New Books in Historical Fiction

Of the brutal conflicts that characterized the twentieth century, none equaled in scale the catastrophe that struck China when the Japanese occupied the northern part of the country just as the Civil War was picking up steam. According to some estimates, 22.5 million people died in these twin acts of destruction. Dreams of the Red Phoenix (Unbridled Books, 2015)  takes place during a few weeks in the summer of 1937, as seen from the perspective of North American missionaries who only think they understand the local culture and their place in it. Sheila Carson–mourning the recent death of her husband, the Reverend Caleb–can hardly bring herself to get up in the morning, let alone supervise work around her house or rein in her teenaged son, Charles, who soon causes trouble for himself and his mother by taunting the Japanese soldiers who patrol the area. But when attacks on the civilian population send a stream of wounded and hungry people into the mission looking for aid, Shirley, one of the few trained nurses in the compound, is pulled into service, her house turned into a clinic. The mission’s protected status, based on U.S. neutrality in these years before World War II, falls under threat when the Japanese army suspects that the refugees include Nationalist and Communist soldiers, and Shirley must decide whether to leave with her fellow Americans or stay and help the charismatic Communist general whose philosophy appeals to her idealistic nature. Her memories of her husband, her responsibilities as a mother, and her own sense of right and purpose are pushing Shirley in different directions even before outside forces intervene to complicate her path. As in her earlier novel, River of Dust, Virginia Pye here takes stories of her own ancestors–in this case, her grandmother and family friends–and weaves them into a vivid, evocative tapestry of love and loss, belonging and alienation, deception and truth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

Many historical novels explore the highways and byways of Tudor England, especially the marital troubles of Henry VIII, which makes it all the more pleasant when an author approaches that much-visited time and place with a fresh eye. In her The Cross and the Crown series–which currently consists of The Altarpiece, City of Ladies, and The King’s Sisters—Sarah Kennedy looks at Henry’s roller-coaster search for marital happiness and male progeny from the viewpoint of a young nun cast out of her convent and flung into a strange interim state where she can neither practice her religion nor marry without the express permission of the king. We meet Catherine Havens in 1535. King Henry has recently declared the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and the local gentry sees a chance to increase its landholdings at the expense of Catherine’s convent–a development that her abbess in no way supports but cannot prevent. When the convent chapel’s large and valuable altarpiece goes missing, the questions raised by the theft and the attempts to retrieve it sweep Catherine into a secular world that her sheltered background has not prepared her to handle. The situation only deepens in future books, as the king’s constantly shifting moods, loves, alliances, and attitudes toward religion keep his realm in equally constant turmoil–the only certainty that a misstep will lead to torture and execution. In this atmosphere, no one is safe. Yet Catherine and the other “king’s sisters,” a group that includes his divorced wife Anne of Cleves, strive to care for his children while remaining true to their consciences. That Catherine is also a gifted physician (although a woman cannot bear that title, and the line between medicine and witchcraft at times wears disturbingly thin) offers her both a means of support and a certain protection amid the many dangers that beset even secondary affiliates of the royal court. The King’s Sisters (Knox Robinson Publishing, 2015) opens a window on a world in which the fate of Anne Boleyn is but one reminder of King Henry’s caprice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

Many novels look at World War II–what happened, why it happened, how the world would have changed if the war had never occurred or had taken a different course. In The Cherry Harvest (William Morrow, 2015), Lucy Sanna approaches World War II from a different perspective: its impact on farming communities in the Midwest and the little-known history of German prisoners of war brought for confinement to the United States. By May 1944, Charlotte Christiansen has reached the end of her rope. The cherry harvest of 1943 has rotted on the tree because the migrant laborers who once worked on her farm have found better-paying jobs in factories. Charlotte has been reduced to butchering her daughter’s prized rabbits in secret and trading eggs and milk for meat if she is to feed her family. But the local country store has canceled her line of credit, and if she and her husband cannot find enough workers to pick the 1944 harvest, they will lose everything they have. So when Charlotte learns that the U.S. government will send German prisoners of war into rural communities to bring in the crops, she urges the local county board to, in the words of one member, make “a bargain with the devil.” The prisoners defy the farmers’ worst expectations. Some of them deny any adherence to the Nazi cause; some are barely out of their teens; one, obviously educated and cultured, speaks English well enough to develop a friendship with Charlotte’s family. The community’s resistance to their presence gradually ebbs. Then Charlotte’s son returns from fighting the Nazis, only to find them harvesting cherries in his own back yard. In this beautifully written and poignant story, Lucy Sanna explores the complexity of love and loyalty in a world where even the distant echoes of war prove impossible to ignore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

Scotland, 1296: William Wallace is leading the resistance against the English while the clans fight one another as fiercely as they attack the invaders from the south. Two candidates in particular claim the throne: the Red Comyn and Bruce the Competitor. Neither can rule without support from Clan Macduff. But when Comyn secures the hand of Isabelle Macduff for his heir, his success appears assured. No matter that Isabelle prefers James Douglas, whose family supports Bruce. In 1296, a woman must accept her father’s choice of husband. Isabelle’s fate is sealed. But Isabelle harbors an unfeminine ambition to see and touch the Stone of Scone, on which all of Scotland’s kings have been crowned. Even though the Stone lies in Westminster Abbey and Edward Longshanks controls half of Scotland, including the clan into which Isabelle has married against her will, she is determined to play a part in her country’s fractious politics. Her determination leads her along a long and tortuous path as the mercurial James, soon known as the Black Douglas, and the depressive Robert, grandson of Bruce the Competitor, struggle to overcome the divisions among the Scottish lords and rally support before the land of their birth falls completely under “proud Edward’s power.” In The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of the Black Douglas (Brigid’s Fire Books, 2014), Glen Craney reveals the events that led up to and beyond the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Rich in historical detail and powerful personalities in conflict, this is a story that picks up where Braveheart ends and follows the drive to keep Scotland independent to its successful, if temporary, conclusion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

From World War I, we jump back more than a hundred years and across an ocean. Napoleon, still First Consul, has convinced the surrounding nations to accept a series of treaties that he violates as it suits him. Great Britain, weary of war, clings to the Treaty of Amiens, determined to play the ostrich even as evidence mounts that Napoleon is massing an invasion fleet on the northern coast of France. What are the alternatives? In 1802, the Battle of Trafalgar has not yet happened. Half the renowned British fleet is in mothballs, the other half dispersed to distant lands. And no one knows (or wants to know) where Bonaparte will strike next: Egypt, the Caribbean, the Channel Islands, Cornwall. Any target is as plausible as any other, or so the Parliament and the lords of Whitehall insist. Amid the confusion, a small group of British spies, the King’s Men, works to gain what intelligence it can on Bonaparte’s movements. Talk of assassination plots mingle with rumors of troop deployments and underwater boats capable of launching carcasses (bombs) and torpedoes to destroy the Royal Navy before its officers know what has happened to them. And smack in the middle of the plot is Elizabeth Sunderland, daughter of a King’s Man, who realizes too late the wolf hidden behind the charming face that wooed her away from her family. Lisbeth wants her son, her estranged husband wants revenge, the King’s Men want information, and the American inventor Robert Fulton wants only to be left in peace to pursue his research into submarines. In The Tide Watchers (William Morrow, 2015), Lisa Chaplin masterfully weaves these warring desires into a fast-paced story that will keep you riveted in your seat as the pages turn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

Boston in 1915 is a town on the move. Prohibition creates opportunities for corruption and evasion of the law. Stock scandals and political machinations keep the news wires humming. Women agitate for the vote, socialists for the good of the common man. A new sports phenomenon, the nineteen-year-old Babe Ruth, sparks enthusiasm for the local team by hitting one home run after another. A new invention called radio hovers on the brink of a technological breakthrough that threatens the established newspaper business. Over it all hangs the shadow of what will soon be known as the Great War. Boston, like most US cities of the time, has large populations of Germans and Irish that do not want to see their country fighting alongside Great Britain and France. Meanwhile, thousands of young men die daily in the trenches, and the RMS Lusitania sinks off the coast of Ireland, torpedoed by a German submarine captain who believes (perhaps rightly) that the British have stocked it with hidden munitions. Through the overlapping stories of the Townsend and Morrison families in Glenfiddich Inn (Sonador Publishing, 2015), Alan Geik weaves these disparate threads into a compelling portrait of early twentieth-century Boston and New York. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

Once in a while, we here at New Books in Historical Fiction like to branch out. This month’s interview is one example. Erika Johansen‘s bestselling Queen of the Tearling (HarperCollins, 2014) blends past and present, history and fantasy, to create a future world that by abandoning its advanced technology (including, by accident, medicine) has reverted to a society that more resembles the fourteenth century than the twenty-fourth. The world of the Tearling is not exactly the Middle Ages revived. The inhabitants know that life was once different, even though books have become scarce and computers nonexistent. They have learned the story of the Crossing, when a few thousand dreamers disgusted with the social stratification and environmental pollution around them decided to leave it all behind and start again on the other side of the Atlantic. And their idealistic young queen, Kelsea–raised in hiding to protect her from the savage politics of the center–yearns to restore her realm to the democratic and egalitarian principles of the founders. Assuming, of course, that she can survive on the throne long enough to establish her right to rule. But treachery threatens Kelsea from within and without, by means military and magical. The greatest danger comes from Mortmesne, the kingdom to the east, where the Red Queen has ruled for more than a century. Kelsea’s first action as queen puts her on a headlong collision course with the Red Queen, with consequences that play out in book 2, The Invasion of the Tearling, due for release in June. In The Queen of the Tearling, Erika Johansen has created a thought-provoking and entertaining coming-of-age saga that both historical fiction and science fiction fans can enjoy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

In this podcast I talk with author Sally Cabot Gunning about law in the Satucket Trilogy: The Widow’s War, Bound, and The Rebellion of Jane Clarke (Harper 2006, 2008, 2010). Gunning is an accomplished writer of mystery novels and historical fiction set in eighteenth-century America. By bringing to life important pieces of America’s legal past, her stories encourage a wide audience to wrestle with a diverse array of legal theories. Some of the topics discussed include: * Colonial jurisprudence * The legal status of women in puritan New England * Indentured servitude * Infanticide trials Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

From July 1 to July 3, 1863, the fields around the small town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, were the site of an intense battle involving more than 160,000 men from the Union and Confederate armies, almost one-third of whom did not survive the campaign. Although the war continued for two more years, in the minds of many analysts past and present, Gettysburg marked the turning point of the conflict. Any schoolchild has heard of–perhaps been required to memorize–President Abraham Lincoln’s memorial address to the fallen, delivered on November 19, four months after the battle. George Stein’s Sing before Breakfast: A Novel of Gettysburg (George Stein, 2012) explores the experience of living through those three cataclysmic days from the perspective of Reis Bramble, a twelve-year-old Pennsylvania farm boy who finds himself caught between the battle lines with his horse and his dog. General Meade asks Reis to serve as a scout for the Union Army, since the boy’s knowledge of the local area gives him an advantage over the invading troops. Reis accepts without hesitation, but the reality of war soon undermines his boyish enthusiasm for the fight. Years later, Reis, looking back on the notes he took during and right after the battle, reflects on the lessons he learned about war, peace, and humanity. Like so many who lived through the Civil War, Reis Bramble realizes that the brutality he witnessed in July 1863 has marked him in ways that he can never erase. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

Even without the almost daily headlines reporting racial injustice in Ferguson, New York City, Cleveland, Madison, and elsewhere, it would be difficult to grasp that fifty years have already passed since the March from Selma to Montgomery to protest discrimination against African-Americans. Events that take place in our own lifetimes or the lifetimes of someone we know do not seem like history, and recent Supreme Court decisions combined with the incidents that populate those headlines raise questions about the stability of the gains made during the Civil Rights Movement as well as the long path that the United States has yet to travel before it achieves its dream of equality for all. In The Fog Machine (Lucky Sky Press, 2014), Susan Follett recreates the years before the March from Selma, before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Her book begins in the Deep South, still clinging to its Jim Crow laws, then moves to the Midwest in an exploration of prejudice both overt and covert and of the forces that promote change in individuals and in societies. The novel opens with Joan, a seven-year-old white girl in Mississippi desperate to fit in. Part of fitting in involves humiliating C. J., who cleans Joan’s family’s house and babysits once a week. When C. J. then leaves for Chicago, Joan is devastated. Surely her cruelty must be to blame. But C. J. has her own reasons for leaving. Chicago welcomes her even as it confines her in a box labeled “live-in maid.” C. J. can’t imagine protesting this treatment; her parents have convinced her that safety means keeping her place. But as the 1950s give way to the 1960s, her friends from home question the wisdom of accepting the status quo. A man named Martin Luther King, Jr., is preaching civil disobedience. A boy named Zach is urging C. J. to help him change the world. And when Zach decides to take part in the Freedom Summer of 1964, C. J., too, wonders whether safety is the only thing that counts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction