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All Historical Fiction Coverage

FictionHistorical Fiction

A Romanov history

Review by Deborah Donovan

Ariel Lawhon’s two previous historical novels delved into the Jazz Age in New York City (The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress) and the final flight of the Hindenburg in 1937 (Flight of Dreams). In her latest, she imagines the last months of Russia’s royal Romanov family—Czar Nicholas II; his wife, Empress Alexandra; their four daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia; and their son, Alexey—following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

Lawhon focuses on Anastasia, the youngest daughter, illuminating those harrowing months in late 1917 and 1918, beginning when the imperial palace is taken over by the revolutionary army. The family is put under house arrest, limited to the few rooms not occupied by soldiers, and their activities are closely monitored. Lawhon recounts their haunting journey east into Siberia by train, when the girls, including Anastasia, are raped. The family is housed in an abandoned army barracks in the “godforsaken outpost” of Tobolsk. Their lives become even more unbearable when the Red Guard takes command, their mission to cruelly punish the family for their former excessive lifestyle. From Tobolsk they are sent further east to the town of Ekaterinburg, where, in July 1918, the whole family is executed by firing squad.

Or—did Anastasia somehow miraculously escape the massacre? Threaded in and out of the chapters recounting the last days of Anastasia and her family is the story of a young woman who, two years later, is pulled from a canal in Berlin and claims to be Anastasia Romanov. She has scars that could be from bullet wounds, and she bears a remarkable resemblance to the young Romanov duchess. Those who refuse to believe her story give her the name Anna Anderson and see her merely as a fortune seeker. Lawhon’s extensive research traces Anna’s steps backward from 1970, when a Hamburg court determines that her claim is “not proven.” In the years leading up to this moment, she is institutionalized, interviewed by Anastasia’s family and contemporaries, and romanticized in plays and movies.

The truth of her own sad story is revealed only at the conclusion of Lawhon’s mesmerizing saga, which encompasses over 50 years and travels from revolutionary Russia and interwar France to the United States in the 1970s.

Though DNA evidence has finally proven what happened to the Romanov family, Lawhon’s labyrinthine tale remains fascinating to the end.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Ariel Lawhon’s two previous historical novels delved into the Jazz Age in New York City (The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress) and the final flight of the Hindenburg in 1937 (Flight of Dreams). In her latest, she imagines the last months of Russia’s royal Romanov family—Czar Nicholas II; his wife, Empress Alexandra; their four daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia; and their son, Alexey—following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

FictionSpeculative FictionHistorical Fiction

A daring experiment

Review by Laura Hubbard

John Kessel’s expansion of his award-winning 2008 novella, Pride and Prometheus, is an exercise in the hypothetical. The year is 1815, and Victor Frankenstein has come to England to perform the most odious task of his life. He must construct a mate for his creation, the creature he reanimated. While he is in London, he makes an unexpected friend: Mary Bennet, who has lived with her parents and sister Kitty for 13 years after the events of Pride and Prejudice. Mary has never met a man like Victor Frankenstein. She is immediately infatuated, attracted to both Frankenstein’s intellect and his seeming interest in her. However, as Mary gets to know Frankenstein, she begins to notice his irregularities—and learn his secrets.

Pride and Prometheus is, at its core, a work of speculative fiction, and not just one about how Mary Bennet and Victor Frankenstein might interact. It is an exercise in what could happen to Mary and Kitty Bennet. Rather than just take what we do know about them from Jane Austen’s work, Kessel does something more—he lets the Bennets grow. Mary isn’t just a moralizing social disaster, but rather a lover of science who will turn down a bad match because she would rather be happy than safe. And Kitty isn’t just Lydia’s silly hanger-on. As she approaches old-maid status, she has become someone her sister can respect.

But while Mary has had 13 years to mature, Victor is still in the midst of his struggle. He is still the man horrified by what he has managed to do, and his creature is still the bitter, lonely child trying to figure out what it means to be alive. Both are still occasionally thoughtless and needlessly cruel. The contrast between the more mature Bennet sisters and the increasingly unstable Frankenstein shows that Kessel knows what readers will believe and what they will not. A brief sojourn in England makes for less character development than 13 years, after all.

The way Kessel handles character growth makes the slightly disappointing part of the novel—the portrayal of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet—that much more unfortunate. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet have hardly changed in 13 years. Yes, perhaps Mr. Bennet is more bitter and perhaps Mrs. Bennet is a bit more silly, but they haven’t grown. That is, until partway through the novel, when both characters seem to do an about-face, saying things they should have said 13 years prior but, in the context of Pride and Prometheus, seem forced. However, the disappointment is a short-lived one and is easily overshadowed by Mary’s story.

Beyond the what-could-have-beens, what makes the book interesting is that, for the most part, it reads like a modernized version of a comedy of manners as well as a gothic novel. Far from being forced, the crossover is easy to accept because Kessel uses the formats and textual cues of both genres. In Mary’s chapters, he emulates the third-person narration of Austen without the older style that would dissuade many modern readers. In those of Frankenstein or his creation, his writing reminds readers of Shelley’s work. This alone would make Pride and Prometheus worth the read.

Kessel sets his readers’ expectations and then twists them as far as he can go—and then just a little bit further. His author’s note tells us that he will play within the constraints set by Frankenstein, but he constantly dangles the possibility of something else. We know how it ends, and yet we keep reading anyway because the way Kessel gets us there is just so much fun. And because we want to believe that there is a chance, even a small one, that Kessel might change his mind and that things might turn out differently.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Behind the Book essay by John Kessel on Pride and Prometheus.

John Kessel’s expansion of his award-winning 2008 novella, Pride and Prometheus, is an exercise in the hypothetical. The year is 1815, and Victor Frankenstein has come to England to perform the most odious task of his life. He must construct a mate for his creation, the creature he reanimated. While he is in London, he makes an unexpected friend: Mary Bennet, who has lived with her parents and sister Kitty for 13 years after the events of Pride and Prejudice.

FictionHistorical Fiction

Two families, twisted together

Review by Leslie Hinson

On Sunday, April 5, 1936, a tornado devastated Tupelo, Mississippi. More than 200 people were reported dead, and the hundreds of African-American casualties were not even counted. The stories and folklore surrounding the storm flourished for decades—a woman found a baby in a crepe myrtle, a cow flew upside down, etc. In her second novel, Minrose Gwin (The Queen of Palmyra) harnesses the intensity of the tornado and pieces together a dual narrative of survival.

Dovey Grand’homme is an old African-American washwoman, and Jo McNabb is a white 15-year-old schoolgirl. The Grand’homme and McNabb families are connected by more than just the intimate laundry that Dovey sorts through weekly—they are also irrevocably linked by a despicable act. Son McNair, Jo’s older brother, raped Dovey’s granddaughter, resulting in a light-skinned baby boy named Promise. During the storm, both Promise and Jo’s baby brother are lost. When Jo finds a baby in her yard, she assumes it is her brother, and the premise is set for this impressive novel.

Promise takes on the page-turning pacing of a mystery while remaining solidly literary. Gwin’s writing is as precise as it is entertaining, and she creates unique rhythms for Dovey and Jo, giving each a distinct pulse. Their memories, supported by a great cast of nurses, neighbors and relatives, bring great richness to the story.

The aid available to the African-American community was obviously insufficient, and literally countless lives were lost for the sake of keeping segregation intact during immediate relief efforts. Humans may have the ability to overcome disaster, but as Gwin illustrates here, segregation neutralizes humanity.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

On Sunday, April 5, 1936, a tornado devastated Tupelo, Mississippi. More than 200 people were reported dead, and the hundreds of African-American casualties were not even counted. The stories and folklore surrounding the storm flourished for decades—a woman found a baby in a crepe myrtle, a cow flew upside down, etc. In her second novel, Minrose Gwin (The Queen of Palmyra) harnesses the intensity of the tornado and pieces together a dual narrative of survival.

FictionHistorical FictionGothic Fiction

Dolls and dark corners

Review by Trisha Ping

The chill of The Silent Companions sneaks up on you and then settles in like a gray mist on a British moor. Which is no doubt intentional, since Laura Purcell’s third novel follows solidly in the Gothic literary tradition. It’s an unnerving read of a woman’s unraveling.

It’s 1865, and Elsie Bainbridge is en route to her new husband’s estate, The Bridge, in rural England. But it’s not a happy journey: Rupert Bainbridge has suddenly died there, and she’s traveling as a widow, not a bride, with only his cousin Sarah at her side. She’s also pregnant.

When Elsie arrives at The Bridge, things go from bad to worse. The housekeeper is borderline hostile, the servants are frightened of strange things that happen in the nursery, and mysterious 17th-century wooden figures are found in a locked room. These “silent companions” are a link to a Bainbridge ancestor, and Elsie starts to suspect they have a sinister purpose. She begins to believe that Rupert’s death was no accident—are she and her baby the next target?

Readers know more than Elsie does: From page one, her more modern story is intercut with both scenes from the 1630s, when the silent companions joined the household, and chapters from the near future, where a now-mute Elsie is confined to a sanatorium. But plenty of suspense comes from waiting to discover when and how the boom will fall.

Purcell ably summons a pervasive sense of doom and dread, and though few of the story beats will truly surprise genre fans, she conjures some genuinely creative horror elements. The Silent Companions is a shivery treat.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The chill of The Silent Companions sneaks up on you and then settles in like a gray mist on a British moor. Which is no doubt intentional, since Laura Purcell’s third novel follows solidly in the Gothic literary tradition. It’s an unnerving read of a woman’s unraveling.

FictionHistorical Fiction

Gone girls

Review by Melissa Brown

A late-season blizzard batters 1879 Albany, New York, and the blinding white seems to have swallowed up two young sisters, Emma and Claire O’Donnell. The snow cripples the city for days, and when it finally begins to melt, Emma and Claire are still missing. Not sure whether the girls are alive or dead, Drs. Mary Sutter and William Stipp, close friends of the family, cease their search and try to continue living without them. When the news of the disappearances reaches Mary’s mother, Amelia, and niece, Elizabeth, who are abroad in Paris, they return home on the next ship.

Spring comes to Albany and brings a flood as the frozen river breaks up, just as the town seems to crack in two along with it. Marriages are strained, sons grow suspicious of fathers, business dealings are not what they seem—and that’s just in the Van der Veer family, one of the city’s most prosperous. At the center of it all, the disappearance of the “winter sisters” continues to captivate Albany’s residents, from prostitutes and police to lumber barons and society matrons. Allegations swirl, and the truth eventually proves stranger than anyone had imagined—or feared.

In Winter Sisters, Robin Oliveira (My Name Is Mary Sutter) spins a long, twisting tale, mixing amended historical facts with the intrigue of a true crime drama. Though her characterizations do descend into well-trodden molds at times, her women are strength and courage personified. Many of the men (except for a phenomenal few) fall short at best and, at worst, commit reprehensible acts. But in Mary, Amelia, Elizabeth and others, Oliveira shows the tenacity of women. They rise to meet challenges with an unwavering sense of morality and duty. And Oliveira holds the reader in her thrall through each suspenseful turn.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

A late-season blizzard batters 1879 Albany, New York, and the blinding white seems to have swallowed up two young sisters, Emma and Claire O’Donnell. The snow cripples the city for days, and when it finally begins to melt, Emma and Claire are still missing. Not sure whether the girls are alive or dead, Drs. Mary Sutter and William Stipp, close friends of the family, cease their search and try to continue living without them. When the news of the disappearances reaches Mary’s mother, Amelia, and niece, Elizabeth, who are abroad in Paris, they return home on the next ship.

FictionHistorical FictionDebut Fiction

Vengeance in the outback

Review by G. Robert Frazier

The story of a frontier family’s murder by a tribe of native peoples and the ensuing quest for vengeance has been written before. It’s a staple of many Western novels. What sets Only Killers and Thieves apart is its locale: not the late 19th-century American West but the untamed wilderness of the Australian outback.

The novel begins innocently enough, with teen brothers Billy and Tommy McBride on a hunting expedition. Debut novelist Paul Howarth entrenches readers in the scene and its grim mood from the opening sentence: “They stalked the ruined scrubland, searching for something to kill.” Later, when the boys discover their parents slain and their young sister, Mary, barely clinging to life, they must swallow their father’s pride and seek help from his nemesis, a deeply racist land baron called John Sullivan.

While Sullivan’s doctor and wife tend to Mary, the teens accompany Sullivan and a posse of Native Queensland police to rout the aboriginal Kurrong tribe believed to be responsible for the McBride murders. Consumed by hate and a lust for revenge, Billy embraces Sullivan’s view of superiority over the land’s native inhabitants, even as the more sensitive Tommy questions everything.

Only Killers and Thieves is brutally violent and shocking, from its depiction of racial bias to its savage realism, but at its heart, it is a coming-of-age novel. Howarth includes many parallels to the novel’s Old West counterparts: a family trying to tame the land and create a livelihood for themselves amid a harsh, unforgiving climate; a rival landowner who threatens to control them at every turn; and the constant threat of attack by the region’s indigenous population. Howarth manages to infuse the old tropes with a depth of emotion and moral complication that will stay with readers long after closing the book.

 

This article was originally published in the February 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The story of a frontier family’s murder by a tribe of native peoples and the ensuing quest for vengeance has been written before. It’s a staple of many Western novels. What sets Only Killers and Thieves apart is its locale: not the late 19th-century American West but the untamed wilderness of the Australian outback.

FictionHistorical Fiction

Love in the West Wing

Review by Leslie Hinson

The latest novel from Amy Bloom (Lucky Us) is an achingly beautiful love story that unfolds through the eyes of Lorena Hickok, known as Hick, a great journalist and author who lived in the White House with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt as “her very special friend.” They were lovers, which was understood by family, the White House staff and even President Roosevelt.

Hick, who grew up amid poverty and abuse in South Dakota, stands by Eleanor’s side at events for many years, though she is cut out of most pictures. Like many relationships that are relegated to the shadows, Hick and Eleanor’s love exists in many incarnations over the decades. They part and come back together time and time again, sometimes as lovers, sometimes seeking the solace of familiarity, always trying to know each other completely.

Bloom brings incredible dimension to her historical figures, especially the wise and savvy Hick, who is apt to quote Emily Dickinson, Samuel Johnson or Shakespeare. Hick’s relationship with FDR is rendered with remarkable clarity, as she watches him give passionate speeches to inspire a nation during wartime, and as his withering body, ravaged by polio, is carried up the stairs at bedtime. Hick knows that Eleanor will never leave him, and despite her respect for the man, her jealousy can never be resolved.

White Houses is so gorgeously written that some passages need to be read more than once, or perhaps aloud, to fully appreciate their craftsmanship. A Roosevelt cousin describes Hick as erudite. To call this novel the same would be an understatement.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Behind the Book essay by Amy Bloom on White Houses.

This article was originally published in the February 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The latest novel from Amy Bloom (Lucky Us) is an achingly beautiful love story that unfolds through the eyes of Lorena Hickok, known as Hick, a great journalist and author who lived in the White House with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt as “her very special friend.” They were lovers, which was understood by family, the White House staff and even President Roosevelt.

FictionSpeculative FictionHistorical Fiction

Memento mori

Review by Gerry Paige Smith

The Black Death has draped a cloak of contagion across the landscape of southwest England in 1382. Traveling toward Exeter, where he carves the stone of the cathedral, John and his brother, William, navigate the growing horror of a plague that can touch any person, high or low. Surrounded by the grim proof of mortality, their conversation turns to the merit of good deeds versus faith alone as surety for life everlasting. But when the mounting corpses become too much to bear, John’s desperate attempt to save one life changes the fates of both brothers.

As they begin to suffer symptoms of plague, a disembodied voice offers John and William a choice: The brothers can travel home and chance delivering death to their family, or they can live six more days, awakening each morning in their beloved community, 99 years after each previous day. Choosing to spare their loved ones from the risk of plague, the brothers begin their journey forward through six centuries.

With each morning’s awakening, the community’s profound political and physical changes inspire both a sense of marvel and a growing dismay. In each new century, as the brothers’ home recedes further into the past, evidence of their existence becomes harder to find. Even John’s stone carvings erode and crumble, his physical mark on the world diminishing as time passes. The strides forward in time become a living tour of what follows after we are gone, the future that our present lives may—or may not—touch.

Combining his credentials as a bestselling historian with an intimate knowledge of Exeter and the surrounding landscape, author Ian Mortimer plumbs a dynamic sliver of the world through evolving cultural epochs. Casting a line into a historical moment defined by death, Mortimer reels in a narrative of persistence and hope. Addressing universal questions about our personal impact on the world to come, The Outcasts of Time is an erudite and thoughtful exploration of death that brings history to life.

The Black Death has draped a cloak of contagion across the landscape of southwest England in 1382. Traveling toward Exeter, where he carves the stone of the cathedral, John and his brother, William, navigate the growing horror of a plague that can touch any person, high or low. Surrounded by the grim proof of mortality, their conversation turns to the merit of good deeds versus faith alone as surety for life everlasting. But when the mounting corpses become too much to bear, John’s desperate attempt to save one life changes the fates of both brothers.

FictionHistorical MysteryHistorical Fiction

High society and murder

Review by Karen Ann Cullotta

If there were a literary recipe for bestselling author Lauren Willig’s novel The English Wife, it would include blending equal parts historical fiction and British murder mystery, a dash of “Downton Abbey” and a pinch of Edith Wharton’s Gilded Age.

That’s not to say The English Wife is cliché or formulaic; on the contrary, readers will be alternately delighted and shocked by this page-turner that features a dual narrative tethered to the social caste systems that straddled the pond in the late 19th century.

One of the novel’s two heroines, Georgie, is a former English showgirl and the wife of the wealthy American Bayard Van Duyvil—a blueblood from a distinguished, albeit dysfunctional, New York family. This unlikely match is kindled in London, where Bayard rescues Georgie from a life of poverty and hardship and brings her to New York, much to the chagrin of his mother, the formidable matriarch Mrs. Van Duyvil.

The tale begins with what appears to be a double murder at a New York society gala, and then unfolds in flashbacks, moving from late 19th-century London’s mean streets, where Georgie works as an actress, to the storied banks of the Hudson, where the Van Duyvil’s gracious manse is a hub for the old Dutch Knickerbocker society, which includes the Astors and Vanderbilts.

When Bayard’s sister, Janie, encounters an ambitious New York journalist determined to crack the case of the so-called Knickerbocker society murders, their working relationship evolves into a wary friendship, with the heartbroken heiress and cynical reporter both determined to uncover the truth.

This elegantly written tale will keep readers guessing until the final chapter.

If there were a literary recipe for bestselling author Lauren Willig’s novel The English Wife, it would include blending equal parts historical fiction and British murder mystery, a dash of “Downton Abbey” and a pinch of Edith Wharton’s Gilded Age.

FictionLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction

A New Orleans symphony

Review by Arlene McKanic

Has anyone written the Great Novel of New Orleans? If not, Nathaniel Rich’s sprawling, funny, tragic, generous new work, King Zeno, comes close. It reminded this reviewer of John Dos Passos’ U.S.A. trilogy, with its clever melding of real and fictional events, its snippets of newspaper articles and astonishingly memorable characters.

Like the U.S.A. novels, the action in King Zeno takes place around the time of World War I. An axe murderer is preying on Italian grocers and their families, and sometimes tosses what’s left of them into the dig site for the Industrial Canal. Sicilian-born Beatrice Vizzini is bankrolling the construction of the canal, which will connect the Mississippi with Lake Pontchartrain. (The canal is real; Beatrice is fictional.) The imperious Beatrice is ever worried about her son, Giorgio, a hulking brute who is probably not as stupid as he wants everyone to think he is.

Detective Bill Bastrop is on the Axman case. He is just back from the trenches and suffering from what we would now call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. More than this, he shot an innocent man suspected of being a robber—though this wasn’t taken very seriously, as the man was African-American. On the other side of town, Isadore “King” Zeno is a young man who can play a fierce cornet but has a pregnant wife and mother-in-law to support. The money just isn’t rolling in—until it is, thanks to a prank that he almost regrets.

Eventually, Bill and Isadore, Beatrice and Giorgio find themselves tangled in the Axman’s mayhem. Rich not only knows these folks and their loved ones, but he also knows New Orleans. He loves the honky-tonks, cathouses and bayous, the names of its streets and even the fetid mud and miasmic summer heat. He is cognizant of the city’s racial hierarchies, which may not be as brutal as those in neighboring Mississippi but still have the power to crush young black men. Readers will genuinely worry for Isadore and his friends, ever threatened by this sledgehammer of racism. Because of this, the ending is a nail-biter—with a twist.

King Zeno is the New Orleans novel we’ve been waiting for.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Has anyone written the Great Novel of New Orleans? If not, Nathaniel Rich’s sprawling, funny, tragic, generous new work, King Zeno, comes close. It reminded this reviewer of John Dos Passos’ U.S.A. trilogy, with its clever melding of real and fictional events, its snippets of newspaper articles and astonishingly memorable characters.

FictionHistorical Fiction

Brother of the Bard

Review by Matthew Jackson

There’s something audacious about fictionalizing even a portion of the life of William Shakespeare. Bernard Cornwell is well versed in historical writing—he’s perhaps the living king of the genre at this point—but this is Shakespeare we’re talking about. It’s intimidating territory, and not every novelist can do it well.

With his usual knack for detail and characterization, Cornwell plunges fearlessly into Shakespearean England for his latest novel. Fools and Mortals follows Richard, William’s brother, as he longs for a career on the London stage. Loyal to his brother, Richard watches as William rises through the ranks of English theater, even as his own career achieves nothing near the same level of success. This tests his loyalty, and things get worse when a manuscript goes missing, casting suspicion on Richard and threatening the lives of everyone around him.

The first thing readers will notice in Fools and Mortals, as they will in Cornwell’s The Last Kingdom, is the voice. Richard tells his own story, and as crafted by Cornwell’s skilled hands, he tells it beautifully. Right away, there’s a sense of the Shakespearean balance of wit and drama. Just as he did with his series of novels on Alfred the Great, Cornwell places us in proximity to history we know and then brushes greater depth and detail into the personal story he’s trying to convey. Readers will long to hear more from Richard and for more details about Elizabethan stagecraft.

If you love historical fiction, Shakespeare, Cornwell’s work or all of the above, Fools and Mortals is a must-read. It’s a riveting novel driven by a distinctive voice that’s sure to hook you.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

If you love historical fiction, Shakespeare, Cornwell’s work or all of the above, Fools and Mortals is a must-read. It’s a riveting novel driven by a distinctive voice that’s sure to hook you.

FictionHistorical Fiction

Behind every great man . . .

Review by Sarah Waller

Following The Other Einstein, her debut novel about Albert Einstein’s first wife, author Marie Benedict once again centers a stirring historical tale on a one-of-a-kind woman. In Carnegie’s Maid, Benedict creates a fictional woman who influences Andrew Carnegie’s transformation from industrial tycoon to the creator of thousands of free lending libraries, resulting in an imaginative story of forbidden love and the injustice of social classes.

Clara Kelley, an immigrant farm girl from Ireland, arrives in industrial 1860s Pittsburgh and expects to work in a mill to support her family back home. Instead, just off the ship, she assumes the identity of a different Clara Kelley, a second-class passenger who did not make the voyage, and finds herself the lady’s maid to Andrew Carnegie’s mother. Using her quick wit and family-taught education, Clara soon becomes indispensable, but she endangers her position by forming an ever-deepening relationship with Andrew, learning his business secrets and sharing ideas.

Benedict evokes the time period through her graceful writing style, which can seem stiff at first but soon immerses readers in “Downton Abbey”-esque drama. With meticulous historical detail, the luxury of the Carnegies’ world is juxtaposed with the destitution of the poor, as Clara balances her place among the elite while sympathizing with her family, sending money to them overseas and bringing her cousins food on her scarce holidays.

Though Clara is fictional, it’s as important as ever to have stories of the strong women behind men, reminding us of the invisible feminists throughout history.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Following The Other Einstein, her debut novel about Albert Einstein’s first wife, author Marie Benedict once again centers a stirring historical tale on a one-of-a-kind woman. In Carnegie’s Maid, Benedict creates a fictional woman who influences Andrew Carnegie’s transformation from industrial tycoon to the creator of thousands of free lending libraries, resulting in an imaginative story of forbidden love and the injustice of social classes.

YA FictionYAHistorical Fiction

The enduring power of books to calm and comfort

Review by Jennifer Kitchel

Antonio Iturbe’s prize-winning third novel, The Librarian of Auschwitz, translated by Lilit Thwaites, is a haunting lyrical tale in the vein of Elie Wiesel’s Night and Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl.

Iturbe interviewed real-life Auschwitz prisoner and survivor Dita Kraus in preparation for writing this fictionalized account of her life. Moving back and forth in time, Iturbe shows us Dita’s journey—from her middle-class family home in Prague to the Jewish ghetto known as Terezín, and finally to the family camp at Auschwitz. At 14, Dita is too old for the horrifying “lessons” being taught to the other imprisoned children, but she is entrusted to collect and distribute the few books snuck into the camp. Over the course of a year, the reader walks with Dita as she experiences the dehumanizing terror of life in a concentration camp.

The daily horrors of imprisonment are palpable, but Iturbe blends in moments of joy, love and mystery—each all the more poignant for their rarity. An essential addition to any reading list focused on the Holocaust, The Librarian of Auschwitz is best suited for an older teen audience due to some language and violence.

 

Jennifer Bruer Kitchel is the librarian for a Pre-K through 8th level Catholic school.

Antonio Iturbe’s prize-winning third novel, The Librarian of Auschwitz, translated by Lilit Thwaites, is a haunting lyrical tale in the vein of Elie Wiesel’s Night and Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl.

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