Wiley Cash’s third novel is a sweeping, old-fashioned saga with an inspiring but ill-fated heroine at its center. The year is 1929, and Ella May Wiggins toils six days a week at a rural North Carolina textile mill to support her four children. Unlike most residents of the segregated town, Ella May mingles comfortably with African-Americans, including her best friend, Violet. Ella May’s bleak existence brightens just a bit when a union attempts to organize the mill workers. This angers many locals, forcing Ella May to choose between keeping quiet or standing up for what she believes is right. That choice is made for her when she is asked to speak at a union meeting, only to end up revealing herself to be a mesmerizing singer.

Ella May’s performance (“While we slave for the bosses / Our children scream and cry,” she sings) transforms her into a new kind of labor leader—one who just might be able to bring black and white workers together. But she also becomes an enemy to those who consider the union a band of Yankee invaders and “bolshevicks.”

Cash—whose previous two novels, A Land More Kind Than Home and This Dark Road to Mercy, were Southern-set bestsellers—eventually splits the narrative, and we see the looming labor violence through the eyes of a diverse cast of characters. We even move fast-forward to the present day, to see Ella May’s now-elderly daughter pass down stories of her heroic mother. This sometimes diminishes The Last Ballad’s narrative urgency, especially since Ella May is such a rich, sympathetic character. Overall, however, The Last Ballad is powerful and moving, exploring complex historical issues that are still with us today.

Polls often find that most Americans believe in angels, so it’s not hard to credit that a 19th-century Irishwoman might believe in fairies. Hannah Kent’s eerie novel The Good People invites us into this superstitious milieu.

The Irishwoman is Nóra. Inaugurating the novel is the funeral of her husband, evoking Faulkner in its impoverishment and starkness. The death leaves Nóra alone to care for her grandson, Micheál. But early on, the child evinces peculiar qualities and mannerisms. Nóra takes on a maid, Mary, to help and comes to believe that the child may be a changeling, a fairy, one of the “Good People.”

The novel thus centers on Nóra’s attempts to exorcise this uncanny being. She thinks this will transform the boy into her true kin or return the spirit to its rightful domain. Her methods become increasingly extreme, and finally Nance, a folk doctor specializing in keening, suggests submersion in a river. This leads to a prosecution, and the novel closes with a rather contrived courtroom scene. “CSI: Fairies,” you might say.

These three women are the principals, but the novel also features a kindly priest skeptical of the local folklore. Kent showcases botanical language and writes in a prose that’s often delectable. Her novel is more literary than thriller; for long stretches of the novel nothing much happens. There is but one central conflict, between Nóra and Micheál, but the resolution is decisive if unsatisfying.

Meanwhile, the novel succeeds in imagining a community of violent ignorance and lassitude. As in Faulkner’s best, Kent presents us with shells of people, consumed with survival. (Two decades later, famine would ravage the Emerald Isle.) The novel’s more historical aspects are more interesting and credible than those supernatural—but when most folks believe in angels, one would not want to presume.

Readers who grew up cherishing the stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder will find much to savor in Caroline: Little House, Revisited, the third novel from Sarah Miller. Authorized by the Little House Heritage Trust and researched with letters, memoirs and other family records, Caroline recounts the events of the Little House on the Prairie series through the eyes of Caroline Ingalls, better known as “Ma.”

The story begins as the Ingalls family prepares to depart the “little house in the big woods” in Pepin, Wisconsin, to stake a claim in Kansas. Caroline, who has just discovered she is pregnant with a third child, is less enthusiastic than her husband, Charles, about leaving their extended family and taking their two small daughters—Mary, 5, and Laura, 3—into the region popularly known as “Indian Territory.” But she dutifully stitches and waxes the canvas wagon cover, packs her beloved china shepherdess into her trunk and completes the other myriad practical preparations for the long and difficult journey. When the family reaches their new home, more trials await that will test their bravery and skills.

One of the greatest charms of the Little House series—at least, for this reader—was the meticulous depiction of the chores, pleasures and challenges of everyday pioneer life (pig-bladder balloons!). Caroline follows in this tradition, as Miller explains everything from the intricacies of building a log house to the preparations for a new baby (Caroline carefully stitches a layer of waxed fabric to the inside of her bodice as a type of early brassiere). Life on the frontier had many dangers, and through Caroline’s eyes, the stakes of the story feel higher. In the original series, Laura’s fears could always be calmed by the right word from Ma or Pa. By contrast, Caroline knows that a lapse in judgment can have fatal consequences, and the reader feels this weight. Miller also introduces an adult element through the relationship between Caroline and Charles, which she depicts as a passionate and supportive partnership.

Full of lyrical descriptions of the wild beauty of the Kansas countryside, Caroline is a well-researched and thoughtful look at the inner life of one of America’s most famous frontier women.

This article was originally published in the October 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Born into the enclave at Twelve-Mile Straight, Winna Jean, a white baby girl, and Wilson, a mixed-race boy, bear all its entanglements and liaisons.

In both her 2011 hit, Ten Thousand Saints, and her new novel, The Twelve-Mile Straight, Eleanor Henderson uses complex family dynamics to depict an era—the former with 1980s New York City, the latter with rural Georgia in the late 1920s and early ’30s. In The Twelve-Mile Straight, Elma (white and talkative) and Nan (black and mute) grow up together, their fathers sharecroppers on George Wilson’s land, raising cotton, crops and gin. Ketty, Nan’s mother, raises them both after Elma’s mother dies in childbirth. When Ketty’s husband leaves the farm and she dies, the two girls live with Juke Jesup, Elma’s father, along with a string of helpers in the shack out back, until Winna and Wilson are born. The two encompass the soul of their rural home, the wholeness of its truth, however concealed and twisted it may be.

The plot unfurls like Creek Creek, along which Twelve-Mile Straight runs—not linearly, but going forward while folding back on itself, the past as much a part of the present as is hope for a better future. Like the gin Nan gives Genus Jackson, a farm hand, the baptismal water at the creek “might have been brewed by the devil’s hand, but it felt like the Lord’s kindness.”

Henderson explores how opposites—innocence and guilt, sound and silence, cowardice and bravery, malice and goodwill—inform each other. She hands us her story, inspired by her father’s childhood home, as a mother entrusting us to witness its growth, so that it might teach us to love. The tone is brutally honest, voiced by strong characters, particularly heroines who are models for all women.

Ken Follett follows The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End with a tale of espionage, political intrigue and extreme faith during a time of never-ending religious conflict. Full of adventure and suspense, A Column of Fire is an inspiring and thrilling portrait of one of Europe’s most perilous times in history.

In 1558, Ned Willard wonders if he will ever be reunited with his first love as he finds himself on the opposite side of the religious divide. Amid the power struggle between Catholics and Protestants in England, Ned and others must decide whether they value friendships and family over loyalty and convictions.

When Ned decides to work for Protestant Princess Elizabeth, he must say goodbye to all that Kingsbridge holds: his family, friends and Margery Fitzgerald, who is being forced to marry another young man. When Elizabeth takes the throne, Catholic Europe turns against her and her tolerant beliefs. She organizes England’s first secret service, with Ned at the forefront, to bring her news of assassination plots, rebellions, and to keep an eye on those threatening to take her throne. Over the next 50 years, Ned and Margery fight for their individual beliefs and watch as those in power tear apart families, cities and countries in the name of faith—all while Elizabeth tries to maintain that no one should be killed for wanting freedom to worship and doing her best to rule as a single woman.

Follett is a master of historical fiction, with meticulous research, adept storytelling and an ability to capture the reader’s interest with colorful, smooth language. As captured in his previous books in the Kingsbridge series, Follett’s characters are lively, full of emotion and relatable, making the book’s length of no great concern for old fans or new readers alike.

Young Lilly Blackwood, hidden away since birth in her parents’ attic because of her albinism, is thrust into the role of sideshow freak. Lilly’s fanatical mother smuggles her away one night and sells her to Merrick, who runs the freak show in The Barlow Brother’s Circus. Delivered from one form of captivity into another, Lilly struggles to survive this new, confusing world. The kind embrace of the other freaks softens the cruelty from Merrick and even the “rubes” who pay to see the oddities.

In The Life She Was Given, Ellen Marie Wiseman paints two parallel portraits of women in the Blackwood family: Lilly, the daughter sold to the circus in the 1930s, and down-and-out Julia who inherits Blackwood Manor in the 1950s. As Julia attempts to blot out her childhood memories, the secrets of the Manor strain to reveal themselves to her, and she tries to make sense of the puzzle pieces of Lilly’s life. In the circus, Lilly finds a freedom unlike anything she’s ever known. Eventually, her skill with the elephants of The Barlow Brother’s Circus becomes a way for her to escape the inhumanity of the freak show and Merrick’s rage. She even finds love with a big top performer before one final gut-wrenching incident tears her new life apart.

While Wiseman excels at creating an atmosphere, there’s more telling than showing to her prose; her writing, while lively, gets bogged down in characters’ inner monologues that at times encumber the plot. Her characters are all vividly drawn and complex, especially Lilly’s abusive mother, Coralline. But at the heart of Wiseman’s tale of loss and redemption are Lilly and Julia, connected in spirit by their determination to overcome years of pain and sorrow.

Fans of Karen White and Sara Gruen will be drawn in by the drama and mystery of Wiseman’s novel.

The Dakota is a notorious, castle-like building on 72nd Street off Manhattan’s Central Park—but 130 years ago, this location was the muddy middle of nowhere. Fiona Davis’ The Address is the story of two women a century apart whose tumultuous lives become part of the Dakota’s sometimes unhappy history. Even John Lennon figures into it.

The novel begins in 1884, when Sara Smythe is brought from London to New York City to be the “manageress” of this brand-new but remote apartment building. In 1985, Bailey Camden is the poor, not-quite relation of the Camdens, who now own the Dakota. Having been tossed out of her interior decorating gig, Bailey gets a job renovating her cousin Melinda’s apartment, transforming it from fusty Edwardian to Barbie beach house. Melinda, a deliciously nasty piece of work, wants green plastic drawer pulls. It’s dispiriting.

Yet dispiriting isn’t the word when it comes to the fate of Sara, who falls in love with the Dakota’s designer. Theodore Camden is a man with three cherubic children and an unhappy wife—but you only think you know what happens next. Davis knows how to twist a plot.

With her nimble writing style, Davis makes pithy commentary on gender, social and economic inequality in both eras. In the earlier setting, one fallen woman is carted off to an insane asylum, while another retains her status by dint of being in a respectable marriage. In 1985, Melinda dismisses servants without a second thought and treats Bailey just a little bit better.

This thought-provoking book makes you wonder what Edith Wharton would have made of these Camdens and pseudo-Camdens. Thankfully, Davis is here to tell us.

This article was originally published in the August 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.