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.

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.

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.

The story of our digital age is sadly lacking in its inclusion of prominent women. One notable exception is Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace. The daughter of the iconic poet Lord Byron, Ada played a critical role in shaping public perception of one of the first computing devices: Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine. In her richly detailed Enchantress of Numbers, Jennifer Chiaverini presents a vivid portrait of Ada’s too-short life while illuminating the significance of her professional accomplishments.

Narrated in her keenly intelligent voice, Ada’s story is one of conflict between the two sides of her genetic and cultural inheritance: the fiery, artistic temperament of her father, who chafed against polite society’s constraints; and her mother’s desire for order and control, rooted in the conventions of England’s 19th-century nobility. Ada’s true gift is her ability to marry the sensibility of a poet to the keen mind of a scientist.

Enchantress of Numbers expertly balances scenes in royal salons and English country houses with Ada’s reflections on the mathematical principles that helped her push the potential of Babbage’s invention beyond expectations. Chiaverini’s latest will appeal to readers who enjoy 19th-century historical fiction and want a glimpse into the dawn of a technological revolution.

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

Based on true events, David Rocklin’s sweeping second novel conveys the complex speech of bodies and art through beautiful prose. This story of a forbidden bond is compelling and tender, revealing the language of love that is often silent.

After the 1868 war between British forces and the Ethiopian Empire (Abyssinia), Prince Alamayou, the son of the emperor Tewedros, is taken to Windsor under the wing of Queen Victoria. Philip Layard, a doctor’s apprentice who met Alamayou as he was escaping the flames of his burning home, travels to England with him and becomes his companion to help him understand the court’s culture. Although Philip doesn’t speak any Amharic (the language of Abyssinia), he and Alamayou find that words aren’t necessary. They communicate with gestures and through Alamayou’s paintings, finding a love they are careful to hide. Alamayou’s artwork captures the attention of the queen, who is mourning her late husband. Alamayou and Victoria form an unlikely friendship, but once he starts to use English, it is clear he will not play the “grateful foreigner” role. When Parliament wants to try Alamayou for his father’s crimes, Alamayou’s friends must find a way to convey his innocence to the court. All the while, the two men wonder if they’ll have to separate from the home they’ve found in each other.

In this important novel, Rocklin captures the raw emotions surrounding the era’s realities of sexuality, gender and race, and the fear of losing everything. Though Rocklin stays in the heads of his characters a bit too much, this is historical fiction at its most delicate, revealing a desire for history to be reversed, to undo the damage of privilege and xenophobia.

Readers will feel present with Alamayou and Philip in this heartbreaking, stirring portrait.

Victorian and modern-day England overlap in Michèle Robert’s The Walworth Beauty, a richly told ghost story set deep in one of London’s most historic neighborhoods and populated by an ex-policeman, a redundant academic and a mysterious landlady whose reach extends beyond the centuries.

In 1851, Joseph Benson has been employed by Henry Mayhew, the real-life documentarian of Victorian working-class life, to research the lives of prostitutes. A former policeman, Benson is familiar with life on the streets and the choices made by the working poor. But he struggles to remain impartial; it’s all too easy to give in to the women’s charms and tricks, especially when compared to his dreary home life. Professional inquiries bring him to Apricot Place and the elegant Mrs. Dulcimer, who runs a boarding house. Benson assumes it is a brothel, but quickly discovers that Mrs. Dulcimer’s life is not so easily classified.

More than a century later, Madeleine moves to Apricot Place after she is laid off from her position as an English professor. Engrossed by the old neighborhood, she wanders the streets, a modern-day flâneuse befriending the neighbors and immersing herself in the sights, sounds and smells. But the deeper she delves into her new environs, the more she senses echoes of a ghostly sort. A disturbing encounter with a widowed minister in a bar leaves her shaken. Is he stalking her, or is it something supernatural?

A novel of dual narratives always risks one being more interesting than the other, but Roberts keeps her interlocked stories in balance, perhaps because her use of sensuous detail serve both so well. Roberts, is a prolific novelist whose previous books have been nominated for the Booker Prize, is better known in the U.K. than the U.S., but The Walworth Beauty might just change that.

Nicola Cornick’s House of Shadows blends a supernaturally tinged historical drama à la Outlander with a cozy village mystery to addictive, mesmerizing effect.

After the disappearance of her brother, Ben, present-day artist Holly Ansell discovers that Ben had become obsessed with Elizabeth Stuart, a 17th-century Bohemian queen whose reign was so short she became known as the Winter Queen. Elizabeth eventually returned to her homeland of England amid rumors that she had secretly married her devoted protector William Craven and was in possession of a treasure with occult powers.

Holly also discovers a Regency courtesan’s diary in her brother’s possessions. Lavinia Flyte’s journal, which Cornick cleverly models on real 19th-century sex worker tell-alls, leads Holly to believe that Elizabeth’s treasure is located somewhere in the ruins of Ashdown House.

In a dreamy, elegiac tone that blurs the lines between past and present, the natural and the supernatural, Cornick stitches together connections between the three women. Even given their enormous differences in class, Elizabeth and Lavinia are both dependent on the good will of men for any semblance of power and must present themselves as objects of desire—even the (initially) happily married Elizabeth. And when both Holly’s and Lavinia’s hunts for the treasure are waylaid by unexpected romance, Cornick explores how powerful yet fragile the bonds of love can be, especially in the first rush of attraction. Their plots seem stuck in time, existing within the season of a relationship when minutes last for hours, the swirl of emotions slowing time to a crawl.

Conversely, Elizabeth’s storyline spans decades, enough time for the instant spark between her and William to accumulate years of regrets and resentments. Theirs is a tragic romance in slow motion, with both parties moving inexorably apart due to sins committed against each other, but with memories of their shared happiness still painfully vivid.

Atmospheric and elegant, House of Shadows casts a hypnotic spell.

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

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.