Arlene McKanic

Folks who think the political discourse is fraught right now might take a time machine back to the 11th-century British Isles. Everyone—the Gaels, the Normans, the Saxons and other little tribes—was at war, with towns pillaged and burned, farmland sown with salt, and women, children and the elderly force-marched to the lands of their conquerors and sold into slavery (if they were lucky). This is the backdrop for Susan Fraser King’s absorbing historical novel, Queen Hereafter, which imagines the life of Queen Margaret.

Margaret, the Hungarian-born Saxon/Scottish saint, was a refugee herself, thanks to the chaos surrounding the Saxon revolt and the Battle of Hastings. After enduring a miserable sea passage from the continent, she and her mother and sister wash up in Scotland, and are taken in as guests/hostages of King Malcolm II. He’s sort of on the side of the Saxons, whose leader is the very young and uncrowned Edgar, Margaret’s younger brother. In due time Malcolm marries Margaret in what is largely a political deal. He also insists on having Princess Eva from north Scotland as another guest/hostage, the better to rein in her ambitious grandmother, known to us as Lady Macbeth. Malcolm, by the way, killed not only Macbeth but his stepson Lulach, Eva’s father. She’s not as happy to be in the King’s redoubt as she could be.

Yet Eva and the Queen form a friendship. They’re both royal, and the spirited Eva is also a bard whose singing and harp music soothe the gentle, often lonely but deeply pious Queen. But Eva is also a spy for her grandmother, and she’s torn in her loyalties.

Fraser King is good at depicting the particulars of life in this savage time, though much of the savagery is kept in the background. She describes the linens, silks and wool worn by the royal ladies. The food is often coarse and plain, even at the royal table. People drink ale and wine instead of water, which may be contaminated. Her characters draw the reader in, though the devout Margaret can come across as a bit wispy. Fraser King’s Malcolm is not the pious and virginal boy of Shakespeare’s Scottish play. He begins as a ruffian who allows himself to be civilized, but not overmuch, by the wife for whom he cares and who does her duty by bearing him sons—lots of them.

Gracefully and tastefully written, Queen Hereafter gives the reader a glimpse into life as it could have been lived during a fairly obscure and turbulent time in world history.

In 1692, after the overthrow of James VII of Scotland and the installation of William and Mary on his throne, a child-sized woman, abused, malnourished and probably half-crazy, tells her story to a priest sent to convert the “barbarians” of the Scottish Highlands. The woman, Corrag, has fled England to escape the fate of her mother, Cora; like so many wild, strange women versed in herblore, Cora was deemed a witch by their intolerant community and hung. Riding “north and west” on a trusty gray mare, Corrag finds refuge and hospitality among the fierce, Jacobite MacDonald clan of Glencoe. Because their clan leader was late in signing a loyalty oath to the new king, some of them are slaughtered on a snowy winter night by the king’s soldiers, who, appallingly, were their guests. Enough of the MacDonald men, women and children flee to keep the clan going but Corrag, named as the one who warned them of the oncoming massacre, is imprisoned and condemned to burn.

The story is based on both fact (the MacDonald massacre) and legend (Corrag’s warning). The book’s chapters alternate, mostly, between Corrag’s narration and the priest’s letters to his beloved and longed for wife. We see Mr. Leslie’s transformation from a man who unthinkingly supports Corrag’s upcoming execution, since she’s a “witch” and there’s nothing more to be done about her, to a man who feels compassion for her and would like to save her if he can.

Corrag’s narrative is riveting. Fletcher describes her reverence for nature with astonishing beauty, whether Corrag is watching a sky full of stars, or gently picking spiders out of her hair, or befriending a stag who finally takes half an apple out of her hand. Her friendship with the mare who brings her from England to Scotland is vividly told, and heartbreaking—the reader will think of that brave mare long after she’s left the scene.

Fletcher’s characterizations of the people of Glencoe are no less moving. There’s the MacIain, the clan’s gruff leader, who Corrag first meets when she tends his headwound. There’s his son Alisdair, whom Corrag chastely and fiercely loves, and Alisdair’s lovely wife, whose baby Corrag helps deliver. One is tempted to describe Corrag as “fey”—tiny, blackhaired and strange, you can see her being played by somebody like Bjork. But she has a mighty heart, and Fletcher has written a novel worthy of her.

The years before the Revolutionary War were a tumultuous and fascinating time, especially in the larger cities and towns of what was to become the United States of America. In Sally Gunning’s latest novel, The Rebellion of Jane Clarke, this ferment is seen through the eyes of Jane Clarke, a young woman from Satucket, a place of routine and petty rivalries that sometimes turn ugly; in the latest kerfluffle, her father, a miller, is suspected of cutting the ears off a rival’s horse. And Mr. Clarke is not only difficult with his rivals, he’s difficult with his own family. His young wife, the latest in a string of wives, is overburdened and neurasthenic. He barely notices his younger children and exiles Jane, his beloved eldest daughter, because she refuses to marry a man he wants her to marry. He sends her to attend a dotty, elderly aunt in Boston, but instead of the experience breaking her will, Jane blossoms.

The strong will that inspires both love and exasperation in her father helps Jane hone her political and moral conscience. Her training as a nurse in a time of poxes, carbuncles and “gangrenous sore throats” has already made her tough. She rejects the knee-jerk hatred the Bostonians have for the occupying British soldiers. She witnesses what will be known as the Boston massacre and during its particpants’ lengthy trial (which lasted more than a day, a shocking rarity back then) tells the truth of what she saw, a singularly brave act. She weathers a betrayal and grows confident enough to decide what sort of man she will, or will not, marry. She just might even go back to Satucket and stand up to her father.

Gunning fills her novel with believable and complex characters, some of whom are historical figures. She gives us John Adams, passionate, principled and even tenderhearted, and his prickly cousin Sam. We see Paul Revere’s propagandistic engraving of the massacre, and of course, the massacre itself, in its confused rage, musket smoke and splashes of red blood on white snow. Gunning is also good with the particulars of 18th-century colonial life, with drafty keeping rooms and parlors, candles made of grease, guests served cider or beer in place of water that’s probably too dirty to drink. The dialogue can be formal without being too flowery. Best of all, she’s created an intriguing and admirable witness to history in Jane Clarke.
 

A clever insert came with my copy of Ellen Horan’s novel. It’s a folded piece of blue notepaper, with a written request for legal representation. A respected dentist, Dr. Burdell, has been gruesomely murdered in his Manhattan office. The suspected murderess is his lodger, the widowed Mrs. Emma Cunningham, the lady who penned the note.

From here this thrilling book becomes not only a murder mystery, but a Wharton-esque examination of the mores and customs of antebellum New York society. The press coverage of the crime is lurid, with Emma all but found guilty in the court of public opinion. Emma may be a good woman, but she’s not a particularly nice one (she comes across as a tougher and coarser Lily Bart). And if she is a gold digger, then a gold digger was what a widow with two daughters and dwindling finances had to be in that time and place—since a lady of her social class could not go to work. Horan is brilliant at showing just how vulnerable such a woman was to male predation.

The other characters are just as memorable. There’s Henry Clinton, the idealistic lawyer who comes to Emma’s defense, and his loving wife, Elisabeth. There’s Sam, Burdell’s African-American coachman, who goes on the run after the murder. And there’s Burdell himself, who is, frankly, a miscreant, his real character masked and excused by his social standing. Horan’s portrait of Manhattan is also remarkable; she reminds us that in 1857 the island was still half wild, the vulgar mansions of the newly rich just blocks away from forests, farmland and a river teeming with fish and oyster beds.

Horan wraps up her story with an ending that one doesn’t see coming, but is perfectly, tragically right. Rich with historical detail, 31 Bond Street is one of the best debut novels in a long while.

Arlene McKanic writes from Jamaica, New York.

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Read a behind-the-book essay about Ellen Horan's inspiration for 31 Bond Street.