Are you a sucker for a story that begins with “once upon a time”? This fall, two accomplished short-story writers are lending a kind of dark beauty to the season with their enthralling collections of modernized fairy tales.

Tuscon-based writer Kate Bernheimer has been called one of the fairy tale’s “living masters” —in addition to editing the World Fantasy Award-winning My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, she also founded and edits the literary journal Fairy Tale Review. Her second collection, How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales, is a remarkable compilation of stories: a girl’s relationship with her shadow, a librarian’s secret home, a solitary boy in a cardboard house.

The writing is deliberately sparse, intended, Bernheimer said, to leave “nonrepresentational space, meant to allow lucid encounters”—as fairy tales often do. The collection discusses various emotional tropes historically found in these iconic stories, like love, fear and hesitation. In “Babes in the Woods,” Bernheimer examines the tension between step-parents and step-children and explores physical and psychological abuse, using suspenseful language. A father remarries; his new wife dislikes his children, and she takes extreme measures to ensure their disappearances. Many of the stories in How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales intersect with each other, pulling readers through the pages as they piece together the puzzle Bernheimer created.

Taking a slightly different tack, New York Times best-selling author Jean Thompson uses an easily digestible narrative style to twist classic fairy tales into more recognizable shapes in her new collection, The Witch: And Other Tales Re-Told. Hansel and Gretel are put in a foster home. Cinderella leaves her shoe behind after a drunken one-night stand. Red Riding Hood’s iPod is stolen at a mall food court.

While prototypical fairy tales often couch difficult situations in mythology or magic Thompson seeks to strip that layer away, exposing characters’ true struggles. In the story “Your Secret’s Safe With Me,” Thompson explores an unusual relationship between a young woman and her new husband. As their marriage progresses, the woman discovers a long trail of lies and deceits, and what emerges is a realization to which many readers can relate: the problem of not knowing someone as well as you thought. 

Though the two books approach the modernization of fairy tales differently, readers of both will arrive at the same conclusion: The crises faced by a character in a classic fable are not always meant to be left behind in childhood. Rather, they can, and maybe should, be carried along through life, to give reassurance during troubled times, or at least lend poetry to where there would otherwise be none.

Haley Herfurth is a full-time writer and editor living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Religion is a motivating force in the lives of millions of people, for good or for ill. In these three books, characters’ religious beliefs spur the action, influence major life decisions—or leave them with at least a shred of dignity under dire circumstances.

FBI-trained forensic artist Carrie Stuart Parks’ suspenseful novel, A Cry from the Dust, is inspired by a dark moment in history: the 1857 Mountain Meadows massacre, where a posse of renegade Mormons slaughtered a group of pioneers and tried to blame it on the Indians.

Gwen Marcey has no idea what she’s in for when she agrees to sculpt the death masks of three victims of the massacre. The forensic artist has taken the job at the Mountain Meadows Interpretive Center to pave the way for a return to a normal life after beating cancer. Mother of a stroppy teenager, ex-wife of a narcissistic best-selling author, owner of a pony-sized Great Pyrenees, Gwen is also intelligent, talented and amazingly perceptive. She will need all of her gifts to survive the mess she will soon find herself in: A remnant of a secret Mormon sect holds a grudge over the long-ago incident, and they want something from Gwen badly enough to kill.

Fortunately, our heroine is lucky even in her misfortune. As her Spock-like friend Beth says, “Everything happens for a reason.” Case in point: The ravages brought by Gwen’s cancer treatments—double mastectomy and hair loss—help her disguise herself during one of many close calls.

Besides having a resourceful and likable heroine, the book also features that rarest of characters: a villain you don’t see coming, but whom you hate with relish. Moreover, you think said villain’s crazy plans for world domination just might work. Let’s just say it’s amazing what some people think they can do with Semtex.

A Cry from the Dust will keep you hoping, praying and guessing till the end.

HOPE AND CHANGE
Philip Gulley’s latest novel, A Place Called Hope, begins propitiously. You’re about six pages in when you realize there are about a half dozen characters you want to smack. This might even include the lovable protagonist, Quaker minister Sam Gardner. That’s because everyone in his small town is pleased to walk all over him, from his wife to his secretary to the church elders.

Sam seems content to tolerate the abuse, until he isn’t. The last straw comes when, as a favor to another minister, Sam presides over a same-sex wedding at the Unitarian church. It gives his church elders the excuse to fire him that they’ve been looking for. It’s no wonder that he fantasizes, for a hot second, about writing a novel about a pastor who slaughters the elders of his church and stows their carcasses in a freezer.

But no matter—Sam finds another meeting to pastor, even though it does only have 12 members. Why, when it used to have more than 100, is one of the mysteries Sam needs to suss out. Gentle and humorous, A Place Called Hope strikes the reader as a sort of extended episode of “Leave it to Beaver” with email and smartphones. That, by the way, is a compliment.

HISTORY'S LESSONS
Though much has been written about World War II, the fight against Japan is often overshadowed by stories of Nazi brutality. This novel changes the balance. A little more than halfway through Sigmund Brouwer’s heartrending Thief of Glory, the sadistic director of a Japanese concentration camp in what was then Dutch East India demands that every girl over the age of 16 be turned over to him as a concubine. The women decide to refuse, knowing it may cost them their lives. Then, they break into “Amazing Grace.”

Though this is the most overtly religious scene in Brouwer’s book, faith pervades the narrative of this Empire of the Sun-like tale of Jeremiah Prins’ childhood in a Jappenkamp. We see it in the piety of the Prins family before they are torn asunder by the occupation. We see it in Jeremiah’s repudiation of his faith after he’s lost everything, and his struggle to get it back.

The author of more than 30 novels, Brouwer based this novel partly on his father’s own experiences in Indonesia during WWII. Not just a book about faith, Thief of Glory is also about redemption and forgiveness.

This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The centuries may differ, but the faith remains the same. From present-day America, to an Atlantic crossing in the 1700s, to a newly established 19th-century Seattle, these three inspirational novels show that while circumstances may vary, the need to trust in God does not. 

In Christa Parrish’s fifth novel, Still Life, photographer Julian Goetz is shooting a magazine story and, while on assignment, meets young Ada Mitchell. Hosea-like, Julian responds to God’s call to marry Ada, the daughter of a militant religious “prophet” and founder of a secluded community.

Soon after their marriage, as Ada is still trying to find her place in the new world, Julian dies in a plane crash. Katherine Walker, unhappy in her own marriage and pursuing an affair to the detriment of those she loves, gave up her seat on that plane for Julian—and now she must face her reasons for doing so.

For Ada, Julian’s loss is both a death and a rebirth. Without him, she must navigate life outside the brownstone they briefly shared. Her journey to a life of her own is guided by five photographs he took—and brings her into contact with Evan, Katherine’s son.

Christy Award winner Parrish deftly guides the reader through the past and present of all her characters. She has a gift for imagery—for capturing, like a camera, all that a scene can hold. Her writing is poetic as she plumbs the angles and emotions of tragedy. As we witness the pangs of Ada’s indoctrination and wounds made by Katherine’s mistakes, Parrish reminds us that even in a broken world, there is still life worth living. Still Life is a story of starting over with the pieces that are left and building more than there was before—mercifully, by God’s grace.

AMISH AT SEA
Persecuted for their beliefs, followers of Jacob Amman in Germany undertake an arduous sea voyage to a new world aboard the Charming Nancy in 1737 in Anna’s Crossing. Though she was reluctant to make the voyage, Anna König was selected because of her ability to speak English.

There are tensions between the Amish and the others on the ship. Bairn, the ship’s Scottish carpenter, begrudges the presence of these Peculiars, as he calls them. Having them on board stirs up his ire—and something else long buried. Curious 9-year-old Felix, whom Anna is tasked with watching over, adventurously explores the ship, his exuberance giving the story its energy. The crew, and the Amish and Mennonite passengers, must deal with deprivations, death, storms and a pivotal encounter with a slave ship.

Author Suzanne Woods Fisher is known for evoking the Amish experience, and the hardships and lurking dangers of the Atlantic crossing are brought to life here as well. She draws from historical fact: A ship of the same name set sail with Amish aboard from Rotterdam to Philadelphia in 1737, in what was one of the first significant Amish crossings to America.

Anna’s steadfast trust in God is sorely tested over the months-long journey, yet she still makes strong arguments for trusting Him during those trials. These arguments slowly begin to reach Bairn, whose resistance to faith in Anna’s God is thoughtfully rendered. The touch of romance and many plot twists in Anna’s Crossing keep Fisher’s story entertaining as well as genuinely interesting.

SPOUSELESS IN SEATTLE
Two young women are at the center of best-selling author Tracie Peterson’s quaint story set at a training school for brides in late 19th-century Seattle, Steadfast Heart. Abrianna Cunningham and Lenore Fulcher make unlikely friends. Outspoken Abrianna cares for the city’s poor, while Lenore lives largely in a privileged world whose rules are dictated by society and her parents. Then Kolbein Booth arrives from Chicago to find his runaway sister, Greta, and changes the game for all three young people—as well as that of the matrons who run the Madison School for Brides. It appears that while suitors mingle with potential mates, more insidious affairs are being conducted in the city streets.

Meanwhile, Lenore experiences an awakening, Abrianna suffers a loss and Kolbein finds himself drawn to Lenore. As change swirls about them all, they must remember to find their anchor in God, trusting him for the best outcome.

Steadfast Heart has a sequel coming, and like any good first book in a series, it leaves just enough questions unanswered to make readers eager for the next installment. What this tale may lack in depth, it possesses in earnestness and the author’s desire for her characters to reflect a sincere growth in faith.

This article was originally published in the March 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.