Historical Novels Review | Issue 98 (November 2021)

H I S T O R IC A L

NOV EL S REVIEW

ISSUE 98

NOVEMBER 2021

A GIANT OF THE GENRE The LIfe & Work of Sharon Kay Penman |

More on page 8

F E AT U R ED I N T H IS ISSU E ...

Echoing & Twinning Sebastian Faulks' Thoughts on Time & Self Page 10

Slippery Evidence Isabelle Grey's Fiction Page 12

Paris in Ruins Working with Personal Accounts Page 13

Identity & Character Robert Olen Butler's Historical Fiction Page 14

The Lady Eve Gill Paul's The Collector's Daughter Page 15

Historical Fiction Market News Page 1

New Voices Page 4

History & Film Page 6

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H I S T O R IC A L

NOV EL S REVIEW ISSN 1471-7492

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

Ben Bergonzi <ben@ruthrosa.plus.com> Publisher Coverage: Birlinn/Polygon; Duckworth Overlook; Faber & Faber; Granta; HarperCollins UK; Hamish Hamilton; Pan Macmillan; Penguin Random House UK (Michael Joseph, Penguin General, Penguin Press, and their imprints); Short Books; Simon & Schuster UK

Issue 98, November 2021 | © 2021 The Historical Novel Society

R E V I E WS E DI T O R S , U SA

P U BLISH E R

Kate Braithwaite

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

EDI TOR I AL BOA R D Managing Editor: Bethany Latham

<kate.braithwaite@gmail.com> Publisher Coverage: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Poisoned Pen Press; Skyhorse; and Soho

Bryan Dumas <bryanpgdumas@gmail.com> Publisher Coverage: Algonquin; Kensington; Other Press; Overlook; Sourcebooks; Tyndale; and other US/Canadian small presses

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

Sarah Hendess

Book Review Editor: Sarah Johnson

Janice Ottersberg

Booth Library, Eastern Illinois University, 600 Lincoln Avenue, Charleston, IL 61920 USA <sljohnson2@eiu.edu> Publisher Coverage: Bethany House; Five Star; HarperCollins; IPG; Penguin Random House (all imprints); Severn House; Australian presses; and 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>

R EV I EWS EDI TOR S, U K 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; Bloomsbury; Canongate; Head of Zeus; Glagoslav; Hodder Headline (inc.

Coronet, Hodder & Stoughton, NEL, Sceptre); John Murray; Pen & Sword; Robert Hale; Alma; The History Press

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

<clark1103@yahoo.com> Publisher Coverage: US/Canadian children’s publishers <jkottersberg@gmail.com> Publisher Coverage: Amazon Publishing; Hachette; Pegasus; and W.W. Norton

Larry Zuckerman <boyonaraft64@gmail.com> Publisher Coverage: Bloomsbury; Macmillan (all imprints); Grove/ Atlantic; and Simon & Schuster (all imprints)

R E V I E WS E DI T O R , I N DI E J. Lynn Else <jlynn@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.

M E M B E R S H I P DE TA I L S 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

H NS E DI TOR I A L U P DAT E S

ISSU E 98 NOV EM BE R 2021 COLU M NS 1

Historical Fiction Market News

Sarah Johnson

4

New Voices Profiles of authors Addison Armstrong, Jai Chakrabarti, M Shelly Conner, and Courtney Ellis | Myfanwy Cook

6

History & Film Sir Gawain & the Green Knight |

Bethany Latham

F E AT U R ES & I N T E RV I EWS 8

A Giant of the Genre A Celebration of the Life & Work of Sharon Kay Penman

by Jenny Quinlan

10 Echoing & Twinning

Sebastian Faulks' Thoughts on Time & Self

by Lucinda Byatt

12 Slippery Evidence

Isabelle Grey Weighs In

by Douglas Kemp

12 Paris in Ruins

Working with Personal Accounts

by M.K. Tod

14 Identity & Character

Robert Olen Butler's Historical Fiction

by Trish MacEnulty

15 The Lady Eve

Evelyn Herbert & Tutankhamun's Tomb

by Bethany Latham

R EV I EWS 16 Book Reviews

Editors’ choice and more

HISTORICAL FICTION MARKET NEWS Welcome to Ben Bergonzi, who joined the UK editorial team in September. He’ll be replacing Karen Warren, who’s stepping down as a reviews editor (she’ll be continuing as a reviewer). Thanks to Karen for all her hard work and contributions over the last five years, and to Ben for his willingness to take on an editorial role. The position of UK children’s reviews editor remains open; if you’re a UK resident interested in this role, please drop me a line at sljohnson2@eiu.edu.

Also welcome to all new members, and to the new reviewers who signed on recently. We’d love to have more reviewers on board, particularly those residing in the UK and Australia, though interested parties residing elsewhere are also encouraged to get involved.

Please contact me at sljohnson2@eiu.edu for information and a copy of the guidelines.

N E W BO OK S BY H NS M E M BE R S Congrats to the following author members on their newly released books. If you’ve written a historical novel or nonfiction work published (or to be published) in July 2021 or after, please send the following details to me at sljohnson2@eiu.edu or @readingthepast

by Jan. 7, 2022: author, title, publisher, release date, and a blurb of one sentence or less. Details will appear in February’s magazine.

Submissions may be edited for space.

Half the Terrible Things by Paul Legler (North Dakota State University Press, Nov. 15, 2020) is a true crime story about a young farm boy murdered in 1922 in the swamps of Florida and the search for his grave by the granddaughter of his girlfriend, eighty years later.

Wayward Voyage by Anna M. Holmes (The Book Guild, Apr.), set in the early 18th-century Americas, follows Anne Bonny’s path to piracy.

Rodger Carlyle’s Enemy Patriots: A Unique World War II Story of Love Courage, Loyalty and Brotherhood (Verity Books, May), is a novel about two friends, forever tied together by a terrible accident where each lost a brother, who are reunited at the opening of World War II, one spying for the Americans and the other for the Japanese.

In Joanna Grochowicz’s Shackleton’s Endurance - An Antarctic Survival Story (Allen & Unwin Australia, May 2), marooned on the Antarctic sea ice after the loss of his ship, Ernest Shackleton and 27 members of his 1914 Trans-Antarctic expedition face a journey of unimaginable proportions over ice and ocean, and the uncharted mountainous interior of South Georgia. The UK release was Sept. 3, and the US release was Oct. 2.

In The Governor’s Man by Jacquie Rogers (Sharpe Books, May 19), the first of a trilogy of Roman Britain mysteries, when Roman military investigator Quintus Valerius is sent back to Britannia on the trail of fraud at the Somerset mines, he uncovers more than just murder and a complex plot threatening the Empire – he lifts the lid on secrets from his own past.

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With the California Gold Rush as a backdrop, Ned Purdom’s Virga (Chapman Saddle Publishing, Jun. 7) traverses the precariousness of a 19th-century transcontinental love story, with the illusory notion of success and how it measures us all.

The Abalone Ukulele: A Tale of Far Eastern Intrigue by R. L. Crossland (New Academia Publishing, Jun. 29) is a historical crime novel set in 1913 Shanghai, where four cultures are about to collide: China, Korea, Japan, and the US; and it develops the ultimate point of collision in three tons of Japanese gold ingots meant to undermine an already collapsing China.

“The social realism of Jane Austen meets the Southern Gothic of Flannery O’Connor” in Silk: Caroline’s Story by Sophia Alexander (Onalex Books, Jun. 30), an award-winning novel set in 1899 in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, where Caroline must choose between the town doctor and a good-natured farmer—all the while oblivious to a young sociopath who is not about to let this happen.

In Ancient Mesopotamia, 2300 BCE, Shauna Roberts’ The Moon God’s Wife: A Novel of Enheduanna (Nicobar Press, Jul. 17), answers the question: Can Esh achieve her destiny despite being a political pawn in the world’s first empire?

The audacious young widow of a Union soldier joins forces with a former Confederate prisoner of war to form a detective agency in 1867 Chicago in Devil by the Tail by Jeanne Matthews (D. X. Varos, Jul. 20).

Set at the beginning of the 13th century, Paul Quinn’s The Venetian Crusader (Vanguard Press, Jul. 29) is a novel of manipulation, greed and revenge telling the incredible story behind the wealth and beauty of Venice.

Champagne Widows by Rebecca Rosenberg (Lion Heart, Aug. 17), was described as an “effervescent historical novel [that] paints a richly detailed portrait of the enterprising Veuve Clicquot” by Publishers Weekly’s BookLife Prize.

Far Other Worlds by Arlene MacLeod (Weymouth Press, Aug. 18), set in 12th-century Scotland, tells the story of young widow Ailsa as she encounters unexpected love and unlooked-for adventure in her quest to live free.

In Skye Alexander’s Never Try to Catch a Falling Knife (Level Best Books/Historia imprint, Aug. 25), first in her Lizzie Crane Mystery Series, Roaring Twenties jazz singer Lizzie Crane is about to get her big break in show biz, when she discovers her saxophonist stabbed to death––and police think she’s either the killer or the next victim.

Inspired by a bizarre chapter in Toronto’s history that began in 1926, The Great Stork Derby by Ann S. Epstein (Vine Leaves Press, Oct.) examines the 50-year aftermath in a family who entered a contest to win cash for having the most babies, and asks whether an overbearing husband can learn the true meaning of fatherhood.

In The Mrs. Tabor by Kimberly Burns (Independently published, Oct 9), a blonde bombshell joins the 1880s Colorado silver rush to find her fortune the best way a woman can—a rich husband—but amid scandalous divorces and weddings, an economic crash, and a deathbed promise, she proves she is not just a gold digger and her love is tougher stuff.

Betty Bolté’s newest release is Fractured Crystals (Mystic Owl, Oct. 12), book 4 in the Fury Falls Inn series, historical fantasy set in 1821 northern Alabama in a haunted roadside inn, and which includes magic and witchcraft, too.

In Kinley Bryan’s debut novel Sisters of the Sweetwater Fury (Blue Mug Press, Oct. 12), three sisters navigate the hazards of seafaring family relationships—when the Great Lakes Storm of 1913 descends upon the region, threatening their dreams and even their lives.

Muskets & Minuets by Lindsey Fera (Zenith Publishing, Oct. 19) is a YA coming of age tale set in Massachusetts during the years leading up to the beginning of the Revolutionary War. While the rich carouse in 1920s Cuba, a voodoo-haunted killer menaces Havana in Dance of the Millions, Paul Martin’s second Music & Murder Mystery (Level Best Books/Historia Imprint, Nov. 2).

The Austens of Broadford by Carole Penfield (Sycamore Lane Press, Dec.), set in the early Georgian era, is based on the life of Jane Austen’s incredible great-grandmother, whose scathing handwritten Memorandum, passed down and read by young Jane, describes the evils of primogeniture; a capricious father-in-law who reneges on verbal promises to support his son’s family which leads to loss of home and social rank, a theme reflected in Sense & Sensibility.

In Home So Far Away by Judith Berlowitz (She Writes Press, Spring 2022), Klara Philipsborn has just side-stepped the rise of Nazism in Berlin for a promising job in Madrid when a fascist military coup draws her into a war that calls her to volunteer her skills as a nurse and translator, a war in which decisions of the heart, and of her very identity, may cost her more than she signed up for.

Love and Retribution by Catherine McCullagh (Big Sky Publishing, Sep. 6) is set against a richly detailed backdrop of wartime England and tells the story of a young widow who rescues two mystery men only to become caught in an intricate web of intrigue, passion, and retribution.

N E W P U BL I SH I NG DE A LS

Set in Renaissance-era Greece, Island of Gold by Amy Maroney (Artelan Press, Sep. 8), tells the story of a noble-born French falconer and a spirited merchant’s daughter who seek their fortunes on the island of Rhodes.

A More Perfect Union by Tammye Huf, about the forbidden love between an enslaved woman and an Irish immigrant in pre-Civil War America, based on the true story of the author’s great-greatgrandparents, sold to Alex Logan at Grand Central for spring 2022 publication via Louisa Pritchard at Louisa Pritchard Associates, on behalf of Myriad Editions, who published the novel in the UK in 2020.

A Strand of Gold by Elisabeth Conway (Atmosphere Press, Sep. 30) explores the struggles of two Chinese women, whose search for a better life in an exotic and challenging environment leads them

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into desperate danger; the narrative explores attitudes to slavery, prostitution, and opium addiction against a backdrop of East India Company bureaucracy and Raffles’ idealism.

COLUMNS | Issue 98, November 2021

Sources include authors and publishers, Publishers Weekly, Publishers Marketplace, The Bookseller, and more. Email me at sljohnson2@eiu. edu or tweet @readingthepast to have your publishing deal included.

Molly Green’s latest novels, Summer Secrets at Bletchley Park and A

Winter Wedding at Bletchley Park, follow the trials of two heroines as they struggle to untangle the German codes and at the same time juggle unexpected romance during WW2. They were acquired by Avon/HarperCollins UK for publication in April and November 2022 respectively.

Yellow Wife (an HNR Editors’ Choice) author Sadeqa Johnson’s Where the Bad Girls Go, focusing on the intersecting lives of two Black women attempting to overcome their circumstances in the late 1940s, sold to Lashanda Anakwah and Carina Guiterman at Simon & Schuster by Cherise Fisher and Wendy Sherman at Wendy Sherman Associates.

Robert Lee Murphy’s Bozeman Paymaster: A Tale of the Fetterman Massacre is the story of the U.S. Army’s worst defeat at the hands of the American Indians until Custer’s Last Stand a decade later: Red Cloud’s War in the Powder River Country of present-day Wyoming is seen through the eyes of a youthful paymaster clerk who falls in love with a young schoolteacher when they are thrown together on the Bozeman Trail, and their future is torn asunder by the Fetterman Massacre in December 1866. Five Star Publishing acquired the rights for an anticipated 2022 release.

The House of Fortune, Jessie Burton’s standalone sequel to her bestselling The Miniaturist, following the story of Nella Brandt’s niece, Thea, in 17th-century Amsterdam eighteen years later, sold to Jonathan Lee at Bloomsbury (North American rights) via Jenny Bent at the Bent Agency on behalf of agent Juliet Mushens at Mushens Entertainment in London. UK and Commonwealth rights went to Picador via Juliet Mushens. Publication is expected in July 2022.

Set in early 20th-c Colorado and featuring a cast of characters from various backgrounds and walks of life, Kate Manning’s Avalanche Days sold to Kate Watson at Scribner via Sarah Burnes at The Gernert Company for summer 2022 publication.

Hamish Hamilton publishing director Simon Prosser acquired British/ Commonwealth rights to Pat Barker’s sequel to The Silence of the Girls and The Women of Troy, entitled The Voyage Home, following the Trojan women on their voyage to Mycenae with their Greek captors, via Clare Alexander at Aitken Alexander.

Under the Wide and Starry Sky author Nancy Horan’s as-yetuntitled historical novel about a 19th-century Portuguese woman seeking asylum with her family in America sold to Shana Drehs at Sourcebooks via Lisa Bankoff at Bankoff Collaborative.

The fourth book in Signe Pike’s Lost Queen series, a prequel set in 6th-century Scotland focusing on Elufed, Queen of Strathclyde, and based on new archaeological finds in Pictish history, sold to Trish Todd at Atria by Faye Bender at The Book Group.

Euphoria by Swedish writer Elin Cullhed, her first novel for adults, which fictionalizes the last year of Sylvia Plath’s life, sold to Hannah Knowles, editorial director at Canongate, via Astri von Arbin Ahlander at the Ahlander Agency for Jan. 2023 publication; the English translator is Jennifer Hayashida.

Set during the Civil War, The Thread Collectors by Shaunna Edwards and Alyson Richman, centering on two women—one Black and yearning for freedom in New Orleans, the other a New York Jewish abolitionist—whose resourceful sewing to support their communities leads them on unexpected, dangerous journeys as they fight to bring their beloveds home from the front, sold to Melanie Fried at Graydon

House, for publication in summer 2022, by Sally Wofford-Girand at Union Literary.

The Porcelain Doll by Kristen Loesch, an eerie Gothic novel spanning three generations of Russian women, from 1917 through the end of the USSR, focusing on an Oxford student discovering her family history through her late mother’s porcelain doll collection, sold to Allison & Busby publishing manager Lesley Crooks via Sharon Galant at the Zeitgeist Agency, for spring 2022 publication.

Robert Harris’s Act of Oblivion, in which the signers of Charles I’s death warrant are tracked across the Atlantic following their escape to the New England wilderness, based on actual events described as “the greatest manhunt of the 17th century,” sold to Noah Eaker at Harper, in a two-book deal, by Suzanne Gluck at William Morris Endeavor.

Maria by Michelle Moran, revealing the true story of The Sound of Music heroine Maria Von Trapp, sold to Susanna Porter at Ballantine

by Daniel Lazar at Writers House.

Retelling the story of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway from the viewpoint of the title character’s only child, Elizabeth, Daughter Dalloway by E. C. France sold to Daniel Ehrenhaft at Blackstone via Jennifer Unter at The Unter Agency for spring 2023 publication.

A Girl Called Sampson by Amy Harmon, telling the story of Deborah Sampson, a historical woman who disguised herself as a man to fight in George Washington’s Continental Army during the American Revolution, sold to Jodi Warshaw at Lake Union Publishing by Jane Dystel at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.

Katy Loftus, publisher at Viking, acquired Beth Underdown’s The Key in the Lock, a gothic novel set in Cornwall in both 1888 and 1918, via Nelle Andrew at Rachel Mills Literary for publication on Jan. 27, 2022.

OTHER NEW AND FORT HCOM I NG T I T LE S For forthcoming novels through 2022, please see our guides, compiled by Fiona Sheppard (adult titles) and by Fiona Sheppard and Susan Firghil Park (children’s and YA): https://historicalnovelsociety.org/guides/forthcoming-historicalnovels

COM PI LED

BY SA R A H JOH NSON 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.

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NEW VOICES

photo credit: Ryan Armstrong

photo credit: Tiffany Conner

Castles, genealogical research, medical equipment, and museums provided inspiration for debut novelists Addison Armstrong, Jai Chakrabarti, M Shelly Conner, and Courtney Ellis.

M Shelly Conner photo credit: Kelly Gleason

Addison Armstrong

Jai Chakrabarti

Courtney Ellis

For Ellis, who began writing at a young age, and had developed an interest in history from listening to her grandfather’s stories about the Second World War, “It was so rewarding to collect these seeds— the manor, the war, the masks, the art—and be able to sew them into my debut novel.”

The primary inspiration for M Shelly Conner’s everyman (Blackstone, 2021), she tells me, “was a culmination of my mother’s genealogical research into our family and my desire to teach that skill to my middle grade Chicago Public School students. I watched my mother wade through obituaries and family affects and noted her patience to wait for census records. I naively thought that because my students were younger that they had greater access to information for their closest relatives. But that wasn’t the case.”

As Conner points out, “Of course, the biggest obstacle to uncovering Black ancestry lies in the institution of American slavery. After that, it’s a willful amnesia to forget known relatives who caused great harm.”

The initial spark of inspiration for Courtney Ellis’s At Summer’s End (Berkley, 2021) came to her during a trip to England, when she “visited Castle Howard in North Yorkshire,” she says. “I was struck by the vast grounds and the enormity of the manor and couldn’t help but imagine what sort of people lived in such a place—and what secrets they were keeping.”

Her novel opens as Eve Mann arrives in Ideal, Georgia, in 1972. Eve is looking for answers about the mother who died giving birth to her.

A mother named Mercy. “A mother who for all of Eve’s twenty-two years has been a mystery and a quest. Eve’s search for her mother, and the father she never knew, is a mission to discover her identity, her name, her people, her home.”

At Summer’s End is set on a country estate in 1920s England when Alberta “Bertie” Preston, an ambitious young artist, accepts a commission from the Earl of Wakeford to spend a summer painting at his home.

Conner explains: “Events, places and time periods commune in everyman in ways that illustrate their relationships to each other and to the people that populate them. It lives in the sprawl of the Great Migration and as much in the stories that are retold as in the ones that were buried. Those of rebellious women. Black queer folk.

Southerners. Northerners. Southern-northerners and Northernsoutherners.”

When Ellis embarked on creating her storyline and characters, “I was deep in research about the First World War for other projects,” she continues. “I felt an attraction to the disillusionment of the interwar period, and the fall of the British aristocracy, and thought it would be interesting to write a story that explored the smaller, personal devastation the war had on its veterans and their families. An opulent stately home seemed the perfect setting.”

As Ellis discovered, “researching a world war can be a harrowing task,” she relates. “I hadn’t expected to become so emotional over the cases of strangers who lived a hundred years before. I found myself particularly moved by stories of early facial reconstruction surgery, and the prosthetic masks that were made for wounded soldiers by sculptors such as Anna Coleman Ladd and Francis Derwent Wood.”

For those who had been injured, “these wearable works of art made returning to normal life easier for a soldier who had suffered disfigurement. This perhaps lesser-known facet of the war gave me the reclusive lord of my fictional manor: the Earl of Wakeford.”

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Because she wanted her heroine, Bertie, to earn Wakeford’s hardwon trust, “I decided to make her an artist,” Ellis says. “Rather than be unsettled by the mask, Bertie sees it with creative eyes, appreciating the skill and artistry that went into making it. For her artistic style, I turned to contemporaries such as Laura Knight, Dorothea Sharp, and Sir John Lavery, who was an official artist of WWI. Lavery’s style heavily influenced what I wanted Bertie’s work to look like. One of his war pieces in particular inspired her most important portrait, which catches Wakeford’s eye and earns her the commission that incites her story.”

COLUMNS | Issue 98, November 2021

For Conner, “everyman is also the genealogy of myself and a desire to connect with greater entities of which I am part. Families.

Communities. Society. This book was written over the course of my seven-year Ph.D. program and heavily revised for an additional five years afterwards. As I evolved, so too, did the characters and the story in ways that illustrate depth more than change; everyman and I settled into ourselves like a house grounding into its foundation.”

Jai Chakrabarti was born in Kolkata, India, lives in Brooklyn, and is a technologist as well as a writer. The time he spent in Jerusalem played a key role in the creation of A Play for the End of the World (Knopf, 2021). Chakrabarti asked himself: “What is the role of art in wartime? This was a central question I grappled with as I wrote A Play for the End of the World, a novel that explores how art-making and storytelling changes the life of a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto.

This question had come to me when my partner and I were living in

Jerusalem. It was our last day in the city, and we decided to visit Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial Museum.”

They had been intending to go to the museum but kept putting it off.

“The day was grey and rainy, but we knew it was our last opportunity.

The visit was important especially to my wife because her maternal grandparents were survivors of the Lodz Ghetto and ultimately liberated from Auschwitz. At Yad Vashem’s Art in the Ghettos exhibit, I first learned that Rabindranath Tagore’s play The Post Office had been performed in Janusz Korczak’s orphanage in Warsaw.

“This felt like a striking coincidence—that I, as an Indian man from Bengal, married to a Jewish woman with Polish heritage, would find a work of Indian literature referenced in a Holocaust museum. It was transformative also because I knew the play from my childhood.

Tagore remains one of my literary heroes, and I was deeply moved to learn that The Post Office had been performed during WWII with child actors.”

So began Chakrabarti’s “decade of research into the lives of Janusz Korczak and Rabindranath Tagore,” he says. “I wanted to understand how a play written in a village in Bengal would become interweaved with the story of an orphanage in Warsaw. Why did Korczak choose to stage this play during the Great Deportations, weeks before he and his children would be sent to Treblinka and their deaths? Seeking answers to this question, I would travel to Poland and to India. What I’d learn would inform the journeys of the characters of my novel, the arc of their love story, and their search for redemption.”

Trawling or even skimming through the internet and reading snippets of articles that catch one’s eyes can lead us on an adventure of discovery. Addison Armstrong, who lives in Nashville, Tennessee, and has an academic interest in literacy and reading skills, is the author of The Light of Luna Park (Putnam, 2021). “I discovered Dr. Couney’s incubator wards online and could barely believe that something so bizarre was real. But it was. Dr. Martin Couney, who was born Michael Cohen and was never a doctor at all, spent nearly forty years exhibiting premature babies in incubators at Coney Island’s Luna Park. He charged visitors to come in and see the babies as if they were a freak show, but he never charged the infants’ parents a cent. And over the decades, he saved approximately 6,500 babies that hospitals never even tried to keep alive.”

Armstrong found that “the juxtaposition was almost garish. On the one hand, there were attractions ranging from five-cent hot dogs to roller coasters, from microcephalic brothers presented as ‘the missing link’ to the four-legged Myrtle Corbin. But on the other hand was a

quiet, orderly ward of high-tech incubators and doll-like babies, of competent nurses in starched white uniforms and stringent rules and standards.

“The contrast was so compelling that I knew I had to write about it. But beyond the sensationalism was a deeply human question: If Dr. Couney was a liar, a conman, and a fraud, was he doing the right thing? I decided to have my protagonist grapple with the same debate. The fictional nurse Althea Anderson smuggles a baby girl out of Bellevue Hospital so that Couney can save her life despite the parents’ wishes. Does Althea overstep? Who has the right to decide whether a baby should be saved? When does a lie become a morally justified means to an end?”

Armstrong’s “second timeline,” she relates, “transports readers twenty years into the 1950s, during which special education teacher Stella Wright must grapple with her late mother’s secrets, her husband’s WWII trauma, and her principal’s inhumane treatment of her students. Though Stella’s work is not directly related to the medicine Dr. Couney practiced, she too believes in children that the medical field, the pseudoscience of eugenics, and the world at large is willing to abandon.”

The cornerstone on which the firm foundations of Armstrong, Chakrabarti, M Shelly Conner and Courtney Ellis’s novels are constructed bears witness to their detailed research and a passion for individuals, communities, the places they once inhabited and the moral dilemmas that faced them.

W R I T T EN BY M Y FA N W Y COOK Myfanwy Cook is an Associate University Fellow and ‘a creative enabler’. She is a prize-winning short story writer who facilitates creative writing workshops.

Contact myfanwyc@btinternet. com if you have been captivated by the writing of a debut novelist you'd like to see featured.

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

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HISTORY & FILM Poem to Film: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

For this issue’s History & Film, I’d ask you to cast your mind back to high school, possibly college. Do you find in its recesses the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? I don’t remember when I first read it; it seems likely it was my freshman year of university in an English Literature course. I do remember being intrigued by it, enjoying the bob and wheel. If your mind draws a blank, the tale goes something like this. Celebrating Christmas and the New Year, King Arthur holds a round of feasting and jousting, “right ripe revel and reckless mirth.” Everyone is happy, life is good, 'tis a joyous season.

Arthur, his knights, lords, and ladies, sit down to a feast, and into the celebrations trots the Green Knight: there hales in at the hall door a dreadful man, the most in the world’s mould of measure high, from the nape to the waist so swart and so thick, and his loins and his limbs so long and so great half giant on earth I think now that he was; but the most of man anyway I mean him to be, and that the finest in his greatness that might ride, for of back and breast though his body was strong, both his belly and waist were worthily small, and his features all followed his form made and clean.

Wonder at his hue men displayed, set in his semblance seen; he fared as a giant were made, and over all deepest green.

I admit, the first time I read this and the further description of the knight's green clothes and shiny green locks, I pictured nothing so much as the Jolly Green Giant. Even the knight’s magnificent horse is green. It’s generally agreed that, interesting coloration aside, the material point is that “no man might his mighty blows survive.” What is it this green interloper wants, exactly? He craves a “Christmas gift” – a friendly “game.” (I don’t think his definition of this word and mine are the same.) He carries an enormous green axe; he will trade blows with any man “bold of blood and hot-brained in his head” enough to bear the challenge. The Green Knight will allow his opponent the first strike with the axe and take his in return a twelvemonth hence.

Arthur leaps to his feet, ready to accept the contest himself. Before he can do so, Sir Gawain begs that the “mêlée be mine.”

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Gawain is young and courageous, but he fears he has nothing to recommend him save that he’s Arthur’s nephew; his adventures up to this point have been practically nil, and Arthur does love a good tale of adventure. Gawain wishes to prove himself, and rather than strike a glancing blow as befits a “game,” he beheads the knight. Contest over…or not. The Green Knight nonchalantly picks up his head, lets Gawain know that he looks forward to meeting him again at his abode, the Green Chapel, in a year. Cheerful exit. Yikes.

Gawain, being the embodiment of chivalry, honors his side of the bargain. Before the year is out, he sets off to find the Green Chapel and meet his fate. The quest is fraught with wolves, bears, giants, even dragons. He takes shelter at a castle along the way belonging to Lord Bertilak de Hautdesert, who shows him every courtesy and seems to delight in mirth and hijinks. He’s also quite helpful: he knows the location of the Green Chapel, and it’s only two miles away. He also proposes a game – whatever he acquires hunting in the wood will be Gawain’s; whatever Gawain acquires in the castle he must then exchange with Bertilak. It might be a good time to mention the lady of the castle, who surpasses even that high bar of Arthurian beauty, Guinevere. She offers her body to Gawain who, chivalrously, declines, but he does accept a kiss out of “courtesy” when Lady Bertilak insists. Gawain dutifully returns this kiss to the lord of the manor in exchange for the fruits of his hunt. The scene repeats itself the next day. The third day, Lady Bertilak visits him again, and he accepts a love-token from her – a green silk belt. She assures him this magical belt will protect him from all harm, which should come in handy, given what he’s about to face. Kisses he had no compunction about returning to the lord of the manor, but this belt goes unmentioned to his generous host. Thus attired, Gawain travels to the Green Chapel, and there he offers his neck to the Green Knight. The knight strikes two feinting blows, and finally a real one – yet he only nicks the noble Gawain’s neck. The first two feints were for the kisses Gawain honestly exchanged; the blood spilled was due to the magical belt withheld. The Green Knight is actually the enchanted Lord Bertilak, and his wife’s conduct was a test. Gawain is adjudged the “most faultless man that was ever afoot”...with the exception of his accepting the belt. Gawain burns with shame at this failure, but the Green Knight assures him that he has done penance at the point of a blade and is entirely absolved. In a somewhat abrupt twist, he lets Gawain know that the entire “game” was the work of the enchantress (and Gawain’s aunt) Morgan le Fay. Her goal: causing Guinevere to drop-dead from fright at the Green Knight’s appearance in Camelot. Gawain returns home, entirely honest with Arthur and the court about all events, even his shame.

So this is the original. When I first saw the trailers for the recent film version of The Green Knight, I was intrigued. The knight himself (a CGIed Ralph Ineson) looked nothing like the description – more than anything, he reminded me of one of Tolkien’s Ents, not green, the trunk of a tree brought to life. Nature turns ambulatory, the sound effects provide even the cracking of bark as he moves. Not true to the poem, but fascinating. Arthur (Sean Harris) and even Guinevere (Kate Dickie) also bore little resemblance to their poetic selves who were “fair folk in their first age still,” and he “so joyous a youth, and somewhat boyish.” Arthur had been transformed into a sad, sickly old king who wishes to accept the Green Knight's challenge but is too frail. He and Guinevere are shown lying at opposite ends of the same bed, seemingly too drained even to stay upright. A court at its most exuberant peak thus morphs into one sliding headlong into the trough of decay. And what of Gawain (Dev Patel)? First glimpses

of this knight so courteous and chaste are of him in a brothel. Ah, Hollywood, so true to form. Anything aspirational must be tarnished and then destroyed in favor of…what, exactly? Nihilism? Gawain's name doesn't appear in the title of the film, and at its beginning, he isn't a knight. I quickly realized that, to enjoy the film – and it does have its moments of beauty and uniqueness – I would need to let go of my attachment to the original material. Or, put another way, consider the film on its own merits in an attempt to understand the choices made. The very first of these, as Patel put it, was “How do we make this guy [Gawain] more likeable?”1 Someone who holds himself to a high standard and exhibits shame at moral failure is unrelatable. Patel’s solution: throw out honor and courage, anything historically considered virtuous. “I fear I’m not meant for greatness,” a worried Gawain complains to his concubine. Now you have a Gawain like you’ve never seen him before: inherently weak. That’s likeable, right?

Gawain may be the largest divergence, but in looking for others, the women stand out front and center. The original tale is fairly short on female presence; the lady of the manor is the only one with any real word count. The women are essentially lumped as one into the “Eve made me screw everything up” category: “But it is no wonder for a fool to run mad and through wiles of woman be won to sorrow,” the poem sagely intones, after a list of such wily temptresses (eg, Delilah). Morgan le Fay is no temptress; the poem describes her (less than chivalrously) as "short and thick, her buttocks big and broad."

I’ve always felt that dropping in Morgan le Fay at the end as impetus for all that went before, with her motivations being so petty, felt a bit tacked on. Perhaps the filmmakers did as well, because there are some interesting choices made with regard to this particular aspect of the tale. Morgan le Fay (Sarita Choudhury) is no longer Gawain’s aunt; she’s his mother. She sets all these events in motion with her witchcraft for the same reason modern parents pray their 30-year-old gets a job and moves out of their basement: she wants her wastrel, layabout son to act like an adult and make something of himself. We also see the addition of more female characters of import. Guinevere is given a stronger role, and Gawain is given a lover, Essel (Alicia Vikander) who serves as foil to illustrate exactly what a selfish ass Gawain can be. Vikander does double-duty here as the lady of the manor and, of course, Gawain’s conduct with her is far less chaste than in the poem (prepare yourself for closeups of bodily fluids). Perhaps one of the most interesting additions is Winifred (Erin Kellyman), a ghostly young woman Gawain encounters on his quest to find the Green Chapel. This character, while absent from the poem, is found in other historical sources; she’s based on the 7th-century Welsh martyr Saint Winifred. Winifred wished to remain a virgin and become a nun; her suitor beheaded her for it. (Do we begin to see a theme?) Her head fell into a spring, and when retrieved and returned to her body, she came back to life.

The ghost seeks Gawain’s help in fishing her head out of the spring, but in true film Gawain fashion, he wants to know what she will give him in return before he agrees to complete this task. She chastises him roundly, attempting to show him the error of quid pro quo and viewing women as sex objects. He learns his lessons poorly.

There are other lessons: characters are inserted to elucidate that, while the Arthur of legend may be portrayed as a noble ruler, his throne floats upon an ocean of violence and blood. Gawain comes across a scavenger (a blithely unhinged Barry Keoghan) in a field of bodies. The scavenger waxes cheerfully poetic on the ceaseless slaughter for which Arthur and his knights bear responsibility. In short: war is bad. And men (for it is only men who bear the blame for everything here) are bad for waging it, since it's primarily the little guy who suffers. There’s no equality of any kind, in death or dinner placement – Arthur’s knights don’t even sit at a round table; it's

C-shaped with Arthur's precedence obvious in the center.

One critic called the film a "waking dream,"2 but it's more accurate to say watching this film feels like a fever-dream, surreal visions drifting in and out of mist, bodies decaying and reconstituting, characters looming from darkened interiors, crowns aflame like a saint’s halo. Imagery is arresting but frequently opaque; it can help if one is familiar with the original source material in some cases, since explication won’t be forthcoming. But there is also much in this film, plot-wise, that has been switched around or simply doesn’t exist in the poem (though some can be found in other medieval sources).

Just because the imagery is dense doesn’t mean it isn’t stunning; this can be a mesmerizing film, visually and aurally. The soundtrack and sound effects are crisp and add a sense of motion. In contrast, the film sometimes feels so caught up in its own visual metaphors that it forgets the most important part of “motion picture” – moving.

This tendency to linger is sometimes a feature, sometimes a bug.

It’s the type of film that critics love and a typical audience outside the arthouse will probably pan from lack of patience. One critic called it an adaptation of the poem into “a form both intelligible and peculiar.”2 Another noted “what a strange and peculiarly powerful film this is.”³ The repetition of that adjective, peculiar, is apt. When considered on its own, outside its source material, it is odd yet frequently beautiful. Its ultimate message, on the other hand – that in this day and age, even mythical heroes must be retconned out of existence – not so much.

Translation Note: Passages quoted from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight use A.S. Kline's modern translation of the 14th-century original.

R E F E R ENC ES 1. Alicia Grauso "Dev Patel Interview: The Green Knight." Screen Rant, 26 July 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jp70ofxjSo

2. Ryan Gilbey “David Lowery’s The Green Knight Feels Like a Waking Dream.” The New Statesman, 29 September 2021. hhttps://www.newstatesman. com/culture/film/2021/09/the-green-knight-dev-patel-davidlowery-gawain-review

3. Mark Kermode "The Green Knight review – A Rich and Wild Fantasy”. The Guardian. 26 September 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/ film/2021/sep/26/the-green-knight-review-david-lowery-dev-patelgawain

W R I T T EN BY BE T H A N Y L AT H A M Bethany Latham is a professor, librarian, and HNR's Managing Editor. She is a regular contributor to NoveList and a regular reviewer for Booklist.

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

7

A GIANT OF THE GENRE A Celebration of the Life & Work of Sharon Kay Penman

from scratch. (And thank goodness she did!) I learned that a demon famously inhabited her computer and that she was a dog lover, like me. I started chatting with fellow fans. I asked a question. And I fell over when Sharon herself answered me. Then Devil’s Brood was released and a stop on Sharon’s book tour was an hour away from me. So I went to my very first author event. And I’ll never forget when it was my turn at the table and I introduced myself...and she knew who I was! She remembered me from her forum! I was already a fan of her writing, but now I was a fan of her as a person.

And I’m not alone. Among her fans are such giants of the industry as George R.R. Martin, Bernard Cornwell, and Margaret George, all of whom formed friendships with Sharon. “She was always concerned for other people, thinking of them,” George says. “Because of this, as everyone who knew her can attest, she knew more about us than we did about her, since she was always more interested in hearing what we were doing than telling us what she was doing. Her selfless relationships with others made her beloved by all.”

Bestselling historical novelist Elizabeth Chadwick also counts Sharon as an influence and a friend. “From my teens I had wanted to write historical adventure/romance fiction and I wanted it to feel real and right for the period...Sharon showed me that it was also possible to write about real people and keep the adventure and romance going without warping the history out of true. As a reader, this was what I loved about her novels—that she was able to steep you in the life and times of her characters and even make the politics understandable and fascinating—that to me is a magnificent feat!”

Every once in a while I have what I call a “reading moment.” When the stars align in the right place, at the right time, with the perfect book, and the result is an incredible and memorable reading experience.

And possibly the most memorable one of all was when I discovered Sharon Kay Penman.

It was a dark, rainy, cold October Saturday. I had the house to myself for the entire weekend. I had all my favorite snacks and beverages, I had a fire going in the fireplace, my dogs at my feet, and I settled in to crack open a book I’d picked up from the library called Here Be Dragons. And I read it in one sitting. For sixteen hours, I was thoroughly transported to 12th- and 13th-century Wales. I couldn’t pronounce half the names, and I’d never even heard of Llywelyn Fawr, but I was riveted. The next morning I was at the library when it opened to check out the other books in the trilogy. And then I found The Sunne in Splendour and When Christ and His Saints Slept. And thus began my love affair with Sharon Kay Penman’s books.

Of course I had to find out more about this amazing writer who could bring the past so vividly to life, who could write novels spanning decades with hundreds of characters and keep me hanging on to every word. I found her website. I found her fan forum (back in the days before Facebook). I learned that her first manuscript for Sunne was stolen and it took years for her to find the heart to rewrite it

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FEATURES | Issue 98, November 2021

In an age of ever-shortening attention spans and endless entertainment distractions, Sharon was able to consistently reach the bestseller lists with lengthy tomes taking place centuries in the past. “Perhaps the biggest reason her books connected with readers so well comes down to what I think was her biggest gift,” observes author Stephanie Churchill Ling, who became a close friend of Sharon’s after penning a fan letter. “I have met very few people who had the gift of empathy as strongly as Sharon did. She observed human behavior so closely and understood the nuances of the deeper why behind people’s outward actions. So she took what she knew of people today and translated it into the context of the historical people she wrote about. That’s the instinctual, intuitive part of writing that can’t be taught. She was a natural.”

On the topic of lengthy tomes, George says: “It was always comforting to know that I had a fellow writer who wrote long, detailed books!

As our careers progressed, the pressure to write shorter books and turn them out faster increased, but Sharon showed me that you must remain true to how best you work to produce the standard of work that you ask of yourself. She did not suffer for it, on the contrary, she gained more readers and even more respect.”

One of the reasons Sharon’s readers were so devoted to her was that she always made time for them. She replied to emails, answered questions on social media, and even organized trips for lucky fans to France and Wales based on the locations in her novels.

Ling, who became administrator of Sharon’s fan group, marvels at Sharon’s reaction to her fame. “Despite all her popularity, fame, and success, she was the least pretentious person I’ve ever met. She absolutely could not comprehend her own fame or how she could

SHARON SHOWED ME that it was also possible to write about real people and keep the adventure and romance going without warping the history out of true. strike her fans speechless when meeting her. She valued people, loved getting to know them, and had the biggest, kindest heart.”

Sharon also had a reputation for devotion to historical accuracy. She even kept a running list on her website of all of the errors she found in her books after they were published, some discovered by her and others pointed out by readers over the years.

“She was a stickler for historical authenticity,” Ling reflects. “She would spend days researching the smallest facts and details to get them right.” Ling believes Sharon’s dedication to accuracy is one trait that marks all of her books. “Sharon felt she had a duty to bridge the distance between fiction and nonfiction. She saw herself as the gateway to people learning history, and for that reason, she felt obligated to pay meticulous attention to historical detail. Her personal reference library could honestly rival that of many smalltown public libraries.”

things are set aside so quickly, but the historical novel community, by definition, thinks in different time frames. We should revere her as one of our giants and inspiration.”

Chadwick concurs. “She is one of the giants of the genre. She brought people together and gave them a passion for history...I think readers will still come to her novels and, through their depth and richness, become lovers of historical fiction. I hope she will inspire readers and writers alike.”

I think it’s safe to say she will. With Sharon’s Facebook fan group and blog still going strong and readers continuing to recommend her books, Sharon’s memory is primed to make fans for generations to come.

In a 2020 article about the importance of historical accuracy in novels for the History News Network, Sharon asserted that novels “can add a valuable dimension to the study of history” and “novelists have learned that our books can reach a wider audience than many academics can...And learning about history is great fun, especially if camouflaged in fictional form!” And it certainly is in Sharon’s fantastic books.

Sharon was also known for her wry sense of humor. On the topic of her favorite book, Chadwick says, “Sharon would probably roll her eyes at me and be wryly amused as I pick one of the frontrunners in Here Be Dragons. She once said to me in a letter, ‘Is The Greatest Knight the fan favorite of your books? With me, Dragons usually wins, followed closely by Sunne. Which could mean that I peaked early and it has been downhill ever since.’”

Chadwick also notes Sharon’s crush on Sean Bean in the Sharpe TV series. In a letter written during one of her bouts with illness, Sharon said, “You know I must have been at death’s door, for I kept getting chills, and how could any woman get cold while watching Sean Bean? Uniforms and high boots do wonders for a man!”

Which brings me back to that “reading moment” that started it all for me. As a huge fan of Sharon’s books, I was thrilled to discover over the course of the ensuing years that she was a kind, gracious, witty woman. I credit Sharon with inspiring me to want to write books like hers. To read all the historical fiction I could get my hands on. To join the Historical Novel Society. To make friends with other readers and writers. When I finally worked up the nerve to attend an HNS conference, I got to meet Sharon in person again. Sharon was a generous supporter of the Historical Novel Society, attending conferences, sharing her expertise on panels, and appearing as guest of honor, alongside Margaret George, in 2009. Her presence at the conferences will be greatly missed. As will her name on the new-releases lists. I had not yet had the chance to read her final release, The Land Beyond the Sea, before she passed, and I confess I’m now putting it off because I know it is the last time I will read a book of hers for the first time.

But we can take comfort in her massive contributions to the historical fiction genre and the legacy she leaves behind. “I hope that she will be remembered, read, and cherished,” George says. “In today’s world,

Above: Sharon Kay Penman (at left) shares a moment with Stephanie Churchill Ling. Photo courtesy of Stephanie Churchill Ling.

W R I T T EN

BY J EN N Y QU I N L A N Jenny Quinlan is the founder of Historical Editorial and Historical Fiction Book Covers.

She serves as an HNS website feature writer and the North America Conference chair. She has been an ardent supporter of historical fiction through her book blog. She lives in Virginia with her family and a spoiledrotten German Shepherd.

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

9

ECHOING & TWINNING Sebastian Faulks’ Thoughts on Time & Self

particularly since many of the characters appear in the earlier book, and those that were on the sidelines, are now in full focus. These arcs prompt questions, too, about how our younger selves develop in later life, how insights into past lives can spark understanding of our own.

The books also in part share a setting. In Human Traces two cousins, Jacques Rebières and Thomas Midwinter, establish a sanatorium at Schloss Seeblick, a train ride from Vienna. Faulks confirmed that the institution is “entirely invented, though some of the buildings are based on houses I saw and visited.” In Snow Country, the sanatorium is now run by Martha, one of Thomas and Kitty’s twin daughters.

Faulks has been said to write about women disarmingly well, with strong female leads in many of his earlier novels. This is true of Martha, whose deep understanding brings unison to the whole story. Another is Lena, whom we first meet as a child and then follow through a poignant coming-of-age. Her mother, Carina, a complex character, had worked at another asylum owned by Rebière and Winter, the Wilhelmskogel clinic. One of Egon Schiele’s portraits of a red-haired woman gave me the idea that Faulks might have drawn inspiration for her character there. But no.

“The idea for Lena came from a book about nursing by Christie Watson in which she mentioned in passing a female patient who could only be happy when pregnant. This woman was also a heavy drinker. I wondered what it might be like to be a child of such a mother. It is a nice idea to think of Lena as depicted by Schiele with that staring, slightly desperate look. But I think she is by her nature less wanton than some of the women in Schiele’s paintings. She can be sensual, but only as part of her fuller nature.”

“Who were we?” is a question that poses the same conundrum for our present-day selves. Arguably, the process of answering is the quintessence of all history writing, but fiction authors can explore it more freely.

Sebastian Faulks will be well known to many for his exceptional evocation of the First World War, known as the French trilogy: The Girl at the Lion d’Or (1989), Birdsong (1993) and Charlotte Gray (1999). The period is one that has always interested him, whether for the heights of bravery and abysses of suffering, or the plain incompetence of the rulers and politicians. Later wars form the background of much of his later work, too, but so do the enigmas of the human mind, our strangeness as a species, how prone we are to mental instability, our struggles to understand each other. This second strand occupies his acclaimed 2005 novel, Human Traces, the first of another trilogy focused on Vienna and the development of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. It is now followed by Snow Country (Hutchinson, September 2021).

Faulks describes the relationship between his books as “cousins”, since some sections of Snow Country are set in 1910, before the First World War, but the main action takes place in 1933, with Europe precariously placed between two wars. Readers might find themselves enjoying the books in reverse order (as he quips, lives can’t be),

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FEATURES | Issue 98, November 2021

Summoned to Schloss Seeblick after her mother’s death, Lena “felt proprietary about the view” from the lake, and she tries to capture the sanatorium, a “new world” which for a time she called home, in paint. Faulks describes the building through many eyes, also Anton Heideck’s because, later, in 1933 he is sent to report on its mysterious history, at once luxurious retreat and place of healing, a place in turmoil and a trove of secrets.

We first meet Anton in Vienna where, after university and through his early years as a journalist, he experiences his tender first love for the Frenchwoman Delphine. Faulks gives a masterclass in timeline management, by arching back and forwards throughout the book: the powerfully mysterious first chapter – a gripping scene of open surgery in a field hospital – only makes sense when we read later episodes, first with Delphine, then Lena and finally Martha.

Snow Country is the English translation of a title previously used by Yasunari Kawabata, the Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1968: I was surprised to discover that Japan is indeed the world’s snowiest country. Faulks acknowledges this borrowing, as well as the inspiration of the book itself, in an afterword. However, when asked about any other connections, it proved a red herring: “There is no Japanese link that I am aware of, apart from my borrowing of the translated title of Kawabata’s book.” Instead, it is to South America that Anton heads, where he is sent by the newspaper for which he works to cover the last stages of the digging and flooding of the Panama Canal: filthy work in every respect. The year is 1913, and the Panama Canal is quite literally clogged up in politics, financing scandals, and horrendous mud that kills thousands of the workers.

FAULKS GIVES a masterclass in timeline management, by arching back and forwards throughout the book.

I was curious to know why Faulks chose to start Anton’s story there.

“Panama is partly a way of getting to know Anton, seeing him in action and measuring how he reacts to being separated from Delphine. I also knew at the time that he would discover Jacques’ letters home from the USA when he was at the sanatorium, and I wanted to prefigure the feeling of being isolated in the face of a great wilderness, wondering whether you have any real physical existence at all. The idea of echoing and twinning became important as the book went on. Panama also touches on the idea of Old World incompetence that led to the 1914–18 war. It is also a thrilling story in its own right.”

Vienna is also in some sense a character in the book. We meet the city at various times, from the early 20th-century society with its idealisms and inequalities to the short-lived Civil Wars of 1934. The history is a very light touch and more efficacious for that. Details are picked out with great attention and remain impressed in the mind after reading: the line girls that so appal Anton, the famous cafés, the detailed observation of the everyday clothing shop where Lena works. The internal troubles of the country surface at various moments and climax when Lena and Anton find themselves in Karl-Marx-Hof as it is attacked by government tanks. Faulks tells me: “I knew a fair bit about Vienna and Austria from the research into Human Traces and from having visited Carinthia (especially the area round Klagenfurt) many times. I went to Vienna in December 2019 with a view to more intense research, and I would have gone back, had it not been for the ‘plague’.”

This reference to the curb on research imposed by Covid-19 will be familiar to many. It meant that “most of the background came from reading books, both histories and contemporary fiction and psychological writing.” It is also a link to an earlier pandemic: the influenza pandemic that swept away countless lives in the years immediately following the War. Strangely, it also provides another of the interconnecting links between Faulks’ novels.

“I wrote much of Snow Country during the Lockdown during which journalists repeatedly told us how ‘unprecedented’ such a virus was.

It added a certain poignancy to the historical setting and to the fate of the two Fourmentier sisters, but I can’t say Covid had a big impact otherwise on my writing.”

The Fourmentier sisters mentioned here are Isabel and Delphine, another of the character arcs that Faulks inserts, minor characters in previous novels who re-emerge or are remembered in later ones. A French governess and language teacher in Vienna, Delphine meets Anton in the 1910s. But at the time she is holding something back, which we only understand much later. As Delphine says her life has “cloudy contours and jagged edges”. What is crucial to the themes of Faulks’ writing is the way our lives are affected by great political events, leaving us impotent to act. At the outbreak of the First World War Delphine is “stuck” in Vienna, while Anton gets stuck in Paris, with life-changing consequences.

Faulks’ fascination with our human make-up – minds as well as bodies – is also apparent in Where My Heart Used to Beat (2015), in part about the Anzio campaign in 1944. “It’s the story of the 20th century – how we moved from emperors, tsars, kaisers, archdukes and kings to social

democracies, via genocide and huge s l a u g h t e r.”

The option of war and the possibility of mass destruction is “linked to the terrible instability of the human being.

We are a genetic freak”.

In Snow Country, Anton relates to Jacques Rebières’ letters which he finds in the attic archive at the Schloss, and these parallels allow Faulks to explore Anton’s yearning and desire, at memories true and false, at lives led separately but in synchrony.

Faulks’ novels are told on many levels. The relationship between Anton and Delphine and ultimately with Lena forms a deeply poignant love story, even as all the while their lives are being shaped by the inescapable events of their time. The lake, over which the desk in Marta’s office looks, offers the characters a chance to see themselves reflected in its waters, whether turbulent or still.

Faulks will return to the “strange nature of the human creature” in his next novel, this time set in modern Britain. Given the “unprecedented” events we too are living through, the wait will be tantalising. But I look forward to hearing more about Anton and Lena, too, in the final book of the trilogy.

W R I T T EN BY LUC I N DA BYAT T Lucinda Byatt is a historian and translator. She is also HNR Features Editor and blogs occasionally at “A World of Words,” https://textline. wordpress.com/

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

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SLIPPERY EVIDENCE

BY DOUGLAS KEMP Isabelle Grey Weighs In In addition to a career as a successful screenplay writer (eg, Midsomer Murders, Wycliffe, and Casualty), authoring nonfiction and a psychological suspense series featuring Detective Grace Fisher, Isabelle Grey, writing as V. B. Grey, has published two recent historical novels (reviewed in HNR Issue 93/Aug. 2020 and Issue 97/Aug. 2021). Given that many writers prefer to stay in their own familiar niche, Isabelle spoke about the variations and challenges she observes between writing for the screen and novel-length fiction.

“The differences are huge. A screenplay is a much more strategic document that has also to work as a blueprint for the actors and director as well as to some degree the costume and production designers, location managers, and other members of the team who will bring it to life. I love writing for actors. What a screenplay must give them is not just the words but, even more importantly, the behaviour, the subtext, an understanding of what lies between the lines. I always try to imagine the camera not only on the character speaking, but also on the reaction of the one hearing what is being said – or perhaps what they think they’ve heard! That gap is what allows actors to act. The ability to cut between scenes – sometimes much more rapidly than could work in a novel – also gives an audience the opportunity to find their own meanings in the gaps between cuts. There is much less room for this kind of subtext and intercutting in a novel. In a novel, one has to stick much more closely to the protagonist and to voice their thoughts, and I have sometimes found that a challenge. But fiction also enables me to control how I create and describe my fictional worlds, and that has been fun.”

In Tell Me How It Ends (Quercus, 2020), the HNR reviewer Katherine Mezzacappa referenced the novel’s association with the 1950 film All About Eve, and Isabelle said that she wanted “to evoke the cinematic qualities of film noir” in the novel. “The main elements I wanted to evoke were the production design – looming staircases, mirrors, slatted blinds – and cinematography – the shadows, half-lit faces, unsettling camera angles, and contrasts that slice the world into black and white. I tried not to overdo it, but I hope readers will pick up some of the visual references.”

Isabelle’s most recent novel, Sisterhood (Quercus, 2021) has a central character, a twin named Freya, with associations to her mother.

Reflecting on the challenges of writing about close family members in fiction, she said, “although I’ve used my late mother’s memories of her time as a junior doctor in London in 1944, the character of Freya is not in the least like her. Mum was never cold or distant. I did draw on her feelings about being a non-identical twin, but letting Freya give voice to those thoughts helped me to understand that experience better. All the other characters apart from Shona (the other twin) and Leo (a member of the Polish resistance) are entirely invented. I did, however, have my aunt in mind as I wrote Shona. I am now the only one left who knew her, and, because I only knew her after she had undergone a leucotomy, it was actually rather wonderful to feel that I could put something on the page to capture the woman she would have been – and also to try to understand the storm of emotion that must have precipitated her breakdown.”

In Sisterhood the minor character Phyllis Levenson, like Freya a retired 12

FEATURES | Issue 98, November 2021

medical doctor, says: “It’s extraordinary…to begin to see the unseen strings that steer people’s lives. How even historic events can become so muddled and disguised that they disappear from the record.”Later in the dialogue with daughter Kirsty, Phyllis says “piecing together incomplete fragments of a story can sometime be far more inaccurate than knowing nothing at all”. Isabelle elaborated on how writers construct narrative from a few assertions and little historical fact.

“What we think of as our own life stories are precisely that, and we are constantly adding, editing and reassessing our personal narratives.

We also jump to conclusions, just as Kirsty does about her husband at the beginning of Sisterhood, and then react to what we may have only imagined, so that, by the time we discover the truth, all the emotion we’ve invested in our assumptions can be difficult to unravel.

“My parents and brother all became doctors, and they all relied on ‘taking a history’, on arriving at a diagnosis guided in part by their acceptance (or otherwise) of the patient’s own story of their illness.

As I learnt from writing crime fiction, the same is true of a forensic investigation. I’m fascinated by the slippery nature of evidence, whatever the context. I think I brought all that experience to the writing of historical fiction – knowing when to drop a clue, when to set up a red herring, when to have sound evidence that nevertheless points in a misleading direction.”

In discussing her favourite writers of historical fiction, Isabelle says that “I am re-reading Georgette Heyer. I adored her novels as a teenager and now I can fully appreciate just how skilful they are. She would have made an amazing screenwriter! I’m also fascinated by writers who are successfully able to fictionalise real people – Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife, about Hadley Richardson, who became Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, is an excellent example. I know how hard it can be to absorb historical research convincingly into a novel, so I admire McLain’s ability to imagine someone as famous as Hemingway as a character whom she has created.”

Finally, although there are no firm plans for writing new works of historical fiction, she has “for a long time been interested in writing about Joseph Duveen, one of the greatest art dealers of all time. He sold European masterpieces to new American ‘squillionaires’, and clearly cut corners, especially in his relationship with the connoisseur Bernard Berenson. He died in 1937 having finally landed his greatest client, Andrew Mellon. Their personalities could not have been more different, so their relationship would make great fiction.” We keenly await what emerges from Isabelle’s talented pen!

Douglas Kemp is a UK Reviews Editor for HNR.

PARIS IN RUINS

BY M.K. TOD

Working with Personal Accounts Authenticity is crucial to historical fiction. Weaving the right blend of facts and fiction will transform a reader in time and place while staying true to the historical record. Deep, wide-ranging research is required to achieve this objective.

My latest novel, Paris In Ruins, begins in September 1870 and continues through the Siege of Paris and the Paris Commune.

Knowing nothing of that time in French history, I wandered around in Google-land to orient myself, gradually slotting my finds into

categories like fashion, life and society, Paris maps and landmarks, women’s lives, the French government.

By the summer of 1870, Napoleon III, nephew of Napoleon I, had presided over France for 22 years, first as president and then as emperor. For some—the aristocrats, the Catholic Church, military and political leaders, the upper middle class—life was good.

However, the gap between rich and poor had widened significantly.

Protests bubbled beneath the surface, occasionally spilling over onto the streets in riots and demonstrations.

I’m a firm believer in looking at bibliographies, which is how I stumbled on the first English account of someone who’d experienced both the siege and Commune. I was unable to read any of the many accounts written in French and was grateful for this discovery. I can laboriously translate and have even paid for French research assistance on a few occasions. However, it’s a serious handicap when writing historical fiction set in a country where the customs and language are foreign.

That first personal account was written by Elihu Washburne, America’s ambassador to France. Michael Hill incorporated Washburne’s letters and diary into a book: Elihu Washburne: The Diary and Letters of America’s Minister to France During the Siege and Commune of Paris. I lost myself in reading about that horrifying time.

Later, I found and read Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris by Henry Labouchère, My Adventures in the Commune by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, and The Insurrection in Paris: Related by an Englishman Davy.

Each of these accounts provided observations of the people and politics, the military activities that took place, the impact of war and the uprising that followed, as well as the look and feel of Paris.

Collectively they helped me build a world for readers filled with real details: the price of meat; the daily weather; the mood of Parisians; the rumours that swirled around inciting unrest and anger.

Did I worry that these diaries were written by outsiders? Yes and no. I had to check the facts for accuracy and ignore comments and generalizations that appeared biased. Yet as an author of fiction, I create worlds for my readers. These diarists actually lived in that world. Their observations and concerns were intended to inform readers of the on-the-ground situation, not to mislead them. The diaries were indispensable to my understanding of Paris and its citizens in those tumultuous times.

Elihu Washburne wrote almost daily beginning in early August 1870, when the French army, under Napoleon III’s leadership, was battling with the Prussian army near the border between those two

countries. By early September, Napoleon III had abdicated, and a new government was established. The detail and imagery of his entries enhanced many of my scenes.

September 15, 1870 — Every carriage has disappeared … the city is but one big camp. Three hundred thousand soldiers passed in review before Gen. Trochu … regiments are marching down the Champs-Élysées and as I write I distinctly hear them singing the eternal but ever inspiring, Marseillaise.

Two main characters in Paris In Ruins are women of privileged upbringings—Camille and Mariele. Did their parents object to them walking in the streets? In one scene, the sound of the Marseillaise leads Camille and Mariele into the midst of a dangerous mob.

December 23 & 24, 1870 — The situation is becoming daily much more grave here in Paris. The suffering is intense ... The clubs have begun again to agitate … they are killing off the horses very fast … 500,000 men now under arms for fourteen weeks have accomplished nothing and will not so long as Trochu is in command.

In Paris In Ruins a modest Christmas dinner becomes the setting for conflict between the younger generation and their parents as Mariele and her brother argue that the rich aren’t doing enough for the poor and that General Trochu is incapable of saving Paris.

April 6, 1871 — Vast numbers of the best citizens are seized as hostages and cast into dungeons … All Frenchmen prohibited from leaving Paris.

A passage like this combined with research into the actions of the Paris Commune prompted a scene where Camille’s brother Victor, a Catholic priest, is taken hostage by a group of Communards who also steal gold and silver artifacts from the church.

When the Communards set Paris on fire in the last days of the Commune, Alfred Vizetelly puts the reader in the very midst of the scene: “The flames seemed to travel from either end of the great façade—over 1200 feet in length—towards the central cupola-crowned pavilion … there came a terrific thunderous shock and uproar, and the whole of the surrounding district trembled. Flames now leapt skyward from the central pavilion of the palace, whose cupola was tossed into the air, whence it fell in blazing fragments, while a myriad of sparks rose, rained, or rushed hither and thither, imparting to the awful spectacle much the aspect of a ‘bouquet’ of fireworks.”

This diary entry helped create a scene with Mariele, Camille, and their mothers watching Paris go up in flames. The vividness of

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

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Vizetelly’s writing was instrumental to the mood of fear, anger, and grave distress. Were their loved ones in the midst of the flames? Would one of them perish? Would Paris ever be the same?

To compensate for the all-male perspective, I found a few diaries written by female artists of the time that had been translated into English as well as a translation of some of Louise Michel’s writings. Michel was a well-known leader of the Commune. I read of French etiquette and manners, the education of women, the rights of women, famous salons led by women, and various articles concerning women of the 19th century.

Personal diaries are treasures for writers of historical fiction. They should be verified and augmented with other sources such as nonfiction, visits to museums, an understanding of the military, political, societal, religious, industrial, and technological circumstances of the time. Leveraging them judiciously into plot, dialogue, setting, narrative and other elements of the story will truly transport readers in time and place.

Butler, who served in Vietnam, believes the experience of war raises questions that literature addresses on a more personal level “We go to war under some banner by which we identify who we are, and then as we kill each other and die in each other’s arms, we find out who we are on some other drastic level.” This is a central concern for the main character of Late City, who finds he is better at killing than at comforting the dying.

Literature confronts those same questions of identity, he asserts. “It seems to me that a novel earns the right to be called literary at its deepest level by asking the great question of who the hell am I,” he said. “It is the yearning for a self, for an identity, for a place in the universe that is at the heart of great literature.”

M.K. Tod’s most recent novel is Paris In Ruins. She also maintains an award-winning blog called A Writer of History.

This search, he believes, is also the draw for historical novels. “When you look at another era, the question is built into the story: who were we then? And, by implication, what does it say about who we are now?”

IDENTITY & CHARACTER

On a bookshelf behind Butler's desk are reference books, including a huge three-volume tome on slang, multiple thesauruses, and reference books for fashion. On his computer are numerous databases including the HathiTrust Digital Library and the Oxford Dictionary of English.

BY TRISH MACENULTY

Robert Olen Butler's Historical Fiction A phenomenal writer of wide-ranging talents, Robert Olen Butler has had—and continues to have—a long and storied career. His first novel, The Alleys of Eden, was published in 1981. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with his short story collection, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. The Pulitzer committee commented that the stories “raise the literature of the Vietnam conflict to an original and highly personal new level.” In addition to his literary novels and short fiction, he has written a series of four historical thrillers set in Paris, which he likens to Graham Greene’s “entertainments.”

At the age of 76, Butler’s career is still going strong. In September 2021, Atlantic Monthly Press released his novel Late City, and at the time of this interview, he was at work on another novel about a couple in Paris during the pandemic. I met with the acclaimed writer at his historic home in North Florida where he lives with his cats as well as a menagerie of birds and squirrels, who peacefully share the feeders outside his writing cottage, to talk about historical fiction and his research process, including the extensive research for Late City, in which a 116-year-old newsman looks back on his life in a conversation with a “wry and smart alecky” God.

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II, I wondered what drew him to World War I. “World War I is the seminal event that spawned the rest of the 20th century and is the cornerstone of the 21st,” Butler said. “The world went to war at a time when technology was becoming an aspect of human life. So many new technologies of war had their birth in terms of the scope and devastation that human beings have wrought upon each other and are still capable of doing.”

Butler notes that as writers we use research to discover the truth of historical politics, attitudes and culture; however, building that knowledge into a credible world can be difficult. “The problem is when people get information about how things were only through their rational faculties and then when they’re creating the characters, they consult their minds and will those details onto the page,” he said.

In order to avoid forcing historical facts into the story, Butler suggests recreating sensory details. “All of us who write in history are keenly conscious of rendering things in the moment through the senses. We are a sense-based medium just like the cinema,” he said. “When you read any good fiction writer, what’s created in the consciousness of the reader is a kind of cinema of the mind.”

When Butler immerses his readers in a different time period and often a different culture, the research is so seamlessly intertwined into the story, it feels as though the experience has been lived rather than learned. He said that in order to effectively build a world, we need to provide a historic narrative of the moment-to-moment sensual life.

“What are the sights, sounds, smells, physical sensations that the character encounters? How are our emotions rendered in our bodies when our bodies are acclimated to a world that is quite different from this one? That’s what we’re in search of,” he said.

Although Late City spans more than a century, World War I looms large. The main character, Sam Cunningham, joins the army when he’s a 16-year-old boy by lying about his age. He grows up quickly, but is permanently scarred by his experiences as a sharpshooter.

Butler believes the writer’s job is to inhabit the character. “When you inhabit the character, if there’s a sound or smell or sight or emotional reaction that is shaped by the culture or the architecture, you see more clearly or hear more clearly or smell more clearly,” he said. “You use what you’ve learned about the sensual world of that time and find what the character is responding to, and you put it in the story because the characters experience it not because you know it.”

Butler’s thrillers are also set in World War I, and his short story “Mother in the Trenches” (Harper’s, 2003) tells the tale of a mother who goes to the front to retrieve her son during the Great War. With so many current historical novels centered around World War

This attention to his characters’ experiences creates an emotional connection with readers. And through the character’s search for “a place in the universe,” the reader comes to a deeper understanding of the human condition.

FEATURES | Issue 98, November 2021

SHE CAME FROM a sheltered, privileged upbringing yet she stepped outside her expected role as daughter of an earl and was brave enough to crawl inside the tomb in November 1922.

Trish MacEnulty, a retired college professor, has published several novels, a memoir and a short story collection.

She is currently working on a novel set in 1913.

THE LADY EVE

BY BETHANY LATHAM

Evelyn Herbert and Tutankhamun's Tomb The 100th anniversary of Howard Carter’s 1922 discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb approaches, and fascination with the find endures. There was another present when Carter and his patron, George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon saw “wonderful things” in the flickering light at the tomb’s breach – Carnarvon’s daughter, Lady Evelyn Herbert. Evelyn’s story centers Gill Paul’s The Collector’s Daughter.

Paul was inspired by two photos of Evelyn: one outside the tomb with Carter and her father in November 1922; the other with Tutankhamun’s funeral mask at the British Museum 50 years later. Inspiration is well and good, but starting the novel was a challenge; Paul tried no less than seven different openings: “The first draft began with Eve at the age of eight greeting Carter when he arrived at Highclere Castle with an artifact for her father’s collection, and it ran chronologically. That was too slow, and there was no narrative hook. Eventually I switched into dual timeline and realized I felt much more comfortable that way.”

The bookend structure features an elderly Evelyn reflecting on her life: “Memory is one of the themes of the book, so it made sense to have an old woman looking back at the period when she was a young girl on the cusp of womanhood and making the decisions that would shape her future.”

Paul’s vision was to detail how Evelyn was shaped by Egyptology, but also by her upbringing and the disparate parenting styles of her father and mother – the former offering freedom, the latter always attempting to rein her in. Her mother, Almina, “the kind of woman who aroused fury,” is a complicated character – high society, at once philanthropic, authoritarian and petty. “I’m sure she wasn’t the easiest person to have as a mother,” Paul notes. By contrast, the Earl was “a quiet man with many hobbies, who spent much of his time motoring around, gambling in casinos, taking photographs, hunting and shooting.” He and his wife were “virtual opposites.”

Paul understands marriages of opposite. She had a party girl for a mother and a shy academic for a father: “I was thinking of my own upbringing when I developed the character of Eve, but I also had to be aware that she came from the very top echelon of the English aristocracy and her responsibilities as a young lady would have been drummed into her from an early age – in particular, to marry well. Family was important to her, and she wasn’t the type to rebel against the hierarchy.”

This multifaceted portrayal is refreshing in a historical fiction landscape that too often defenestrates historicity in favor of molding heroines to embody every tenet of modern feminism. Paul points out the tendency to distort historical personality through a contemporary lens when discussing Evelyn’s relationship with Howard Carter: “Her letters to him are chatty and affectionate. In one she writes ‘I am panting to return to you,’ which has been interpreted by some as

evidence of an affair.” Yet Paul explains that Evelyn was an exuberant young girl, described by those who knew her as “slangy.” To Paul, “The endearments in that letter are throwaway, in tune with the way young people spoke in the early 1920s.” Paul pegs Evelyn and Carter as good friends. “Eve had known Carter as a friend and business associate of her father’s since she was a child. He was not a suave or charming man; he could be rather brusque, but he was extremely knowledgeable about Egyptology, and Eve was infected by his obsession. Howard never married or had a romantic relationship, to our knowledge. Egypt was his life, from when he went there at the age of eighteen as an artist copying items from tombs, through to the 1920s, which he devoted to excavating and cataloging the tomb of Tutankhamun.”

The contemporary lens also presents a different view when it comes to the disposal of archaeological artifacts. Paul explains that, up until the 1920s, the primary mindset was one of “finders keepers.” Egyptian independence fundamentally changed that: “Tutankhamun’s tomb was uncovered nine months after Egypt gained independence from its British protectorate status, and it marked a turning point in attitudes towards artifacts dug up on foreign soil. Until then, archaeologists felt entitled to a substantial share of their finds, if not all, as recompense for their investment of finance and expertise. But the Egyptian independence movement had been militant in its demands that Egypt be respected as a sovereign nation and allowed to retain its own rich culture and heritage. Carter and Carnarvon negotiated their Valley of the Kings concession carefully, hoping to take home at least some of their finds, but Egyptian law was tightened during the 1920s to prevent that. There is understandable ill feeling in Egypt that significant artifacts still reside in overseas museums.”

This idea – of taking something that belongs where it lies – fueled the infamous “curse” of Tutankhamun’s tomb. Paul explores this mythology as an outgrowth of the resurgence of spiritualism that occurred after so much loss during the Great War. No less than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle intoned that the curse was caused by “elementals” from the spiritual realm. Carnarvon had held seances at Highclere, the family seat, and Evelyn grew up in an atmosphere where spiritualism was taken seriously. After her father’s death, there is historical documentation of Evelyn’s nervousness about the possibility of a curse; newspapers reported that she offered to release Brograve, her future husband, from their engagement to spare him from its repercussions. Paul notes that anxiety about the curse was “an important element of Eve’s experience and one I had to explore.”

Another element of Evelyn’s experience explored with sensitivity in the novel is her struggle to overcome the effects of multiple strokes.

She approaches this obstacle – the impairment of memory, speech, basic motor function – with the same strength as the rest of her life.

Paul says, “When I researched Eve, I found she was a courageous and very popular woman. She came from a sheltered, privileged upbringing yet she stepped outside her expected role as daughter of an earl and was brave enough to crawl inside the tomb in November 1922. We see that courage again in her seventies when she was determined to overcome the effects of a stroke.”

In her portrayal of the way Evelyn’s life was shaped, the events to which she was crucial, Paul illuminates the woman, and “especially the important discovery in 1922 that she was part of yet was not given credit for in the history books.”

Bethany Latham is HNR’s Managing Editor.

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

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C L A SSIC A L

REVIEWS ON LI N E E XC LUSI V ES 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

TO T H E E DI TOR : Regarding the reviewer’s comments about my novel When Cities Sink Howling in Ruin (HNR 97): “… just long enough to be killed”: Of the characters listed in the “cast of characters” that die, the average number of pages between the time they’re introduced and the time they die is 341 pages. (Cannon fodder don’t warrant back stories.) “… seem to have little depth to them”: I’ll try to give the vaguest outline of Iakos’ experiences and their effect on his character: 1. Starts out as a vain, shallow 19-year-old with a naïve view of battle.

2. Comes to know war’s terror.

3. Sails around the Mediterranean, seeing civilization after civilization destroyed.

4. Returns home to find his city destroyed and his mother dismembered.

5. Becomes catatonic from the horror.

6. Emerges from catatonia a psychological wreck: panic attacks. PTSD. Suicide attempt.

Too emotionally devastated and cowardly to avenge his parents….

Many more experiences and psychological developments await Iakos, including of course the climax and resolution. Note that Aithon is even more nuanced. “the black man”: Shallow Iakos is the only one who calls Eurybates “the black man.”

Other characters chide him for it.

K. Partridge

A NC I E N T H I STORY KEZIAH’S SONG Daryl Potter, Paper Stone Press, 2021, $12.95/£9.99, pb, 396pp, 9781777307301

135 BC. When her parents are cast out and her little brother killed, Keziah is rescued from the village mob by a shopkeeper and taken to live with her aunt. Meanwhile, her brother, Joazar, has become one of the Seleucid Empire’s hostages taken to ensure Jerusalem’s submission. During this time, Joazar befriends the treasurer, Jugurtha. When fortunes change and the treasurer’s former master marches to reclaim the Seleucid throne, the pair escape back to Jerusalem. Jugurtha enters Jerusalem’s 16

political games, but Joazar travels to Galilee to find his sister and settle down. However, war continues to threaten the land, calling him back to the life he hoped to leave behind.

In truth, this is Joazar’s story. We follow him in times of war and politics, which Keziah is largely left out of due to social convention. We get snippets of her between scenes of armies and skirmishes. Keziah’s growth and healing arise from playing the lute. In this way, the prose arises like a harmonious composition of music, flitting through minor and major chords. I savored descriptions like, “Spires of wind-borne dust appeared as sudden witnesses over the land, spying over the fields, spending themselves, and then ceasing to exist as the grains fell back to earth with a faint staccato.” However, the prose employs a thirdperson style that isn’t always suited for highly emotional moments. It’s hard to connect with characters when, before something impactful happens, the scene cuts away. Readers miss out on Keziah falling in love, what happens after they find Little Sarah, and Moshe’s turmoil after the Egyptian attacks.

Potter has a gift for lush imagery, bringing Maccabean Israel to life in beautiful and brutal ways. While the book lacks the emotional impact a drama like this needs, it is overall highly enjoyable.

J. Lynn Else

STARLIGHT IN THE DAWN Naveen Sridhar, Independently published, 2021, $10.99, pb, 252pp, 9798502534246

The city of Ur, about 2300 BCE: Sargon the Great rules the Akkadian Empire, and his daughter Enheduanna is the high priestess of Ur. Enheduanna is an intelligent, spirited, and talented woman, creating new hymns to worship the goddess Inanna and the moon god Sin. She’s the earliest named poet in history. In Starlight in the Dawn, we’re given a fictionalized version of Enheduanna’s life: a life of passion and conflict.

For not everyone is happy to serve Sargon’s empire. Lugalanne, King of Uruk, schemes to usurp Sargon’s throne—and Enheduanna becomes entangled in the resistance to Lugalanne’s plots. Not only her life, but the religion she loves, is endangered, but she perseveres, creating peace and finding love.

Starlight in the Dawn is a mixed bag. The story’s good, but the writing is awkward.

However, English is not the author’s first language (or even perhaps his second, as he speaks eight languages), and the historical details, the vivid feeling of what it might have been like to live in ancient Ur, make up for that.

It’s always exciting to discover an influential historical woman of whom one’s never heard, and Enheduanna is an exhilarating find.

REVIEWS | Issue 98, November 2021

India Edghill

SISILIAN PRINSESSA (“The Sicilian Princess”) Jukka M. Heikkilä, Karisto, 2021, €36.90, hb, 236pp, 9789511377412

This novel, written in Finnish, is set in the period 310-240 BC, when great political powers contended for dominance in the Mediterranean and Near East after the era of Alexander the Great. Agathocles, King of Sicily, marries his daughter, Princess Lanassa, to Pyrrhus, King of Epirus. She becomes a pawn in a political intrigue, charged with bearing sons and putting up with her husband’s other wives.

But Lanassa, fed up with her selfish husband’s lust for power, leaves him. She marries her husband’s enemy, Demetrius, King of Macedonia. In the process, she becomes the first goddess of the Hellenes, worshipped and adored by the common people. She experiences fabulous luxury in a world where even the gods seem to be utterly brutal.

In this work, the Finnish author, Jukka M. Heikkilä, who has a deep knowledge of ancient history, skilfully opens a window into the antique world. Familiar historic names come to life in a new way. He describes life in the age of warriors and kings from a woman’s point of view.

If you didn’t like school history books, here’s a book that will make history accessible and spark your interest in a new way. This story is easy to read and inspiring.

Riitta Steiner

PROTECTOR Conn Iggulden, Pegasus, 2021, $26.95, hb, 432pp, 9781643138176 / Michael Joseph, 2021, £20.00, hb, 416pp, 9780241420423

Protector picks up where Conn Iggulden’s first book (The Gates of Athens) in his new Athenian series left off: in 480 BCE, with the sprawling forces of Persia threatening to overwhelm the peoples of Greece. After making a valiant stand at Thermopylae, the Greeks have retreated to Salamis, an island west of Athens.

And the Persians have followed.

Iggulden plunges us into the action almost immediately, detailing how the surrounding waters become “a slick of splinters and corpses” as Greek triremes—nimble warships crewed by three rows of oarsmen and tipped with a ship-killing bronze ram—do their best to survive against a vast fleet of Persian galleys as Athens burns in the distance. The details are evocative, and the stakes are high throughout, as one character notes, “no one keeps a reserve in a fight with a bear. It was all or nothing, for a future as free men or slaves.” Iggulden also touches on the hypocrisy of that sentiment.

The Greeks saw bending the knee to Persia as an unacceptable form of subjugation, yet they thought little of owning slaves themselves.

But while I appreciate that Iggulden brings this issue to light, I wish Protector had investigated it further. Most of the point-ofview characters in the book are generals and

kings. It might have been illuminating to see part of the story through the eyes of someone with less power (like an Athenian slave who earned his freedom by rowing in the bowels of a trireme during the engagement around Salamis). This quibble aside, I found Protector to be a compelling, informative read. Iggulden is a master of military fiction, capable of rivaling Bernard Cornwell’s skill in recreating battles on land and Patrick O’Brian’s vivid portrayals of conflicts at sea. I can’t wait to see where the Athenian series goes next.

Nick Wisseman

DAUGHTER OF CARTHAGE, SON OF ROME Kate Q. Johnson, Bellastoria, 2021, $5.99, ebook, 246pp, 9781942209881

218 BC. Desperate to flee an arranged marriage, Elissa sneaks aboard one of her father’s ships setting sail for Italy. Little does she know that soon after arriving in Italy, Rome and her home country of Carthage will declare war. As she tries to escape a city filling with Roman soldiers, she’s caught by centurion Marcus Gracchus. Still affected by the loss of his brother, Marcus knows the soldiers around him will kill the spirited Carthaginian woman if they learn her identity and thus decides to keep her close. Also fearful of being discovered, Elissa tries escaping only to be caught by a lecherous Roman senator.

After Marcus rescues Elissa from his grasp, she’s torn by the kindness in Marcus versus the threat he represents to her country.

Johnson dives deep into each character’s heart as love draws enemies together. As Marcus moves beyond his initial desire for Elissa to something deeper, he contemplates if love for Elissa would make him a traitor to Rome. For Elissa, her brother marches with the Carthaginian army. Even if she escaped, after publicly betraying her family by running from an engagement, where would she go?

Now she’s surrounded by the opposing army.

It’s a duality that tears at Elissa. However, too many escape attempts in the plot make for repetitive chapters. It isn’t until the last third of the book that she finally begins understanding the dangers around her.

The Roman army’s movements highlight Johnson’s impeccable research as she brings to life the organization of legions and maniples, setting up defensive camps, uniform styles, and battle tactics. A passionate romance at its core, Daughter of Carthage, Son of Rome brings together two people who will have to overcome their own internal wars if they want to find the true meaning of loyalty and love.

J. Lynn Else

SANDS OF THE ARENA AND OTHER STORIES Ben Kane, Orion, 2021, £18.99, hb, 464pp, 9781398705982

A novice gladiator fighting for his life before depraved emperor Caligula, a centurion unhappy in retirement, and Hannibal

pondering attacking Rome—these are just some of the latest actionpacked stories from respected Roman empire writer Ben Kane.

Kane has long been thrilling readers with his novels, but this book consists of seven brilliantly

written short stories.

The titular story (novel-length in itself), begun online during lockdown, involves Hibernian slave Midir, fighting in the arena’s burning sands before Caligula. It’s the longest at 192 pages, and Kane gives us plenty of blood, guts, drinking and swearing, with his usual verve and panache. We get three stories about centurion Tullus, starting with an unsettling visit to “The Shrine,” trying to keep new conscripts alive in “Eagles in the East” and leaving his understanding wife for a dangerous challenge in retirement in “Eagles in the Wilderness.” Hannibal considers war with Rome in “Good Omens,” and legionary Piso is celebrating payday, until it starts to go wrong in “The Arena.” Two men travel to the edge of the empire in “The March,” searching for a lost friend and to assuage past guilt.

Kane takes us from sweltering Italy and Spain to the cooler climes of Germany and eastern Europe and onto Indian plains. You can smell the streets, feel the sweat and are in those characters’ sometimes rotting sandals. Highly recommended. Put it on your Christmas list.

Kate Pettigrew

1ST C E N T U RY THE WORK OF THY HAND Betsie A. Gebbia, Christian Faith Publishing, 2021, $18.95, pb, 346pp, 9781098078751

AD 66. Mira Bat-Chet is the daughter of a prosperous Christian family from Yaffa. When the Romans attack, she is taken as a slave and sent to Rome. While there, she becomes a personal attendant to Lady Verina Gallus, member of a prominent patrician family. In the service of Lady Verina, she spends much of her days going to the marketplace, attending to her mistress’s toilette, and embroidering garments with her own skill. When Drusus Flavius Gallus, her mistress’s son, returns to Rome, Mira does what she can to avoid his notice. Despite his attempts to pursue her, she rebuffs him at every instance.

This debut novel is beautifully written and has a powerful message. In Mira, we have a protagonist who is strong-willed and dedicated to following her faith even though Christians are killed for it. While I liked Mira, there were moments where I found her characterization problematic. She often comes across as flat

and unremarkable, making it difficult to form a close relationship with her. Drusus Flavius Gallus is an exceedingly well-written character who adds a lot to the story. He is a character that I could instantly relate to. The author’s depiction of the ancient world is rich with imagery, description, and detail. There are times where the world of the 1st century comes alive. The plot is nicely developed and the pacing is consistent. Overall, it is an enjoyable read, but it does have its issues.

Elizabeth K. Corbett

THE LOST WISDOM OF THE MAGI Susie Helme, The Conrad Press, 2020, £9.99, pb, 528pp, 9781913567378

In this biographical historical novel set during the 1st century, Sophia is a Jew who loves exploring the royal archives as her father’s secret apprentice. She feels called to learning and devotes herself as a bridesmaid of God. When she is forced into a betrothal, Sophia flees from home. She’s found by an incense caravan and adopted into a family. Her love of stories and learning thrives amongst the caravan. She eventually joins a commune of magi. When a rebellion against Rome arises in 70 AD Jerusalem, Sophia joins and uses her learned skills in magic to aid the cause.

Though pledged to celibacy, the stars have ordained she will know her true love “over a pool of blood.” Meanwhile, the world holds its breath for Judgement Day. The prose could use a bit of polish. With sentences like, “We abided a week in Pella while the hot winds from Arabia passed, then passed over the mountains…” (word repetition) and “Crying always make me exhausted…” combined with sentences missing independent clauses, sometimes the narrative feels awkwardly put together.

The book itself is all story with no end notation discussing research and source material. Where did the history about the study of magic and mysticism within the Jewish community arise? I’d hoped for an inside look into Helme’s research; she knows the time period well!

The setting and its peoples are stunningly realized, but most compelling are Sophia’s struggles with mental illness, aptly named “the black cloud.” Sophia must learn to pull herself out of these spells when the cloud/the demon overpowers her. Sophia’s poignantly told, slow development to overcome her “demons” gives the character a depth rarely seen in ancient fiction. This is a unique story with multifaced characters and a landscape filled with tension.

J. Lynn Else

LEGION Geraint Jones, Canelo, 2021, £0.99, ebook, 330pp, 978180032408

In 6 AD Pannonia, Corvus is a legionary— section commander in the second century of the second cohort of the Eighth Legion.

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Thanks to a longish stretch of relative peace, he is in the odd position of being something of a veteran while having seen almost no combat at all, but he is very, very eager to change that.

A brooding fellow with obvious trauma in his past, Corvus seems to care for very little beyond his “brothers”—his closest comrades and Marcus, his beloved childhood friend—and the chance to lose himself in violence. When that chance finally arrives, in the form of Tiberius’ huge campaign against the Marcomanni tribes, Corvus is happier than he has been in years… until the auxiliary troops raised for the campaign mutiny, and the Eighth Legion finds itself facing overwhelmingly superior numbers in vicious guerilla warfare in the mountains.

Jones has seen service, and his first-hand knowledge of a soldier’s inner workings is clear and convincing, and especially poignant when it deals with the dynamics of fire-forged friendship. Perhaps a couple of changes of heart come across as a little abrupt, and the toocareful avoiding of Roman naming patterns is a tad distracting, but these are minor faults in a robustly written story that explores the reasons for and the brutality of war.

Chiara Prezzavento

THE TWIN Kevin St. Jarre, Encircle, 2021, $15.99/£11.99, pb, 240pp, 9781645992585

“Sui generis” best describes Kevin St. Jarre’s one-of-a-kind new novel, which retells the story of Jesus from the point of view of Doubting Thomas, a.k.a. the apostle Thomas Didymus (“twin” in Greek). Readers who can’t resist stories about mystery manuscripts may be sucked into the “Translator’s Proem,” a swashbuckling account of a professor who finds, in a jar in Afghanistan, a text that rewrites Christianity. (The Gnostic Gospels actually were found in a jar in Egypt in 1945.)

We’re in Dan Brown territory—Gnostic Gospels, Mary Magdalen, dark secrets, love, feminism—but Prof. B. L. Treah is no Tom Hanks. Instead, he’s a pedant and a dullard who annotates the manuscript with trivial, annoying, inadvertently humorous comments while totally missing what’s actually interesting here: St. Jarre’s notion that during his “missing” youthful years, Jesus (called Yeshua) studied Buddhism in India and absorbed its precepts into his own spirituality. (Legends do link Jesus, and especially Thomas, to Southeast Asia, particularly Kashmir.)

Thomas then retells the New Testament with a Buddhist flavor, turning miracles into realistic events with the help of common sense and Eastern drugs, and adding Mary Magdalen (also a trained Buddhist) as Yeshua’s thirteenth apostle, or possibly girlfriend. Thomas’s twin is his devilish doppelgänger or tempter, called the Other, who often pops up with bad advice—rather like the bumbling B. L. Treah.

An incongruous commentator is another interesting literary device, which might have been pushed even farther.

Susan Lowell

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2N D C E N T U RY A WINTER WAR Tim Leach, Head of Zeus, 2021, £18.99, hb, 372pp, 9781800242869

A Winter War, the first entry in a new trilogy

by Tim Leach, noted author of Smile of the Wolf, takes us just east of the Danube in the year 173 AD. Thus we are partly concerned with those insatiable conquerors and aqueduct builders, the Romans. This novel, however, is no simple barbarian-Roman, sword and sandals, bloodand-iron bash but more a philosophical, meditative take on a people we know so little about—a novelist’s dream perhaps—the Sarmatians.

We follow a Sarmatian warrior, Kai, as he navigates life after defeat in battle. Is he lucky to survive or cursed to live a shamed man? But what is his shame compared to the possible end of the world he knows? Despite the wider context, which is nonetheless made clear, it is a story of individuals and their complex relationships rather than of Empire. Perhaps the philosophical tone is fitting given that the emperor, who makes a few brief appearances in the narrative, is Marcus Aurelius, he of Meditations fame.

I enjoyed this book, and although it is rather slow-burning, the ending is done well; enough narrative threads tied up, enough strands left to weave a second story, which I look forward to reading. Recommended.

Chris James

A DREADFUL DESTINY Rosemary Rowe, Severn House, 2021, $28.99/£20.00, hb, 240pp, 9780727889911

In late 2nd-century Roman Glevum (present day Gloucester), Libertus, duumvir and former slave, is his patron Marcus’s main advisor in how to avoid getting caught up in the political fallout after the uncertainty following the Year of Five Emperors. Aside from that, Libertus’s life is generally pleasant. But Gwellia’s infected foot, a runaway bride, and an overweeningly arrogant, well-connected Senator start a chain of events that blight Libertus.

Rosemary Rowe’s A Dreadful Destiny is a page-turner, written in a clear and fast-paced style. My only quibble is that some of the tragic instances in the story seem oddly partnered with the somewhat sardonic voice of the narrator, which may imply a little lighter fare.

There is real tragedy in the book—I gasped aloud a couple of times. My biggest complaint is that it ended before I was ready for it to.

Protagonist Libertus is well drawn, entertaining, likable, and clever. Rowe does a laudable job of making his ownership of slaves feel less reprehensible in context, and it would be difficult to avoid slave ownership by any man of power in Rome. All of the characters, though, are three-dimensional, with the possible exception of the villain Senator Hortius, who is mostly offstage and irredeemably awful.

Rowe uses an interesting technique to give actions historical context: Libertus’s first-

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person account includes parenthetical asides to explain the usual course of events in Roman culture. This technique works well, as Rowe has already established the mixing of Celtic and Roman cultures, so if Libertus was talking to a contemporary, it wouldn’t be unusual to explain those details.

A Dreadful Destiny is an excellent novel, well researched and well written, and should be high on your reading list.

Jodi McMaster

3R D C E N T U RY THE GOVERNOR’S MAN Jacquie Rogers, Sharpe, 2021, £6.99, pb, 258pp, 9798513081081

When Roman Imperial Investigator Quintus Valerius is despatched to investigate the suspected theft of silver, mined in the southwest of what is now England, he encounters not only the crime and the criminals involved but also an aspect of his own, younger life which has left him emotionally scarred.

Jacquie Rogers opens her novel with an assured gusto which she retains throughout. It begins well enough, and we quickly understand what we are in for. The strong plot is rapidly set up. Locations are vividly described in precise, painstaking detail, and a huge cast of players is introduced, again in great detail. By now the reader is drowning in facts, floundering in descriptive information without enough clarity regarding who, what and where lie clues as to who, what and where the basic narrative line is leading.

Only one character is conceived and presented convincingly. This, of course, is Tiro, the basic British foot soldier, everybody’s hero, whose virtue shines through the ingrained dirt of his appearance. Tiro is wise, brave, shrewd, faithful and perceptive. The other characters, particularly the women, are a tedious bunch of stereotypes with storylines to match. We have the faithfully deferential servants, the insipid Lady Julia and her insufferable daughter Aurelia. Then there is the wicked black-eyed, flame-haired Fulminata, not enough of her, but oh how we must enjoy seeing her get her just deserts. Poor old Quintus Valerius, our presumed hero, wrestles with a plot increasingly dependent on a copious use of the device of overhearing information essential to the resolution of this, by now, very tired plotline.

The fights are graphic, the blood appropriately sticky but, by now, who cares.

By the end of this novel it has become obvious that more of the same is planned, indeed, may already be in the pipeline.

Julia Stoneham

6T H C E N T U RY TOO SOON THE NIGHT James Conroyd Martin, Hussar Quill Press, 2021, $15.99, pb, 418pp, 9781734004328

For someone who’s been dead almost 1500 years, Empress Theodora of Byzantium is

having a moment. The subject of numerous biographies and now historical novels, she’s gaining recognition as arguably the most significant woman of the late Roman Empire.

(Full disclosure: my historical novel, The Eagle and the Swan, deals with Theodora’s career up to 532 AD.) Martin’s Too Soon the Night, a sequel to Fortune’s Child, begins in 528—after Theodora married Justinian, who became Emperor in 527. It recounts her exploits in Constantinople until she died in 548.

And exploits there were! Martin describes a period fraught with political, religious, and social tumult, at the cusp between antiquity and the medieval world. The juiciest, most scandalous part of Theodora’s story isn’t mentioned except as brief flashbacks. The young Theodora, daughter of the circus bear keeper, was a notorious actress, striptease performer, and courtesan before attracting the future emperor Justinian.

Martin tells the story through alternating viewpoints. A third-person narrator drily documents actual historical events. Livelier is a first-person version told by Stephen, a scribe tasked with writing Theodora’s biography.

Through his perspective we get emotion and internal conflict. It’s an alternative to the actual historical account of Justinian’s reign by official court historian Procopius.

That functionary’s vindictive Secret History (an account that made Theodora the most maligned woman of the ancient world) portrays her as a degenerate seductress.

In contrast, Martin’s well-researched novel shows an imperial Theodora tempering Justinian’s intolerance of unorthodoxy. Rising from the bordello to the throne through wit and beauty, she advanced rights for women and courageously saved the city from ruin, a turning point in Western civilization.

Carol C. Strickland

7T H C E N T U RY FOR LORD AND LAND

series. I can’t wait for the next outing. Highly recommended.

Mike Ashworth

10T H C E N T U RY THE THRALL Sarah Myers, Independently published, 2021, £10.99/$12.99, pb, 343pp, 9798736537648

999 AD. The people of Anglia believed they were safe from Viking raiders—after all, their king had paid a hefty Danegeld to keep them away from his shores. Unfortunately, not all Northern raiders felt bound by the agreement, which is how young Rowan is captured and carried away to thralldom by handsome Draki.

Myers does a good job of depicting the complicated feelings between captive and captor—even more so when Draki has to let Rowan go as payment for a life-debt. Details of their lives are woven through the narrative, giving sufficient periodic colour to the narrative even if there are several occasions when the use of modern expressions such as “fan of” or “mythology” jar me out of the story completely. Likewise, there are occasions I have problems following who says what, or in what viewpoint we are. A thorough edit would have dispensed with some of the more confusing word choices, like the recurring “basin” for what I assume to be a lake or perhaps a pond.

Life as a slave is not particularly enjoyable, the occasional stolen moments with Draki being far from sufficient to compensate Rowan for being forcibly bedded by her new master. A sequence of events culminates in bloody battle, and maybe—maybe—there is a rosy sunset hovering on the horizon.

Despite my issues with prose and formatting, Draki and Rowan are engaging protagonists, which makes this an enjoyable read for all those who emphasise the “romance” in historical romance.

Anna Belfrage

Matthew Harffy, Head of Zeus, 2021, £18.99, hb, 462pp, 9781801102223

AD 651. War continues to rage across Anglo-Saxon England as kings indulge their passion for conquest. Oswiu of Bernicia looks for an excuse to invade neighboring Deira. Beobrand, Lord of Ubbanford, has defied his king, Oswiu, and taken his band of warriors south to help an old friend. His action, while understandable, gives Oswiu the excuse he needs to start the war he craves.

Beobrand must face the political and military consequences of his action both as a leader and on a personal level.

This is the latest installment in the highly successful Bernicia Chronicles. Fans of Matthew Harffy will know what to expect: a taut plot and credible, exciting action sequences with strong characterization, bringing alive the entire life and times of the Anglo-Saxons. The book can be read as a standalone or, better still, as part of the

11T H C E N T U RY BLOOD FEUD Stuart Rudge, Independently published, 2020, $12.00/£8.99, pb, 356pp, 9798652403935

Much of Hispania in the 11th century is under the domination of Islamic Moors while a few small, squabbling, Christian kingdoms precariously survive in the north of the peninsula. Meanwhile, the Muslims are themselves divided into various warlordled statelets called Taifas. In 1067, aspiring knight Antonio Perez is newly married with an expectant wife while he is under the overall tutelage of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, 24 years old and Campeador or Champion of King Sancho of Castile. Rodrigo will later be called El Cid, and Antonio is protected by this formidable mentor. As part of an envoy to exact tribute from a small Taifa, Antonio is critical in discerning a threat to all of Northern

Hispania. But his situation is complicated as other Christian kingdoms, interfamilial feuds, and long-held grudges threaten the dream of the Reconquista as much as do the Islamic invaders.

The second book in the Legend of the Cid series, Blood Feud is based on historically fascinating research. However, the novel is not so much a sweeping epic of the beginning of the reconquest of Spain as a tale of familial and royal intrigue among Christian cousins. Nevertheless, the action, medieval combat and color are superbly rendered. The description of the city of Leon and the vestiges of the people’s Visigoth and Roman ancestors is especially well done. There are a few modernisms and what I found to be repeated, gratuitous use of the F-word, but that did not overly distract from my genuine enjoyment of the book. Blood Feud is classic and interesting historical fiction. Recommended.

Thomas J. Howley

12T H C E N T U RY MATRIX Lauren Groff, Riverhead, 2021, $28.00, hb, 272pp, 9781594634499 / William Heinemann, 2021, £16.99, hb, 272pp, 9781785151903

England, 1158, and young ‘Marie who comes from France’ rides through a cold, damp valley towards the royal abbey where she has been appointed prioress at Queen Eleanor’s behest.

She feels no religious calling, only anger and yearning for what she has left behind; the abbey is rundown and impoverished, the nuns malnourished, and the coughing sickness has taken many lives.

From this unpromising beginning, we follow Marie’s life as she moves from resentment to determination to protect those entrusted to her care. A capable administrator, she becomes abbess in her turn and skilled at fending off avaricious churchmen, tempted by her abbey’s growing wealth. Though she experiences strange visions, her religious views remain unconventional, even heretical.

Like those of many mystics, actually.

Marie de France wrote in French during the late 12th century. What little is known of her life is drawn from scanty references and inferences drawn from her poetry. This allows Groff the freedom to construct her own story, but her choices are plausible, the picture of abbey life convincing: even Marie’s opposition to the patriarchal structure of church and society finds support in her writings. Groff’s Marie is a reformer, unwilling to submit to a system that oppresses her ‘daughters’, but astute

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enough to learn which strategies work best.

These are dangerous times for open defiance, as the Albigensian Crusade demonstrated.

There were other more immediate dangers too, and Groff provides many examples of how accidents, infections, and diseases cripple and kill, especially those weakened by hunger and harsh conditions.

This is an involving and stylistically impressive story: the writing style is skilful, characterization and setting vivid, dialogue entertaining; and Marie’s success at helping so many while struggling with her own personal challenges marks her as a true hero. Highly recommended.

Ray Thompson

WOLF AT THE DOOR Sarah Hawkswood, Allison & Busby, 2021, £8.99, pb, 288pp, 9780749027254

All Hallows’ Eve, 1144. A man is found savagely mauled in his cottage in the King’s Forest near Worcester. The man’s son claims it was a wolf—but wolves have not been seen in this part of the country for years, and something doesn’t seem right to the Sherriff’s men, Bradecote and Catchpoll, along with their apprentice Walkelin, sent to investigate the killing. The murdered man’s son, William fitzDurand, is better known to the wily Sarjeant Catchpoll as William Swicol, or Deceitful William, and Catchpoll is sure he is involved. As disturbing incidents start to pile up—another man missing, a major fire and a raid on the nearby King’s hunting lodge—it gradually becomes clear that there are malevolent forces at work deep in the forest, whether natural, supernatural, or man-made. The three must seek for evidence that will make sense of what’s happening in the usually peaceful area.

The author skilfully invokes a medieval world where peaceful lives can be turned upside down in a moment, but where human motivations are emotions are what they have always been: greed and lust; loyalty and friendship. The three central characters of the Sheriff’s men are well-drawn and likeable, the differences between them providing much of the readers’ enjoyment— Walkelin’s enthusiasm and naivety compared to Catchpoll’s hard-boiled cynicism; Bradecote’s upper-class outlook not hiding his fundamental compassion and desire for justice.

This latest instalment in Hawkswood’s popular medieval crime-fighting series is as entertaining as previous books in the series, but can also be read in its own right as a standalone mystery. Overall, this is an absorbing historical murder mystery with an engaging cast of characters and a convincing medieval atmosphere—very enjoyable.

Charlotte Wightwick

SUMMER WARRIOR Regan Walker, Regan Walker Publishing, 2020, $10.99, pb, 270pp, 9780997990591

By the mid-12th century, the Gaels of Ireland, Scotland, and the Isles are hunting down the 20

remnants of the Viking invaders of previous centuries, who are either being annihilated or absorbed.

Intermarriage is common, and many among the antagonists are related.

Somerled, the hero, is dedicated to taking back his ancestral lands in Argyll, which were earlier invaded and occupied by the Viking foe. He also envisions a Gaelic kingdom of the Isles between Scotland and Ireland.

He assembles a small but growing fleet of longships with crews of Scots and Irish fighting men. He also attempts to gain allies through diplomacy with established kingdoms. He travels to the Island of Man to confer with the king there. Somerled is almost immediately smitten by the king’s daughter, Ragnhild. The princess, who is on the verge of being forcibly betrothed to a Viking chieftain, is equally taken with the gallant visitor. So, Somerled must continue on his martial quest to take back the isles, while simultaneously maintaining the flames of romance with his intended.

Despite the title, this novel is primarily a romance with all of the flowery and courtly prose attendant to that genre. Military and battle scenes, though well done, are short and fleeting. Nevertheless, Summer Warrior is a colorful, illuminating, and wonderful history of a time and place little examined. Many of the characters are actual historical figures, and the Gaelic pageantry, examination of the importance of castles and descriptions of food, dress, and music are exceptionally wellrendered. A short section on the “Battle of the Standard” is a prescient examination of the dangers of Scots and Irish ever becoming involved in English affairs. An Author’s Note expertly caps the whole thing. Highly recommended.

Thomas J. Howley

13T H C E N T U RY A MARRIAGE OF LIONS Elizabeth Chadwick, Sphere, 2021, £20.00, hb, 496pp, 9780751577587

In this latest book, Elizabeth Chadwick takes us back to the 13th century. Henry III is on the throne but is at odds with many of his barons for favouring foreigners with honours and positions within his household. Shades of the great William Marshal also hover over it, in that his granddaughter, Joanna, is a prime character in the story. She existed and was taken to court as a young child of around eight to be trained as a lady-in-waiting to the Queen and in time married William de Valence, halfbrother to the King. Also involved is Simon de Montfort, married to the King’s sister,

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Eleanor, who had previously been married to William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke (eldest son of the previous William); There were constant clashes over land rights between the de Montforts and the Valences.

All the characters, apart from one or two very minor ones, existed, and this book expertly relates the history of the period. The gradual deterioration of relations between Henry and Simon is expertly told, and the difficulties of life in this period are graphically described. Details are, as always, well researched and, as with all Chadwick’s books, once the book is started it is hard to put down. If all school textbooks were written in this vein, history would be a very popular subject.

As always, the author’s notes are informative, and I would suggest reading these first unless the reader has a very detailed knowledge of the period. The family trees, cast of characters, and maps included in the front of the book are also well worth studying. Yet another first-class story from this author, and it will certainly join all the others on my bookshelves.

Marilyn Sherlock

OLAV AUDUNSSØN I: VOWS Sigrid Undset (trans. Tiina Nunnally), Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2020, $17.95, pb, 376pp, 9781517910488

In 13th-century Norway, Olav and Ingunn are betrothed to each other as children. As teenagers, romantic love grows between them, but their passion gets entangled in the unbreakable net of kinship and custom that holds their world together.

Every decision in Undset’s medieval Norway is made communally, every action is weighed for its potential effect on the extended family’s prestige. The medieval church mediates as, in a sense, a force of modern law and order: carefully wrought statutes to be obeyed by all citizens and enforced by authorities. This budding justice system conflicts with what Olav calls “the laws for men with hearts of flesh, volatile blood, and vengeful spirits.”

In medieval Norway, in Undset’s 1920s, in our time, the conflict endures. Codes of law go against the visceral urge to erase shame by personally avenging physical injury and violations of one’s communal code of honor.

The lovers’ struggle, too, endures: individual passion against the security of the enveloping family.

Sigrid Undset received the 1928 Nobel Prize in Literature “principally for her powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages” (Nobel Prize website). But Undset’s lucid and precise prose, as cast in English by

Tiina Nunnally, goes beyond describing a milieu long gone by. Olav Audunssøn brings to historical fiction readers what they most cherish, but too rarely find in one book: a vivid, living time and place authentically inhabited by men and women whose joys and woes, wrath and love, resonate in the hearts of men and women to this day.

Jean Huets

A HEART DIVIDED Jin Yong (trans. Shelly Bryant and Gigi Chang), MacLehose Press, 2021, £14.99, pb, 608pp, 9780857059581 / Griffin, 2021, $19.99, pb, 608pp, 9781250250131

Jin Yong is one of China’s most beloved authors; this is Book 4 of the Condor Heroes saga, bringing the initial segment of the saga to a close. It was first published in Chinese in 1954, with two further revisions since.

This translation must, I think, be close to the original feel of the work. There is a whole oeuvre of Saturday matinee kung fu movies that the book evokes, as the heroes and antiheroes unleash and counter, moves with unlikely, poetic names in long convoluted sequences. It’s a book of two halves, with the first part a nicely told boy gets girl / boy loses girl sequence (with plenty of kung fu thrown in), wrapping up some storylines from the previous three books and adding further complications; then the second half is an interesting digression into the Mongol advance into China.

The boy turns out to be the adopted son of Genghis Khan, who has accidentally become engaged to the Khan’s daughter— complicating his relationship with the first girl rather severely. We have an interesting and tightly written description of the art of warfare and siege tactics, as the boy is thrown into the position of general of one of the Mongol armies and takes us with him as he learns his trade.

Then Boy and Girl A get back together and Girl B takes herself off into exile to clear their way; we leave the Mongols getting on with it, and return to China for one last tremendous kung fu fight as all the Masters— good and evil—battle each other for Supreme Champion, with all their signature moves failing to defeat the boy, who is far too modest to recognize his prowess.

Overall, if you were the kind of kid who adored kung fu movies as a child, you will find this a rollicking good read. If not, you may find the first half a little long and repetitive; the switch of pace at the Mongol encampment definitely redeemed the book for me.

Nicky Moxey

14T H C E N T U RY HAWKSWOOD’S SWORD Christian Cameron, Orion, 2021, £20.99, hb, 458pp, 9781409180258

1368. Fourteenth-century Europe is shattered by plague, and old principalities are fracturing. Spain, France, England are

preparing for war. In Italy, the Pope and the Visconti princes are battling for supremacy.

This is the age of the condottieri, professional military leaders, like Sir John Hawkswood, who sell their services to the highest bidder. Sir William Gold, once a follower of Hawkswood, is now working freelance, hoping for fame and fortune. He tells his story to Chaucer, who was in France at the time.

Hawkswood’s Sword is the fifth in Cameron’s Chivalry series, and I must be honest and say that for the first three chapters I floundered. I hadn’t a clue what was going on, and there were far too many characters. I nearly stopped reading. What it really needs is a ‘The Story so Far’ preface which includes bits of necessary history, or, possibly a cast list, telling the reader who is who.

Fortunately, I read on, and the fog lifted; I gradually realized that I knew what was happening and then, the characters came to life. Furthermore, I really enjoyed the fact that, unlike most books of this genre (men fighting), there are real women who have genuinely important roles and whose characters aren’t just there for sex or bit parts. The female characters are ordinary women of a certain age—often attached to the church in some way (no bimbos here)—and they knew how to get things done.

The result, for me, was that the book suddenly became fully 3-D and in colour; rather than being a male-only fantasy story, full of bulging muscles, violence, and blood.

I’ve read and reviewed a number of Cameron’s historical novels, and Hawkswood’s Sword strikes me as being a new development in his writing—and I like it.

Elizabeth Hawksley

THE CHANCELLOR’S SECRET Susanna Gregory, Sphere, 2021, £20.99, hb, 416pp, 9780751579482

Stamped across the front of this book, the 25th in the series, is “the FINAL Bartholomew chronicle”. The book does have something of the feel of a last hurrah about it, complete with a happy ending that feels ever so slightly contrived. Nevertheless, this is a competent book, building on the wealth of knowledge that Susanna Gregory has of the era; the reader is once again immersed in a world where the Church is the major source of learning, where women play a mostly secondary role, and where the loss of a bridge can have devastating effects on the life of a town. And then there are the bodies—murder mysteries piled high, false trails and uncooperative witnesses abound, and poor Matt has other pressing issues that he would prefer to be dealing with, not least a mysterious outbreak of the flux. The resolution to this medical problem, as well as to the whodunit, is both surprising and satisfying.

I am not a huge fan of murder mysteries, finding them to be sometimes a little formulaic, and I have only dipped in and out of the earlier Bartholomew books; but I found

myself sad that the book had come to an end. (I also enjoyed the Historical Note, full of interesting stuff.) I’m sure I join Susanna Gregory’s fans in hoping that Bartholomew has simply changed jobs, and there is more to come in his new career.

Nicky Moxey

A CLASH OF LIONS A. J. MacKenzie, Canelo, 2021, £9.99, pb, 384pp, 9781800324848

In 1346, right after the English victory at Crécy, Simon Merrivale, herald to the Prince of Wales, is sent back to England to follow the domestic ramifications of the Europewide conspiracy he just unearthed. In tow he has the wilful Tiphaine de Tesson, a Norman noblewoman intent on exacting vengeance on a former lover, who just happens to be one of the lead conspirators and determined to be at the herald’s side—whether he wishes it or not. Once in London, Merrivale and Tiphaine pick up the trail of their foes—and it leads North, where the young King of Scotland, David Bruce, is preparing to invade England in earnest… but just who is filling David’s famously empty coffers? What is really behind this sudden burst of hostility? And, most of all, who can be trusted in the morass of divided loyalties spanning across the Border? A subtle diplomat on speaking terms with everyone who’s anyone in Europe, and able to outmatch any armed foe with his bare hands, the Herald is an unusual, slightly unlikely, but very likeable hero in this tightly plotted, well-researched story of intricate espionage and derring-do. A word of caution, though: second in a series, A Clash of Lions will be more enjoyable if read after Book One, A Flight of Arrows.

Chiara Prezzavento

THE RIVERWOMAN’S DRAGON Candace Robb, Severn House, 2021, £20.99/$28.99, hb, 256pp, 9781780291369

This thirteenth in the Owen Archer series begins in York in 1375. The pestilence draws closer, and dread permeates the town and its outskirts, where the poor are cared for

by Magda Digby. Hailing from a long line of healers knowledgeable in the efficacy of plants, and gifted with the sight, Magda resides on a rock in the river Ouse, watched over by her dragon and some local lads, but never enters the town. As the Death encroaches further, the archbishop orders the parish priests to shun the local healers upon whom the citizens have relied for centuries, chastising the people for their sins.

When the body of a factor is found floating in the Ouse, fingers point at Magda, and Owen Archer, the city captain charged with defending all citizens, vows to guard her welfare, although Magda needs little protection. Owen, called ‘Bird-Eye’ by Magda for his lack of an eye, has healing skills and powerful intuition of his own. The arrival of Magda’s estranged daughter, Asa, who

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shunned her mother’s gentle teaching in favour of charms and spells, and the leech, Bernard, falsely claiming to be a healer, triggers unpleasant events, and Owen must sort truth from lies.

Robb’s timely story strikes close to home; the fear incited by the priests is similar to that provoked by government and multimedia today. Neighbours are eyed with suspicion, anger and resentment, midwives beaten in the street, people shunned for their beliefs.

Magda’s Quaker-like thee, thou and thy speech pattern is delightful, and her referral to herself as Magda, rather than I or me, endeared me to her. Dialogue throughout the book is eraappropriate and helps set the tone. The healer has only appeared briefly in one of the early Archer books, but I would welcome seeing her return. An informative and engaging murder mystery, very well told.

Fiona Alison

THE KNIGHT’S TALE M. J. Trow, Severn House, 2021, $28.99/£20.99, hb, 224pp, 9781780291352

Trow has written several historical mystery series, including one featuring the playwright Christopher Marlowe, so turning his attention to another English literary luminary, Geoffrey Chaucer, is a natural next step. Like other historicals that star Chaucer (Bruce Holsinger’s A Burnable Book, Michael B. Herzog’s This Passing World), this well-paced initial volume reads a bit like Canterbury Tales fan fiction, and the narrative style is cozy Edwardian armchairdetective rather than attempting to be actually medieval. However, Trow is an experienced craftsman, and his careful research creates a plausible historical analogue for the knight and squire who are the first-named fictional pilgrims in Chaucer’s famous anthology.

This novel begins, as do the Tales, on a cheerful April day, but the circumstances are more somber—Lionel, Duke of Clarence has just died under mysterious circumstances, and his trusted retainer, the titular Knight, Sir Richard Glanville, seeks Chaucer’s help in investigating the death, which shifts the setting to bucolic Clare Castle in Suffolk.

Trow’s Chaucer is not a natural sleuth, but his open-mindedness and curiosity give him access to a wide variety of suspects; his innate empathy will inspire affection in all but the most pedantic of readers.

The omniscient point of view means that readers must shift their attention among many characters, which can be confusing, but Trow’s humorous tone and homely details of medieval life keep the reader entertained. His depiction of medieval biblical plays and folk festivals is particularly lively, all of which excuse the modern diction of his characters. Female characters, though important to the plot, are depicted in a tiresomely paternalistic way, and there are rather too many (historically accurate but insensitive) jokes about sexually predatory clergy, but one can chalk that up to the overall 22

irreverent tone. It will be entertaining to see what kind of historical situations he comes up with for each of the Canterbury pilgrims.

Kristen McDermott

15T H C E N T U RY THE DAY OF THE SERPENT Cassandra Clark, Severn House, 2021, $28.99/£20.99, hb, 256pp, 9780727890900

Imprisoned in Pontefract Castle by the usurper, Henry Bolingbroke, Richard II starved to death. At least that’s the story that was put about in 1400 so the people would accept Henry’s big lie. Brother Chandler, reluctantly indentured to the House of Lancaster, is whisked north by the usurper king’s stepbrother, Thomas Swynford. Tasked with bringing Richard his meals in Pontefract’s tower, Chandler’s scenes with the young king are deeply moving; then, without warning, Richard is brutally murdered. As the entourage makes its way to London, three bodyguards are struck down by a skilled archer. Swynford, forever disgruntled at the lack of recognition by the king, orders Chandler to find the culprit without delay. Investigating loudly whilst prevaricating, Chandler discreetly protects those who might be responsible. Back in London, Chandler hopes to reunite with his love, Mattie, but receives a frosty reception.

Times have changed since he went north.

Self-styled archbishop Arundel is hardening the heresy laws in favour of burning, and even Chandler is not safe from Arundel’s wrath.

Our friar is an enigmatic, multifaceted and likeable man with a disarming friendliness, useful for a spy. Clark doesn’t dwell on his background, only revealing occasional tidbits.

Mattie, a maid in Chaucer’s household, is the voice of the times (an interesting choice for this role which works perfectly), relating the toxic fear gripping the land, and her anxiety for Master Chaucer and his ‘heretical’ writings.

There’s complexity and urgency in the multiple themes— an anointed king’s murder, the dead guards, the mystery bowman, the revamped heresy laws, Mattie’s secret excursions, the heretical Book of the Lion—and the frequent inability to fathom which side Chandler is on. This is a compulsive, edgy read about dangerous times, when misinformation was the order of the day.

Clark ties the multiple ends up neatly, with neither cliffhanger nor happily-ever-after. A terrific achievement in a series to watch closely.

Fiona Alison

DAUGHTER OF THE YELLOW DRAGON Starr Z. Davies, Pangea Books, 2021, $4.99, ebook, 346pp, 9781736345917

Genghis Khan once united a nation, but Mandukhai has only known civil war. In the spring of 1464, she’s sent as a new bride to the current Great Khan, a fate she despises.

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Mandukhai dreams of becoming a fierce warrior woman, like the fabled Khutulun.

Now her life has a new goal: producing an heir. Meeting her husband for the first time, it’s evident he’s lived a languid life, protected by the warriors around him. One in particular, Unebolod, catches her attention. Before long, the warrior and the queen find themselves drawn together. But Unebolod has sworn to protect the Great Khan, and both their lives are at risk if they give into their feelings.

Mandukahi must also contend with a bitter first wife, an overbearing field commander, and a rising threat to the Great Khan’s claim to rule.

Davies gives Mandukhai a strong, fierce voice. In a time of war, she rises in power through political acumen and careful observation.

As Mandukhai only has one person she can implicitly trust, tension runs high throughout the narrative. I found her character growth compelling.

There are a noticeable number of grammatical errors in the book, like missing apostrophes, extra words in sentences, and a few metaphorical errors including Mandukhai’s “heart-shaped face.” An ivy leaf or water lily leaves might be more appropriate for this time and place. Despite this, the author makes it easy to imagine living in a ger, proper dress for a queen, or riding through the Mongols’ landscape. Founded upon Davies’s hearty research, the world and characters around Mandukhai are structured with meticulous care. This is a fantastically written first book, and I look forward to the next chapter in Mandukhai’s life. Thanks to Starr Davies for bringing this largely unknown historical figure vividly to life.

J. Lynn Else

HIGHLAND LEGEND Kathryn Le Veque, Sourcebooks Casablanca, 2021, $8.99/£6.99, pb, 288pp, 9781728210162

The ghosts of Roman gladiators loom over this medieval Scottish series, of which Highland Legend is the third. Elite warrior Magnus Stewart, known as the Eagle for his head-kicking finishing move, has more up his nonexistent sleeves than anyone knows. The bastard son of a Scottish duke, he was held captive for much of his childhood. His need for adulation and female companionship is fueled by his abandonment. Diantha de Mora was another captive, an heiress to the Spanish lands of Navarre, who is betrothed to the son of her captor. When she recognizes Magnus on the streets of Edinburgh, she runs away, hoping for his protection.

Set largely in the clandestine gladiatorial world Magnus lives in, the reader is immersed in a Latin-Scottish mashup. Strong man, compassionate woman themes run throughout. Nothing unexpected here, except the extraordinary kindness of strangers and the deus ex machina finale.

Katie Stine

THE ROYAL GAME Anne O’Brien, HQ, 2021, £20.00, hb, 496pp, 9780008422844

The novel opens with a dispute over a will between mother and son, Agnes Paston and John Paston, which sets the tenor of the book. The Pastons are a litigious family, based in Norfolk. Their story is told from the perspectives of three women: Margaret Paston, John’s capable, spirited wife; Eliza Paston, John’s sister; and Anne Haute, who is betrothed to Margaret and John’s oldest son.

Margaret’s voice has the lion’s share of the narrative. Her life is a constant round of supporting her difficult husband in ceaseless strife over property. Eliza is physically and emotionally abused by her mother and seems doomed to spinsterhood. When she finally marries, her happiness is short-lived as her husband dies on the St Albans battlefield in 1461.

The weakness of King Henry VI allowed for court factions and eventually civil war. These events are initially distant for the Pastons but come nearer as their fortunes rise and they accrue valuable but disputed castles and manors. When John is imprisoned for the third time in Fleet Prison, Margaret cunningly garners the favour of King Edward IV with a faked family tree. Suspicion remains that John may have indeed falsified the will that led to the family’s sudden enrichment.

It is initially a little difficult to be moved by the family’s avaricious pragmatism. However, O’Brien is especially good in her descriptions of the clothes and textiles belonging to her characters, and Margaret’s cures for boils and chilblains are nicely drawn. The scenes of court flirtation between Anne Haute and Sir John Paston are well-written and vivid. The author is drawing on the Paston Letters, most of which are held in the British Library, but her faithfulness to her source material means that the narrative is sometimes lacking in drama.

O’Brien immerses us in this extraordinary family’s quest for social aggrandisement in the 15th century, as they rise from peasantry to aristocracy.

Tracey Warr

THE KING’S SWORD Rebekah Simmers, Independently published, 2021, $12.99, pb, 416pp, 9781737262008

“Take their words, labels, expectations, and find a way to define them on your own terms.”

15th-century Germany. A man trying to bury his name. A princess trying to define hers.

Both longing to stop being pawns in another man’s game. Matthias, known as The King’s Sword, is sent to barter for a princess’s hand.

However, another man plots to take her title by force and seeks to kill Princess Avelina. On the run, Matthias and Avelina must traverse mountains in hopes of losing their pursuers on their journey to Ewigsburg. What they find along the way makes them question their

purpose in life, and how far they’ll go and what they’ll sacrifice for love.

I’ve noticed an increase in women in historical fiction running away to escape their circumstances. However, they never plan further than the escape. Instead of lending a sense of independence and agency, the characters come across as naïve. Avelina gets this idea in her head twice, only to have a man rescue/stop her. Additionally, Avelina keeps injuring herself (spilling candle wax on her hand, stubbing her toes and needing her feet massaged, etc.). After so many injuries, it felt like an overused device to bring Matthias and Avelina together.

Alternating between Matthias and Avelina’s points of view, The King’s Sword is a sweeping adventure nestled within Renaissance Germany. From castles to farmland, the sights are breathtaking. Simmers has penned a spectacular landscape along with great characters. I thoroughly enjoyed their internal struggles and discoveries. Simmers makes the depth of her research appear effortless as her story comes to life. Despite some minor issues in Avelina’s early development, the story satisfies on many levels. Simmers’ prose is luscious and the character development enchanting. I look forward to what else Simmers has in store for readers.

J. Lynn Else

16T H C E N T U RY THE KING’S ANATOMIST: The Journey of Andreas Vesalius Ron Blumenfeld, History Through Fiction, 2021, $27.95, hb, 294pp, 9781736499009

Jan van den Bossche has been the best friend of anatomist Andreas Vesalius since childhood. The two are “astral twins,” sharing a birthday and a special bond. While van den Bossche gravitates towards mathematics, Vesalius has always been fascinated by the human body—its myriad parts, how they fit together, their purpose and workings. This leads him to buck convention, dragging van den Bossche along as he grave robs and worse to acquire specimens for dissection and to craft his De humani corporis fabrica libri septem anatomical text, a work scholars have called “epochal.” Now middle-aged (or elderly, by Renaissance standards), Vesalius inexplicably leaves his wife and daughter behind to go on pilgrimage. When van den Bossche receives word of Vesalius’s death on a remote Greek island, he makes the difficult journey to say one last goodbye at his friend’s grave. Yet when he arrives on the island, he quickly realizes nothing about his friend’s journey or death—and much of his life—is what it seemed.

The slow-moving mystery at the heart of Blumenfeld’s novel almost feels secondary to the fictional van den Bossche’s relationship with Vesalius, his wife, Anne, Renaissance politics, and the flowering of new knowledge.

Unraveling the threads that tie these characters

together is as important as discovering what really happened to Vesalius. The history is instructive without ever becoming pedantic, and van den Bossche’s voice is engaging.

This is a mystery with a firm enough base in scholarship that even the more cantankerous academics might enjoy it.

Bethany Latham

I, MASTER SHAKESPEARE David Lawrence-Young, The Conrad Press, 2020, £9.99, pb, 224pp, 9781913567392

Written in the form of William Shakespeare’s autobiography, the novel tells his life story from his birth in April 1564 to his death in April 1616.

It is possible Shakespeare died on his birthday but, given we don’t know the exact date of his birth, we can’t be certain. In fact, although he is arguably the world’s most revered playwright and poet, it is extraordinary how little we do know about him.

In I, Master Shakespeare, David LawrenceYoung offers some plausible answers to the questions that have perplexed scholars for centuries: where was Shakespeare during the ‘lost years’ of 1585 to 1592, before we can definitively place him in London? Who was the dark lady of the sonnets? And why did he leave his wife their ‘second best bed’?

Written in an easily accessible style, the novel is meticulously researched. The author shows us the inner workings of Shakespeare’s mind and brings to life his world, moving from Stratford on Avon to the theatres of London, and the courts of Queen Elizabeth and King James.

Recommended for long-time admirers of the Bard, or for those who simply wish to learn more about the man Ben Jonson so fittingly described as, ‘not of an age, but for all time’.

Penny Ingham

BEDTRICK Jinny Webber, Cuidono, 2021, $17.00/£15.99, pb, 344pp, 9781944453145

London, 1599-1603. Alexander (Sander) Cooke plays female roles in Shakespeare’s company, but she has a secret: she is a woman. To escape an unwanted marriage, she disguised herself and joined a troupe of traveling players, and despite the dangers, she has avoided discovery so far. But when Johnny, her brother and fellow player, suggests she marry the woman he impregnated but refuses to marry himself, she is indignant at his irresponsibility. Johnny, however, remains adamant, and since Frances is a good friend, other friends prove supportive, and alternatives seem worse, they do indeed wed, despite their misgivings.

The relationship between Sander and Frances survives a rough stretch after the infant dies shortly after birth, but this is more than a romantic tale of a (female) marriage of convenience developing into one of love.

Not only do we witness the uncertainties of life faced by actors in Elizabethan theatre, but they engage in an insightful discussion of

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their roles in Shakespeare’s plays. Increasingly, however, the focus shifts to the impact upon ordinary people of the turbulent political events during the dying years of Elizabeth’s reign, particularly the Earl of Essex’s failed attempt to seize power and the uncertainty over the succession.

Most of the significant characters are historical figures, even Sander himself, though making him a woman is Webber’s invention.

‘Bedtrick’ is defined as sex with a partner who pretends to be someone else, as occurs in Shakespeare’s so-called problem comedies.

In this case, however, the deception is not between Sander and Frances: ‘the lie is to the world.’

Though Sander is fortunate to find so many sympathetic and influential friends who penetrate her secret (including Shakespeare and the queen herself!), this is an absorbing and credible picture of the world of Elizabethan theatre. Highly recommended.

Ray Thompson

IN THE SHADOW OF QUEENS Alison Weir, Headline Review, 2021, £20.00, hb, 413pp, 9781472286284

In the Shadow of Queens is a collection of 13 short stories written to accompany Alison Weir’s series of books called Six Tudor Queens, on each of the wives of Henry VIII. Originally published in digital form, they are now brought together in print.

The stories are indeed overshadowed by the Six Queens, but that was such an excellent series it would overshadow most pieces of historical fiction. By comparison the short stories are slight though entertaining and sometimes poignant; there was much to grieve over in Tudor England. Most of the stories concern minor characters from the series, giving a different angle on the protagonists.

However, there is a macabre piece about the history of Katherine Parr’s corpse and its several exhumations, and a modern ghost story set in the Tower of London.

If you enjoyed Weir’s Six Tudor Queens novels, you will like to read this.

Edward James

17T H C E N T U RY THE MASTER OF MEASHAM HALL Anna Abney, Duckworth, 2021, £14.99, hb, 304pp, 9780715654354

1665: Charles II has returned from exile and is now king, but the Civil War still casts its long, dark shadow, intensified by the plague now raging throughout the land. Young Alethea Hawthorne lives in London, away from Measham Hall, her beloved ancestral Derbyshire home, eagerly awaiting the king’s pardon so her elder brother William can return from exile abroad.

When, by accident or design, she finds 24

herself thrown out on the streets, Alethea plans to make her way north, facing many barriers and unexpected detours along the way. She is rescued from disaster by Jack, who is not evil but a law unto himself. Although she is a Roman Catholic, Alethea and Jack find refuge in Epping Forest, living and working with a group of dissenters. She is soon beguiled by their way of life and is infatuated with their charismatic leader, Samuel. When disaster strikes, she is even more determined to return home and take possession of Measham Hall any way she can.

Right from the very first lines of this novel, I was totally gripped. Alethea is a delightful combination of youthful naivety and strong determination. She is not perfect but soon becomes a force to be reckoned with. She has every right to be the Master of Measham Hall.

This is the first book in a promising series based on the author’s own ancestors. I can’t wait for the next volume. With a rich cast of characters, not only are the plot and narrative replete with twists and turns, but the turbulence of the 17th century is closely observed. I thoroughly recommend what I hope will prove a stunning series and a new author to celebrate.

Sally Zigmond

THE LION ASCENDANT John Biggins, Bonanova Editions, 2021, $21.95/£15.95, pb, 496pp, 9798465710473

Flemish surgeon’s apprentice Frans Michielszoon van Raveck enters the PolishSwedish 1626-29 War in the service of King Gustav.

Biggins’ “fascination with “the pathology of decaying empires”, as claimed in his author’s biography, is evident throughout. Frans’s life story reads like a comedy of errors, as he assists in one bumbled project after another.

Over-wintering on a frozen hummock on the Vistula River, Frans becomes assistant to an Italian architect charged by King Gustav to construct an overpriced fortress and sluice-gates. He earns a medical scholarship by successfully operating on the Swedish king, while studying at a miserably equipped university in Uppsala. In Stockholm he assists in the construction of the ill-fated folly, the Vasa warship, which sank less than a mile into her maiden voyage.

Peppered with classical and biblical references, the writing admits to having “drunk deep at the spring of Pericles [and] Cicero”. It is a rich, erudite style which is very much to my taste. Even apart from the frequent vocabulary in Dutch, Polish, Swedish and Latin, I found almost 20 words I have never before seen

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in usage, such as “obloquy”, “clyster” and “gallipot”.

In places the language is so flowery as to be humorous. For example, a fellow who doesn’t love Amsterdam “would certainly starve in the midst of Dame Abundantia’s larder and lack salt to his boiled egg beside the very brine pans of Cadiz”. The language is believable for the 17th century, something which I consider essential for historical fiction.

This is Biggins’ sixth novel. See, for example, A Sailor of Austria (HNR 34) and Tomorrow the World (HNR 42). This is the sequel to The Surgeon’s Apprentice and ends with Frans travelling, so we can expect Volume III. Susie Helme

THE DANGEROUS KINGDOM OF LOVE Neil Blackmore, Hutchinson, 2021, £16.99, hb, 352pp, 9781786332677

England, 1613, and Francis Bacon travels to the royal palace at Theobalds, to be told

by King James that he will be elevated to the post of Attorney General. Bacon, the writer and intellectual, narrates in the first person the slippery, treacherous life of the Jacobin courtier and politician. King James is bewitched by his lover Robert Carr, who demands payment from Bacon to stop him from poisoning Bacon in the King’s ear. Bacon develops a strategy to displace the favourite and replace him with another beautiful and irresistible youth—and finds George Villiers in a country house in Leicestershire. But Bacon bites off a little more than he can chew, and Villiers, the future Duke of Buckingham, affects Francis Bacon more than he thought possible.

This is a violent, profanity-filled narrative of the despicable nature of human ambition and jealousy—where you either use others or are used and abused yourself—a cruel theatre of hatred, convenient and temporary alliances, and treachery. While the king is obsessed with his favourite boys, Bacon who is also gay, attempts to navigate the duplicitous and dangerous waters of court life, where a wrong word or a well-placed enemy can see you thrown into the Tower. Notwithstanding his intelligence, Bacon is by no means a wholly reliable narrator. The language is a strange amalgam of contemporary and archaic diction, which does seem to work, King James speaks in a kind of comedy current-day Glaswegian more like something from Irving Welsh than 17th-century wording. It is a romping read, a little overdramatic at times, which plays fast and loose with historical authenticity, but nonetheless is a most enjoyable novel.

Douglas Kemp

CUNNING WOMEN Elizabeth Lee, Windmill, 2021, £14.99, hb, 384pp, 9781786091161

In 1620, a Lancashire hamlet lies abandoned, haunted by its many plague victims. A destitute family has found shelter in a hovel, shunned and feared by the nearby

village. Mam is a cunning woman marked by a dark stain which makes her gifted in healing, potions, spells, and curses. Memories of recent witch trials and fear of being cursed cause the villagers to avoid this strange family, but their fear is overcome to make clandestine visits to Mam for her services and coin for the occasional meal. Sarah shares her mother’s mark, making her destined to also be a cunning woman. Headstrong young John steals bits of food from the local farmer while his sister, Sarah, frets over protecting littlest Annie from being approached by the evil one who will mark her too.

Daniel, the farmer’s son, is different than the brutal men around him. He is gentle, kind, and caring, feeling the pain of others— human and animal. When he meets Sarah, he is attracted to her wild hair and eyes “every colour of the sea.” Theirs becomes a tender love story. Sarah wants a peaceful life, to marry Daniel, and escape her fate in favor of “a life of light that leaves no place for such darkness.” She wants her beloved Annie to have enough to eat, to laugh and play among other children instead of the spirits of the dead in the plague hamlet. When a new magistrate comes to the village, he stirs up the people’s fear and hatred, hunting out insidious evil with disastrous results.

The author tells a compelling story of a village in the grips of superstition and susceptible to the influence of a radical witch hunter. The story moves slowly, but stay with it because it begins to build about halfway, and the book becomes hard to set aside.

Janice Ottersberg

THE BLOODLESS BOY Robert J. Lloyd, Melville House, 2021, £18.99/$29.99, hb, 416pp, 9781612199399

In 1678, the exsanguinated body of a boy is discovered on the banks of London’s River Fleet. Harry Hunt, working as an assistant to the scientist Robert Hooke, is amongst the first to see the body and strives to discover the murderer and the reason for the boy’s death. Initially he is encouraged by Hooke, but later, when Hooke decides to cease the investigation, Harry continues, in secret and alone, putting himself, and those close to him, in danger.

First self-published in 2014, this version is substantially longer than the original, still compressing two years of events (1677 to 1679) into a few weeks in January. There is a prevalence of “info dump” in the slow-moving early part of the novel and a tendency to overexplain. In contrast, the final 100 pages flow with great speed and skill.

Although, in parts extremely well written, this novel is not for the historical purist.

There are a number of factual errors and anachronisms. Until 1752 the new year began in March, not on January 1st, and the revolving mechanism on pistols remained manual until the 19th century. Lloyd uses words not in common parlance in 1678, e.g. “pugilist” (1789), and “Jack Robinson” (1778).

Seemingly solely in order to fit in the expression “mountebank and his merry-Andrew,” Lloyd creates grotesque characterisations of Israel Tonge and Titus Oates.

This is a “Blood Libel” story, but Lloyd dismisses in a single sentence the wide prevalence, in that era, of the anti-Semitic nature of such claims, ascribing it to Catholics to reinforce the “Popish Plot” theories of the time.

Accepting the precedence of a “novel” over historical reality, this is a book with much to admire, not least for the extensive bibliography at the end.

Aidan K. Morrissey

REDEMPTION Philip Yorke, Mashiach Publishing, 2021, £9.99, pb, 479pp, 9798529306079

Guilt and vengeance prevent Captain Francis Hacker from finding solace from God after his daughters’ murders. As the second year of civil war drags into a third, he struggles with the incongruity of faith and war. Despite his desire to lead a godly life, situations arise over which he has no control and cause him to stray far from that path.

Oliver Cromwell’s intervention inadvertently sets him on a more righteous path. He wants Francis to ingratiate himself with the leader of the Midland Association forces. Gaining Lord Grey’s trust is unlikely, but the Midlands is too valuable to allow the Royalists to gain control there. Yet discord between him and the leaders of Leicester make the city too enticing a target—one that could spell doom for the Parliamentarians.

Combined with dissension within the ranks of the Parliamentarians, rumors of a plot to kill Cromwell, sightings of the murderer, and the imprisonment of two people dear to him, Francis unveils webs of intrigue that are far more treacherous, duplicitous, and devious than he ever suspects.

This second book in the Hacker Chronicles opens in 1644 at the battle of Marston Moor and ends in 1646 after several crucial victories for Cromwell’s New Model Army. Yorke ably demonstrates the irrevocable physical, mental, and spiritual wounds war inflicts on soldiers.

The subtlety of a few clues may cause them to be missed, while repetitious reminders of the murders and Francis’s torture may intrude, but readers who persist are rewarded with a tale as intricately interlaced as a jigsaw puzzle.

When redemption comes, Yorke masterfully crafts a solution that prevents characters from violating who they are and what they believe.

At story’s end, readers will feel compelled to read Regicide, the next title in the series.

Cindy Vallar

18T H C E N T U RY THE LA MOTTE WOMAN Mary Martin Devlin, Cuidono, 2021, $17.00, pb, 344pp, 9781944453121

Grasping, greedy, manipulative, and

scheming, Jeanne de Saint-Remy-Valois, daughter of an illegitimate and impoverished descendant of Henry II and self-styled the Comtesse de Valois after her marriage to Nicolas La Motte, led a life of adventure, extravagance, and fraud in pre-Revolutionary France. Granted a pension by the French king Louis XVI and obsessed with being a princess, she craved luxurious living but was constantly strapped for cash. When the Paris jewelers Bassenge and Bohmer create the world’s most fabulous diamond necklace and Jeanne learns Queen Marie Antoinette desires it, she sees an opportunity. Taking advantage of her lover Prince Cardinal Louis de Rohan’s wish to return to the Queen’s good graces, Jeanne concocts a devious plan to commit a great heist. Acting as the Cardinal’s agent and with his money, she uses forgery, blatant lies, and an imposter to obtain the necklace for herself, but when the “Affair of the Diamond Necklace” is exposed, everyone ensnared in her web (including herself) must publicly face the consequences.

Devlin’s meticulous research is evident, but she has loaded the novel with too many characters, too much description, and not enough action. Multiple narrators and slow pacing kept me from being fully engaged.

Jeanne, with her witty quips and outrageous lies, is a fascinating character, but she’s too selfish and unlikable to draw much sympathy.

Most of the male characters seem either dimwitted or weak or hysterical; the jewelers in their attempts to sell their necklace were almost like a comedy duo. Occurring at a time of extraordinary wealth and terrible poverty, this fiasco further discredited the already unpopular queen and accelerated the monarchy’s downfall and should be remembered, but this account lacks energy and fervency.

Michael I. Shoop

THE VANISHED DAYS Susanna Kearsley, Sourcebooks Landmark, 2021, $16.99, pb, 464pp, 9781492650164 / Simon & Schuster Canada, 2022, C$24.99, pb, 544pp, 9781501116582

Prizewinning Canadian author of more than a dozen books, bestseller Kearsley sets her latest novel in early modern Scotland.

Here, she presents a trademark “twinstranded” story, interweaving present and past. The present: 1707, in the wake of the Acts of Union dissolving the Scots Parliament.

The plot revolves around “Lily” Aitcheson’s dubious claim that she was wife to the late James Graeme—he died in the failed Darien expedition, Scotland’s ill-fated attempt to establish a colony on the Isthmus of Panama.

If so, she’s entitled to collect his portion of funds being doled out by Queen Anne’s Equivalent commission. The young man assigned to investigate her claim, sergeant Adam Williamson, has a difficult task. Finding an answer takes him, and us, into Lily’s and Scotland’s past. Individual lives bestride historical trends in religion and politics, we

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find. Other characters include Archibald Campbell, 9th Earl of Argyll; the Erskine brothers, Lord Grange and the Earl of Mar; the Lairds of Inchbrakie and other Graemes (their family tree is reproduced), like Colonel Patrick Graeme. Kearsley fans will recognize him from The Winter Sea, a companion novel.

The Vanished Days offers a finely balanced mix where historical research overlaps fictional imagination. “A Word about Accuracy” and a note “About the Characters” help readers differentiate fact from fiction. Kearsley’s characters are well-developed, although their 18th-century diction is, occasionally, uneven.

Sprinkled with literary allusions, her book has intricate plot twists, mostly believable historical contexts, and wonderfully deft descriptions, such as this one of 18th-century Edinburgh’s “labyrinth of wynds and closes twisting off the broader streets and narrowing to falls of steps that disappeared in shadows, overhung by painted tenements with galleries and watching windows crowding close together overhead.”

An entertainingly satisfying read.

Mark Spencer

UNDER A GRAVID SKY Angela MacRae Shanks, Braeatha Books, 2021, $12.99, pb, 306pp, 9781999962432

The Hanoverian Army, having won the Battle of Culloden in 1746, storms the northeastern S c o t t i s h Highlands, intent on crushing its clans.

Sevenyear-old Duncan hides while his family is burned to death. In 1747, five-year-old Rowena loses her mother, who dies in childbirth.

Duncan is taken in by a priest, and then passed to Rowena’s father, who teaches him the art of smuggling whisky. Rowena soon befriends Morna, the green woman, who eventually passes on to her the healing skills of the natural world. Years later, Hugh McBeath, a ruthless exciseman who has arrived to end the whisky smuggling in the area, is captivated

by Rowena’s beauty. Although he thinks she is a witch, he wants her for his wife. Duncan, meanwhile, is the best smuggler in the glen, but feels he can never be worthy of the lovely and gifted Rowena.

Beautiful and breathtaking, this Scottish historical novel transports you to the sweeping beauty of the Highlands. The dialect is perfect for the period, and the lush descriptions of the scenery take the reader straight to the mosscovered mountains of Scotland. The story is alive with folklore as we learn of “wild places” and “faeryhills.” Because she is learning the art of healing and is sensitive to “the trees and their spirits,” Rowena is often thought of as a witch in a time when witches were tried 26

and killed. The whisky-smuggling culture of the Highlands, and the reason for it, is also explored. Full of deception, treachery, love, folklore, and kinship, Under a Gravid Sky is a heartrending but passionate saga set in a tough and sometimes heartless time.

Bonnie DeMoss

FIREFLIES AND CHOCOLATE Ailish Sinclair, GWL Publishing, 2021, $14.00, pb, 218pp, 9781910603840

In 1743, sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Manteif was in Aberdeen, Scotland, to choose a new horse. Instead, she finds herself “a kidnapped prisoner aboard a slave ship” headed to America. Elizabeth’s goal now is to get back home. Readers “survive” the difficult Atlantic crossing with Elizabeth and her protector, Peter, only to be thrust into the heartbreaking scene of children and adults being sold as slaves in Philadelphia. Ailish Sinclair captures readers’ hearts with Elizabeth’s Scottish brogue and “wee” glimpses into her childhood and even conveys hope when she escapes from her new owner into the woods to find two “quines,” one Native American and one Black. These girls become a link to Elizabeth’s emotional and physical survival. Ailish Sinclair weaves the plight of plantation owner, Michael, and his personal dependencies with Elizabeth’s search for Peter, writing of letters home, and passionate but dangerous quest to right the wrongs of slavery. Through heart-stopping twists of fate, Elizabeth’s journey intersects the plight of slaves on a tobacco plantation with her own passage through stages of grief and coming of age in a new country.

Ailish Sinclair spins this Scottish tale filled with excitement and suspense as encouraging news of the Jacobite Rebellion and Bonnie Prince Charlie reaches America, only to get the crushing reports of Culloden Moor. Scottish phrases become familiar as history and mysteries unfold, right there with Elizabeth on the gangplank of the ship heading back to her beloved Scotland. Like Elizabeth wrapped in a plaid, savor the pages of Fireflies and Chocolate and wait for that ‘bonny” feeling, “I’ve come home.”

Dorothy Schwab

19T H C E N T U RY

REVIEWS | Issue 98, November 2021

MISS ELIZA’S ENGLISH KITCHEN (US/Can) / THE LANGUAGE OF FOOD (UK) Annabel Abbs, William Morrow, 2021, $16.99/ C$21.99, pb, 400pp, 9780063066465 / Simon & Schuster, 2022, £14.99, hb, 416pp, 9781398502222

The author’s love of old cookbooks has inspired a delightful imagining of the origins of the first truly famous English recipe book, Modern Cookery, published in 1845. Eliza Acton and her assistant, Ann Kirby, were real people; while Eliza’s status as a published poet, playwright, and gentlewoman left ample evidence about her life, Ann was known only by a brief mention. Abbs chooses the brilliant tactic of giving both Eliza and Ann equal time as point-of-view characters in this novel; because their voices are so distinct, and because they occupy such different classes, we get a portrait of Victorian domestic life that is both encompassing and finely detailed.

Acton’s life carried hints of scandal in spite of the cozy domesticity of her most famous work, and Abbs captures the character of a woman who channels her intense sensuality into the socially acceptable context of cookery. Ann is an equally capable cook whose hero-worship of Eliza is thoughtfully tempered by her cleareyed understanding of the harm caused by the willful blindness of the privileged class to the suffering of the poor. Through her, we learn about the desperation of the mentally and physically disabled, and the hypocrisy of the wealthy who hid them—and their needs—away.

Because Ann is a bright and satirical observer, these somber details don’t overshadow the entertaining portrait of the growing friendship between these two talented women. Recipeloving readers will appreciate the detailed descriptions of Victorian dishes like Apple Hedgehog and Buttered Celery on Toast; fans of women’s history will find plenty to admire in the way Ann and Eliza inspire one another to be true to themselves in a culture that has little use for intelligent single women.

Kristen McDermott

UPON THE MALABAR COAST Philip K. Allan, Independently published, 2021, $19.50, pb, 330pp, 9798744579487

1803, Cornwall. Captain Alexander Clay and his crew, disbanded during peacetime, are spending idyllic days in a village. But when the news of a secret French naval expedition to India reaches the British Admiralty, Clay and his crew, including his recently married

coxswain, Sedgwick, a Black African man, are pressed back into service. Clay is given command of the frigate Griffin, and after rescuing Sedgwick from slavers, he sets sail for the Indian Ocean. He pursues the French fleet, which includes mysterious cargo vessels commanded by the crafty Admiral Linois. Clay learns of the French objective of influencing the Malabar Coast’s maharajas with not only jewels but in creating a secret project in Travancore, which would adversely affect the British trading cargo vessels plying the Indian Ocean. Clay and his company need to thwart Linois’ plans and maintain the flow of trade required to sustain Britain’s forces against France.

Although this is the ninth book in Philip Allan’s Alexander Clay series, it can stand alone. The novel is essentially a naval warfare yarn, and Allen acknowledges he is inspired by other well-known novelists, such as Forester and O’Brian. His bold decision to select a Black character for a responsible position on board an HMS fighting ship, including his marriage to an English lass, works well, as it adds depth and intrigue to the story. The backstories of the officers and lower-deck sailors are also interesting. Allen’s in-depth research shows in the detailed accounts of military intricacies and the decoys used in the battles. The showing of life and customs in India, as well as the descriptions of complex political complications, are impressively narrated. Although coincidences abound in the plot, Allan has noted the deviations from historical fact. Highly recommended.

Waheed Rabbani

SOMEONE PERFECT Mary Balogh, Berkley, 2021, $8.99/C$11.99, pb, 400pp, 9780593335307

Justin Wiley, Earl of Brandon, is not looking forward to a difficult meeting with his young half-sister Maria, who blames him for offences against her recently deceased mother. When he encounters the beguiling sight of a very attractive young woman dangling bare feet in a river, he reacts with ungentlemanly impoliteness that does nothing to improve his already dark mood. Since Lady Estelle Lamarr is a good friend of Maria, his conduct confirms what she has heard. Readers of Regency romances will recognize that these two are destined for each other, despite this unpromising start, but the journey is not easy. ‘Sometimes one’s prejudices and preconceptions were more enjoyable to cling to than inconvenient facts that pointed in a different direction,’ she ruefully acknowledges.

The second plot strand unravels two related mysteries. Why did Justin’s father banish him?

What caused the alienation between Maria and her other relatives? The healing process necessary to restore harmony is not without risk, since it requires painful honesty, genuine regret, understanding and forgiveness, qualities as uncommon then as now.

This is part of the Westcott series set in Regency England, but the insight and

wisdom are more relevant than ever. Highly recommended.

Ray Thompson

BETRAYAL ON THE BOWERY Kate Belli, Crooked Lane, 2021, $27.99/ C$36.99, hb, 336pp, 9781643857589

Genevieve Stewart, society page writer/ part-time sleuth, stands on a New York City dock watching her recently married friends— Esmie and Rupert, the Lord Umberland— depart for their honeymoon in Europe. But a scream erupts from the ship, and Genevieve knows it came from Esmie’s stateroom.

Standing beside her is her romantic foil and investigative partner, Daniel McCaffrey, and without hesitation, he bolts up the gangplank with Genevieve in tow. In Esmie’s room, they find Esmie’s former suitor, Marcus Dalrymple, dead on the floor.

What follows is a complicated mystery that draws Genevieve and Daniel back into the darker recesses of New York’s crime syndicates. Esmie and Rupert are remanded to Esmie’s home by a police detective, Aloysius Longstreet, who loathes the aristocracy and has a sore spot for Daniel. A mysterious coin found in Marcus’ pocket leads Daniel and Genevieve to a seedy Bowery brothel called Boyle’s Suicide Tavern—made legendary by deaths upstairs. Added to Marcus’s death is a side job for a wealthy sugar magnate whose daughter has run away from home. Soon, the tangled web of deceit and retribution ensnares Genevieve and Daniel as they inch closer to unraveling dark plots.

Belli (Deception by Gaslight) relies on a few plot conveniences to move the story forward, but the interactions between Genevieve and Daniel elevate the story; can their love for each other survive a mysterious house and gangsters out for their lives? Gilded Age New York is drawn in all its grim nastiness counterposed against the glamour of the Astor 400 set. A satisfactory mystery with enough plot twists to keep the reader guessing.

Bryan Dumas

THE BRIGHTEST STAR IN PARIS Diana Biller, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2021, $17.99/ C$22.99, pb, 387pp, 9781250297877

1878 Paris. Amelie St. James has more than one battle to fight. Though she has risen to prima ballerina status with the Paris Opera Ballet, she must face her body’s decline through the continual abuse of dance. Her many falls and subsequent injuries have led to her life of constant pain. Her former love, Benedict, returns to Paris from America, and their encounter triggers a host of memories about their past relationship and promises dashed. When a dead man appears in her dressing room, she must rely on the ghosts of former dancers, which guide her to the

mystery’s answer and also to her future beyond the theater world.

This well-researched novel thrusts the reader into Paris when the opera ballet was at its height; descriptions of people, places, and things shine. The author lures us into Amelie’s wounded self, her dealings with grief and loss, and the mountain she faces when encountering Honoré de Lavel, her mother’s ex-lover and the father of her sister Honorine.

(He had given her mother syphilis, which has caused her death.) Amidst all the unfolding scenes, Benedict appears a calm foil for the chaotic life in which Amelie attempts to grasp the truth amidst the pain.

The novel’s strength lies in the depiction of opera ballet life and the physical pain that inhabits a career dancer’s body. The love story is well drawn, and the characters seem realistic. But the ghosts detract from the story substance, because they draw the reader’s attention from Amelie’s quest through their continual shape-shifting. Also, at times, the backstory chapters take the reader away from the ongoing narrative. Yet overall, the novel succeeds in its presentation of ballet life in the Belle Époque.

Gini Grossenbacher

THE WASTREL’S DAUGHTERS Arabella Brown, Independently published, 2021, $12.99, pb, 268pp, 9798736315444

In Regency Harrogate, sisters Polly and Anne Selby have been left in precarious circumstances by their father’s improvidence.

Even the house they live in must pay a gambling debt. Polly is practical and sharpwitted, protective of her younger sister, but at over thirty no longer considered marriageable (there are shades of Anne Elliot here). Both women must seek work, and as gentlewomen this means as a lady’s companion and as a governess. Both are in different ways vulnerable, one to the imperiousness of her employer (who though initially reminiscent of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, with appropriate management, turns out to be tough but likeable) and the other to the predatory approaches of her pupils’ father.

Brown writes elegant, sprightly, frequently funny prose, as in ‘Hector turned entirely around, since the height of his shirt-points made it impossible to move his head without lopping half-an-inch off his earlobes.’ Her historical research is impeccable, not just in what people wore, but what music they heard and played, and what they read (I shall follow up on some of the less wellknown Maria Edgeworth novels). There are apparent homages to Jane Austen (Mr. Hallam’s mother has much of the silliness of Mrs. Bennet) without the book being remotely derivative, yet it also has a darker tinge: Hallam considers rebuilding his fortune by managing a Jamaican plantation, whilst kind Mr. Ledsham makes his money from coal but chooses to live where the air is cleaner.

Light shines where one might not expect

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to find it; redemption for one character comes via the proprietor of a spunging-house. The atmosphere of the book also recalls Cranford, with its kindness of neighbours and friends, along with everyone knowing everyone else’s business. This is an enchanting novel and a joy to read.

Katherine Mezzacappa

SOMEONE WANTON HIS WAY COMES Christi Caldwell, Montlake, 2021, $12.95, pb, 335pp, 9781542021395

In this first series volume, Clayton Kearsley, the Viscount St. John, is furious when his best friend betrays Lady Sylvia, the wife Clayton set him up with. Three years later, the viscount investigates the group that 1820s London society is calling the Wantons and finds the widowed Sylvia has, somewhat by accident, convened a Mismatch Society of women dedicated to abolishing the institution of loveless marriage. Feelings renew, but these otherwise mature and sensible characters have heavy emotional baggage: Clayton is burdened by guilt and the belief he’ll die young, while Sylvia was burned by her marriage and dreadful goings-on among her husband’s family. The antics of their separate families and the Mismatch Society provide amusing diversions while Sylvia righteously insists, Clayton blunders, and Sylvia’s in-laws play the villain’s role.

The manifold premises and several tropes somewhat crowd the emotional arc, leaving the scenes of intimacy feeling rushed, and the prose style is occasionally overladen and awkward. Women’s rights for 1820s London align very much with modern values. But the lively humor and dramatic action, appealing secondary characters, and feminist theme make for an enjoyable read. The echoes of previous books as well as setup for the Wantons series will keep Caldwell’s fans hooked.

Misty Urban

THE COTILLION BRIGADE Glen Craney, Brigid’s Fire Press, 2021, $18.99, pb, 399pp, 9780996154116

The Cotillion Brigade is an historical novel that sweeps you into the bloodiest conflict fought in the USA—the Civil War. The story is told from the perspectives of a Southern belle from LaGrange, Georgia, and a Union military officer directed to burn a stake deep into the heart of the Confederacy.

The novel begins in 1856 when Nannie Colquitt Hill makes 28

her debut in antebellum society. She is not a demure belle but a single-minded, intelligent woman who defies Southern gentility by forming a women’s militia to defend her hometown. To the north, a farm boy, Hugh LaGrange, joins an Abolitionist crusade to ban slavery and later enlists in the First Wisconsin Cavalry to fight for the Union. Plunged into the maelstrom of brutal warfare, they finally meet in a climactic confrontation at war’s end.

Author Glen Craney masterfully captures the essence of Nannie and Hugh through dialogue and multilayered scenes foreshadowing how the story will end. The narration alternates between the two characters, chapter by chapter, as the war approaches and then progresses into bloody battles. One of the aspects that I enjoyed most is how each character considers previous historical events to make decisions. As with most wars, Nannie and Hugh adamantly believe in their causes, but the realities of death and destruction ultimately challenge their humanity and forever change them. Yet, even in the darkest moments, moments of compassion rise above the cruelty of war. The story reflects the author’s impeccable research and passion for the subject.

The Cotillion Brigade will appeal to readers who enjoy reading poignant, characterdriven Civil War stories that will resonate in their minds long after finishing them. Highly recommended.

Linnea Tanner

DAUGHTER OF THE SHIPWRECK Lora Davies, Bookouture, 2021, $10.99/£8.99, pb, 325pp, 9781800195905

Mercy Whitworth, a nineteen-year-old orphan, arrives in London in 1820 to live with her recently deceased’s guardian’s cousin, Dr. Stephens, and his wife, Catherine. The servants look askance at her, and she thinks it’s because she’s Black—which is a positive for Catherine, an indefatigable campaigner for abolition.

Mercy’s assumptions will be challenged over and over in her new home.

Daughter of the Shipwreck moves along at a nice pace, and the characters are welldeveloped. It felt a little odd to backtrack through time at the second part of the book; it might have been more effective to have them parallel through the story, although that potentially would have spoiled a plot twist (which is a bit exposed by the publisher’s summary). Once the two stories sync up in time, the novel is at its most effective.

A lovely aspect of the story is that most of the characters are not what they seem on first acquaintance. Davies is adept at making her characters human, with traits that both attract and repel, and resist easy answers.

The novel does an excellent job of showing how Blackness was equated with slavery and how insidious the practice of slavery was, with people from all walks of life being affected or involved in it. Davies also explores how class and markers of class also play into bias in an effective way. Well-plotted and enjoyable,

REVIEWS | Issue 98, November 2021

Daughter of the Shipwreck is an adventure to check out.

Jodi McMaster

CHARMING ARTEMIS Sarah M. Eden, Covenant, 2021, $16.99, pb, 277pp, 9781524418069

The Regency romance Charming Artemis is pure escapism. Set in 1818 England, the novel revolves around an upper-crust young man and woman who initially detest each other but gradually resolve their animosity.

Eden is a best-selling author of many prior novels dealing with the families of our protagonists, Artemis Lancaster and Charlie Jonquil. If one isn’t familiar with the characters, keeping them straight is confusing. Artemis and Charlie, forced to marry, both have serious Daddy Issues. Artemis pines for a kind man who befriended her as a lonely child. Charlie, whose saintly father died when he was a tot, feels bereft of paternal guidance.

Artemis’s obsession with a missing father figure strains credulity, as does the saccharine nature of the star-crossed lovers. (Charlie is so considerate, he even brings daily flowers to his grumpy bride.) Furthermore, recalling Jane Austen, “It is a truth universally acknowledged” that a story is only as compelling as its antagonist. Here there’s no villain, only an obnoxious seducer easily dispatched by the Jonquil brothers. Charlie and Artemis’s repartee and a realistically portrayed Georgian milieu will keep those pages turning.

Carol C. Strickland

STRONGHEART Jim Fergus, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2021, $17.99, pb, 385pp, 9781250303677

Strongheart, the third and final novel in Fergus’s One Thousand White Women trilogy, deepens and shades the well-known horrors of genocide and land theft unleashed against Native American tribes.

This series imagines a benighted attempt in 1873 by President Grant to “civilize the Indians.” In this bizarre deal, one thousand white women from penitentiaries and asylums were handed over to warriors from Cheyenne and other tribes in exchange for one thousand horses. Some of these women did assimilate, finding comfort, meaning, and sometimes love in their forced unions. Most found themselves trapped between two cultures, alienated from both.

After the Battle of Little Big Horn, May Dodd and Molly McGill help create Strongheart, an egalitarian warrior society seeking both revenge against white men and a new home where they can find peace. There’s also a handsome, partComanche cowboy, Chance, with whom May has a romance. The novel builds on imagined narratives, as journals of the fictional Molly and May are passed down to a descendant, Molly Standing Bear, who gives them to an editor and his son. Readers new to the series may have a rough start with these layers of narrative and multiple characters, many of

whom have both European and tribal names and extensive backstories. Stilted dialogue and self-conscious dialect are problems.

Once acclimated, however, readers will find an action-packed saga of raids, escapes, subterfuges and conflicting loyalties. The backdrop is systemic abuse of women, starting from incarceration to forced marriage, rape, infanticide, and loss of homeland. Yet the Strongheart women persist, forming powerful bonds, exacting rough justice and building sturdy self-respect despite overwhelming odds.

Readers who can overlook the flaws in Strongheart will find a unique view of the complex impacts of westward expansion on both white and tribal women.

Pamela Schoenewaldt

ARROWOOD AND THE MEETING HOUSE MURDERS Mick Finlay, HQ, 2021, £8.99/$12.99, pb, 433pp, 9780008324551

The fourth instalment of Mick Finlay’s Arrowood series deals with some very sensitive topics, as Barnett and his guv’nor are tasked with protecting a group of Africans of the amaQwabe tribe. The men and women have been contracted as performing Zulus

by Capaldi, a nefarious showman, and are desperate to escape his clutches. Seeking refuge in the Quaker meeting house, the detectives think their charges are safe but, when one of the Africans and a member of the Quaker community are murdered and the other Africans are taken, Arrowood and Barnett realise that there is more to this mystery than first appears.

This book is filled with characters from London’s underworld of freak shows, docklands, greasy pubs and casual violence, alcohol, and desperation. Alongside this narrative is that of Arrowood’s floundering marriage and the plague of illness that ripped through Victorian London’s poor, particularly the children. Each book in the series features an individual mystery and so can be enjoyed as a stand-alone, but reading them as a series will give the reader an insight into the world and the characters of the series, especially the development of Barnett and Arrowood and their relationship.

A wonderful insight into the prejudices and cruelty of the Victorian era and essential reading for fans of historical crime authors such as Laura Shepherd-Robinson, Ambrose Parry and Antonia Hodgson.

Lisa Redmond

THE SECRET CHILD Lynne Francis, Piatkus, 2021, £9.99, pb, 360pp, 9780349424620

This novel is about Molly, who begins her marriage to Charlie with a dark secret. The emotional turmoil she experienced haunts her throughout her married life and continues

to her present day, when a young man called George Smith, whose story is much too connected to hers, arrives on the Woodchurch Manor estate in Kent where they live, looking for work after a career in the Navy.

The author conjures 1814 Kent accurately and embeds her characters successfully in that time. She describes the divide between the upper class and the working class and highlights their different social problems.

For example, the working-class men of Kent are worried that they will be press-ganged into the Royal Navy to work as sailors for the goods trade. If they are captured, they have no way of warning their friends and family what has happened to them. Alternatively, the upper class have a choice to go into the Navy, but they are restricted to who they can marry because of familial obligations. The women also have a different life: if they are not married by twenty, they are considered a spinster. Overall, the author successfully paints a life that is fraught with individual difficulties, and it is up to the characters she creates to overcome their problems or take ownership of them.

Clare Lehovsky

THE LOST NOTEBOOK OF ÉDOUARD MANET Maureen Gibbon, W.W. Norton, 2021, $17.95, pb, 336pp, 9780393867152

At 51 years old, Manet died too young of the ravages of syphilis. Today major galleries and collectors revere his paintings, sketches and signed lithographs. To many, he showed the way from idealized realism to impressionism.

This intimate first-person account details the last three years of Manet’s life (1880-83).

Gibbon tells his story through a fictional journal that he gives to a maid on one of his last days. Eleven real Manet sketches add visual context.

The core of the journal covers Manet’s race to keep painting while the disease disables him more and more, with no cure in sight. Along the way, his reflections touch on everything from a colorful salamander found in the garden to his plans for the next stunning painting of a client or a series of paintings on Parisian women.

He describes how he manages to keep toiling through mounting pain and debilitations. He writes of past loves, friends, clients, models, and earlier adventures. Manet comes across as deeply insightful with no regrets, no selfpity, and as always obsessed to sketch and paint any subject that interests him. He finishes some of his finest creations during this brutally hard time, including probably his most popular piece, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère.

The first-person notebook allows intimacy but does have limitations. We must rely on Manet to describe accurately how others view him and his work. His journal entries are too clean, lyrical, and grammatically perfect for anyone’s private notes, particularly for someone in pain and often medicated.

However, the novel is a deeply felt and honest

portrait of one of the great painters of his or any generation.

G. J. Berger

LOVE, THEODOSIA Lori Anne Goldstein, Arcade, 2021, $26.99, hb, 380pp, 9781950994090

First, a confession: I’ve never seen Hamilton, and haven’t heard the song that inspired this novel. But I have heard of Aaron Burr’s captivating daughter Theodosia, who in 1800 was 17 years old, beautiful, and extensively and highly educated. At a time when most girls received very little in the way of schooling, this set Theodosia apart from her contemporaries; her main emotional bond was with her father.

While Aaron Burr loved his daughter in his own self-absorbed fashion, he also regarded her as a valuable playing piece in his game: politics. In 1800, a Presidential election was being held, with both Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr as candidates (others were running, but only Jefferson and Burr really counted). At that time, the candidate with the most votes became President, the runnerup became Vice President. Burr is bitterly determined to be President at any cost, even that of his daughter. Burr needs the Southern states behind him to win, and he needs the unpleasant and secretly brutal Joseph Alston of South Carolina to bring him those states.

This means Theodosia must marry Alston—a man she despises. Worse, Theodosia is in love with Philip, son of her father’s greatest political enemy, Alexander Hamilton.

While the novel’s got a great plot, and fascinating information about the politics of the young United States, the tone can be uneven. Some of the dialogue is very modern, and Theodosia sometimes seems rather snobbish—which of course is due to her raising as Princess Over-educated by her arrogant father. But I enjoyed reading it, since the only other novel I know of that features Theodosia Burr came out in 1941 (My Theodosia by Anya Seton). I’m glad to see Theodosia once again step forward from the historical shadows to tell her own story.

India Edghill

THE SECOND PERSON FROM PORLOCK Dennis Hamley, Fairlight Books, 2021, £14.99, pb, 394pp, 9781914148033

1824. In London, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, now in his fifties and totally addicted to opium, sits by his seriously ill son, Derwent, and reflects on his life; his failed marriage; his broken relationship with his other son, Hartley; his wrecked friendships and his poetry, the characters of which haunt his waking and dream life.

Meanwhile, in Cambridge, George Scrivener, a sizar (this being a student who has free board and lodging but who has to work) discovers handwritten marginalia in a small book of Coleridge’s poems. Scrivener is intrigued by this ambiguous text by an

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unknown hand and believes it is speaking directly to him, although he doesn’t understand what the words mean. Scrivener desperately wants to be a poet and decides that Coleridge will be his guiding light and goes in search of answers.

At the same time in Sicily, Samuele Gambino’s father dies suddenly. At the funeral, his mother, once a renowned opera singer, admits that Samuele may in fact be the son of Coleridge, with whom she had had a short love affair. Samuele, who had hated his father, decides to go to England to find out as much about Coleridge as possible, in the hope that he is his real father, whom he can love and who will love him.

I really wanted to love this book, but in general I didn’t feel the slightest engagement with either Scrivener or Samuele. I found it hard to empathise with either of them, and their goals and motivations seemed arbitrary and sometimes ridiculous.

Marilyn Pemberton

THE CURSE OF MORTON ABBEY Clarissa Harwood, Thornfield Press, 2021, $4.99, ebook, 361pp, B097Q9TF46

Vaughan Springthorpe journeys to Morton Abbey to collect and prepare papers that will allow Sir Peter Spencer to sell his family’s residence and grounds. Though well-trained by her father, Vaughan keeps her gender, as well as the birth defect that compromises her ability to walk, secret in her correspondence with Sir Peter. 1897 England is not a time nor a place for young women to seek independence and a professional career as a solicitor.

She is met at Morton Abbey by Sir Peter’s ailing younger brother Nicholas, who is doing his best to thwart the sale of the property, and attractive gardener Joe Dixon, who lives with his mother and brother in nearby Netherton.

Vaughan soon learns why other solicitors have abandoned the job and the Abbey— keening sounds in the night, a child’s jacks and marbles left in front of the door to her room or on the stairway, books repeatedly pulled from shelves and scattered helter-skelter in the library. She also learns of the tragic deaths of two young girls—Nicholas’s daughter Frances, and Joe’s sister Dora—and notes the absence of other young girls in Netherton.

The Curse of Morton Abbey is reminiscent of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre with its moody and enigmatic Nicholas and strange nightly happenings amid the societal backdrop of the times. But while the plot seems familiar, there are enough surprises along the way to keep readers guessing and wanting to follow the feisty, headstrong Vaughan as she uncovers the truth underlying the mystery and navigates life on her own terms.

K. M. Sandrick

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RULES FOR HEIRESSES Amalie Howard, Sourcebooks Casablanca, 2021, $8.99, pb, 288pp, 9781728217222

Antigua, West Indies, 1864. Lady Ravenna Huntley, unwed sister to the Duke of Embry, is in trouble. As usual. She is disguised as a man, but after she is threatened with jail for cheating at cards, the situation spins out of control, and she finds herself reluctantly engaged to a former fiancé. To complicate matters, Courtland Chase wants neither a wife nor the dukedom of Ashvale which he has just inherited.

The plot, which drifts towards melodrama, is filled with popular romance motifs: the coincidences are fortunate, the threats dire, the heroine adventurous and spirited, the hero muscular and wealthy, the villain elusive and predatory, the friends loyal, the stepmother cruel, the sexual encounters frequent, graphic, and prolonged. To carry it off, authors need to make readers care enough for the characters.

Ravenna wins our admiration for her courage and enlightened attitudes; and, since he is of mixed race and the victim of prejudice and aristocratic snobbery which have undermined his self-confidence, Courtland deserves our sympathy. Insights into the psychological impact of childhood trauma and racist attitudes in the era are illuminating, but though well suited, the couple take a frustratingly long time to accept their good fortune. Uneven.

Ray Thompson

RESCUING HER HEART Cindy Ervin Huff, Smitten Historical Romance, 2021, $14.99, pb, 301pp, 9781645263197

Kansas, 1870. Delilah McLain is freed from a hellish life as an abused mail-order bride when Lemont James dies in the house fire he caused.

Rancher, preacher, and Civil War veteran Jed Holt finds “Dee” hiding in her barn and brings her back to his family’s ranch. She assists with housework and child care. Dee is terrified of men, but the healing support of Jed and his large extended family helps her get past her fear. Jed has his own demons. The family lost much in the Civil War, and he suffered greatly in a prisoner-of-war camp. The trauma still follows him.

The busy plot has many characters and unexpected twists. As the story progresses, Dee becomes part of both the town and church communities. She starts a baking business in a bid for independence. Her parents move out West, and an unexpected new character appears. Dee has crucial decisions to make as a mystery deepens and criminals threaten.

Fans of sweet religious romance might like this.

Elizabeth Knowles

THE BOOK OF SKULLS David Hutchinson, Flying Sheep Publishing, 2020, £7.99, pb, 247pp, 9781838028022

The Book of Skulls, book one in the Doctresses series, is a delightfully unconventional historical mystery set in 1875 Edinburgh. It is the first in a series about two ‘doctresses,’ Liz Moliette and Amulya Patel, the only female students at the

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Edinburgh Medical School, who become close friends.

Interestingly, both Liz and Amulya are women of colour, though with very different socioeconomic backgrounds. Liz, the lead protagonist, is an orphan of uncertain ethnicity raised in London. Hard work, perseverance, and plenty of luck enable her to join the Edinburgh Medical School and soon become assistant to surgeon Dr Florian Blyth.

A series of grisly murders embroil Florian and Liz in the investigation led by Inspector Macleod and the murky worlds of the Edinburgh Asylum, alienists, and phrenology.

Danger threatens Liz as she also begins to uncover her own family secrets. Both mysteries keep readers engaged till resolution.

Amulya, who is from a wealthy Indian family, prefers a career over marriage. Despite providing Liz financial and moral support, she remains a shadowy secondary figure.

Little is revealed about her personal journey, e.g., finding accommodation, adjusting to a blander non-vegetarian diet (Patels are usually vegetarian), and dressing differently. Positively, her way of speaking is not caricatured, and she highlights the universality of gender inequities.

She’s also shown providing professional advice following a murder at the Burry Man Festival which she attends with journalist Hector Findlay.

Hopefully, the next book reveals more about Amulya and numerous others who either oppose or help the women, and feature in interesting subplots. The narrative highlights inequities linked to gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and sexuality convincingly without being too true-to-life for contemporary sensibilities. Hutchinson’s sketches, descriptions of Edinburgh, Scottish festivities and words add colour.

Despite requiring occasional suspension of disbelief and some anachronisms, the book inspires me to read any sequels.

Indrani Ganguly

THE DICKENS BOY Thomas Keneally, Atria, 2021, $28.00, hb, 399pp, 9781982169145 / Sceptre, 2021, £8.99, pb, 400pp, 9781529345100

In 1868, Edward Dickens, the tenth, ne’erdo-well child of the famous author, emigrates to Australia at age sixteen to learn the sheep business.

Talk about great expectations and a name he can’t live up to: Everyone he meets seems to have memorized his father’s works and supposes he’s done the same, when, in fact, he’s never read a word.

From this ingenious premise, Keneally

spins a delightful, often hilarious, wideranging coming-of-age novel. You have the usual themes, such as sexual awakening, learning to adjust abstract morals to real-life circumstances, and how to judge another person in his or her fullness, allowing for imperfections. To that, add what it means to be a family outcast in a country settled by outcasts.

Young Dickens adapts rapidly, perhaps conveniently, but you have to admire his insistence that he has none of his father’s gifts, which stands in for the wish to be taken as his own man. He has doubts about who that man is, but he derives warmth and satisfaction from people saluting his individuality—welcome to the democracy of the outback. Even when the story turns harsh, even murderous, kindness isn’t far away. That’s another theme, whether humans are innately evil with occasional good impulses, or good with occasional evil ones.

Keneally celebrates the frontier ethic, in which a person’s deeds and capabilities often, but not always, matter more than his or her birth. As such, you can pretty much tell the good guys from the bad guys without a scorecard, and they seldom do anything to challenge the judgment; perhaps that’s Dickensian too. However, laughter levels that broad-brush approach, with a theatrical tone that Dickens himself might have admired.

A few characters could have stood more nuance, but this is a thoroughly enjoyable novel. Highly recommended.

Larry Zuckerman

PARTING THE VEIL Paulette Kennedy, Lake Union, 2021, $14.95, pb, 387pp, 9781542032117

Parting the Veil, a debut novel by Paulette Kennedy, is a gothic-noir p s yc h o l o g i c a l thriller.

Wellwritten, the novel admirably recalls Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady. Its spunky, unconventional heroine Eliza Sullivan leaves behind a traumatic past in New Orleans to make a fresh start in 1899 Victorian England. Accompanied by her level-headed half-sister, Lydia Tourant, Eliza takes possession of an inherited mansion in a hamlet outside London. It just happens to be next door to an enormous manor owned by Malcolm Winfield, Viscount Havenwood. The Havenwood ancestral mansion—half ornately impressive and half-burned and dilapidated— functions as a two-faced symbol of sinister secrets to be unearthed among the decadent aristocracy. The puzzle of double identities and motives provides subtext and drives the

plot, adding contradictions to keep the reader guessing.

What kept me involved were the twists and gradually revealed back stories of the characters. In this well-plotted novel, Eliza must sift through discrepancies and inexplicable rumors to figure out the source of family dysfunction. Romance figures vividly, as Eliza struggles to understand the many contradictions of the man to whom she’s attracted. Both haunted (yes, there’s a supernatural element) and haunting, Havenwood Manor hides dark surprises that beg to be explored. The intrepid Eliza must part the musty veil of mystery to see what’s behind the stone façade.

Carol C. Strickland

LOVE AND LAVENDER Josi S. Kilpack, Shadow Mountain, 2021, $15.99, pb, 320pp, 9781629729299

1822. One would think that her wealthy uncle’s offer to bestow upon her a substantial dowry would delight Hazel Stillman, especially since the young schoolteacher’s prospects are both limited and precarious. She, however, is offended at the idea of buying a husband who will overlook her deformed foot. Then she meets her ‘sort of cousin’ Duncan Penhale, who has been told he is ‘odd’ (on the autism spectrum, in modern parlance). He too has been offered a ‘marriage inheritance’, but acknowledges he is unlikely to be able to meet the conditions. They resume their familiar lives, though they agree to correspond by letters. But when both face a crisis, Duncan suggests that it can be resolved if they marry each other to fulfill the terms of the inheritance.

Reluctantly, she agrees but stipulates they be free to pursue their own lives separately after one year.

This is an absorbing inspirational romance, which shows two unlikely but sympathetic protagonists working their way through difficult adjustments. Fortunately, both learn to appreciate one another and to recognize that, despite the challenges, their new life together is more rewarding than their original aspirations for greater independence.

Strongly recommended.

Ray Thompson

MURDER ON PRINCIPLE Eleanor Kuhns, Severn House, 2021, $28.99/£20.99, hb, 224pp, 9780727850072

A man garbed in a bright yellow waistcoat, fawn-colored pantaloons, and red-trimmed Hessian boots is an unusual sight in the Maine woods, and the state of his body is even more so. The fashionable Mr. Randolph Gilbert lies dead, both strangled and stabbed.

In November 1800, Will Rees, weaver and amateur detective, is asked by Constable Rouge, his sometime rival, to help solve the murder, which was discovered by an elder from the nearby Shaker community. After Rees learns Mr. Gilbert’s purpose in town, he grows nervous. The man was seeking to recapture a

light-skinned young woman and her baby who fled enslavement in Virginia, and Rees and his wife, Lydia, have just returned from that state on an abolitionist mission (as recounted in Death in the Great Dismal, the previous book).

The theme explored in this sharply rendered historical mystery, tenth in series, is a powerful moral question. “If the victim is a slave catcher, well then, I say thank you to his murderer,” Rees’s friend Tobias, a free man of color, tells him, requesting that he drop the investigation. Rees’s natural inclination to pursue justice causes him internal conflict, and his Black friends may not forgive him if he succeeds. Plus, he can’t help but wonder if they themselves are guilty. Kuhns devotes close attention to fine period details, from cooking implements to rural Shaker lifeways, while the contemporary relevance of some plot aspects is unmistakable. The late Mr. Gilbert was ill with smallpox, the pestilence is quickly spreading, and Rees moves to quickly inoculate his children using a doctor’s suggested methodology. Not everyone puts their trust in science, though. The novel stands alone, though some characters’ backstories (the origin of Rees’s large, blended family, for instance) aren’t immediately obvious to newcomers. Recommended for readers enamored of early American settings.

Sarah Johnson

IF GOD WILL SPARE MY LIFE Mike Lewis, Victorina Press, 2021, £10.00, pb, 444pp, 9781838036041

Born, like his forebears, in rural Wales, William Batine Jones’s childhood was dogged by extreme poverty, by family sickness and ill-fortune. His very basic education involved an incident which blighted his young life. His propensity to make impulsive and often foolish decisions put many people against him.

Most of Will’s history is told as a firstperson narrative, interspersed with sections from the endearing and complex character of Arthur Nicolas, a young Welsh solicitor commissioned, for legal reasons, to trace Will.

Will ships to the USA, where he finds work in the ruthless world of a rapidly industrialising America. He survives the great fire of Chicago before enlisting in the Seventh Cavalry under the command of General Custer. For us, the die is cast, but Will still envisages a future with Annie, the Irish girl who, despite adversities is by now the love of his life—and he of hers.

From the saddle of his horse Will experiences the harsh splendour of the massive territory over which the cavalry is forced, endlessly, to ride. As prospects of the coming confrontation loom, conditions have become increasingly punishing for Custer’s men and their mounts.

Cruel weather and failing supplies have reduced both men and beasts to a state of exhausted starvation, rendering them totally unfit for the impending battle, the shock of which, when it comes, is brought starkly to life.

Underlying the author’s ingenious structure, his confident use of time and space,

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and his sublime storytelling, lies a powerful sense of intimacy and compassion, hooking us, without resistance, into the strength and the inevitability of Will’s history and into his increasing comprehension of himself as his maturity develops.

Mike Lewis rises triumphantly to provide a satisfying conclusion. A “not to be missed” first novel.

Julia Stoneham

AN IRISH WIFE Deborah Lincoln, Blank Slate Press, 2021, $17.95, pb, 220pp, 9781943075690

This is a love story set against the harsh reality of the immigrant experience in the late 19th century. Niamh Kilgariff leaves Ireland for what she thinks will be a new life in America.

Niamh has a husband awaiting her, an arranged marriage to Martin Gill, a cousin of her father’s and a man much older than she.

Martin is a miner in the coalfields and brings her to live in a squalid company-owned house.

The mine owners become rich, but the miners and their families live in poverty, existing on subsistence wages and facing eviction whenever work ceases. And when Martin’s mine closes and there is no pay, life becomes even worse for Niamh. Her husband begins to drink and becomes abusive.

One person who knows of Niamh’s situation is Harry Robinson, son of a prominent family in the neighboring town. He and Niamh met by accident in the woods where she often goes to find respite from her grim daily life. Harry falls in love with Niamh and wants to marry her. But she is a devout Catholic who will not leave her husband. She and Harry spend one passionate day together, and Niamh becomes pregnant.

When Martin dies in a mine accident, she believes that her sin has caused his death.

Niamh realizes that while she loves Harry, love may not be enough. The differences in their backgrounds are just too vast.

It is a heartbreaking story, but well-written and devoid of sentimentality. It’s not a fairy tale, and while the romance between Niamh and Harry seems doomed, the author teases her reader with hope for a happy ending.

Niamh must make a hard decision, choosing between love and reality. This dilemma drives the resolution of the plot and makes An Irish Wife an unforgettable love story.

Anne Leighton

THE MAD WOMEN’S BALL Victoria Mas (trans. Frank Wynne), Doubleday, 2021, £14.99, hb, 210pp, 9780857527028 / Abrams, 2021, $25.00, hb, 224pp, 9781419757594

Paris, 1885. In the Salpêtrière Asylum, sixteen-year-old Louise is roused from sleep to go to a lecture, of which she will be the subject.

As the patient of the renowned neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, she is hypnotised until she goes into a hysterical spasm, for the instruction as well as edification of the doctor’s acolytes.

In the spartan lodgings she has occupied since coming to Paris from the Auvergne, the 32

austere Geneviève Gleizes, senior nurse at the asylum, writes letters to her long-dead sister.

As preparations are underway in the asylum for the eagerly awaited Lenten costume ball, the nineteen-year-old Eugénie is brought to the asylum against her will: ‘the majority of the [female] patients have been committed by the men whose name they share.’

Geneviève recognises that her new patient is sane; the girl’s offence in the eyes of her bourgeois father is her ability to see the dead, an ability that convinces Geneviève to help her, though her doing so results in an immense personal reversion. Eugénie, put in solitary confinement, behaves initially as a lunatic is expected to behave, screaming, and smashing things; she wants to escape not just the asylum but also the restrictions of her earlier life. By contrast, the ageing Thérèse, a former prostitute, placidly knits for her younger companions. When told she is cured and can leave, she takes steps to ensure she never will, as for her the walls of the Salpêtrière provide asylum in the truest sense of the term.

The enclosed world of the hospital, its corridors, its gardens, its stultifying routines, and the absolute power of its medical staff are vividly evoked in Mas’s first novel, through Frank Wynne’s elegant translation.

Katherine Mezzacappa

THE PARIS WIFE Meghan Masterson, Bookouture, 2021, $10.99/£8.99, pb, 310pp, 9781800196902

This novel is set in Paris during 1856-1857, against the background of Italy’s push for unification. Livia Valenti, pregnant with her first child, which was clearly conceived before her marriage five months ago, arrives in Paris.

Accompanying Livia is her well-connected diplomat husband, Niccolo, who is consigned

by Italian prime minister Camillo de Cavour to persuade Napoleon to aid Italy in its fight for independence. Livia, skilled with medical knowledge gleaned from her doctor father, studies plants and herbs and, chillingly, always carries nightshade with her. Lonely and cowed by her solemn husband, whom she barely knows, Livia comes into the vibrant circle of Elisabetta, Countess of Castiglione, also sent to Paris by de Cavour to seduce the emperor, Napoleon. Although very different, the two women become fast friends and soon find themselves entangled in poison, politics, assassination attempts, and murder, whilst Livia’s ugly past chases her relentlessly. With a constant sense of foreboding, Livia’s backstory plays significantly into current events.

Gradually we learn of the reasons behind Livia and Niccolo’s strained relationship and the reason he doesn’t touch her, and the subsequent softening into mutual understanding, which gradually becomes a deep and abiding love, is poignant and engagingly told. Although the novel is fictional, many of the characters mentioned are historical but, except for Elisabetta, most famous for her pioneering artistry in photography, they hover in the background. Told in vivid prose, each chapter

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begins with a quote from Livia’s book of herbal studies. Not by accident is she named for the infamous wife of Emperor Augustus. The Paris Wife is not only an engaging read, but it also offers fascinating insight into the efficacy and toxicity of plants. Readers interested in herbal lore will not want to miss this book.

Fiona Alison

DEVIL BY THE TAIL Jeanne Matthews, D. X. Varos, 2021, $18.95, pb, 300pp, 9781941072974

Chicago, 1867. A young widow and a Confederate veteran team up to start a detective agency. Garnick, the Confederate, and Mrs. Paschal are an improbable pair.

Paschal’s real name is Quinn Sinclair, widow of the late son of a prominent Chicago family from whom she is estranged. She is fighting to claim her widow’s portion from her husband’s estate, and his family is ignoring her petition.

Garnick deals with his own personal demons, dark souvenirs of his time as a Union prisonerof-war.

Against a background of corruption, gambling, and brothels, the two attempt to solve two cases: one involving a man who says he is innocent of killing his wife and the second, of a lawyer who needs their help in establishing reasonable doubt that his newly married client killed his bride. The two have a third challenge: to discover who is trying to kill Mrs. Paschal.

Amid all this, there is a growing attraction between the two newly minted detectives. But Garnick is a laconic figure who is reluctant to express his feelings for his partner. And with her personal life in disarray, Mrs. Paschal is averse to any relationship. However, as their crime-solving progresses, so does their unlikely romance.

Matthews leaves the relationship unresolved in this book, instead providing tantalizing clues to tease the reader and subtly pave the way for a sequel. Garnick and Paschal deserve a good run in historical fiction, as Matthews has created two unforgettable characters. Her writing effortlessly combines suspense and humor, leaving the reader eagerly awaiting the next Garnick and Paschal adventure.

Anne Leighton

JOHN EYRE Mimi Matthews, Perfectly Proper Press, 2021, $16.99, pb, 362pp, 9781736080221

In 1843, John Eyre leaves his position as a schoolmaster in Lowton, England, to become a private tutor for a pair of young boys living at Thornfield Hall in Yorkshire. Beset by guilt and regret after the suicide of his friend Lady Helen Burns, and plagued by what he calls megrim headaches, John is looking forward to living and working in the remote location as well as having the chance to rekindle his passion for teaching.

Upon arrival, he is struck by oddities—the storm that always threatens but never arrives, the mists that take on ethereal shapes, the black dog legends. Particularly unusual are Stephen

and Peter, his strangely pale and silent students, and Mrs. Rochester, the peripatetic mistress of Thornfield.

This retelling of Charlotte Brontë’s classic Jane Eyre is not alone.

Other iterations have modernized the tale, transformed it into a graphic novel, offered Rochester’s perspective, or placed Jane in destinations outside of England. But in bestselling author Matthews’ hands, John Eyre offers new twists and turns.

The book provides an interesting take on the timeless tale not only by switching Jane to John and Mr. to Mrs. Rochester. It also weaves in elements of Gothic suspense and superstition.

The atmosphere is appropriately moody and disquieting. The storyline emerges gradually, building drama and tension. Characters, even minor ones, are complex and memorable.

Language is Brontë-esque, making the reader feel he or she is not just turning the pages of a knockoff but actually entering Charlotte’s world. John Eyre is a stellar addition to the Eyre family of fan fiction.

K. M. Sandrick

AND THE RIVER RAN RED Rod Miller, Five Star, 2021, $25.95, hb, 212pp, 9781432878863

Miller shines light on a sordid chapter of westward expansion in this fictionalized account of the U.S. Army’s 1863 massacre of as many as 400 Shoshonis at Bear River in what is now southern Idaho. A California detachment is sent to a desolate western post to police matters among Native Americans, wagon train settlers, and Mormons. Historical background for the army, the Indians, and the Mormons sets the scene, and the tale is told via fictionalized accounts of historical figures: Army officers, Shoshoni chiefs, and Brigham Young and his henchman Porter Rockwell.

Descriptions of the remote landscape are vivid, and the army’s mission to Bear River unfolds with a sense of foreboding. Heinous imagery of a climactic battle scene has shock value, and the outcome is unsurprising given superior numbers of soldiers armed with superior weapons. In this saga, blame for the dark moment seems to attach to all parties, though the biggest share surely lies with ruthless army officers held largely unaccountable by the political and military establishment during Civil War years. Miller, a Utah native with a dozen western novels to his credit, is also a poet and essayist.

Brodie Curtis

ABSAROKA WAR CHIEF Bryan Ney, Next Chapter, 2021, $10.99, pb, 253pp, 9798747037939

James Beckwourth’s name was in the news in 2021, when a wildfire sprang up near the California town named for him. I hadn’t heard of him before, but this book enlightened me on why a town and mountain pass were named for this African American pioneer.

Beckwourth was born into slavery, later freed by his white father. In 1820s Missouri, Beckwourth likes the idea of going west as a trapper, where he will not be required to show his emancipation papers on demand. He joins William Ashley’s expedition, although he resents not being made a partner due to his race. After winning the respect of the other mountain men, James is captured by people of the Crow nation. He learns Crow ways and becomes a leader in raiding and war parties, adapting himself to their customs, sometimes reluctantly: he tries to persuade them that certain traditions are bad, such as cutting off one’s finger when grieving. After several years with the Crow, the band’s torture of a Blackfoot captive starts James wondering whether he should return to the whites’ world.

Ney bases his tale on an 1856 interview of Beckwourth by Thomas Bonner, and provides notes correlating the two books. He compresses Beckwourth’s timeline and does not cover his later years. The notes section does not mention whether any Crow sources were consulted.

I appreciated learning about a lesserknown figure in Western history and the Crow way of life. However, Beckwourth’s appeal as a character is affected by some of his actions, like the treatment of his own Crow wives and the stealing of another man’s. But Ney notes that historically, wife-stealing was common among the Crow. Perhaps I’m guilty of judging a historical character by today’s standards, but the novel would not make my list of repeat reads.

B. J. Sedlock

DOWN A DARK RIVER Karen Odden, Crooked Lane, 2021, $26.99, hb, 336pp, 9781643858692

Set in London in 1878, this mystery novel introduces a new Scotland Yard detective— Inspector Michael Corravan. Much of this novel serves as an introduction to his complex and surprisingly introverted character. Raised in the slums of London, he is an ex-bareknuckles boxer with a knowledge not only of London and its policing but also of the River Thames, its characters, its tides, and its own criminal underworld.

The crimes he and his assistant, Stiles, face involve a series of young women found dead in small boats floating down the river. All seem to be much-loved single women of good character and good family. Until one day one of the women is found to be married and pregnant, also hurt but still alive. This is the tiny opening Corravan has been hoping for.

His hunt for the killer takes him into a wide

variety of homes inhabited by families with Victorian upper-class values, the nuances of each beautifully delineated by the author. In this, the novel is very reminiscent of those of Anne Perry. The characters are true to the time and place in every detail, and the story moves swiftly and pleasurably along to a gripping and fitting climax.

The development of the difficult but rewarding personality of Corravan is focal in this novel, and one of its most satisfying aspects. His often-uncomfortable relationship with his supervisor, Vincent, and his somewhat checkered past history on the river offer promise for future novels. He, together with his lady and his assistant, Stiles, are characters developed to be so exasperating and satisfying that the reader cannot help but hope for more.

A most pleasurable novel, impossible to put down.

Valerie Adolph

BLACK DRAGONFLY Jean Pasley, Balestier Press, 2021, $17.99/£12.99, pb, 258pp, 9781913891053

Using the main character’s own words extracted from letters, essays, and books, Pasley vividly recounts the life of wandering writer Lafcadio Hearn.

At age four, he is orphaned by his Greek mother, followed by his Irish father, and left with a stern aunt.

Hearn never found acceptance or belonging growing up. He travels to the United States, the West Indies, and eventually to Japan as a newspaper correspondent. While there, he discovers more than just a story: he also finds hope that perhaps he’s finally found a home.

Pasley explores the beauty of late 19thcentury Japanese culture with elegant brushstrokes. Utilizing Hearn’s curiosity and sense of wonder, the author examines Japanese ideologies. Hearn struggles to look beyond his Western mindset in order to reconcile vastly different concepts of living.

While attending his class on Greek and English literature, the Japanese students are perplexed. They find it incomprehensible to read about characters who are motivated by passion and self-preservation instead of by family and duty.

The narrative isn’t always linear as Hearn reflects back on his life while his viewpoints change. However, the different time points flow smoothly from one moment to the next.

Hearn is not always the most likeable person, but the influence of those around him bring about his growth. The interactions with his wife are highlights of the novel. She shares

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Japanese stories and explains why her culture sees things as they do with her husband. As a daughter of a fallen samurai clan, the contrast between her life and his (particularly when it comes to family) is compellingly explored.

Hearn’s viewpoints are shaken up in such a way that perhaps he can find peace. The landscape Pasley recreates is picturesque and immersive.

Overall, Lafcadio Hearn’s journey into a disappearing culture is both enlightening and heartfelt. Recommended.

J. Lynn Else

NOT THE KIND OF EARL YOU MARRY Kate Pembrooke, Forever, 2021, $8.99/C$12.99, pb, 368pp, 9781538703755

Miss Charlotte Hurst is enjoying a tranquil breakfast with her brother when the Earl of Norwood bursts in and demands an explanation for the announcement of their betrothal in the newspaper. Angered at his arrogant assumption that she is responsible for an attempt to trap a man of fortune and title into marriage, she not only denies it, but informs him that she is “more interested in the content of a man’s character than the contents of his purse… you’re not a man I would ever choose to marry.”

Readers familiar with Pride and Prejudice will recognize immediately that these two are destined to fall in love and wed, but of course the challenge is to make this process both credible and entertaining. Pembrooke succeeds. To avoid a scandal which would damage the reputation of both parties, Charlotte reluctantly agrees to a temporary betrothal, but as they spend time together, the couple discover attractive qualities in each other and increasingly their feelings become engaged. Marriage prospects are derailed when the villain strikes again with the threat of blackmail, but the pair rise to the challenge and earn the happy outcome. Warmly recommended.

Ray Thompson

MURDER AT THE ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS Andrea Penrose, Kensington, 2021, $26.00/ C$35.00/£21.00, hb, 368pp, 9781496732507

This is the fifth book in Penrose’s series of Regency mysteries featuring the Earl of Wrexford, a brilliant scientist, and his betrothed, Lady Charlotte Sloane, who has a secret identity as the satirical artist A. J. Quill.

At their first outing as an engaged couple, a gala banquet at the Royal Botanic Gardens, the discovery of the body of a visiting botanist disturbs the festivities. A trace of white powder on the victim’s lips shows that the man was murdered, just as he was about to announce the momentous discovery of a cure for malaria.

Wrexford and Charlotte, with the help of Charlotte’s two wards, the delightful street urchins Raven and Hawk, investigate the crime and find themselves caught up in a web of 34

intrigue involving several villainous characters.

The plot thickens when an old enemy shows up. Will our two protagonists solve the crime so their wedding can take place?

Penrose’s series is very enjoyable and is best read in order so the reader can see how the main characters’ relationship develops.

Wrexford and Charlotte are opposites in many ways. He relies on science and logic, while she uses her intuition. A powerful attraction develops in spite of their differences. Each volume focuses on a different aspect of Regency science, and here Penrose explores botany and medicinal plants. Another delight of the series is its secondary characters. These include Wrexford’s friend Sheffield, who appears to be an empty-headed wastrel but who is really quite intelligent and courageous.

He has an on-again, off-again romance with the mathematician Lady Cordelia. Various members of Charlotte’s estranged family also appear, including her great-aunt Alison and her brother Hartley. Throughout the book, Charlotte is apprehensive about her reunion with her family. I am looking forward to seeing where Penrose will take her protagonists next.

Vicki Kondelik

A CHRISTMAS LEGACY Anne Perry, Ballantine, 2021, $21.00, hb, 208pp, 9780593159392 / Headline, 2021, £16.99, hb, 208pp, 9781472275127

Gracie Tellman, former maid to Charlotte and Thomas Pitt, is enjoying her home and family in Victorian-era London and looking forward to Christmas with her daughter, Charlie, when a knock sounds at the door. Millie, a young maid in the Harcourt household, has come with disturbing news.

High-quality food is disappearing, and it won’t be long before the mistress of the house finds out. The servants are scared that somebody will be accused of theft, and nobody knows the culprit. Gracie decides to take Millie’s place for nine days leading up to Christmas in order to solve this mystery. Gracie soon learns that all is not as it seems, and reveals that sometimes evil can parade about in fancy clothes.

This satisfying Christmas novella combines mystery, suspicion, upheaval, acts of kindness, and a Christmas miracle together to create a captivating story. The perils of servant life in a Victorian household are well described, and the young age of some of the servants at the time is shocking. The rich also had the ability in those days to completely ruin the lives of their servants by sending them to the street, homeless, with no reference. The fact that some homeowners held this power over the heads of those in their employ in order to terrorize them is disturbing. But despite the tumult, a sense of truth, loyalty, and fairness is also woven into the story, and it ends with a miracle so wonderful that it could only happen at Christmas. Anne Perry has once again created a Christmas tale that will captivate the reader and transport them straight to Victorian London during the holidays.

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Bonnie DeMoss

CALISTA Laura Rahme, Independently published, 2021, $11.99, pb, 317pp, 9798728861942

Berkshire, 1848. Inspector Maurice Leroux arrives at Alexandra Hall to investigate a series of unexplained deaths: first of Calista herself, a Greek peasant girl married to Aaron, a trained doctor obsessed with the work of Anton Mesmer; Aaron himself; his embittered sister Vera; and a servant girl. A portrait of Calista hangs on the stairs. A sinister housekeeper appears devoted to her memory, in an echo of Daphne du Maurier’s Mrs Danvers, the other servants, almost exclusively Irish escapees from the Famine, don’t want to talk. The house and its inhabitants dislodge in Leroux memories he, too, would rather forget.

Rahme’s novel has shades of magical realism, and works also in the crime genre but is more than anything a gothic mystery, with unexplained sounds and smells in closed rooms, eyes at keyholes, rattled door handles, a terrifying visage glimpsed at an upstairs window, and awful secrets in a locked cellar.

Rahme references not just Mesmer but the groundbreaking marine scientist Jeanne Villepreux-Power and Georges Cuvier, and her inspiration includes Jules Verne, H. P. Lovecraft, and H. G. Wells. There are passages which are genuinely terrifying and others that are moving, although the text would have benefited from a tighter proofread to pick up lapses like ‘formerly’ for ‘formally’, ‘remnant’ for ‘revenant’ and anachronisms like ‘bullshit.’ Leroux’s point of view is obscured by explicatory flashbacks which might more neatly have been expressed through a journal or correspondence, allowing the reader instead to unravel the mystery alongside him.

Alexandra Hall is repeatedly referred to as Georgian, though with its ‘narrow stainedglass windows’ and Renaissance coffered ceilings, it must be more Fonthill Abbey than Chiswick House. All in all, though, this novel delivers a genuine chill to the spine and is best not read in an empty house.

Katherine Mezzacappa

THE PICKWICK MURDERS Heather Redmond, Kensington, 2021, $26.00, hb, 336pp, 9781496734280

Twenty-three-year-old Charles Dickens can hardly believe his luck in January 1836 when he receives an invitation to join the exclusive Lightning Club. Excited, he arrives at his induction, only to be plunged into a basement labyrinth, where he discovers the murdered body of Samuel Pickwick, the club’s president.

Realizing he’s been set up, Dickens can do nothing but claim his innocence even as he’s booked into Newgate Prison to await trial.

Meanwhile, his fiancée, Katherine Hogarth, begins receiving a series of cryptic letters that send her chasing all over London and the surrounding countryside in hopes of finding and proving who framed Dickens. Each letter comes with a deadline for finding the next, and

failure could mean injury—or worse—to her imprisoned fiancé.

Redmond adeptly immerses the reader into late-Georgian London in the dead of winter.

From the infamous London fog to the types of food vendors common on the streets to the grimy, bleak world of Newgate Prison, the atmospheric details plunge the reader into Dickens’s world. The characters are all fully fleshed-out and unique, and readers will enjoy seeing several historical figures besides Dickens and Hogarth.

This book, however, is likely best enjoyed by readers familiar with the first three in the series.

There are several unexplained references to events from previous novels which, while not vital, would have been helpful to understand.

The unveiling of a villain in the last quarter of the novel falls a bit flat without knowing about this character, who must have appeared in previous books.

The Pickwick Murders is a solid, workmanlike book, but it will be best enjoyed as part of its series rather than as a standalone.

Sarah Hendess

THE MYSTERY OF THE SORROWFUL MAIDEN Kate Saunders, Bloomsbury, 2021, £16.99, hb, 315pp, 9781408866924

Laetitia Rodd is a private detective valued for her common sense, ability to view the dead without screaming, and her nose for a solution to a mystery. The character is prim and proper as befits the widow of a clergyman, which leads to some humour when she is faced with some interesting situations and people. She wants to be unflappable and world-weary but cannot help but be shocked or disturbed by the manners and behaviour of some characters she encounters.

The year is 1853, and Mrs Rodd has been called into the theatre to resolve some financial issues between a thespian couple, Mr and Mrs Transome. Shades of King Lear abound, as the couple have three daughters who, between them, have and are causing all manner of problems. Complications become deadly when a body is discovered in the ruins of the burnt down theatre. This is a thoroughly enjoyable tale which keeps the reader entertained and intrigued. It is the third in a series but can be read as a stand-alone.

The first one is The Secrets of Wishtide. and I am definitely planning to seek this out so I can start from the beginning.

Ann Northfield

THE DEAD CRY JUSTICE Rosemary Simpson, Kensington, 2021, $26.00/ C$35.00/£21.00, hb, 304pp, 9781496733344

As we are reminded by 19th-century photographer Jacob Riis’s zealous documentation of the slums, the plight of destitute children is painful to observe, no more so in the 19th-century than today, and the exploitation of vulnerable girls who are abducted and trafficked into addiction and

prosecution may sadly never be eradicated.

As the saying goes, “you can get anything you want in New York City.” In The Dead Cry Justice, Simpson’s passion for her subject highlights a particularly brutal and distasteful side of this ‘industry’.

Readers of the series will be familiar with private agents, Prudence MacKenzie, a wellknown heiress, and Geoffrey Hunter, an ex-Pinkerton. After finding a young brother and sister hiding in the law school basement, Prudence takes them to her friend, Dr Sloan, at the Friends (Quaker) Refuge. Not only are they filthy and starving, but the girl is also clearly very ill and may not recover. After some early enquiries, Prudence receives an unidentified parcel containing a porcelain doll, which bears a resemblance to the girl.

But the children unexpectedly disappear overnight, and Prudence and Geoffrey are left with a search through the deadly streets of the Five Points, leading them to an exclusive cabal catering to the most expensive and depraved tastes in sexual congress with minors.

One of many books featuring female sleuths, this one stands out. Simpson has clearly done copious research. Time and place are well-observed, the narrative is moving and immersive. Characters are true to type, diverse, and carry the racing narrative through to its conclusion. Nellie Bly, Jay Gould’s philanthropic daughter Helen, and Jacob Riis make cameo appearances. For this sixth in a series of standalone Gilded Age mysteries, it should perhaps be noted that details of the girls’ ordeal are very graphic, but it’s a terrific read and noteworthy for its important historical content.

of the Eastern Dakota tribe. She is a proud member of her tribe and struggles to accept the changes forced upon her by white men.

Oenikika’s father has returned from Washington, DC, after talks with Abraham Lincoln. The tribe must move to a reservation.

In exchange for the loss of their hunting and gathering lands, and way of life, they will receive annual compensation in gold and supplies. They are forced onto increasingly smaller lands, and the promised gold and provisions do not arrive. They are starving.

The fear, hatred, and conflict between the native people and settlers escalate. As the tribe’s patience runs out and the desperation for food escalates, disaster is inevitable. The result is a massacre of hundreds of white settlers with a revengeful public hanging of 38 Dakota Sioux men, the largest mass execution in U.S. history.

The Native Americans’ unity with nature and the land that sustains them is told in lyrical language. The author acknowledges that she is non-Native. Her goal was to gain understanding of the complexities on both sides, and acknowledge the many wrongs that occurred. She accomplishes this goal. This extraordinary novel is thought-provoking and heartbreaking, and should be read by all.

Fiona Alison

A prank gone awry changes lives in this delightful Regency romance. In her first Season, beautiful Celia Trent became a pawn in the Duke of Dowden’s cruel society games; the scandal sheets dubbed her “Lady Infamous.” Now facing poverty due to her father’s gaming debts, Celia agrees to Dowden’s demand to create a particularly brutal “joke”—a note that goes astray and results in the forced marriage of wallflower Phyllida Singleton and highly desirable Viscount Redvers.

When Society discovers that Lady Infamous has gone far too far, Celia’s forced by lack of both money and reputation to change her name and take a position as an elderly lady’s companion. Unfortunately, one Christmas Celia’s employer is invited to Viscount Redvers’ country seat for the holiday, and, there, events take a series of twists and turns that may lead to justice and love, or to utter ruin when everyone’s darkest secrets are exposed.

Perfect for fans of Bridgerton, Infamous is also a charming story for Christmas. In fact, I enjoyed Infamous so much that when I was halfway through it, I ordered the author’s first novel, Dangerous. I look forward to reading much more of Minerva Spencer’s work.

DOVETAILS IN TALL GRASS Samantha Specks, SparkPress, 2021, $16.95, pb, 310pp, 9781684630936

The personal stories of two young women representing c l a s h i n g cultures, white settlers and Native Americans, are told in two viewpoints. We meet Emma Heard and Oenikika in the months leading up to the Dakota-Sioux War in 1862 and see the tragic impact of the war’s aftermath on their lives. Emma’s family has settled near the town of New Ulm, Minnesota, along with other settlers lured west by promises of land by the government. Emma gains independence by helping out in her father’s law firm, and learns to see the good and bad in both sides.

Oenikika is the daughter of Chief Little Crow

Janice Ottersberg

INFAMOUS Minerva Spencer, Kensington, 2021, $15.95/£12.99, pb, 376pp, 9781496732873

India Edghill

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THE MURDERESS MUST DIE Marlie Parker Wasserman, Historia, 2021, $16.95/C$21.25, pb, 260pp, 9781953789877

Martha “Mattie” Garretson raises herself from a dirt-poor farmer’s daughter to the wife of an insurance adjuster. In between life with her abusive father and her current husband, she marries a grocery clerk and bears him a son, later adopted by another family after her husband abandons them. She keeps knowledge of her son a secret, but regrets giving him away. Now that she has a good home, she wants him to be a part of her family, but her stepdaughter, Ida, doesn’t want a brother. She has her father wrapped around her little finger, getting everything she wants while doing little things that help to drive a wedge between him and Mattie.

William Place, a widower with a young, teenage daughter, initially hires Mattie as a temporary housekeeper, but four years into their marriage realizes he made a mistake.

The revelation of her son and the fact that she squirrels away house money to give to him—a fact divulged by Ida—aggravates the situation until Mattie’s self-control snaps, and murder ensues.

This novel tells the story of the first woman executed at New York’s Sing Sing prison in 1898 and the first woman in the world to die in the electric chair. It unfolds from 29 perspectives: Mattie, William, Ida, and various relatives and people who come in contact with Mattie, such as a minister, lawyers, police, and prison personnel. While this technique has a good flow and makes a compelling narrative, readers never truly connect with Mattie, and some aspects of the murder become so cloudy it’s difficult to discern what actually takes place.

This is an intriguing examination of choices and consequences, as well as questionable investigative techniques. At the same time, Wasserman captures 19th-century life in a way that makes it easy to visualize.

Cindy Vallar

AN ENGAGEMENT OF SORTS Alene Wecker, Covenant, 2021, $14.99, pb, 223pp, 9781524417642

When her parents threaten to force her into marriage, Anne Fletcher begs for a chance to find an acceptable husband of her own choice.

It will not be an easy task, however, for though beautiful, she is awkward, headstrong, and has ignored the lessons in the etiquette considered essential for ladies of the gentry during the Regency period. Predictably, her progress is marked by a series of social misadventures, but she is lucky enough to stumble across Thomas Paling (almost literally). He finds her amusing and refreshing, and to help her out offers a false engagement that will enable her to meet promising candidates. Nor is it long before their feelings become engaged as well.

That Thomas should fall in love with Anne is rather unexpected. Since this is a first-person narrative told from her point of view, his true feelings are almost as unclear to us as to her.

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Her attention focuses upon her mistakes and their embarrassing consequences, and even her comments often seem more impertinent than refreshing. Her treatment by her parents and snobbish debutantes does win Anne some sympathy, but she learns too little from her experiences and remains disappointingly selfcentered.

Ray Thompson

A COUNTERFEIT SUITOR Darcie Wilde, Kensington, 2021, $26.00/ C$35.00/£21.00, hb, 304pp, 9781496720887

Estranged sisters Rosalind and Charlotte Thorne are not blessed with a caring father.

Sir Reginald Thorne is a gambler, a forger of promissory notes, and an irrevocable drunk who has wreaked havoc on their lives in more ways than one. When he’s found stabbed in the home of Russell Fullerton, a known rogue whose living comes from advantage over gullible women and debt-ridden men, the sisters aren’t particularly sorry. However, Fullerton, despite having tried for some time to ruin Rosalind’s stellar reputation, unexpectedly seeks her aid to prove his innocence in the crime. As a private enquiry agent, Rosalind has also been contracted by a Mrs. Walford to oversee a charity ball and discreetly look into a growing attraction between her daughter and a possible fortune hunter. All these connections come together in a twisty sojourn into politics, Bonapartists, fraudsters, forgers, gamblers, and liars in 1820s London.

A Counterfeit Suitor, the fifth in Wilde’s Regency-era Rosalind Thorne series, can also stand alone. A well-researched story, the narrative is fast-paced with spot-on dialogue. Two small idiosyncrasies are apparent—italicised asides, which often seem superfluous, and trivialise the reader’s ability to glean a character’s thoughts or actions; and occasional anachronisms such as ‘gotten’ and ‘reached out to’. Adam Harkness, a Bow-Street Runner and Rosalind’s wouldbe romantic partner, features in the story, but it seems Wilde is delaying the onward progression of love. A wise choice, as it would detract from a cleverly convoluted mystery.

Charlotte, Rosalind’s haut-ton courtesan sister, is an absolute delight, and the story explores women’s vulnerability in the Regency era and the complex challenges faced by overprotected offspring. The heading of each chapter with a Regency-era quote (e.g., Maria Edgeworth, Catherine Gore) serves to ground the narrative historically.

Fiona Alison

20T H C E N T U RY THE STRANGER FROM BERLIN Melissa Amateis, Simon & Schuster UK, 2021, $3.99/£2.99, ebook, 288pp, 9781398504042

As Amateis describes in her notes, the idea for this novel came from her research into antiGerman sentiment in the U.S. during WWII

REVIEWS | Issue 98, November 2021

and how, across the nation, town names were changed, churches vandalised and burned, surnames Americanised, the German language outlawed, and even food names changed (hamburgers became liberty steaks).

Amidst this hysteria, history professor Max Koenig, resident of the U.S. for five years, loses his job at the University of Nebraska in 1944 and, at the behest of a friend, heads to a small town to translate a diary found by the curator of a new museum being established in memory of a famous local mystery writer. The diary apparently relates events from WWI which someone wants buried, but it is stolen before Max has a chance to review it. Although he befriends Jenni Fields, a museum guide, Max is a source of conflict and enmity for most of the townsfolk, and he and the outspoken Jenni run into danger on several fronts. As events ramp up, Max is accused of crimes time after time, with no evidence, simply because he is German.

Almost everyone in this story is deceiving other people on some level: living with guilt, ashamed of their actions, or lying about their history, including Max and Jenni. The novel speaks honestly of paranoia, fear, and delusion, and how people can be led to betray their own concepts of right and wrong.

Unfortunately, it becomes repetitive. Max’s longing for Germany, Jenni’s off-the-rails life and her wish to relocate, the mayor’s rantings, the ignorant police officer, the annoying FBI agent—all become rather stereotypical.

Readers may enjoy this romance wrapped in a laudable theme, but to me it felt like just another WWII story.

Fiona Alison

THE WISH BOOK CHRISTMAS Lynn Austin, Tyndale, 2021, $12.99, hb, 304pp, 9781496452528

Christy Award-winning author Lynn Austin shows readers that “it’s better to give than to receive.” The Wish Book Christmas is a “wise man’s” gift to readers as Austin unwraps the true meaning of Christmas through this followup to characters in her World War II novel If I Were You. In December 1951, Audrey Barrett and Eve Dawson are sharing a house with their five-year-old sons in postwar America. Harry and Bobby discover the Sears Christmas Wish Book and become obsessed, wishing for toys from every page. How will two single moms provide toys but also lessons on giving from the heart? In this stand-alone novel, Austin expertly provides the background of Audrey and Eve’s earlier lives that led to feelings of unworthiness, insecurities, and self-doubt in 1951. She lovingly weaves one “unexpected, undeserved, unbelievable” gift from over 2000 years ago with another gift that will change the hearts and lives of Audrey and Eve. This is a “curl up by a crackling fire with a cup of cocoa” book, a reminder of 1950s America and “the reason for the season.”

Dorothy Schwab

THE ART OF LIVING Stephen Bayley, Doubleday, 2021, £16.99, hb, 398pp, 9780857526397

Any novel, historical or otherwise, that begins with a photograph of the fictional firstperson narrator and the caption laconically stating that the subject, Eustace Dunne is a c***, intrigues the sometimes-jaded reader. Stephen Bayley is a design guru and historian and has written an intriguing novel about an enfant terrible English designer.

The story comprises a mixture of fictional and real-life characters. The reader sees a hint of Terence Conran in Dunne’s search to identify beauty in the design of furniture and bringing magnificence to the mundane and quotidian, which was not exactly an easy task in dull, grey austerity Britain in the 1950s.

Dunne is a plagiarist, a thief, an opportunist— while his life is dedicated to the creation of beauty in design, he achieves this essence of aestheticism by some rather unpleasant and decidedly unattractive behaviour.

Written by a designer and artist, the novel vibrates with the culture and milieu of postwar Britain and the Western world, filled with the artifacts and objects of the 1950s, the overweening ethic of design and good taste dominating the story, so at times the reader occasionally forgets this is a fictional tale and sees it as a sort of socio-cultural biography of exquisite perception and decorum. In his afterword Bayley cheerfully admits that the story is a sort of pastiche of all the excesses of the design world, made up of his magpie-like habit of collecting a lifetime of experiences, sayings, and characters. Indeed, the content occasionally seems to be just a catalogue of 1950s and 60s design ethics as Dunne makes his belligerent way through the design and taste world of West Europe and North America, stealing, adapting, and making his reputation as Britain’s leading design guru. It is readable, enjoyable, but not exactly great fiction.

Douglas Kemp

ROAD OF BONES James R. Benn, Soho, 2021, $27.95/C$35.95, hb, 312pp, 9781641292009

It is September 1944, and Billy Boyle is relaxing in a London hotel after completing a dangerous intelligence mission in France.

Orders come for him to leave immediately for Poltava, a joint Russian/American air base in Ukraine. Two men at the base, a Russian and an American, have been found murdered. The situation is delicate with the U.S. and Russia, who are technically allies but in an uneasy relationship, and the Russians: paranoid, quick to find fault, and even quicker to punish.

Boyle and fellow investigator Kaz, a Polish aristocrat who hates Russians, must manipulate their way through Russian and American chains of command—military, OSS and NKVD. Assistance is provided intermittently by men whose primary agenda is to stay away from Siberian prison camps

and lethal mine-clearing assignments. Boyle and Kaz find themselves in an environment of spies, counterspies and drug smugglers for whom espionage is merely a sideline.

In this, the 15th of the series, Billy Boyle rapidly finds himself in a British bomber flying eastwards over Germany and forced to crawl outside the plane to kick free a bomb that has failed to drop. Later he is a passenger on an old-fashioned biplane piloted by one of the Russian women pilots, known as ‘the night witches’, on a slow, silent and potentially fatal bombing raid. His safe return is not welcomed.

The author portrays this crucial time and remote, little-known place with insight and occasional humor. The espionage/counter espionage genre is here developed and portrayed by a master. He maintains a high level of tension together with vividly portrayed action and expert characterization. The result is an intriguing variety of nail-biting experiences.

Valerie Adolph

KEEPING SECRETS Bina Bernard, Arcade, 2021, $25.99, hb, 336pp, 9781951627300

On the eve of the end of the world for many of Poland’s Jews, a father and mother must make a terrible choice. Hershel and Malka Stein have two young daughters, their pride and joy, loving playmates Lena and Hannah.

Hershel is determined to take flight to America before the barbed wire gates of hell close in on them. But he can only take one daughter.

More than thirty years later, Hannah Stone, married but childless, living in New York, struggles with her relationship with her father Harry. Harry has a secret, one that has tormented him since the day he left one of his darlings behind with the promise that someday he would return.

Keeping Secrets is the story of one family’s descent into darkness, where the shadows of the past are never out of sight. Hannah must embark on a journey of discovery to find out the truth of her sister. Did Lena die among the six million, or did she somehow manage to survive? Can Hannah find her and bring her back to New York before her dying father becomes another one of those nightmare shadows?

Ms. Bernard’s novel reads as though the events of the novel occurred in real life to her own family. The horrors of Nazi Poland. The fear that never fades. Life after the war where decisions made and secrets kept breathe life into a fear that never quite goes away. While at times I felt that the dialogue was stilted, the Stone family’s plight is moving, and the story pulls you along until its dramatic conclusion.

Keeping Secrets is more than just another Holocaust novel. It is author Bernard’s alert that the shadows of evil are never far away.

Peter Clenott

GOD REST YE, ROYAL GENTLEMEN Rhys Bowen, Berkley, 2021, $26.00, hb, 304pp, 9780440000082

Rhys Bowen continues the Royal Spyness mystery series with God Rest Ye, Royal Gentlemen, set on the fringe of the royal Sandringham Estate at Christmas 1935.

Newlyweds Darcy and Georgiana O’Mara are settling into married life, and Georgie is planning her first Christmas house party.

As Georgie is writing letters and putting an advert in The Lady for a new cook to help the bumbling Queenie, all the plans go awry. Darcy receives an invitation for them to spend the holiday with Lady Aysgarth, his Aunt Ermintrude, and that Queen Mary, in residence at Sandringham, is looking forward to a visit from Georgie—practically a royal summons!

Rhys Bowen’s readers are off on an adventure of merrymaking and mystery as the cast of quirky and famous guests arriving at Lady Aysgarth’s Wymondham Hall continues to surprise and dismay Georgie. For “royal followers,” the guest list includes the Prince of Wales and Wallis Simpson, so processing into dinner in order of rank is a must. When Lady A’s companion, Mrs. Short, realizes there are thirteen guests at table, she admonishes the group that this is bad luck, and a death is imminent. Rhys Bowen’s use of foreshadowing is a perfect eyebrow-raising moment for the now-leery guests. A series of unfortunate “accidents” piques the holiday drama and keeps readers second-guessing along with Darcy and Georgie as they meet surreptitiously to strategize and solve the royal mysteries.

Proper hunts, a “paper chase,” “sardines,” and royal names like Cookie and Shirley Temple add to the royal celebrations. Even royal granddaughters Lilibet and Margaret are at Sandringham for holiday snowmanbuilding and ice skating. Meanwhile, Queen Mary and readers are counting on Georgie to figure out “who dunnit!”

Dorothy Schwab

MURDER AT STANDING STONE MANOR Eric Brown, Severn House, 2021, $28.99/£20.99, hb, 224pp, 9780727850560

In this, the eighth installment of the Langham & Dupré mystery series, newlyweds Donald Langham and Maria Dupré have moved from London’s fashionable Kensington district to the snowy English countryside: the Yew Tree Cottage, to be precise, within eyesight of “the imposing bulk of Standing Stone Manor.”

The novel-writing Donald, whose library is arranged in “alphabetical and chronological” order, and his publishing-agent wife, Maria, who is also accomplished in French cookery, are busy setting up house while meeting the local inhabitants of 1950s Ingoldby-overWater. They are an eclectic group. There is youthful, orphaned, and naive Nancy

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Robertshaw; her uncle, the retired Professor of Greek, Edwin Robertshaw, a “cantankerous old duffer” and a standing stone enthusiast; Nancy’s aunt Xandra; and her cousin Randall. Also, the eccentric farmer Richard Wellbourne—who plays Bach, on his violin, to his cows—and his wife Harriet. And, living in a caravan on the Wellspring Farm, young Roy Vickers, a Dickens-reading RAF veteran. Or is he who he says he is?

Soon, it becomes evident that not all is idyllic. Many long-standing tensions are just below the surface. Add to the mix Professor Robertshaw’s standing stone theory, landownership disputes, blackmail, and even murder. Our detective couple has a lot to untangle. Brown’s characters are believable, for the most part. His literary allusions are apt, and his prose is economical. Fans of the series will not be disappointed and new readers will want to pursue Langham and Dupré’s earlier adventures.

Mark Spencer

BLIND TIGER Sandra Brown, Grand Central, 2021, $28.00, hb, 512pp, 9781538751961

In the small Texas town of Foley in 1920, Prohibition is in full swing, and so are the moonshine wars as a young widow and a soldier returning from World War I cross paths and purposes in bestselling author Sandra Brown’s Blind Tiger.

Taking its title from the slang for speakeasy back in the day, Brown dives into the personalities and corrupt politics of 1920s America and includes her signature style of action, romance, and threedimensional characters.

In early 1920, Laurel Plummer is newly widowed, caring for an ailing infant and sharing a rundown shack with Irv, a father-inlaw she just met. After a bloody stint in WWI, Thatcher Hutton is riding the rails back to his old cowboy job in north Texas when trouble forces a leap of faith that lands him in Foley, broke and looking for temporary work to pay his way. After a chance encounter one afternoon, both Laurel and Thatcher feel an electric connection neither can deny. But when a prominent local woman goes missing, all eyes shift to the mysterious new drifter in town.

As Laurel pluckily struggles to make ends meet, she is leveled by yet another tragedy that pushes her into the illicit regional moonshine industry fraught with malicious and violent competitors.

Sheriff Bill Amos, meanwhile, recognizes in young Thatcher the qualities of a lawman-inthe-making and, despite his protests, hands him a deputy’s badge. The budding romance 38

between Laurel and Thatcher gets distinctly more complicated when she realizes they are on opposite sides of a war about to explode in the “Moonshine Capital of Texas.”

Chock-full of memorable and endearing characters, Blind Tiger is an exceptional adventure that mixes mystery, history, rousing action, and a deeply nuanced love story of two wounded people seeking wholeness.

Peggy Kurkowski

ONCE UPON A WARDROBE Patti Callahan, Harper Muse, 2021, $24.99, hb, 271pp, 9780785251729

Megs Devonshire loves numbers, equations, and physics. That is why she is currently majoring in physics at Oxford. She doesn’t think much about fairy tales or magical lands.

But her younger brother, George, does, and he is currently dying from a heart problem.

It is 1950, and there is no cure. More than anything, George loves the new book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. He also wants to know where Narnia came from. It is up to Megs to find the man who brought Narnia to life and get answers for George before his young life is over.

This is a heartrending journey of a young girl who wants to help her brother by contacting the author C. S. Lewis, who is known as “Jack.”

It is also the story of Jack’s childhood, as he uses anecdotes from his past to try to explain to George, through Megs, how Narnia was born.

In addition, it ties in Jack’s tragic loss of his mother when he was quite young. Historical events of the time are woven in as well. Megs visits Jack and his brother Warnie often and brings back tales for George. When she tells George about the death of Jack’s mother, she breaks down in tears. The dying George says this: “It’s okay, Megs. It’s part of the story.

There’s lots of parts to a story.” This brings home the fact that George’s story is ending, but the story of Megs will continue to grow, just as Jack’s stories blossomed and grew after his mother died. This beautiful and soul-touching book is about death and dying, but it also reminds us that new chapters remain for those of us who are left behind.

Bonnie DeMoss

COMMANDOS: Set Europe Ablaze Richard Camp, Casemate, 2021, $22.95/£17.99, pb, 240pp, 9781636240084

1942. The Second World War is not going well for the Allies. Two experienced American Marines, friends Captain Jim Cain and Gunnery Sergeant Leland Montgomery, are sent across the Atlantic to train alongside British Marines in Scotland.

Despite a welcome from the officer in charge of the training facility, they find the seven weeks of daily training exercises more difficult physically and mentally than any they had faced before. The dangers are illustrated by the gravestones for previous trainees who lacked competence. But during one exercise

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approaching steep cliffs from small navy boats, the group of trainees is recalled and ordered to use their new skills by attacking a Nazi radar facility on Alderney Island in the English Channel. With support from the English Navy, the attack is successful despite heavy losses.

A naval battle ensues as the remainder of the group tries to make their way back to safety.

Making all of this interesting to a reader who is not intrinsically interested in battle training or strategy is a significant undertaking. It is masterfully handled by the author, a Bronze Star and Purple Heart recipient who served for 26 years in the U.S. Marines. He has written fifteen books and over 100 magazine articles.

All of this shows in his meticulous attention to relevant detail that brings the action to life with immediacy, emotion, and humour. And humour is necessary to relieve the tension of ongoing, heavy, military and naval action. The light touch of romance for Jim Cain is welcome, as is the nod to the women who served in wartime.

I found this book not just readable but hard to put down despite my complete lack of military knowledge. It is an exciting tale, masterfully told.

Valerie Adolph

THE LOST GIRL OF BERLIN Ella Carey, Bookouture, 2021, $10.99, pb, 324pp, 9781800192171

Kate Mancini is the only woman in the group of war correspondents in Berlin in 1946. Wanting to tell the balanced truth in the aftermath, she is thwarted at every turn.

Kate has been told that Americans want to hear their news from a man and only want to get back to “normal.” Kate gets her lucky break when she is sent to report on the trials in Nuremberg. While in Berlin, handsome reporter Rick Shearer assists her in rescuing an orphaned girl from the ruins. Carey’s character development, showing Rick’s gentle approach to the speechless, scared blue-eyed girl, will endear readers to the dashing reporter.

After ten months of traveling Europe together, Kate is conflicted. She has no room in her life for husband and family—only the goal of landing a contract with a major news agency.

After returning to New York City, readers will be enthralled with their blossoming romance and the iconic sites of the city. Carey gives readers hope when Kate lands a broadcasting job at WNYR and Rick’s career takes off with his own radio show. Meanwhile, Rick’s wealthy, powerful father, Willard, his devoted but fearful wife Frances, and Kate’s starryeyed sister, Bianca, add immersive threads of betrayal, blackmail, and bullying. Readers will remain on edge and incensed but hopeful that goodness will win overall. The fear and suspicion of Communism and McCarthyism have infiltrated American society, and no one is off limits, not even popular broadcaster Rick Shearer. Carey’s exacting research makes this novel an eye-opening history lesson, and her words evoke deep emotion in the heartwarming love story of the orphan girl who fights her way

back home. In The Lost Girl of Berlin readers will be frustrated and fascinated, but in the end fulfilled.

Dorothy Schwab

A PLAY FOR THE END OF THE WORLD Jai Chakrabarti, Knopf, 2021, $27.00, hb, 286pp, 9780525658924

Jai Chakrabarti’s A Play for the End of the World is an elegant book about the effects of grief and guilt that persist years after trauma, and the power of art in political resistance.

Jaryk Smith, a Polish orphan and Holocaust survivor, travels from New York to Gopalpur, India, after his closest friend and only family, Misha, dies. Misha was an orphan in the same home in Warsaw, raised by the real-life Janusz Korczak, or “Pan Doktor.” Misha went to India because political rebels had read that the Warsaw orphanage had staged the play “The Post Office” by Rabindranath Tagore as an act of resistance to Nazi occupation.

The Gopalpur resisters, too, wanted to produce the play and thought the presence of the Holocaust survivor would give the act credence.

Jaryk does not want to be part of the playmaking at first, but Misha’s death pushes him to India. His travel results in conflict with Lucy, his girlfriend in New York, with whom he is always slightly guarded and uneasy.

The author is especially gifted at creating diverse and fully realized characters. All of the above-mentioned characters are fascinating, and their desires and motivations make sense.

The vast cast, however, means that there is a lot going on plot-wise, so that it is difficult to summarize in a short review.

The prose is fluid and enchanting with a light touch of humor. Chakrabarti has written a unique Holocaust book in that the focus is the trajectory of one person after the historical moment. I appreciated how the author takes as a starting point one seemingly miniscule point in history—Pan Doktor’s orphanage production of “The Post Office”—and creates a rich story around it.

Jill E. Marshall

SMALL PLEASURES Clare Chambers, Custom House, 2021, $27.99, hb, 352pp, 9780063094727 / W&N, 2021, £8.99, pb, 350pp, 9781474613903

In 1957, a woman contacts a southeast London newspaper to claim her daughter was the result of a virgin birth. The news reporter assigned to investigate the story soon realizes that miracles come in many forms.

Jean Swinney is a journalist trapped in a life of solitary drudgery and disappointment.

Living with and caring for an elderly mother, her days are taken up with writing tidy segments for the North Kent Echo, detailing household hints and marriage announcements. One day, she gets the unique opportunity to investigate the wild claims of Gretchen Tilbury, a young woman who believes her daughter, Margaret,

was conceived by unusual means. Jean’s life opens in unexpected ways as she gets to know the Tilburys: Gretchen, her older husband, Howard, and ten-year-old Margaret, the mirror image of her mother. Chambers’ elegant prose draws the reader deeper into Gretchen’s mystery as Jean unravels the skeins of her story, particularly of her monthslong residency at the all-female St. Cecilia’s Nursing and Convalescent Home where Gretchen received treatment for rheumatoid arthritis—and where Margaret was conceived.

Suspending her own disbelief and enchanted by the warmth and kindness of the Tilbury family, Jean sees her past disappointments fade in the light of new possibilities, despite their inevitable price.

Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021, Small Pleasures is a delicate and original exploration of love, friendship, and the strange serendipities life throws at the unsuspecting.

Peggy Kurkowski

THE WOMAN AT THE FRONT Lecia Cornwall, Berkley, 2021, $17.00, pb, 464pp, 9780593197929

This book is a love story—a deep and compelling one—but it’s not only about romantic love. It is also about the love one woman feels for her vocation. Eleanor Atherton has yearned to be a doctor like her father her whole life. After graduating from medical school near the top of her class, however, she is relegated to cleaning up her father’s surgery, while across the Channel, the Great War rages, and doctors are desperately needed. When a countess asks Eleanor to go to France to retrieve her son, an injured pilot, Eleanor finally has the opportunity to prove herself.

Along the way, she meets Fraser MacLeod, a rugged Highland Scot with a brogue “as rich as warm whiskey,” whose heart has been deadened by years of carrying stretchers for the wounded at “the meat grinder of the Western Front.” Though they are from different classes, Eleanor and Fraser have in common a passion for helping others. When Fraser disappears in battle, Eleanor must continue to work to save lives while holding on to the slim hope that they might one day be reunited.

Cornwall’s book is a spellbinding read. The gritty descriptions of the makeshift hospitals in the midst of battle ring true, and the dialog is pitch-perfect. Eleanor’s determination to do what she was born to do in the face of unrelenting prejudice toward her sex never wavers. Even a revelation that shakes her faith in her abilities cannot diminish her drive to do whatever is required. This is a book you will not want to put down.

Trish MacEnulty

THE KEEPER OF HAPPY ENDINGS Barbara Davis, Lake Union, 2021, $14.95, pb, 435pp, 9781542021470

In France in 1939, Soline is working with her mother in their dress shop preparing wedding dresses with “happy endings.” Her mother, who is known as “The Dress Witch,” stitches happiness into the gowns with family spells and a little magic. Soline is a talented designer who does not feel she has the family’s magical gift. She dreams of leaving the dress shop and becoming famous for designs of her own.

Then the Nazis arrive. While working as a volunteer in the hospital, Soline meets Anson, an American ambulance driver.

In 1985, Rory is barely existing. Her life has been on hold for months while she waits for word of her fiancé, who has been kidnapped while working for Doctors Without Borders.

Then she awakens a little as she sees a building that speaks to her, and begins to plan the art gallery that she has long dreamed of. Soline is also living in Boston in 1985. Her dress shop has been destroyed in a fire, and she has injuries that will not allow her to sew again.

She spends her time dreaming of a lost love and an unused wedding dress.

This is a beautiful story of two heartbroken women whose worlds meet at a crucial time.

The main characters, Soline and Rory, will reach out from the page and touch your heart. The romance between Soline and Anson in Nazi- occupied France is touching and real. The description of their work for the French resistance is thrilling and mesmerizing.

In 1985, it is a joy to watch as the cautious friendship between Rory and Soline blossoms and grows. This intriguing novel is magically woven together with sorrow, surprises, and happiness, just like the wedding gowns of “The Dress Witch.”

Bonnie DeMoss

COCO AT THE RITZ Gioia Diliberto, Pegasus, 2021, $25.95, hb, 304pp, 9781643138411

Coco at the Ritz takes us back to France right after the end of World War II when France has been liberated, and those who cooperated with the Nazis are being interrogated. Coco Chanel, famed fashion icon, is summoned from her rooms at the Ritz Hotel to a police station, where she is asked to account for her relationship with a German officer. During the interrogation, we look back at Coco’s time at the Ritz during the war and her relationship with Baron Hans Guenther von Dincklage, also known as “Spatz,” a German intelligence officer. Sharp scissors stand at the ready, as women who slept with Nazi soldiers during the occupation are considered traitors and will have their hair cut off and heads shaved out of vengeance.

This fascinating book takes a closer look at Chanel, her powerful personality, and her activities during the occupation of France.

Intriguing questions are raised in this fictional take on a true story. Did Chanel assist Spatz

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as a spy during the war? Was Spatz just an innocent man forced into military service by his country? Why did Chanel return to the Ritz when she knew it was occupied by German officers? Did she really stay in Paris to try and wrest control of Chanel No. 5 from the Jewish Wertheimers, directors of Parfums Chanel, who had fled? Did Winston Churchill save her from prosecution? Some of these questions may never publicly have answers. However, the author shows us that for Chanel, nothing existed except the world of fashion and her position as queen of that world. This compelling book shows us a side of Chanel’s personality we may not have known before, and we meet a complex woman who was talented and powerful, but also vain and manipulative. Highly recommended.

Bonnie DeMoss

YOURS IS THE NIGHT Amanda Dykes, Bethany House, 2021, $15.99, pb, 362pp, 9780764232688

This complex, metaphysically-charged tale is anchored in the carnage that was no-man’sland around the trenches in World War One France. The Meuse-Argonne Offensive in the fall of 1918 pitted U.S. and German soldiers in a desperate struggle. In the midst of chaos and the destruction of everything that might be termed human, an angelic voice breaks the silence and hovers over the maelstrom: “A melody – burrowing through the underbrush in minor notes, emerging from the bracken…” Is this air a harbinger of hope, or do the refrains unfortunately signal darker times?

In her complicated narrative told through the lens of multiple characters, Dykes forces readers to deeply engage with the story.

There are numerous unanticipated twists and turns embedded in shifting geographic locations and timeframes. Although Dykes crafts several levels of interaction, the action mainly centers on two principles: Mireilles, a young Frenchwoman, and an American named Matthew Petticrew. Each—one a lost and lonely citizen, the other a soldier—is a very emotionally and spiritually damaged figure.

The overarching question remains: is Matthew simply imaging a sense of peace within chaos, or might he be losing his mind?

Where do the melodies emanate from, and is this gesture simply futile within the overall carnage? Mireilles desires safety but ponders who she can trust in this difficult era. Matthew, in a similar manner, also seeks safety and peace.

However, as each searches independently and jointly, positive possibilities are foreshadowed.

Jon G. Bradley

A BETRAYAL OF HEROES David Ebsworth, Silverwood, 2021, $23.99/£16.99, pb, 774pp, 9781800420717

In October 1939, reporter Jack Telford arrives at the British consulate in Rabat to gain passage to Great Britain. He’s been on the run after being swept out to sea, dashed against rocks that seriously damaged one eye, and 40

imprisoned as an enemy of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco before escaping to Madrid, Oran, and now Rabat. As he begins to explore the city, he soon finds he’s being tailed. He wends his way past vegetable and pottery stalls in the medina, dashes into the Hassan Tower, slips and rolls down a treacherous incline, finds himself dangling precariously, then pulled to safety by his pursuer—Isaac Gabizon, an envoy from the Sultan’s palace who has sought out Jack to let the world know about the beginnings of World War II and Morocco’s push for independence from France and Spain.

A Betrayal of Heroes is author Ebsworth’s third in the Jack Telford series, which focuses on the rise of fascism in Europe. The story is based on the exploits of La Nueve, Spanish Republicans who fought for the Free French during World War II in Morocco, as well as wartime historical figures, including Philippe Leclerc, who led the French Far East Expeditionary Force; Col. Bill Eddy, US Minister to Saudi Arabia; and French entertainer Josephine Baker.

A thriller, the book is sweeping in scope, taking Jack to Casablanca, Vichy France, Lisbon, Normandy, and Paris throughout the war years 1939 to 1945. Woven with intrigue, the storyline includes foreboding characters such as the Black Scorpion, who leaves his namesake as a calling card in Jack’s hotel bed, and shadowy operatives like Gabizon. Like Tom Clancy’s analyst Jack Ryan, reporter Jack Telford rushes from one action sequence to another, providing a breathless ride.

K. M. Sandrick

THE GREAT STORK DERBY Ann S. Epstein, Vine Leaves Press, 2021, £12.99/$17.99, pb, 298pp, 9781925965674

After falling and lying prostrate in his home for several days, the elderly Emm Benbow is offered a place at an old age home, but his social worker suggests he try his children first.

The problem is there’s been no contact, they are an enigma to him, and he can’t name his grandchildren, let alone the ‘greats’. He and his wife, Izora, had entered the Great Stork Derby in 1926, a contest that ran until 1936 in Toronto, Canada, encouraging wives to produce the most babies during the specified decade, all at the bequest in a will made by an eccentric millionaire. Having named the children alphabetically for easy recall, Emm remembers Arvil was killed in the war, so he makes a trial move to Bruna’s, then Cleon’s, then Darold’s—you get the picture. One of the charms of this novel is the little vignettes relating each child’s birth, Emm’s reaction, his mother’s perpetual interference, and Izora’s early death.

This is not a traditional historical novel, but more of an in-depth study of family dynamics, and Emm begins his journey by using oldage helplessness to his advantage. His body is failing him, but his mind is lively and agile.

As time progresses, he softens, learning his children’s likes and dislikes, where they work, their interests and abilities, how surprisingly

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different they are from each other, and how misguided his singular adoration of Arvil had been. Emm’s journey transitions from stubbornness, guilt, and shame, to discovery, and ultimately redemption and forgiveness, as he finds new joy in family obligation and in earning what he sees as Izora’s blessing. Based on a true event, this is a touching and poignant look at family life and how it is never too late to effect change.

Fiona Alison

THE DICTATOR’S MUSE Nigel Farndale, Doubleday, 2021, £16.99, hb, 321pp, 9780857527172

This novel takes as its theme the build up to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, centering on the stories of three British young people caught up in the politicisation of sport. Kim Newlands is an impoverished English athlete hoping to triumph, despite competing against the Black American track and field champion, Jesse Owens. He makes a deal with the devil so he can train, taking (forbidden) sponsorship funding from the British Union of Fascists (BUF). His girlfriend, fascist sympathiser and aristocrat Connie Dalton, accompanies him to Berlin, along with a young Welshman, Alun Pryce, a Communist who has infiltrated the BUF. Film-maker Leni Riefenstahl is the fourth key character. For her part, she is preparing to capture the Olympic Games on film, playing various Nazi leaders against each other as she works. The fate of all four collide at the Olympics, as Riefenstahl captures a heavily edited version of reality on film. Her creative honesty, however, forbids her from destroying the rushes.

The novel is framed by the (near) contemporary research of a young German journalist, Sigrun Meier, who has been willed exclusive access to Riefenstahl’s film archives.

She visits Riefenstahl’s Bavarian house, finding an archive of an unknown British athlete. On impulse she steals the film. Her original aim of discovering whether Hitler ever shook the hand of Owens leads her deeper. Instead, she uncovers a story with personal implications.

This is an immersive historical thriller.

Farndale brings the troubled history of the time, in both Germany and the UK, to life, deftly intercutting it with the more contemporary timeline. He weaves all the strands of the story together at the end, creating a narrative that questions whether, as Pryce thinks, the ends do justify the means. This is a novel that interrogates betrayal, the long shadow of history and the persistence of love.

Katharine Quarmby

SNOW COUNTRY Sebastian Faulks, Hutchinson, 2021, £20.00, hb, 368pp, 9781786330185

This is a sequel to Faulks’s 2005 novel Human Traces. Given that there has been a 16year hiatus between the two books, it is just as well that the author states at the beginning of the book that it can be read as a standalone

volume. I read Human Traces, and it is indeed quite a challenge to resurrect the first book from the depths of one’s memory; fortunately, reading this book does not depend upon a knowledge of the plot and characters of the first volume. The plot is initially split into two separate strands, which are quite long, like a novella. The reader anticipates that these independent narratives will be joined later in the story, but it does make at first for a compartmented tale.

Anton Heideck is a young journalist in Vienna trying to make his way in the world as Europe slips into the catastrophe of The Great War. In another strand, Lena (family name unknown) comes from an impoverished background in a provincial town in Austria and is drawn to Vienna in the years following the end of the War. In 1933, through quite different life trajectories, both are drawn towards the asylum (but not as patients) at Seeblick Schloss. There they reflect upon their own lives, and we also pick up the story from the original book again, retracing the themes of how, as necessarily individual sentient beings, we can find some connection, some way of surviving and making an authentic existence for oneself, while at the same time coping with the existential problem that is encapsulated on page 178: “the human mind has evolved in a way that makes it unable to deal with the pain of its own existence. No other creature is like this” The book ends in Vienna in 1934, with the scope for another installment – I just hope it does not take another 16 years!

Douglas Kemp

THE HIDDEN CHILD Louise Fein, William Morrow, 2021, $16.99, pb, 480pp, 9780063090934 / Head of Zeus, 2021, £18.99, hb, 496pp, 9781789545364

In Fein’s second novel, set in the rural English countryside in 1928, Eleanor H a m i l t o n is happily married to her celebrated war hero husband, Edward; or so she thinks.

Her husband is deeply involved with the newly popular Eugenics movement, which started in Germany but appeared in both Great Britain and the United States.

Loosely based upon Charles Darwin’s research of survival of the fittest, the Eugenics Movement seeks to sterilize anyone who is feeble-minded, criminally insane, mentally unstable, prone to epilepsy, or who has dwarfism. The theory behind the movement is that society will be better off if the “offensive people” are not allowed to sire offspring

and thereby ensure that the human race will become an elite group.

And Eleanor backs Edward in his noble pursuit of bettering humanity until their fouryear-old daughter, Mabel, has an epileptic seizure. Suddenly conflicted, Eleanor must face a choice between her love for her daughter and her commitment to her marriage. Told in stunning detail on how people with epilepsy were treated in Europe just before the rise of the Nazi Party, and laced with enough history to help the reader understand the political movements afoot, this novel moves forward with a plot that compels the reader to continue page after page.

Inspired by the author’s own family experience, the well-formed characters vividly illuminate the ethical issues of an era laced with prejudice and fear. The empathy the reader feels early on for Eleanor is gripping.

Highly recommended.

deal with this anxiety in more appropriate ways than others, with even love finding root. Notwithstanding this daily drama, human relationships do develop, with each sister seeking solace in her own way. The denouement does indeed bring closure but also opens other possible avenues for sister adventures in the following postwar era.

Jon G. Bradley

WUHAN John Fletcher, Head of Zeus, 2021, £20.00, hb, 759pp, 9781800249875

No, this is not a hastily written novel about Covid-19. It is a big, sprawling, angry novel that was started well before the pandemic and recalls Wuhan’s other claim to fame as the place where the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 met with its first

Linda Harris Sittig

SISTERS OF THE GREAT WAR Suzanne Feldman, MIRA, 2021, $16.99/C$21.99, pb, 400pp, 9780778311225

Sisters Ruth and Elise Duncan feel stifled with life under the watchful eye of their controlling, widowed father.

Each wants to explore her own personality and life goals in a changing world but feels confined by prevailing social and gender norms. Escaping to the British Field Ambulance/ Medical Corps, the two sisters land in Belgium in the spring of 1915: one as a nursing sister and the other an ambulance driver.

This powerful tale is grounded in the maelstrom that was the Western Front during World War I. Through the eyes of Ruth and Elise, who experience firsthand and in shocking detail the human devastation wrought by combat, readers explore their landscape orchestrated by trench warfare.

Feldman is to be congratulated for describing the often-chaotic medical realities that frontline hospitals and aid stations experienced.

Unexploded bombs, artillery noise, strafing planes, fire and damage from exploding shells, constant tension, wild rumours, dearth of necessary supplies, constant poor nutrition, lack of fresh water, and possible impending death mark their environment. The conditions under which medical staff labour are carefully described within the larger overarching conflict.

The stress of long-term exposure to such a stressful environment takes severe psychological tolls on all personnel: some

serious reverse.

Wuhan is divided into three parts, which Fletcher originally intended as separate books.

‘The Road to Wuhan’ follows the flight of the refugees before the Japanese advance, which I found the most powerful and harrowing part of the book. It is seen through the eyes of a peasant farmer and his handicapped daughter, a difficult feat for a western author, which Fletcher carries off convincingly.

‘Wuhan’ contains the battle scenes, and ‘The Road from Wuhan’ centres mainly on the colourful group of foreigners who reported on the war and sometimes became caught up in it. Several different stories are woven together, and the cast of characters is immense.

This is a very committed book, angry at Europe and America’s indifference to China’s suffering, shocked by the savagery of the conflict, awed by the resilience of the Chinese people. This is where WW2 began, years before the war reached Europe.

An epic book about an epic conflict. Don’t miss it.

Edward James

THE RETURN Anita Frank, HQ, 2021, £14.99, hb, 474pp, 9780008341282

May 1945: for everyone else, the end of the War in Europe is a cause for celebration. But for farmer Gwen Ellison, it’s a time of uncertainty.

Her husband Jack promised not to return, for both their sakes. But now that her peaceful existence with her son Tom is threatened, maybe Jack is the ally she needs. June 1939: on the run from his past, Jack Ellison stumbles upon the Hughes’ farm. He is instantly mesmerised by the beautiful and capable Gwen and stays

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on as a temporary labourer, even though it might be safer for him to keep running. But Gwen has secrets of her own.

I enjoyed Frank’s gothic first novel The Lost Ones, but her second book is even better. In many ways, it’s a more modern take on Far from the Madding Crowd, the story of a spirited young woman and her entanglements with three very different men—the loyal labourer, the dashing cad and the older neighbouring farmer—with the same potential for tragedy as in Hardy’s novel.

The characters are all brought vividly to life, and while the author never sugar-coats how difficult rural life can be, especially for a single mother with only a Land Girl and an older local woman to help her, she also celebrates the beauty of the Berkshire countryside, which weaves a magical spell over Newcastle-born Jack. If I have to nit-pick, the only fault I could find with this book was the repeated use of “disinterested” (impartial) when the author clearly means “indifferent”.

This is the sort of book where being able to predict plot twists only makes the story more compelling, because you hope against hope that you’re wrong. I can’t wait for Frank’s next book.

Jasmina Svenne

CROSSROADS Jonathan Franzen, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021, $28.00, hb, 592pp, 9780374181178 / Fourth Estate, 2021, £20.99, hb, 592pp, 9780008308896

Days before Christmas 1971, long-ignored pressures seethe within the Hildebrandt family, whose patriarch, Russ, is associate pastor of a suburban Chicago church. His eldest child, a college freshman, feels guilty for the student draft deferment that keeps him out of Vietnam.

The only daughter, the high school queen bee, plots her social diplomacy with Machiavellian savvy; maybe she’ll surprise everyone and turn counterculture. The next youngest, a boy brilliant beyond his years but addicted to pot, shows contempt for lesser beings. Russ, feeling fettered in his marriage, cozies up to a pretty parishioner, unaware that his wife dreams of running away.

The common thread among these Hildebrandts? Each is utterly neurotic about sex, if in different ways. That leaves the youngest boy, who’s ten, as the only placid family member.

The first of a planned trilogy, Crossroads offers Franzen’s trademark prose—garrulous, insightful, often humorous. He delves into the characters’ search for God, including Russ’s 42

arresting notion that the early Christians would have found much to like about the 1970s counterculture. The atmosphere of protest and social conscience rings true without being preachy. And I enjoyed Franzen’s spot-on portrayal of sensitivity groups, which brought back memories.

However, Crossroads is difficult to read, in that way disappointingly unlike his muchcelebrated novel, The Corrections. The Hildebrandts are an off-putting bunch, manipulative and controlling, and it’s hard to sympathize, especially with Russ, his stubbornly unreflective wife, or their insufferably intelligent son. The narrative drags emotionally, despite the never-ending domestic drama. And Franzen’s attempts to redeem his characters don’t persuade me, either because they sound false or come too late.

As a literary evocation of the early 1970s, Crossroads feels true to the time. Yet the novel falls short, I’m sorry to say, and from one of America’s finest writers, I hoped for better.

Larry Zuckerman

THE GIRL WITH THE SILVER CLASP Juliet Greenwood, Orion, 2021, £8.99, pb, 336pp, 9781409196600

This novel is about how society was changed forever by the First World War. Jess Morgan, an aspiring silversmith, is forced to work as a seamstress to make ends meet once the postwar world tries to return to a new normal. As she tries to pursue her passion, she meets women along the way who are like her in that they are navigating both their old and new identities.

Greenwood allows the reader to follow each character with an invested interest while they are attempting to make a life for themselves.

The Great War did not just affect the men and the women who went out to the front; it also affected people at home who found that their businesses were struggling to survive due to the changes that conflict brings. Additionally, the Cornish landscape turns out to be a character in this spellbinding novel, as all the characters are connected to it in some way, and it brings out their true personalities. The stories of war refugees are present in this tale to demonstrate how true kindness can make a difference. An enchanting read, this novel will remain with you long after you reach the last chapter.

Clare Lehovsky

SCANDAL IN BABYLON Barbara Hambly, Severn House, 2021, $28.99/£20.99, hb, 240pp, 9781780298085

Capturing the spirit of the times from the first page, this mystery features Emma Blackstone, a Roman and Latin scholar enticed to Hollywood, after the death of her husband, by her movie star sister-in-law, Kitty Flint, to oversee script revisions. Overflowing with Hollywood “It”, the wildly impulsive, mercurial Kitty is almost the worst actress in the world, according to Emma, but she loves her all the same, and Kitty is nothing if not

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stunningly beautiful, trailed by a dizzying array of admirers. Seeing Hollywood’s frenetic madness through Emma’s Oxford-educated British eyes adds an interesting dimension.

When Kitty’s estranged ex-husband (one of several) is found in Kitty’s dressing room, shot with Kitty’s gun, Emma and her no-nonsense cameraman boyfriend begin analysing the anomalies of the botched murder scene, clearly meant to discredit Kitty but not to send her to jail. The police are noticeably heavyfooted and more hindrance than help. Kitty’s only defense? – I didn’t do it!

Peppered with a well-rounded supporting cast including a helpful bootlegger and randomly dropped household names from 1920s Hollywood – Swanson, DeMille, Goldwyn, Hearst – the era bursts from the page with cumbersome sets, booming directors, anachronistic props and costumes (gold lamé in Ancient Rome?), over-the-top acting, script changing (Emma hopes audiences can’t lipread!), sexual melodrama, backstabbing, and outrageous abuse of power. All come together in a tangled web amidst the chaotic hustlebustle of the film studio. The sensible, much calmer, Latin-quoting Emma compliments the flighty, inconstant Kitty, but that doesn’t make either woman anything other than immensely likeable, and their relationship and fondness is touching. Even Kitty’s three Pekinese play their roles, and Hambly ably balances the seriousness of murder with the substantially less serious excesses of Hollywood without making either one seem trite. Thoroughly engaging.

Fiona Alison

DARJEELING INHERITANCE Liz Harris, Heywood Press, 2021, $12.99/£8.99, pb, 404pp, 9781913687083

In 1930, Charlotte Lawrence is finally done with boarding school in England and returns home to India and her family’s tea plantation.

Her companion and friend, Ada, accompanies her. Ada will marry Harry Banning, a neighborhood planter. But when Charlotte arrives home, she discovers that her father has died and left the tea plantation to her, along with the wishes that she marry Andrew McAllister, another neighbor.

Charlotte is overcome with sadness, and unsure about what to do. She hesitates to marry a man she doesn’t know so, postponing the arrangement, she instead asks the assistant manager, Dan, to teach her everything about owning a tea plantation. As she learns more about the life of a tea planter, she begins to develop a sense of herself, and discovers what she truly wants in life. Meanwhile, Ada, bored with her marriage to Harry, begins a sordid affair with Andrew. Ada also discovers some secrets in the McAllister family. She plots, contrives, and meddles.

Harris incorporates good detail about tea plantations and the way of life in colonial India. Readers learn quite a lot about life on British tea plantations. And while Charlotte is a bit too naive and obedient, Ada makes a nice

contrast and diversion with her deviousness.

This is an enjoyable read, full of romance, and with enough treachery and intrigue to keep interest throughout.

Rebecca Cochran

THE AIR RAID GIRLS Jenny Holmes, Corgi, 2021, £6.99, pb, 356pp, 9780552177078

The fictional coast town of Kelsthorpe, England, 1941. Baker’s lass Connie Bailey, airraid warden and usherette, has been widowed by an industrial accident. Suspicious, she determines to investigate by befriending the main witness, black-marketeer George Bachelor, with whom she tolerated her late husband’s dealings. Letting George lure her into premises containing contraband, she’s spotted and arrested. Publicly shamed, she loses both jobs. George escapes. Younger sister Lizzie, frustrated with fiancé Bob’s constant objections to her desire to “do her bit” for Civil Defence, discovers defiance and trains as an ambulance driver. Now aware it’s a sparkless relationship, she starts to look around. Connie’s cinema colleague Pamela and parents are rendered homeless by German bombs, but she cannot face relocating to Aunty and Uncle’s place to sleep on the sofa.

Leaving her snobby mother et al., she takes a boarding-house room near Connie. Fellow resident Fred has an easy attraction and an awkward past…

Holmes provides a plethora of authentic detail about ARP uniforms, equipment, and training regulations as well as realistic danger not only as bombs fall but also during subsequent clear-up operations. I did wonder why this small town with only a fishing port and timber yard (to which all the main characters have some connection) warranted such relentless ferocity from the Luftwaffe, but that aside, the drama, intrigue and especially romance are well staged and maintained throughout in credible contemporary settings with an interesting eclectic supporting cast. A fine read.

Simon Rickman

MURDER MOST FAIR Anna Lee Huber, $15.95/$21.95/£12.99, 9781496728494

Kensington, 2021, pb, 372pp,

Former secret service agent Verity Kent has done her time serving behind German and French lines in WWI. Her forays into Germany, held confidential by the Official Secrets Act, allowed her access to her aunt, Tante Ilse, who witnessed the horrors of war as a German. During Verity’s missions in Germany, she encountered deserters from all sides committing treasonous acts. In England, while spending the Christmas holidays with her parents, husband, and family in Yorkshire, she spots a thatch-haired man loitering on the outskirts of the property.

Meanwhile, Tante Ilse and her maid Bauer have come to visit with Verity and her family.

Post-war, anti-German sentiment abounds in

the village, and also in the household where Tante Ilse is staying. One day, Verity discovers a note from Bauer saying she wishes to see her. Soon after, she and her husband Sidney discover Bauer dead from a pitchfork stabbing in a nearby barn.

Verity’s quest to find Bauer’s killer breaks open festering postwar wounds as she must unravel whether or not the killer is related to the man she has seen lurking on the grounds.

In addition, Verity must determine whether that vagrant is a second deserter whom she encountered during the war or another soldier who committed treason by planting a bomb that resulted in the loss of British troops.

Fans of Anna Lee Huber will again revel in the author’s expert storytelling, along with her ability to weave historical backstory seamlessly into the ongoing narrative. All the while, Anna Lee Huber invites the reader into Verity’s emotional reactions, so the world of post-WWI England takes shape, and the reader becomes a part of it. This novel continues the Verity Kent Mystery series.

Gini Grossenbacher

THE MEMORY BOX Kathryn Hughes, Headline Review, 2021, £7.99/$12.99, pb, 416pp, 9781472265951

One has to be very old these days to remember a wartime romance, which is why The Memory Box begins with the narrator’s 100th birthday. As you would expect, she has ‘unfinished business’ and needs to revisit the scenes of her youth—in this case Italy—to find closure.

The story is structured in the familiar two time-streams. The historic stream covers the narrator’s experiences as an evacuee on a Welsh farm and then as the English wife of an Italian partisan fighter in German-occupied Italy. It is an unusual love story, well imagined, dramatic and sometimes violent, which ends with a twist that upends the story. In contrast the contemporary time stream, which is given roughly equal space, and which centres on the narrator’s young carer and her difficult relationship with her boyfriend, is pallid and lifeless. The historic stream includes a massacre and several violent deaths; the contemporary stream is mainly about squabbles over the housekeeping money. The narrator has to tell the story to somebody, but the listener’s story should not be a distraction from the main narrative.

An interesting variation on the two-stream reminiscence novel.

Edward James

THE GYPSY’S DAUGHTER Katie Hutton, Zaffre, 2021, £7.99/$12.95, pb, 400pp, 9781838770372

The eponymous Harmony Loveridge, “Harry” to her family, friends and others who are neither, is raised on a farm in Kent by loving parents. This book is a sequel to the author’s excellent debut novel, The Gypsy Bride, and through Harry’s story we learn

about the struggles and prejudices faced

by Romanis, even those who settle into a stationary existence. Set in post-World War II England, this is an impeccably researched, heart-warming, coming-of-age story taking us through Harry’s teenage and early twenties experiences, good and bad, and her search for a love that is as strong as that of her parents.

Harry’s life is touched by family tragedy and externally imposed violence. From the relative tranquillity of rural Kent, to university life in Nottingham with its factories and mining communities, Katie Hutton demonstrates a mastery of description, bringing characters and settings to life.

The novel deals with the difficult subjects of domestic violence and homosexuality sympathetically and with a great understanding of historical context and remains true to the prejudices and attitudes of late 1950s England. Much care has obviously been taken with the authenticity of accents and dialect, adding to the sense of place.

The Gypsy’s Daughter is an extremely well written, classically romantic tale. The characters are well rounded and believable, and the novel flows with just the right amount of pace to keep the reader turning the pages.

Aidan K. Morrissey

ORPHANS OF THE STORM Celia Imrie, Bloomsbury, 2021, £14.99, hb, 416pp, 9781526614919 / Bloomsbury, 2021, $27.00, hb, 416pp, 9781635577884

September 1911, Nice, France. A terrified young woman sits in a lawyer’s office, struggling to explain why she is there. So begins Celia Imrie’s emotional tale of Marcella Navratil’s fight for her children. The historical facts of the case, described in an end note by researcher Fidelis Morgan, are dramatic enough to need no further embellishment. All Titanic enthusiasts will know of the orphans in the last lifeboat. For those of us who don’t, the moment when Marcella’s children are led onto the doomed ship is heavily foreshadowed. But by imagining a powerful emotional life for her historical characters, Imrie has translated these well-known facts into a page-turning saga.

She charts Marcella’s journey from joy to despair, beginning as she dances on the beach and dreams of becoming a singer. But her family insists she learns a trade. Thus, Marcella embarks upon training as a ladies’ tailor, and meets charmer Michael Navratil.

Michael is not all he seems, and, in the tradition of saga stories, innocent Marcella is blind to all the warning signals. There were times when I wanted to shout, ‘Marcella, don’t be so stupid!’ But here lies Imrie’s skill: I had to continue reading. How much will he hurt her, before she stops believing his lies? Then suddenly, we cut to the story of Margaret Hays, an American heiress taking the Grand Tour of Europe.

The structure is complicated, jumping back and forth in time, and switching between differing characters. But it’s well handled, easy

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to follow, and everything comes together in the end. Early 20th-century Nice, cosmopolitan and busy, forms an active backdrop. Other settings, whether the opulent Titanic or the grey Channel, are vividly sketched but never intrude on the drama.

Recommended for those who like an emotional saga with lavish fashions and a heart-warming ending.

Helen Johnson

THE PRINCE OF THE SKIES Antonio Iturbe (trans Lilit Žekulin Thwaites), Macmillan, 2021, £16.99, hb, 544pp, 9781529063332 / Feiwel & Friends, 2021, $28.99, hb, 544pp, 9781250806987

Iturbe’s second novel opens at Le Bourget Aerodrome, Paris, in 1922. Antoine de SaintExupéry’s plane is described as an ungainly, oversized child’s toy—until it takes gracefully to the air, transforming also its pilot. This is not primarily a novel about a writer’s life and death (though it is also that); it’s a novel about aviation, and an exhilarating account it is too.

It’s also the story of two of Saint-Exupéry’s colleagues and friends: Jean Mermoz, an often arrogant, devil-may-care risk-taker with an appetite for food that rivals that of Obelix, and the dependable, uxorious Henri Guillaumet.

In these early contraptions of wood, steel and canvas, these ground-breaking pilots are exposed to the elements in ways unimaginable in modern air travel, in their relentless mission to deliver mail across oceans and continents.

Even if Guillaumet’s survival against the odds when his plane is downed in the Andes is a historical fact, I read Iturbe’s reconstruction of it with my heart in my mouth.

The book is also a story of love, or obsession, notably in Saint-Exupéry’s doomed courtship of Louise de Vilmorin. Due to a bad hip, Louise is sometimes carried about on a palanquin, like Trollope’s Madeline Stanhope. She is similarly both bewitching and flighty: Saint-Exupéry’s agony of disappointment and his need to keep fighting what he knows is a helpless cause is empathetically portrayed (ultimately it inspires his Southern Mail). Iturbe’s imagery in this elegant translation is memorable: “all his experiences have left an unpleasant taste in his mouth, as if he’d drunk the water from a vase of dead flowers”. Epic might be an overused word, but it is an appropriate description of this novel.

Katherine Mezzacappa

THE LAST DANCE OF THE DEBUTANTE Julia Kelly, Gallery, 2021, $27.00, hb, 320pp, 9781982171636

Kelly immerses the reader in the rarefied mid-20th-century world of British debutantes, where we experience the Season along with shy, studious 18-year-old Lily Nicholls. Lily’s grandmamma tells her she will be presented to Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, launching her into a grueling, glittering marathon of balls and cocktail parties so she 44

can “meet the right people” and find a suitable husband. “It’s what women of our class do.”

Lily befriends Leanna and Katherine, two very different debutantes, competing for Deb of the Year, 1958. Beautiful, high-handed, demanding Leanna Hartford bosses Lily and makes her feel managed. Nouveau riche Katherine Norman seeks a career in journalism.

Mature beyond her years and genuine, her positive influence helps our heroine discover her true desire. Tall, handsome graduate student Ian Bingham provides the love interest.

From the Carlton Club to the Savoy to the Queen Charlotte’s Ball, it’s a seductive yet stultifying and repetitive whirlwind – “a strange combination of ever changing and always the same.” The tone changes when Lily leaves London and the Season behind to discover the truth of her family secrets. The novel has a coming-of-age feel as Lily develops from a shy girl into a confident young woman.

As always, Kelly creates realistic characters and shines in her depiction of an era.

Gail M. Murray

BEASTS OF A LITTLE LAND Juhea Kim, Ecco, 2021, $27.99, hb, 416pp, 9780063093577 / Oneworld, 2022, £16.99, hb, 416pp, 9780861543229

This beautiful book follows the lives of a girl named Jade, who is sold at the age of ten as an apprentice to a courtesan, and JungHo, the impoverished boy who befriends her. The story, which begins in 1917 and ends in 1965, takes place against the backdrop of a tumultuous century of occupation, hunger, and political upheaval as the Koreans yearn for independence. Along the way we meet a wide-ranging cast of characters, including Japanese military officers, celebrity courtesans, communist revolutionaries, and tigers. The writing has a dreamlike quality that immerses the reader in a fascinating world.

Jade’s story is one of strength and survival.

She has a difficult journey through life and has her heart broken more than once. When at long last she finds love, it comes in a form she could never have imagined. In the end she learns that “life is not about what keeps you safe, but what you keep safe.” JungHo’s life is equally difficult as he transforms from a petty criminal into a revolutionary. His love for Jade is unrequited, but ultimately they find they have a deeper bond than mere romantic love.

Not only is this a gorgeously written story, but Kim also gives us insight into a historical period with which many Westerners will be unfamiliar.

The casual cruelty of the Japanese military,

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as they allow the Korean peasants to starve, and the indifference of the Americans and Europeans to their plight, provide a justifiable rationale for some Koreans, including JungHo, to turn to communism and the Soviet Union for help in achieving justice. The tiger—an elusive, majestic creature—is a fitting symbol for these courageous people as they face their doom.

Trish MacEnulty

THE HEALING OF NATALIE CURTIS Jane Kirkpatrick, Revell, 2021, $16.99, pb, 369pp, 9780800736132

Jane Kirkpatrick tells the story of Natalie Curtis, an accomplished musician who compiled a landmark book on American Indian culture. In 1897 Curtis suffered a nervous breakdown, brought on by the pressure of performing in concerts and by an unrequited love interest. Her brother George, concerned about his sister’s lingering malaise, had been working at a ranch in the West. In 1902, he convinced her to travel with him to California, then on to Arizona and other states, hoping new sounds and sights would revive her. They did. Fascinated with Indian songs and with their creators, Natalie Curtis devoted the rest of her life to recording and publishing Indian music. She fought against efforts to assimilate Indians, confronting officials who banned Indian songs, dance, and dress. Using her family connection to Theodore Roosevelt, she lobbied, with mixed success, for an end to such harmful regulations.

Kirkpatrick bases her engaging work of historical fiction on facts, but creatively fills gaps in the record. The novel at times reads like a travelogue, as Curtis and her brother move by horse, mule, and wagon from one community of Indians to another. Some readers may find Curtis’s progress toward mental health insufficiently dramatic to sustain the plot and may feel her enlightened efforts to avoid objectifying Indian culture seem too current.

Other readers will admire how Kirkpatrick conveys Curtis’s growing appreciation for Indian culture and will praise the novel as a wellwritten story of a journey toward mental and spiritual health. Readers may also welcome the imaginative “interludes” scattered through the novel that are written from the point of view of individual Indians, adding to the range of perspectives.

Marlie Wasserman

THE FAMILY Naomi Krupitsky, Putnam, 2021, $27.00, hb, 368pp, 9780525541998

There is family, and then there is Family.

Krupitsky takes a familiar American narrative— growing up in the Mafia in the middle of the 20th century—and with lyrical, dreamlike prose, transforms it into a story of finding one’s place in the wider world. Antonia and Sofia are dazzling creations, intelligent, passionate women who begin their lives knowing what is expected of them as daughters of the Family,

but find, through their deep bond of friendship, a way to redefine themselves.

Impulsive, passionate Sofia is the cherished d a u g h t e r of Brooklyn underboss Joey Colicchio, and shy, practical Antonia the less-privileged daughter of Joey’s friend and henchman Carlo Russo. Growing up in adjoining apartments, the two are not only friends but the centerpoints of each other’s chaotic lives. “If I can see you, I must be here,” is the poignant repeated phrase that describes the way their connection offers an identity denied them in a culture where most women are invisible.

Both girls live a “normal” life in 1930s Italian American New York, but the bond between them is strained when Antonia’s father attempts to leave the Family and disappears.

The ripples from this tragedy affect their lives for the next twenty years, as both women find themselves wanting more than the narrowly defined roles they have inherited as their fathers’ daughters.

The heroines are the center of the novel but not the only voices—their parents and husbands get to tell their stories as well, creating a rich portrait of a culture suspended between Old World traditions and modern pressures. Krupitsky’s confident style adds a satisfying literary dimension to the often-told tale of how the Mafia tested family loyalties.

It’s hard to believe the author is a California native and that this is her first published work; her love of New York and its 20th-century history have created an authentic, moving novel.

Kristen McDermott

THE WOMAN AT THE GATES Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger, 2021, $12.99/C$16.99/£10.99, 9781800191631

Bookouture, pb, 414pp,

This is a novel of personal resistance: against a totalitarian regime, an invasion, an oppressive occupation, as well as fellow citizens who also have their own shifting loyalties based on contemporary experiences.

It is also resistance against oneself and the constant doubts that can deflect from positive action. “Strange how cheering in ecstasy appeared to use the same muscles as were required to scream in fury.”

Antonia is the epitome of a citizen with a single overarching dream: independence for her homeland, Ukraine, from Russia. During the subsequent German occupation, she struggles through the complex and layered landscape that is the barbarity of World War Two to keep her personal and national dreams

alive during capture, interrogation, torture, internment camp life, and ever-threatening death. Often on the edge of despair with execution and destruction surrounding her, Antonia centers her energies, continually conniving and striving to survive and reunite her scattered family.

This is an elaborate tale played on a complex landscape during times of great stress. LucykBerger captures the horror of camp life, the brutality of occupation, and ferocity of partisan engagements. Further, at times, the reality of betrayal shifts both action and alliances. The poignant denouement brings some strands together and does foreshadow a future. As reality dictates, not all survivors will participate in these new directions, and not every gate will open to a complementary path. However, even the memories might provide a positive route to follow.

Jon G. Bradley

TENDERNESS Alison MacLeod, Bloomsbury, 2021, $29.00, hb, 624pp, 9781635576108 / Bloomsbury Circus, 2021, £18.99, hb, 616pp, 9781408884669

It’s 1928, and D. H. Lawrence is in Italy, trying not to die of his desperately poor health.

Then it’s 1915, and he and his new wife, with whom he is already at odds, are temporarily occupying a cottage on a friend’s pastoral property in Sussex.

Then it’s 1959, and the lovely wife of Massachusetts’s junior senator is sneaking away from her tony apartment to attend, incognito, the Post Office’s obscenity hearing for Lawrence’s last novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. J. Edgar Hoover has a particular interest in banning the book, so when the FBI agent covering the hearing catches a photo of the dark-eyed Jackie Kennedy clutching the controversial novel, Hoover suddenly has leverage over the presumptive presidential candidate. And Mel Harding, the nearly disgraced FBI agent who took the photo, now has a way to redeem his career.

The novel jumps and skips between Lawrence, with his “large but crooked heart” and propensity to ruin friendships, Jackie Kennedy, Hoover, Harding, and nearly everyone else who encounters Lawrence or his novel’s two important obscenity trials.

Dashing from languorous afternoons on the Sussex Downs, to Hoover’s living room, to a library reading room in Cambridge, and all sorts of destinations in between, this novel has an expansive reach. Humans are contradictory, time folds in on itself, and literature informs life. Quotes from Lawrence’s writing, his contemporaries’ poems, and even this novel itself are layered through the book as if seen through a scrim behind the novel’s primary text.

Unfortunately, the book feels overlong and even boring at times, with many rich passages that have little narrative drive and too many characters’ thoughts. Still, the overall effect is astounding, as MacLeod draws parallels between two historical turning points when

the old guard fought against progress, and she subtly suggests contemporary parallels.

Carrie Callaghan

WHITE RIVER RED Becky Marietta, TouchPoint, 2021, $16.99, pb, 262pp, 9781952816147

In 1972, Betty McLaughlin is bored writing obituaries for the Springdale Times. An aspiring journalist, Betty musters her courage to ask her editor if she could have a new assignment. Murray obliges by giving her a lead about an elderly tightrope walker living in a nursing home facility in Fayetteville. If Betty proves herself an able writer, the story will be a Sunday feature.

Forrestina Campbell, aka White River Red, ran away from home at the age of 15 to join a circus. In 1909, she catches up to Ringling Brothers and is signed on as a ballet girl, but her real desire is to be an aerialist—a tightrope walker. What follows is a fictionalized account of Forrestina’s life as told to Betty.

Based on the real Forrestina Campbell, Marietta recounts Red’s ascent to becoming a star tightrope walker, a fall that results in her dismissal from the famous circus, two tumultuous relationships with alcoholic lovers, a run as a carnie worker using trained rats, and lastly, Campbell’s generosity toward others. Such material could have made for an exceptional telling; however, Marietta’s writing does not fully capitalize on Forrestina Campbell’s life or even the gritty backdrop of the Depression. A lack of emotional tension and shallow characterizations fail to elevate this novel beyond a serviceable account of a woman’s life. It is a pleasant story, simply written.

Mary Lawrence

DANCE OF THE MILLIONS Paul Martin, Historia, 2021, $18.95, pb, 340pp, 9781953789853

Three friends attend law school in Havana during the time called the Dance of the Millions, between September 1919 and May 1920, when Cuba’s economy cratered after prices for its principal export raw sugar rose from 6½ to 22½ cents per pound, then fell to 3¾ cents.

Each of the young men represents a faction thrown into turmoil. Eduard Betancourt is the son of a sugar estate owner in El Siboney who has mortgaged his property to the hilt to add modern sugar-processing equipment and a rail line to ship sugar to market. Degas Falla Bonet is the son of a confidential aide to the president of the country and is expected to join the government himself after graduation.

Enrique Solar is so concerned about poverty and political pressure on laborers and unions he abruptly leaves school and disappears.

When police ignore a series of ritualistic murders of young female dancers, Eduardo and journalist Tomás Fuentes team up to investigate on their own.

Dance of the Millions is Martin’s second

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historical mystery, and it has elements of the first. Killin’ Floor Blues (2020) describes a series of bizarre killings of country blues performers police turn their backs on, leaving the investigation to a father and son who are traveling the Depression-era South and recording blues music.

The story is multilayered, weaving in details about the economy and politics of the time, the complicated history of Cuba, slavery, Santería religion, and voodoo. Music is a focus, with descriptions of Habanero songs and dances.

But the story does not gel. The plot drags; dialogue is often stilted and explanatory. While scenes of Havana and other parts of Cuba are evocative, the narrative keeps readers at a distance, wishing they could find una melodía.

K. M. Sandrick

LAST DAYS IN CLEAVER SQUARE Patrick McGrath, Hutchinson, 2021, £16.99, hb, 240pp, 9781786332745

This is a novel of the Spanish Civil War, or more accurately, the memories of the traumatic times that Francis McNulty ponders on. In 1975, he is an elderly man living in an old house in south London with his daughter Gilly and a housekeeper, Dolores López, whom he rescued from the Spanish fascists in 1936. Francis finds the past catching up with him—he was an ambulance driver in Spain and witnessed atrocities which have haunted him since, coming close to execution in a mixup that has preyed upon his conscience and crippled him with guilt.

McNulty is a published poet, though his inspiration seems to have departed, and in its place has come a series of unnerving visitations from a decomposing and foul ghoul in the shape of Generalissimo Franco, who at the time was dying in Spain. Gilly, who is engaged to be married to a senior Conservative politician, is worried about her father, and wants him to sell the dilapidated house and move in with her and her new husband. Francis wants nothing to do with this.

He is the quintessential unreliable firstperson narrator: the reader experiences Francis’s descent into a traumatized senility and sees the disturbing world though his own undependable vision. The memories and recreations of the deeply stressful and life-altering events in Spain in the 1930s are described with a visceral reality which combines well with his own confused decline into the end of old age.

Douglas Kemp

HER HEART’S CHOICE Rosie Meddon, Canelo, 2021, £2.00, ebook, 344pp, 9781800322929

The story follows Lou Channer, a girl from North Devon during World War Two, who is astounded by her cousin’s dramatic career change from socialite to government position.

She is inspired to find a job herself in Plymouth to see if there is more to life than being married 46

to the first Devon boy who asks her. She finds a position at the Royal Canadian Naval Yard as a clerk and quickly finds it is hard to learn who her friends really are. She is asked out by Harry Hinds, a confident young man who has a job which seems to be a part of their relationship, which Lou realises too late. It doesn’t help there is the lovely Lieutenant Ross who has also taken interest in her.

Author Rosie Meddon captures wartime Plymouth with skill and experience. She takes time to craft her characters in such a way that the reader is compelled to make judgements on all of them, even the protagonist herself. The author hints at the threat of the black-market trade and the seriousness of the laws against it. She contrasts the quiet life of Devon with the haphazard nature of the busy city of Plymouth and its naval bars. We are always rooting for the protagonist, even when she makes mistakes, and follow her progress throughout the novel. Overall, Rose Meddon has written a highly entertaining and successful novel.

Clare Lehovsky

THE RETURN OF THE PHARAOH Nicholas Meyer, Minotaur, 2021, $25.99/ C$34.99, hb, 262pp, 9781250788207

In 1910, Dr. John Watson takes his wife to Egypt for a tuberculosis cure. While she gets mud packs, he discovers the mysterious disappearance of Egyptologists from the British aristocracy. And someone wearing Watson’s own army uniform, stains and all, is incognito in El Fishawy Café before him. It’s his old friend Sherlock Holmes, on the case. With the help of the real excavation personage, Howard Carter, they explore hidden hotel rooms, exotic dancers, pyramids, long-buried tombs, and unravel the plot that goes back in time to the Eighteenth Dynasty as well.

Nicholas Meyer gave us the bestselling Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1974) and movie (1977), concerning an earlier unknown adventure of the master sleuth in which real-life Sigmund Freud put in a cameo performance.

Star Trek sequels and other blockbuster movies formed Meyer’s oeuvres in between.

With this background, plotting and story are flawless, hitting every beat spot on. And the self-conscious parallels between the Covid we’ve all lived through and the tuberculosis of a hundred years ago are deftly done.

We even get pictures amid the text, a Wikimedia panoply of Rosetta stone and statues of Akhenaten. A formulaic escape read that goes down like honey-sweetened jasmine tea from the ewer on the back of a Cairene street vendor.

Ann Chamberlin

THE STORIES WE TELL Liz Milliron, Historia, 2021, $16.95, pb, 290pp, 9781953789167

America is enmeshed in World War II. While “our boys” fight overseas, on the home front, young women like 18-year-old Betty Ahern

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work in the factories producing the weapons and airplanes that will ultimately win the war.

Betty is hardly out of high school when she is called upon to do her part. In Buffalo, New York, in the dead of a frigid winter, little does she know that war is about to be brought right to her doorstep.

The Stories We Tell is the second novel in Milliron’s Homefront Mystery series. Betty has already earned a reputation as someone who can solve the deepest, darkest, most threatening of mysteries. In this book, a young coworker hires her to find out why her healthy grandmother Pelagia, a Polish immigrant, dies so suddenly of a heart attack. Betty’s co-worker suspects otherwise. But who would want to kill a harmless old woman?

With the able assistance of her friends Dot and Lee and the budding partnership of Buffalo police detective Sam MacKinnon, Betty must unravel secrets that go back decades to a time of a distant war in a bloodbath involving foreign countries and national betrayals.

When a delegation of Poland’s governmentin-exile visits Buffalo and one of the delegation is murdered, the death of Pelagia no longer seems so innocent. What is her connection to the murdered Pole and to the wealthy Witkop family who, themselves, left Poland many years ago?

Betty Ahern is not your average American 18-year-old. She works hard, smokes like a sailor, and is stubborn, fearless, and determined to resolve any mystery even at the risk of her own life. The Stories We Tell jumps right into the murder mystery and does not let up until the end. What lies in a story, Betty discovers, is a matter of life and death.

Peter Clenott

THE ENGLISH GIRL Sarah Mitchell, Bookouture, 2021, $10.99/£8.99, pb, 318pp, 9781800196926

The English Girl is a tale of star-crossed lovers set in the aftermath of World War II. However, the book is much more than just a story of illfated love. The year is 1946, and Fran, who lives in Norfolk, England with her sister, her mother, and her ailing father, takes a job in the office of a nearby prisoner-of-war camp. Even though the war is over, the good folk of her village are still suffering, and they resent the intrusion of these former enemy combatants.

But life doesn’t automatically revert to normal after the war. There are mines to sweep, economies to rebuild, and supply shortages, and the prisoners provide expendable labor.

When Fran has a chance encounter with one of the Germans, a man named Thomas, his blue eyes blaze their way right into her heart. The feelings are mutual, but no one in the village likes the idea of an English girl making time with a German prisoner, least of all Fran’s unforgiving sister, who deeply mourns the brother they lost in the war. Fran isn’t the only one with personal problems. Viv, the wife of the colonel in charge of the prison camp, has found solace in the arms of a rakish American, and Martin, a young man who couldn’t fight

in the war because of a medical condition, discovers that his doting mother has both saved and, in some respects, destroyed him.

The story is engrossing, the history fascinating, and the writing lovely. Here’s one example of the many trenchant observations: “…she focuses on the unexpected gift of sky.

On the pink-footed geese, who are beginning to cruise the mudflats, drowning out the zip of her tyres with their early morning cries.”

Trish MacEnulty

A BRIGHT YOUNG THING Brianne Moore, Alcove Press, 2021, $27.99/ C$36.99/£23.99, hb, 320pp, 9781643855332

It’s 1931. The Great Depression has begun.

In London, a young socialite named Astra Davies finds herself in a terrible jam. Astra’s parents have both dropped dead, leaving her a fine old country house and no money at all in which to continue her rather carefree single life. Thanks to her father’s bad investments, Astra inherits nothing but some worthless stock and a great many debts.

Ignorant of all things financial, Astra must figure out a way to save herself. But a female relative is in league with the family lawyer, and they advise Astra to fire all the servants and to sell the family estate at Hensley. Astra rents out her former home to buy time and moves in with an aunt and her witty cousin, Toby, who conspires with Astra to get out of her dismal financial situation and save her family home.

What transpires is a very 1930s romance, with lots of banter between Astra and her friends reminiscent of the Thin Man movies.

The social milieu of upper-class England at the start of the Great Depression seems realistic enough, with its summer house parties and country weddings, but some characters do border on cliché. The handsome and helpful aristocrat, Jeremy Harris, Earl of Dunreaven, for one, a naval officer recently returned home from the sea, seems way too good to be true.

With a little help from her friends, and a bit of creativity, Astra triumphs. Her development from a social butterfly to a smart, competent woman is nicely rendered as she blooms into maturity in this very readable upper-class romance.

David Drum

THREE SISTERS Heather Morris, St. Martin’s, 2021, $28.99, hb, 414pp, 9781250276896 / Bonnier Zaffre, 2021, £13.99, pb, 400pp, 9781838775506

Written in three sequential chronological parts, this Holocaust novel drives readers through the turbulent years of pre- and postWorld War II Central Europe. Commencing late in 1929, where the eldest daughter of a Jewish family, a mere child, is prophetically charged by her father to “always take care of the girls,” the chronicle winds through the war years before culminating in the newly emerging country of Israel. In many ways, the central narrative is anchored in the

cauldron that was the concentration camp environment.

Based on a true story, this multi-character, dense narrative follows three sisters (Magda, Cibi, and Livi) as, against all odds, they actually survive the camps and find each other. Emerging lost and futureless in 1945, they struggle to imagine a positive postwar life.

Stories that detail concentration camp existence, especially over four years, are fraught with literary danger. What words must be used to describe, yet not repel, how are the inhumane conditions portrayed, and which character flaws become amplified? As a subtext, is there a spark of humanity even in these situations? Morris carefully crafts her scenarios in limited, erudite “chunks” shifting back and forth in time as well as geographic locations. As such, she strategically offers the reader a respite from the horrors being graphically described.

The reader is left to ponder how these three teenage females survived. For a single person to survive such camp life is an incredible accomplishment; two is clearly astounding; while three borders on being a miracle. Additionally, for all three sisters to have escaped from one camp and to have successfully entered new lives in a new country might well be considered a triumph of humanity over adversity.

Jon G. Bradley

THE SHADOWS OF MEN Abir Mukherjee, Pegasus Crime, 2021, $25.95, hb, 352pp, 9781643137445 / Harvill Secker, 2021, £12.99, hb, 352pp, 9781787300590

1 9 2 0 s Calcutta can be a perilous place.

Muslim and Hindu tensions are running high, and the city is a tinderbox awaiting a match. When a popular Hindu theologian is found murdered in his own home, Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant Surendranath (aka “Surrender-not”) Banerjee of the police become inextricably involved in the case.

Not only must they ensure that Calcutta remains peaceful and that justice is served, but Surendranath has already been arrested for the crime! Higher-ups ensure that Sam and Surendranath are given a brief amount of time to clear Surendranath and solve the case. But with murder overlapping religious intolerance and a mobster also demanding that Sam provide his son’s murderer within the same time limit, it seems almost impossible for our heroes to succeed.

Naturally both cases are wrapped up— successfully from the point of view of their

superiors—and Sam is happy with the results.

But his partner has learned more during the desperate search for the truth than he really wanted to know and is less sanguine than his friend and superior. Surendranath finds himself facing a different future than he expected before the start of this case.

Alternating points of view between Surendranath and Sam provide a fascinating double look at the case. This fast-paced story provides both a lot of suspense and a bit of sociology to season it. The Shadows of Men is a fine addition to this addictive series, and I am eagerly looking forward to the next installment.

India Edghill

THE FIRE PORTRAIT Barbara Mutch, Allison & Busby, 2021, £12.99, pb, 416pp, 9780749026691

Frances McDonald navigates her career as an artist in pre-Second World War South Africa in this novel. The story begins with her as Frances Whittington, a catch in English society. After the economic crash, her family falls from favour, and she goes to Africa to be a companion to her Aunt Mary. Frances grows to have a passion for art that takes precedence over everything that happens to her, even as her role as lover, wife, and mother.

This novel spans the two worlds of English and Afrikaans and predicts the future struggles between these two societies. Mutch uses the historical and political events of the times as plot devices successfully, and the characters must respond to the challenges she sets before them. It is also a novel rich in description and full of life, as Frances is aware of every little detail in nature as she begins to learn to draw, to the pinnacle of her career as an artist, taking inspiration from everywhere she goes. This novel highlights the importance of place, loyalty, and knowing who your friends are. Frances McDonald demonstrates how far passion can take you if you give it a chance.

Clare Lehovsky

LITTLE BROWN DOG Paula S. Owen, Honno, 2021, £8.99, pb, 358pp, 9781912905430

London, 1903, and animal-loving flatmates Eliza Blackwood and Lena Hageby hatch a plot to infiltrate a medical school demonstration on a live dog. Naturally, chaos ensues, and after the women organise a memorial to the suffering dog, the statue becomes the focus of violent protests. A large cast of characters gradually resolves to four main players: the women; Jack, a medical student; and Doctor Bayling, academic, researcher, and pantomime “baddie”.

The book follows many stories. The main focus is the friendship between the two women, who, despite mismatched backgrounds—one a librarian, the other an heiress—share both a flat and an abhorrence of experiments on animals. But there’s also a love story, and

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Eliza’s personal development from timid librarian to accomplished campaigner.

I would have enjoyed the novel more if the character of Bayling had been more nuanced.

Entrenched in Victorian convictions of white, male, upper-class entitlement, he represents “The Medical Establishment”. But his long list of justifications for experimenting on animals includes “easing Man’s suffering”, and I think the book would have been richer if this aspect could have been explored. As it is, Bayling is cast as a sadistic bully, with no redeeming features.

But the historical story told is intriguing. In an endnote, Owen describes how she came upon the statue of the “Little Brown Dog”, which became the focus of violent clashes.

Anti-vivisectionists united with campaigners for other powerless groups, and we are reminded that many working-class men, as well as all women, were excluded from the vote. Powerful privilege opposed them.

Owen’s fictitious heroines shine, and despite its many storylines, the book is easy to read.

Recommended for those who enjoy “rooting for the underdog”.

Helen Johnson

SPLINTER ON THE TIDE Phillip Parotti, Casemate, 2021, $22.95/£17.99, pb, 233pp, 9781612009582

War makes boys grow up fast, and World War II had that effect on plenty of civilian guys turned naval reserve officers, men like Ash Miller. With his first ship blown out from under him by a floating mine just prior to the story’s opening, Ash has a year of sea duty experience at just the time the navy receives the first of a new class of small escort vessel, the woodenhulled sub chaser. The little ships are tailormade for very junior officers to command, and he finds himself made captain of Chaser 3 as a freshly minted lieutenant (junior grade).

With a couple of green ensigns and a little crew of inexperienced enlisted reservists, Ash must rely heavily on a handful of regular navy petty officers to help him mold the vessel into an effective warship. Convoying merchant ships up the East Coast is the duty Chaser 3 has drawn, but in those early days of the war, U-boats make things dangerous even within sight of Boston and Miami. Occasional upkeep periods in port help Ash keep his sanity despite a frenzied schedule, and he soon develops a bond with a young teacher named Claire. But the pressure, the boredom of convoy routine, and the random periods of great danger when U-boats move in stretch their relationship to the breaking point.

Parotti captures the feel of shipboard life perfectly, and the technical details he brings make for great realism. Unfortunately, the plot is a bit “under-gunned,” with a shortage of drama and character conflict. For some readers, this may be unsatisfactory in a war story. For others, though, it may provide a comfortable, enjoyable read.

Loyd Uglow

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BENEATH THE VEIL OF SMOKE AND ASH Tammy Pasterick, SheWrites, 2021, $16.95, pb, 370pp, 9781647421915

Set amid the factories and coal mines of western Pennsylvania, Pasterick’s novel follows several interconnected families over the course of seven years. In 1910, Slovak immigrant Janos Kovac supports his two children and his widowed sister by working in a dangerous steel factory while his wife, Karina, keeps house for the factory’s manager. Dreaming that her boss will take her away from the town and give her a life of ease, Karina allows him to exploit her sexually. She neglects her husband and children, but when her boss betrays her, she conspires with two other workers for revenge, altering the course of everyone’s lives. Their 11-year-old daughter, Sofie, is best friends with Pole, a neighbor boy whose brutish, drunken father joins the conspiracy and drags the boy out of town when the plan goes bad. Karina runs away as well, and her son Lukas’s efforts to catch her cost him a leg in a terrible accident.

Seven years later, Lukas has a patron and the life of which his mother had dreamed. Sofie longs to see Pole again, and Janos has fallen in love, but Karina’s return once again threatens to ruin everything.

Told from multiple characters’ points of view, the story is heartfelt and moving. Pasterick’s characters are realistically flawed but at the core good people trying to make a life for themselves and their families under difficult circumstances. Readers gain an appreciation for the Slovak culture that centers family, solidarity in the workplace, and generosity toward those who have even less. Based on the author’s family stories, this novel draws us into the world of those who built a nation during the Industrial Revolution.

Lyn Miller-Lachmann

A DARKER REALITY Anne Perry, Ballantine, 2021, $24.99/C$37.00, hb, 320pp, 9780593159361 / Headline, 2021, £8.99, pb, 368pp, 9781472275202

Third in the Elena Standish Series, A Darker Reality opens in the spring of 1934, as Elena, an M16 agent, has made the long journey from London to Washington, DC to celebrate the 60th wedding anniversary of her maternal grandparents, Wyatt and Dorothy Baylor, a couple known to be of great wealth and with political and influential connections. As a photographer, Elena is interested in capturing elegant guests such as scientist Harmon Worth and his Austrian wife, Lila, President Franklin Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor, and others of “high society, politicians, the rich and ambitious.”

Anne Perry’s lush descriptions of the magnificent home and luxurious setting help settle readers into a comfortable niche to observe and listen in on Elena’s conversations with the well-connected, distinguished guests, which lead her to question her grandparents’ political beliefs. Elena’s background and involvement in MI6, the British secret service,

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as well as extensive descriptions of the radical, political leanings of the Baylors and their guests, are seamlessly woven into dialogue.

These details become immensely important as a chauffeur interrupts the lavish party to announce Lila Worth has been run over in the driveway! Chaos and mystery ensue; police are summoned, guests questioned.

Anne Perry leads readers on a steady march, keenly analyzing suspects, subjecting readers to palm-sweating confrontations with Agent Elena in disguise and deep, emotional delving into grief. Through quiet conversations, characters’ conscious and innermost feelings develop as Perry explores the close relationship of Elena and Grandfather Lucas, former head of MI6, and casts suspicion on fellow agent James Allenby. Political intrigue or a domestic issue? Elena and Allenby concur; the killer is among the guests. A “tangled web of distrust” leads readers through this maze to an appalling and ghastly conclusion. What’s next for Elena Standish?

Dorothy Schwab

THE LIMITS OF LIMELIGHT Margaret Porter, Gallica Press, 2021, $14.95/£11.00, pb, 412pp, 9780990742012

Sixteenyear-old Helen Nichols is pretty and intelligent but has never seen herself as someone special.

However, her cousin, rising star Ginger Rogers, sees potential in her and invites her to move to California to try her luck in pictures. Quickly renamed Phyllis Fraser, the fresh-faced Oklahoman is whisked off to an exciting life of screen tests and auditions. But getting a big break is hard. She finds herself struggling to get small roles, and many of those end up on the cutting room floor. Phyllis is lucky to have Ginger and her aunt for emotional and financial support; not all her friends and fellow actresses are so fortunate. She begins to wonder if she should continue her pursuit of an acting career or whether she should follow her childhood dream of becoming a writer.

Porter offers up a captivating novel about Hollywood in the 1930s and ´40s. Plenty of celebrities make an appearance, including Katharine Hepburn, Anne Shirley, Howard Hughes, and the doomed Peg Entwistle. Rather than focusing solely on the glamour of the movie-making industry, the author provides plenty of details about the hardscrabble life working performers faced, providing a more realistic and multifaceted view of the era. Also engaging are the strong female friendships Phyllis has with other actresses and

her relationship with her family, a group of determined, ambitious women. This book is a real treat for those looking for a peek inside Hollywood’s Golden Age. Janice Derr

THE VIXEN Francine Prose, Harper, 2021, $25.99/£20.00, hb, 316pp, 9780063012141

This is one of the most satisfying novels I’ve read in ages.

From the beginning, Prose places us firmly in the consciousness of an insecure young Jewish man named Simon who has just graduated from Harvard and who, for mysterious reasons, has been rejected by the only graduate school he applied to. He feels like an utter failure.

On the night of the execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (an event of worldwide condemnation), he’s living near Coney Island with his parents, watching the proceedings of the execution on television with horror.

His mother, who knew Ethel, is especially disturbed.

Simon’s quest for success starts off in a deceptively mundane manner. With the help of a well-connected uncle, Simon lands a job with a prestigious publisher, but his first real assignment—to edit a terribly written novel casting Ethel Rosenberg as a nymphomaniac commie—entails an enormous personal conflict. While the stakes may not seem particularly high at first, as the plot moves forward, it does indeed thicken. Simon desperately wants to succeed in his job, but the juxtaposition of Ethel Rosenberg, a devoted wife and mother, with the overwrought sexuality of her fictional counterpart is more than his conscience can handle. He has no idea that the awful writing and slanderous story are the least of his worries.

The book, which takes place at the height of the Cold War, in the midst of McCarthyism and a general miasma of paranoia, reveals how we lie to each other and to ourselves. The fact that an asylum is one of the settings is no accident. At that point in history, it must have seemed as if the lunatics were in charge—not so different from our own era. Francine Prose is a fabulous writer, and The Vixen is a brilliant literary achievement.

Trish MacEnulty

DEATH AT GREENWAY Lori Rader-Day, William Morrow, 2021, $16.99/£9.99, pb, 421pp, 9780062938046

Greenway, Agatha Christie’s estate in Devon, England, serves as the setting for this

riveting novel.

Lori RaderDay’s story centers around the practice of evacuating children from London to the country during World War II, to keep them safe from the Blitz. Two young women, acting as nurses, care for ten lonely but rambunctious children housed at Greenway. A crew of servants, volunteers, and villagers assists the nurses. Nurse Bridget Kelly, the protagonist, begins as a sad, almost invisible character, who develops powers of observation, and more importantly makes at least two startling choices upon which the plot turns. Christie is absent from her own house more than resident there, but her spirit is always present. Before long readers learn, of course, that not all is as it seems. Are the nurses really nurses? Is the village doctor really an honest man? Are the high number of robberies in the village just a coincidence?

And what about the disappearances?

The novel evokes Christie’s style, complex plots, and atmosphere, but with impressive updates in terms of intimate relationships and psychology.

Rader-Day introduces many hints, some of which prove to be omens and some distractions. Even paying close attention to these, most readers will be unable to guess at the details of the unfolding plot or the nature of mistaken identities. American readers will love such phrases as “bits and bobs” and “spend a penny” and such words as “snogging” and “bothy,” expertly chosen

by Rader-Day to evoke the place and time.

Readers of historical novels will love the mix of history and fiction, admiring the way facts are easily feathered into the flow of the story.

Highly recommended.

Marlie Wasserman

THE LAST ROSE OF SHANGHAI Weina Dai Randel, Lake Union, 2021, $14.95, pb, 430pp, 9781542032872

As borders around the world close to Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, Shanghai becomes their destination. But now the Japanese are occupying Shanghai, and Jewish refugees are housed in a ghetto under appalling conditions.

This is the wartime love story of Aiyi Shao and Ernest Reismann. As an older woman in 1980, Aiyi wants a documentarian to tell Ernest’s story and to right a wrong she’s done to him.

The mystery remains throughout as to why his story and what the wrong was. Moving back to 1940, Aiyi’s and Ernest’s stories are told in alternating chapters.

Aiyi is a young Chinese woman from a prominent family who has arranged her

upcoming marriage to Cheng, a controlling man with traditional values. She defies Chinese customs by owning her own jazz club, One Hundred Joys Nightclub. With Cheng’s opposition and a wartime economy, Aiyi struggles to keep her club from failing. Ernest, a pianist, and his young sister arrive in Shanghai from Berlin, destitute and hungry. With so much antagonism against the refugees, no one will hire a foreigner, let alone a Jew. After Ernest gives Aiyi an audition playing her favorite song, “The Last Rose of Shanghai,” she takes a chance in hiring him, hoping her patrons will overlook who he is and allow his piano to enthrall and entertain. Ernest, after suffering under Nazis in Germany, is subjected to brutality from the club’s patrons, a jealous Cheng, and cruel Japanese soldiers. Ernest and Aiyi find solace and happiness together, but that changes when they are separated after Germany persuades the Japanese to take action against the Jews.

The author has created resilient characters to love and admire along with a compelling story. Readers gain a new perspective of WWII from this narrative of the Japanese occupation in Shanghai. Weina Dai Randel’s novel deserves a place of distinction among WWII fiction.

Janice Ottersberg

ALL THAT IS SECRET Patricia Raybon, Tyndale, 2021, $15.99, pb, 372pp, 9781496458384

1922: Cowboy Joe Spain finds an infant abandoned on the freezing Colorado plains.

The baby dies in his arms. Joe later boards a train to Chicago to visit his brilliant daughter, a “colored professor” of theology with a love for Sherlock Holmes novels. Joe never arrives; his body is found along the railroad tracks, pushed to his death. A year later a disillusioned Annalee remains plagued by questions about her father’s killing. A cryptic telegram arrives on a snowy night and summons her back to Denver to investigate the murder.

Eddie, a young urchin searching for his father, joins Annalee and saves her life when a stranger attacks them. In Denver, the two flee the train. After a brush with the KKK, the pair are met, not by the elderly pastor Annalee expects, but by his enticingly handsome nephew, Reverend Jack Blake. Blake, a WWI hero, is the new pastor at the Mount Moriah Church. Disturbed by other murders as well as Joe’s, Jack reveals he sent for Annalee.

The Invisible Empire, the KKK, rules Denver, and Annalee’s investigation threatens people from all levels of society. Her life, and the lives of her friends, are endangered as she searches for the truth of Joe’s slaying, but Annalee’s quest for justice brings her unexpected treasures—renewed faith, love, and more mysteries to come.

This fast-paced mystery beautifully evokes life in 1920s Denver. Spunky Annalee proves a resourceful and intrepid heroine and her allies are fully fleshed individuals. Raybon’s lively style keeps the novel moving while shining a

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light on a sad epoch in American life that still reverberates a century later. I’ll look forward to Annalee’s next case! Recommended.

Susan McDuffie

THE CITY UNDER SIEGE Michael Russell, Constable, 2021, £8.99, pb, 314pp, 9781472130402

The story begins in southern Ireland in 1939 when the body of a young, gay man, James Corcoran, is found by a lake in Kildare, badly mutilated, although the injuries were caused after death. The Irish authorities didn’t seem to bother much with the case, and no one was ever charged with the offence. Corcoran had been training to be a priest at St. Patrick’s College in Dublin but was beginning to have doubts about his vocation. Two years later several similar offences occurred in London and a further two in Malta. When these last two bodies are found, Scotland Yard decides to do something about it and sends Detective Inspector Stefan Gillespie from the Irish Police and Chief Inspector Frank Nugent from Scotland Yard to Malta to sort it all out.

The story is intriguing. It twists and turns, and the job is made more difficult by the two detectives who get involved with the Maltese officials and realise that they are not welcome there. The characters are compelling, and after a fairly slow start, the mystery begins to grip. What is the connection between these dead men? They are all gay at a time when this was illegal on both sides of the Irish Sea, so is that the main reason for their murders?

Britain is at war with Germany, Malta is under siege, and the Irish are trying to maintain their neutrality, so does all this have anything to do with it? Is one person responsible, or are there more and it is all just coincidental? This is the sixth book in the Stephan Gillespie series, and I am very tempted to read more.

Marilyn Sherlock

THE WIDOWS OF CHAMPAGNE Renee Ryan, Love Inspired, 2021, $9.99/ C$13.99, ebook, 379pp, 9780369704795

Josephine, Hélène, Gabrielle. Three generations of women of Château FouchéLeblanc in Reims, France—matriarch, daughter-in-law, granddaughter—have the misfortune to be widows. They have banded together to continue their family’s centuriesold tradition of producing celebrated vintages of champagne, but France’s surrender to the Nazis in 1940, and the subsequent occupation, threatens their business and very lives. With Helmut von Schmidt, a German wine importer turned Wehrmacht captain, requisitioning their home and organizing mass theft of champagne for the Third Reich’s consumption, each woman takes separate, dangerous steps to save their legacy and family.

The story ably conveys the trio’s courageous acts amid the constant fear of discovery.

Nervous but determined, Gabrielle constructs a false wall to conceal the most treasured 50

champagne blends in their cellar and agrees to spy for the Resistance. Hélène, a sophisticated former Parisian whose paternal Jewish heritage is kept hidden, feigns affection for Von Schmidt, seeing no other choice. Her internal decision-making process, as she endures feelings of guilt and shame, is nuanced and emotionally shattering. Equally moving is the perspective of Josephine— still elegant at 77— as she tries to hold off encroaching dementia while formulating a daring plan. The chime of cathedral bells and intriguing details on champagne production establish credible atmosphere and serve as reminders of daily life around Reims in normal times.

The cruel, lecherous Von Schmidt seems a formulaic villain at first, but the story turns unexpectedly powerful when his superior arrives. Past the halfway point, it has the pacing of a thriller, where the pages can’t be turned fast enough. Aspects of the denouement, however, feel abrupt and fail to address the novel’s complex moral issues in adequate depth, especially since they were explored so realistically beforehand. While The Widows of Champagne has many strengths, the neat conclusion may not satisfy all readers.

Sarah Johnson

THE SHADE TREE Theresa Shea, Guernica Editions, 2021, $21.95, pb, 300pp, 9781771836296

In the 1930s, Ellie and Mavis Turner live on their father’s failing Florida orange grove. Ellie is head-turningly beautiful, her father’s spoiled favourite. Selfish, mean-spirited, vindictive, lustful, and a proficient liar, she bears a striking resemblance to Steinbeck’s Cathy Ames. When her father sells her to a rich landowner in exchange for badlyneeded money, Ellie is outraged but pays dearly for her underestimation of the man’s determination to have her. Her refusal to marry him is the catalyst for all that follows.

Young Mavis wholeheartedly believes in her older sister’s good nature, despite everything she sees to the contrary. Although slow to take root, Mavis’s character grows and matures as she seeks to understand why white privilege is so endemic it is barely noticed. Juxtaposed against Mavis’s growing maturity, Ellie inevitably sees herself as the victim and can justify her actions as warranted revenge for whatever has been done to her. Shea does little to forward Ellie’s growth beyond her churlish cruelty and petulance, and this serves the narrative well.

A midwife, living on the Yates plantation, Sliver is always there to catch new life as it emerges, regardless of colour or parentage.

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She is the sieve through which the events run, filtering out right from wrong and bringing perspective. Her silence about much of what she sees and feels is well-founded, but some secrets should not be kept forever.

For fifty years, readers share a harrowing journey with these three women, whose lives become inextricably entwined. The novel explores young white women’s attraction (although forbidden) to Black men. With non-Black authors currently discouraged from writing Black stories, Shea successfully finds neutral ground in this situation, leaving the reader to discern the innumerable wrongs and the uplifting rights. Mesmerizing, engrossing, and brilliantly plotted, this is an achievement that will echo long after the last page is turned.

Fiona Alison

THE DOWRY Ikbal Singh, Prerogative Publishing, 2020, $6.99, pb, 130pp, 9798681154341

The Dowry highlights the important antidowry abuse campaigns commencing in 197273. Commendably, Maya, the protagonist, leads reform campaigns with some assistance from family and Indira Gandhi; she’s not a victim to be ‘saved.’ Also positive are insights linking dowry abuse in that era to middle-class greed and barriers to abused women escaping, e.g., family/community pressures, limited employment opportunities, and inadequate housing.

Sadly, the plot is implausible with Maya almost singlehandedly combatting dowry abuse while surviving an impotent and cowardly husband, abusive in-laws, gang rape and acid attacks, and muddling through myriad relationships with Caucasian and Indian men and a Japanese lesbian. Indira Gandhi also needs little beyond Maya’s support to win elections, instigate reforms and subdue Pakistanis by creating Bangladesh.

Factual errors abound, e.g., Maya’s name is explained as meaning wealth and desire; it means illusion. The sensationalist opening statement incorrectly portrays sati (immolation of Hindu women on their husband’s pyre) as widespread and voluntary. Concerningly, the devastation caused by British colonizers is completely denied: ‘when India was ruled by Britain, people were enterprising – they did not let poverty touch them and they would do anything to live well’. In America, they ‘had the advantage of starting from an empty continent.’

Equally concerning is the author declaring the ‘unruly madness in India’ justification of Mrs. Gandhi’s repressive Emergency.

All religions except Christianity are denigrated, with some subject to ridiculous generalisations, e.g., Hinduism and Islam have become indistinguishable because both are rooted in sacrifice. Indians are corrupt and resistant to change. American and Australian societies are superior, with no issues for married women as they can easily divorce. At one point, Maya comments ‘I’m sure you have problems in America too,’ but this is never expanded.

Overall, The Dowry is not recommended

for literary merit (too much tell) or ethical storytelling.

Indrani Ganguly

THE PAVILION IN THE CLOUDS Alexander McCall Smith, Polygon, 2021, £14.99, hb, 224pp, 9781846975899

1938: not quite nine-year-old Bella Ferguson lives on a remote tea plantation in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) with her parents Henry and Virginia and her governess, Miss White.

Bella is happy enough in her imaginative world with her dolls Li Po and Po Chu-i (named after two Chinese poets her mother reads to her in translation), but book-loving Virginia can’t help feeling vaguely threatened by the more intellectual Miss White. Those feelings are exacerbated by remarks she elicits from Bella about her father and her governess, especially after an accident that might not have been as accidental as it appears…

This is a very calm, pleasant read, despite the distant rumblings of unease at the rise of Fascism in Europe and Virginia’s sense that she and the other white plantation owners are interlopers who will be forced to leave, if they do not go voluntarily. Most of the historical novels I review are so unrelentingly dark or dramatic that it makes a nice change to read one with so many touches of gentle humour, particularly in Bella’s interactions with incomprehensible adults—what do they want her to do or say? —and the conversations she has with her dolls, both of whom have very distinct personalities.

The pace is gentle, too, though there is the frisson of possible dark undercurrents in the planters’ privileged lives, and Bella’s life is not untouched by tragedy. The characters are so well observed that I had to remind myself that the book is written by a man from a mostly female perspective, because he captures the nuances of female interactions so well. A pleasant, light read with a twist at the end designed to send you back to the beginning to spot what you missed on the first reading.

Recommended.

Jasmina Svenne

A SONG FOR HER ENEMIES Sherri Stewart, Heritage Beacon, 2021, $14.99, pb, 296pp, 9781645262831

Tamar Kaplan, a Jewish woman and promising soprano with the Haarlem Opera Company in 1943, is given a chance to sing Violetta in La Traviata. Her performance is magnificent, and she dreams of a brilliant future. Little does she know the company will be shut by the Nazis the following day. At the celebration of her triumph, her brother introduces her to Dr. Daniel Feldman, a Jewish resident at the local hospital and a member of the Dutch Resistance. When the opera company closes, Tamar acts as Daniel’s nurse assisting Jews who are in hiding and hoping to escape. The pair themselves are soon forced to flee and are fortunate to be hidden by a

Christian violinist from the opera company.

Love grows between Tamar and Daniel as they face the dire consequences of being Jewish.

One central theme of the book is Tamar’s questioning of the role of God in this nightmare of her life. Her Christian friend encourages her to look for “God’s hand when evil reigns around us.” Throughout her time in the Resistance and in two transition camps, Tamar witnesses a series of atrocities and uses this advice, to the extent she can, to keep her faith and the hope she’ll survive.

This novel is a Christian-oriented addition to the World War II repertoire. It is also somewhat different from most World War II books in its setting in Holland, where a larger proportion of Christians aided Jewish neighbors, and in that faith ultimately triumphs.

Lorelei Brush

AN IRISH COUNTRY YULETIDE Patrick Taylor, Forge, 2021, $17.99, hb, 208pp, 9781250780904

This lovely Christmas novella takes us back to the fictional village of Balleybucklebo in Northern Ireland, 1965. Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly is set to spend Christmas with his wife, Kitty, colleague Barry Laverty, and other friends and neighbors, but sadness, illness, and division threaten to ruin the holiday. This is Book 16 in the Irish Country Doctor series. Although it can be read as a standalone, I would recommend reading the whole series.

I truly enjoyed the village of Balleybucklebo and its residents. The Christmas season arrives, along with a chickenpox epidemic, and the doctors are busier than ever. We are transported almost immediately to wonderful Christmas traditions, including caroling, tree trimming, Christmas Mass, gift exchanges, and delectable treats. We are also given a little bit of Irish folklore and legend during the story. While there is some sadness and hard news in this book, there is also faith and joy. The doctor’s quiet assistance to his fellow villagers is more than just medical, and his housekeeper, Maureen Kincaid (Kinky), who is “fey,” or “gifted with the sight,” is dependably on hand to provide insight and delicious food. As always, there is a selection of recipes at the end.

Longtime fans of this series will be overjoyed to visit Balleybucklebo once again at Christmas. New readers will want to learn more about this town and its people. Highly recommended for anyone who loves Christmas stories and/or Irish historical fiction.

Bonnie DeMoss

THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY Amor Towles, Viking, 2021, $30.00, hb, 416pp, 9780735222359 / Hutchinson, 2021, £20.00, hb, 608pp, 9781786332523

Huckleberry Finn, make way for valiant Emmett Watson. Also, for his bookish little brother Billy, for Duchess, the fatal

troublemaker, and for world-wary Woolly, characterful friends who gather at the Watsons’ farm after the older boys are released (Emmett) or escape (Duchess, Woolly) from the labor camp where they served time as juvenile delinquents in 1950s America.

Although Billy references classic texts such as Ulysses and The Three Musketeers, the road trip upon which he and the others embark turns into a nonstop series of madcap misadventures that could well come from the pages of the book the boy prizes above all others, Professor Abacus Abernathe’s Compendium of Heroes, Adventures, and Other Intrepid Travelers. While Emmett and Billy originally intend to drive to San Francisco to track down their longlost mother, they instead find themselves in pursuit of Duchess and Woolly after these two steal Emmett’s Studebaker and travel into the opposite direction—to New York.

Before the siblings, who ride the trains with an assortment of fascinating fellow wayfarers, catch up with Duchess and Woolly, the boys’ biographies are told from the viewpoints of the four different protagonists.

As readers discover the tragic, rather than vicious circumstances which led to their incarceration, they come to care deeply for the boys—with perhaps one notable exception.

But even though one of the friends threatens to turn their wonderful escapade into a murder plot, this amazing sojourn through the heart of the McCarthy-era United States, its colorful cast of drifters, and the central group of loveable yet complex, actually or partially orphaned, youths stay in the reader’s memory far more succinctly than individual crimes and misdemeanors. The ending makes one hope that there will there be a sequel—and perhaps a movie version, too.

Elisabeth Lenckos

PSYCHO BY THE SEA Lynne Truss, Bloomsbury, 2021, $27.00, hb, 320pp, 9781526609878 / Raven, 2021, £14.99, hb, 320pp, 9781526609878

This fourth installment in the Constable Twitten mysteries plays out in England’s coastal town of Brighton in September 1957.

A street vendor of little wind-up bunnies goes missing. A professor’s body lies in a department store’s music listening booth. A serial cop-killer escapes from the local insane asylum. He murders policemen, then boils their heads. A photography shop clerk is beaten and almost killed. The story is told mostly through three Brighton policemen: Inspector Steine, referred to by those who know him as Inspector Idiot; Sergeant Brunswick, aka Sergeant Stupid; and Constable Twitten, indeed a twit and neurotic.

Clever women make for nice contrasts to the hapless cops. Police station janitor and tea server, Mrs. Groynes, is a criminal mastermind and head of a small army of thieves and murderers. Another gang, run by stunningly beautiful Adelaide Vine, plots to unseat the Groynes gang. Transplanted Vienna psychiatrist Carlotta Stein has her

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own devious plans for the serial cop-killer. Even London’s Scotland Yard Police Commissioner and his secretary, Miss Lennon, conspire with the crooks.

Though unconventional and sometimes crazily nonsensical, this novel is humorous, clever, interesting, and easy to follow. The very British dialogue and narration, names, settings, and customs lend authenticity. Truss gets the details right. The many secondary characters all fit, some in funny ways, such as four gang thugs disguised as French onion sellers.

This is no hard-boiled mystery. Readers will turn pages not so much to learn “who done it” but to see what capers unfold next. All manner of zany goings on (not just bodies) do pile up. Recommended for anyone looking to enjoy a macabre, yet charming change from traditional mysteries.

G. J. Berger

WHEN TWO FEATHERS FELL FROM THE SKY Margaret Verble, Mariner, 2021, $27.00, hb, 384pp, 9780358554837

Two Feathers, commonly referred to simply as Two, is a horse-diver in a 1920s zoo and family entertainment park at Glendale in Nashville.

Her job is literally to ride a horse from a diving tower into a pool of water (and I’d recommend a quick YouTube search to see old footage of this actually taking place). But when Two’s act ends in disaster, and her diving pool collapses into a network of underground caves, strange things begin to happen at Glendale. Spirits from the past are awakened, and animals at the zoo die in suspicious circumstances.

From its rich and beautifully written prologue, it is clear that When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky is an ambitious story, as much about the history of Glendale and the treatment of its native Indian population, as it is about Two and her friends trying to solve the mystery at the zoo. It is refreshing to read a historical novel from this period with such diverse and engaging characters.

But Verble tells her story from multiple points of view, and this may be a case where less would be more. A ghost, Little Elk, repeatedly expresses his surprise at modern 1920s life and when he’s not trying to protect Two, spends most of his time stealing tobacco.

The zoo owner’s family turmoil also seems an unnecessary distraction, although zoo manager Clive’s budding romance with Two’s landlady, and his own encounters with ghosts from his recent experiences in World War I, bring depth and interest to the novel. With elements of history, romance, the paranormal, a murder mystery, and plenty of entertaining information about turtle racing, there is a lot going on here. Overall, an enjoyable and original read.

Kate Braithwaite

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AFTER AUSCHWITZ Lewis M. Weinstein, Independently published, 2021, $15.99, pb, 367pp, 9798577096250

SS-Standartenführer Berthold Becker stands in the dock at Nuremberg accused of directing the transportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews to the various Nazi death camps during World War II. His defense attorney makes no objection to the evidence put forward by the prosecution, but presents only one witness who has a chance to prevent Becker’s eventual execution.

Jewish journalist Anna Gorska tells the court that Becker should be allowed to live and tell a story that only he can share with the world: how Adolf Hitler manipulated his way to power and constructed the most evil regime in history. When Becker is sentenced to twenty years in Spandau Prison, Anna firmly believes that she and her lover will be able to endure this separation, just as she survived her years in Auschwitz.

A Catholic priest provides Becker’s lifeline to the outside world while he challenges his fellow inmates about their roles leading up to and during the war. Anna begins life anew in the State of Israel, and her journalistic contacts bring her to the attention of Golda Meir. These two strong women enable Berthold’s eventual release from Spandau so that he can positively identify Adolf Eichmann in Argentina for Mossad, and bring him to his final justice.

Weinstein’s invented protagonists so consumed him while writing his two-part novel (spanning 1923-1946) that this third book (1946 to 1961) completed their life stories. You cheer as they break down the barriers that stand in their way to happiness. Historical figures, such as Winston Churchill and Elie Wiesel, interact convincingly with the fictional characters. This trilogy is an important addition to Holocaust literature.

Tom Vallar

THE SPIRIT ENGINEER A. J. West, Duckworth, 2021, £14.99, hb, 304pp, 9780715654330

Set in Ireland between 1914 and 1920, The Spirit Engineer is based on the true story of William Jackson Crawford and his encounters with the medium Kathleen Goligher. Jackson is an engineer who is drawn into the spiritual world when he is recruited to investigate Goligher and her associates, who are widely regarded as fraudulent. Sceptical at first, he gradually becomes an enthusiast with a firm belief in psychic phenomena. Set against a backdrop of the Irish fight for Home Rule and the outbreak of the First World War, the novel also brings in other real-life figures with an interest in spiritualism, such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini.

The story is intriguing, and I was keen to see how it unfolded. The reader is compelled to wonder about the reasons for Crawford’s eventual suicide (which we are told about in the very first chapter). And the spirits that frequent the pages sometimes seem too realistic for comfort. Unfortunately, the prose often gets in

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the way of the narrative. I found it wordy, with frequent inconsequential details. I was also irritated by the occasional error, such as the description of Kathleen as “Ms Goligher”, a form of address that was not in use at the time.

The novel is an interesting exploration of the early 20th-century obsession with spiritualism, but the style may deter some readers.

Karen Warren

HARLEM SHUFFLE Colson Whitehead, Doubleday, 2021, $28.95, hb, 336pp, 9780385545136 / Fleet, 2021, £16.99, hb, 336pp, 9780708899441

In 1960s Harlem, Ray Carney owns his own furniture store and is determined to prove himself as an honest businessman, in stark contrast to his crooked dead father. But Carney has never been completely clean, and he supplements his income by fencing stolen goods. When his hapless cousin Freddie lines him up to fence jewellery stolen in a robbery of the Hotel Theresa, it seems that Carney can’t avoid being part of the criminal underworld he’s worked so hard to escape.

Structured in three parts, the novel homes in on key events in Carney’s life: first the hotel heist, then a story of revenge against a businessman who cheats him out of $500, and lastly, against the backdrop of the Harlem Riots of 1964, when Carney is caught up in another theft, a murder, and becomes the target of a corrupt New York real estate magnate.

Harlem Shuffle has the pace, humor, and edginess of an Elmore Leonard novel or a Quentin Tarantino movie. The balance between plot and description is expertly handled. Descriptions of Harlem are vivid and compelling to read. Duality is the overriding theme. Carney lives two lives, “trying to keep one half of himself separate from the other half,” running his businesses out of one building with two separate doors, one legitimate, one not; keeping his wife, children and loyal employees separate from his crooked side. The duality is also true of New York City— “the black city and the white city: overlapping, ignorant of each other, separate and connected by tracks.”

Whitehead’s skill as a writer is on full display here, particularly in his seemingly effortless ability to capture a time and place within a character-driven story.

Kate Braithwaite

THE CLOCKMAKER’S WIFE Daisy Wood, HarperCollins, 2021, $16.99, pb, 400pp, 9780008444631

This dual-timeline novel begins in 1939-40

with London newlyweds Arthur and Eleanor (“Nell”) Spelman and their baby Alice. After losing their apartment home to a Nazi air raid, Arthur sends Nell and Alice to Nell’s family in the safer countryside. Arthur, an expert clockmaker, must stay in London to keep Big Ben chiming.

The second storyline begins in the present in New York. Thirty-eight-year-old Ellie (Alice’s daughter and Nell’s granddaughter) finds a treasure that belonged to Grandmother Nell.

Ellie knows Nell died suddenly and too young at the start of WWII but little else. She flies to England to find out more before her mother, who emigrated to the U.S. as a young woman, fully succumbs to dementia.

Fascists lurk in WWII England and plot to destroy one of her grand edifices—Big Ben. England’s secret service arrests and jails Arthur. Nell rushes back to London. While navigating around craters and dodging air bombardment, she must figure out why Arthur has lost his freedom. Did someone set him up? Is he a closet Nazi? Nell’s frantic search and Ellie’s present-day reconstruction reveal Nell’s harrowing quest and the cause of her sudden death.

The wartime scenes and details, down to how Big Ben is kept running, are riveting.

Nell’s striving to save Arthur and thwart sabotage become heroic. She is feisty, smart, and maintains a sense of humor in the worst times. Ellie’s modern-day life does not hold up its part. Ellie approaches most everything half-heartedly, including her search about Nell. Ellie’s forced romance distracts, as do a few too many information dumps. The novel would have worked better had it not strayed away from Nell. Her story grabs hold from its first pages to the complex but realistic pageturner ending.

G. J. Berger

IF IT RAINS Jennifer L. Wright, Tyndale, 2021, $15.99, pb, 400pp, 9781496449306

Two sisters narrate this novel in alternate chapters, set in the 1930s Dust Bowl. Kathryn, 14, is hampered by a club foot.

Sister Melissa is newly married to one of the richest men in town, raising her several steps up the social ladder. Kathryn’s father wants to leave Oklahoma and go to relatives in Indianapolis, and during the trip, Kathryn gets lost in a “duster.” Melissa tries to fit into the Ladies’ Auxiliary circle at church but is always conscious of her farming background. She tries to reach out to a poor

woman who is very prickly about charity; it doesn’t go well.

Meanwhile, Kathryn falls in with a man hired by town officials to make rain, but after his scheme fails, he makes sexual advances to her. She escapes with the help of a vagrant, Mr. Hickory, who agrees to escort her to Kansas City. Melissa continues to aid the poor woman, but her husband objects to her deceitfulness, especially after she trades his prized cufflinks for medical help for the woman’s child. His punishments include physical abuse. And since Kathryn has no money for a ticket, the only way she can get to her father in Indianapolis is to have Mr. Hickory show her how to hop a freight train.

Kathryn is another prickly character, gruff and blunt almost to the point of unlikability, but Wright’s skill in characterization makes the reader root for her anyway. Melissa’s struggles climbing the social ladder in a small town are vivid. The story contains a couple of smaller themes about the family’s fondness for the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and also of the characters’ relationships with God. Wright brings people’s experiences in the Dust Bowl to life in the sisters’ compelling stories; I heartily recommend this novel.

B. J. Sedlock

M U LT I -P E R IOD THE BALLAD OF LAUREL SPRINGS Janet Beard, Gallery, 2021, $27.00/C$36.00, hb, 288pp, 9781982151560

This multi-period novel traces the lives of a family of Tennessee mountain women from a brutal murder in 1891 to the present day.

This violent inheritance is mirrored by the old-timey ballads passed down through the family over the years. The stories of the nine women intertwine, as their threatening legacy plays out, generation after generation.

The novel also brings the changing life in the East Tennessee mountains over the past century into focus. A new school, logging, national parks, strip malls and mini-golf transform the old country life of Tate Valley into a summer tourist attraction for outsiders.

The changes, and the interrelated stories of these women, are splashed with scarlet, as the menace voiced in old mountain songs such as “Pretty Polly” and “The Knoxville Girl” weave a bloody red streak through the gentle green of mountain laurel. Yet the songs and the women endure.

Janet Beard, born and raised in East

Tennessee, knows the area well, and her love and understanding of the locale, its people, and its music, inform this riveting book.

Lovers of folk music will find that the old songs linger in their minds long after the book is completed, as do the stories Beard tells us.

However, although the reader is transported to the Southern mountains, the violence and deadly secrets these women live with are not limited to the Appalachians. The Ballad of Laurel Springs throws light on a dark heritage carried through history by many women, in myriad times and places. A compelling read.

Susan McDuffie

THE ORPHAN HOUSE Ann Bennett, Forever, 2021, $12.99, pb, 336pp, 9781538707517

In 1934, young Connie Burroughs watches her father from the shadows at Cedar Hall, an orphanage in the English countryside. He is the superintendent with a secret room above the carriage house where he disappears for hours, sometimes all night. When she stumbles upon her father giving away a foundling, he invokes a fear in her that will ensure all his secrets are kept safe.

In present-day Weirfield, Sarah Jennings finds comfort with her terminally ill father while she puts her life back together. Her father was one of Cedar Hall’s foundlings, and his search for his parents have hit a dead end. The clock is ticking, and she wants to help. Cedar Hall is about to be sold, and the only person who could have answers is ninetysomething Connie Burroughs, who has been placed in senior care.

Elderly Connie drifts in and out of memories, while fears of a vengeful father-in-spirit haunt her. When Sarah starts asking questions about Cedar Hall, Connie is distraught that his secrets, secrets she doesn’t want to know, will be discovered. Answers may lie in an unread diary given to Connie long ago by Anna, a young pregnant woman. Through the diary, the author drops breadcrumbs between Connie’s memories. Anna’s story is compelling; however, her diary reads more like a first-person novel.

The author has wonderful details and descriptive language, but for Anna’s diary I was often bumped out of the story thinking, “No one would write this description in a diary.” Her characterization of the elderly Connie is told with heartfelt honesty, vacillating between fearful child, rational adult, and confused senior. The romance is sweet, with just a touch of heat, and slips easily into the storyline without feeling gratuitous or implausible. Ann Bennett’s story is a charmer, and I couldn’t wait to put the puzzle pieces together.

Karen Tinsley

BLUE POSTCARDS Douglas Bruton, Fairlight Books, 2021, £7.99, pb, 152pp, 9781912054770

This novella has an unusual format in that

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the paragraphs, even sometimes just single sentences, are all numbered, with white space between each one. Each piece of text never contains any more words than would fit onto a postcard. Each “postcard” continues one of three connected stories.

There is the story of Henri, a Jew, who, in the 1950s, is the last tailor in what was once the Street of Tailors. He always sews a hidden blue Tekhelet thread somewhere into the trousers for luck. His life is transformed by the daily visit of a lady in a dress of blue flowers.

Is she real or just from the “blue mists of memory,” from happier times?

The second story is the artist Yves Klein (1928 – 1962), who is famous for his blue monochrome paintings. Klein was real, but was Henri, and did he make the artist a suit? There are such things as blue lies, which are those told for the benefit of the community.

The third story is purportedly set in the present day, whenever that is, and tells of the narrator himself, who finds a postcard of Klein’s blue monochrome at a stall by the Eiffel Tower, run by Michelle, a girl many years his junior.

They both have a love of swallows and of blue and her habit of pushing her hair behind her ear reminds him of his mother. This could be a bitter sweet love story or, again, it could be a story based purely on a remembrance or a longing.

Although the stories are simple, they are beautifully told, and the musings on the colour blue, truth, lies, memory and time will remain with the reader for far longer than it took Bruton to write them, which was apparently just six days. Highly recommended.

Marilyn Pemberton

THE KEENING Anne Emery, ECW Press, 2021, $25.95, hb, 394pp, 9781770415843

The Keening opens in Enniskillen, Ireland, in 1595, then moves to the same place in contemporary times. In both past and present, the property is a hostelry, welcoming guests.

The Gaelic mystery referred to on the book cover dominates the plot. A locally beloved healer and seer is murdered, to the shock of the community. Her close friend was Brigid Tierney, who owns the guest house near Enniskillen castle and a Cistercian monastery and whose man, Shane, serves as a musketeer for the Maguire clan. England had established rule in much of Ireland 50 years earlier, pacifying some clans, but not the Maguires of Enniskillen. In the 21st century, Brigid’s descendant Mick Tierney runs the guest house with his grown daughter Róisín, designer of 54

murals depicting the historical Maguires.

Threatened by a developer who intends to buy the adjoining property, they turn to archeology to stop his grandiose plans. Did something significant happen here in the 16th century?

The Keening keeps the suspense going with its intriguing protagonists and ongoing puzzles.

Who killed Sorcha and why? In 1595, Queen Elizabeth was determined to bring the Irish, with their Roman Catholicism and traditional laws and customs, under English domination.

In the time of the incomparable Shakespeare and William Byrd in London, English soldiers and settlers committed brutal acts against the native Irish with the goal of starving them out.

Along with history of the Catholic church, Irish princes, and Irish traditions of learning—and such notables as the sea captain Granuaile, or Grace, O’Malley—The Keening is full of music, poetry, and tales, with enlightening epigraphs to each chapter. A rich and rewarding book, it arouses our sympathies for the long, painful history of the Irish within an engrossing mystery. Recommended.

Jinny Webber

HALF THE TERRIBLE THINGS Paul Legler, NDSU Press, 2020, $19.95, pb, 267pp, 9781946163189

A loophole in the U.S. Constitution (vividly documented in the film The 13th) provides for the continuation of slavery, as long as the enslaved person is incarcerated by law. While this loophole was often used for keeping African Americans in chains after emancipation, the practice could be employed against anyone who was poor and vulnerable, as this book convincingly demonstrates. The story covers a lot of territory—from North Dakota to Washington, DC, to rural Florida. With an alternating narrative between 1922 and 2003, the story juxtaposes the barbaric justice system in the early 20th-century American South with the unconscionable treatment of prisoners in the “War on Terror” that happened on our watch.

The story is a hybrid of documentary and fiction, depicting the true story of a young North Dakota farmer named Martin Tabert, who left home to see the world and wound up in a convict labor camp in North Florida, where he was whipped to death. The two other point of view characters in the novel are fictional creations: Edna, the girl Martin left behind, who is now a dying old woman; and Nicole, her granddaughter, an attorney for the Justice Department. When Edna asks Nicole to find Martin’s grave, Nicole takes a welcome break from her demanding job, where she has doubts about the legality and morality of the work she does after she discovers evidence of the cruelty toward Middle Eastern prisoners in the clutches of our government.

The book is meticulously researched and written in a clear, accessible, no-nonsense style. The pace lags at times, but that’s a small issue in an important story about a despicable

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chapter in U.S. history and a reminder of what happens when we dehumanize “the other.”

Trish MacEnulty

THE STOLEN LADY Laura Morelli, William Morrow, 2021, $16.99/£12.99, pb, 512pp, 9780062993595

The Stolen Lady has dual timelines and three points of view. In 1939 France, Anne Giuchard, a young typist at the Louvre, is asked to join a perilous mission. She and other staff must move the priceless artwork and treasures, including the Mona Lisa, to the Castle of Chambord and away from the advancing Nazis. But as the Nazis keep drawing closer, she and the others are forced to keep moving and hiding them. The second timeline is Florence of 1479.

Bellina Sardi is servant to Lisa Gherardini or “Mona Lisa,” the young wife of a wealthy silk merchant. Bellina is caught up in the preaching of Girolamo Savonarola, who urges the poor to revolt against the rich and burn their belongings. In this timeline is the viewpoint of Leonardo da Vinci, who moves from one city to another, focusing on his engineering works and starting masterpieces but having difficulties finishing them.

The Stolen Lady provides fascinating insight into the history of the Mona Lisa. The Florence timeline is about the woman behind the enigmatic expression, the artist, and the influence of politics and the social climate on the world of art. The politics and times, however, are in the background, brewing and creating noise but never overpowering the characterizations or story. The WWII timeline focuses on the constant upheaval and protection of the Louvre’s treasures. In both timelines, Bellina and Anne are forced to protect the Mona Lisa while growing as people. Bellina comes into her own, breaking away from the pressure of the political and religious restrictions, while Anne becomes strong enough to use a gun to protect both the artwork and her colleagues. A thoroughly enjoyable read!

Franca Pelaccia

THE HOUSE OF ASHES Stuart Neville, Soho Crime, 2021, $27.95, hb, 304pp, 9781616957414

Some secrets refuse to stay buried for a couple in Northern Ireland when a mysterious old woman shatters the fragility of their new home in The House of Ashes.

Sara and Damien Keane are new owners of a 120-year-old farmhouse called The Ashes, named for the cluster of trees it hides behind.

Recently moved from England to escape her nervous breakdown and get a fresh start, Sara is interrupted one day by a bloodied old woman pounding on her door, shrieking “what are you doing in my house?!” Sara soon realizes her controlling and domineering husband has hidden the house’s grim past from her, one that is intimately linked with the old woman, Mary. So begin dually told tales in alternating chapters of Mary’s past and Sara’s present, as

the cruel and macabre history of the house and its previous occupants unfolds. Neville’s unflinching prose gives authentic voice to Mary’s nightmarish imprisonment in the house a half century earlier, mirroring Sara’s own sense of powerlessness in her marriage.

As Sara delves deeper into the dark heart of the past, she slowly reassembles the shattered pieces of herself to confront her abuser and help Mary to share her story with the world.

The House of Ashes is a well-executed thriller that grips the reader throughout, though the trope of the passive, frightened woman quaking beneath the male gaze grates after a time. Neville furnishes a denouement, however, that packs a feminist punch.

Peggy Kurkowski

THE PARASOL FLOWER Karen Quevillon, Regal House, 2020, $18.95, pb, 336pp, 9781947548732

The best historical fiction seamlessly blends history and fiction. It informs about society in a particular bygone time and engrosses the reader with the humanity of individual characters: their biographies, adventures, tribulations, and triumphs.

Quevillon’s debut novel The Parasol Flower masterfully merges known facts and unknown fancy.

Set in late-19th-century Malaysia—then a British colony—the novel bores into colonial exploitation and imperial arrogance but never bores with its vivid characters, whose struggles come alive on the page. The protagonist, Hannah Inglis, is a painter, trapped in a marriage to Colonel George Inglis, a British official who transports her to the expat community of a Malay village where he’s posted. George, like most of the privileged Brits who rule the colony, is utterly opposed to his wife’s pursuit of art and, indeed, to any aspiration she might have, other than tea parties with the proper English wives in residence.

Hannah, undeterred, paints in the jungle, searching for a legendary plant (the parasol flower) and accompanied by a local Sikh policeman who’s an amateur botanist.

Her compatriots are horrified by her lack of propriety, except for a wealthy eccentric Englishwoman, Eva Peterborough. Eva is conducting research for a scientific treatise.

She becomes a patron of Hannah’s art until scandal erupts.

Quevillon splits narration between two eras: Hannah’s Victorian period and contemporary times, in which a graduate student, Nancy Roach, discovers Hannah’s paintings and

letters. The novel alternates between two passionate quests: Hannah’s determination to be free of constraints on her independence and Nancy’s hunt for information about an artist whose work grips her imagination.

Through these disparate viewpoints, the reader gradually learns background context and subtext, experiencing both Hannah’s frustration and Nancy’s curiosity.

Carol C. Strickland

CHINA ROOM Sunjeev Sahota, Viking, 2021, $27.00, hb, 256pp, 9780593298145 / Harvill Secker, 2021, £16.99, hb, 256pp, 9781911215851

Trauma and endurance form the complex legacy passed on by a young woman, trapped in a loveless marriage in Punjab in 1929, to her great-grandson, the descendant of Indian immigrants to Britain, who returns seventy years later to the home where she had suffered.

1929. When Mehar, along with two other brides, is married to one of three brothers in a single ceremony, her mother-in-law denies her the succor of knowing which man beds her at night. While her sisters-in-law submit to this cruel caprice, Mehar sets out to discover her husband’s identity. Her quest for love and insight results in a domestic tragedy that has grave repercussions for her descendants.

1999. An unnamed young man of Asian heritage, freshly arrived from England, retreats to the Indian family estate where the so-called China Room once witnessed the rebellion and subsequent subjugation of his great-grandmother.

Does a return to the place where his ancestor challenged fate allow a young man to overcome his defeatism, caused by the discrimination he experiences in his adopted homeland? The novel contains two strands— one belonging to him, the other to his greatgrandmother— which run side by side and don’t connect until the end when a brief aside explains how her actions prompted his exile.

While Mehar’s story is told in the third person, and her great-grandson’s is told in the first, both are vividly rendered. Their two voices are distinct; whereas the language in Mehar’s section is lyrical, measured, and historical, the young man’s idiom is modern, fastpaced, direct. Although both accounts are moving, Mehar’s is more memorable, since the oppression she experiences is immediate and familial, rather than general and societal.

Although more interweaving between the narrative threads would have been desirable in order to clarify the author’s intent, each reads poignantly. Highly recommended.

Elisabeth Lenckos

THE RAINBOW Carly Schabowski, £8.99/$11.99/C$14.99, 9781800198104

Bookouture, pb,

2021, 339pp,

This is a complex multigenerational novel spanning decades from pre-war Poland through World War Two and into presentday England. Isla sadly realizes that her

grandparents are slowly falling into dementia as she frustratingly attempts to unravel a deep past shrouded in betrayal, battle, hardships, and love lost. The chronicle shifts as the reader moves through time with the horrors of occupied Poland anchoring Isla’s historical journey.

A tattered and forgotten diary, faded blackand-white photos, and a rainbow-patterned scarf propel Isla on her quest. Hidden secrets, long-held points of view twisted by time, past disagreements with forgotten groundings, and emerging love combine in a cauldron that is German-occupied Poland. The reader experiences the brutality of occupation along with the fears of forced conscription, violent battle, and traumatic aftereffects.

Grounding much of this novel is the shocking cry of “I killed my friend”. How did this seminal event unfold, and how might it have influenced the future? Isla must overcome the reluctance of the past to reveal itself as well as the fading memories of her grandparents as she peels away layers of misapprehensions to attempt to understand the intersection of past events.

Schabowski entertains while detailing human brutality. Her descriptions of depravity balance snippets of human love and sacrifice.

The finality does bring some closure to Isla and her family but, although the wounds of so long ago may be muted, has a balance been restored?

Jon G. Bradley

THE LOST GIRLS OF FOXFIELD HALL Jessica Thorne, Bookouture, 2021, $11.99/ C$15.99/£9.99, pb, 300pp, 9781838887414

1939. Having to part with her fiancé on the eve of WWII is the least of Lady Eleanor (Ellie) Fairfax’s worries. Her father, absorbed by his war work, abruptly puts her in the care of his new secretary, Ava Seaborne, a sinister woman who doesn’t let Ellie out of her sight.

Strangest of all, Ellie meets an oddly-dressed woman named Megan in the maze on her estate who claims to know future events, including the fact that Ellie will disappear without a trace in a matter of days.

2019. No sooner does landscape gardener Megan Taylor arrive at Foxfield Hall than she becomes caught up in legends concerning the Green Lady, the resident ghost whose power is linked to the ancient well at the centre of the maze. Inexplicably, Megan also meets Ellie, the missing heiress from eighty years earlier, in the maze. Megan becomes obsessed by the story of Ellie’s disappearance, and for good reason: it seems someone intends Megan to be the next missing person.

I enjoyed the feminist retelling of the Arthurian legends as well as the fantasy elements, but the ending tied up all the loose ends a little too neatly for my taste.

Thorne’s writing style also has an oddly flat quality that’s at odds with the elaborate legends and secrets. The two protagonists’ inner worlds were not developed as well as I would have liked, either, making them seem

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two-dimensional and adding to the distant feel of the writing. A competent but not truly engaging read.

Clarissa Harwood

THE SINGING TREES Boo Walker, Lake Union, 2021, $14.95/£8.99, pb, 429pp, 9781542019125

2019: Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Seventyyear-old Annalisa climbs an extension ladder to retrieve a wind chime from the snow-covered branches of an oak tree for her dying friend, Emma. The wind chimes, making the trees sing, were made by Annalisa years ago. Emma is thrilled to see the chimes hung in her hospice room. This brings back memories of their lives together and of Emma’s estranged brother, Thomas. Emma dictates one final letter of forgiveness to Thomas that makes Annalisa reflect on her past.

1969: Payton Mills, Maine. Young, orphaned Annalisa, a talented artist, lives with her humble Italian grandmother. She is determined to make a name for herself. She moves to Portland, achieves some success, and meets Thomas, an Ivy League student from an affluent family. They fall in love. While Annalisa thinks that her dreams are materializing, an indiscretion on her part, and a betrayal from another, threatens to tear her world apart.

Boo Walker’s interest in songwriting shows in the lyrical prose. The characters’ emotions in this love story are lucidly displayed. However, the storyline has numerous coincidences, and a significant misunderstanding between the main characters tends to make it somewhat melodramatic. Nevertheless, depictions of the young Annalisa’s ambition, and her resolute effort to succeed in life, overcoming the problems she encounters, delivers a heartwarming read. The images of peoples’ lives, dialogue, and songs transport us to life in Maine during the Vietnam War era of the 1970s. Readers will discover the effect of that war on the lives of soldiers and ordinary citizens. The prologue is surprising, as it covers events occurring towards the end of the story.

Readers who skip it will find the novel more entertaining.

Waheed Rabbani

GUARDIANS AT THE WALL Tim Walker, Independently published, 2021, $8.99/C$11.99/£7.99, pb, 298pp, 9798718811414

As the history of an excavation site comes to light, so too do the ancient peoples who lived it. Alternating between third-person-narrated past and first-person-narrated present times, the 180 CE battle of Roman soldiers versus Caledonian war bands is penned with extraordinary detail.

In the present day, Noah is working at the Hadrian’s Wall excavation site when he uncovers an ancient stone goddess of fertility.

As he researches the lives of soldiers who lived in the area, Noah becomes entangled in a love triangle while trying to discover the fate of a 56

Roman soldier, Gaius Atticianus, serving as a guardian of Hadrian’s Wall.

I truly enjoyed the concept of alternating between an excavation site and the historical setting that they’re uncovering. The chapters move seamlessly between time periods. The interplay of the past influencing present is explored well. In Roman times, the stakes are high, whereas in present time, issues are resolved much more easily.

While meant to add tension, the mentormentee (mentee being Noah) relationship mostly left a bad taste in my mouth. Noah’s mentor hints at having personal struggles, but this is never fleshed out, so taking advantage of her student left me ill at ease.

There are a few things that stick out, like the use of “mate” in Roman times, which sounds too modern when most characters in the modern era also use this reference.

Additionally, a few editorial errors, like missing end quotations or mis-formatted paragraphs, are noted. However, these errors are few.

Overall, a well-executed concept of past and present lives converging at a historical site where discoveries of artefacts as well as perseverance and strength are put to the test.

A fun excursion into archaeology and history.

J. Lynn Else

THE WIND CHIME Alexandra Walsh, Sapere, 2021, $12.99/ C$16.50/£10.99, pb, 412pp, 9781800553057

In Windsor, England, in 2019, Amelia is completely without family, having lost her daughter and then her parents to serious illness. Without any surviving relatives, she is adrift and contemplates selling the family home.

When fulfilling the last request of her mother to clear out the attic, she finds some intriguing photographs of a large estate in Pembrokeshire featuring the Attwater family.

When Amelia uncovers the diary of Osyth Attwater, she realizes she may have discovered some family secrets.

In Pembrokeshire, Wales, in 1883, young Osyth is a dreamer and writer who awaits the gathering of the Attwaters, her storytelling family, at their oceanside mansion each year.

There is a wind chime in the garden that signals the arrival of relatives, and she greatly looks forward to the tales they will tell. But then she overhears a conversation that shatters her world.

This dual-timeline novel of family secrets, fairy tales, missing pieces, and a special wind chime is both enchanting and compelling. In their separate timelines, Osyth and Amelia both search for answers. The theme of mental

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health, and how it was managed in 1883 versus the present, is explored. The secrets that families keep and the reasons they keep them are examined in heartbreaking detail.

The pace and flow of this book are gorgeous, and we are caught up in the beauty of Wales, the magic of fairy tales, and the mystery of family secrets. With Amelia, we piece together puzzling bits of family history and try to see the whole picture. The Wind Chime will engage all of your senses as you see the beautiful Victorian mansion, feel the heartbreak, smell the ocean air, taste the tears of grief, and hear the wind chime calling you home. This is a soul-touching and captivating read. Highly recommended.

Bonnie DeMoss

CALL ME STAN K. R. Wilson, Guernica Editions, 2021, $24.95, pb, 420pp, 9781771835985

This picaresque journey of the immortal “Stan” is a colloquial guide through specific eras of history. Though the narrative begins in modern times, serving as a frame for Stan’s long-lived recounting, the story itself begins with his birth in the Bronze Age. Initially killed as a teenager in a skirmish, by an Egyptian charioteer with a particularly brutal spear aim, Stan recovers, returning home to find that his family has moved along as though he were dead. Including marrying his wife off to his half-brother. Eventually, his tell-tale problem surfaces: he does not age. He learns that he cannot stay in one place for too long. On his meanderings, he encounters a Trojan princess giving birth, helps raise a proto-Nordic Wotan, finds Buddhist mystics, early Jewish hermits, makes friends with Jesus, defends an Italian monastery from raiding Visigoths, and snogs Richard Wagner, despite the composer’s narcissistic anti-Semitism.

I thoroughly enjoyed every journey, yet the contemporary framing was off-putting for me. Theoretically, the overarching issue was resolved at the end, with a nod to the film The Usual Suspects—but I was left with more questions. Many more. Wilson promises a second tome, presumably to extend the story, but I hope the sequel will also answer some of these long-lived questions.

Katie Stine

H I STOR IC A L FA N TA SY THE WINTER GARDEN Alexandra Bell, Cornerstone, 2021, £14.99, pb, 518pp, 9781529100839

In the early 19th century, six-year-old Beatrice is ordered by her father to say goodbye to her mother. When she enters her sick room, she is appalled and refuses. Her father is angry, so she runs into the garden. Although it is a hot summer’s night, she soon finds herself in a magical, beautiful winter garden of sparkling frost and ice. Of course, no-one believes her.

When her father dies, Beatrice, now a rich heiress, accepts a proposal of marriage from

handsome Lord Chalkley of Raven Hall, only to change her mind on their wedding day, She wants to travel the world exploring and studying the natural world. She also is obsessed with finding the elusive magical winter garden. Lord Chalkley later marries a young American heiress, Rosa Warren. She is a skilled artificer, famous for her elaborate mechanical creatures. These two rich, independently minded women become fierce rivals when invited to enter a competition to create a fantastical winter garden. Who will win?

This is the framework of the weirdest fantasy novel I have ever read. I soon couldn’t differentiate reality, an opium nightmare, memory, and pure magic. At first, I was impressed by the author’s writing style and the detailed descriptions of winter magic such as sparkling frost and snow that create illusions of diamonds and pearl. However, as I continued through this 500-page novel, the dark cruelty underlying the glitter gave the whole novel an ugly taste. Don’t get me wrong. The fantasy is brilliant, the winter scenes are amazing, but after a while, like eating a huge box of rich creamy chocolates, I thirsted for a glass of plain water.

Sally Zigmond

THE LAST ROMAN: EXILE B. K. Greenwood, Bat City Press, 2021, $12.99, pb, 246pp, 9781736794906

In B. K. Greenwood’s debut novel, a Roman commander has been given the unpleasant task of supervising the day’s crucifixions.

When the time comes to dispatch the thin Jew claimed by his followers to be the Son of God, Marcus Gracchus is touched by the blood of Christ as he withdraws his sword.

His penalty: a tainted immortality that begins a tale spanning two thousand years, alternating between seminal historical events and a present-day plot orchestrated by an embittered immortal who wishes to destroy civilization.

Greenwood’s writing can be adjectively excessive, and is occasionally weighed down by unnecessary detail. But that doesn’t matter, because he has a real talent for plot and action, and the novel races forward in a style that may remind readers of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Marcus’ tactical thinking and closeinfighting skills are worthy of Jason Bourne and, as we follow him over the centuries, the novel leaps from Charles Martel’s defeat of the Saracens at Tours in 732 to the Turks’ bloody conquest of Constantinople in 1453, to gunfights in the streets of Paris and infiltrations of the Vatican in the present. If you like action and, as required by most time-bending fiction, don’t examine the premises too closely, this is a ride that will keep you pinned to your seat from start to finish.

Readers should be warned that the finish leaves you hanging, as Exile is the first of what is designed to be a multi-volume series.

Perhaps as the series proceeds, Greenwood will better flesh out his characters. In the

meantime, the plot and action are enough to keep you turning pages.

Richard Henry Abramson

A GIRL MADE OF AIR Nydia Hetherington, Quercus, 2021, $26.99, hb, 400pp, 9781529408881 / 2020, £14.99, hb, 400pp, 9781529408874

“Ever yone is the star of their own show, performing for the passing, faceless crowds.

We are all clowns.”

On the ground, she was invisible to everyone in the circus, even her parents. In the air, she became the star of the show. It’s thanks to Serendipity Wilson, a performer with orange hair so bright it lights up a room, that our nameless star becomes the greatest funambulist who ever lived. Serendipity gives the budding star, nicknamed Mouse, something she never had before: belonging.

But when Serendipity’s child is lost, in part due to Mouse’s actions, the performer will devote her life to make things right. As the life of a retired performer is retold through her adult voice using stories recounted to a reporter, a post-WWII circus raises its tents once again via the taps of Mouse’s typewriter.

“All we can do is perform our lives as gloriously as possible.” Sometimes selfreflective, sometimes a revival of feelings in diary entries or letters, the story unfolds both in the present and past. Readers journey through tales of Manx folklore and magic, Mouse’s euphoric feeling of being on the tightrope, and the emotional drama that unfolds when Mouse’s longing to keep Serendipity’s love to herself leads to tragedy.

Unveiling a person’s mistakes through words, Hetherington will grip readers’ hearts with her honest, poignant prose and her vivid characters. There are moments of joy but also deep darkness that Mouse must endure in her quest to rectify a mistake. While not quite a fantasy, A Girl Made of Air is a recollection of events through stories. Its enchantment lies within the girl who believes in the magic of the stories she’s grown up with. Just as they were once given to her, now the stories are ours to care for.

J. Lynn Else

SISTERSONG Lucy Holland, Redhook, 2021, $28.00, hb, 416pp, 9780316320771 / Macmillan, 2021, £16.99, hb, 416pp, 9781529039030

It is southwest Britain in the 6th century, and the Saxons are threatening again a generation after they were stopped by Aurelianus’s (Arthur’s?) victories. As British kingdoms fall,

Dumnonia waits in trepidation, its morale further weakened by internal conflict between the old religious beliefs and an intolerant Christianity preached by Gildas. Influenced by his wife, King Cador sides with the priest, though his three daughters cling to the old ways and their ability to draw on the magic power of the land. As a further complication, Keyne, the middle daughter, is transgender, as is Myrdhin, a druid who also practices the old ways. And is the warrior Tristan really an ambassador from another British kingdom as he claims, or is he a spy? And for whom?

The primary inspiration for the story, however, is a traditional British murder ballad known as ‘The Twa Sisters’. Needless to say, with these ingredients this is a dark novel, filled with violence and hardship, deception and betrayal, frustration and jealousy, remorse and guilt. In other words, very appropriate material for its Dark Age setting.

Point-of-view alternates between the three sisters, each of whom suffers stress of varying intensity, but as the plot advances and the trio inexorably forge their own fate, the story grows more involved. Since Myrdhin and the sisters are able to draw on the magic of the land, this may be considered historical fantasy except for the decline in belief that magic is weakening. Magic has little significant impact upon events, apart from the harp that gives voice to the dead sister. Highly recommended.

Ray Thompson

ARIADNE UNRAVELED Zenobia Neil, Hypatia Books, 2021, $6.99, ebook, 346pp, B09647R6CF

Best known in Greek mythology as the Princess of Crete who helped the Athenian prince Theseus escape the labyrinth and kill the Minotaur, her half-brother, Ariadne is given fresh treatment in this new retelling.

The prologue impressively evokes her despair and fury after waking alone on the shores of Naxos, abandoned by Theseus, her lover, after betraying her family for him. Neil first moves back and then forward from this low point in Ariadne’s life, giving her agency and showing her as much more than a selfish man’s discarded mistress.

Ariadne Unraveled primarily recounts the romance between Ariadne and her husband Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy, among other fun qualities, and how their life together is thwarted by the capricious jealousy of the goddess Artemis, Dionysus’s half-sister, whom Ariadne serves. (Theseus comes back into the picture midway through.) Many different versions of Ariadne’s story exist, and Neil stitches a collection of them together into a coherent whole, all written in bright and energetic prose. Alongside their love story, we witness the ebb and flow of power: how Ariadne, a high priestess used to being surrounded by eager handmaidens, contends with the gradual loss of hers, while Dionysus, a new god, learns to control his divine abilities.

The writing style is anything but dry. The Minoans are an attractive, athletic, and

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sensual people, and the varied sex scenes will definitely steam up your Kindle. The special effects are fabulous, too: we have creative shapeshifting, wild drunken parties, gods making trouble, and grapevines that magically twine around things. In contrast, the author’s portrait of the underworld is hauntingly plaintive. While Dionysus and Ariadne seem to fall in love instantaneously, their relationship grows in emotional richness over time. In all, an entertaining reinterpretation of a classic story.

Sarah Johnson

T I M E SL I P CITY OF TIME AND MAGIC Paula Brackston, St. Martin’s, 2021, $27.99/£21.99, hb, 320pp, 9781250260697

This delightful fourth book in Brackston’s Found Things series picks up where the last, The Garden of Promises and Lies, ended.

Xanthe, time-traveling spinner, is determined to get back to Liam, her boyfriend, who is currently lost in Victorian England. She begins by seeking treasures that will “sing” to her, which is the way in which she can time-travel.

Xanthe is able to find the perfect antique and quickly finds herself at the door of none other than Erasmus Balmoral, Lydia Flyte’s rumored spinner lover. So begins her grand adventure to find Liam and get them both back to the proper time. Naturally, all kinds of mischief are afoot, danger lurks in corners, and Xanthe must overcome many hurdles to save the day.

Brackston has once again developed a fun and enjoyable time-travel novel with good historical elements and an interesting plot.

Xanthe and Liam make a great team, and old favorites such as beloved friend Harley feature prominently. As with the previous books, the story is well paced. Readers learn a lot of backstory and history of spinners throughout time. While it can be read as a standalone, it is much richer (and more entertaining) if you read them all in order. The entire series is highly recommended for all lovers of time-travel books.

Rebecca Cochran

THE LAST DAUGHTER (UK) / THE LAST DAUGHTER OF YORK (US) Nicola Cornick, HQ, 2021, £8.99, pb, 384pp, 9780008278526 / Graydon House, 2021, $16.99/C$21.99, pb, 368pp, 9781525806452

Young and vivacious Caitlin went missing in mysterious circumstances over a decade ago.

Since then her twin sister, Serena, has struggled to put the trauma behind her. The trauma is made worse because she has suffered from dissociative amnesia. When Caitlin’s body is discovered near their grandparents’ former home set within the ruins of Minster Lovell Hall, Oxfordshire, Serena has no choice but to return to the village to identify the body. She is also determined to find out the truth at last.

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The mystery deepens when she learns Caitlin’s body was discovered totally sealed inside a medieval tomb. Only her body shows that it was a recent burial. What on earth?

In this gripping novel, the modern world, history, the supernatural, myth and legend collide. At the heart of the mystery is the Lovell Lodestar, a small piece of rock with astounding powers which ties Serena’s family to the centuries-old royal mystery which still intrigues today. Whatever happened to the 15th-century Princes in the Tower?

This is the very first of Nicola Cornick’s historical mysteries I have read and will not be the last. I was soon engrossed in what begins as a modern “missing person” thriller but is soon intertwined with one family’s struggles during the Wars of the Roses. The Lost Daughter is a spine-chilling, page-turning time-slip novel that kept me reading too late into the night. I enjoyed it hugely. However, I was shocked to find an author who has clearly put in hours of research confusing the two totally separate actions of spinning and weaving.

Sally Zigmond

ANTICIPATION Melodie Winawer, Gallery, 2021 C$22.99, pb, 480pp, 9781982113698

“Anticipation”

implies hopeful expectation but here refers to the Huntington’s disease (HD) gene, discernible in one generation, anticipated in the next.

Recently w i d o w e d Helen Adler, a cellular biologist researching the gene, is stumbling through single parenthood when her young son asks to go to Greece. A bright boy with educational challenges, Alexander may not write, but he re-enacts Greek myths using his socks and can relate the history of Troy and Sparta with ease. He’s a truly endearing participant in this novel.

Modern-day tour guide for the ancient site of Mystras, Elias is keeper of the stones, born in 1237, dedicated to the Prophet Elijah but stalked across centuries by the Frankish Lusignans who carry the HD gene and believe Elias’s Romaioi (part-French, part-Greek) blood can cure them.

The first thirty pages suffer from the lack of a map to orient the geography of Byzantine Greece, but after some online searching, I was hooked. Impeccably researched and memorably blending history with fantasy, Winawer’s narrative is persuasive. The prose is beautifully shaped, convincing in its study of reincarnation and crash-course history of occupied Greece, learned through Elias’s lives.

The author touches briefly on the 1981 EU entry – Greece again under tight-fisted European

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control – the irony not lost on Elias! And 2015 is the modern-day setting, not accidentally the year of the bailout referendum.

Throughout the novel, we meet fascinating characters and are immersed in Greek culture – mannerism, food, dress, both modern and medieval – and its centuries of bloody, racially discriminatory domination. Helen and Elias narrate their stories in first person, the others in third, which works well to keep readers grounded in time and place, while the flow – past-present-past – is seamless. If the greatest praise comes by seeking out an author’s previous books, then I’m off to find a copy of The Scribe of Siena.

Fiona Alison

A LT E R NAT E H I STORY SCANDALOUS ALCHEMY Katy Moran, Head of Zeus, 2021, £18.99, hb, 408pp, 9781786695420

Scandalous Alchemy is the third of Katy Moran’s alternate history series based around the Cornish Lamorna family and set in the early 19th century. The series envisions a world in which Napoleon was not defeated at Waterloo and instead invaded England and, with the demise of the British Royal family, a young Russian princess is now heir to the throne. It is 1825, and at Fontainebleau the major players are meeting to discuss lasting peace and a planned betrothal between Princess Nadezhda and a Hapsburg prince. She has appointed Kit Helford as captain of her royal guard and Kit’s childhood friend Clemency Arwenack as her lady in waiting.

Intrigue and political maneuvering surround the main characters, and it seems they all have secrets. Comparisons with Georgette Heyer are inevitable, and the author is open about her admiration of Heyer. While romance and scandal are never far from the page, Moran is interested in more than just romance. Her attention to detail will excite those who know the real historical events even as the author subverts them, and the plot is driven by the behaviour of an enthralling cast of characters.

There is a great deal more depth in the storytelling than in much of Heyer’s work, and while reading the previous books in the series would enable the reader to better understand the characters motivations, Scandalous Alchemy can be read as a stand-alone.

The book has been compared to the Poldark and Bridgerton novels, and while I can understand this, readers can expect a great deal more than Cornwall and courting from Moran. She has created a compelling narrative and intriguing characters and is a gifted storyteller.

Lisa Redmond

C H I LDR E N ’S A N D YOU NG A DU LT

BLUEBIRD Sharon Cameron, Scholastic, 2021, $18.99, hb, 464pp, 9781338355963

“I am Eva Gerst. And I am Bluebird. And I am going to kill my father.”

Drawing inspiration from actual events, Sharon Cameron has crafted a complex multilayered novel that explores an immediate post-World War II Germany in which shadowy groups continue to support experiments in “mind control.” Spiriting suspected Nazi sympathizers out of Europe under contrived identities, hundreds of medical doctors and scientists brought with them the results of various drug and mental experiments initially carried out on innocents imprisoned in concentration camps.

Twenty-seven names, committed to memory, begin Eva’s journey in New York City. Why these specific individuals, and what memorized messages to be conveyed?

Further, where does her missing “papa” fit into this mosaic? Arriving with a damaged sister, under recently created false names with fake papers and with limited English language skills, into an environment that still overtly views Germans as “krauts,” Eva must navigate an increasingly large murky group of adults.

Who can she now trust, and who must be kept at arm’s length along with who might betray rather than succor? The internal pressure on Eva to protect her sister, as well as navigating this foreign landscape to complete her own personally imposed mission, weighs heavily.

The narrative regularly takes the reader quickly from postwar Germany back and forth to New York as people come and go. Situations are often dire and fraught with danger; many of the Germany-based scenarios force readers to confront wartime brutality along with uncomfortable human realities. Realistically, Cameron does not craft a Pollyanna ending; rather, some issues are resolved with others remaining shrouded in uncertainty.

Jon G. Bradley

THE MINERS’ LAMENT Judy Dodge Cummings, illus. Eric Freeberg, Jolly Fish, 2021, $8.99, pb, 150pp, 9781631635359

In October 1950, Mexican-American employees at the Empire Zinc Company went on strike. The striking miners demanded fair pay and safe sanitation for their homes.

When a court order prevented strikers from blocking the road into the mine, their female relatives took

their places, preventing strikebreakers from entering.

The Miners’ Lament is the fictional story of one of these young feminist warriors.

Protagonist Ana Maria is only eleven years old when she defies her father to stand shoulder to shoulder with the brave men, women, and children of her town. Author Judy Dodge Cummings marries history to story seamlessly in this novel as she dives into the complexities of social justice in families and communities.

Cummings humanizes both sides of the picket line; she explores racism and classism in the rich context of personal relationships.

The resulting story reminds audiences that while division can be deadly, it can disappear with empathy, patience, and connection. If young readers can overlook the retro cover, Cummings’s tale of bravery and community will inspire them. Highly recommend for ages eight and up.

Melissa Warren

THE BEATRYCE PROPHECY Kate DiCamillo, illus. Sophie Blackall, Candlewick, 2021, $19.99, hb, 256pp, 9781536213614

Author Kate DiCamillo is a two-time winner of the Newbery Medal, and the illustrator has won a similar number of Caldecott medals, so when you pick up this whimsical novel you can be sure it is of the highest quality.

Set in quasi-medieval times, the story opens in a monastery where the stubborn goat Answelica delights in bucking anyone within range. One night, a gentle monk finds a young girl hiding in a stall, cuddled next to the formidable Answelica. The brothers nurse her back to health, except for locked-away memories, and make a startling discovery about her: She can read, unlike every other female in the land. Soon it becomes evident that she is the subject of a prophecy that bodes ill for the king and that has put her on the run as a traumatized amnesiac. With a motley cast of friends and helpers, she travels toward her destiny.

DiCamillo’s voice as an author is delightful and resembles that of a fairy tale. Her descriptions are unusual and vivid. One small example is this paragraph: She took the seahorse from his hand. It was light, so light that it felt as if she were holding someone else’s dream cupped in her hand.

The book’s characters are unusual but distinctive, and the journey they go on forges the relationships between them as they each come to their own resolution. With its superficial treatment of the medieval era, this is not a book to read for its history. Instead, it’s one to read for sheer enjoyment and the kind of sweetness and innocence that permeates childhood.

Xina Marie Uhl

BAREFOOT DREAMS OF PETRA LUNA Alda P. Dobbs, Sourcebooks for Young Readers, 2021, $17.99, hb, 278pp, 9781728234656

1913 Mexico. Petra Luna’s mother died in childbirth. Her father was forced to either join the Federales, the government army of tyrant

Victoriano Huerta, or be executed in front of his family. When soldiers burn her village and home, twelve-year-old Petra Luna must lead her grandmother and two young siblings to safety. But is anywhere safe? Walking barefoot through the desert, they find temporary safety in a church and, later, with a rebel army led by a female soldier. Petra considers joining the rebels, but who would care for her family?

Would it be better to continue north and hope that the United States will be safe? Will it be a place where she could finally go to school and learn to read?

Based on events from the author’s greatgrandmother’s life, this is an excellent story of the Mexican Revolution. The focus is less on the political situation and more on the effects of war on the poor. Dobbs brings not only the time but the place to life. The Lunas are able to survive in the desert because of Abuelita’s knowledge of the land she loves. Petra Luna is a wonderfully strong and compassionate character. Readers will empathize with her challenges and understand her dreams.

Spanish words are sprinkled throughout the text in a way that makes their meaning clear.

End material explains the author’s inspiration for the story, and a timeline outlines major events in the revolution. Highly recommended.

Ages 8 and up.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt

THE PROGRESS OF OUR PEOPLE Anne E. Johnson, illus. Eric Freeberg, Jolly Fish, 2021, $8.99/£8.99, pb, 160pp, 9781631635397

Chicago, 1893. Young Lorraine Williams loves to sing and can’t wait to visit the Chicago World’s Fair. Her father laid concrete for the Expo’s ponds, but when his work is done, Lorraine’s family cannot afford the ticket price. When Lorraine learns that her friend’s choir will sing in the Haitian Pavilion, she joins that choir. Lorraine attends the fair and hears Sissieretta Jones sing: an AfricanAmerican woman admired by all races.

Lorraine vows to return to the Expo to get advice from Mrs. Jones. However, a movement has started in Chicago’s Black community to boycott the Expo: There is no mention of the many achievements of recently freed African Americans. What will Lorraine do?

This is an excellent novel, full of suspense, with a realistic heroine. Lorraine’s love of family, frustration with rules, ingenuity at finding ways to make money, ambitions and admirations all ring true. The mix of formats (prose, diary entries, newspaper excerpts, with end notes) all help to integrate the historical details while not slowing the pacing of the plot. The debate within the Black community forces the reader to grapple with the same ideas and brings little-known historical events and people to life. Highly recommended.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt

A CLASH OF STEEL: A Treasure Island Remix C. B. Lee, Feiwel and Friends, 2021, $18.99/£13.95, hb, 432pp, 9781250750372

Do your eyelids droop when you hear the word classic? Never fear, remixed classic to the rescue! C. B. Lee’s reimaging of Treasure Island transports readers to China in the 1800s

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when one pirate ruled the ocean, the queen of the Dragon Fleet, Zheng Yi Sao, and she makes Blackbeard look like a naïve schoolboy.

A Clash of Steel overflows with sword fights, mysterious islands, and epic storms, but it offers readers much more than the classic tale. C. B. Lee is no Victorian-era author. Lee and her heroin, Xiang, take this story to bolder, brighter places and offer a refreshing challenge to history and the people who record it.

Lee’s attention to language, culture, and identity creates a more inclusive and exciting portal into history for young readers. It is a space where diverse audiences can imagine their place sailing the high seas searching for treasure. Xiang’s struggle to connect with her mother, defy expectations, and claim her place in her found family reminds readers that they too can cut their own paths. It is the perfect read for anyone who loves romance, adventure, and a fresh perspective; I highly recommend this book for ages 13 and up.

Melissa Warren

THE PERFECT PLACE TO DIE Bryce Moore, Sourcebooks Fire, 2021, $10.99/£8.99, pb, 320pp, 9781728229119

Zuretta (Etta) and her sister Ruby live what appears to be a quiet life in Utah, but underneath it all, they are dealing with an angry and abusive father. When Ruby discovers the extent to which Etta has been beaten and abused, she urges her to run away to Chicago and find a better life. Etta decides not to go, but Ruby leaves with dreams of finding a job in the exciting city that is host to the World’s Columbian Exposition (World’s Fair) in 1893. When Ruby’s letters stop coming and Etta begins to have frightening dreams, Etta decides to go to Chicago to try and find her sister.

This is a fascinating novel that combines the true crime and thriller genres, as well as adding in a touch of magical realism. Fictional and real-life characters combine to tell the story of an actual serial killer in Chicago who ran a “murder house” hotel. Each chapter of the book is headed with a part of the actual confession letter the killer wrote after he was caught, a fascinating and genius addition to the story. We learn a little about the World’s Fair and a lot about the killer and the Pinkerton Detective Agency. It is easy to connect with the serious and determined Etta, who has an admirable ability to focus and analyze events in unfortunate or perilous situations. The two sides of the killer—his public face and his private murderous personality, are shown to great effect. The underbelly of Chicago, waiting to pounce on the unsuspecting young women who have been lured to the city by the famous and popular fair, is almost a character in and of itself. Riveting and sometimes horrifying, this 60

is a combination of true crime and historical fiction that readers will find irresistible.

Bonnie DeMoss

DARK RISE C. S. Pacat, Quill Tree, 2021, $18.99/C$23.99, hb, 464pp, 9780062946140

This historical fantasy for readers 14 years and up starts with Will, a boy trying to earn a living working at the London docks at a time when sailing ships and swords were prevalent.

Witnessing the branding of Tom, to signify his status as one of Lord Simon Crenshaw’s inner circle, Will is drawn into a Dark World. Simon Crenshaw’s Remnants are set against the Stewards, an older race of people defending the world against the return of the Dark King.

The world Will finds himself in is one of betrayal and revenge. A world where nothing and no one is as it seems. A world where disillusion and betrayal are routine, although the occasional surprise ally turns up. Beloved mothers turn out to be enemies, respected fathers are cruelly rejecting. Characters are androgynous and their stated loyalties are unreliable.

This is a novel full of battles and struggles.

Loyalty is admired but seldom a reality, beauty is found but usually reveals evil. Trust is a very scarce commodity as sides split into factions.

Tension abounds as Will, together with Violet, struggle for what they believe is good. As battle lines are drawn between light and dark, Will and his friends play a vital role in trying to prevent the return of the Dark King.

A high level of tension is maintained throughout. Even in descriptive passages, a sharp undercurrent of tension is evident.

This enhances a complex storyline. If “tense” and “plot-driven” are terms you look for in descriptions of novels for young people, this book is for you.

Valerie Adolph

THE CITY BEAUTIFUL Aden Polydoros, Inkyard, 2021, C$24.99, hb, 480pp, 9781335402509

$19.99/

Chicago in 1893 is home to thousands of immigrants from all around the world, each of them hoping to realize a new and prosperous life in their adopted land. Alter Rosen, a 19-year-old Jew from Romania, is no exception, but when his father dies on board a ship to America and Alter arrives alone and lost, he finds his father’s dream of a better life disappearing. Alter knows his father’s death will make it even more difficult for him to bring his mother and two sisters to America.

When Alter’s best friend, Yakov, is murdered— the latest victim in a string of murdered Jewish boys—Alter becomes determined to find out who is behind the murders. But when Alter is possessed by Yakov’s dybbuk, he is plunged into a world of corruption, deceit, and bigotry where he connects with a boy from his past, a boy who is dangerous but means so much to Alter. Together, the two of them must track down Yakov’s killer and exorcise his dybbuk before he completely possesses Alter.

Set against such iconic American events as the Great Chicago Fire, the Chicago World’s Fair, and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, the

REVIEWS | Issue 98, November 2021

novel is a detailed and fascinating look at America at the turn of the twentieth century and its people, especially the Jewish immigrant population.

Evocative scenes and beautiful prose bring this debut YA novel to life. It is full of interesting bits of Jewish culture and lore, and the author adds a handy Yiddish glossary at the back of the book. Part murder mystery, part gay romance, part paranormal thriller, this fascinating hybrid of a novel is highly recommended.

John Kachuba

MERCURY BOYS Chandra Prasad, Soho Teen, 2021, $18.99/ C$21.99/£15.99, hb, 360pp, 9781641292658 Biracial sixteen-year-old Saskia moves from Arizona to Connecticut with her white father after the devastating (and humiliating) discovery of her mother’s affair with a man half her age. With just a few months left before the end of the school year, Saskia struggles to fit in. Researching Robert Cornelius, a 19thcentury pioneer of photography, for a school assignment sends Saskia into the archives of the local college with her only friend, Lila.

Saskia becomes fixated on a daguerreotype of Cornelius and discovers that by touching liquid mercury she is able to time travel in her dreams. In an attempt to impress the charismatic Paige, Saskia tells Paige and her sister Sara Beth, along with another friend, Adrienne (all of whom are white) about meeting Cornelius. The other girls quickly get their own daguerreotypes and form a secret club called the Mercury Boys Club. They gather every week under the weeping beech on Paige and Sara Beth’s lawn to discuss their meetings with their Forever Boyfriends. Though Lila tries to be the voice of reason, Saskia and Adrienne are fixated on Paige’s approval. Summer drags on and the Club becomes menacing, as Paige exerts more and more control.

Prasad introduces a diverse set of characters: Saskia has a Black mother and a white father; Lila is Latinx and a lesbian; and Josh, the boy whom Saskia hooks up with early in the story, has a Japanese mother. The girls all come from homes with varying degrees of dysfunction.

The premise, daguerreotypes and mercury as a portal to the past, is so intriguing I really wanted to love this story. Unfortunately, the promise of that premise is not fulfilled. Saskia’s obsession with Cornelius comes too quickly to believe, and the obsession is exacerbated once Paige takes over. Prasad paints a mostly stereotypical picture of teenaged girls, making the story somewhat predictable. Character development is lacking, and there are no risks or consequences. Young adult readers who enjoy time travel and mean-girl stories may enjoy.

Meg Wiviott

A BOY IS NOT A GHOST Edeet Ravel, Groundwood, 2021, $16.99/£12.99, hb, 239pp, 9781773064987

On the Russian front in 1941, a twelve-yearold boy dreams of having adventures with his

best friend. Natt Silver and his mother are crammed into cattle cars alongside thousands of other Eastern Europeans and sent into forced exile in Siberia. While Natt loathes the dank conditions and brutal Siberian winter, he holds onto the hope that they will eventually be reunited with his imprisoned father. But it’s not enough just to wait out their sentence—one by one, Natt’s few remaining family and friends are taken from him, leaving him desperate to survive on his own, afraid of the fate of so many other young children orphaned by Joseph Stalin’s regime.

The second in a duology following Natt Silver’s experiences during World War II, the novel’s activity is chiefly the humble tasks of daily survival in the face of deprivation.

Natt learns how to ration food and how to bribe Russian guards for favors. He faces the horrors of watching fellow exiles die around him in the harsh landscape, and yet he strives to help others, learning to code messages and build a network of friends who might be able to help him reunite his parents and escape from Siberia.

Natt’s thoughts are a mixture of boyish adventure-seeking and basic perceptions of the world-changing action happening around him. Telling a story entirely from a child’s perspective is one of the most difficult narrative voices to adopt, and yet Ravel makes the task look easy. This is an unflinching depiction of childhood in wartime that will appeal to young readers ready for stories of survival, global politics, and mature emotional journeys.

Erin Page

THE GHOST OF MIDNIGHT LAKE Lucy Strange, Chicken House, 2021, $17.99, hb, 336pp, 9781338686432

It is December 1899; a new century looms.

Twelve-year-old Agatha, living in Gosswater Hall in the English Lake District and accustomed to expensive luxuries, mourns her father’s death and finds this means she is to be thrown out. Apparently, the man she has called ‘father’ is not her real father. A loathsome cousin appears with documents proving he is the new heir to the estate. A village carpenter comes for Agatha in a horsedrawn cart, glumly agreeing that she is his daughter.

The carpenter, Thomas, also keeps geese, which Agatha find fearsome. His small cottage has no luxuries, no servants. He is a silent man often absent. Alone, Agatha attends the funeral of the man she thought was her father.

An elderly aunt takes one look at her and dies of shock. Sad and lonely on Skelter Island, her family’s long-time burial island, Agatha meets the orphan Bryn. Perhaps, Agatha wonders, she also had been an orphan and adopted by the emotionally distant Asquith family.

This novel for middle grades is exciting from beginning to end as we follow the many adventures of Agatha and Bryn, who

together search for Agatha’s true family, her true identity. The pace quickens to a dramatic climax with Gosswater Hall on fire and Thomas’s pet goose playing a pivotal role.

An enjoyable novel, this combines a complex, many-layered plot with vivid characters, each of whom has a carefully developed arc that is realistic and satisfying.

Don’t be put off by the title. This novel will speak to anyone who has ever wondered about their identity and the influences that have created their present life. A thoughtful book for readers of any age.

Valerie Adolph

I SURVIVED THE GALVESTON HURRICANE, 1900 Lauren Tarshis, Scholastic, 2021, $5.99, pb, 142pp, 9781338752533

Galveston, Texas, in 1900 is the fastestgrowing city in the South. The richest city in Texas bustles with activity as boats loaded with goods visit the harbor. But danger lurks as the deadliest disaster in US history is about to unfold.

Eleven-year-old Charlie Miller is a quiet boy who lives in Galveston with his family. He loves magic tricks and struggles with feeling invisible and being the target of a bully. A well-known scientist at the time says that hurricanes cannot affect Galveston, but his knowledge is proved wrong on the afternoon of September 8.

The story opens with a bang as Charlie is swept into swirling flood waters. As the tale of his everyday life emerges, real-life historical details like the city’s economic activities and vibrant social life are expertly revealed. The reader sympathizes with Charlie, and his fears and triumphs. The last section of the book reveals fascinating true-life details of the hurricane, complete with photos of the aftermath.

The disaster, which resulted in the deaths of upwards of 10,000 people, does not dwell on the terrifying storm and grisly deaths, making it perfect for its audience of second through fifth graders. Highly recommended.

Xina Marie Uhl

THE AMBER CRANE Malve von Hassell, Odyssey, 2021, $14.99/£9.99, pb, 260pp, 9781922311221 Set mostly in the Baltic port of Stolpműnde

during the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), this novel travels occasionally to the time of the Second World War. Both periods see mass movements of refugees along the southern shore of the Baltic as foreign armies invade.

Peter Glienke, however, is more concerned with his daily trials as apprentice to Master Nowak, a respected craftsman working with amber, and a member of the Guild that regulates all standards and prices in the amber industry. Amber can occasionally be found

on the seashore near Stolpműnde, although walking along the shore is forbidden.

One day, while walking on the forbidden shore, Peter picks up two exceptional pieces of raw amber. He keeps these a secret, but finds they transport him to meet Lioba, struggling to escape the armies of WW2. He is amazed at the changes he sees—trains, a bicycle, ships that move without sails—but he recognizes one thing: the flood of refugees, destitute and desperate, trying to escape war. Despite his own rebellion and family issues, Peter is allowed to take the exam that could make him a journeyman amber worker and establish his future.

This thoroughly researched novel provides insight into the amber trade and medieval Guilds at the time of the Hanseatic League.

However, the long paragraphs of information do not enhance its readability, and they weaken the flow of the narrative. The wide cast of characters are generally well-drawn.

Kudos to this author for introducing us to a time and place seldom presented in historical fiction.

Valerie Adolph

JOURNEY ON THE C&O CANAL Tovah S. Yavin, Menucha, 2021, $19.99, hb, 264pp, 9781614654476

In the summer of 1909, Mr. Brandt and his wife operate a barge on the 370-mile Chesapeake & Ohio Canal. Pairs of mules walk on trails by the canal and pull the barges via long ropes. Mr. Brandt steers the barge, while Mrs. Brandt does all the cooking and laundry and watches over their young daughter.

On this round trip, the Brandts must retrieve an ailing mule left behind with a veterinarian in Georgetown. However, they can’t pay for an added crew member to help with the recovering mule and tend to its wounds, so 12-year-old Gabe Marks gets recruited at no cost, except for his food. Gabe has been raised as a devout Jew. Mrs. Brandt is happy to provide him kosher meals, and Mr. Brandt makes sure to get to Georgetown and a Jewish home by sundown on Friday for the Sabbath.

Gabe quickly learns how to handle the mules as he walks with them for many hours, taking care to not slip on the wet trail and fall into the filthy canal. Wild pigs, a bear, stinging flies and summer storms menace the crew and mules. On the way back from Georgetown, the sickly mule adds to the demands. Gabe’s quiet diligence and keen intelligence help him get through multiple crises.

Gabe and the Brandts have top billing in the story. But the real star of the novel is the entire canal operation, with its 75 locks, lock keepers, other barge operators, and the tireless mules that make it all work. The story should delight and inform fifth through seventh graders about a little-known but important part of how America was built and the strong people and animals who built it.

G. J. Berger

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CONFERENCES

The Society organizes biennial conferences in the UK, North America, and Australasia.

Contact Richard Lee <richard@historicalnovelsociety.org> (UK), Jenny Quinlan <jennyq@historicaleditorial.com> (North America), or Elisabeth Storrs <contact@hnsa.org.au> (Australasia).

© 2021, the Historical Novel Society, ISSN: 1471-7492 | Issue 98, November 2021

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

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