJ2TF9 Writing good historical romance is an art. While often dismissed as being light on historical details and heavy on the romance, a good historical romance portrays the prerequisite love story against a background of a well-researched and equally wellpresented historical background. Ms Kullmann not only knows her period, she is also wonderfully adept at painting the historical setting in such a way that it is never intrusive yet always there, be it how to arrange for a special marriage license to how to fight a duel between gentlemen. Actualities of the time—such as Prinny’s falling out with Beau Brummel after the latter dismissed the future king as fat, or Napoleon’s escape from Elba— add a further sense of time and place to the descriptions of everything from interiors to clothes. The supporting cast of characters includes everything from the loyal maidservant to the rather obnoxious father of our heroine, but this is primarily the story of Hugh Tamrisk and Lallie Grey. They are easy to like, these two people who meet, fall in love and marry, only to lose their way as the expectations of society overwhelm them. Both of them are wary of being hurt, neither of them quite dares to declare their love for the other, and after

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a series of misunderstandings it seems their marriage is doomed to fail. Fortunately, any romance worth its name has a happily ever after, so too Perception and Illusion. I can but congratulate Ms Kullmann on this beautifully written and thoroughly enjoyable little gem and warmly recommend it to any reader looking for that well-balanced combination of period detail and love that is the hallmark of a truly good historical romance. Anna Belfrage

THE DESIGNS OF LORD RANDOLPH CAVANAUGH

Stephanie Laurens, MIRA, 2018, $7.99, pb, 380pp, 9780778368816

Lord Randolph “Rand” Cavanaugh has that deuced disadvantage plaguing many second sons of the nobility—he must make his own way in the world since his elder brother inherited the title and lands. It’s 1843, and inventions are sprouting right and left in England. What better career for Rand than managing investments in some of those inventions? He is betting heavily on a prototype steam-powered carriage to be the next money-maker. But others who stand to lose if the carriage succeeds are not above sabotage. Throw into the mix the inventor William John Throgmorton’s lovely sister Felicia, brilliant in her own right, and there’s a recipe for romance and intrigue. The pressure mounts as surely as the steam in Throgmorton’s boiler, as Rand and William John, with crucial aid from Felicia, race against time to finish the invention before the big exposition, and protect it from a mysterious saboteur. It’s good, sometimes hotly passionate, fun. The viewpoint wavers in a number of passages, and the characters’ feelings might be better shown rather than explained so much. Nevertheless, the principal characters come across as real enough, albeit with very few flaws, and they are easy to like. Loyd Uglow

THE OPAL DRAGONFLY

Julian Leatherdale, Allen & Unwin, 2018, A$29.99, pb, 582pp, 9781760293079

Set in Sydney, Australia in the mid-1800s, The Opal Dragonfly recounts the financial and social descent of a wealthy, privileged family. Described by Leatherdale as a work of fiction with its roots in historical research, his second novel recreates the sights, sounds and social tensions of early colonial Sydney. Whilst firmly set amongst the governing class of gentry, professionals and military personnel, 32

we encounter all types of inhabitants, including the dispossessed indigenous peoples, pardoned convicts and abandoned gold rush “widows” living in poverty. The main protagonist is Isobel Macleod, the youngest daughter of New South Wales’ Surveyor General, a character loosely based on Sir Thomas Mitchell’s youngest daughter, Blanche. It’s a novel rife with sibling rivalry, old grudges, secrets and deception. Isobel is a strong-willed character with her heart in the right place, but who often exhibits flawed judgment, resulting in disastrous consequences. The novel follows her through childhood to early womanhood and beyond, as she experiences loss and isolation, love and hatred. We ponder whether her circumstances are brought about entirely by her own actions or due to something more sinister and supernatural, her mysterious, opal dragonfly pendant. The Opal Dragonfly is an ambitious undertaking that presents all of the class bigotry and narrow-mindedness of the era. Its characters and awkward coming-of-age scenes are reminiscent of Austen. That, combined with Dickensian social realism, has resulted in Leatherdale creating a memorable, epic work that is destined to become an Australian literary classic. Christine Childs

MY ONCE AND FUTURE DUKE

Caroline Linden, Avon, 2018, $7.99/C$9.99, pb, 384pp, 9780062672926

A match between a conventional duke and a young woman without connections, surviving by her skill at gambling, seems highly unlikely. Sophie Campbell is, however, beautiful, and Jack Lindeville, Duke of Ware, feels an immediate physical attraction. As they learn more about each other, he comes to admire her intelligence and spirit, she the passion and decency behind a haughty exterior. They fall in love, but the path to wedded happiness is strewn with obstacles: social constraints, troublesome family members, and the inevitable misunderstandings. The gambling device is used interestingly, not just as a social commentary upon the follies of a bored and idle aristocracy, but as an insight into the protagonists. Both are riskaverse, strange as it may seem in Sophie’s case; they have to learn to take a chance and trust their hearts and each other. In fact, chance looms large in the plot of this Regency romance. Conversely, the minor characters are not well developed, though the curious epilogue, which reads more like a bridge to the next book in the series, suggests we may learn more about them. Here, however, the focus is upon the lovers and their passionate lovemaking. It grows a bit tedious.

REVIEWS | Issue 84, May 2018

Ray Thompson

HARBOR OF SPIES

Robin Lloyd, Lyons, 2018, $24.95, hb, 320pp, 9781493032266

In January 1863, a storm forces American captain Everett Townsend to sail his ship reluctantly into the Port of Havana. Before arriving there, he rescues an escaped Englishman from the sea and then helps him locate his friends in Havana. On his return to his ship, Townsend is captured by the police and thrown into jail. He is rescued by a mysterious but rich Cuban merchant and forced to sail to the United States by running the Union blockade. As a former Union Navy man, he is reluctant to participate, but the merchant’s thugs who sail with him keep him from sailing into a Union port. In this novel of spies—Union, Confederate and Cuban—intrigue and an unsolved murder lead Townsend through 1860s Cuba. He is disturbed by the horrors of slavery and learns more about his mother’s past (she had been born and raised in Cuba before her marriage) while falling in love with a woman living in a Havana boardinghouse. This enjoyable read offers suspense, fastpaced action, and an engaging protagonist placed in a historical setting. The author paints a rich and colorful picture of Havana during the 1860s. It’s a real pleasure to read as tension builds to an exciting climax. I learned more about Cuba and its relationship with the governments of both the Confederacy and the United States. Caught between both worlds, the Cuban merchants tried to trade and make their fortune with both governments. I wasn’t aware of the harsh conditions experienced by the slaves of Cuba, treated as bad as or worse than their American counterparts in the South. Civil War enthusiasts will enjoy this book, as well as readers who like historical nautical fiction. Jeff Westerhoff

THE STORY KEEPER

Anna Mazzola, Tinder, 2018, £18.99, hb, 340pp, 97814722334797

The real hero, or maybe villain, of this book is the island of Skye, the largest island in the Inner Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland. Remote, misty, stormy, rugged, it looms over the story like a malevolent spirit. By 1857, when the heroine, Audrey Hart, arrives in Skye, the ‘clearances’ have taken away most of the population. An aging remnant clings on, eking a miserable living from the thin soil. Audrey is fleeing her own problems in London and answers an advertisement to assist an old lady who is collecting the folk tales of Skye before the native Gaelic-speaking culture disappears. She soon discovers that local girls are disappearing, sometimes to be found months later either dead or so traumatised that they are incoherent. The locals blame the sluagh, an airborne band of evil spirits. It seems everybody on Skye has dark secrets, even the minister at the kirk, and nobody wants to help Audrey probe the disappearances. Only

when she is herself abducted and manages to escape can she identify the villain. An atmospheric, suspenseful mystery which makes a compelling read. Edward James

A DYING NOTE

Ann Parker, Poisoned Pen Press, 2018, $26.95, hb, 374pp, 9781464209796

The body of a musician washes ashore upon the banks of San Francisco’s Mission Creek Bay in November 1881. Inez Stannert, manager of D & S House of Music and Curiosities, finds herself involved with solving the crime. She teams with Wolter Bruijn (a noted “finder of the lost”), and Frisco Flo, a madam from Leadville, Colorado who has ties to Inez from when she lived there prior to moving to San Francisco. They are threatened by the victim’s father, a rich merchant from Leadville, to find the killer within a week or suffer the consequences. This is the seventh entry in the Silver Rush Mystery series. I liked how the plot gradually unraveled until the conclusion. I don’t feel it is necessary to read the previous books because the author did an excellent job of providing the reader with a short backstory that helped in developing the major characters. The San Francisco setting is richly described, giving the reader a fascinating glimpse of the period. This is not a fast-paced story, but one that provides clues to the crimes committed, along with a surprising conclusion. Jeff Westerhoff

THE KILLING SITE

Caro Peacock, Severn House, 2018, $28.99/£20.99, hb, 224pp, 9780727887757

The Killing Site is the ninth in Peacock’s Victorian-era Liberty Lane series. In 1847, Liberty is happily married to Robert Carmichael, mother to Harry and Helena, and mostly retired as a private detective. When Liberty is lured away from a dinner party and kidnapped, chapters alternate with her first-person narration as she tries to figure out where she is being held, and third-person narration from Robert, and Liberty’s friends Amos Legge and Tabby, as Robert acts on the kidnappers’ instructions, and Amos and Tabby conduct their own investigation. I’ve read a few in the series and not consistently, but that doesn’t matter. I devoured this in one sitting because both characters and plot are gripping. Liberty has no active cases, so why was she targeted? What is Robert retrieving that is so valuable to the kidnappers? Peacock throws in a few red herrings as she takes the reader to the high-stakes denouement. Those red herrings do take focus away from the villains, whose motives are not revealed until the very end, so they are less compelling characters. Liberty, Amos, Tabby, and Robert, to a lesser extent, are the standouts of the story, and there’s even a cameo by Benjamin Disraeli. Peacock gets the atmosphere of London in 1847 just right;

the streets, the clothes, the class relationships are all pitch perfect. I’ve now got to fill in my gaps in the series and eagerly await the tenth. Ellen Keith

MURDER AT HALF-MOON GATE

Andrea Penrose, Kensington, 2018, $26.00, hb, 368pp, 9781496710796

This is a thoroughly enjoyable Regency thriller/mystery novel in the same vein and era as The Alienist. The story centers around the murder of a brilliant scientist who has made a revolutionary discovery of a steam-powered engine as yet unknown to the industry. The murder is made to look like a by-product of a burglary, but on closer inspection is clearly pre-meditated. The novel provides an authentic glimpse into the life both of nobility and those who live by the skin of their teeth on the seedier side of London. Lord Wrexford is a wealthy man, but also a gifted scientist. Having been once accused of murder himself and compelled to prove his own innocence, he is intrigued when the beautiful young widow of the murdered scientist asks for his help. She is sure her husband was killed for his discovery. Wexford enlists the aide of the quick-witted Charlotte Sloane, who has maintained a living for herself and two unlikely wards by penning satirical cartoons under the name of her late husband. The book is full of interesting characters who come together in a series of unexpected events and provides an interesting treatment of the law of 19th-century English intellectual property rights. Surprisingly approachable and entertaining. Jackie Drohan

TWENTY-ONE DAYS

Anne Perry, Ballantine, 2018, $28.00, hb, 320pp, 9780399179884 / Headline, 2017, £19.99, hb, 352pp, 9781472234094

Twenty-One Days is the first of Anne Perry’s new crime series. Fans of her Thomas and Charlotte Pitt stories will recognize the protagonist as their son, Daniel, now a newly minted London barrister. His first big case is the defense of a nasty tempered reprobate accused of murdering his wife. The defense is not a success. With a history of brutality and no other credible suspects, Daniel’s client is quickly convicted. But Daniel doubts his guilt enough to file an appeal. He is given 21 days to clear his client. As his hunt for the real killer progresses he finds an ally in his employer’s daughter, Miriam, a Cambridgetrained scholar with her own laboratory and state-of-the-art x-ray equipment. Her skills and knowledge contribute greatly to Daniel’s investigation, and they become a formidable team. However, their pursuit generates a serious moral dilemma for Daniel as he learns that his client is set to publish a compendium of salacious gossip that would smear old family friends, his father, and the national security service he leads. Should Daniel sit back and

let the scoundrel hang or should he continue his attempt to clear him. The plot thickens! This is a thoroughly enjoyable, complex story with an appropriate and satisfying conclusion. It also has a wonderful freshness about it: the main characters are young, it is a new century, science is coming into its own, and romance is in the air. Thus, even though the plot revolves around violent death, we get the sense that life, overall, is still good. My only complaint is that the characters tend to be one-dimensional; they are either all good or all bad. But, no matter, Twenty-One Days is still without a doubt, a top-notch story. Go for it! Lucille Cormier

IN SPITE OF LIONS

Scarlette Pike, Sweetwater, 2017, $17.99, pb, 272pp, 9781462120512

Anna Kensington is taking charge of her life, fleeing from her privileged but stifling Victorian-era existence. She books passage on the first available ship. While boarding, Anna meets the Livingstones and becomes their traveling companion. After 12 weeks at sea, they arrive in Africa. Anna volunteers to join the Livingstones’ missionary work, but Anna has lots to learn about survival. Despite her efforts, she has trouble being accepted by the Bakwena people. Soon, a drought strikes the village. Meanwhile, tensions rise between the Bakwena and the Boers. So, what can a woman who knows more about the queen’s fashion than the entire African continent do when the lives of her new family are in danger? The author’s lyrical prose, arising from Anna’s hopes, fears, past wounds, and wonderment, kept me turning the pages. Pike fleshes out a unique setting that’s well described and offers up the unexpected. However, my favorite characters were the real-life secondary ones woven into the plot, especially Chief Sechele. Overall, In Spite of Lions is a beautifully narrated story about reclaiming one’s life, but it should be marketed as a series so reader expectations are met. I didn’t realize this was part of a series. J. Lynn Else

MURDER WILL SPEAK

Penny Richards, Kensington, 2018, $15.95, pb, 272pp, 9781496706065

Believing that a woman can influence wrongdoers to change their ways, Lilly Long leaves a touring theatre company to become a Pinkerton operative. In the summer of 1881, her Chicago-based boss offers her an assignment right up her alley. Her former theatre partner, Nora Nash, has disappeared after offering herself as a mail-order bride in Fort Worth, Texas, but not before uncovering corruption in the bordellos of Hell’s Half Acre. Lilly’s partner, Cade McShane, recruits his sister Erin to portray an aspiring brothel owner, and together they set out to discover what happened to Nora. The trio meet the typical shady sheriff, selfconfident enforcer, helpful prostitute, and

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the strangest deus ex machina I’ve seen in a long time—a calligrapher, who plays a recluse and an imbecile, and happens by just when Lilly needs a clue. Nora is portrayed as a kind of early Carrie Nation, feisty and smart but naïve in campaigning to stop prostitution in a lawless town. The attraction between Lilly and Cade is palpable, and the mystery is engrossing enough, but the book hints at being an inspirational novel, which isn’t realized, plus I felt aloof rather than close to the characters. This is the third in a series, but it fails to stand alone since Richards refers more than a dozen times by name to people in the other two books, drawing me out of this story’s plotline. The most interesting subplot resolves the tension between Cade and Erin occasioned by his wife’s death, but that concerns hidden anger and guilt, not mystery. By the end of the book, Lilly is unsure whether she will continue as a Pinkerton, but this reader doesn’t care either way. Tom Vallar

A RECKONING

Linda Spalding, Pantheon, 2018, $25.95, hb, 320pp, 9781524747008

In Spalding’s excellent fifth novel (after The Purchase, 2013), John, a white man, and Bry, a black man, struggle with the onus of slavery, the pain of lost love, and their own sins in preCivil War Virginia. Bry envies the deer their freedom; John has little more than Bry. His half-brother, Benjamin, owns the decaying family plantation and, when he dies, it passes to his wife, leaving John, an impoverished pastor, homeless. After illegally releasing the remaining slaves, John packs his wife and young children into a wagon headed for Kansas Territory without him. John is heading for Tennessee to find Emly, the slave he loves. Bry’s name is on a Runaway Slaves poster; he must cross the Missouri to avoid capture. John’s neglected wife, Lavina, struggling to keep her children together, finds relief from an unexpected source. Still on the run, Bry takes up with a Delaware woman. As the travelers consider their past, present and future, the reader begins to understand their world. The theme of A Reckoning is present throughout. How will any of us pay for our sins? Slavery is a difficult subject for a novel, familiar enough to forewarn us but, in Spalding’s capable hands, original enough to surprise us. By interweaving vastly different journeys, Spalding explores our exciting if painful national experience, without sacrificing the personal details that make reading novels pleasurable. A Reckoning is highly recommended. Jeanne Greene

AN UNQUIET GHOST

Linda Stratmann, Sapere, 2018, $10.99/£8.99, pb, 337pp, 9781912546060

An Unquiet Ghost can be described as a light amateur detective story in the cozy 34

crime genre. This is the third book in Linda Stratmann’s Mina Scarletti Mystery series set in the English seaside town of Brighton in the 1870s. Stratmann’s previous work includes non-fiction forensic chemistry, true crime, and a fiction series featuring a lady sleuth, based in Bayswater in the 1880s. The main character is 25-year old, Mina Scarletti, a 4-foot 8-inch semi-invalid who writes sensational horror stories under a male pseudonym. She occasionally publishes children’s stories to prevent her family from getting suspicious. Mina has developed a reputation (over the first two books) for unmasking fraudulent spiritualists. She is surprised when a young betrothed couple begs her to help them find a genuine psychic so they can communicate with a murdered uncle. Second cousins, they want to know if any murderous tendencies exist in their family, before committing to marriage and offspring. Despite her cynicism about spiritualists, she agrees to help them, fuelled by compassion and intrigued by the 20-year, unsolved poisoning case. Along the way she recruits some unlikely helpers to investigate; the local doctor, her charming, but idle, brother and a retired magician’s assistant. Together they unearth layers of deception and intrigue, but is any of it relevant to the old murder case? Whilst part of a series, An Unquiet Ghost can be read as a stand-alone novel. I hadn’t read the first two books in the series but was able to quickly follow what was going on. I found some of the passages about spiritualism a bit lengthy, but it didn’t detract from my overall enjoyment of the characters and plot. Stratmann has created a memorable protagonist in the physically frail, but mentally sharp, Mina. If you enjoy Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple stories, then Mina Scarletti will almost certainly become a new favorite. Christine Childs

EDGAR ALLAN POE AND THE JEWEL OF PERU

Karen Lee Street, Pegasus Crime, 2018, $25.95, hb, 368pp, 9781681776675 / Point Blank, 2018, £8.99, pb, 368pp, 9781786073389

Philadelphia, 1844: The City of Brotherly Love is not so loving in 1844 as nativist Americans foment unrest against Irish Catholic immigrants. Despite this, Edgar Allan Poe enjoys his morning rambles by the river with the Catholic priest and educator Father Keane. Poe’s home life with his young wife and mother-in-law is serene. This happy bubble bursts when Poe receives several macabre packages—a parcel of mummified crows, a strange diorama seeming to threaten his wife, and other oddities. The arrival of the idiosyncratic young woman Helena Loddiges from England compounds that mystery, along with her request that Poe investigate the death of Jeremiah Matthews, a young ornithologist and explorer who reportedly drowned in Philadelphia after an expedition to Peru. When abduction and murder complicate the inquiry,

REVIEWS | Issue 84, May 2018

Poe gratefully welcomes his friend C. Auguste Dupin, who arrives to help solve the crimes. This somewhat macabre mystery entranced me. Its Gothic mix of antebellum Philadelphia, exotic Peru, hints of vanished cultures and lost treasure, taxidermy, and a cast of intriguing and unusual characters drew me into the tale like a fly caught in a spider’s web. Street’s writing is evocative and true to the period while the plot unwinds in unexpected ways. This is an engaging read. Recommended for lovers of Poe’s writings, for those who enjoy the Gothic and macabre, and for all historical mystery fans. Susan McDuffie

MR PEACOCK’S POSSESSIONS

Lydia Syson, Zaffre, 2018, £12.99, hb, 406pp, 9781785761867

In the late 19th century, Oceania—a vast expanse of sea, dotted with the occasional landmass, from the huge continent of Australia through to tiny, insignificant islands—saw a substantial movement of people. European colonisers came, settled, and moved again somewhere better. The new need for labour, brought by the colonisers, saw many natives of the region move from their original homes, either by choice or by force. Lydia Syson’s new novel provides us with an insight into this shifting, mobile world. Set on a remote volcanic island, it tells the story of one European family trying to create their own paradise, and of six Pacific Islanders who have travelled across hundreds of miles of ocean, seeking work. One of the Peacock children disappears shortly after the men arrive. In seeking him, this new, fragile community uncovers the dark secrets at the heart of their new Eden. Told from the points of view of Lizzie, one of the Peacock daughters, and Kalala, who has come to the island seeking new horizons, Syson’s novel is beautifully imagined and written. The relationships between the characters are skilfully drawn. The dark web of power, possession, dependence and love that binds the Peacock family together is compelling, as is the mixture of protectiveness, grief and wistful misunderstanding between the brothers Solomona and Kalala. From the very beginning, the reader is exposed to a creeping sense of dread, an understanding that there is more happening on the island than meets the eye. As the truth is uncovered and innocence is lost, the novel makes its way to its dramatic and disturbing

climax and the ties of love and loyalty that bind the characters together are tested to their limits. Powerful, intense and beautiful, this novel will stay with me for a long time. Charlotte Wightwick

THE PHARMACIST’S WIFE

Vanessa Tait, Corvus, 2018, £12.99, pb, 387pp, 9781786492715

The Pharmacist’s Wife is a tale of deception, addiction and revenge. Rebecca is a young wife in Victorian Edinburgh, struggling hard to behave exactly as she should. Her husband has just opened a new pharmacy and laboratory and has created a new drug which he hopes will gain him acclaim. Alexander offers her the new drug, which he has named heroin, to calm her nervous energy and headaches, and Rebecca discovers that it enables her to escape from her dull everyday. However, she becomes concerned at Alexander’s strange sexual behaviour and begins to believe that he has been unfaithful. She makes friends with Evangeline, the woman she believes to be his mistress, discovering that she too is an addict. When Rebecca discovers the depths of her husband’s depravity and that she and Evangeline have both been dupes in his experiment, she begins to plot her revenge. This is a fast-paced tale of Victorian attitudes to women and sex. It examines the place of women in society from the housemaid to the prostitute to the angel in the house as well as the attitude and behaviour of men towards women and the growing trade in pills for every ailment, which was a feature of the Victorian age. Rebecca is a sharply observed character who journeys from blushing bride to quivering addict to strong-willed and independent woman. This is a dark tale of love and revenge, which will appeal to fans of Sarah Perry, Sarah Waters and Jessie Burton. Lisa Redmond

SHE BE DAMNED

M. J. Tjia, Legend, 2018, $14.95/C$19.95/£8.99, pb, 288pp, 9781785079313

Prostitutes in the Waterloo district of London in 1863 are being found dead in unusual numbers and with unusually macabre mutilations. Then a young girl of good family goes missing in the area, and Mrs Heloise Chancey is asked to find her. Mrs Chancey, who poses as a wealthy widow, has a variety of skills. To Sir Thomas Avery she is one of those very rare females: a woman detective. To a select number of wealthy gentlemen she is an experienced and beautiful courtesan. She can also pose as a street prostitute or a sewing woman. She is, occasionally, an actress, and as such she can quickly assume any number of identities. To find Miss Carter, who is in “an unhappy condition,” Heloise spends some time in Madame Sylvestre’s brothel, making friends throughout the underbelly of London society but putting herself in considerable danger of being mutilated and murdered. She visits

medical and not-so-medical men and women who practice abortions, never knowing who her friends or enemies are. The author sets out to paint a picture of the unfashionable, dangerous side of Victorian London, a place where women are especially vulnerable and danger lurks around every corner. She spares no effort to delineate the physical and moral filth that Heloise must negotiate as she searches for Miss Carter. Heloise herself is an entertaining character, and her normal lifestyle of wealth and beauty stands in vivid contrast to the sleazy brothels and abortionists’ hovels she must investigate. The many facets and options of her wealthy life run counter to the one focus of London prostitutes: to survive. Despite the author’s efforts to shock the reader in a variety of ways, she still manages to weave an entertaining tale with entertaining characters and many plot twists. Valerie Adolph

NO CURE FOR THE DEAD

Christine Trent, Crooked Lane, 2018, $26.99, hb, 336pp, 9781683315445

In September 1853, Florence Nightingale has finally shaken off her mother’s demands that she make a good marriage and has left home to embark on her mission to help the sick. With the help of a friend who has an influential husband, she has taken on the position as Superintendent of the ‘Establishment for Gentlewomen during Temporary Illness’. Immediately she can see that changes are needed to bring the care of her patients up to any reasonable standard. But before she can initiate any changes she finds the body of one of her nurses hanging in Florence’s favourite alcove in the library. It appears to be a suicide, but Florence immediately realizes that it must be murder. Her efforts to identify the murderer are hampered by the fact that she does not yet know any of her nurses and by the efforts of one of the hospital board members to remove her from her position. While this novel is set in the time before Florence Nightingale distinguished herself nursing during the Crimean War, Christine Trent has clearly delineated her character. We see her as a young woman, inexperienced and occasionally naïve, but with a clear and dominant vision of what nursing care ought to be. Her persistence and common sense throughout her murder enquiries together with her simple but effective changes presage her future. Clearly, a great quantity of research underpins this novel, although sometimes it is a little too obvious. The author has indeed been true to the times, the attitudes and the characters she reveals to the reader. From errand boy John Wesley to Secretary at War Sidney Herbert the characters are true to their role in the society of the time. Trent shows a thorough understanding of the early career of a significant Victorian figure. Valerie Adolph

THE LAST BRONTË

Stephen Whitehead, Ashmount Press, 2017, £8.99, pb, 320pp, 9780955283536

No lover of English literature needs an introduction to the Brontë Parsonage and its remarkable inhabitants, which can be both a blessing and a hazard to the writer who makes them a subject of historical fiction. Here, Stephen Whitehead, a former employee of the parsonage museum who has published nonfiction about the Brontës, takes a fresh approach to his subject by choosing Arthur Bell Nicholls, the curate who eventually became Charlotte Brontë’s husband, as his narrator. There is a twist, however, that is revealed to us at the beginning of the novel: in this telling, Anne, not Charlotte, is Arthur’s first love. While my first instinct upon reading this revelation was to clutch my imaginary pearls, my worries were for naught, as Whitehead keeps within the bounds of plausibility. All of the parsonage inmates, human and otherwise, are well rendered, and the dialogue is sharp. Arthur himself is sympathetically drawn. As this is his story as well, we are not confined to the parsonage and its familiar faces, but get to meet his own relatives and friends. I finished the novel wanting to have more of his story— and to read more of Whitehead’s work. Susan Higginbotham

THE BELIEVERS IN THE CRUCIBLE NAUVOO

Alfred Woollacott III, myfourleggedstool, 2017, $3.95, ebook, 357pp, B075M55QLN

The first few decades of the 19th century were turbulent. In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, the global economy contracted, and the resulting instability proved fertile ground for two phenomena that swept the United States: the Second Awakening and the Utopian Movements. Joseph Smith, founding prophet of the Mormon Church, blended a Utopian vision with controversial religious beliefs, but his charisma saw people flocking to his church. Among those new converts were Naahma Carter and various members of her family. Breaking new ground is never easy. The Mormons found it especially difficult, as they were viewed with suspicion by many of their contemporaries. There were accusations of financial fraud, of circumventing federal law. For people like Naahma, the troubles and challenges were much more practical: where to live, what to eat, how to survive the ague that plagued the large Mormon settlement at Nauvoo. On top of this, there was the constant fear of being overrun by the hostile gentiles. In brief, life for the Mormon community was no picnic. Things became even more difficult after Joseph Smith was murdered, the local authorities making it very clear they would no longer tolerate a Mormon settlement at Nauvoo. The Mormon exodus that would lead the faithful to present day Utah was about to begin. The Believers in the Crucible Nauvoo is a

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labour of love. Mr Woollacott writes about the lives of people who belong to his extended family tree, and it is apparent he has invested a lot of time on researching his facts. The novel, however, could have done with a thorough edit, principally to rid it of the constant headhopping. This detracts substantially from what is otherwise an interesting and educational read. Anna Belfrage

20TH CENTURY

THE GENERAL’S WOMEN

Susan Wittig Albert, Persevero, 2017, $16.95, pb, 400pp, 9780996904025

In May 1942, Kay Summersby, the senior woman driver, parked her olive-drab Packard in front of the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square to wait for General ‘Ike’ Eisenhower. This was the beginning of a relationship between the two that Kay later wrote of as a love affair. Ike asked Kay to go with him to North Africa as his driver and look after the dog they had bought. He suggested that Kay might like to be nearer to Dick, her fiancé, who was already serving over there. She agreed. Later photographs of Ike and Kay arrived on Ike’s wife Mamie’s breakfast table. Rumours of the affair spread, and US Army Chiefs and politicians made it clear to Eisenhower that his ambitious postwar plans for the presidency might be smashed if it continued. This well-researched and enjoyable novel is told from three viewpoints, Kay’s, Ike’s and Mamie’s. Kay’s story is the richest and told with most sympathy, based on her two published memoirs. Mamie’s, by comparison, is a little thin. The love-story narrative clearly excludes her, and she only becomes central on Ike’s return to the US after the War. That said, Albert writes the time and the milieu attractively, and the close perspective on Eisenhower and particularly his wartime life is compelling. Jane Hill

SANTA FE MOURNING

Amanda Allen, Crooked Lane, 2018, $26.99, hb, 298pp, 9781683315476

Santa Fe Mourning is the promising start to a new series. It is set in the 1920s when losses from the First World War were fresh and Prohibition meant everyone knew a bootlegger. Madeline Vaughn-Alwin is a well-born New Yorker whose husband died in Flanders. She shocks her society family by moving to Santa Fe, where she is free to live as a painter, among friends who are not the upper crust. When Tomas Anaya, Maddie’s gardener, married to her housekeeper Juanita, is murdered, his teen son Eddie is arrested. Maddie is protective of the Anayas and determined to prove Eddie’s innocence. Allen covers a great deal of ground in a natural narrative- and character-driven way. She touches on the insularity of pueblo life, from which Tomas and Juanita have been expelled; the deadly effects of bootlegging; 36

and the calculations of a false medium who preys on those who want to hear from their lost loved ones. Maddie has a love interest in a handsome British doctor as well as a gay best friend, a novelist who is as supportive of Maddie’s career as her family is dismissive of it. Santa Fe is the perfect setting for this collection of artists, people trying to make a fresh start, and, unfortunately, those who would take advantage of them. Although this mystery is resolved, the book ends with a cliffhanger, setting the stage for Maddie’s next mystery. Ellen Keith

THE STORM

Arif Anwar, Atria, 2018, $26.00, hb, 320pp, 9781501174506

In November 1970, while a cyclone sweeps Bangladesh’s shores, Honufa scurries from her hut in a Chittagong fishing village with her three-year-old son, Shahryar, attempting to reach the safety of the mansion of the zemindar, Rahim. Decades later, Shahryar is in Washington, DC driving his nine-year-old daughter, Anna, to the home of her mother, Valerie. Anna is distraught; Shahryar, having completed his PhD and unable to secure permanent employment, is required to leave the US. Shahryar hires a shady lawyer for advice on various options—some illegal—to remain in the US. Much earlier, during WWII, the teenaged Honufa helps a Japanese pilot, Ichiro, out of his crashed bomber on a Chittagong beach. Ichiro is treated in a POW hospital by a British doctor, Claire, who has ulterior motives in assisting him. Rahim adopts Shahryar, and he searches anxiously for his birth parents. Arif Anwar has deftly woven together the lives of ten major and several secondary characters to recount not only their love stories but also the lifestyles of Bangladeshis and their country’s tumultuous history. The story shifts between periods from 1942 to 2004: the WWII years in Burma and Chittagong, India’s Partition in 1947, the 1970 Bhola Cyclone, the 1972 Bangladesh independence, Shahryar’s student life in the US, and even some of the recent problems created by the Rohingya seeking refuge in Bangladesh. Accomplishing such a chronicle in 320 pages, while others might have produced a doorstopper, is remarkable. While the time-switching adds to the intrigue, much use of telling and summary is utilized in the narrative. However, the elegiac quality of the prose is a pleasure to read. Anwar’s PhD level education and work experience with BRAC and UNICEF show in this historically and culturally detailed novel. The open-endedness of some storylines might hint at a sequel. Highly recommended. Waheed Rabbani

THE ONLY STORY

Julian Barnes, Jonathan Cape, 2018, £16.99, hb, 222pp, 9781787330695 / Knopf, 2018, $25.95, hb, 272pp, 9780525521211

England in the early 1960s. Paul Roberts is nineteen and home for the summer holidays

REVIEWS | Issue 84, May 2018

after completing his first year at Sussex University. He lives with his parents in a conventional and respectable middle-class commuting suburb south of London. He is persuaded to join the local tennis club, where he is teamed up in a competition with Susan Mcleod, a married mother of two in her late 40s whose marriage is in a sad state. Against all of society’s conventions, they start an adulterous affair. The affair forms into a longer-term relationship, which then creates difficulties, which Paul narrates with a wistful, painful honesty. This early love shapes the rest of Paul’s life, his emotions and his relationships, as it resonates throughout the years until he reaches old age himself. As you expect from fiction from Julian Barnes, it is a literate, intelligent, and beautifully written and observed novel. The narrator’s gentle, nostalgic and honest account of his liaison with Susan, as he looks back from the distance of fifty years, tries to make sense of their time together and all that happened subsequently. It is the most important event in Paul Roberts’ life. Julian Barnes demonstrates that you do not have to write challenging, experimental cutting-edge contemporary fiction to give the reader an insight into a life, to show how we can live today. Douglas Kemp

MADNESS IS BETTER THAN DEFEAT

Ned Beauman, Knopf, 2018, $26.95, hb, 416pp, 9780385352994 / Sceptre, 2018, £16.99, hb, 416pp, 9781473613584

This book opens in 1938 Manhattan, where a wrestler struggles with an octopus in a waterfilled tank. From there we quickly move on to the deep jungles of Honduras, where two rival expeditions converge on the ruins of an ancient Mayan temple. One group, from Hollywood, expects to stay for two weeks to shoot a movie. The second group is there to disassemble the temple and move the ruins to New York City. Neither side will compromise. Eighteen years later, both groups remain mired in the jungle, forgotten by the outside world. A rogue CIA agent learns of the opposing camps, but that is just the bare beginning of the deep conspiracies forming the plot of this unique novel, laced with equal parts of thrills and comedy. Although Beauman’s prose propels the reader along at a break-neck pace, at times I felt I was hacking my way through dense jungle. The prose and the plot are complex, but the book is not a slow, considered read. It’s more the sense of little plot tendrils growing before your eyes and winding about your ankles.

Something slithers in the undergrowth, sensed but not fully glimpsed, as you forge ahead. It could be easy to get tripped up. Eventually the disparate elements come together in a cohesive whole, although like many explorers I feel that I’ve barely scratched the surface of this territory, and don’t really know it at all. Not a clear view in sight, but richly detailed, like the heart of the dark rainforest itself. There’s a lot for the intrepid reader to uncover here. Susan McDuffie

ON A COLD DARK SEA

Elizabeth Blackwell, Lake Union, 2018, $14.95, pb, 305pp, 9781477809372

This story is told from three different viewpoints as three very different women wind up in Lifeboat 21 as the Titanic sinks. Charlotte Digby, a liar and con artist, is aboard the Titanic under false pretenses. Esme Harper is a wealthy American trying to get back home, and Anna Halversson is a Swedish farm girl hoping for a new start in America. Each woman’s tale is presented through flashbacks as they rush to find safety on the sinking ship. Part II skips ahead to 1932 America when Charlotte sees a newspaper article that brings the past rushing back to her. All the memories of that time spur her to find out what happened to Anna and Esme, as well as to right a past wrong. Class differences aboard the ship are related in a profound and realistic way. Blackwell captures the terror of the passengers and the mistakes that were made quite vividly. Throughout the story, Blackwell also weaves in snippets from real newspaper clippings and Congressional Hearings as she tells the story of each woman. This adds to the authenticity of the novel and makes the fictional aspects seem real. All in all, this is a dramatic story. Readers will be intrigued by the mysterious Charlotte, charmed by the lovely Anna, and rooting for Esme. Recommended. Rebecca Cochran

WHITE HOUSES

Amy Bloom, Random House, 2018, $27.00/ C$36.00, hb, 240pp, 9780812995664 / Granta, 2018, £12.99, hb, 224pp, 9781783784929

Bloom has created an unforgettable voice for journalist Lorena Hickok, as she reminisces about her decades-long love affair with Eleanor Roosevelt. Both women are brought stunningly to life in Bloom’s sparkling prose, which captures Hickok’s Midwestern dry wit and Roosevelt’s patrician brilliance equally. The two women represented opposing poles of class and privilege in the first half of the American 20th century, but fought equally fiercely to improve the lives of working people. These social movements are a muted background, however, to the richly detailed portrait of Hickok that emerges from her hardscrabble childhood and romantic entanglements. There is little in the way of historical event here; instead, you get a moving, engrossing meditation on how

Hickok carved an identity for herself as a gay woman and an intellectual, struggling to balance her devotion to the most powerful woman of her time with that woman’s need to keep their relationship secret. It’s a sign of this novel’s success that it feels much too short; the episodic structure (Bloom is best known for her short stories) may not appeal to all readers, but it is perfect for capturing the emotional intensity of one of the great love stories of our century. Kristen McDermott

THE GRAVE’S A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE

Alan Bradley, Delacorte, 2018, $26, hb, 384pp, 9780345539991 / Orion, 2018, £14.99, hb, 384pp, 9781409172888

This is the latest installment in the very popular history mystery series starring adolescent sleuth, pre-teen and chemistry whiz Flavia de Luce, set in the early 1950s. In this case, Dogger, faithful family servant and WWII vet, takes Flavia and her two older sisters punting past the village where the vicar was recently hanged for killing three of his parishioners with communion wine. Trailing her hand in the water, Flavia soon finds herself tangled in the corpse of another victim, a young man in very dramatic dress. Flavia busybodies and amateur-labs her way through local politics to get to the bottom of the crimes. Upper-crust British girlhood of their great-grandmother’s generation has so little in common with what young people today experience with cell phones and action flicks that one marvels at how popular this series is with them. And yet it is, even though Bradley never dumbs down. I find that encouraging. Adult readers, too, can only love the challenge of literary and historical references as well as plenty of inducements to engage in STEM disciplines. You’ve got to run pretty fast to keep up with Flavia—and will relish every moment. Ann Chamberlin

GODS OF HOWL MOUNTAIN

Taylor Brown, St. Martin’s, 2018, $25.99, hb, 294pp, 9781250111777

The Korean War was unforgiving, particularly for the United States, whose forces were exceptionally unequipped, unprepared, and inadequately trained. Rory Docherty returns to the mountains of North Carolina from the brutal reality of the Korean battlefield with a wooden leg and a string of traumatic

memories. The memories Rory carries from his career as a Marine at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir continue to haunt him as he tries to find some sense of normalcy again. The dark corners of Rory’s life, pre- and post-war, are relayed in vivid and gritty detail. The landscape of Howl Mountain is also relentless; Rory fights his inner demons while running bootleg whiskey throughout the wooded mountain, watching his back for revenuers who are in the business of trying to shut him down and others who want to take over the bootleg industry. Rory’s mother, Bonni, has spent the last several years in a mental hospital, refusing to speak, following an event that left her husband dead and someone’s eyeball in a jar. Granny May, Rory’s grandmother, former prostitute and now local herbalist/folk-witch, watches over Rory, protecting him in any way that she can which can seem questionable yet effective. The Docherty family’s story slowly unfolds over the nearly 300 pages in a lyrical and quiet manner that makes you want to learn more. Brown does not release all the secrets of Howl Mountain at once; rather he takes his time, casting a spell upon his readers. Whiskeyrunning through the mountains in the 1950s might not, in itself, appeal to all readers, but Taylor Brown’s ability to weave a story of a dark family history and retribution with the relentless mountainous backdrop make this a compelling read. Highly recommended, especially for readers with an appreciation for Ron Rash or Daniel Woodrell. Elicia Parkinson

A DANGEROUS LEGACY

Elizabeth Camden, Bethany House, 2018, $15.99, pb, 334pp, 978076421881

New York City, 1903, is an exciting time with advancements in technology, and Lucy Drake is no stranger to the marvels of the new century. Not only has she mastered Morse Code, but she works for a local news agency’s telegraph office. This makes a perfect place to spy on her nefarious uncle who has kept Lucy and her brother’s rightful inheritance to himself: the rights to an engineering marvel invented by her grandfather. When Sir Colin Beckwith arrives from London, Lucy’s adventures begin in earnest. Although they work for competing companies, Lucy and Colin slowly begin to develop a friendship and Colin decides to work with Lucy to find a way to stop her uncle once and for all. As the two get closer, so too, does the danger. Camden again has realistically painted a

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truly endearing love story. Lucy nearly ruins her chances with Colin and their struggles to accept each other’s faults are endearing, authentic, and make their love so much stronger. Camden also successfully weaves in good historical detail, vivid imagery, and real characters. This is a delightful historical romance and one worth reading. Rebecca Cochran

A LONG WAY FROM HOME

Peter Carey, Knopf, 2018, $26.95, hb, 316pp, 9780525520177 / Faber & Faber, 2018, £17.99, hb, 368pp, 9780571338832

In 1953, Irene Bobs and her husband, Titch, leave their young children at home to enter the brutal Australian open road race known as the Redex Trial. Irene drives better than most men. Titch buys and sells cars for a living and knows how to fix them. The Bobs’ neighbor, Willie, is an unemployed teacher, radio quiz show champion, and a map expert. He joins them as navigator. What starts as a risky and exciting roundthe-continent competition turns into much more. The great race tests Irene’s and Titch’s marriage and love for their children. It strains her complicated relationships with her older sister and with her zany swindler father-inlaw. Willie’s own complex past catches up with him on the trek and ties into the racism of the continent’s white settlers. Australia is a hard land. Its weather and treacherous terrain, its self-reliant characters, and the horrid plight of aboriginals—present and past—take on increasing significance. Carey’s historical details, from auto breakdowns and rescues to Aussie and Aboriginal dialogue, all ring true. His prose fits the fast-paced story. This rich novel packs a lot into just over 300 pages. Some readers will struggle to identify the narrator in many point of view switches and to follow the story lines across sometimes rapidly changing time periods. For those who stick with it, the effort is rewarded. G. J. Berger

INVITATION TO A BONFIRE

Adrienne Celt, Bloomsbury, 2018, $26.00/ C$35.00, hb, 256pp, 9781635571523

Opening with a hint of mystery, this literary novel unfolds through letters, detailed diary entries, and other documents that provide the backstory and emotional terrain of its unusual love triangle. The central characters are Russian émigrés: Zoya, a war orphan of impoverished rural origins, whose diary is juxtaposed with complex and revealing letters from the brilliant writer Lev Orloff to his wife, Vera, both of whom grew up in wealthy circles. During the first half of the story, the link between Zoya and the Orloffs remains unclear and tangential. But when Lev accepts a teaching position at the elite New Jersey girls’ school she once attended on a scholarship and where she now works as a gardener, Zoya 38

plunges into a passionate, reckless affair with her idol. He asks her to do a shocking favor, and the besotted, gullible young woman assents despite her uneasiness. Vera looms as a presence mostly in the background until Zoya’s face-to-face encounter with her. From that point on, the tension accelerates, and the plot rapidly turns an unexpected direction. Vivid descriptions of Zoya’s years of humiliation by snobbish girls from rich families, together with traumatic half-suppressed memories of her childhood in war-torn Russia convey her vulnerability and inner turmoil. A similar level of artful character development makes Lev and Vera intriguing as well. At first the story moves rather slowly, and the plot seems tenuous. However, it achieves the intensity of a thriller near its conclusion. Something Lev often tells Zoya while wooing her, and which she internalizes, takes on a new dimension in the dramatic surprise ending. Cynthia Slocum

WOMAN OF THE ASHES

Mia Couto (trans. David Brookshaw), Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018, $26.00, hb, 272pp, 9780374292270

The introduction to this tale of the end of independence for the country then called Gaza (now Mozambique) is emblematic of its gradual demise. A quote describes scars gashing the land so often and deeply that its residents are prouder of the wounds than of the land itself. This fictional account depicts the role of a woman, Imani, as interpreter for Sergeant Germano, the man assigned to monitor the Portuguese control of Gaza. Imani describes the series of events leading up to the final confrontation between the Portuguese and the African emperor, King Ngungunyane. One watches as initially the Portuguese soldiers are losing because they in no way understand the culture, psyche and determination of this hearty people, Imani’s VaChopi tribe. She recounts their elaborate feasts and religious rituals, all based on worship of Mary, the mother of Christ, but interlaced with their own African beliefs. Elements of magical realism, superstition and mythology fill these pages, just as they guide the behavior of these mostly illiterate peasants. Imani describes the history of her people, “doomed because of the small-mindedness of their leaders.” Imani loses her children as victims of this long, circuitous war but survives through her faith. In reality, she has no idea how the war will end but stands strong as a model for her people. Though there is much pain in Imani’s life, there is immense joy and delight in her land, its people and its huge hope for a beautiful future, expressed in prosaic and poetic language that makes the reader want to meet these people. Finalist for the Man Booker International Prize in 2015, Mia Couto has written a story that will deeply move all readers.

REVIEWS | Issue 84, May 2018

Viviane Crystal

IF THESE WALLS COULD TALK

James D. Crownover, Five Star, 2018, $25.95, hb, 322pp, 9781432838201

In 1918, the great influenza epidemic is sweeping the world. Young ranch hands Silent Cooper and Dempsey Nealy are sent to an abandoned ranch house to avoid contracting the disease. Hanging on the walls of the house are old newspaper clippings that go back to the murder of a man named Riley Giddens by Tucker Beaver in 1886, on the steps of the Tularosa Courthouse in New Mexico. It soon becomes evident to the two boys that Tucker may have been innocent. Upon returning to civilization, they begin asking questions about the crime of those who lived in the area when it occurred. Many are reluctant to provide answers. This Western moves at a very slow pace. The concept is interesting—the story told through the unraveling of the wallpaper—but I soon lost interest in the mystery surrounding the murder of Riley Giddens several years earlier. The author is a fine writer. His knowledge of cattle ranching is excellent. However, I didn’t find the storyline and characters very interesting. If you enjoy stories that show little emotional depth but like a slow-developing mystery, you may find this novel appealing. Jeff Westerhoff

A PROMISE GIVEN

Michelle Cox, She Writes, 2018, $16.95, pb, 366pp, 9781631523731

A Promise Given is an entertaining romp through the social mores of 1930s Chicago and England, with the American upper crust proving themselves every bit as elitist as their British cousins. Henrietta Von Harmon is the beautiful oldest daughter of the ne’er do well daughter of a leading Chicago family and the butcher’s boy. She is raised in poverty with a disagreeable, perhaps mentally ill mother, providing what mothering she can for her younger siblings. In the first two Henrietta and Inspector Howard books, the inspector, Clive Howard, scion of a wealthy Chicago family, and the beautiful, kind and down-to-earth Henrietta fall in love. The first half of A Promise Given gets the two married and off on their honeymoon to England and Europe. Cox does a terrific job of getting inside her various characters’ heads— the book is about the tangle of relationships of a family, with the added complication of class differences. All the characters are engaging, and Henrietta and Clive are especially appealing. She’s plucky and does the right thing even when it’s tough, while he struggles with his desire to protect her and his promise to treat her as an equal partner. In a parallel story line, Henrietta’s sister Elsie must find her path amidst suitors who may or may not have her best interests paramount. Both women must

figure out when to be compliant, as their times insisted, or resistant. Enjoyable, escapist read with some truths to savor. Kristen Hannum

ON THE HOMEFRONT

Barb Warner Deane, The Wild Rose Press, 2017, $17.99, pb, 388pp, 9781509215201

Though many novels have been written about the exploits of the American military in World War II, few provide an intimate picture of those left behind: the mothers, lovers, wives, and brothers of soldiers serving in all the realms of war. From France to Africa, these relatives waited at home, trying to carry on as best they could, ever fearful the dreaded letter would arrive one day, announcing the death of their boy or man. This novel provides such an intimate picture, told through the viewpoints of the women. Characters Lilly, Ruth, and Helen each have a story that unfolds surrounding the war; each fights the enemy in all the ways women did on the home shores. They worked in factories, raised their children, suffered food shortages, used ration coupons, darned socks and mended holes in blankets. We see the choices each woman had to make at home, and the author shows their courage: they face rape, an unwanted pregnancy, the loss of a husband, and the decision to join the forces overseas as an ambulance driver in France. The story is lovingly told using the jargon and expressions of the times. The author provides a heartfelt picture of the way each life was affected by the war. The novel also embeds historical references to customs and culture so that the reader learns about the times and values from the era. The author is a fan of genealogy—that is evident through the meticulous research she gathered in presenting the simple, yet complex lives of women in the face of war. Gini Grossenbacher

A MILLION DROPS

Víctor del Árbol (trans. Lisa Dillman), Other, 2018, $19.95, pb, 640pp, 9781590518458

“Nobody wants to be sent off to freeze to death in Siberia. So the police make up any damn excuse to send them there, no trial, nothing. All it takes is no internal passport.” So begins Elías Gil’s nightmare. Having traveled to the USSR in 1933 to study and work, the idealistic young Communist engineer from Barcelona leaves his friends in a bar to go outside for a moment—without his passport— and is taken by police, shot, beaten, and jailed as a spy. Deprived of water for days, he tries to make sense of this “misunderstanding,” as his friends are arrested, mutilated, and forced to give him up. Faced with their betrayal and dying of thirst, Elías is offered water in exchange for his confession. “In the end, Elías picked up the glass, brought it to his lips, and with one sip sealed his fate.” In A Million Drops, award-winning author Víctor del Árbol creates a world as mystifying

as that of Josef K.’s in Kafka’s The Trial. But del Árbol takes readers further—across generations, continents, and wars—in a tale whose characters are bound by secrets, love, revenge, and hatred. And not the kind of hatred we usually see. This hatred simmers and festers for generations, consuming all in its path and curling the reader’s lip. Readers who study the Spanish Civil War and the aftermath of the Russian Revolution will be gratified by del Árbol’s attention to detail. Those less familiar with the era will not get lost, thanks to the author’s clear depiction of place, era, and politics. Blending personal, psychological, and historical elements in a nonlinear narrative, A Million Drops is complex, but del Árbol has the chops to pull it off. Take your time reading this one. It is worth every minute. Strongly recommended. Rebecca Kightlinger

THE POPPY GIRLS

Margaret Dickinson, Pan Macmillan, 2018, £6.99, pb, 509pp, 9781509851461

The Poppy Girls takes us to Belgium during World War I. The Poppy Girls of the title form part of a quick-response group of volunteers to get casualties from the front line as quickly as possible to the medical centres, whether that be to tents in a nearby field or to main hospitals and back to England if necessary. Our Poppy Girls are two people from very different backgrounds. Both come from Lincolnshire, but Pip Maitland is from a country estate, and Alice Dawson is her maid. Pip’s ambition is to be a doctor like her brother, Robert, but she is constantly thwarted by her parents, who do not see this as a suitable career for a girl. Her job is to marry well and bring up the next generation. When war breaks out, a friend of the family organises a quick response group, and Pip and Alice immediately volunteer. From then on they are in the midst of the battlegrounds. I very much enjoyed this book. It proved to be a good, credible story with a great deal of detailed history of how the First World War was fought and won. The characterisation includes a very good mix of the class system of the time and how it had changed by 1918, when girls had become used to earning their own money in jobs other than by simply going into service in the larger houses, or becoming nurses or governesses. The plot rolls effortlessly on, with one or two surprises thrown in. I had not met this author before but will certainly look out for her again. Marilyn Sherlock

NEW YORK STATION

Lawrence Dudley, Blackstone, 2018, $27.99, hb, 373pp, 9781538469194

Roy Hawkins is an Anglo-American working for MI6 in Paris as the city is overrun by the Nazis. Desperate to remain and fight the Germans with the underground, Hawkins receives orders that he’s to ship out and report for his new assignment in neutral America. In New York, Hawkins is tasked with finding the spy who is leaking shipping information to the Nazis waiting offshore in their U-Boats. Quickly, this assignment plunges Hawkins into a deeper threat to America, and ultimately the world. Hawkins discovers that the isolationist and pro-Nazi radio host Walter Ventnor is behind an attempt by the Nazis and their agent Dr. Hans Ludwig to turn the American election and derail FDR’s attempt at a third term. The hope is to get the Democrats to install a pro-neutrality president in office. As the investigation moves forward, taking Hawkins from New York to Saratoga and the famous horse track, Hawkins meets and eventually falls in love with a young heiress, Daisy van Schenck, who ends up as Hawkins’ own secret agent and introduces him to the dark side of America’s wealthy elite. Dudley builds a fast-paced political thriller full of intrigue, with a mysterious and resourceful female lead, and just enough twists to keep the reader honest. Based in part on actual events—which Dudley explores in the acknowledgement—New York Station is written in short, quick chapters perfect for a robust political thriller. Hawkins’ inner monologues sometimes bog the story down and the foreign dialog, often without translation, can make for frustrating reading. But the timeliness of the plot (foreign intervention in elections) and the complex story make this a worthy read. Bryan Dumas

THE CORPSE AT THE CRYSTAL PALACE

Carola Dunn, Minotaur, 2018, $15.99/C$20.99, hb, 280pp, 9781250047052

Set in London during 1928, this is the latest of more than twenty Daisy Dalrymple mysteries. Daisy, wife of Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, takes some visiting young relatives to visit the Crystal Palace—a beautiful glass dome surrounded by extensive gardens. This peaceful family excursion ends abruptly when two of her young relatives find the family’s nanny unconscious in the lake. At the same time Daisy herself discovers the body of another nanny—but wait! not a nanny but a man masquerading as a nanny—in the ladies’ conveniences. The search for the murderer of this most unpleasant character takes Alec, working with Scotland Yard, and Daisy with her friends, to visit characters in intriguing locales around London. The eloping Russian émigrés make an especially delightful vignette. The author writes with a freshness and evident pleasure in developing unique and quite memorable characters to enrich her

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novels. She also brings to life the glory that was the Crystal Palace. She demonstrates the sensibilities and vocabulary of a London divided between Victoriana and modernity. Carola Dunn’s Daisy and her intrepid and intelligent interference helping to solve her husband’s cases has become essential fireside or beach reading. Valerie Adolph

THE VERDUN AFFAIR

Nick Dybek, Scribner, 2018, $27.00/C$36.00, hb, 320pp, 9781501191763 / Corsair, 2018, £16.99, hb, 304pp, 9781472153869

This novel switches back and forth between California in 1950 and France and Italy as they recover from war in 1921. The title refers to what became known as ‘The Verdun Affair’ – a World War I military disaster where it is said that 250,000 men were killed. In the novel, it is also a town that sees the start of a romantic affair. In 1921, the protagonist, officially an aide to the bishop of Verdun, is a bone collector. It is his job to search the countryside around Verdun for any human bones remaining from the battles so they can be commemorated in an ossuary. Seldom is there anything to indicate the name or nationality of the soldier whose remains are found. They are just anonymous bones. Yet families come from all over France and beyond with sad tales and always the same question: “Have you seen him?” It would be unethical to give false hope, but cruel to tell the truth. A woman comes from the US with just such a question, and it leads to Italy, to two men who are in love with her, and to an amnesiac hospital patient who may or may not be her husband. While there are obvious comparisons to The EnglishPatient, this book seems to be an extended metaphor showing how relationships, loves even, can be shattered beyond all recognition, just as a human body can be obliterated. The author effectively communicates the spirit of place and time. He also has a knack for sharing the feelings and intentions behind quite ordinary conversations. The strength of this book lies in the first chapters set in Verdun. The powerful images of post-war suffering eclipse the image of long-dead romances. Valerie Adolph

THIS I KNOW

Eldonna Edwards, John Scognamiglio Books, 2018, $26.00, hb, 320pp, 9781496712868

Grace Carter is like any preteen living in a small Midwestern town in the late 1960s except for one thing: she has what she calls “The Knowing.” She knows things, such as when an accident is about to happen, or where a missing child can be found, or why her mother is always so sad. She also communicates with Isaac, her twin who did not survive birth. Her brother’s death all those years ago affected the family in profound ways, leaving Grace to feel as if she was to blame. She is the odd one out in her family of four 40

sisters, and her evangelical pastor father is more than disturbed by Grace’s intuition, forcing her to hide her gifts from everyone. When Grace’s mother is “sent away” after the birth of the newest baby, Aunt Pearl comes to take care of the family; she is the only one who seems to understand Grace, as does Grace’s new friend at school, Lola. When a young girl goes missing and a townsperson is accused, Grace must decide if she should tell the authorities what she knows or protect herself from additional ostracism in the community. Perhaps best categorized as a coming-ofage novel, this story about a young girl who is overwhelmed by her own clairvoyance, and shunned because of it, is uniquely premised and altogether fascinating. Grace’s loneliness seeps through the pages, while heartfelt scenes between Grace and her deceased twin are beautifully rendered. Ultimately, it is a story of courage and of resilience. If you’re looking for good, old-fashioned storytelling, one that will pull you in from the beginning and never let go, this is the book for you. Hilary Daninhirsch

ELLA’S JOURNEY

Linda Harris Sittig

Lynne Francis, Avon, 2017, £7.99, pb, 352pp, 9780008290658

This is the first installment of the Mill Valley Girls family saga set in the late 19th and early 20th century in England. Though it stands alone, this novel relies heavily on the summary of events that took place before the opening scene of the book, which often overshadows the plot of the current story. Ella, the titular character, is a witness to much change and turmoil in the lives of other people, but her own picaresque journey is one of intermittent hardship, little romance, and service. Starting as a mill worker in her girlhood, Ella enters service for a local family until a random meeting on the road with a rich gentleman lands her in service at a grand estate. There she lives out most of her days, caring for the son of the family, and sometimes returning home to the countryside to visit her mother and siblings. The meandering account of life in the lower classes pre- and post-WWI lacks vivid scenes that might endear Ella’s hardships to the reader, but instead it feels like a litany of neverending chores. The reader is left to wonder if this ever turns into a Cinderella story, where the opening difficulties are redeemed by good fortune in the end. Alas, there is no thread to connect the events or the characters, and plot points are often sprung on the reader to such a degree that it makes the storyline difficult to believe. Katie Stine

A DEATH OF NO IMPORTANCE

Mariah Fredericks, Minotaur, 2018, $24.99, hb, 288pp, 9781250152978

Set amidst the extravagance of 1910 New York City, where moneyed families lived in fear

REVIEWS | Issue 84, May 2018

of scandal, this is a story of two deaths. One occurs within the wealthy Newsome family, whose fortune was built upon a tragedy of the less fortunate. The other death involves an immigrant father trying to exact retribution for the murder of his son. All action is told through the protagonist, Jane Prescott, a lady’s maid to the Benchleys, an upper-class elite family. Jane sees to the day-to-day orderliness of the two Benchley daughters, Charlotte and Louise. But when Charlotte Benchley’s fiancé, Norrie Newsome, is gruesomely killed, Jane realizes that she is privy to certain details that might allow her to identify the murderer. The situation becomes more complex when a young newspaperman latches on to Jane for her supposed help, but all the while is trying to catch the scoop of the decade for himself. This novel is told with exquisite details of the city and life among the rich and their hired help, and I felt drawn into the mayhem of early 20th-century New York City. Applauding the pluckiness of Jane Prescott, I did wonder how a girl from “below stairs” would have the savvy she did in solving the details of both deaths. Nevertheless, I heartily recommend this book.

MURDER IN GREENWICH VILLAGE

Liz Freeland, Kensington, 2018, $15.95/C$17.95, pb, 277pp, 9781496714244

Murder in Greenwich Village is the first book in a new mystery series featuring Louise Faulk as the first woman to eventually become one of New York City’s female detectives. In the bohemian days of Greenwich Village, before the outbreak of WWI, twenty-yearold Louise Falk has left her home in Altoona, Pennsylvania, for the bright city lights of New York. She visits her eccentric aunt, who hosts weekly literary soirées, but Louise chooses to move into a boardinghouse, sharing a room with Callie, an aspiring model. After they become roommates, Callie’s cousin suddenly appears, stays for a week, and gets murdered in their room. The tension escalates when the two girls discover that the murdered cousin was wearing a borrowed nightgown of Callie’s, and from a quick look, could have passed as Callie. Did the murderer kill the wrong girl? The plot then develops twists and turns as Callie admits to an affair with a prominent gentleman, and a friend from Altoona, with romantic interests of his own, comes to visit Louise. The girls decide to strike out on their own to solve the cousin’s murder when it appears that the New York Police Department are dragging their heels with the investigation. That decision uncovers family secrets and puts both girls’ lives at risk. This well-told murder mystery is enjoyable to read. I do hope that subsequent books in the series will flesh out Greenwich Village in more detail. Linda Harris Sittig

THE SUMMER I MET JACK

Michelle Gable, St. Martin’s, 2018, $27.99, hb, 528pp, 9781250103246

Alicia Darr arrives in America, a displaced person hoping to find a new life after the war. Her cultured, privileged childhood in Poland is but a distant memory, and she finds part-time jobs to make ends meet. When a roommate asks her to fill in as a maid, Alicia finds herself thrust into the midst of the boisterous Kennedy household in Hyannisport. There she meets Jack, Bobby and Ethel, Teddy, Joe and Rose, and the Kennedy girls. Their raucous behavior, Joe’s blatant adultery, and Rose’s frigid ways bemuse her. But it’s Jack’s charisma and fullcourt-press approach that sweeps her off her feet. Despite significant reservations, Alicia accepts his proposal of marriage, yet when Joe Kennedy learns more of Alicia’s background, Jack and Alicia’s relationship comes to an abrupt halt. Alicia heads to Hollywood, where she mixes with politicians, screen stars, and the super-rich, never able to fully leave the Kennedys behind her. This book has all the salacious elements of a juicy page-turner: illicit romance, wealth, greed, power, adultery, gossip, blackmail, and intrigue. Readers will also notice a take on the Kennedy clan that is not often portrayed but does feel authentic. The one stumbling block is Alicia herself. As a main character, she’s difficult to like or to root for: opportunistic, flighty, and a glutton for punishment by Jack and his family. The reader observes Alicia’s foolish, often callous, behavior and begins to wonder if she deserves anything better. There is space for greater emotional depth here, but those opportunities fall by the wayside as Alicia pursues her next meaningless relationship, moneymaking scheme, or wealthy friend on her quest to climb the ladder of fame and fortune. A more nuanced heroine would have made this story irresistible. Rebecca Henderson Palmer

PAVING THE NEW ROAD

Sulari Gentill, Poisoned Pen Press, 2018, $15.95, pb, 375pp, 9781464206917

It’s the fourth outing for amateur detective Rowly Sinclair and his unlikely band of helpers, housemates and creative types Edna, Milton, and Clyde. They’re heading from their native Australia to Germany, to keep an eye on Australian New Guard (and Fascist) leader Eric Campbell, who hopes to win the favor of a rising politician by the name of Adolf Hitler. Australia’s Old Guard is paying their way, so the team spares no expense: disguised as art collectors they fly to Europe with legendary pilot Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, they spend money, and they generally get in the way of Campbell’s ambitions. Both hilarity and danger result, as Rowly and his team get drawn into the fashion and art worlds of 1933 early Nazi Munich. Historical figures including Eva Braun and the Göring brothers, Hermann and Albert, play prime roles in this rollicking escapade. Gentill includes some stellar plot twists and her signature historical quotes

throughout, deftly combining history and mystery in this page-turner. Helene Williams

THE GOOD DOCTOR OF WARSAW

Elisabeth Gifford, Corvus, 2017, £14.99, hb, 350pp, 9781786493415

This gripping true love story about a young Polish Jewish couple is set in Nazi-occupied Warsaw. Misha and Sophia meet at a lecture given by the renowned Dr Korczak, the humanitarian child psychologist who had decided to devote his life to caring for the children of an orphanage in Warsaw. His work and ideas were already hugely respected—he had helped to write the first Declaration of the Rights of the Child in Geneva in 1924—but for the Germans occupying the country, his status counts for little. Courageously, he continues to feed and protect his ‘republic of children’, as he calls his ghetto orphanage. His fiercely held principles about respecting the needs of children above all else co-exist with a naivety which leads him to believe the Germans ‘will never let the orphanage be dissolved’. Misha is one of his devoted assistants who works to make the children feel valued and secure. Against this dramatic historical situation, the love affair between Misha and Sophia is challenged by the constant fear, danger and near starvation which all in the ghetto experience. Their story involves risk and ingenuity, desperate journeys to apparent safety outside Poland and a separation of nearly three years, during which neither can be sure the other has survived. Elisabeth Gifford has re-imagined reallife events, keeping to the documented facts and faithfully researching the historical background. The result is a moving and wellwritten account conveying an immediacy and engagement with the central characters, adults and children. An author’s note at the end fills in the post-war lives of the pitifully small band of survivors. Imogen Varney

THE LAST MAN IN EUROPE

Dennis Glover, Overlook, 2017, $26.95/C$35.95, hb, 256pp, 9781468315912 / Black, Inc., 2017, £10.99, pb, 288pp, 9781863959377

Eric Blair, known to the world by his pen name, George Orwell, spent his youthful journalistic career writing about England’s working class. His experiences among them shaped his political beliefs in a time when socialism, fascism, and communism competed for dominance in Europe. A man of action as well as words, Orwell fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil War and broadcast British propaganda to Asian countries over the BBC during World War II. Although his political novel, Animal Farm, was an international bestseller, his major opus was yet to come: 1984. Glover’s novel vividly recreates Orwell’s short life—he died from tuberculosis at the

age of 46— emphasizing the personal, social and political influences that would later give rise to the futuristic vision Orwell depicted in 1984. Glover shows a hardworking author struggling to make ends meet, whose social conscience sometimes puts him at odds with those in control, the people he would come to call “Big Brother” in 1984. The two sides of Orwell’s life—the writer and the political activist, which are nearly impossible to separate—are examined in detail and would appeal to readers interested in the inner workings of a writer’s mind or in how politics may shape a person’s character, regardless of their vocation. The novel is peopled with important historical figures with whom Orwell had various relationships, such as H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, Willy Brandt, and Sir Oswald Mosley. Some of Orwell’s letters are reproduced in the book, adding another layer of historical information to a novel that already hews closely to the history, but relates Orwell’s story in an entertaining way. The Last Man in Europe is highly recommended. John Kachuba

THE HOME FOR UNWANTED GIRLS

Joanna Goodman, Harper, 2018, $16.99/ C$21.00, pb, 384pp, 9780062684226

It’s post-WWII, and in Québec there are two opposing factions: French Canadians and British Canadians. Rarely do the communities mix; however, fifteen-year-old Maggie has parents who are an exception—a fact that doesn’t mean her bilingual father is open to her seeing the poor French boy next door, Gabriel Phénix. When they find that Maggie is pregnant, she is sent away to have baby Elodie, a sickly preemie who is handed to the nuns at an orphanage. This story covers both Maggie’s journey into adulthood, Elodie’s ordeal as a “Duplessis orphan,” and their eventual coming to terms with the hands they were dealt in life. The cultural and political themes are one of the most interesting aspects of the story—an eyeopener for anyone not familiar with this era of Canadian history. Even though the first chapter opens with eloquence on the subject of seeds and growing plants, it’s not the main focus, but cushions the narrative comfortably in the background and also provides a clever parallel. The orphan theme seems to be a trend lately, and Goodman’s take brings to light a subject matter that is heartrending, but historically accurate. The children, who were

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deemed mentally deficient by the government for nothing more than extra funding, find a voice in this book that encourages readers to research more about this dark time in Canada’s history. While this story is incredibly sad, it also offers forgiveness and second chances for multiple characters. It is a wonderfully told coming-of-age tale recommended for anyone looking for emotional and redemptive fiction. Arleigh Ordoyne

THE VAIN CONVERSATION

Anthony Grooms, Univ. of South Carolina Press, 2018, $27.99, hb, 230pp, 9781611178821

A Vain Conversation is based on a lynching: in 1946 two African-American couples, including a pregnant woman, were brutally murdered in Walton County, Georgia by a white mob. The perpetrators were never identified. The novel opens in rural Georgia after World War II, when Lonnie, a poor, blackberrypicking white boy, watches a white mob torture and murder four African-Americans, including his father’s best friend, Bertrand, an educated, compassionate man who has returned from the war outraged that “Nazi POWs were treated better than colored soldiers.” For the rest of his life, Lonnie will struggle with helpless guilt for his unwitting role in what was locally called “the incident.” The story is told in the voices of Lonnie, Bertrand, and Jack, a lonely white landowner complicit in the murder yet deeply conflicted by the racism around him. Flawed and troubled, all three characters are drawn with insight and compassion. Grooms writes of the South with deep love for a rich and fertile land bedeviled by a history as tangled as kudzu. While asking and stubbornly refusing to answer fierce questions of race, class and gender in America, A Vain Conversation yanks the reader into the characters’ yearnings, tormented loves, and struggles to redeem their pasts. While the “vain conversation” between white and black Americans is not resolved, and some passages read as position statements, the novel is a powerful dramatization of this country’s long road toward social justice. Readers should expect racially and sexually charged language and vivid descriptions of lynchings. Pamela Schoenewaldt

PROMISE

Minrose Gwin, William Morrow, 2018, $25.99/ C$31.99/£18.99, hb, 384pp, 9780062471710

Promise is set in 1936 in Tupelo, Mississippi on the day of, and the days following, a devastating tornado. Following the parallel stories of two families, seemingly separated by race, class and geography, we discover their deep connections. In this story told from alternating points of view, we experience, in grinding detail, the fear and panic accompanying a terrifying natural disaster. Dovey, a local washwoman, is desperate to find her family in the aftermath of the tornado. Her granddaughter, Dreama, finally turns up, and together they search for Promise, 42

Dreama’s baby, a child resulting from a violent rape. Dovey despises the young man responsible. Son, the son of prominent judge, Mort McNabb, has gone without punishment for years. There is no justice in Tupelo for African Americans. Jo McNabb provides the other voice in the story. She is Son’s younger sister, but she has none of his ugly nature. Instead, she bravely cares for her mother after her mother’s new baby was blown right out of her arms. Jo also searches for her father and discovers a surprising turn of events. The characters are well-drawn, and the plot creates a great deal of tension. However, the ongoing descriptions, while beautifully rendered, bog down the progress of the story midway through the book. However, do not give up. The overall impact of the book is not so much about the devastation of a tornado, but the ravages of racism in our country. Though set during the Great Depression, this book is quite relevant to the world of Charlottesville, Black Lives Matter, Ferguson and NFL protests. In elegant prose, Gwin illustrates the vast schism in our culture; more importantly, she shows us our shared humanity. That is hopeful. Anne Clinard Barnhill

THE SOUL OF A THIEF

Steven Hartov, Hanover Square, 2018, $24.99, hb, 352pp, 9781335144577

“In the spring of 1944, I realized I was not going to survive the war.” With this simple sentence, The Soul of a Thief yanks the reader into its bizarre world, a world in which the word “Jew” is a death sentence—yet the narrator is half-Jewish and works for a high-ranking SS officer. In 1944, men of vision thought they saw how the war would play out its endgame, and made arrangements to survive and thrive. Shtefan Brandt, adjutant to Colonel Erich Himmel, has wound up as the colonel’s combination of lucky mascot and whipping boy, and knows the details of the colonel’s plan to steal enough to set up comfortably after the war. Shtefan has plans too, involving the colonel’s unwilling French mistress and the soon-to-be stolen treasure. But only one of the two men can make it through the war alive and rich—so which will it be? While the novel is oddly varied in tone, the book is nonetheless compelling. For me, it falls into the same “war is insanity” category as M*A*S*H and Catch-22. Nothing is what it seems, especially perceived reality. I hate to use that overworked-but-gamely-soldieringon phrase “a real page-turner,” but I found The Soul of a Thief difficult to put down (because a reviewer has to sleep sometime!). India Edghill

THE WOMAN AT 1,000 DEGREES

Hallgrímur Helgason (trans. Brian Fitzgibbon), Oneworld, 2018, £14.99, hb, 451pp, 9781786071699 / Algonquin, 2018, $27.95, hb, 400pp, 9781616206239

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Whilst telephone-canvassing during the

2006 Icelandic municipal elections, the author encountered an opinionated, irascible, mischievous old lady who had been living alone in a garage for 10 years, keeping in touch with the world via the Internet. Fascinated, Helgason wrote this novel based on her eventful life. His fictional heroine, Herra Björnsson, born in 1929, lives in a garage with a laptop, an oxygen cylinder and a hand grenade. Awaiting death aged 80, she recounts how her idyllic childhood in rural Iceland ended abruptly when her father went to study Old Norse at a German university just as the Nazis were rising to power. Falling under Hitler’s spell, he joined the SS, and after the Nazi defeat, Herra became one of the countless refugees crossing Europe in search of safety, enduring cold and hunger and witnessing horrors (there is a particularly harrowing scene involving concentration camp victims). She finds refuge in Argentina before returning to Europe via the USA, eventually ending up in a garage, estranged from her family and alone with her memories, including a flirtation with John Lennon in Hamburg in 1960. She warns the reader, however, that she is an unreliable narrator: ‘I sink into the depths of my quilt…with all my load, sails and oars. With all my lies.’ But which are the lies and who amongst us remembers everything perfectly? Herra is a compelling character: funny, bitchy, annoying, often perceptive but ultimately poignant. The narrative is somewhat rambling and disjointed (probably deliberately). This novel will appeal most to readers of a literary bent. Sarah Cuthbertson

SECRETS OF THE EAST END ANGELS

Rosie Hendry, Sphere, 2018, £6.99, pb, 414pp, 9780751566840

This is the second in the series, continuing the adventures of the three young women— Bella, Frankie and Winnie—who are part of London’s Station Seventy-Five ambulance service. Following on from the previous novel, East End Angels (reviewed in HNR 83), the three friends, who have been flung together by the War and come from a variety of backgrounds, face a number of severe challenges. It is 1941, and air raids continue to wreak havoc throughout the capital, having a devastating impact upon lives and property. In addition to the strains caused by their work, there are a number of personal issues that the three women have to face. Winnie takes on a leadership role at the station which causes her much personal angst, as she has to make a series of difficult decisions about mutually exclusive priorities. The underlying thread is the firm sense of community and alliance that the three women share, regardless of how desperately difficult circumstances are at times. The story is told in undemanding prose and can be raced through quickly. The research is sound and the plotting capable and keeps the reader fully engaged in the narrative. There appears to be plenty of scope for the continuation of the series—after all, London

has always needed an ambulance service, operated by dedicated and selfless staff. Douglas Kemp

THE SPARSHOLT AFFAIR

Alan Hollinghurst, Knopf, 2018, $28.95, hb, 417pp, 9781101874561 / Picador, 2017, £20, hb, 464pp, 9781447208211

Art rushes in where society fears to tread. In the 1940s, a group of young men watch from the windows of their Oxford College as a handsome newcomer, soon to be an RAF Pilot, exercises in his room. From this moment on, 17-year-old David Sparsholt becomes the object of their desire and continues to loom large in their existences, particularly since decades later, he is tried for homosexual offenses. As the reader discovers, the earlier episode, which could have come from the pages of Brideshead Revisited, stems from the memoir of Freddie Green, one of the young men present on that day, who explains how a nude drawing of David by Peter Coyle, a London Slade School of Art student, later came into being. At the conclusion of the novel, the art hangs in the London home of David’s son, Johnny, who takes comfort in the work of art after his father dies. Vita brevis, ars longa? The novel offers no simple consolations, while it describes in luscious language seven decades in the lives of a group of gay, upper-class men from World War II England to the present. As the narrative nears completion, Johnny, who is painting his daughter, attempts not only to come to terms with the loss of his parent, but also to make sense of his legacy, the ‘Sparsholt Affair,’ which is forever retold in print and on the Internet—reducing David’s personality and accomplishments to scandal and intrigue. Against this reductionism, Johnny sets his art, the portrait of his daughter, her features recalling her grandfather, who dared not show his face when he was painted by his lover in World War II. Elisabeth Lenckos

MOOD INDIGO

Ed Ifkovic, Poisoned Pen Press, 2018, $15.95, pb, 252pp, 9781464209437

As 1932 ends, award-winning novelist and playwright Edna Ferber attends Noel Coward’s extravagant birthday party. The room is full of New York’s elite and includes rising Broadway star Belinda Ross and her moody, wealthy boyfriend, Dougie Maddox. The couple upstages the party with a raucous fight, revealing the volatile nature of their relationship. Dougie, also the backer of Belinda’s latest show, is obsessive and jealous of the attention his beautiful girlfriend receives. When she is found murdered in an alley a few days after the party, no one is surprised Dougie is the police’s main suspect. Only Noel Coward believes Dougie is innocent and he enlists Edna to help him get to the bottom of things. As usual, Ifkovic’s dialog is the star. The witty

banter between Edna and Noel is engaging and fun to read. Also intriguing is Edna’s observation of the juxtaposition between her high society friends and those lining the streets of New York waiting for hours in bread lines. The mystery falls a little flat, however; while there are plenty of suspects, none are very interesting or well developed. Not the best in the series, but I look forward to seeing what mystery Edna becomes entangled in next. Janice Derr

THE BLACK EARTH

Philip Kazan, Allison & Busby, 2018, £14.99, hb, 382pp, 9780749022976

The Black Earth begins in 1922, with a chance encounter between two children in Athens. Zoë has become separated from her parents, who were fleeing from their home town of Smyrna when it was occupied by the Turkish army, while Tom’s family is returning to England from India. In different ways both children are robbed of their childhood. Zoë has to forget her previous privileged existence and face life as a refugee, dependent on the kindness of a stranger who has taken her in. And Tom suffers cruelty at the hands of a father who is traumatised by his service during the Great War. Fate brings Zoë and Tom together again during the Second World War, but separation, trials, and heartache lie ahead. The author apparently based this book upon his own family history. Unlike many war stories, which concentrate on those fighting on the front line, he approaches war from a number of different angles. There is the effect of post-traumatic stress on the families of those who have fought; the fear, confusion and physical hardship inflicted on those caught up in the war although not a part of it; and the occasionally bizarre existence of an Official War Artist. Then there is the Greek Civil War, which plunged the country into further chaos almost as soon as hostilities had ceased elsewhere in Europe. Philip Kazan’s style is highly descriptive and sometimes lyrical: I found it reminiscent of the prose of Helen Dunmore. Highly recommended as a slightly different portrayal of life before, during and after World War II. Karen Warren

THE DUTCH WIFE

Ellen Keith, HarperCollins Canada/Park Row, 2018, C$16.99/$16.99, pb, 336pp, 9780778369769

In 1943, a Dutch woman, Marijke, is arrested with her husband in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. They are both sent to camps— her to Ravensbrück, him to Buchenwald— as political prisoners, a higher echelon of inmate. When Marijke is offered a chance to be a prostitute at a new prisoners’ brothel at Buchenwald, she goes—hoping that she will find her husband. Instead, she finds Karl, an SS officer who finds her to be the distraction he needs from the unseemly duties of overseeing torture and executions. Thirty years later, a

young man in Argentina, Luciano, is taken by the Peronist regime for attending student protests. Among the historical “disappeared,” Luciano struggles to make a difference, and reconcile himself to his European father’s cold and aloof behavior. This book is a good reminder of what hard choices mean. Where is the line between survival and collaboration? The tragedy of well-written books about atrocities is that they can sometimes be a challenge to get through. The Dutch Wife is vivid, gripping, and well-paced. However, this is not a beach read. Some passages are stomach churning, not because of the characters that experienced the torture, rather because we are sometimes in the perspective of the character perpetrating it. I recommend this book, but it is not for readers with a delicate constitution. Katie Stine

GREEKS BEARING GIFTS

Philip Kerr, Putnam, 2018, $27, hb, 528pp, 9780399177064 / Quercus, 2018, £8.99, pb, 464pp, 9781784296551

Bernie Gunther returns for #13 in Philip Kerr’s crime fiction series. The former Berlin police detective has survived the Nazi years, but at the price of making powerful enemies who have been on his trail since the war’s end. His latest evasion strategy is to hide in plain sight. That is why he now works as a mortuary assistant in Munich. It is 1957, and he goes by the name Christof Ganz. Gunther doesn’t fly under the radar for long. A corrupt Munich cop recognizes him and blackmails him into a robbery gig that turns into murder. Bernie foils the plan, returns the money, and wins a job as an insurance claims investigator. He’s very good at it and gets sent to Greece to investigate a claim for a sunken boat. There the web becomes tangled indeed. Sadistic murders, stolen antiquities, Nazi plunder—all are skillfully woven into the realpolitik of post-war Greece. The Bernie Gunther stories are noir by genre, so we expect to see the dark side of human nature. But in Greeks Bearing Gifts dark becomes black. There is no relief from deceit or greed or callousness. Gunther himself has become bitterly cynical and sarcastic. Further, as a seasoned criminal investigator he makes some rather stupid moves, and he’s developed an amazing fascination with female cleavage. Though never an altar boy, this new Gunther is not very likeable. A third off-putting feature of Greeks Bearing Gifts is the author’s tiresome overuse of similes, though some are pretty funny. However, in spite of it all, the story moves well and you want to see how it ends. I have long been a Bernie Gunther fan and will no doubt line up for Volume 14, but perhaps this time with muted enthusiasm. Lucille Cormier

MURDER LIES WAITING

Alanna Knight, Allison & Busby, 2018, £19.99, hb, 286pp, 9780749022099

Murder Lies Waiting may grab the attention

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by its quirky title, giving the reader the idea that they are in for a real treat. Our female detective, Rose McQuinn (or Macmerry), has travelled from Edinburgh to the Isle of Bute with her housekeeper, Sadie Brook, for a week’s holiday. During their stay Sadie admits to a former life on the island (and former name as Sarah Vantry), as well as a non-proven verdict following her acquittal at a murder trial some twenty years earlier. Unfortunately, the lack of questioning applied towards her housekeeper’s history about these revelations leaves us feeling irritated at the detective’s potential to solve any crime. This, together with the end of chapter summaries that are presumably intended to tease the reader into pursuing the story, and the repetition of information (in one case on the same page), leads to a lack of credibility in the characters. The historical events referred to such as the growth of the suffrage movement, and the lack of female cyclists and motorists shows insight, and research has been applied into the background of the novel. But the writing style and plot appear rushed and un-proofed before publication, and though the storyline is good, the conclusion appears to have been thrown together with haste. It may be time for the author to re-visit her characters’ traits and delve into developing her detection along more realistic lines, whilst looking again at the information provided to allow the reader to identify the murderer. Cathy Kemp

TRENTON MAKES

Tadzio Koelb, Doubleday, 2018, $25.00/ C$34.00, hb, 224pp, 9780385543385 / Atlantic, 2018, £12.99, hb, 224pp, 9781786494061

In Koelb’s debut novel, a woman in postWWII Trenton, New Jersey, accidentally kills her abusive husband, then disposes of his body and takes his identity. She can do so because her husband was a smallish man, and she herself was made strong by years of factory work during the war. Living now as Abe Kunstler, he moves to another part of town and eventually gets work at another factory, as he had done during the war. Abe decides that for his ruse to be complete, he needs a wife and child. He eventually marries Inez, an alcoholic taxi dancer. In time, Abe takes steps to start a family. The narrative then jumps ahead about 25 years to 1971. Abe’s son, Art, has possibly figured out Abe’s secret. Now Abe is determined to hold together everything he has struggled so hard to create. This book won’t be for everyone. The writing style, leaving readers uneasy and offcenter, takes some getting used to. Obviously, issues of gender roles and identity come into play. Throughout the novel, the woman Abe was before had no identity of her own; Abe’s male identity completely overwrites her as a person. Also, not central to the narrative, but still looming large, is the question of consent. Abe’s world hinges on the idea that he needs a child. The manner in which that child is conceived eliminates consent on a multitude of 44

levels and may be triggering to some readers. The shift in perspective from mostly Abe’s to mostly Art’s during the jump ahead in time is a bit jarring, given the uniqueness of the writing style. Overall, this is a well-crafted book, but one that I think will turn off many readers for various reasons. However, it would make a great book club selection because there are so many topics to discuss. Kristen McQuinn

ANOTHER SIDE OF PARADISE

Sally Koslow, Harper, 2018, $26.99/C$33.50, hb, 352pp, 9780062696762

The four-year romance between the married F. Scott Fitzgerald and divorced Hollywood gossip columnist Sheilah Graham has been chronicled in books and movies before this fictional retelling—but not like this. Koslow begins her portrayal with Scott’s sudden death in December 1940 after years of rejection letters, dieting on candy bars and gin, and cancelled book and movie script contracts. Next, the story takes us to their first meeting and then further back to Graham’s childhood of abject poverty in London’s slums, an orphanage, and her fight for every rung up the ladder to success. Scott and Graham make a perfect match. He cherishes her mind, spunk, and beauty. She has the strength to put up with his violent binges, admires his giant literary talent, and basks in his depth of feeling for her. Graham’s first-person point of view (in mostly the present tense) makes for white-hot intensity. The romance is deep and interesting but never pornographic. Scott’s addiction and downward spiral are riveting but never maudlin. Lighter vignettes of Hollywood’s golden age and industry characters enhance the main story. After all, Graham was the biggest gossip columnist of her time. The prose feels as if Graham herself were the author, ranging from literary to snappy and funny (“The speeches were each as long as a lease”; “danced like a wounded kangaroo”). This intimate nothing-held-back work is a pleasure from the first lines to the last and will linger with many a reader. G. J. Berger

THE PORTRAIT OF MOLLY DEAN

Katherine Kovacic, Echo, 2018, A$29.99, pb, 215pp, 9781760409784 / also $9.99, ebook, B07986498H

“Lane & Co. think they have a portrait of a pretty but unknown girl by an unknown artist.

REVIEWS | Issue 84, May 2018

However, I am planning to buy a portrait by Colin Colahan of a girl who became famous for being the victim in one of Melbourne’s most sensational murders; a murder that has never been solved. Her name is Molly Dean.” These attention-grabbing sentences summarize the opening of Kovacic’s terrific new crime novel. In 1999, Alex Clayton, an art dealer used to turning paintings over swiftly for profit, arrives at an auction house knowing more about a portrait’s backstory than anyone—or so she thinks. After her successful bid, she researches its subject, uncovers a web of mysteries, and needs to know even more. Molly Dean, the dark-haired, brown-eyed woman gazing out from the canvas, was the artist’s lover, a schoolteacher and aspiring writer with a troubled home life. In 1930, she was brutally beaten on a dark suburban lane and died hours later; the prime suspect went free, without even a trial. With the help of her art restorer friend John, the Mulder to her Scully, Alex investigates the decades-old mystery. An alternating thread follows Molly’s path up to that fateful night. This is Kovacic’s debut, and thriller writing is clearly her forte. Her art-infused story has relentless pacing, and Alex’s brash attitude and witty voice exert a strong pull. Molly’s sections are slower and more detailed, and the bohemian world she inhabits is more implied than present, but her determination inspires respect. She seeks to escape her coarse, abusive mother and achieve her literary dreams but lacks sufficient support. Molly was a real person, and her shocking biography is just as the author describes. Fans of Jessie Burton’s The Muse and Josephine Pennicott’s multi-period gothics should seek it out. Sarah Johnson

DEEP RIVER NIGHT

Patrick Lane, McClelland & Stewart, 2018, C$35.50, hb, 416pp, 9780771048173

A motley collection of men work at a lumber mill in central British Columbia. Caring for their physical ills is Art, first aid man who, still in 1960, remembers the brutalities of WW2 in Europe. When whisky fails to obliterate his memories, he joins Wang Po, the Chinese cook who uses opium to help him forget the atrocities of the Japanese occupation of Nanjing. The mill workers are from many countries and of all ages, the youngest being Joel, the lad Art salvaged from an open freight car in a snowstorm. Part of the story centres around Joel’s coming of age, which brightens a novel that mostly reveals suffering. If Art’s anguished dreams and futile efforts to quit drinking are not enough, there are men in camp who are cruel for the sake of being cruel, men who do evil from ignorance, and a man driven to evil by matters beyond his control. The manager of the mill is himself morally numb, his decisions driven by expediency. The ancient stories of a boy becoming a man, and good men trying to sustain a community against the powers of evil, are set in the harsh and uncompromising environment of a small

isolated community in a land both beautiful and austere. Having some knowledge of this environment I was able to appreciate the author’s penetrating eye for detail. He not only reveals the exquisite beauty of leaf and dragonfly, of river pebbles and mouse’s ear, but also the clanging metallic detail of mill machinery as well as the intimate detail of grizzly and man face to face at the dump. Despite the overwhelming sense of suffering, the author reveals the hope of redemption and rebirth that remain as constant and inevitable as the flow of the mighty river beside the mill. Valerie Adolph

HEARTS OF RESISTANCE

Soraya M. Lane, Lake Union, 2018, $14.95, pb, 332pp, 9781477805107

During WWII, three women fight against the Nazi occupation of France and their numerous personal conflicts. Hazel, a Special Operations Executive (SOE) spy, trained in radio communication and how to take a life with her bare hands, is looking to prove that she is more than a future housewife. Sophia is fighting against the Nazi empire her father supports, and for the safety of the Jewish man she loves. Rose is determined to further the cause that her husband died defending. Throughout the narrative, traumatic events transform the characters quite often, sometimes almost jarring the reader with the abrupt change. While the turn of their attitudes may shock the reader, upon further thought, it is always logically justified. Between these women develops an extraordinary bond of friendship, which only gets stronger through the misfortunes they endure. Through tragedy, torture, and even a little romance, these ladies pull together to better the future of France. This is a refreshing narrative of driven individuals and provides a welcome reminder that women are quite often their own hero, and do not need an invitation to make a difference. All in all, Hearts of Resistance beautifully tells the story of three women becoming friends, and later sisters. Alice Cochran

I WAS ANASTASIA

Ariel Lawhon, Doubleday, 2018, $26.95, hb, 352pp, 9780385541695

I’ll start by revealing that I’m a huge Romanov junkie, and so predisposed to like this novel. With a very few caveats, I wasn’t disappointed—and since those caveats arise from my decades-long fascination with the book’s central mystery, the average reader probably won’t even notice them. Memorable, poignant, and a dazzling tour-de-force of structure and storytelling, this novel starts in both the last days of Tsarist Russia and in 1980s Virginia. For once there was a young woman named the Grand Duchess

Anastasia, who died in July of 1918. Once there was a woman who calling herself Anna Anderson, who died in February of 1984. The question over whether Anna was in fact the Grand Duchess Anastasia raged for most of the 20th century, and although the question was pretty conclusively settled in the early 21st century, the arguments remain. The positives: the book’s amazing narrative drive, and its willingness to explore the darker reaches of both Anastasia’s and Anna’s souls. The downside: the amazing inaccuracies about the imperial family’s pets. There never was a black Siberian husky named Jimmy. There was a very small spaniel named Jemmy (sometimes given as Jimmy). The French bulldog’s name is usually given as Ortipo, not Ortimo. Minor points, but historical novels are created of minor points used to produce an illusion of reality. However, I still thoroughly enjoyed this book. For one thing, the story structure is just plain brilliant. Anastasia’s story rolls inexorably forward as Anna’s unravels backward until the stories collide with the inevitability of tragedy. And even though I knew how the novel must end, I still found myself hoping that somehow the author had managed to pull off the miracle that would change Anastasia’s history—or at least change Anna’s. India Edghill

PEACE IN MY HEART

Freda Lightfoot, HQ, 2017, £7.99, pb, 311pp, 9781848455054

Manchester, 1945. The war has ended, but there are more troubles ahead for Evie Talbert. Like so many women of the time, she has lost her job to a returning soldier and is left with no money for rent or food. And her family has been scattered by war service, bombing and evacuation. Peace in my Heart is the story of Evie’s quest to reunite her family and to rebuild their lives. She, her husband, and her children all have their individual problems and demons to overcome. There are so many books about the Second World War that it makes a change to see the spotlight moved to the aftermath. Euphoria at the end of hostilities is soon replaced by a feeling that the future looks just as bleak as the war years. However, for me, the promise of the plot was let down by the quality of the writing. The dialogue in particular was often stilted, and it sometimes felt as if the characters were giving information to the reader rather than communicating with one another. But I may be in a minority: Freda Lightfoot’s sagas have many fans. I have no doubt they will find plenty to enjoy in this book. Karen Warren

WALKING WOUNDED

Sheila Llewellyn, Sceptre, 2018, £16.99, hb, 261pp, 9781473663077

This is a shocking book, and I hope you will read it and be suitably shocked. It is set in a military psychiatric hospital near Birmingham, England, in 1947, treating cases

of what we now call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The hospital is being run down in preparation for its hand-over to the new National Health Service. There are two main protagonists, a patient and a psychiatrist, and the narrative alternates between the two points of view. The patient is a veteran of the Burma campaign who has had violent episodes since being demobilized, and the psychiatrist is a psychotherapist, very much out of sympathy with the views of several of his colleagues who favour physical interventions such as electroconvulsive therapy and lobotomy (severing the connections between the frontal lobes and the inner brain). There is a chilling account of a demonstration lobotomy under local anaesthetic. There is no real plot. Both protagonists come to terms with their inner demons and move on. Besides being a bestselling author and playwright, Llewellyn is a cognitive behavioural therapist who worked in a PTSD clinic in Northern Ireland. Her book is a reminder of the invisible wounds of war and the difficulties we have in understanding and treating them. Edward James

IKE AND K AY

James MacManus, Duckworth Overlook, 2018, £16.99, hb, 320pp, 9780715652947 / Overlook, 2018, $27.95, hb, 288pp, 9781468316353

During World War II, British senior military officials and American media sources alike were scandalised by the close relationship between Ike Eisenhower, the US general tasked with winning the war in Europe, and his driver, a British-Irish woman in her midthirties, the attractive Kay Summersby. James MacManus’s novel describes the relationship between the two, primarily from Kay’s perspective, but also from the perspective of Eisenhower himself, and even from that of other historical figures such as the Nazi commander, Rommel, and Eisenhower’s wife, Mamie. While it is a fictional account, MacManus draws heavily from history. The relationship is in the foreground, but the war and the tactical decisions made by Eisenhower and other military leaders and troops are never far in the background. Although this is billed as a love story, MacManus’s focus on the war rather than the participants, together with large tracts of historical description, means that the reader never fully gets into the characters’ minds—or their hearts. The characters seem to be lacking in affection; the word “love” is used, but Ike and Kay appear fond, rather than passionate, about one other. MacManus’s techniques also borrow from non-fiction: events are described from several characters’ viewpoints. A character in the middle of a mundane action will flash back to a more exciting moment, robbing events of their immediacy. I would have preferred a straight work of non-fiction; as it was, it felt like I was reading non-fiction with the occasional non-raunchy sex scene

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and mild speculation about the thoughts and emotions of the characters. Ike and Kay is historical fiction for those who prefer the emphasis on the history. The unusual and intriguing story of a relationship I was not previously aware of makes for an interesting, if not compelling, read. Laura Shepperson

SILENCE UNDER A STONE

Norma MacMaster, Doubleday Ireland, 2018, £12.99, pb, 298pp, 9781781620441

Harriet Campbell is a young wife in the years after the Great War, living on the Ulster side of the border in a newly divided Ireland. She is married to a strict and harsh Presbyterian who becomes an Elder in their local church, Ballymount. They have a son, James, whom Harriet dotes upon, and jealously protects from their interfering Catholic housemaid, and from her husband who wants to toughen James up in a strict Protestant environment. But there are far more worries for Harriet as James grows into an adult, and circumstances are difficult for her. The narrative is in Harriet’s first-person viewpoint, interspersed with her thoughts as she looks back upon her life in 1982, by then an old woman dying in a nursing home in Northern Ireland. It is a tale of religious intolerance, rigidity and an inability and unwillingness to forgive. Harriet herself had a strict religious upbringing that molded her character and gave her a foundation of intolerance and righteousness that lasted right up until her death. This is not a particularly profound or difficult book to read, though it is interesting and paced well, examining the horrors of religious bigotry. The narrative plods along somewhat, but it is ultimately a moving and rather chastening story. Douglas Kemp

TANGERINE

Christine Mangan, Ecco, 2018, $26.99/C$33.50, hb, 320pp, 9780062834409 / Little, Brown, 2018, £14.99, hb, 320pp, 9781408709993

Christine Mangan’s debut novel, Tangerine, takes us into the twisting and menacing streets and alleyways of 1950s Tangier, Morocco. Beginning as a college student in Vermont, Lucy Mason takes her obsessive love for her wealthy, insecure college roommate, Alice, to this ancient, mysterious city on the brink of revolution. Alice had begun to distance herself from Lucy when the death of her fiancé, Tom, in an unexplained car accident damaged Alice’s already fragile psyche and eventually sent her to the security of marriage to another man. Her healing and newfound self-confidence suffer another blow, however, when her husband’s work takes them to dangerous, frightening Tangier. The story unfolds in alternating chapters by first Alice, then Lucy. The reader gains snippets of insight into each character’s life and past. But which one is telling the truth? Which one has a true grasp on reality, and which one 46

lives in her own false and tortured version? Perhaps neither. The novel comes alive in Tangier as Lucy finds the menacing, near lawless atmosphere of Tangerine life to her liking and uses it in her quest to regain Alice. Alice’s anxious, wounded mind is no match for Lucy’s gaslighting and machinations. The novel’s film noir atmosphere and sinister surroundings and characters add up to a superb story of twisted love, deception, suspense and murder. Promised extensive publicity and optioned by George Clooney’s film company, this should be a blockbuster. A must read. Pamela Ferrell

ALL THINGS BRIGHT AND STRANGE

James Markert, Thomas Nelson, 2018, $15.99/ C$19.99, pb, 348pp, 9780718090289

WWI has recently ended, and local veterans—at least the ones who survived— have moved back to their small, rural South Carolina hometown, Bellhaven. Ellsworth Newberry, a sad widower who has lost not only his wife but also his leg, is among them. War has left each of these former soldiers physically and emotionally scarred. The local women they left behind, wives and neighbors, have also suffered. Now something in the woods surrounding the little town seems to bring a new peace and healing. But all is not as it seems. The townspeople have been advised to avoid these woods for generations. Yet something draws the people there now to seemingly ease their never-ending heartbreak and woe. There is not only a genuine evil out and about in the form of the Ku Klux Klan but an even worse and ancient supernatural evil which is growing stronger. Ellsworth, who suspects the worst, must forget his own tragedies and rally his neighbors to try to confront and defeat this primordial menace. The novel starts slowly but accelerates in pace and emotion as the eerie threat makes its presence increasingly known. The characters, especially Ellsworth and Gabriel, a lovable single woman full of “girth and muscle,” are attractive and memorable. There is a bit of jumping around in time and context. And the little Southern town seems to have an inordinately diverse collection of religious groups. But the author admits in his acknowledgments he created a “world of my own.” This is an exorcist story on well-written steroids resembling the best of Stephen King without the nihilism. By the end, I expect

REVIEWS | Issue 84, May 2018

readers may be emotionally drained yet ultimately uplifted. Recommended. Thomas J. Howley

UNDER FIRE

Linda Shenton Matchett, eLectio, 2017, $17.99, pb, 278pp, 9781632134080

In 1942 Ruth Brown watches her sister’s empty coffin being lowered into the ground. Ruth refuses to believe Jane is dead; after all, the body hasn’t been found. A society reporter for a small New Hampshire newspaper, Ruth decides to use her reporting skills to investigate what happened to Jane. She learns that Jane was in conflict with the union at the factory where she performed war work. The union men refused to let women join and would sometimes sabotage their work. Ruth discovers that union steward Roger Clark dated Jane for a time and comes to suspect that he knows something about Jane’s death. When Clark leaves for England to accompany a shipment of war materials, Ruth has her editor and her officer brother Chip pull some strings to get her a flight to England, where she can report stories about the war and continue her quest to find out what happened to Jane by tailing Clark. Her doggedness gets her mixed up with a German resistance fighter, the IRA, and a smuggling ring. Under Fire is an inspirational novel; part of the plot involves Ruth’s anger at God over Jane’s fate, while resisting the attempts of other characters to convince her to trust in God and have faith. It’s also a “clean” mystery with no gore or sex, and only a bare hint of romance. Pluses: Ruth is a spunky and interesting character, one who struggles against 1940s expectations of women’s roles. Short chapters will propel readers onward. Minor minuses: Several important events take place off stage, which may frustrate some readers. The ending is rather abrupt, but a hint is given that Ruth’s story may continue in future volumes. Fans of inspirational fiction, mystery, and World War II will like this novel. B.J. Sedlock

THEORY OF SHADOWS

Paolo Maurensig (trans. Anne Milano Appel), Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018, $23.00, hb,176pp, 9780374273804

On March 24, 1946, current world chess champion, Alexandre Alekhine, is supposed to be getting ready to defend his title against a Russian challenger. But, at age 53, Alekhine lies dead in his seaside hotel room in Estoril, Portugal. Fully dressed and wearing a heavy overcoat, Alekhine appears to have been eating dinner. A local doctor soon certifies he choked on a piece of meat. The day was too hot for a heavy coat, and who would dine still wearing the coat? Born in Moscow, handsome, married four times, master of multiple languages, widely travelled, Alekhine was caught behind enemy lines before and during World War II. To stay alive, he played for both Stalin and high-level Nazis. He drank to excess, smoked heavily,

studied chess games deep into the night instead of sleeping. He suffered from angina. Did he die of a heart attack, a stroke, choking on food, murder by the KGB or partisans for his apparent sidling up to Nazis? Skeptics and chess fans have wondered. In this fictional rendering, Maurensig recounts the chess master’s last days, interspersed with flashbacks, and sets the table for the likely explanation of Alekhine’s death. The elegant but plain prose does not feel like a translation from the original Italian. Maurensig portrays well the all-consuming addiction of high-level chess but never gets bogged down in the fog of chess moves. From the start, readers know the narrator is out to pursue the real cause of death, but that does not diminish the mysteries in this page-turner. If anything, at only about 160 pages of text, Theory of Shadows summarizes too briefly many aspects of a complicated genius in a fascinating time. G. J. Berger

HOLMES ENTANGLED

Gordon McAlpine, Seventh Street, 2018, $13.95, pb, 215pp, 9781633882072

This slim, inventive novel begins in the early 1940s in Buenos Aires, though it is only a frame to the body of the story, which takes place in the 1920s. Sherlock Holmes is a living and breathing character now retired from his profession as a detective. He is a professor now, and his business partner, Dr. John Watson, is deceased. When a well-known author of science fiction and adventure stories, Arthur Conan Doyle, comes to Holmes to ask him for his help in determining who is trying to kill him, Holmes accepts the job with some hesitation. Now, with the help of Dr. Watson’s widow, Holmes is back on the case. The clues lead him to debunk a séance, wear disguises as only Sherlock Holmes can, and even identify the source of a secret society. There are references to characters and circumstances which will be familiar to most readers of the original Sherlock Holmes series, and this metafictional approach to the series is somehow surprisingly refreshing and enjoyable. McAlpine appears to have a respect and an appreciation for the Conan Doyle stories about Holmes, but allows for the Holmes of his creation to be of a slightly different character than the version Dr. John Watson narrated. For die-hard Holmesians it may be a bit much to ask them to suspend their disbelief when the voice of Sherlock Holmes is different than what we have grown to know and love. But for others it will be a fun, quick read that is amusing to boot. Elicia Parkinson

LOVE AND RUIN

Paula McLain, Ballantine, 2018, $28.00, hb, 400pp, 9781101967386 / Fleet, 2018, £14.99, hb, 400pp, 9780708898925

In Love and Ruin, Paula McLain returns to ground she has already covered very successfully in The Paris Wife: the life and loves of Ernest Hemingway. This time around, she

gives us Martha Gellhorn, Hemingway’s third wife, the only one who leaves him. But Love and Ruin is wholly Gellhorn’s story, and she is a heroine who thoroughly deserves her own space and voice. Independent, restless, ambitious and talented, Gellhorn is a match for Hemingway in many ways. The novel charts her life and career from 1936 to 1944, a tumultuous time for Europe and America. Gellhorn and Hemingway first meet in Key West when she is on vacation there with her mother and brother, and their initial relationship is a blend of friendship and patronage. Hemingway encourages Gellhorn, a struggling writer nine years his junior, to join a band of writers and journalists covering the Spanish Civil War, and the two fall in love in war-torn Madrid. Although a much less experienced writer, Gellhorn still believes herself to be his equal; but when they settle into life together in Cuba, and Hemingway leaps to literary super-stardom with the publication of For Whom the Bell Tolls, the delicate balance of their relationship shifts. This novel is a beautiful story of love and loss. McLain has magically immersed herself into Gellhorn’s character and given voice to her struggle for success and her own professional identity. As well as being a love story, this is also an excellent portrayal of a dramatic period of history, full of evocative description. Furthermore, it is a book, written by a talented writer, McLain, about two other talented writers, busy writing. The passages where Gellhorn and Hemingway are writing and/or struggling to write, are fascinating to read. Kate Braithwaite

THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ

Heather Morris, Zaffre, 2018, £12.99, hb, 288pp, 9781785763640 / Harper, 2018, $16.99, pb, 272pp, 9780062797155

The Holocaust will surely be an endless source of inspiration for creative artists of all disciplines. We take for granted the poignancy of the plethora of subjects, narratives, images and sounds in the various works of art, from paintings, sculptures, ballets and musical compositions to poetry, and prose which owe to it their origins. The Tattooist of Auschwitz more than justifies its place among a rich crop of novels, from Anne Frank’s story to the present day, the best of which have emerged from the creative artist’s mind, provoking strong and irresistible

reactions to the original, sometimes almost unbearable histories of the characters involved. The tattooist has the job of tattooing serial numbers upon newly-arrived prisoners and uses the tiny privileges that this gives him to help other prisoners as much as he can. The writing style of this novel is intriguing. It delivers a concise immediacy that suggests confident, uncluttered movement as the narrative proceeds, gathering momentum and delivering its powerful storyline. No place here for maudlin sentimentality or over indulgence. The telling is crisp, the dialogue and the characters convincing. The territory may be familiar, but the viewpoint is refreshingly original. Above all, it is an engrossing read. Julia Stoneham

PENHALIGON’S PRIDE

Terri Nixon, Piatkus, 2017, £8.99, pb, 370pp, 9780349418780

Who doesn’t love a good family saga? Set in Edwardian Cornwall, here’s a novel with a tried and tested recipe: dark secrets, affairs of the heart, a spot of blackmail and a rather spectacular storm! It’s an absorbing story for a rainy afternoon or to take on holiday, and will no doubt be a popular choice in libraries from Penrith to Penzance. Terri Nixon sketches a credible Cornish village community, still reliant on its traditions of fishing and tin mining but emerging into a more modern era where electric lights, motor cars and transatlantic travel are part of a brave new world. We follow the story of characters created in an earlier novel (Penhaligon’s Attic); they are trying to move on from past issues but events surrounding the mysterious death of a pregnant, unmarried girl trigger misinterpretations that serve to unsettle many relationships including that of Anna Garvey and her lover’s daughter, Freya Penhaligon. Although the author clearly loves her Cornwall, and the novel is awash with indigenous surnames and place-names, the “Cornishness” does not have the authentic ring of Winston Graham or du Maurier, and the 1910 setting, though competently handled, is never fully realised. Perhaps the most effective part is the description of the storm; the havoc wreaked by a tempestuous sea upon a coastal village is told convincingly. Terri Nixon has devised a good plot, and I think you will care enough about the characters to welcome a third instalment at some point in the future. Will the lovely Freya be won by journalist Tristan, or upper-class Hugh? And what will happen to this village when the Great War breaks out? Jan Middleton

THE RIVER BY STARLIGHT

Ellen Notbohm, She Writes, 2018, $16.95, pb, 192pp, 9781631523359

In the early 20th century, Annie Rushton is shamed in her small Iowa town as a divorced woman and a failed mother. She is

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not allowed to be part of her baby’s life. She accepts an invitation from her brother to join him in Montana on his homestead. There she meets Adam Fielding. The two have a strong chemistry, and Annie is persuaded to remarry as a condition of taking over her brother’s farm. The couple has big plans and dreams for a successful truck farm while their passionate marriage thrives. Annie becomes pregnant and hopes are high, but things come crashing down when the pregnancy ends. Their lives are completely turned upside down when postpartum psychosis takes over Annie. This is what destroyed her first marriage, and again it rears its ugly head. Adam desperately wants a child, but each subsequent pregnancy and miscarriage repeatedly sends Annie into the same psychotic state. Annie is a resilient woman and Adam is a patient, loving man, but both are at the mercy of Annie’s illness and their dreams of family are jeopardized. Ellen Notbohm weaves a mesmerizing story with beautiful prose. The story moves from hopeful to devastating many times. A marriage is portrayed with all its ups and downs: jealousy, love, passion, fights, and reconciliations. But when mental illness takes over, it becomes more that any couple can weather. For women with mental illness prior to modern-day medicine, ignorance and social stigma dictated their treatment. They were often hidden away in asylums. This novel reminds us of how the issue of postpartum depression, as much a reality of the past as it is now, profoundly affects both men and women. Janice Ottersberg

SWIMMING BETWEEN WORLDS

Elaine Neil Orr, Berkley, 2018, $16, pb, 416pp, 9780425282731

Written with candor and compassion, Orr’s second novel takes place in the conservative South in 1959 with short flashbacks to her home country of Nigeria. Through the intertwining stories of Kate Monroe and Tacker Hart, she illustrates the challenges of unlearning ingrained racism and how immersion in a new culture can reveal problems in one’s own backyard. Both viewpoint characters sit at a crossroads. Tacker, a former high school football star, is back in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, pondering his career path. During the year and a half he spent in Ibadan on an architectural design project, he’d become good friends with his Nigerian coworkers and soaked up the Yoruba culture. Following his dramatic firing for “going native,” he takes a job at home, managing his father’s grocery. Kate, his former classmate, finds herself alone after her parents’ death. While debating a photography career, she learns a family secret that upends her world. After meeting Tacker again, she finds him attractive yet somehow changed, and he’s drawn to the prickly Kate. The third protagonist is Gaines Townson, a young black man who Tacker hires and befriends, and of whom Kate is initially 48

suspicious due to his skin color. Through Gaines, Tacker gets introduced to the ongoing civil rights struggle. This is the era of sit-ins at Woolworth lunch counters, segregated swimming pools, sexist attitudes, and racist attacks on African-Americans—all sharply rendered (and some of which sadly hasn’t changed). Fortunately, Gaines is more than a vehicle for the others’ emotional growth; he’s a well-developed character with a rich family life and his own future plans. Against this backdrop of social unrest, their relationships with one another unfold in a tentative, realistic manner, as each decides what’s most important. Orr’s gracefully written, character-centered tale, showing how beliefs are formed and transformed, is both original and memorable. Sarah Johnson

BENEATH THE DARKEST SKY

Jason Overstreet, Kensington, 2018, $26.00, hb, 302pp, 9781496701787

American Foreign Service worker and former FBI agent Prescott Sweet finds the enticement of working in Stalin’s Soviet Union during the mid-1930s too tantalizing to resist. The fact that he is African American in an era of segregation and discrimination in the United States is the main impetus for his decision. He and his talented wife, Loretta, long to be accepted for themselves rather than receiving the second-class status their own nation affords them, and they see the Soviet Union as a chance for them and their two adolescent children to finally live in a free and equal society. Their dream is quite different, however, from the reality that slowly emerges for the family. The murderous Stalinist regime has gripped the entire nation in a paranoid stranglehold, and the Sweets are not immune. Drawn inexorably into a system of terror that brutalizes its own citizens and foreign residents alike, Prescott Sweet must call on every skill he possesses to try to save those he loves. Author Jason Overstreet alternates chapters from the novel’s present with chapters from several years earlier, in a way that gives the past events more immediacy than a standard flashback would, and eventually, the past catches up with the present. The book has a few stylistic shortcomings. For example, so much information comes out in dialogue and exposition that it may overwhelm the reader, and some descriptions sound more like written articles than ideas conveyed through the eyes and voice of the characters. Some deep political conversations may lose the reader. Characterization, on the other hand, is this novel’s strongest facet. From the beginning, Overstreet succeeds admirably in winning the reader’s sympathy for Prescott and Loretta and achieving a balance between their desire for dignity and equality and their inescapable identity as Americans.

REVIEWS | Issue 84, May 2018

Loyd Uglow

DEAR MRS BIRD

A. J. Pearce, Picador, 2018, £12.99, hb, 307pp, 9781509853892 / Scribner, 2018, $26, hb, 288pp, 9781501170065

London, 1942. Emmy Lakes is an eager young woman who aspires to be a journalist tackling the hard issues of the day. She shares a flat with her best friend, Bunty. The women work during the day and volunteer with the Auxiliary Fire Service at night. The story begins when Emmy lands her dream job, only to discover that she is the assistant for an Agony Aunt column, not a lady war correspondent. The column is bland and unhelpful because the Aunt, Mrs. Bird of the book’s title, refuses to respond to unacceptable letters. These include letters that highlight women’s concerns, ranging from flirting to unplanned pregnancy to grief over loved ones killed in action—all topics considered off limits by Mrs. Bird. Restless Emmy takes matters into her own hands, secretly replying and eventually sneaking her own unacceptable responses into print. London during the Blitz is a well-worn setting, but Pearce successfully brings a fresh perspective by placing Emmy, Bunty, and their concerns centre stage. The women are charming. Their stories weave together episodes of romance, family and friendship set against the pressures and tragedies of German air raids. This is Pearce’s debut novel. Inspired by actual Agony Aunt columns from wartime magazines, she’s given us a fun read, although at times I found the non-stop ‘jolly’, ‘blimey’, and ‘I say’ in the dialogue distracting. She’s attracted a two-book deal and a big marketing plan, and the international rights were snapped up, so expect Emmy and her jolly adventure to make some noise. Sallie Anderson

THE SECRET LIFE OF MRS. LONDON

Rebecca Rosenberg, Lake Union, 2018, $14.95, pb, 329pp, 9781542048736

The Secret Life of Mrs. London, Rebecca Rosenberg’s debut novel, is set in San Francisco in 1915 on the brink of World War I. Charmian London, a writer in her own right, is married to the famous Jack London, who lives life as a great adventure. Charmian is a free thinker herself, and theirs is what you might call an “open marriage.” But, as Charmian says at the end of the book, “This free-love thing is for the birds.” Already somewhat chaotic, dealing with the alcohol-laced London, life becomes even more complicated when the Londons go to see Houdini’s magic show. Harry Houdini selects Charmian from the audience, igniting a love triangle: Harry, Charmian, and Harry’s wife, Bessie. While interesting, and based on the actual lives of the participants, these characters don’t jump off the page. Instead, they seem to be marionettes with the author pulling the strings. Not that there was any difficulty in believing

what happened to them; it was just hard to care. But, learning more about Jack London was enjoyable, as well as seeing early feminist examples. Those interested in exploring the lives of London and Houdini, as well as those who are interested in the time just before WWI, will find this book of interest. Anne Clinard Barnhill

THE MAGNIFICENT ESME WELLS

Adrienne Sharp, Harper, 2018, $26.99/ C$33.50/£20, hb, 337pp, 9780062684837

In her novel told in alternating parts set in Los Angeles (1939-41) and Las Vegas (194553), Sharp portrays the dark underpinnings of Hollywood’s movie industry and the mafiacontrolled birth of America’s sin city, all as seen through the first-person eyes and voice of Esme Wells. Esme never attends school, can barely fill out a job application, but absorbs more important lessons. From age six, she tags along with her dancer mother Dina to show rehearsals. She goes to race tracks with her father, Ike, helping him keep track of his betting slips. Naturally blond, Esme grows into a petite hourglass-figured beauty and catches the lust-besotted eye of big Vegas boss Nathan Stein. He lavishes favors on Esme and helps Ike climb up from the lowest level jobs to the casino cash counting room. But Nathan is a ruthless master, and Esme must use every ounce of her street smarts to keep herself and her father among the living. Sharp vividly portrays the places and leading players of Hollywood and Vegas, including cameo roles by the likes of Judy Garland, Robert Taylor, and Senator Estes Kefauver. The details, from cars to costumes, and from the neighborhoods of Los Angeles to massive structures newly rising out of bare desert, are spot on. Though uniformly dark, the main plot elements ring true. The prose is richly literary but sometimes overwhelms the story and title character. An unschooled Esme Wells, looking back at her life from the young age of 21, would not express herself so eruditely (using words such as codify, viable, mendacity, purview), observe everything around her so keenly, recount local history so deeply. Though it might have worked better in third person, I recommend this honest and lavish story. G. J. Berger

ECSTASY

Mary Sharratt, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018, $26.00/C$37.00, hb, 400pp, 9780544800892

This is an intimate deep-dive into the thoughts of the composer Alma Schindler Mahler during her marriage to Gustav Mahler. Her upbringing in Belle Époque Vienna was intellectually and artistically privileged, but her choice to give up composing to support her celebrated husband’s career creates numerous opportunities for conflict and drama. Her up-and-down cycles of elation and

depression, however, soon weary the reader, because Alma’s reactions are so oppressively self-centered, giving Sharratt few chances to bring to life any of the artistic geniuses with whom Alma interacts. The one exception is the brash American musicologist Natalie Curtis, who offers Alma a glimpse into the possibilities the new century and the New World offer an independent artist-scholar—but her scenes are all too brief. Instead, readers get more description than they probably need of Alma’s many erotic obsessions and disappointments. For fans of the setting, however, Sharratt’s considerable skill with descriptions of gorgeous Alpine countryside and the equally sumptuous social and musical soirées may be enough. The novel actually becomes more compelling as Alma’s social circle widens, and I found myself wishing that Sharratt would extend the narrative into the much more interesting second half of Schindler Mahler’s life, when she breaks free from the bourgeois constrictions of her life as Mahler’s muse and forges an identity for herself as arts patron, composer, and feminist. Kristen McDermott

BETWEEN EARTH AND SKY

Amanda Skenandore, Kensington, $15.95/ C$17.95, pb, 316pp, 9781496713667

Amanda Skenandore has hit pay dirt with her debut novel, Between Earth and Sky. At its heart, this luminous book tells a Romeo and Juliet story. But Skenandore’s book is so much more than a simple romance. This novel examines the complex relationship between love and loss, culture and conquest, annihilation and assimilation. The story begins in 1906 when Alma Mitchell reads in the news that a man she grew up with, Harry Muskrat (Alma knew him as Asku), has been accused of shooting a federal agent and languishes in jail awaiting trial. When she sees this, she immediately convinces her husband, Stewart, a lawyer, to travel to the reservation in an attempt to save Asku. Alma knows Asku could never be guilty of so heinous a crime. She knows because she and Asku grew up together at the missionary school her father ran for Native American children. Returning to her home brings back memories Alma would prefer to keep hidden, both from herself and Stewart. But seeing her old friend behind bars brings Alma’s secret history back with sudden and heart-wrenching

clarity. Told in alternating chapters between the present (1906) and Alma’s past, the truth of who Alma really is gradually reveals itself. One of the typical problems with a “frame” structure is that the storylines are unbalanced, one being more compelling than the other. Not so, here. Each thread of the plot is balanced, past and present holding a graceful tension. As the tale winds its way to the shocking and heartbreaking conclusion, the meticulous writing and the perfect rhythm of the pace combine to create a true work of art. Anne Clinard Barnhill

THE DEATH BEAT

Fiona Veitch Smith, Lion Fiction, 2018, $14.99/£7.99, pb, 336pp, 9781782642473

In this third installment of the Poppy Denby Investigates series, our titular heroine, a burgeoning reporter, begins the novel enraged with her managing editor, Rollo Rolandson. He had lost a bet that a New York Times editor could try to increase ad revenues of his London-based Daily Globe within three months. If he does, the new editor can buy 60% of its shares, effectively forcing Rollo out of his position. While the interim editor tries to improve the Globe (and surely none of Rollo’s staff would sabotage his efforts), Rollo leaves London as part of the terms; he takes Poppy along because since she’s been at the paper, ad revenues have gone way up, and he doesn’t want her making money for them. While in New York, they stumble upon a puzzle involving human trafficking, forced prostitution, and immigration. Somehow linked is the murder of a New York socialite in his penthouse. Poppy and Rollo can’t let it go until they figure it out and get the inside scoop ahead of their competition. As with the previous two novels, this was taut and entertaining. I also liked Poppy’s development from the earlier books. She’s always been torn between her upbringing as a Methodist minister’s daughter and her own desires as a career-minded young woman in the 1920s. Her inner conflict felt more pronounced to me in this book. Poppy has enlightened standards for how women should be treated that deviate quite a bit from her very traditional, conservative background, which at times cause her stress. This fits in well with the blossoming awareness about the conditions of immigrants and sweatshops and people forced into prostitution. While it was fun to see 1920s New York, I confess I missed London. In any case, it was an exciting, well written story and a good series addition. Recommended. Kristen McQuinn

THE GLASS FOREST

Cynthia Swanson, Touchstone, 2018, $25.99, hb, 340pp, 9781501172090 / also £12.99, pb, 352pp, 9781501192418

Married to Cary-Grant-handsome Paul and with a new baby boy, Angie Glass lives her dream in a small town by Lake Superior. Her contented life ends with a telephone

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call in September 1960. Angie’s 17-year-old niece, Ruby, says her own mother, Silja, has left the family home and will not come back, and that Ruby’s father (Paul’s brother, Henry) committed suicide. Over Paul’s objections, Angie insists on travelling with Paul and their young son to the carnage in upper Westchester, New York. Angie hardly knows Paul’s family. She yearns to help and comfort Ruby. In rotating chapters, the story builds from three points of view—Angie, Ruby, and Silja— going back to World War II. Silja’s marriage to Henry is frustrated by combat wounds and Henry’s cold-fish personality. Paul becomes ever more restless as his ugly past comes to light. Ruby, rather than vulnerable and upset, appears composed, controlling. Only Angie stays true to who we think she is. Where did Silja go? Why did she leave, will she come back home to her only daughter, and why did Henry take his own life? Why does Paul seem to push Angie away? Why is Ruby so unruffled? These questions lurk in every page of this literary portrayal of dark family relationships. They are answered in a complex thriller-paced ending. Readers of literary fiction will appreciate the details, insights into human behaviors, and social currents of the 1940s to 1960s. Unfortunately, the complicated resolutions of Henry’s death and Silja’s sudden leaving will strike some as unrealistic and forced. G.J. Berger

MEPHISTO WALTZ

Frank Tallis, Pegasus, 2018, $25.95, hb, 304pp, 9781681776439

Mephisto Waltz, a Max Liebermann Mystery, finds the Freudian psychiatrist Max and Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt in 1904 Vienna, trying to make sense of the murders of people who appear to have no relation to each other. As they search for answers, their investigation leads them to a group of political activists, whose goal is to eradicate poverty and introduce equal rights for all. The group is headed by a mysterious and elusive person who goes by the name of Mephistopheles. When Max and Oskar find bomb-making equipment in one of the group members’ homes and a coded letter on the bomb maker, they call on experts, including Max’s love interest, Amelia, to help them break the code and locate the bomb before it can subvert the status quo. Mephisto Waltz is an intricately but elegantly written mystery as much as it is an immersion in the time. Vienna in 1904 is brought to life through vivid and detailed illustrations of situations, places, food, and the cultural milieu, such as the inequality between classes and between men and women, especially regarding scholarly pursuits. Classical music plays a part in the plot, as does the psychology and science of the day. All the characters, whether they appear for only a short chapter or turn out to be integral, are also individualized and given authentic names. My hat goes off to Tallis for creating such individual characters 50

and names, but it was difficult to remember who was who and if I should remember them in case they turned out to be important. Mephisto Waltz is an interesting read, especially to gain insight into the time. Francesca Pelaccia

AN UNCERTAIN HEART

June Tate, Allison and Busby, 2017, £7.99, pb, 380pp, 9780749021641

The absolute horror and loss of life experienced by the soldiers and the medics who treated them from the battlefields of Passchendaele during 1917 were not easily erased from memory. For many of these young people, scarred both physically and mentally, their trauma endured for the remainder of their lives, affecting their ability to sustain relationships, hold down a job, or resume everyday activities. June Tate has captured these difficulties perfectly. The main characters were stationed in Belgium during this period and their lives were inextricably linked thereafter. From the theatres at the field hospital behind the frontline, to the near normality of the facilities at the hospital in Rouen, leading Surgeon Richard Carson and Theatre Sister Helen Chalmers face their challenges tirelessly, and a physical relationship develops, though Richard has a wife back home. A chance encounter with young Captain James Havers gives Helen the opportunity to break away from her reliance on her colleague, much to Dr Carson’s chagrin. When James is injured during crossfire on his return to his unit, he is removed to their theatre, and his recovery depends on Richard’s operating skills. Once fit enough to be repatriated, with Helen accompanying him on her well-earned leave, James’ recovery is fraught with nightmares from his experiences, eventually necessitating some psychological intervention. Many authors would be content to allow their characters to resume their lives once Armistice was reached. Tate further develops her story to focus on the post-war issues and the realities facing those who continued to suffer in the months and years that followed. The characters captivate us, and we become engrossed in their progress. Cathy Kemp

LEARNING TO FLY

V. M. Taylor, V. M. Taylor, 2017, £6.99, pb, 226pp, 9781999736118

This biographical novel tells the story of an unsung hero of the First World War. Fred Dunn grew up in a mining village in the North East of England, but then his parents secured work in London when he was young. At the beginning of the 20th century he was helped by his parents’ employers to train as a pilot just before the outbreak of the First World War so it was evident he would be an early member of the Royal Flying Corps, the forerunner of the RAF, which it became towards the end of conflict. Flying aeroplanes was an unknown war discipline, and the planes themselves were

REVIEWS | Issue 84, May 2018

rudimentary to say the least, so Fred’s war was a very steep learning curve of death, danger and discomfort. V. M. Taylor is a journalist as well as a descendant of Fred Dunn, and her detailed research shines out. I don’t object to the fact that Fred Dunn is always seen in a positive light because all men who fought in that horrendous war were heroes. What convinced me less was the fictional love affair the author imagined, which I found unconvincing given her main character. I would have preferred more fictional speculation about the air disaster that killed him and more detail of the background of the founding of the RAF, which celebrated its centenary in March 2018. Sally Zigmond

THE BLOOD

E. S. Thomson, Constable, 2018, £14.99, hb, 382pp, 9781472126573

The third in the Jem Flockhart and Will Quartermain series is set primarily on the noxious floating naval hospital on the river Thames, known colloquially as The Blood. Jem is an apothecary, her big secret being that from childhood she has gone about her business disguised as a man in order to allow her to pursue her profession at a time in Victorian London when it was not acceptable for females to follow such pursuits. Will is a property surveyor and has formed a close platonic bond with Jem, in which they solve some grand-guignol themed murders. Jem and Will first visit The Blood when Jem receives a puzzling message from a fellow apothecary, John Aberlady, who is based on the vessel. He goes missing and then they discover the corpse of streetwalker Mary Mercer near an adjacent run-down building which Will is to convert to a warehouse. Mary has been murdered and once more, the game is afoot. Like the two previous books in the series, the plotting is excellent and the story rattles along in entertaining style. While the narrative is capable, the ending is perhaps a little flat and the story rather fizzles out. I also have to point out that while they are rounded and likeable characters, both Jem and Will are unrelentingly enlightened and their views on tolerance and fairness come straight from the 21st century. The novel is rather coloured with today’s obsession with identity politics, whether it be gender or race. Douglas Kemp

NEVER ANYONE BUT YOU

Rupert Thomson, Other Press, 2018, $25.95/ C34.95, hb, 368pp, 9781590519134 / Corsair, 2018, £18.99, hb, 352pp, 9781472153500

Suzanne Malherbe is a shy teenager in pre-WWI France. She’s a talented illustrator who doesn’t fully blossom until she meets the precocious Lucie Schwob. Lucie is 14, a troubled, free spirit, who has already attempted suicide, certain she’s not long for this world. The young women are instantly attracted and sneak off to discover their forbidden, growing

love. Lucie enjoys art and writing—she pens poetry and works on a novel. Their families are friends, and when spouses die, the remaining spouses marry. Now Suzanne and Lucie are “sisters” and can spend time together without comment. Bored in rural France, the two women travel to Paris and immerse themselves in the avantgarde scene of Surrealists and Dadaism. Lucie reinvents herself as Claude Cahun and Suzanne as Marcel Moore. They vacation on the island of Jersey and decide to purchase a house there. Hitler rises in power and the Germans invade the island. Claude is infuriated, and she starts a propaganda campaign. She and Marcel write anti-Nazi comments on cigarette packs, distribute flyers, often using poetry to defame the invaders. Their quiet existence disrupted, they live in fear of being caught. This story, based on fact, follows two pioneering women who revel in their lesbian relationship in a dangerous time. Claude becomes known for her photography, Marcel her drawings. Eschewing real fame, they survive on an allowance from their family. Thomson’s prose is evocative, beautifully descriptive, the novel more emotional than action-based. It can be slow and meandering, but no less compelling. I learned about artists I’d never heard of—including the protagonists—actors, authors, and painters in 1920s-1940s Paris. A literary tour de force that hopefully will rescue these women from obscurity. Diane Scott Lewis

FLYING JENNY

Theasa Tuohy, Kaylie Jones Books, 2018, $15.95, pb, 272pp, 9781617756214

In 1929, two young women test the bounds of society as well as their budding relationships in Tuohy’s Flying Jenny. Jenny Flynn can fly as good as, if not better than, any of the guys. And she proves this by doing the previously impossible—flying under all five of New York City’s bridges. Her stunt draws the attention of the New York press, and one paper sends out a young reporter, Laura Bailey, to document the feat and to interview the intrepid pilot. But Jenny wants nothing to do with the fame or the interview. She just wants to fly when she feels like it and then to go home to the Midwest and her husband. And that’s what she does. Laura, ambitious and eager to prove her worth in the maledominated newsroom, follows Jenny west to get her story. But there’s another reason Laura wants to go; she has a faded photo that shows her mother in the area standing with a man Laura believes is her estranged father. Laura eventually climbs into Jenny’s plane and flies with her doing stunts and shows, and a friendship grows. Tuohy uses both Jenny and Laura to explore gender roles in the late 1920s and how two young women push their own boundaries as well as the society around them. Unfortunately, Flying Jenny is grounded by incessant introspective narratives on feelings

rather than letting the excitement of the time and events drive the characters forward. What pulled me through this book was my interest in the air races, barnstorming, and women fliers. Those who are not interested in early flight might find this book sluggish and uninspiring. Bryan Dumas

BACHELOR GIRL

Kim van Alkemade, Touchstone, 2018, $16.00/ C$22.00, pb, 422pp, 9781501173349

The time frame of this novel spans 21 years from 1918 to 1939. The plot revolves around Jacob Ruppert, a real person, owner of the Ruppert Brewery in New York City and the New York Yankees baseball team. The heroine and hero are fictitious. However, some of the events portrayed actually happened, lending a tone of authenticity to the plot. The heroine is Helen Winthrope, a young actress whose career was cut short by unfortunate circumstances. She supports her mother and younger brother. Helen is rescued by Jacob Ruppert, a close friend of Helen’s late father; Ruppert was with Helen’s father when he died. Ruppert takes Helen under his wing to help her maintain financial independence. He guides her in a career which earns her the nickname “Bachelor Girl.” Albert Kramer, the hero, is an intimate friend of Helen’s and also Ruppert’s personal secretary. Every character has a secret that drives the plot. Van Alkemade has chosen to relate the story through the eyes of both the hero and heroine. It is told in the first-person in alternating chapters – first from the heroine’s point of view, then switching in the succeeding chapter to the hero’s viewpoint. This is a brave concept on the author’s part, but a confusing one to the reader. The characters’ various and varying sexual relationships are integral, with even the heroine’s paternity being questioned. It is a good plot with interesting characters, but the story moves slowly. Audrey Braver

THE AVIATOR

Eugene Vodolazkin (trans. Lisa C. Hayden), Oneworld, 2018, $26.99/C$35.99/£14.99, hb, 368pp, 9781786072719

Innokenty Platonov wakes in a Russian hospital bed with no memory of who he is or why he is there. Dr. Geiger is only willing to tell him his name because he wants memories to return naturally. He gives him a journal to record any memories that surface. As Innokenty writes, he begins to recall his life, people, and events. Then his nurse leaves a bottle of medication at his bedside, but the date on the bottle makes no sense: 1999. This can’t be, since he is sure he was born in 1900. Innokenty’s life unfolds through his diary entries as he puts the pieces together and he tries to make sense of the strange world he now inhabits. He writes of his experiences living through the Red Terror, the Russian Revolution, and imprisonment in a Soviet gulag. Bittersweet are his memories of

Anastasia— loving her then losing her. But how real are these memories? How can he reconcile these memories with what is now his reality? A young woman, Nastya, comes into his life, and they fall in love. Both Dr. Geiger and Nastya help him navigate and discover the modern world where he now finds himself. Innokenty is an intriguing character who stoically and bravely faces what has happened in the past and what his life is now. There are two beautiful love stories: Anastasia, who he lost in the 1920s, and Nastya, who becomes a part of his life in the 1990s. This book also addresses the possibilities of science and what scientific advances can do to us as humans. I loved this story in diary entries, told mainly by Innokenty, but also by Dr. Geiger and Nastya. This format made the pages fly by. A brilliant, thought-provoking read. Janice Ottersberg

SOMEWHERE STILL

Denitta Ward, Welbourne, 2017, $16.00, pb, 360pp, 9780999301807

This is an intriguing Cinderella-style story set in 1920s Kansas. The city is on the cusp of radical change, but it is divided by class and colour. Jean Ball and her terminally ill mother live on the edge of poverty in an apartment block with caring people of mixed nationalities. Jean lands a job as an elevator operator at the Empire Hotel owned by the Whitcomb family. She catches the fancy of Elden Whitcomb, heir to the Whitcomb millions, and begins a relationship that opens her eyes to fine dining and charge accounts as well as fast cars, booze, jazz and speakeasies. They grow close, and he is enchanted with her honesty and simplicity. When Jean’s mother dies, she is desolate, but her neighbours rally around, and she is taken under the wing of Mrs Parker, one of the city’s influential do-gooders. Her husband handles the Whitcomb family’s legal affairs. When Jean becomes pregnant, it’s the beginning of the revelation of a series of powerful secrets. Mrs Whitcomb, ashamed of her background, grows fonder of gin, and Mr Whitcomb’s affair with a chambermaid has far-reaching consequences, but they unite in their determination to break up Elden and Jean. This is a deep and complex story with credible characters that pull at the heartstrings. Half way through, I began to wonder how it could end. Ward’s final pages did not disappoint. The only disappointment for me is the cover, catching though it is: the

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illustration is of a mature-looking couple, not teenagers, as Jean and Elden are. Patricia O’Reilly

CIRCUS OF THE QUEENS: The Fortune Teller’s Fate

Audrey Berger Welz, Rare Bird Books, 2018, $17.95, pb, 320pp, 9781945572968

Donatalia Petrovskaya grows up in imperial Russia and believes her life will follow in her mother’s pointe-shoed footsteps. But in 1905, as the Russian revolution rises, Donatalia’s father sends her to America for safety. On the ocean liner, a chance encounter with a charming man ultimately leads to an accident that will change Donatalia’s life irrevocably. When an old friend from Russia, Vladimir Vronsky, comes back into Donatalia’s life in 1911, she finds a new calling, performing in his family circus as a fortuneteller. They travel across the United States, but shadows loom over the circus, including jealous rivals, vengeful past lovers, and the Great Depression. Can this circus family survive these hardships as Donatalia and Vladimir learn to let go of the Russia they once loved? Using prologues to throw readers back in time is a very popular literary device, and this book has two such throwbacks. However, the second throwback is simply unnecessary, as it takes away from the intrigue of the first. Overall, though, the book is rich in culture and diverse characters. Relationships between friends, family, and circus animals are the strength of this novel. I would have liked a bit more time spent during Donatalia’s prima ballerina days and experienced her dancing with Vladimir at the Winter Palace, as it’s referenced often in the book. This would have added depth and palpable conflict to their relationship. As it is, Donatalia’s and Vladimir’s relationship is the least compelling part of the story; however, there are many intriguing characters and heartfelt connections to draw readers in. Episodic in structure, charming, and unpredictable, Welz waxes a sentimental reflection of immigrant life in early 20thcentury America. J. Lynn Else

THE FAITHFUL

Juliet West, Pan Macmillan, 2017, £16.99, hb, 336pp, 9781447259091

Hazel, just sixteen, anticipates a long, boring summer at Aldwick Bay in Sussex. Her best friend won’t be there and Hazel’s self-indulgent mother, Francine, is preoccupied with her lover, Charles. But then the Blackshirts, followers of the British fascist, Oswald Mosley, arrive and a curious Hazel is attracted by the air of danger that surrounds them. She meets Lucia, one of the movement’s most ardent upper-class supporters, and Tom, a working-class lad who has been dragged along to the camp by his parents. When Francine and Charles abruptly leave for London, Hazel is left on her own to cultivate her new friendships. The choices she makes will affect her whole future. When she 52

meets Tom again a year later, she is unable to tell him the real reasons she was forced to cut contact with him. The characters are all interesting. Hazel has to grow up fast and become self-reliant. Likewise, Tom becomes an adult after he faces the guns in the war in Spain. Lucia’s delusions and selfishness must catch up with her. Then there are the hidden secrets in the intriguing relationship between Charles and Francine, and also that of Tom’s parents, that will catch the reader by surprise. Although on one level, this might be described as a coming-of-age love story set in that turbulent era of the mid-1930s, it is so much more than that. It has an expertly light touch. The historical background with its clashes of ideologies and loyalties is superbly handled and often it is what is left unsaid, or only slowly divulged, that gives it power. This is a novel to savour and one that will leave you thinking long after the last page. Highly recommended. Marina Maxwell

TO DIE BUT ONCE

Jacqueline Winspear, Harper, 2018, $27.99/ C$34.99/£19.99, hb, 336pp, 9780062436634

Although WW2 has broken out, in London it is the lull before the storm when everyone is prepared for attack but nothing much is happening. Across the English Channel, however, it is a different story, and the British Expeditionary Force is pinned down on the beaches of France against the German onslaught. Soon the Admiralty will call on the general public to lend all sea-going craft to the rescue effort. In this tense atmosphere, Maisie Dobbs takes up her latest case. Young Joe Coombes, an apprentice working on a secret contract to paint RAF bases, seems to have gone missing, and his parents, pub-owners Phil and Sally, who run Maisie’s “local,” are worried. It is possible that Joe’s increasingly debilitating headaches could be linked to something toxic in the fire-retardant paint. Meanwhile, Tim, the headstrong teenage son of Maisie’s friend, Priscilla, decides to join the rescue mission to Dunkirk. Maisie is set a hectic pace to uncover the truth about Joe while helping Priscilla and also trying to resolve legal issues around the little war refugee, Anna. The secondary story involving Tim’s exploits is powerful enough in its own right, and with the additional diversions into Anna’s situation, the drama of the prime case involving graft and corruption in government contracts tends to lose its dynamism to some extent. But this is still another rewarding tale in the series with all the trademarks that fans have come to expect: historic authenticity and an unusual plotline with sympathetic psychological undertones plus the group of regular leading characters who have their own charms and quirks. As usual, to get the best out of this enthralling series, it is recommended that the titles are read in sequence.

REVIEWS | Issue 84, May 2018

Marina Maxwell

LOST IN THE BEEHIVE

Michele Young-Stone, Simon and Schuster, 2018, $16.00/C$22.00, pb, 298pp, 9781451657647

It’s 1965 when Gloria Ricci reluctantly enters the Belmont Institute. When her mother tries to reassure the teen, “They’re going to make you like everybody else,” Gloria wonders if it’s really wrong to fall in love with another girl. When their affair was discovered, Isabel dumped her, assuring Gloria that it was nothing but a fling. All Gloria feels is loss, but the Institute’s staff say she is mentally ill. She’s not allowed to call home or speak to the other patients, apart from supervised events. They are boys and girls like Gloria: incarcerated “sexual perverts” to be cured by prayer and harsh counseling. Alphabetically assigned, she waits in line by Sheffield Schoeffler, an irreverent New Yorker. Before long, they are planning to run away to Greenwich Village. Michele Young-Stone’s Lost in the Beehive is a tender, desperate portrait of teens branded as defective in the most critical aspect of their identities, and during the most critical years of their lives. Though she is buffeted by love and loss—and haunted by bees—Gloria doggedly chases acceptance and a sense of family. She’s a believable character that adults and YA readers will cheer for and mourn with, and I recommend that you give Lost in the Beehive a try. Jo Ann Butler

MULTI-PERIOD

THE DARKLING BRIDE

Laura Andersen, Ballantine, 2018, $27.00/ C$36.00/£23.50, hb, 368pp, 9780425286432

Hold up your hand, and tick off the Gothic conventions one by one: atmospheric, crumbling family home; older, brooding yet ridiculously handsome hero; inexperienced, attractive young outsider uncovering dark secrets; skeletons in closets (or more accurately, walls); tantalizing historical documents; storms, spirits, changelings, mysteries, madwomen (multiple), unnatural death…are you out of fingers yet? The Darkling Bride makes a solid attempt to include every possible Gothic cliché in a single novel. In 2015, Carragh Ryan is hired to catalog the library at Deeprath, ancestral home of the Gallaghers. There she meets the 17th Viscount, Aidan Gallagher, who hasn’t been back to said castle since the unsolved murder of his parents when he was a child. The suspect pool is quickly limited to family and close retainers. Other storylines follow Aidan’s mother before her death, and Jenny Gallagher and Evan Chase – the Victorian-era novelist who came to write about the legend of the Darkling Bride and ended up marrying the heiress to Deeprath…a madwoman in the attic (tower). Probably very little that occurs, including the eventual Scooby-Doo reveal and confrontation of the malefactor, will surprise readers. While the above may sound damning, note: this is a quick and enjoyable read, escapism

between two covers. The author gets preemptively meta to head off eye-rolling at the chosen chestnuts through tools such as Ryan’s literary knowledge (“Chekov’s gun on the mantelpiece, except I didn’t see it at the beginning so it’s not fair for it to appear now”) and Chase’s examination of the “formula” necessary to sell his Darkling Bride (“beauty… brooding atmosphere…a taciturn man who can only be redeemed by the right woman and the kind of mystery that can be tied up neatly”). There you have it: formula. But wellwritten formula can be pleasantly familiar and agreeable, no? Bethany Latham

THE HIDDEN SIDE

Heidi Chiavaroli, Tyndale, 2018, $24.99, hb, 414pp, 9781496432780

Natalie works at a Christian radio station in 2016 New York. She uses the name Skye for privacy. She gives advice and healing prayers to her listeners. But when her teenaged son Chris is accused of a dreadful crime, she believes God has deserted her, and questions her ability as a mother. How could she have missed her son’s torment? Maelynn is Chris’s twin, though they’ve grown apart. She’s dating Jason, the popular boy in school, but she hides an embarrassing secret about their relationship, one that has her questioning her faith. Chris’s suffering at school, which he has mostly hidden, is overlooked by both these women in his family. In 1776 New York, young Mercy is in love with Nathan Hale. When Nathan is hanged for being a spy for the patriots, Mercy joins the spy ring to avenge his death. She pretends to be a loyalist and attracts the ardor of the very charming Major John Andre of the King’s Army. She gathers details of army movements and passes them on to General George Washington. Would God approve of her duplicity? All three of these women put on facades they later regret. There’s only a slight connection between these eras and people. In fact, the stories could have been told as two different novels, with more character details—and in Mercy’s case descriptions of the time period, plus the causes of the revolution. These three women are sympathetic, yet Maelynn holds onto her love for Jason, to Chris’s detriment, for far too long. The stories had me engrossed, especially the modern one. However, and I realize this is Christian fiction, the religious expounding could have been cut by a third. Recommended for Christian fiction fans. Diane Scott Lewis

A FIST AROUND THE HEART

Heather Chisvin, Second Story, 2018, $19.95/ C$19.95, pb, 240pp, 9781772600667

This is such a surprising book, one filled with layers inside layers and new revelations

at every turn. Moving back and forth from WWII-era New York and Winnipeg and a Russian shtetl in the 1880s, and many points in between, it doesn’t offer the chronological path of a standard historical novel. However, its flow feels natural, like the unspooling of memories from a remarkable life. In 1942, Anna Grieve, a well-off career woman in her sixties and longtime Manhattan resident, has just put her older sister Esther on a train back to Winnipeg after an enjoyable, long-awaited visit. Following Esther’s arrival home on “If Day,” the date of a simulated Nazi invasion, Anna receives a call from a policeman that Esther is dead; she’d walked in front of a moving train, an apparent suicide. Esther, a widowed society matron, had had episodes of mental instability from childhood on—periods when she seemed tuned out from reality—although she’d seemed fine during her stay. As Anna herself returns to Winnipeg for answers, a mystery unfolds, drawing in reminiscences of both women’s earlier lives. In 1881, when Anna was five and Esther ten, their frightened parents, fearing antiSemitic retaliation after Tsar Alexander II’s assassination, sent the girls away from Russia with her mother’s aristocratic employers. On their transatlantic voyage, young Anna’s confusion is palpable. Despite a comfortable upbringing, with an adoptive father who respects her intelligence, Anna worries continuously about her fragile, ethereally beautiful sister. Anna is a woman of astonishing courage and hidden complexities. She forms friendships, has several love affairs, and participates in the early birth control movement alongside Margaret Sanger. Chisvin brings this setting alive with vibrant ease. One of Anna’s later travels feels a bit contrived, but this debut is a fine literary mystery with an insightful look at an unusual sisterly relationship. Sarah Johnson

TOMORROW

Damian Dibben, Hanover Square, $26.99, hb, 320pp, 9781335580290

2018,

The bond between a dog and its owner feels eternal, but this is literally so for Tomorrow. He has been made immortal by his owner, Valentyne, in the 17th century. Valentyne is a royal physician to support his true life’s work, tending to wounded soldiers. He and Tomorrow live contentedly together until they are separated by Vilder, an evil, rival chemist who is jealous of Valentyne’s powers. Desperate to find his best friend, Tomorrow begins a 200-year journey traveling across Europe. He finds himself in the middle of the court of Versailles, bloody battlefields, and the streets of Venice. His arduous quest turns dangerous as he comes to realize that he too must avoid being caught by Vilder. Along the way he meets a number of humans and dogs. The standouts are a scrappy stray named Sporco, who becomes Tomorrow’s comic

sidekick, and Blaise, the only dog he allows himself to fall in love with. Despite a slightly anti-climactic ending, the book is a beautiful tale of undying love and friendship. Told from Tomorrow’s point of view, each page is filled with rich descriptions of the sights, sounds, and particularly the smells he encounters. Not just for dog lovers, this is an enjoyable escape. Janice Derr

THE WAY OF BEAUTY

Camille Di Maio, Lake Union, 2018, $14.95, pb, 384pp, 9781503950122

The Way of Beauty is a charming multigenerational love story, but it is more than that: it is a story of family, love lost, and love found. Vera is the daughter of German immigrants who live in New York City at the turn of the last century. While still very young, she forms a friendship with Angelo, the handsome, Italian newsstand operator, who is a decade older. As Vera grows into a young woman, she realizes that she is in love with Angelo, but he breaks Vera’s heart by marrying Pearl, a daughter of wealthy socialites. He also becomes stepfather to Pearl’s son, William. Pearl is everything that Vera is not: she’s older, she’s rich, she has a child, and she is an activist fighting for women’s voting rights. Nonetheless, the two women form a friendship, with Vera becoming William’s second mother. But with Pearl away so often, Vera and Angelo grow closer, and Vera can no longer deny her feelings. Decades later, Vera’s daughter, Alice, is grappling with her own romantic turmoil, torn between two very different men. She also knows that, because of the work of the women who came before her, she has choices in her life that previous generations of women did not. I was spellbound from the first page of this gripping novel and was caught up in the impossible choices both Vera and Alice had to make. At times sentimental but not overly so, the book also pays homage to the suffragette movement and the groundwork that these fearless women laid for future generations of disenfranchised women. It is also a loving tribute to the workers who risked their lives and health in building iconic structures in New York City, such as Penn Station, and the importance of preserving history. Hilary Daninhirsch

THE COMPANION

Sarah Dunnakey, Orion, 2017, £8.99, pb, 336pp, 9781409168560

Yorkshire in the 1930s, and Billy Shaw aged twelve, is sent to be a companion to another boy of similar age, Jasper. Jasper lives in a large property at the top of the moors, High Hob House, with his mother and uncle, Edie and Charles Harper. Both of these are rather bohemian people, and Jasper is a wild, eccentric child, with a violent temper. Billy narrates his unusual experiences in his own

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idiosyncratic northern voice. We know from the first page in the novel that there is a violent dénouement with the apparent suicides in 1936 of both Edie and Charles at their house. The story alternates the 1930s with the present: Anna, trying to escape a bereavement in her native north-east, takes up residence as the custodian and manager of the mill house and property that Billy’s family once lived in, that is now a museum and local heritage centre. Frank Chambers, whose mother was Billy’s sister, lives in an adjacent farm, and tells Anna that the trustees of the museum are not being fully truthful about events. The reader is plunged into an immediate mystery, and Anna begins to suspect that the Harpers might not have committed suicide. She befriends a successful crime fiction writer, Sam Klein, who is staying at High Hob House, and the whole sorry imbroglio is gradually uncovered. The novel takes place in Wuthering Heights country near Haworth, and indeed, the mood of the narrative resonates with the raw passions and emotions that affected some of Emily Brontë’s famous characters on the wild and windy moors. It is an absorbing tale of how events can resonate throughout the years, as Anna uncovers the sordid past to present a truer version of what happened many years ago. Douglas Kemp

HOUSE OF ROUGEAUX

Jenny Jaeckel, Raincloud, 2018, $26.95, hb, 306pp, 9781941203248

In the 18th century, Iya was taken from her African home and enslaved on a sugar cane plantation on the island of Martinique. Iya’s children, Adunbi and Abeje, and grandchild, Hetty, are born into slavery. Hetty was taken to Canada and, when slavery was abolished there, she married Dax Rougeaux and gave birth to five children who became the first free-born descendants since their greatgrandmother Iya. In seven sections, and from 1785 to 1964, a different family member tells the story of the House of Rougeaux. Iya’s life is taken by a horrible act of the master’s son. Abeje is a healer and highly revered in the slave community. Her brother Adunbi marries but loses his daughter Hetty when the master trades her for a heifer calf. This non-linear story continues with two young cousins, Nelie and Azzie, living in Philadelphia in 1949; Rosalie, a high school student in 1964; and Martine in Montreal in 1925. In 1853 Hetty is taken to Montreal, and her son Guillaume tells his story from 18831889. The narrative of Guillaume’s daughter finishes the book in late 1800s New York. The genealogy chart is an invaluable reference since the story jumps back and forth in time, making it difficult to place each narrator within the context of the family. This family suffers the indignities of slavery and its aftermath while living with grace and strength through time and important historical events. I could feel their pain, fear, and heartache through the author’s intensely beautiful descriptions. For example, Guillaume 54

mourning his wife’s death: “A long, long river of tears cut a path through the night, until the sky paled, and the bleak dawn broke, unwanted, outside the window.” I felt his all-consuming grief. The language of each narrator feels authentic, whether slave or business owner, illiterate or educated. A wonderful read. Janice Ottersberg

THE MAP OF SALT AND STARS

Jennifer Zeynab Joukhdar, Touchstone, 2018, $27.00/C$36.00, hb, 360pp, 9781501169038

Nour, a twelve-year-old Syrian-American girl, her two teenaged sisters, and their recently widowed mother, a mapmaker, have returned to Homs, Syria, after more than a decade living in New York City. Unfortunately, the Syrian civil war begins and quickly envelops them. Their house is shelled, and they are forced to become refugees, fleeing Syria. Their flight out of Syria and across revolution-torn north Africa parallels the path taken by the 12th-century north African mapmaker, al-Idrisi. All her life, Nour’s parents have told her stories of this famous geographer. The legends of his journeys are brought to life in the novel by a young girl disguised as a boy, Rawiya, who accompanies al-Idrisi and his entourage on their long trek. These stories and histories, along with the memories of her happy childhood in New York and her beloved father, help to sustain Nour in the family’s harrowing, and (to Nour), bewildering flight to safety. These parallel stories are accompanied by evocative shape poems which enhance both stories. Truly beautiful writing captures the reader’s interest in both stories, but it is when Nour relates her family’s desperate fight to survive that the reader is caught up in her attempts to understand humanity’s cruelties and insanity. In spite of the immediacy and rawness of Syria’s plight in the 21st century, the skill of the author and the depth of her writing keep the novel and Nour from falling into despair. It’s a haunting, inspiring story, one which remains in this reviewer’s mind long after the final pages. Highly recommended. Pam Ferrell

THE PASSENGERS

Eleanor Limprecht, Allen & Unwin, 2018, A$29.99, pb, 344pp, 9781760631338

The Passengers is an intergenerational historical novel set in both the tail end of World War Two and the present day. It is Australianbased Limprecht’s third book. Her other novels, What Was Left and Long Bay, feature women in situations where they feel trapped. The Passengers doesn’t disappoint on that front. Written entirely in first person from the points of view of two female members of the same family, seventy years apart, it explores the complexity of family relationships and changing nature of expectations placed on women, by themselves and others. It covers a fascinating era of Australian/US history: that of the 15,000 Australian women who married

REVIEWS | Issue 84, May 2018

US military personnel and were repatriated to the US under Operation War Bride. Hannah and her grandmother Sarah are on a cruise ship leaving the US for Sydney. Sarah, a war bride, hasn’t returned to her homeland since she left in 1945. Hannah is the same age her grandmother was when she made the original journey. She’s a complicated, driven character with her own inner demons and secrets. We gain more insight into them as the journey progresses. Sarah made the long journey to the States after a hasty wartime marriage, leaving her family and friends behind. She discovers that she’s unprepared and ill equipped for life on her husband’s parents’ tobacco farm. Isolated and alone, her husband diminished by his war experience, she’s forced to confront the reality of the choice she made. Her subsequent actions cast a long shadow over the rest of her life and that of her family. Limprecht could have settled for writing a compelling novel about the lives of war brides, but by juxtaposing the past and present stories of Sarah and her granddaughter, we have a richer insight into the challenges they faced as they battled adversity to establish a sense of purpose and identity. Christine Childs

THE LAST WATCHMAN OF OLD CAIRO

Michael David Lukas, Spiegel & Grau, 2018, $27.00, hb, 288pp, 9780399181160

Joseph, a graduate student in America, receives a mysterious package involving his father. The note reads, “Hope you can use this.” Joseph’s father was an Arab Muslim and his mother an Egyptian Jew. The initial attraction between his parents doesn’t work out after Joseph’s birth. However, as a child Joseph learned that his father’s family, the Al Raqbs, have guarded hidden Jewish scrolls for centuries, including the mysterious Ezra Scroll. These documents are hidden in the attics of old temples and are known to emanate supernatural power. The novel is multilayered as we are introduced to the actual time, 1897, when these documents were found by two spinster scholars. They connive to transport the scriptures and notes to Cambridge University. This part of the novel is absolutely intriguing, as are the sections about how ardently the Al Raqb family took their work, including the time when they believed they had failed because some of the works began to disappear. The people treat the hidden documents as sacred, and here two mysteries are added to the plot. Joseph, a rather plain character who seeks to understand his family’s past, adds little to the story other than revealing the Raqb family and the two spinster sisters. The novel also notes the changes in Egypt occurring after the dramatic change in government with the election of Nasser, which continue to the present day. This is wonderful historical fiction, a novel that entices the reader to truly care about the

historical artifacts revered by the characters in its pages. Highly recommended, and a great read!

Viviane Crystal

GATEWAY TO THE MOON

Mary Morris, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2018, $27.95/C$36.50, hb, 352pp, 9780385542906

This thrilling, shattering literary novel spans centuries and continents, telling in essence the story of Entrada de la Luna, a small town in northern New Mexico, four hundred years old, in which the natives keep traditions they do not know the source of and the cemetery headstones are written in a language no one reads. In 1992, 14-year-old Miguel Torres takes a job babysitting for Rachel Rothstein’s two young sons. The chapters set in 1992 move fluidly among the viewpoints of Miguel, a budding astronomer; Rachel, overwhelmed by her failures with her sons, her marriage, and her art; and Miguel’s aunt Elena, a dancer in New York coming to terms with what she left behind in Entrada. Intertwined with the modern time are chapters that trace Entrada’s origins, a story that begins in 1492. As Jews and Muslims are forced to convert or leave Spain, Luis de Torres, a converted Jew, sails with Columbus and stays in the new land, where his descendants, fleeing the horrors of the Inquisition, gradually move northward to the plot of land that Coronado called the Gateway to the Moon. The discoveries and understandings that unfold in the 1992 storyline blend convincingly and harmoniously with the historical chapters, which portray the New World in luscious detail and do not flinch at the cruelty of the explorers to the natives or the tortures of the Inquisition. Morris’s taut, sculpted sentences make a stately music, weaving a beautiful and heartbreaking history that balances the worst of human cruelties, from poverty and violence to betrayal and neglect, with the sweetest human longings for meaning, for connection, and to uncover the mysteries that make us who we are. Misty Urban

THE UNFORGOTTEN

Laura Powell, Gallery, 2018, $25.99, hb, 304pp, 9781501181221

In 2006, Mary’s life is falling apart. She has been diagnosed with breast cancer, and mental instability asserts itself; she is increasingly estranged from family while succumbing to overwhelming guilt over something that occurred in her past. Back in

1956, Betty Broadbent is also having a rough go of it. Her mother is an alcoholic, a “loose” woman who alternates between mania and depression, leaving the teenaged Betty as the only adult in the house. The two women manage a small inn in a sleepy Cornish fishing village, which is currently seeing a boom in business—their rooms are full up with reporters due to a series of murders attributed to the Cornish Cleaver. One of these reporters holds a special fascination for Betty, and they become close despite the terrible backdrop and a great difference in age and temperament. The novel successfully plays on rather than suffers from an excess of melodrama. Betty’s relationship with her mother is the main set piece here, a relationship that is complicated at best and hellish at worst. The novel is replete with women on the edge of sanity, and Powell is skillful in her descriptions of how the world appears to these damaged individuals as they try to move through it. The main themes involve secrets, lies, and guilt, and the lifelong consequences attached. Readers may have the murderer pegged long before the denouement and an over-extended epilogue, but the format does offer catharsis for the characters and wraps everything up neatly. Bethany Latham

A SHOUT IN THE RUINS

Kevin Powers, Little, Brown, 2018, $26.00/ C$34.00, hb, 272pp, 9780316556477

This dual-period story alternates between the 1860s and 1950s, beginning in Chesterfield, Virginia. Rawls, an enslaved young man, runs away one night to find Nurse, the woman he loves, which results in his being pursued and caught. Seizing the moment to get a bargain, cunning and ruthless plantation owner Antony Levallois purchases Rawls from Bob Reid. When the Civil War breaks out, Bob Reid goes to fight for the Confederacy, leaving his teenage daughter and his land to fall prey to the machinations of Levallois. Disastrous consequences ensue. Rawls and Nurse, now owned by the same master, manage to reunite. And though their plight improves in that regard, Levallois still causes them anguish. When the war officially ends, suffering and violence remain far from over, and none of the characters endures unscathed. In 1956, George Seldom, a man in his nineties, becomes displaced from his home because of an interstate highway expansion. He makes a journey back to the ruins of a cabin in North Carolina where he was left as a toddler with a note pinned on him asking for someone to take him in. The truth of George’s origins eludes him, but his connection to the earlier storyline becomes poignantly clear to the reader. A very adept writing style captures the eras, settings, and lives of these characters. Rich in symbolism, history, and humanity, the book depicts the social context just prior to the Civil War, as well as the subsequent destruction, loss, and lasting devastation wrought on so

many levels. It is a wrenching and compelling story with themes of greed, cruelty, and hatred that echo the past and continue to reverberate. Cynthia Slocum

THE OVERSTORY

Richard Powers, W.W. Norton, 2018, $27.95/ C$36.95, hb, 512pp, 9780393635522

Author Richard Powers, in The Overstory, weaves together eight stories of people with stories of trees. Solid and simultaneously magical—a bit like tree rings— the paths of the novel ripple out and then come together as satisfying as a walk in the woods. The book’s protagonists live in different times and places, but all are connected by the trees around them: aspens, chestnuts, oaks, banyans, and more. The people include farmers, eco-activists, and immigrants, and their stories of love, inheritance, and loss, happening in our hurry-up human time frames, are played out in counterpoint to the trees’ time, “one spreading ring wrapped around another, outward and outward until the thinnest skin of Now depends for its being on the enormous mass of everything that has already died.” Don’t let that quote scare you. Richard Powers is a prize-winning “literary” writer, known for bringing complex science and music into his books, but The Overstory is a classic; its storytelling is lyrical, accessible, and meaningful. Yes, he brings in a wealth of science about trees, how they communicate, how their roots twine together to make a single entity of a community of saplings, and more. But that information is elegantly offered; it doesn’t intrude into the plot. By the novel’s end, I felt as though I’d finished a book that I would remember for the rest of my life. Readers hostile to the idea of protecting the environment probably won’t like it as much as I did; in fact, readers who vaguely support protecting the environment as long as that doesn’t interfere with growing the GDP might not like it as much. But for those readers who long for a well-plotted novel that brings together passion, science, and spirituality, The Overstory is a must read. Kristen Hannum

THE REHEARSALS

Vladimir Sharov (trans. Oliver Ready), Dedalus, 2018, £12.99/$17.99, pb, 347pp, 9781910213148

Written in the early 1980s, and now translated into English for the first time, Vladimir Sharov’s The Rehearsals is considered

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a modern literary classic in Russia. It’s a difficult read, with no chapters, sentences that can fill an entire page, and various digressions. Those attempting it will need to be up to speed on Russian history and theology first, but fortunately Oliver Ready’s bouncy translation is very readable, even when the subject matter is at its most dense and incoherent. The plot (as far as there is one) stems from the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church’s desire to bring about the Second Coming of Christ in the year 1666. He orders the Holy Land to be rebuilt in the Russian countryside, and arranges for hundreds of illiterate peasants to perform the gospels word for word, but the years slip by without the Messiah appearing. Instead, we follow the descendants of those actors as they rehearse, keep their faith alive, and hand down their roles through the generations right up until the worst horrors of Stalin’s regime and the gulags. Sharov’s structuring and tone are unique in world literature, with some parallels to the anonymous narrators of Julian Barnes, the nation-narrative allegory of Salman Rushdie, and the historical mastery of Umberto Eco. Members of the Historical Novel Society will surely enjoy such gems as “It’s not ordinary people we know, remember, imitate and emulate, but characters in books… and the past we remember is theirs”. The Rehearsals is at times absurd, inspiring, and wretchedly depressing. However, its exploration of the Russian psyche is deeply fascinating, and Sharov packs more content into one novel than most writers can dream of in a lifetime. Tom Graham

THE BROKEN GIRLS

Simone St. James, Berkley, 2018, $26.00/ C$35.00, hb, 336pp, 9780451476203

In 1950, four roommates from Idlewild Hall, a New England boarding school for wayward girls, bond over the one thing they have in common— they are each unwanted by their family. Katie was deemed unruly and promiscuous, Roberta was recovering from a traumatic incident, CeCe was simply illegitimate, and Sonia was orphaned by the war and passed off by her great-uncle and aunt. Personal woes were not the only complaint, however. Written in textbooks handed down from each generation were notes from previous girls about a terrifying ghost—a girl who’d died on the grounds decades before. When one of the roommates goes missing, their worst fears are realized. Meanwhile, a parallel story set in 2014 is told by Fiona Sheridan—daughter of a once56

famous but now reclusive journalist. Her sister had been murdered 20 years before, her body found on the abandoned grounds of Idlewild. Fiona and her boyfriend, policeman Jamie Creel, begin digging into files and interviewing people of interest, angering those who want to keep the past buried. They find not only clues to several crimes, but the whispered rumors of the ghost girl who seems to be central to the tangle of deaths and disappearances. This book delves into several heavy subjects, including murder, domestic violence, police corruption, PTSD, drug addiction, and child abuse. The author handles the plot-weaving and time-hopping phenomenally, giving just enough information to keep the reader on edge and hungry for more. The protagonist, Fiona, is an instantly likeable character, as are the Idlewild girls in their various narrations. Historical mystery fans or those looking for a chilling ghost story will devour this book! Highly recommended. Arleigh Ordoyne

BRIXTON BEACH

Roma Tearne, Aardvark Bureau, 2018, $15.95, pb, 400pp, 9781910709474

On 7 July 2005 in London, Doctor Simon Swann rushes out of his hospital onto the streets and into the aftermath of an incident in a Tube station and a blown-up double-decker bus. There are mangled human bodies lying all over. Although he is anxious to help the wounded, he is also desperate to reach a house named Brixton Beach to ascertain the safety of a woman. Earlier, in 1975, nine-year-old Alice is being taught to ride a bicycle on a beach in Colombo, Sri Lanka, by her Singhalese grandfather. Her mother, Sita, had married a Tamil, Stanley; facing discrimination, and to escape the bombings and the brewing civil war, they move to London. Years pass. Stanley has affairs and becomes friends with fellow Tamils, and Sita develops dementia. Alice becomes an artist, names her house after a beach, faces typical life-changing events, and meets Simon at an opera. Roma Tearne, herself of Singhalese-Tamil parentage, has penned this novel, her third, in her usual lyrical style. About half the book, set in Colombo, provides an authentic look into the lives of the Sri Lankans and the discord between the Singhalese and Tamil peoples. The other half gives insight into the Sri Lankan immigrant communities’ struggles in Britain. The first chapter’s vivid account of the 7/7 terror attacks in London is immediately followed by somewhat tranquil descriptions of little Alice’s days in Colombo. Although the opening creates intrigue, and we might think that either Alice or her Tamil father might have something to do with that event, it is only toward the end that we learn the facts. While there is no linkage between the Tamil bombings in Sri Lanka and Al-Qaeda attacks elsewhere, Ms. Tearne has brought to light the overall global conflicts.

REVIEWS | Issue 84, May 2018

Waheed Rabbani

HOTEL ON SHADOW LAKE

Daniela Tully, Legend Press, 2018, £8.99, pb, 292pp, 9781787198890 / St. Martin’s, 2018, $26.99, hb, 256pp, 9781250126962

The novel begins with Martha Wiesberg in 1990. This part is quite brief, and the action immediately jumps back in time to the same character in 1938. She is in Hitler’s Germany with all the tension, fear and uncertainty this era contains. Martha’s twin brother has been seduced by Nazi propaganda, and his enigmatic blond Aryan poster boy friend, Siegfried, seems to be cut from the same cloth. Nevertheless, Martha is drawn to Siegfried, but all is not as it seems. There is another jump in time, to her granddaughter, Maya, in 2017. Her grandmother disappeared some years ago, and now remains have been discovered in the US near where Maya lived for a time. She travels out to investigate, conquering her fear of flying to do so. It is a case of murder, and despite dire warnings to not meddle with the case alone, Maya does just that. Her life is complicated further by the appearance of love interest, Ben, whose family secrets may just be connected to the mysterious death of Martha, so far from her home. The different settings are clearly conveyed, and the theme of family secrets is an interesting one that draws the reader in, making them want to unravel the mystery. Ann Northfield

AMERICAN HISTORIES

John Edgar Wideman, Scribner, 2018, $26.00/ C$35.00, hb, 192pp, 9781501178344

In his new short story collection, American Histories, John Edgar Wideman explores current situations by delving into the past, a sort of marriage between the personal and historical. In the first story, Wideman imagines a conversation between Frederick Douglass, the black abolitionist, and John Brown, the white leader of the infamous raid at Harper’s Ferry. Structured to defy convention, the two men represent different ways to combat slavery. Later in the book, in the story “Nat Turner Confesses,” Wideman brings together his research about those leaders, often ignored by traditional textbooks, who instigated slave rebellions. Though set in history, Wideman brings up currently familiar names like “Trayvon” and “Emmet” as he stitches together the sins of the past with the sins of the present. Wideman is able to leap beyond the constraints of plot and character to wrestle the heart from a story. One of my favorite stories is “New Start,” which opens with a couple watching TV late into the night to escape the fear of his cancer treatments. This scene rings so true, mainly because my husband and I did just that as I received chemo. The terror, the unease, the easy flight into the land of TV seem absolutely right. But Wideman doesn’t leave the reader there; instead, he segues into a commentary

about watching Downton Abbey and what the act of watching does to both viewer and actor. Wideman’s style can cause the reader to stumble. Fragments. Verb-less sentences. Odd juxtapositions. Perhaps some readers can relate to such tweet-like verbiage. In the hands of a lesser writer, these tendencies might detract from the story. But in Wideman’s hands, the style helps accentuate the sporadic and chaotic nature of the current day. Anne Clinard Barnhill

THE HOUSE ON FOSTER HILL

Jaime Jo Wright, Bethany House, 2017, $14.99, pb, 368pp, 9780764230288

The House on Foster Hill is an edge-ofyour-seat multiperiod mystery that brims with suspense, romance, and inspiration. A century ago, Ivy, the daughter of a mortician, b e c o m e s entwined in the baffling circumstances surrounding the death of a nameless young woman, found in a tree on the property of an abandoned house in rural Wisconsin. Ivy is convinced that the woman had a baby, and that baby still could be alive. Against the wishes of her father and an old friend, Joel, who has reappeared in town after a twelveyear absence, Ivy risks her life to find the truth. Fast-forward to the present day, and the reader meets Kaine Prescott, who, sight unseen, buys the abandoned house on Foster Hill in the town where her grandmother, Ivy, was raised. Kaine flees San Diego for a fresh start, as she is reeling from the heartbreaking, sudden loss of her husband. Kaine is convinced, however, that her husband’s death was no accident, and that she herself is being stalked; the San Diego police never believed her. Although no one but her sister knows her destination, strange happenings convince Kaine that her stalker has followed her to Wisconsin. In the interim, Kaine teams up with a potential new suitor to uncover the secrets of the house on Foster Hill. The author deftly weaves the two time periods into one cohesive story, with parallels between the two women’s life stories, as they were in search of self, love, and faith. The writing is atmospheric, and the author is so skillful at constructing delightfully hair-raising scenes that at times, I was scared to turn the pages. Twists and turns kept me guessing the entire time. Ultimately, the book was a satisfying read, and it is highly recommended. Hilary Daninhirsch

TIMESLIP

LEGENDS OF PERSIA

Jennifer Macaire, Accent, 2017, £7.99, pb, 262pp, 9781786154668

SON OF THE MOON

Jennifer Macaire, Accent, 2017, £7.99, pb, 255pp, 9781786150651

These two books are sequels to The Road to Alexander, reviewed in the November 2017 issue of Historical Novels Review. The three books can be read as stand-alone novels but are best read as a series, if only because The Road to Alexander is the best so far. This is almost inevitable, since the big leap of imagination takes place in the first book and the next two are built upon it. Ashley is a young journalist in the third millennium AD who wins a prize to be sent back in time to interview a character of her choice. She chooses her hero, Alexander the Great. All goes well until the return trip goes awry and she finds herself stranded in the third century BC. This is all in the The Road to Alexander. By the time Legends of Persia opens, Ashley has become Alexander’s consort, and thus no longer a wide-eyed stranger but an established member of Alexander’s court. In this book we follow Alexander through the conquest of Central Asia, and in Son of the Moon we go with him on the invasion of India. The two sequels are therefore more like conventional historical novels, and the timeslip element is hardly evident. The Greeks have no problem in having another semisupernatural being in their midst, for they are familiar with nymphs, demi-gods and so forth. Not that these two books are not colourful, exciting, witty, sexy, inventive and well-researched, but at the end we are still wondering how Ashley will get back to her own time and will she be able to cheat history and avert Alexander’s early death. That must be for the next book. Edward James

DUKE DE JOUR

Petie McCarty, The Wild Rose Press, 2017, $18.99, pb, 462pp, 9781509218103

In this entertaining Regency timeslip romance, the present-day Duke of Reston, Jared Langley, tumbles back to 1816 and into the life of his reckless ancestor, the seventh Duke, whose disappearance at the Battle of Waterloo left a shambles that Jared must repair. Seven spent the ducal fortune, broke the heart of Ariana, the sweet earl’s daughter next door, and the assassins who killed Reston at Waterloo are intent on killing him again. Jared’s growing affection for independent, self-possessed Ari gives way to attacks, kidnappings, and daring rescues as he uncovers a plot to kill the Duke of Wellington, and the bustling action of the middle section starts to feel repetitive with yet another lusty widow, another attempt on Jared’s life, and Ari fleeing another scene of betrayal. Still, McCarty delivers all the beloved conventions of the Regency romance--cravats, curricles, balls, and a superfluity of titled characters-

along with subplots concerning hidden treasure and a secret half-brother. The lighthearted treatment keeps the time-travel and Regency tropes from feeling too time-worn, and the pages turn swiftly toward a sweet resolution that opens the door to further adventures in the Lords in Time series. It’s a fun read. Misty Urban

SEARCHING FOR MR. TILNEY

Jane Odiwe, Paintbox, 2017, $12.50, pb, 318pp, 9781545098554

Searching for Mr. Tilney is a compelling combination of a retelling of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and a time travel novel. In 1975, fashion design student Caroline Heath goes to Bath to recover from an illness. She stays in a Georgian house that had once belonged to relatives of Jane Austen. Soon she meets Harry Tate, a young man who bears a close resemblance to Henry Tilney, hero of Northanger Abbey, Caroline’s favorite novel. She believes she might have found the man of her dreams, but complications ensue. Caroline discovers the teenage diary of Jane Austen and is increasingly drawn to it. Eventually she finds herself inhabiting the body of Jane’s sister, Cassandra. Caroline, both in her experiences as Cassandra Austen and back in her own time, reading Jane’s diary, learns of the Austen sisters’ lives in 1788-89, while they stay with their relatives in Kent and, later, in Bath. Cassandra falls in love with Tom Fowle, a penniless clergyman, but her mother wishes her to marry her wealthy cousin Lucius. Meanwhile, Jane feels the first stirrings of love for Lucius’s younger brother Thomas. Jane Odiwe’s love for Austen shines through on every page. The novel is a treat for Austen fans, especially lovers of Northanger Abbey, as Caroline’s romance with Harry parallels that of Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney, complete with a spooky old castle. The reader learns details about Jane Austen’s early life that are not widely known, and Odiwe makes a strong argument that the so-called Rice Portrait of Jane Austen actually does represent the teenage Austen. In the diary, we learn how the portrait came to be painted, and Odiwe speculates on what happened to it later on. Odiwe keeps you turning the pages, both in Caroline’s story and in that of the Austen sisters. Vicki Kondelik

HISTORICAL FANTASY ELISHA DAEMON

E.C. Ambrose, DAW, 2018, $7.99/C$10.99, pb, 400pp, 9780756411343

Elisha Daemon is the fifth and final book in the Dark Apostle series, set in a fantasy version of 14th-century England and Europe. At the beginning of this series Elisha is a barber, a low-level medical person, who comes into his magic through tragedy. By this final book,

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Elisha is the most powerful magus of all and trying to undo the harm the necromancers have done to Europe by enhancing and spreading the plague as a source of increasing their power. The magic in this series, such as the ability to travel instantly from one place to another through the Valley of Death, is convincingly told and incorporated in a dark, gritty style. A great strength of this book is the realism of its portrayal of life in the 14th century, especially aspects of medicine. A portion of the book is set in the medical school in Salerno, and the depictions of the treatments and medical theories, as well as the social hierarchies, are detailed and fascinating. The historical power struggles within the Catholic Church of this period are nicely interlaced with the fantastical elements, with evil “mancers” having infiltrated the Church. Despite the extraordinary powers Elisha has developed, he continues to have failings and many insecurities, and he refuses to give up on the downtrodden and rejected people he meets, so he is a likeable and engaging character. His complicated romantic history offers another thread of interest. Judith Starkston

THE PARENTATIONS

Kate Mayfield, Point Blank, 2018, £14.99/$26.99, hb, 482pp, 9781786072429 / also £12.99, pb, 482pp, 9781786072436

The premise of Kate Mayfield’s multi-period historical fantasy, which takes the reader from the 18th century to the present, centres on an Icelandic spring that halts the ageing process of all who drink from it—as long as they maintain small, regular doses thereafter. An “overdose” will, however, kill. In modern London, the eccentric dress of the Fitzgerald sisters turns no heads in Bohemian Camden Town. Across the river, in now chic Bermondsey, lives the Fowler household, headed by Icelandic-born Clovis, and her husband Finn. The Fitzgeralds and the Fowlers go back a long way—back to the 1830s, when the wealthy, widowed sisters and the criminal Fowlers lived a few streets from each other in Limehouse. The Fowlers are charged with the care of a baby boy from Iceland, and this infant will change all their lives, literally forever, as he carries with him the blessing (or curse) of the spring. The narrative tumbles through the decades and the centuries, revolving particularly around the opposing characters of the devout and loving Verity and Constance Fitzgerald and the malign force of Clovis Fowler, a woman who will stop at nothing to achieve her ambitions— and who has all the time in the world to do so. For their circle of “immortals”, long life brings self-knowledge, redemption and tragedy. The omniscient narrative flits from character to character, creating a kaleidoscopic effect that suits the fantastical nature of the story and the hurtling passage of the years. London itself, and the Thames, are also central characters as we watch the city and the river evolve and change through the passage of time. It is an intriguing novel, with elements of 58

Nordic myth, the Dickensian underworld and Victorian gothic. Mary Fisk

THE GENES OF ISIS

Justin Newland, Silverwood, 2017, $2.99, ebook, 300pp, 9781781326084

A flood is coming, one capable of wiping out all life on earth. However, when Akasha and Horque lock eyes for the first time, divine beings known as the Watchers bless the two as the last hope for humanity. Their progeny will survive the flood and repopulate the earth. But their union is taboo. Akasha is human, while Horque is a Solarii, aliens/“angels” in human form stranded on earth until an old curse can be made right. Set in the Old Kingdom, The Genes of Isis is a speculative tale about the evolution of man to homo sapiens sapiens. Unfortunately, the research is bare minimum with incorrect facts sprinkled throughout. People didn’t say “fire at will”; things like chessboards and bridesmaids didn’t exist yet; 3rd, 4th, and 18th Dynasty names are haphazardly mixed in; the country wasn’t called Egypt (a Greek name), it was Kemet; and Thebes (another Greek name) was called Waset. Plot-wise, most progression happens due to divine intervention. At first, Akasha finds Horque odd and arrogant, but after the diving blessing, she’s insta-love crazy for him. Threats are solved not by human effort but by mysterious forces telling people what to do or removing obstacles. This, consequently, removes opportunities for character growth. Only Horque’s mother shows initiative to influence the plot, which comes at great cost to her. Despite its “speculative” classification, if the historical setting isn’t supported by strong research, the story’s not believable. Language and mindsets are too modern in their references, making it difficult to reconcile the setting with its characters. Flying machines in ancient Egypt? Pyramids and obelisks built by aliens? For history fans, this disappoints. However, Newland cultivates many creative story elements, and as a science fiction story, it totally works. As a speculative piece set in ancient times, it doesn’t. J. Lynn Else

CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULT

MARTHA AND THE SLAVE CATCHERS

Harriet Hyman Alonso, illus. Elizabeth Zunon, Triangle Square, 2017, $17.95/C$23.95/£13.99, hb, 256pp, 9781609808006

Martha has kept secrets her whole life. Her parents are abolitionist, conductors on the Underground Railroad. Though Connecticut is a Free State, slave catchers often hunt fugitive slaves. When the Fugitive Slave Law is passed, the danger becomes even greater for those once enslaved, those trying to help them, and for Martha’s younger brother.

REVIEWS | Issue 84, May 2018

Jake’s mother was an escaped slave who died in childbirth in Martha’s home. Now seven, Jake can be difficult—acting out, unable to sit still, fearful. Today, he would be on the autism spectrum. Martha’s family, and Martha in particular, do all they can to keep Jake safe. But one day the worst happens. Jake is kidnapped by slave catchers and returned to the Maryland plantation from where his mother escaped. With the help of other abolitionists, thirteenyear-old Martha makes the journey south to find her brother and rescue him. Adult writer Alonso presents a suspenseful story of a loyal, spunky young girl for whom readers aged 8-12 will cheer. Unfortunately, the dialogue is often stiff. The basic premise of the story is interesting but stretches belief when so much responsibly falls on young Martha due to her mother’s depression/ anxiety, and when she is allowed to take part in the rescue mission. Likewise, given that she has grown up in a world of secrets, her inability to follow the rules seems a convenient way to increase tension. Simple black and white illustrations appear throughout the story. The maps of Martha’s journey—southbound and northbound—appear in the endpages. Meg Wiviott

G.I. DOGS: Judy, Prisoner of War

Laurie Calkhoven, Scholastic, 2018, $5.99, pb, 128pp, 9781338185232

Judy, an English pointer, was born in 1936 in Shanghai. She was adopted by sailors of the British Royal Navy to join their crew on the Gnat, a gunboat patrolling the Yangtze River. She was a loyal companion to the sailors, and her exceptional hearing and senses alerted them to dangers, which grew more common as Japanese soldiers became more aggressive. Judy was serving on the HMS Grasshopper when Britain entered WWII. In early 1942, while attempting to evacuate British and Chinese citizens from Singapore in advance of the invading Japanese, the Grasshopper was sunk. The survivors were soon captured by the Japanese. Judy and the sailors with whom she served spent the rest of the war in prisoner of war camps. Under extreme conditions, Judy continued to help her sailors keep up their morale by performing tricks taught to her by a special human, Frank Williams. Judy caught rats and lizards to feed herself, occasionally sharing with Frank, who occasionally shared his watery rice with her. After the war, Judy and Frank returned to England and later traveled to the British colonies in Africa for Frank’s work. Judy’s story is true—she was the first animal to become an official prisoner of war. Calkhoven hints at the horrible conditions of the camps and treatment the soldiers had to endure by telling the story through Judy’s point of view. It is an excellent way to make a difficult subject interesting, understandable, and tolerable for readers ages 7 to 10. This is an excellent choice for young readers—dog lovers or not. Meg Wiviott

THE FAMILY WITH TWO FRONT DOORS

Anna Ciddor, Allen & Unwin, 2018, £6.99, pb, 185pp, 9781743368596

The reader is ushered into a home with the smells of baked bread and tasty home cooking. The Rabinovitch family is busy and foremost, happy. Pappa Rabinovitch is a rabbi, and his family of eleven lives in two apartments that give the book its title. Through them, we learn about traditional Jewish life in 1920s Poland. When the eldest sister, Adina, is told that she will be married at 15 to a man chosen for her by a matchmaker, we see the anxieties of not only Adina but also of her younger siblings. This is a coming-of-age story seen through the eyes of the children, mainly ten-year old Nomi. The journey from the announcement to the wedding is filled with the tensions of meeting the potential husband and his family and uncertainty of the future. An easy read and completely immersive, the novel is thoroughly researched and based on the true story of the author’s grandmother. The narrative is woven into a bustling routine of cooking and serving food. My mouth watered at the descriptions of cooking and the carefully organised routines, which create a sense of family solidarity. There are hints at prejudices towards Jewish people, but, unlike many other novels, this is a story which chooses to focus on the warmth, traditions and the happiness of their family’s bonds before the horrors of war. It is both refreshing and affirming that against a backdrop of prejudice, with which we are now familiar, the Rabinovitches maintain their kindness, dignity and charitable nature. The reader is swept into the celebrations of the wedding and the emotions running throughout the book. The glossary provides explanations for unfamiliar terms and so completes a short educational snapshot of a family life I would never have known. This book is well written, evoking the senses and emotion, and is definitely a recommended read. Lindsay Mulholland

SUSIE Q FIGHTS BACK

Jane Cutler, Holiday House, 2017, $6.99, pb, 112pp, 9780823439935

Summer, 1942. When Susan’s father loses his job, he moves the family from New York City to Clayton, Missouri, where he has found work. Despite moving so far and leaving so much behind, Susan is optimistic and tries to fit in, attempting a Southern accent and looking for friends. She makes two friends quickly— Marlene, who is white, and Loretta, who is black. Although she didn’t have any black friends in New York, the city was integrated. The separation of blacks and whites and the Jim Crow laws of Missouri surprise and frustrate Susan. She doesn’t understand why everyone puts up with them. She and her two friends come up with a plan to challenge the

segregated culture without actually breaking the law—or getting in trouble. This novel does a great job of showing what life was like in 1942 America, through the eyes of an intelligent and stubborn ten-year-old girl. Susan is a character that children will easily relate to. The presentation of racism is realistic without being preachy, and without making stereotypes of all Southern white people. In one scene, a Chinese restaurant is vandalized and spray-painted with antiJapanese slurs. In another, the reader (in the middle of the book) discovers that Susan is Jewish, when one of her friend’s grandparents disparages Susie’s father. Both are effective ways of showing the ignorance of prejudice. Highly recommended for ages 8-12. Elizabeth Caulfield Felt

HAMILTON AND PEGGY!: A Revolutionary Friendship

L. M. Elliott, Katherine Tegen Books, 2018, $17.99/£12.99, hb, 448pp, 9780062671301

Set in late1700s New York during the American Revolution, this is an entertaining homage to Lin-Manuel M i r a n d a’s m u s i c a l , Hamilton. Peggy Schuyler, eighteen, is the youngest of Patriot General Philip Schuyler’s three eldest—and in 1777, as yet unmarried— daughters. With the commander of the Northern Army as her father, Peggy is privy to the tribulations, and, eventually, to the hard-won victories that turn the tide toward American independence. There are two struggles for independence here—the one the Patriots are fighting, and the one in Peggy’s heart. Through her relationship with the “quicksilver” Alexander Hamilton, who hopes to marry Peggy’s sister, Eliza, readers experience Peggy’s yearning to make a genuine contribution to the Revolution, no matter how small; in short, to claim her own identity and not live in the long shadow of sweet Eliza and beautiful, flirty Angelica. Peggy’s sharply observed interaction with her future brother-in-law, “Hammie,” begins when he writes to enlist her as an ally in wooing Eliza. Against this backdrop, Peggy faces personal and political turmoil head on until, finally, she must summon all her courage to keep her family safe. I particularly appreciated the author’s sidelong glances at contemporary issues. Three out of four men in the Continental Army were born somewhere other than America. Hamilton, the immigrant son of a single mother,

sailed from the Caribbean Island of St. Croix to America to make his name and fortune. Many famous men and women (Benedict Arnold, Martha Washington) inhabit these pages, including the affable young French aristocrat, the Marquis de Lafayette, who volunteered with the Continental Army, was named a Major General at age nineteen, and very nearly steals the show. The author’s engaging afterword and a thorough bibliography nicely round out the book. Highly recommended. Alana White

STRONGHEART

Candace Fleming, Schwartz & Wade, 2018, $17.99, hb, 256pp, 9781101934104

Based on a true story, this historical novel tells a fascinating story of a German shepherd raised as a fierce police dog in Berlin, Germany, that goes on to become an unlikely movie-star hero during the 1920s. During Hollywood’s black and white silent film era, one man, Larry Trimble, envisions the potential appeal of having a dog act in the movies. Not any dog, but an intelligent dog that would be a leading character in the cinema story. However, Larry is not able to find an American dog that meets his criteria. On a trip to Germany, he discovers the German shepherd who will become known as Strongheart. The remainder of the story is how this dog went on to capture the hearts of American moviegoers through his six blockbluster movies and pave the way for other famous dogs like Rin-Tin-Tin and Lassie. Written for middle-grade readers, this story will appeal to anyone who loves dogs. It is a charming tale, with heartwarming illustrations, and provides teachable moments for students to understand the amount of research needed for writing. Archival photos and a solid bibliography tailored to ages 7 to 10 accompany the text. Linda Harris Sittig

BLOOD ON THE HEATHER

Griselda Gifford, Two Falcons Press, 2017, £6.99, pb, 125pp, 9780995588301

Set in the Highlands of Scotland in 2017, with a time-slip to 1745, an era of red coats and Jacobites, this charming novel reveals the story of two troubled girls, Kirsty and Catriona. Both are facing major changes and upheaval in their lives and have been uprooted from their previous homes. Both have had to mature and deal with life-changing events. This is where this intriguing adventure takes on a greater depth than I expected. Kirsty has become the minder/carer to her brave mother, who is fighting a difficult battle against cancer: her ‘Wolves’. She will not share the reason why she has returned to the croft near the Highland castle with her daughter, but we know there is a secret to be revealed. Catriona has been brought back to live at the castle by her grandmother and father, who was injured in Iraq twelve years previously and has been left with disability. It is when the past pulls both girls into its

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secrets as they try to help Jacobite Angus that their paths eventually meet and the truth begins to unravel. Historical detail is slipped in as the girls try to help young Angus. Parallels are made between the plight of refugees then and now. The fast pace of events makes the reader want to know how, and if, they will be able to help the escaping boy, but more than that there are real human issues being dealt with by both girls that are realistically and touchingly conveyed. Some life situations have to be faced and overcome whilst others cannot be helped. This novel convincingly shows this, and I would recommend it as a worthwhile read, not just for the historic adventure, but for its thoughtprovoking content. Valerie Loh

MAYBE Morris Gleitzman, Puffin, 2017, £6.99, pb, 240pp, 9780141388656

Newly named Australian Children’s Laureate for 2018/19, Morris Gleitzman is known for making tough issues accessible to young readers through his trademark humour. Maybe is no exception. It follows Felix, a Holocaust survivor, as he struggles to find a haven in the chaotic aftermath of 1946. Aged 14 years, Felix is on the run in Poland with older friends. They are pursued by Zliv, a thug who believes Felix killed his brother. The friends soon reach their place of safety, only to face a hostile mob backed by corrupt officials. This is just the opening salvo in an actionpacked journey which sees Felix depart from war-torn Europe to a peaceful life in Australia. Or so he hopes… Along the way we witness the physical and emotional hardships that war brings. Felix has to leave everyone he knows when he boards the Lancaster bomber that will transport him to his new host country. Gleitzman handles the painful parting with his characteristic light touch. He also weaves in strong details, of Felix squeezing into the gun turret with perspex walls, then lurching down the runway with everything rattling: “Far below, the airbase looks like a breadboard with a few caraway seeds on it…” Maybe is the sixth in what Gleitzman describes as a ‘family’ of novels which can be read alone or in any order. Whereas the earlier Once portrays the horror of Nazi Germany with huge poignancy, Maybe evokes a time of turbulence—and a more mixed palette of emotions. Felix has to deal with old threats and new challenges Down Under, as well as his own newly romantic feelings. As ever, Gleitzman ensures he muddles through with kindness and humanity. Good for Key Stages 2/3. A final book is planned. I commend the entire ‘family’ to your keeping. Marion Rose

INTO THE WHITE: Scott’s Antarctic Odyssey

Joanna Grochowicz, illus. Sarah Lippett, Allen & Unwin, 2017, £7.99, pb, 269pp, 9781760293659.

A first novel, and based on the true and wellknown story of Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole in 1911-12, this is a straightforward and accessible introduction to the subject for young people aged 11-15. Joanna Grochowicz has done her research, and emphasises that this is the story of the Terra Nova expedition itself, and the ‘memorable characters’ who accompanied Scott, rather than a biography. Each actor in the story—the four men who died with Scott and the others who survived—is brought to life, and their individual actions, thoughts and feelings dramatized. This is a group endeavour, and is made to seem so. We care as much about the young student Apsley Cherry-Garrard as Dr. Edward ‘Uncle Bill’ Wilson, and learn as much about the latter’s ‘worst journey in the world’ to secure emperor penguin eggs as we do about the last days of Scott’s race to the Pole. The tale is told in the present tense and uses existing diaries, notes and previously published memoirs for authenticity; conversations and interior monologue are invented but not obtrusive. The language is terse and precise: Six ponies gone. It’s a terrible blow …’ but not without poignant imagery: ‘The sun is now a slave to the horizon … A strange twilight remains.’ Sarah Lippett’s illustrations throughout are simple and engaging, with thumbnail sketches of all the characters, scenes and equipment—a pair of boots, a sextant, a sledge—scattered throughout, drawn in a clear and graphic style. The maps are excellent and informative. This book somewhat simplifies the complex character of Scott himself, and mentions but does not delve into some of the controversies of the story, but this is appropriate for the book’s anticipated audience, and does not in the end shirk an atmosphere of final tragedy. Jane Burke

RUBY IN THE RUINS

Shirley Hughes, Walker, 2018, £12.99, hb, 32pp, 9781406375893

Set in 1945, this book reveals the devastation the Blitz has had on Ruby and her neighbours as the city around them is bombed night after night. Whilst the words convey the story of how her mum refused to leave the house, or even go down the bomb shelter, whilst her husband is serving, we feel for the girl who listens terrified to the bombs falling. Although sent to the country for her safety, Ruby returned to be with her mum. When the war ends and a celebration party can be enjoyed, the fathers do not all return unaffected, or at the same time. The human cost is great. Ruby has to make space in her home for her father, who is like a stranger to her. From the dialogue of the children, we realise their fathers also need to overcome their war experiences and talk to each other. To the children, the bomb sites of broken houses with staircases

REVIEWS | Issue 84, May 2018

leading nowhere appeal as forbidden places, danger signs are ignored, and exploration begins and the inevitable happens. But for Ruby all ends well. The layout of the book is a joy to the eyes. There is so much scope for further discussion. By covering the opening pages with images of ration books and war time posters, questions form straightaway. This classic book gives an accurate visual impression of the era, from the bomb sites to the fashions worn and the uniforms of the day, but more than this, it touches on many issues to show how war affects every member of the household and how those changes also have to be overcome. A highly recommended read. Valerie Loh

CODE WORD COURAGE

Kirby Larson, Scholastic, 2018, $16.99/C$22.99, hb, 256pp, 9780545840750

Billie is a sensitive fifth-grade girl trying to cope with several challenges. She’s the object of teasing from what she calls “louts” and wonders how a close friendship she had has turned into nothing but unkind barbs. Add to that the fact that her brother Leo, who has always been her best friend, is about to go off to World War II, departing into danger that could prove fatal. First, however, Leo brings home a new and interesting friend, a Navajo or Diné Indian, Denny. Denny immediately warms to Billie and gets her to think about the war in a different way. His first notable act is to rescue a wounded dog that bonds quickly with Billie. She names him Bear, and later it will turn out that Bear is a unique animal with unusual presence. Denny’s role in the war will be far greater than anyone could imagine; he is a code talker. This means that the U.S. government has used words in the Navajo language to have specific meanings for communication during battles, not easy to decipher for those ignorant of the code’s origin. This heartwarming story depicts how Billie learns to be strong and trusting despite adverse conditions. It’s also the adventure of soldiers who not only manage to survive gruesome battle conditions, but also trust an inner strength that is almost supernatural. “Bear” is a precious gift. Remarkable, engaging and highly enjoyable historical fiction for young adults as well as all readers. Viviane Crystal

LEGENDS OF THE LOST CAUSES

Brad McLelland and Louis Sylvester, Henry Holt, 2018, $16.99/£12.99, hb, 336pp, 9781250124326

In this debut novel, Brad McLelland and Louis Sylvester combine elements of The Lord of the Rings, The Walking Dead, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid into one thrilling middlegrade adventure story. Keech Blackwood is not your typical Western hero. He is a teenage orphan living an unremarkable life at Carson’s Home for Lost Causes under the care of Pa Abner. But Keech’s

life is forever changed when his siblings and guardian are murdered and his home burnt down by a group of zombies led by the outlaw named Bad Whiskey. Now on the run with a charm that can put the undead to rest, Keech embarks on a journey to avenge his family and ensure the magic Char Stone that Bad Whiskey is seeking does not fall into the wrong hands. Along the way, he bands together with another group of orphans. Together these youngsters show courage and heart as they face hailstorms of bullets, a cursed forest, and growing numbers of villains being raised from the dead. Can they solve the clues left by Pa Abner before the magic stone is unearthed by Bad Whiskey? The novel clearly lands in the realm of fantasy, but the authors weave in an element of history and lore from the Osage Native American tribe into a backdrop of the American frontier. We also encounter an exciting collection of well-developed and entertaining characters throughout the story, from the group of brave children to the mysterious villain named Reverend Rose. Due to the persistent violence in the story, I would recommend this for readers at the upper end of the target age group. The storyline is fastpaced and fun, and the authors do a superb job setting the stage for an exciting series. I look forward to meeting these characters again in the next installment! Jenna Pavleck

THE BELOVED WILD

Melissa Ostrom, Feiwel & Friends, 2018, $17.99/C$24.99, hb, 320pp, 9781250132796

In her YA debut, Melissa Ostrom creates a charming tale set in the early 1800s in New Hampshire. Harriet Winter, a feisty young woman with a mind of her own, is bored by the continual chores she must perform as the oldest daughter: cooking, cleaning and caring for her younger siblings. She is also not impressed with her young neighbor, Daniel Uriah Long, who was DUL (dull), just as he carved in all of his whittling creations. However, her mother is quite impressed with Mr. Long, who owns the adjoining farm. To escape inevitable marriage to Mr. Long, Harriet joins her favorite brother, Gideon, on an adventure to strike out for the Genesee Valley in western New York. There’s opportunity there, and Gideon intends to get his own land to farm. He’s also in love with Rachel Welds, an orphaned cousin of their neighbors, the Welds. On their treacherous journey to their destination, Harriet decides to become “Freddy,” a young boy travelling with Gideon. She cuts her hair into a boy’s style and wears britches which she has sewn herself over the preceding months. As a boy she gains entry into a world denied her as a woman. She is able to enter a tavern, almost gets into a fight, and discovers the mobility allowed by britches rather than heavy skirts. Well-written and sweet, the only problem in this story is the 21st-century mindset for a 19thcentury young woman. Harriet’s thoughts about the way women’s clothing is a kind of shackle really displays a modern awareness. Otherwise, this adventure should delight the reader. Anne Clinard Barnhill

THE AMBER BEADS

Judith Rypma, Black Opal, 2017, $12.99, pb, 248pp, 9781626947610

Julie’s summer plans have been completely upended. She needs to travel to Michigan and sort through the contents of her greatgrandmother Olga’s estate, which has been left to her in Olga’s will. When the sixteenyear-old and her mother arrive, they discover piles of junk. While exploring a secret room, Julie finds stunning remnants of her Russian heritage, including an amber necklace. As she puts on the amber beads, Julie becomes overwhelmingly tired and decides to rest. She wakes to find herself in 1917 Russia in her great-grandmother Olga’s life. At first, Julie believes it’s all a beautiful dream as she attends a ball hosted by the Romanov family. Soon, Julie realizes she’s actually living in 1917. A revolution is raging against the nobility, and WWI is hitting the country hard. With the government crumbling and her neighbors’ homes being overtaken by revolutionaries, Julie finds herself tested in ways she could never imagine and with no idea on how to return to her life in 1995. Russia in 1917-1918 is lovingly described by Rypma. From palaces to hospitals to churches, Rypma’s research is commendable. Unfortunately, speaking as someone who was a teenager in 1995, Julie doesn’t talk or think like a young sixteen-year-old girl. Julie also does very little to get home. She’s almost unbelievably passive throughout most of the narrative, often sitting around drinking tea or playing dice games. Additionally, the amber beads have no rhyme or reason to their magical properties. Overall, I think the story would have been better served if it wasn’t a time-slip. Many elements would have had greater emotional value if the main character had been Olga versus Julie. It was a beautiful historical setting, but I wasn’t emotionally invested. J. Lynn Else

I SURVIVED: The Children’s Blizzard, 1888

Lauren Tarshis, Scholastic, 2018, $4.99, pb, 144pp, 9780545919777

Chicago-born 11-year-old John Hale’s family has moved to the Dakota prairie, and he contends with the challenges of farming in a brutal environment as well a city boy can. Action builds as winter comes, and brings with it a deadly Midwestern blizzard that kills hundreds and traps John and his friends in a life-or-death struggle for survival. Packed full of 19th-century American history from a kid’s point of view, this novel educates about the sod houses, isolated pioneer life, and difficulties of farming amidst plagues of locusts, unobtrusively making it a perfect addition to class lessons on the time period. John’s adventures will thrill boys who appreciate some minor gross humor and exciting action scenes. By the end of the book

John has grown and survived the winter of major discontent. He provides a sympathetic window into the hardscrabble life of a pioneer. Written with simple language and short sentences, the grade level seems closer to 3rd than 4th, but readers will likely not be put off by that. The author’s note at the end gives a lively look at how she developed the story, that could inspire readers toward their own creative endeavors. The Q&A and reading suggestions also do an effective job of piquing readers’ interest in learning more. While the author’s reliance on the passive voice and plenty of exposition makes for a less vivid read than it might have been, the story and character arcs hit all the right places for a satisfying literary journey. Recommended. Xina Marie Uhl

LADY MARY

Lucy Worsley, Bloomsbury, 2018, £6.99, pb, 372pp, 9781408898048

1527. Eleven-year-old Princess Mary, daughter of King Henry VIII and his Spanish wife, Catherine of Aragon, are at the Palace of Greenwich where the visiting French Ambassador raises concerns about Mary’s proposed marriage to Henri, heir to the French throne. The pope has decreed that the marriage between Henry and Catherine is illegal as Catherine had previously been married to Henry’s elder brother, Arthur. Mary is therefore illegitimate. Mary’s teenage years were traumatic. Shunted from one royal residence to another, parted from her mother, pressurized to renounce her title ‘Princess’, she is halfstarved and deprived of company. She is demoted to ‘Lady Mary’ and sent to be ladyin-waiting to her baby half-sister, Elizabeth, daughter of Henry’s second marriage to Anne Boleyn. Mary refuses, and Anne, who will stop at nothing, tries to engineer her downfall by attempting to entrap her into a compromising position with a handsome young man. Who can Mary trust? I had no idea that Mary went through all this from when she was eleven to twentyone: ten long years of a poisonous cocktail of abuse, neglect and disinformation at an age when she was at her most vulnerable. There must have been times when she feared for her very life. This is a gripping first-person account, as Lucy Worsley, with great skill, allows the reader inside Mary’s head as she struggles to understand what is going on, and why her father, who professes to love her, allows these horrible things to happen. Before I’d read Lady Mary, I had little sympathy for Mary, a woman I saw as a religious bigot. Now, I feel pity for the appalling situation she was placed in at such a young age, and admiration for her courage. Thoughtful girls of eleven plus should find Lady Mary a heart-rending read. Elizabeth Hawksley

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CONFERENCES

The Society organizes biennial conferences in the UK, the US, and Australasia. Contact Richard Lee <richard@historicalnovelsociety.org> (UK), Vanitha Sankaran <info@vanithasankaran.com> (USA), or Elisabeth Storrs <contact@hnsa.org.au> (Australasia).

ÂŠ 2018, the Historical Novel Society, ISSN: 1471-7492 | Issue 84, May 2018

A publication of the Historical Novel Society | www.historicalnovelsociety.org