New Books in 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

In a town in eastern Gallia, circa 65 AD, an old woman learns that she has lost the last of her siblings, a man she has not seen for thirty years. The news propels her back into memories of her past as Mariam, the rebellious young daughter of a carpenter in Galilee and her experiences with her family, including her oldest brother, Yeshûa–the New Testament’s Jesus of Nazareth. Yeshûa struggles to find his place and his mission in Roman-occupied Judah, a hotbed of unrest where Galileans are especially suspect. For a while, he lives among the Essenes, where he masters their medical knowledge, but after a year he realizes that his low social standing limits his advancement within the order. The Essenes’ philosophy is, in any case, too restrictive for him. Yeshûa returns home, determined to aid the poor as a healer and a teacher. But his neighbors, and even his own family, have little sympathy for Yeshûa in this new role. So he sets off on a journey that will lead him to the Sea of Galilee and on to Jerusalem and a fateful confrontation with Roman power. Throughout this journey with all its doubts, failures, and successes, he is accompanied by Mariam and her betrothed, who is also her brother Yeshûa’s best friend, Yehûdâ Kerioth–Judas Iscariot. In lucid and captivating prose, Ann Swinfen traces the story of Yeshûa the Galilean as he and his sister Mariam travel through the first-century Levant in pursuit of his destiny. The Testament of Mariam (Shakenoak Press, 2014) contrasts this story with the heroine’s life in old age to present new and compelling insights into the familiar Gospel story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

From sixteenth-century Venice we move back a century and travel north to Mainz, Germany, where a “madman” named Johannes Gutenberg has invented a radical new method of making books. Like any technological genius, Gutenberg needs venture capitalists to finance his workshop and skilled craftsmen and designers to turn his ideas into reality. He finds a financier in Johann Fust, a wealthy merchant and seller of manuscript books. Indirectly, this relationship also brings in a new craftsman when Fust calls his adopted son, Peter Schaffer, back from Paris, where Peter is making his name as a scribe, and forces him to become Gutenberg’s apprentice. Like many people in the early days of printing, Peter is initially repelled by the ugliness and the mechanical appearance of books produced using movable type, an invention that to him seems more satanic than divinely inspired. But Fust will not release Peter from his apprenticeship, and the young scribe is soon learning to man the press and cut type as Gutenberg embarks, in secret, on the creation of the massive Bible with which his name will henceforth be linked. As he works, Peter too comes to appreciate–and in time to enhance–the beauty of printed books. Publication, though, takes longer and proves more difficult than anyone has expected. As the process drags on, tempers fray and tension rises, quire by quire. Alix Christie apprenticed twice as a letterpress printer, and her experience informs and enriches Gutenberg’s Apprentice (HarperCollins, 2014). In this interview, we also talk about the ongoing transition from print to electronic books, what will tip the balance, and how our understanding of the first great technological revolution in books may prepare us for the second. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

As the son and heir to the workshop of sixteenth-century Venice’s premier gondola maker, Luca Vianello has his career, his marriage, and his place in society mapped out for him. True, his stern father still grieves for Luca’s older brother who died in childhood. And Luca’s left-handedness–viewed in Renaissance Europe as sinister, even demonic–provokes blows from his father even as it causes him to lag behind his younger brother in developing his skills. But it is only when tragedy shoots Luca out of his family’s boat-building business altogether that he can envision the possibility of change. Through luck, Luca lands a position in another Venetian boatyard, far less prosperous than the workshop to which he was born. He loads boxes, succeeds as an errand boy, and befriends an older, more experienced gondolier determined to introduce Luca to the charms of wine, women, and on-the-side deals. Before long, Luca has become the private boatman of Master Trevisan, painter to Venice’s elite. There Luca encounters  both the beautiful Giuliana Zanchi (and Trevisan’s portrait of her) and the abandoned, broken-down gondola that will become his personal restoration project. Laura Morelli is an art historian and the author of, among other nonfiction works, Made in Italy and Artisans of Venice. In her award-winning debut novel, The Gondola Maker (Laura Morelli, 2014), she draws on her extensive knowledge of the Venetian past and present to recreate a lost fictional world that will astonish you with its rich, varied, endlessly fascinating detail. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

The year is 1860, months before the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War. Officially, slavery does not exist in Oregon, but the brand-new U.S. state has no compunction about driving most African-Americans out of its territory and violating the civil rights of the few permitted to remain. Worthy Brown, once a slave, has followed his master from Georgia on the understanding that he and his daughter will receive their freedom in return for helping their master establish his homestead near Portland. Indeed, the master, Caleb Barbour, does emancipate Worthy Brown as agreed. But he refuses to let go of Worthy’s fifteen-year-old daughter. Worthy’s options for securing his daughter’s release are limited, but he obtains support from Matthew Penny, a recently widowed young lawyer just arrived from Ohio. Alas, Caleb Barbour is also a lawyer, wealthier and better connected than Matthew, and their clash of personalities unleashes a series of events that threatens not only their own lives but those of Worthy and his daughter. In 1860, Oregon is, after all, a state where even the local circuit judge relies on his pistol as much as or more than his law books. Phillip Margolin, a former criminal defense lawyer, turns his attention to the past in Worthy Brown’s Daughter (Harper, 2014). Although the story is loosely based on an actual law case from the Oregon Territory, the twists in the plot are Margolin’s own–and, as one would expect from the author of numerous bestselling contemporary literary thrillers, those twists and turns will keep you on the edge of your seat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

Women in the Western world take many things for granted: the right to an education and a career, to walk in the street unaccompanied, to make personal decisions, to choose a marriage partner–or whether to marry at all. Female characters in historical fiction seldom enjoy such control over their own lives. Even today, as Nadia Hashimi shows in The Pearl That Broke Its Shell (William Morrow, 2014), the lives of women in rural Afghanistan remain as constrained by traditional demands as they were centuries ago. Afghanistan is far from the only place where such a statement applies. Yet this restricted cultural space includes customs that temporarily allow girls to live as boys or women as men. Male dominance of society can, it seems, withstand the cross-dressing of individual females. Through the lives of two young women living a century apart–Rahima, whose family turns her for a while into the son her mother did not have, and her great-great-grandmother Shekiba, ordered to don men’s clothes and guard the king’s harem–Hashimi explores the contradictions of gender stereotypes, the power of tradition, and the lessons of her own heritage. What is given can also be taken away, and Rahima and Shekiba are soon forced to live as wives and mothers after experiencing the greater freedom and authority granted to men. As they struggle to retain their sense of themselves in a world determined to return them to their place, each of the women must decide whether to adapt or to escape. “Seawater begs the pearl to break its shell,” wrote the thirteenth-century poet Rumi. This lyrical, passionate, uncompromising novel reveals the undying power of the human spirit even in the harshest of circumstances. It should be on everyone’s list. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

Historical fiction, by definition, supplements the verifiable documentary record with elements of the imagination. Otherwise, it is not fiction but history. These elements often include invented characters, made-up dialogue, the filling in of vague or unknowable events and personalities. Through the more or less careful manipulation of historical truth, the novelist seeks to uncover a deeper emotional truth that speaks to both the reality of a past time and the needs of the present. Before and During (Dedalus Books, 2014)–Vladimir Sharov’s exploration of Soviet life and the revolutionary movement that preceded it, skillfully translated by Oliver Ready–pushes historical invention to its limits. Set in a Moscow psychiatric hospital circa 1965, the novel follows a patient identified only as Alyosha as he pursues his self-assigned quest to create a Memorial Book of the Dead, à la Ivan the Terrible, by recording the life stories of those around him and people of importance in his own past. One fellow-patient, Ifraimov, launches into a long and fantastical account of reincarnation, philosophy, revolution, free love, and incest that sweeps from Mme de Staël and Lev Tolstoy to Lenin and Stalin–assiduously recorded by Alyosha. As Sharov’s English-language publisher puts it, “Out of these intoxicating, darkly comic fantasies–all described in a serious, steady voice–Sharov seeks to retrieve the hidden connections and hidden strivings of the Russian past, its wild, lustful quest for justice, salvation, and God.” It’s quite a ride. But if you love Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, this book’s for you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

No fan of Renaissance history can ignore the far-reaching influence–or the legendary corruption–of the Borgia family. From Rodrigo Borgia, who became Pope Alexander VI, to his scheming, possibly murderous sons, to his daughter Lucrezia whose reputation for debauchery still follows her ghost to this day, the Borgias were certainly one of the most memorable families of their time. A key figure in the family’s infamy was Giulia Farnese, the young mistress of the powerful pope. With floor-length golden hair and looks that inspired artists, Giulia was certainly beautiful. But she must have been much more than merely a stunning woman: she was the only person to escape the orbit of the cunning and destructive Borgias and live to tell the tale. In The Serpent and the Pearl (Berkeley Trade, 2013) the rise of the Borgias is examined through the eyes of three unforgettable characters: Carmelina, a cook with a life-or-death secret to keep; Leonello, a knife-wielding dwarf on the trail of a serial killer; and Giulia Farnese, who proves, as author Kate Quinn puts it, that she “has brains under all that hair.” Kate Quinn brings Renaissance Rome to glittering life in this, the first installment of her Borgia series. The author of five published novels set in Rome with another on the way, Quinn delights the reader with gorgeous prose and a fast-paced, intrigue-laced plot in The Serpent and the Pearl. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

In North America, the year 1492 is inextricably linked to Columbus’s discovery of the West Indies, funded by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. But in Spain itself, the year brought two events that at the time appeared more vital to the health and spiritual purity of the kingdom: the conquest of Granada from the last Muslim rulers of Andalusia, and the expulsion of the Jews whose families had inhabited Iberia since the height of the Roman Empire. Against the backdrop of the Spanish Inquisition, The Mapmaker’s Daughter (Sourcebooks, 2014) tells the story of Amalia Riba–child of a converso family whose father embraces Christianity to save his family and whose mother pays lip service to the new religion even as she teaches her daughters to observe Jewish ritual in secret. During Amalia’s long and varied life, she travels from her childhood home in Sevilla to Portugal and to Castile, to Granada and to Valencia–accompanied by the exquisitely decorated atlas painted by her great-grandfather and charting her course between security and identity. With a sure hand, Laurel Corona explores the importance of choice, the prices paid for resistance and assimilation, and the overlapping of identity and community, especially in the lives of women. Along the way, she makes a powerful case for the value of diversity–not only in the past but in the present. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

From the Saxons and Danes warring in the British Isles, this month’s interview skews dramatically eastward and dives back two centuries in time, although the circumstances of war and unrest will seem remarkably familiar. Nanidat, head of the Maniakh trading house, has just returned from two years in Chang’an, the capital of Tang Dynasty China–three months’ away along the Silk Road from his home in Samarkand. It is 749 CE. The House of Maniakh–like Samarkand and the surrounding lands–is slowly recovering from a recent invasion by the Arabs, who have striven to impose their rule and their religion on the Zoroastrian and Buddhist Sogdians. Nanidat looks forward to a relaxing visit filled with wine, women, and poetry before he again mounts his camel to return to his beloved Chang’an. Instead, he is less than halfway through the opening reception before a pair of strangers try to murder him. The next morning, his knife wound still raw, Nanidat finds himself bundled out of his house, on the road west to Bukhara, in search of a young woman whom he has loved as a sister–and perhaps a little more. A reluctant traveler, Nanidat soon finds himself enmeshed in a web of conspiracy and intrigue that threatens his beliefs about his family and its place in the larger world. Dmitry Chen‘s The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas, translated by Liv Bliss (Edward and Dee, 2013) explores the events surrounding the decline of the Umayyad Caliphate, the rise to power of its successor state under the House of Abbas, the founding of Baghdad, and the conflict that underlies the current division between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, now playing out in Iraq. Follow Nanidat as he struggles, never quite certain where the next betrayal will come from, to puzzle out a path to safety before his would-be murderers succeed in their mission. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction