Drawing from a discovered cache of journals, letters and unpublished fiction, Héctor Tobar’s third novel, The Last Great Road Bum, follows the true peregrinations of Joe Sanderson, denizen of Urbana, Illinois. Privileged and corn-fed, Joe goes where his whim takes him, and his family even pays for him to do so, their money wired to embassies all over the world. You might grit your teeth with resentment if Joe weren’t so openhearted—and if Tobar weren’t such a wizard of a writer.

Joe’s journey begins on a teenage lark when he hitchhikes out of Urbana and ends up in Jamaica with a band of welcoming Rastafarians. But the tale darkens as he gets a glimpse of the Vietnam War and then the horrifying famine in Biafra. Throughout his travels, Joe witnesses suffering that radicalizes him, though his letters home remain almost aggressively cheery. After more rousting about, he stumbles into a group of guerrilla fighters in El Salvador. It’s among these dedicated compas, some still in their teens, that the last great road bum finds his purpose.

Third-person narration weaves with Joe’s stream of consciousness, so we’re privy to not only his thoughts and observations, which flit from topic to topic like the butterflies he used to catch as a child, but also the thoughts of his mother, his fellow compas and even people he meets briefly. Quirky endnotes conclude each chapter. This structure lends propulsion and unexpected cohesion to a tale that would have been haphazard without it. A work of fiction and sort of true, The Last Great Road Bum is brilliant in its contemplation of a particularly American restlessness, innocence and foolishness.

In 1950s Iran, religious and nationalist fervor can be sparked by last names, loyalties and different appearances. Against this backdrop, a discarded girl with a boy’s name matures in a man’s world. Through this girl’s journey, Iranian-born author Nazanine Hozar’s debut novel traces the reign and overthrow of the Shah of Iran through Ayatollah Khomeini’s dramatic return to power.

Young Aria, rescued as an infant by a sensitive army driver but abused by his angry wife, endures early censure and ridicule because of her blue eyes and red hair. Her life is marked by division and strife, but she grows up defiant and strong, wondering where she came from. Everyone she encounters—from her childhood friend Kamran, to her wealthy school pals Hamlet and Mitra, to those who know the truth about her birth mother—influence her path. She learns and loves, goes to school, wrestles with the shifting politics of her country, eventually marries and has her own baby amid the Iranian Revolution.

Hozar’s vivid depictions of daily life in the divided city of Tehran ground Aria in stark reality. Modernity strains against the confines of a place where the past always has a foothold—where history keeps being rewritten and a new future staged, where power changes hands, often brutally.

Hozar’s perceptive writing falters at times, and the plot meanders distractingly. But early poetic chapters and the novel’s thrilling climax draw the reader in. One thing is clear: Pain propels us, but so do offerings of love. Aria accepts both in her life, and they develop into the will and perseverance she needs to survive.

History, it is said, is written by the winners. But good historical fiction can be written about the losers. L. Annette Binder’s sad, intimate first novel, The Vanishing Sky, conveys a sense of Germany at the tail end of World War II, as seen primarily through the experiences of one family from Heidenfeld, near the city of Würzburg.

Etta and Josef have two sons, Max and Georg. Josef was the head teacher at the local school until he became forgetful and had to retire. Max, a soldier, has been sent to the Eastern Front, where he witnesses unspeakable horrors. Georg, just 15, is enrolled in the Hitler Youth group, where he struggles with his feelings about a blond young colleague named Müller. Georg is also a budding magician and hoards five half-dollar American coins, sent from a relative in Milwaukee, with which to do tricks.

This is autumn 1944, and although the radio and newsreels say the Germans are fighting back, we all know what’s to come. (In the following spring, Würzburg becomes a target for large-scale bombing by the Allies.) At the start of the book, Max is sent home from the front; his parents don’t know why. Soon, his behavior suggests that something is awry with this once strong and active young man. He barely eats, and he sees visions. Soon, he is taken away to a psychiatric hospital. Meanwhile, Etta, an indomitable “Mutti,” seeks out food for the family from neighbors in town and in the country. She tends to Josef, a stick figure who never really comes alive in the book. He is almost a caricature of the German sensibility: rigid and unfeeling.

The most successfully rendered character is Georg, a pudgy, bookish youngster who’s ill-equipped for fighting. He is the book’s Odysseus, his mother its Penelope. Binder creates a believable, lost world with Etta and Georg. The ending is inevitable, and we are left with an overriding—and poignant—sense of loss.

In her third work of historical fiction, Kathleen Rooney takes her gift for inhabiting fascinating real-life figures in an exciting new direction. Both of the narrators in Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey were lauded for their heroic actions in World War I: Major Charles Whittlesey, leader of the famous “Lost Battalion,” and Cher Ami, a brave homing pigeon. As in her previous novels, 2012’s Robinson Alone and 2017’s bestselling Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, Rooney provides historical context that is at once sweeping and specific, and her affinity for research is evident in details both lovely and harrowing.

Charming, contemplative Cher Ami speaks from a display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, where her taxidermied body has been behind glass since her 1919 death. She reflects on her homing-pigeon training in Britain and her service in WWI, where she crossed paths with the major. Charles, an intelligent and kind man suffering from PTSD, harks back to his prewar life in New York City, where he had a law partnership and spent evenings visiting neighborhoods where he could meet other closeted gay men.

The two share their experiences of a 1918 battle in France’s Argonne Forest, where their battalion was trapped for five terrifying days. Cut off from supplies, surrounded by the enemy and, in a final insult, pelted with shells fired by fellow American troops, they were saved by Cher Ami's delivery of a crucial message. The press and the Army showered Charles and Cher Ami with honors and praise, but memories linger: the trenches, filled with danger and death; institutional incompetence that left the soldiers vulnerable; and the anguish of seeing feathered and human friends die.

Rooney makes a strong case for considering alternatives to war, pondering who we call heroes and why, and offering animals more empathy and respect. This is a creative, heartfelt, edifying reimagining of an important event in World War I history, as seen through the eyes of two extraordinary individuals.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Kathleen Rooney illuminates the unlikely heroes of Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey.

As everyone now knows, the challenges of being a health care worker are exponentially greater during a global pandemic. As Emma Donoghue explains in the author’s note to The Pull of the Stars, her thinly plotted but moving new novel, the centenary of the 1918 flu pandemic inspired her to write this work. She couldn’t have foreseen how relevant this story would feel upon its publication.

The novel takes place over three days in Dublin, from Halloween to All Souls’ Day, when World War I is winding down and the flu is ravaging the population. Nurse Julia Power is a single woman about to turn 30. She lives with her younger brother, Tim, who suffers from war neurosis and has remained mute since his return from the front. One morning, when Julia arrives at the Roman Catholic hospital where she has worked since age 21, she learns that the head of the maternity/fever ward has taken ill. Julia is to serve as acting ward sister in her stead.

In spare prose, Donoghue documents Julia’s harrowing three days. Her patients are pregnant women of various economic backgrounds. Some characters are more fully fleshed out than others, but all suffer from the flu and other complications, much of which Donoghue renders in graphic detail. Among the people assisting Julia is the book’s one real-life figure: Kathleen Lynn, the physician and Sinn Féin activist who was instrumental in the Easter Rebellion of 1916.

The book’s most touching sequences dramatize the budding friendship between Julia and Bridie Sweeney, a volunteer who was raised in a convent and gives her age as “about twenty-two.” The stories of Bridie’s upbringing are among the book’s most devastating passages, as when she tells Julia that punishments at the convent sometimes involved hanging the transgressor by the hair from a coat hook.

At its best, The Pull of the Stars confronts a reality as pertinent today as it was in 1918 Ireland: Some people are part of what Bridie calls “the pipe”—orphanages, reformatories, prisons—whereas others benefit from greater privilege. Donoghue’s novel is a plea for an end to the inequality that pandemics make all the more stark.

David Mitchell has written some of the most innovative novels of the past 20 years, from the post-apocalyptic Cloud Atlas to Slade House, a ghost tale about a mysterious residence “that only blinks into existence one night every nine years.” His latest, Utopia Avenue, is a journey into new territory and a return to earlier themes. One of the biggest surprises here is that an author who has built a reputation for creating original worlds now seeks originality in a seemingly familiar milieu: a British rock band’s brief moment of fame in the psychedelic heyday of the late 1960s.

It’s 1967, and impresario Levon Frankland, on the lookout for fresh talent, spots bass guitarist Dean Moss, a 23-year-old “long-haired lout” who’s desperate for a gig and a place to live. Soon, Dean joins a band that includes drummer Peter “Griff” Griffin, no stranger to having bottles thrown at him during a set, and lead singer Elf Holloway, formerly half of a folk duo with her Australian ex-boyfriend, a man who isn’t above using thievery and unfaithfulness to achieve his goals.

So far, so familiar, but this being a Mitchell novel, a wrinkle is not too far off. This novel’s wrinkle involves lead guitarist Jasper de Zoet, a man who, ever since an afternoon on the cricket pitch during his youth in the Netherlands, has heard a persistent knocking in his head. The knocking has now returned, as has the message tapped out by this foreign entity inside his brain: “Life and liberty . . . De Zoet must die.”

Utopia Avenue is more ramshackle than Mitchell’s earlier works. Some plot elements, including episodes of revenge, jealousy and blackmail, are exactly what one might expect to find in a story of newly celebrated musicians. Mitchell fans, however, will welcome the continuation of flourishes from such earlier works as The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and The Bone Clocks, including the reemergence of characters from those novels and the neologisms that made Mitchell’s previous works such mind-bending experiences. Mitchell’s song may be different, but readers will recognize the tune.

What Sue Monk Kidd has done with her latest novel is far from predictable, but she is steering her formidable narrative talents into somewhat familiar territory. How does one write a compelling, evocative and, most importantly, new take on one of the most analyzed and fictionalized people who’s ever lived? With a tremendous narrative voice.

The Book of Longings follows Ana, a young girl growing up under the reign of Herod Antipas with dreams of making her ideas resound across the ages. Ana’s sharp thoughts and probing mind eventually bring her into contact with an 18-year-old man named Jesus of Nazareth, who just happens to be as intellectually precocious and open as she is. Their curiosity about each other turns to romance, and Ana finds herself wrapped up in one of history’s great sagas, through it all searching for new and lasting ways to carry her own voice not behind Jesus’ but alongside him.

The gripping conceit at the heart of this novel stems from the idea that, if Jesus were married, his wife might be completely erased by the history that followed their relationship. This raises spellbinding questions. What kind of spirit would have been so compelling to Jesus? What kind of strength would she possess? And most importantly, how hard would she fight to be heard?

Kidd’s narrative, etched into the emotionally precise and tactile prose of Ana’s first-person voice, doesn’t always answer these questions directly. The Book of Longings is not an attempt to rewrite history. Instead it’s an exploration of a triumphant, fierce spirit and the stories she aches to tell. There’s an exuberance to Ana that vibrates off every page, and that is a testament to Kidd’s gifts. 

It’s been eight years since we last saw Thomas Cromwell, and Hilary Mantel fans have been waiting impatiently ever since. Even though we knew how this story ends, we still need Mantel to guide us through the final days of the relationship between Henry VIII and his most famous adviser. The wait is over.

The Mirror & the Light opens where Bring Up the Bodies left off. Cromwell has just witnessed the execution of Anne Boleyn. Days later, he is haunted by the memory of the late queen, as well as the five suitors who were also put to death for allegedly having consorted with her. But mostly it’s business as usual: The wedding of the king to third wife Jane Seymour, the dissolution of the monasteries, repressing tax rebellions in the north and the endless jockeying for position among England’s aristocratic families are all in a day’s work for the Renaissance’s hardest-working Privy counselor.

As Cromwell goes about the king’s business, he is troubled by more than these events. Ghost-laden memories arise from a childhood spent as his father’s punching bag and his later years in Europe as a mercenary soldier and financial fixer. Another visiting ghost in the form of his previous employer, Cardinal Wolsey, continues to trouble him. Cromwell’s attempts to form a religious alliance with the Protestant German states through Henry’s marriage to Anna of Cleves backfires, an incident that wounds the king’s pride beyond repair. Cromwell is blamed, and the aristocracy, who have never accepted his origins as the son of a blacksmith, turn on him.

The Mirror & the Light is the longest book of the trilogy, as if Mantel didn’t want to give up her relationship with Cromwell, but that won’t bother readers who may feel the same way. No other contemporary writer has so thoroughly and uniquely entered the mind of a historical character. Told from an unusually close third-person perspective, The Mirror & the Light is lushly written, suspenseful even though you might know its outcome and has occasions of unexpected wry wit. This is the kind of storytelling that so completely transports you, you look up from a chapter not quite knowing where you are.

Mantel has, quite simply, redefined historical fiction with this trilogy. Cromwell may be gone, but long live Hilary Mantel.

Ariel Lawhon’s Code Name Hélène is a spellbinding work of historical fiction inspired by the real story of Nancy Grace Augusta Wake, a woman so extraordinary that your first instinct might be to believe she is imaginary, like James Bond. 

In 1936 Paris, Nancy, an Aussie expat, cleverly bluffs her way into becoming a freelance journalist at the European branch of the Hearst newspaper group. It’s a career chosen out of necessity rather than a calling, but Nancy is nonetheless very good at it, earning respect from her male colleagues for her bravado and instincts. It isn’t long before she falls in love with a wealthy French industrialist named Henri Fiocca. The two marry and make Marseille their home, where Nancy is ready to spend the rest of her life as Henri’s supportive housewife. Truthfully, Lawhon could have stopped Nancy’s story here and left it as one of the most sensual romance novels you’ve ever read. 

But there is more to life than romance, as Nancy discovers in 1940 when Henri is drafted to fight the Germans. Alone, anxious and restless, Nancy starts by driving an ambulance for the wounded but soon finds her way deeper and deeper into the French Resistance until she emerges as one of its most powerful leaders. Nancy, also known as Madame Andrée the fighter, Lucienne Carlier the smuggler, Hélène the spy and the White Mouse, becomes the most wanted person on the Nazi target list. She is real, this really did happen is the mantra you may find yourself repeating, in awe at every page. 

In her acknowledgments, Lawhon describes the extraordinary life of Nancy as first and foremost a story about love and marriage. Right away it seems preposterous to consider a story about a woman who seemed to magically summon weapons for the Allied Forces, who killed a Nazi with her bare hands, who saved thousands of lives, a love story. But let the story sink in, and Nancy and Henri’s enduring love will indeed rise to the surface.

The harrowing, heartfelt debut novel from Elizabeth Wetmore tells the story of a West Texas town reeling from an oil boom and a brutal rape case in the late 1970s. Surrounded by a harsh and beautiful landscape, the town of Odessa serves as a microcosm of the U.S., allowing Wetmore to explore themes of motherhood, sexism, capitalism, violence, immigration and race. 

The story opens on 14-year-old Glory, the unrelenting sun shining down on her, her rapist fast asleep. Covered in cuts and bruises and suffering from organ damage, Glory silently wills herself to walk, to escape. To live. She comes to the farmhouse porch of pregnant Mary Rose, who sends Glory inside when the assailant, a young white man, comes to claim his “girlfriend.” Mary Rose denies Glory’s presence and holds tight to her rifle as she waits for the cops to arrive. After they take the villain into custody, Mary Rose can’t shake the feeling that she’s failed the girl. She’s compelled to testify in the case, which causes a rift between her and her husband. When Mary Rose subsequently moves into town, she meets her new neighbor Corrine, who’s drinking herself into oblivion as she mourns the recent loss of her husband. We also meet spunky 11-year-old Debra Ann Pierce, who steals cans of food to help a homeless war veteran. As the trial nears, Mary Rose receives daily threats from drunk townsfolk who call her horrible things. 

With her children at home with Corrine, Mary Rose takes the stand to testify. It’s been hours and hours since she’s breastfed her newborn baby, and her vulnerability in this moment—and her sacrifices to get here—will leave readers contemplating the very nature of justice.

As these women navigate what is decidedly a man’s world with feminine grace, Valentine becomes a testament to the resilience of the female spirit. Wetmore’s prose is both beautiful and bone-true, and this mature novel hardly feels like a debut. You’ll wish you had more time with each of these powerful women when it’s over.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Elizabeth Wetmore shares a glimpse of growing up in Odessa.

Most Americans learn about the pilgrims of Plymouth Plantation in elementary school. But few know that besides the men and women seeking religious freedom, more than half of the Mayflower passengers were investors, indentured servants and crew members who were hired to stay the first year in the New World. Even fewer know about the murder of one colonist by another that occurred in the settlement’s early years. This crime and the social, political and religious anxieties that surround it are at the heart of TaraShea Nesbit’s new novel, Beheld.

In 1630, 10 years after the Mayflower landed, the inhabitants of the Plymouth colony eagerly await the arrival of a new ship bringing fresh supplies and more colony members—members who will help grow the community and pay off debt to their initial investors. But not everyone is optimistic. Alice Bradford, wife of the colony’s governor, longs to meet her stepson but worries he won’t accept her as his father’s second wife. Former servants John and Eleanor Billington, resentful of perceived mistreatment at the hands of Governor Bradford and military adviser Myles Standish, are keen to share their grievances with the newcomers. When the Bradfords spot religious agitator Thomas Morton among the passengers, it seems like the new ship is bringing nothing but potential problems to their struggling shores.

Nesbit tells this story of conflict and contradiction in alternating chapters from both the empowered and the powerless. The voices of the women are especially strong, particularly Elizabeth, whose friendships and reminiscences of the colony’s earlier days offer insight about the women of the plantation. 

There were many crimes that occurred in Plymouth Plantation, and the killing that took place in 1630 was obviously not the first murder. Wampanoags had been killed since the Europeans’ arrival, and Myles Standish himself was involved in the death of Neponset warrior Wituwamat, an incident that even many of Standish’s white peers found troubling. But the murder of one settler by another was the first death that made the community question whether the colony was truly following a righteous path. 

Land ownership, religious observation and differing accounts of events all play their part in this clever, insightful novel that digs deeply into our country’s conflicted origins. 

After their gold-prospecting father dies, 12-year-old Lucy and 11-year-old Sam are left to fend for themselves in the gold rush days of the American West. The first task of these Chinese American sisters is to bury “Ba,” and tradition dictates they place two silver dollars over his eyes—two coins they don’t have. The girls head to a bank, and all hell breaks loose when a banker casts them out with a hateful epithet.

That’s just the first of many action-packed scenes in C Pam Zhang’s standout debut. Lucy and Sam’s odyssey unfolds in a series of edge-of-your-seat twists and turns, bringing to mind the classic True Grit and Paulette Jiles’ News of the World, two Westerns that also feature fierce young heroines. Yet Zhang turns the genre on its head by writing a historical saga that also serves as a modern immigration novel. Before dying, Ba tells his eldest, “I grew up knowing I belonged to this land, Lucy girl. You and Sam do too, never mind how you look. Don’t you let any man with a history book tell you different.” Ma, however, offers polar-opposite advice. While Ba dreams of having a large, isolated parcel of property, Ma warns, “Gold can’t buy everything. This will never be our land.”

Unfolding in a carefully structured, nonlinear fashion, the novel repeatedly questions what makes a home a home and what makes a family a family. Zhang was born in Beijing and, she writes in her bio, has lived “in thirteen cities across four countries and is still looking for home.”

The book also wonders at the nature of truth and who can be trusted. Because boys earn a higher wage working in the coal mines, Sam begins wearing boys’ clothes and finds that this new identity suits her, thus bringing to the forefront issues of gender, identity and cultural and sexual prejudice. 

Zhang’s sparse prose style may initially take some getting used to, but both language and plot remain clearly focused. Daringly original, How Much of These Hills Is Gold is gritty and frequently gruesome, yet at times magical and ethereal, incorporating tiger paw prints and a buffalo sighting, along with a fog-filled view of San Francisco and the wild ocean beyond. 

Zhang’s laser-sharp reexamination of America’s myth-laden past is likely to help bring clarity to many issues that continue to challenge us all. 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: C Pam Zhang discusses the “gold-soaked sun” and hauntings of the American West.