A remarkable exploration of storytelling, fame and the Nigerian American experience, acclaimed science fiction writer Nnedi Okorafor’s Death of the Author surprises all the way to its brilliant ending.
A remarkable exploration of storytelling, fame and the Nigerian American experience, acclaimed science fiction writer Nnedi Okorafor’s Death of the Author surprises all the way to its brilliant ending.
A Ballad of Love and Glory rides the waves of war and the bloom of lovers’ passion, intertwining real events of the Mexican-American War with a vividly imagined relationship between a forlorn Irish immigrant soldier and a grieving Mexican curandera, or folk healer.
In her fourth novel, Mexican American author Reyna Grande explores a little-known aspect of the Mexican-American War. After the annexation of Texas in 1845, hostilities between the United States and Mexico approached a boiling point due to a land dispute near the Rio Grande. At the time, foreign-born soldiers, primarily from Ireland, Germany and Italy, made up nearly half of the U.S. Army. After the American invasion of Mexico, many of the soldiers deserted the army in favor of Mexico’s cause as they resisted further land takeover and domination by the U.S.
In Grande’s detailed and well-researched novel, Irish Catholic immigrant John Riley, who is based on a real figure, deserts the U.S. Army in 1846. Enticed by the promise of better treatment, more pay and acres of land, John joins the Mexican Army, leading a growing battalion of deserters under Saint Patrick’s banner. They become known as the San Patricios.
Meanwhile, after Texas Rangers murder her husband, Ximena Salomé uses all the healing skills her grandmother taught her to bring comfort and relief to the many soldiers felled by each brutal battle. Her fate becomes inextricably bound with John’s while saving the life of one of his fellow soldiers, and in time, longing leads them to each other’s arms.
Grande’s novel highlights the abuses that American immigrants suffered at the hands of Yankee soldiers, in addition to the atrocities of war and all the maddening political and military machinations that go along with it. Although A Ballad of Love and Glory lags in pace or falls into cliche at times, it also often excels at making history palpable and real, not dry and unimpassioned but lively and full of the emotions the people of the past surely felt.
A Ballad of Love and Glory lives up to its title as it pays tribute to the heroism of everyday people called upon to defend their honor as well as their lives.
A Ballad of Love and Glory lives up to its title as it pays tribute to the heroism of everyday people called upon to defend their honor as well as their lives.
By now, Karen Joy Fowler’s husband knows what to expect when his wife starts writing a book, like the bestselling The Jane Austen Book Club or the Booker Prize finalist We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. She will lament, “Oh, it’s never been so hard,” and he will remind her: “You did say that last time. And the time before that, you know.”
“Is it possible that every book is harder than the one before?” Fowler wonders, speaking from her home in Santa Cruz, California. “Or do you just not remember? I don’t have an answer to that question.”
As she does in her writing, Fowler laces her conversations with curiosity, humor and reflection. You can practically hear her good-natured wheels turning as she discusses her latest novel, Booth, an immersive, behind-the-scenes account of the years leading up to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination at Ford’s Theatre in 1865, by way of an investigation into the family of assassin John Wilkes Booth. The Booths were a famous theatrical family celebrated for their Shakespearian performances, especially father Junius and brother Edwin, whose 1893 funeral was described as one of “the most remarkable ever held in New York City” by the New York Times.
“As much as I am trying to argue that he is not the most interesting person in this family, I know that the narrative tension in the book is all because of John Wilkes Booth.”
Despite such a wealth of source material, and despite her husband’s reassurances, writing this book was particularly difficult for Fowler. Her despair over gun violence in the United States prompted her to choose this topic, but she didn’t want to focus on the assassin. Instead, she was interested in exploring the culpability and guilt of the Booth parents and siblings. How to achieve this delicate balance, “from the words, to the conception, to the way the book was organized,” was something Fowler “grappled with on nearly every page.”
Now she passes that same conundrum along to her readers. “I would not have written this book if John Wilkes had not killed Abraham Lincoln,” she says. “As much as I am trying to argue that he is not the most interesting person in this family, I know that the narrative tension in the book is all because of John Wilkes Booth.”
Even the book’s title is problematic. “It actually should be Booths—plural,” Fowler says, “but that’s just so hard to say. I knew that at least in America, if you saw a book entitled Booth, you would think this is a book about John Wilkes Booth. Which is exactly what I didn’t want you thinking!”
This is one of the primary reasons why the novel doesn’t depict Lincoln’s shooting in real time. “I didn’t want to imagine what John Wilkes Booth was thinking [in that moment]. First of all, I can’t—my imagination doesn’t stretch that far. But it’s still very painful to see that turning point in our history, to wonder what might have been.”
One passage in the novel, in fact, enumerates the many close calls with death John Wilkes had throughout his life, even before he carried out his tragic deed. “It was something that really struck me when I did the research,” Fowler explains. “[His death] would have been devastating for his family, but so much better for everyone else.”
The Booth clan has long fascinated Fowler, and she has featured various family members in three short stories, including “Standing Room Only,” which is about time travelers who journey to witness Lincoln’s death. A science fiction fan, Fowler was frustrated by the many stories she read in which time travelers seem to go undetected by those they encounter. “I thought, obviously not, it won’t be that way at all,” she says. “They’ll just be like tourists everywhere. I live in a tourist town, and I can spot the tourists. And then I went from that to thinking, well, there will be destination holidays, and one of them, unfortunately, will be the Lincoln assassination.”
Research, she muses, “is probably the closest we will come to time travel,” and from the start of creating Booth, she had mountains to sift through. A godsend came in the form of biographer Terry Alford, author of Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth, which Fowler calls “magnificent,” and the forthcoming In the Houses of Their Dead: The Lincolns, the Booths, and the Spirits. Alford’s biography features unique details, so Fowler reached out to ask a few questions. “He’s been researching this family for 30 years, and he sent me piles of research that would’ve taken me months and months to find on my own, if ever,” she says. “It was just mind-bogglingly generous.”
John Wilkes Booth was born in 1838, the ninth of 10 children. In 1822, his parents, Junius and Mary Ann Booth, emigrated from England to Bel Air, Maryland, where they bought 150 acres and moved a small log cabin onto the property. Junius, an alcoholic who was at times mentally unstable, was often away on tour, leaving his wife—with the help of enslaved men and women—to tend to farming and maintaining the home. The family faced poverty, hunger and disease; four of the 10 children died. Fowler portrays these ordeals with startling immediacy, especially from the perspective of young Rosalie, who watches “the household collapse into madness” and communes with the ghosts of her dead siblings.
Karen Joy Fowler, author of Booth
“I’ve had dreams about the place,” Fowler says. “In my dreams, the barn is there, and the slave cabins are there. It’s clearly a metaphor for doing research. The property [in my dreams] was beautiful, but I had a sense of menace, that something was very wrong and that it was a dangerous place to be.”
Junius eventually had a larger home, named Tudor Hall, built on the property. It’s now a museum on a fairly small lot surrounded by other houses. “There’s a lovely group of people who maintain it,” Fowler says. “It seems the ghosts have been purged.”
The name Tudor Hall is something of a touchstone, since Fowler’s love of historical fiction was inspired by Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, about Thomas Cromwell and the court of King Henry VIII. “I blame Hilary Mantel for the fact that [Booth] is in present tense,” Fowler says. “Wolf Hall was so powerful that somehow Hilary Mantel has persuaded me that this is how you write a historical novel.”
Indeed, readers will feel as though they’re watching events transpire in real time, with different sections told from the perspectives of not only Rosalie but also brother Edwin and sister Asia. Information about Edwin was plentiful due to his acting career, but Asia also left behind a valuable resource. In 1874, she wrote a secret memoir about her infamous brother, though it wasn’t published until 1938, long after her death. Fowler calls Asia “an incredible woman, but hard to like. . . . I would probably have wanted to make her more likable if her own words hadn’t condemned her in certain ways.” (For instance, although Asia disapproved of John Wilkes’ crime, she blamed Lincoln for going to the theater that night.) Photographs of Asia, however, continue to bewilder the author. “Nobody talks about Asia Booth without mentioning what a beauty she was,” Fowler says, “and you look at the pictures, and you just think, what are they talking about?”
Rosalie, in contrast, remains a cipher, with few details available. She never married and had some sort of “infirmity,” widely commented on but never specified. “Every time Rosalie’s name comes up, you hear, ‘What an invalid she is, poor Rose,’” Fowler laments. But these gaps in Rosalie’s history proved useful. “There was a little more freedom to imagine who she might be. She’s pretty much made up, although the things that happened to her are not. I cannot tell you how delighted I was to discover that she had a romance with a lion tamer!”
“I blame Hilary Mantel for the fact that [Booth] is in present tense.”
Although Fowler says she is always on the hunt for such “small details that I hope will bring the world more to life,” she also keeps a bigger picture in mind. When she first began to write Booth, she was primarily focused on issues of gun violence, but the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump caused a shift in the story’s significance. “I wasn’t really thinking about the Civil War, the ongoing legacy of white supremacy and the various ways in which that war has just never ended in this country,” Fowler says. “And yet, as I wrote, those things seemed more evident to me than the fact that John Wilkes Booth had a gun.”
By the time of the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Fowler had completed her manuscript. “To watch the Confederate flag being carried into the Capitol was just terrifying and heart-wrenching, having just immersed myself in what that flag meant,” she says. “I couldn’t turn the television off. I sat and watched the footage in real time, and just couldn’t believe it.”
There’s a similar sense of horror in Fowler’s visceral descriptions of how various Booth family members react to the news of John Wilkes’ horrific act: “Edwin’s first thought is not a thought, more like a blow to the head, a sense of falling, the crashing of the sea in his ears. His second thought is that he believes it. He wishes he didn’t.”
There were several post-assassination details that Fowler had to omit from the novel—such as the fact that Ford’s Theatre collapsed during Edwin’s funeral, killing 22 people. “Maybe there needs to be a second book,” she says. “Something short—a slender, poetic novel dealing with their later lives.”
After all, Fowler says, “History is full of fabulous stories.” Fabulous, provocative, challenging and necessary—such is the story of Booth.
Photos of Karen Joy Fowler by Nathan Quintanilla
In her eighth novel, Karen Joy Fowler offers a wholly original perspective on American history through the story of John Wilkes Booth’s family.
Reeling from loss, a woman takes the trip of a lifetime in One Italian Summer by bestselling author Rebecca Serle (In Five Years).
Thirty-year-old Katy Silver used to have it all: an adoring husband, a comfortable home near her family in Los Angeles and a rock-solid friendship with her mother, Carol. But her mother’s death turned everything upside down. Suddenly nothing makes sense or feels right for Katy, not even her marriage. After the funeral, she wonders, “If your mother is the love of your life, what does that make your husband?” Katy doesn’t have an answer, but she knows she needs change.
So Katy leaves all her commitments behind and travels to Positano, Italy—a place her mother spent the summer 30 years ago, and where Carol and Katy had dreamed of visiting together. There, Katy stays at the gorgeous (and very real) Hotel Poseidon, and she immerses herself in the Amalfi Coast.
That may sound capricious, but to Katy these choices are necessary, even if she can’t quite explain why. What Katy doesn’t count on is running into a woman who looks and sounds exactly like Carol would have at 30—and even shares both her mother’s name and profession. Without understanding how it’s possible, Katy gets to know a different side of her mother as a young woman, and One Italian Summer becomes a sumptuous and sensuous feast of a book.
On a deeper level, Serle’s novel is a savvy meditation on the necessity of change and how roles shape what we see of each other. Carol was always stylish, beautiful and strong-willed, but marriage and motherhood made her cautious. The woman whom Katy befriends on the Amalfi Coast is free and adventurous, and this spirit rubs off on Katy.
One Italian Summer isn’t just about wild oats and adventure either—it’s about knowing yourself. Carol made some mistakes along the way: She was almost an idol to her daughter instead of a teacher, and now Katy doesn’t know how to function without her. In Italy, Katy is sunnier and more willing to experiment, even getting to know an older real estate investor who could be a potential love interest, while her marriage hangs in limbo.
For readers open to moral complexities, One Italian Summer is a thoughtful, fun escape, blending contemplations of love and loss with a touch of adventure. It’s also a beautiful tribute to the pleasures of Italian culture.
For readers open to moral complexities, One Italian Summer is a thoughtful, fun escape, blending contemplations of love and loss with a touch of adventure.
Anyone familiar with a collection of short stories entitled Fishing the Sloe-Black River knows the strength of Colum McCann’s writing. Like Thomas Wolfe, McCann writes lyrical prose that is both refined and urbane. Given the structure of the short story, McCann’s talents distill themselves into wonderfully descriptive passages that segue gracefully into and out of the action of his well-captured characters. McCann is a master at making his language float about whatever subject or object he has chosen to describe. In his stories his vocabulary slips easily from the archaic to the profane, proving him to be much more than a literary stuffed shirt. McCann’s strong knowledge of words is only out done by his even stronger sense of the way words sound. Whether expressing dialect or trying to evoke the emotion of a certain exchange, one cannot help but admire the way McCann’s dialogues draw out sounds. The stories of Fishing the Sloe-Back River are a wonderful testament to a writer with an incredible ear for language.
This Side of Brightness follows in this tradition of powerful writing. This new novel captures all of the admirable qualities of his short stories and expands them. The long form of the novel suits McCann well in this generational story about one man’s struggle to raise a family in New York City. The novel begins just after the turn of the century when we meet Nathan Walker, a transplanted Georgian working as a digger in the New York City subway system. Walker is embroiled in the burgeoning Irish community of the Lower East Side as he works in the dangerous and somewhat heroic position as a lead digger in the tunnels being excavated underneath the East River. After a disaster in the tunnels, Walker’s ties to an Irish family are deepened by his eventual courtship and marriage to a deceased friend/coworker’s daughter. From this marriage springs the great tale of the Walker clan as it spans three generations living in Harlem under the stigma of a being a family born from a racially mixed couple.
As a novelist McCann could not be better fit for such a remarkable tale about such a memorable family. His strengths at dialogue are well served not only in his rendering of life in the growing Irish community of New York but also through the thoughts and conversations of a mysterious homeless narrator whose place in the novel takes on an almost prodigal nature. McCann addresses the big issues of race, love, and time with a literary majesty that completely befits the nature and scope of this family epic. His tone as novelist is a wonderful reminder of the self-assured poetics of his shorter fiction, yet now even more of a literary treat as he traces out his tale through the vicissitudes of time. This Side of Brightness is an epic not only in its embrace of one family’s generational struggles, but in its accomplishments as powerfully written art.
Anyone familiar with a collection of short stories entitled Fishing the Sloe-Black River knows the strength of Colum McCann's writing. Like Thomas Wolfe, McCann writes lyrical prose that is both refined and urbane. Given the structure of the short story, McCann's talents distill themselves into…
Jane Hamilton writes lovely, thoughtful books about trying to take life as you find it, dealing realistically with harsh, immutable truths and surviving in spite of them. In her first novel, The Book of Ruth, the main character learns to transcend the dismal future that her abusive family history portended. In A Map of the World, a moment of neglect results in the death of a child, and the woman who is responsible must learn to live with herself.
In The Short History of a Prince, Walter McCloud is faced with a double whammy: the death of his brother and his own homosexuality. Walter is 15 years old on the day this novel starts, the day his older brother’s illness is discovered. Daniel will die of it about a year later. And Walter is agonizingly aware that Daniel is the heterosexual son, the one who’d have produced grandchildren for his parents, the one who’d have stayed close to home. Home where to find it, how to get there is and remains the big issue in Walter’s life. Home is where Walter imagines he might achieve a sense of belonging whether it is in his parents’ comfortable Midwestern suburb or at his mother’s family’s country estate at Lake Margaret, passed down through several generations. But even at 15, Walter knows he is never going to fit in, nor is he likely to realize his dream of becoming a ballet dancer. Passion and drive, intention and ambition, hope and hard work are not enough. There are some truths like death, lack of innate talent, and homosexuality that resist all attempts at manipulation, and Walter confronts several of them.
Neglected by his grieving parents, brokenhearted over his first love affair, humiliated, guilt-ridden, Walter leaves for New York, where he goes to college, finds a “career” working in a dollhouse store, and attempts to satisfy himself with a series of short-lived sexual relationships.
But 23 years later, Walter, now in his mid-thirties, is forced to concede it isn’t working for him. “A friend had dragged him to the Y, to a seminar on taking charge and living in the moment, but the theories and techniques were suspect, Walter thought. The moment, after all, was a flash in the pan. Life, he knew, had meaning and was fully possessed only as it was remembered and reshaped.” Almost reluctantly, Walter begins to reflect and make changes.
He gets his teaching certification, and accepts a job back in the Midwest, where, he knows, his sexual orientation will have to stay hidden. He attempts to forge a relationship with his much younger sister, born after Daniel’s death, who, with her tract house, car-salesman husband, and generic toddler, seems to him frighteningly conventional. He learns to teach literature to mostly uninspired adolescents, and he makes awkward stabs at finding a significant other.
Through all of this, he is bolstered by only a few reassuring constants: his friend Susan, with whom he’d studied ballet; his parents; and the house at Lake Margaret, which is in danger of being sold off. In fact, it is in dealing with that looming catastrophe that Walter starts to pull himself together, to begin making decisions about what has value and what does not.
Not a lot happens in this novel, and often what does happen seems to happen offstage. But somehow Walter’s dilemma, his struggle to find a place for himself in the world, is rendered so vividly that by the last sentence, in which is expressed the smallest, most fragile tendril of hope, an entire world of possibility has been envisioned, and the hope belongs not only to Walter but also, passionately, to the reader.
Reviewed by Nan Goldberg.
Jane Hamilton writes lovely, thoughtful books about trying to take life as you find it, dealing realistically with harsh, immutable truths and surviving in spite of them. In her first novel, The Book of Ruth, the main character learns to transcend the dismal future that…
Set in England during World War II, Jennifer Ryan’s The Kitchen Front follows four very different women as they compete in a cooking contest sponsored by “The Kitchen Front,” a BBC radio program. The winner will earn a slot as the first ever female co-host of the show. The contestants include war widow Audrey; her sister, Gwendoline, the wife of a wealthy older man; kitchen maid Nell; and Zelda, a skilled chef. Ryan’s excellent use of historical detail and gifts for character and plot development will draw readers in, and after they finish this heartwarming novel, they’ll be able to discuss engaging topics such as female agency and women’s roles during wartime.
Focusing on life at the fictional Beijing Duck House in Rockville, Maryland, Lillian Li’s Number One Chinese Restaurant is a sly, compassionate portrayal of the culinary world. Owner Jimmy Han, whose father made the Duck House a success, is making plans to move on to a flashier restaurant. The novel’s intricate plot involves members of Jimmy’s extended family, as well as a wide range of Duck House staff. Love affairs, back-of-house drama and a restaurant fire all figure into the entertaining proceedings, and questions concerning community, identity and class will inspire great reading group dialogue.
Donia Bijan’s The Last Days of Café Leila tells the story of Noor, who goes home to Iran after spending many years in America. In Tehran, her father, Zod, runs the family business, Café Leila. The return compels Noor to come to terms with her troubled marriage and reassess her life. At the heart of the novel lies Café Leila and the comfort it provides through food and camaraderie. Bijan’s nuanced depiction of modern-day Iran offers abundant subjects for book club discussion, including family ties, immigration and Iranian history.
In The Secret French Recipes of Sophie Valroux by Samantha Vérant, talented chef Sophie Valroux works hard in hopes of one day heading up a world-class restaurant. But when her culinary career falls apart and her beloved grandmother in France has a stroke, Sophie is forced to reevaluate her life, her values and her love for cooking. Brimming with delicious recipes, Vérant’s novel is a compelling tribute to food and family. Themes of female independence, foodie culture and the nature of the restaurant business make this a sensational selection for book groups.
Reading groups will savor these delectable food-themed novels.
There’s a saying you might have heard: Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. Fortunately, two authors—one veteran, the other new to fiction—have ignored this warning and written novels about classical music, and we readers are luckier for it.
The Great Passion by James Runcie, author of the acclaimed Grantchester Mysteries, is a beautiful coming-of-age novel set in 18th-century Germany. In 1726, 13-year-old Stefan Silbermann is mourning the death of his mother. His father makes arrangements for Stefan to attend a music school in Leipzig, an especially useful education for a boy whose family’s business is building and repairing church organs. At school, lonely Stefan is tormented by the other students, finding solace only in singing and in the presence of the demanding but empathic choir director, Johann Sebastian Bach.
Stefan’s heavenly singing voice and sensitivity endear him to Bach, who enlists Stefan as a soloist in many of his cantatas. But Stefan remains deeply unhappy, and when he runs away from the dorms, Bach invites him to live at the Bach family home. There, Stefan basks in the warmth of domestic life, assisting Bach’s children with chores and working as a copyist for the great composer.
When another tragedy strikes, this time in Bach’s family, Stefan is a firsthand witness to the way grief can be a catalyst for musical genius, watching and then performing in the work that will become one of Bach’s most celebrated compositions, “The Passion According to St Matthew.” Stefan’s exposure to Bach’s creativity, family and devotion to God is the restorative balm that the young man needs in order to move forward with his life.
On the other end of the spectrum is Brendan Slocumb’s debut novel, The Violin Conspiracy, a fast-paced thriller about a young Black violinist and his search for a priceless instrument, set against the backdrop of systemic racism within the world of contemporary classical music.
Ray McMillian has a dream of becoming a concert violinist, and nothing will stand in his way: not his unsupportive mother and uncles, his disinterested teachers or the industry’s inherent racial bias. When Ray’s beloved grandmother gifts him with her grandfather’s violin, it brings him a step closer to his dream, and when the instrument is revealed to be an extremely rare and valuable Stradivarius, his star really begins to rise.
Ray is on the verge of attending the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow when the prized instrument is stolen and held for ransom. Suspects range from members of Ray’s own family, eager to claim the insurance money, to his musical rivals in Europe. Even the descendants of the family who once enslaved Ray’s great-great-grandfather are claiming the instrument belongs to them. As Ray travels the globe, not sure whom he can trust, music remains the only constant in his life, supporting him no matter the situation.
Despite their differences in literary styles, locations and eras, these novels are connected by more than just their musical themes. Resilience is a powerful presence in both stories, whether in the face of personal pain and grief or against the constant pressures of embedded prejudices. Music is the conduit through which two young men learn to overcome loss and fight against insurmountable odds, offering not only a reason to live but also a way to thrive.
Classical music is a powerful force in new novels from James Runcie and Brendan Slocumb, inspiring their heroes and illuminating the way forward.
Set against the backdrop of the Irish War of Independence, Jennifer Deibel’s second novel, The Lady of Galway Manor, springs from the fascinating legend of the origin of the Claddagh ring, a traditional Irish band that features two hands clasping a crowned heart, symbolizing friendship, loyalty and love.
In 1920, Lady Annabeth De Lacy is the British daughter of the new landlord of Galway Parish in Ireland, and she is excited to begin her jewelry apprenticeship with the descendants of the creators of the Claddagh ring. Although jeweler is an unusual pursuit for an aristocrat, Anna takes on this new opportunity with great enthusiasm.
However, Anna’s trainer, Stephen, resents the British and is irritated to have her around. He’s also lost his faith in the ideals and promises of the Claddagh ring’s imagery, especially the love it symbolizes. But as Anna and Stephen work together, their bond grows, and they begin to recognize the misconceptions in their beliefs about each other.
Deibel beautifully re-creates Galway’s sights and sounds, from the allure of the Claddagh area in Galway to the magnificence of its famed Spanish Arch and the locals’ appreciation of traditional Irish music. She also couches the bitter enmity between the Irish and British in the personal struggles of her characters. Stephen is unwilling to let go of his pain caused by past events, including atrocities committed by the British. And Anna is conflicted, torn between following her heart, which would risk alienation from her family, and accepting an advantageous marriage proposal devoid of love.
In their divided world, the characters of The Lady of Galway Manor become open to each other’s cultures, soon making way for acceptance and love.
Count the Nights by Stars
Much like privileged Anna, Priscilla Nichols, the daughter of a wealthy and influential railway investor in Michelle Shocklee’s fifth novel, Count the Nights by Stars, enjoys a cushioned life, shielded from the plight of people who are disadvantaged. In 1897, Priscilla travels with her mother to Nashville to attend the Tennessee Centennial Exposition. They stay at the Maxwell House Hotel, where she meets an Italian immigrant named Luca Moretti. Priscilla appreciates Luca’s poise and confidence but is aware of the strict societal rules that dictate who her “appropriate” partner would be. Meanwhile, she must decide whether to accept a proposal from another man who comes from a wealthy background similar to her own.
After meeting Luca, Priscilla is introduced to a new world where she learns about the challenges facing destitute young women and children who are lured into a prostitution ring run by powerful forces. She quickly becomes an inspiring lead character who fights for the rights of the underserved and advocates for raising the legal age of consent.
The impact of Priscilla’s actions is heightened by a parallel story. In 1961, Audrey Whitfield, the daughter of the Maxwell House Hotel manager, finds Priscilla’s scrapbook. Audrey, who had previously dismissed the eccentric and now elderly Priscilla living in the hotel, is captivated by the woman’s earlier life. She draws encouragement from Priscilla’s lifelong work of activism for women’s rights.
Along with the historical intrigue of both storylines, Count the Nights by Stars also includes appealing mysteries and delightful romance. In 1897, Priscilla and Luca face danger as they try to solve the disappearance of Luca’s sister. In 1961, Audrey welcomes a striking young man into her life, and together they embark on an investigation into Priscilla’s stories and photographs—but it’s clear that someone else is set on having the scrapbook destroyed.
In Shocklee’s novel, the important lifelong work of a daring woman inspires another to follow her dreams. It’s sure to stir such feelings in the reader as well.
Across the ages, it’s always inspiring when women speak up for what is right. In these Christian novels, two affluent women endeavor to understand and rectify disparities within their societies.
Nebula Awards 32, edited by Jack Dann, contain stories that are almost as good as Tolkien’s tales. No surprise since this volume honors the short stories, novellas, and novelettes that were voted by the professional members of the Science Fiction Writers Association as the best science fiction and fantasy of the year for 1996.
These millennium-ending stories feature Leonardo Da Vinci’s flying machine, a vampire story in a nursing home, an alternative American Civil War, time travel, and Mayan archaeology. My only disagreement is that I would have voted for Ursula LeGuin or Allen Steele in the novella category over Jack Dann, but that’s a small quibble about an outstanding array of the best modern science fiction has to offer.
Reviewed by Larry Woods.
Nebula Awards 32, edited by Jack Dann, contain stories that are almost as good as Tolkien's tales. No surprise since this volume honors the short stories, novellas, and novelettes that were voted by the professional members of the Science Fiction Writers Association as the best…
Imagine that countless statues all over New York City share the likeness of one young, beautiful woman. In The Magnolia Palace by Fiona Davis, that woman is Lillian Carter, who, after her mother’s death of the Spanish flu, ends up working at the Frick mansion, which is now home to the revered art museum of the same name. The novel moves between Lillian’s story and that of Veronica, a model who, nearly 50 years later, finds herself following a mystery via secret messages in the mansion.
In each of your novels, architectural history comes so clearly alive! Tell us a bit about your research process. Did this new book challenge or evolve your process in any way? Did it lead you anywhere especially surprising? When it comes to research, the first thing I do is get a good look inside the building and then interview experts on the subject and the era. For The Magnolia Palace, I was able to get a wonderful behind-the-scenes tour of the Frick Collection in January 2020, from the bowling alley in the basement up to the top floor where the servants slept.
Usually I’d make several return trips as I write the first draft, but the city went into lockdown, making that impossible. So I was thrilled to discover that the Frick’s website includes a wonderful floor plan with a 360-degree view of each of the public rooms. If I needed to check out what artwork was above the fireplace in the library, for example, I could find the answer with just a couple of clicks. Thank goodness, as otherwise I would’ve been really stuck.
When you pass by or enter an incredible old building, what’s the first thing you look for? I’m always curious as to what has changed over time. How does the building compare to the one that was originally constructed? How has the neighborhood changed over the decades? It’s those contrasts that help me decide what time periods might work best for a novel. As I walk by, I can’t help wondering about all of the people who walked its halls, all of the ghosts that remain.
Obviously a sense of place plays a huge role in your work, from libraries and hotels to mansions and museums—and of course, the whole city of New York. What details do you seek out to bring these spaces into such vivid relief? I’m always looking for the strange details, the ones that are fun to describe because they will surprise the reader. It might be the grimace of a gargoyle over a doorway or the catwalks that span the enormous windows of Grand Central that end up drawing my attention and making it into the novel. We New Yorkers often think we know these places so well, but it’s amazing how little we “see” as we wander the streets.
How did you decide on the title The Magnolia Palace? Titles are tough for my novels, as I’m looking for a title that’s not too on the nose but which describes the location nicely and has resonance within the plot. That’s asking a lot. Choosing titles for each book is a team effort involving my editor and my agent, and they’re often the ones who have the best ideas.
For this novel, I realized the gorgeous magnolia trees outside the Frick would be a nice touchstone, one that I could bring into the story with the search for the (fictional) Magnolia diamond. And Dutton’s art department came up with that gorgeous cover with the magnolia blossoms—it was perfect.
“I can’t help wondering about all of the people who walked its halls, all of the ghosts that remain.”
The art in this novel is impressively catalogued. How did you choose which pieces to highlight in the novel? What do you think they add to the story? The scavenger hunt scenes, with clues that lead to several pieces in the Frick art collection, were really fun to write. I tended to choose works of art that have interesting backstories, ones that further illuminate what’s going on with the characters on the page. For example, the woman who sat for the George Romney painting that’s included in the scavenger hunt led a scandalous life as a mistress and a muse. When Veronica comes upon it and learns the history, it deepens how she feels about being made into an object of art as well.
I love the dimensions of these women—Lillian and Veronica, as well as Helen Frick, daughter of Henry—and wonder how you built the complexities of each of them. Where did you find inspiration for these women? And more broadly, how do you choose what types of women will occupy and make their marks on the buildings at the heart of your novels? As I research, I’m looking for women from history who accomplished great things but have since been forgotten. The inspiration for Lillian came from the carving of a nude woman over the entrance to the Frick. The model who posed for it was Audrey Munson, who achieved great fame in the 1910s but met a tragic end. She was gorgeous and successful and then suddenly an outcast, and I knew I wanted to include her story in the narrative.
The more I read about Helen Frick, the more I adored her. She was acerbic and smart, yet she was mocked in the press for her eccentricities. As a writer, I wondered what would’ve happened if Audrey and Helen crossed paths in real life, and the plot developed from there.
Then, once I decided to set part of the book in the 1960s, I thought it would be fun to have a character who is also a model, as a way to compare and contrast how women’s roles have been valued (or not) over time, and Veronica bubbled up out of that.
“We New Yorkers often think we know these places so well, but it’s amazing how little we ‘see’ as we wander the streets.”
What is your process for writing braided narratives? How do you know when they’re working well together? Once I know who the main characters are, I brainstorm scenes and create each timeline separately. Braiding them together is the toughest part, as each novel contains an element of mystery, and I have to make sure I don’t give away a clue too soon in one timeline and thereby destroy the tension in the other.
It’s always a mess at first, but once I have it down on paper, I’m eager to start writing the first draft. I write one timeline first all the way through (usually the older one), then the other, and then do a read-through to see if they work together. There’s still a lot of tweaking to be done, but by then the structure is usually pretty solid.
What is your ultimate day in New York City? Which museums or special places are especially dear to you? I’ve called the city home for 35 years now, and it’s full of wonderful places. The Frick Collection is dear to me, to be sure. I also love grabbing a pastry at Café Sabarsky at the Neue Galerie, or heading to the Campbell Bar at Grand Central for a cocktail. Hitting all three in one day would be a dream.
What are you reading now? I’m excited to start Ann Patchett’s latest book of essays, These Precious Days. She’s such a champion of authors and booksellers and is masterful working in both fiction and nonfiction. She’s probably as close to an author superhero as there is.
Photo of Fiona Davis by Deborah Feingold
Bestselling author Fiona Davis transforms New York City’s architectural history into winning fiction, and her latest, The Magnolia Palace, builds upon the secrets of the Frick Collection in a delightful blend of emotion and adventure.
Edith Reardon, looking back at her childhood through the lens of years, says she once thought that everyone in her family had to be good in order for any one of them to be good. She knows better now.
"If you get mixed up in something just happening, you can get submerged or you can get raised up. With or without your being good. Sometimes your skill can help, but sometimes what’s happening is just too big for your little dog-paddle efforts."
It’s 1979 in Charlottesville, Virginia. A rip-tide is about to surge through Edith’s family. Mike and Joss Reardon, parents of Edith and her sister Nora, are at the center of a volatile group of intelligent and talented friends and family members. Mike is a Jesuit-educated lawyer in his forties, a former congressional staffer, whose knowledge of history, religion, politics, and art is formidable, but to his family, often stultifying. Joss, an experimental film maker, is a punster par excellence and a dedicated mother with the temper of a virago.
The narration of The Half-life of Happiness by the author of the excellent Spartina, winner of the 1989 National Book Award, alternates between the point of view of Mike and that of daughter Edith. From both we hear of Mike’s realization that his wife has fallen in love with a woman — the fiancee of one of the family’s group of friends. Mike, furious about Joss’s affair, decides to funnel his rage into a run for Congress.
The pacing of The Half-life of Happiness is slow up to the point of Mike’s realization and decision, but the contrasts between the public image of Mike’s family and the private truth, as well as between Mike’s viewpoint (at the time) versus Edith’s (looking back), are among the triumphs of this book. The reader is both inside and outside the story simultaneously.
Mike himself — with his particular mesh of loyalties and flirtations, great ideas and flaws — is another of the strengths of this book, as is Edith’s unsparing but loving assessment of her parents, their friends, and their times. Notable also is author Casey’s sense of comic timing, best seen in Mike’s hapless encounters with the daughter of his political opponent. The writing throughout is sharp, witty, fine.
It’s Edith who makes sense of it all, understanding as she does, ". . . that the last scene of certain happiness becomes the first scene of uncertainty." And brief is the interval between "the alarms and sadnesses of childhood" and "the first squeeze of perspective toward your vanishing point."
Edith Reardon, looking back at her childhood through the lens of years, says she once thought that everyone in her family had to be good in order for any one of them to be good. She knows better now.
Fruit trees and family trees intertwine in The Family Orchard, Nomi Eve’s semi-autobiographical novel that traces a fictional Israeli family from the early 19th century to the present. The title refers to the family business: growing citrus.
The Family Orchard treats the reader to characters like Avra, a lovely compulsive thief who doesn’t keep her booty, but artistically relocates stolen objects into humorous contexts. We also meet Miriam, an activist who trains in grenade throwing well into her second pregnancy. Spanning almost the entire 19th and 20th centuries in Israel, The Family Orchardtouches significantly on Jewish history in other parts of the word as well. Readers see the Holocaust, not close up as in much recent fiction, but from a great distance. Instead of seeing the victims of genocide, we read about the Haganah, the Israeli underground movement that helped European Jews flee Europe by immigrating illegally to Israel. We read about surviving cousins finally located after a long search and brought to Israel. The greatness of The Family Orchard lies not in its politics, however, but in its exploration of family psychology. How can one couple maintain a lifelong passion while, in the next generation, a secret tragedy makes irreparable tears in the fabric of happiness?
Eve leads you through this family saga in much the same way children are led through the family album, one page, one couple at a time, until the photos become familiar those of the current generation. The early chapters, about distant ancestors, capture the way families mythologize their roots, blending known fact with powerful faith. By inserting herself directly into the last pages of her novel, without even changing her name, Eve inventively challenges conventions concerning the separation of fiction and autobiography. Families rarely observe those conventions in the way they pass on ancestral stories from one generation to the next, and Eve gives us a novel based on that flagrant blending of truth and poetry.
Lynn Hamilton writes from Tybee Island, Georgia.
Fruit trees and family trees intertwine in The Family Orchard, Nomi Eve's semi-autobiographical novel that traces a fictional Israeli family from the early 19th century to the present. The title refers to the family business: growing citrus.
Whoever said that nonsense about girls being full of sugar and spice and everything nice couldn’t have imagined Marie Antoine and Sadie Arnett, the binary star at the center of Heather O’Neill’s When We Lost Our Heads. These perversely fascinating characters are filled with guile and bile and many things vile, and even though it’s virtually a certainty that they are star-crossed, it’s impossible to tear one’s gaze away.
Marie is the beautiful daughter of a Victorian-era sugar baron; her childhood friend, Sadie, was born the odd one out into a political family of social climbers. If anything, Sadie’s ambition is to be, in Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s words, “a social climber / climbing downwards.” The two girls form a peculiarly strong bond in the opening of the book, just before the act that will separate them for years: They accidentally murder one of Marie’s household maids.
Rich sugar barons’ daughters don’t go to jail, not in Montreal, not back then, so the equally culpable Sadie gets pegged for the crime and is sent off to England to a school for “difficult” girls. Over the next few years, the temporarily separated pair evolve into the bewitching sociopaths who will ignite the fuse for the book’s latter-half powder keg.
Bound inextricably by murder and money, the Antoine and Arnett families navigate an unsteady truce that ultimately leads Sadie’s brother, Philip, to become a suitor for Marie’s hand. Circumstances change rapidly, though, and it dawns on Marie that—for her, at least—marriage would be tantamount to slavery. “Freedom and power,” she realizes, “were one and the same and were interchangeable.” The interfamily schism seems irreparable, and scandal ensues. Rather than retreating from the gossip, Marie leans into it, while on the other side of town, the recently returned Sadie stokes the flames with an incendiary novel whose protagonists are loosely (and transparently) based on herself and Marie.
All this personal drama plays out against the background of women’s suffrage, workers’ rights and the economic inequality that characterized the Gilded Age. It comes as no surprise that society and the sociopaths are on a collision course, but O’Neill is sufficiently deft to keep the reader in suspense as to where and how that inevitable impact will occur.
With explicit echoes of Marquis de Sade and the French Revolution, this is not a book for the faint of heart or Victorian sensibility, but it does encompass a fair amount of sugar . . . and spice.
Heather O’Neill’s perversely fascinating characters are filled with guile and bile and many things vile, and it’s impossible to tear one’s gaze away.
Holiday preparations flood our hearts with the warmth of Christmases past—or the echoes of family dinners best forgotten. Wherever your memories lie, two debut works of Christmas fiction are sure to lighten your spirits.
Journalist Megan Angelo has written extensively about pop culture, motherhood, womanhood, TV and film for the New York Times, Glamour, Elle and more. Her debut novel, Followers, is a perfect intersection of her passions that delivers a curious tale of three influencers and their followers, from 2015 to 2051.
Sean Adams has dialed down the dystopian quotient from his first satirical novel, The Heap, but that element is still very much present in The Thing in the Snow.
In a novel never published in her lifetime, Zora Neale Hurston presented a new vision of the biblical King Herod. Scholar Deborah G. Plant reveals how the masterwork was saved after Hurston’s death, and what we can learn from these precious pages.
“Family vacation” takes on a new meaning for grown children without kids of their own—like the couple trying their best to keep both sets of in-laws happy in Weike Wang’s Rental House.
