British-born Maud Heighton, the protagonist of Imogen Robertson’s latest page-turner, The Paris Winter, couldn’t have picked a worse time to come study painting at Academie Lafond. It’s the winter of 1909-1910, when the Seine overflowed its banks, flooding people out of their homes and sucking away the very ground beneath their feet. Perhaps Maud had some idea that she would be a starving artist for a few weeks before she sold her first painting and made a big splash at the Salon, but she had no idea what she was in for. She’s broke, starving, freezing and probably on the verge of a deathly illness.

Fortunately for Maud, her rather desperate situation is noticed and she’s sent to be the companion for a young woman named Sylvie Morel, who lives with her brother. Now, Maud has a warm bed to sleep in and some decent food to eat. The Morels are kind to her. Everything goes well, until, of course, it doesn’t. The bad stuff includes but isn’t limited to gaslighting, attempted murder and an ingenious jewel heist that almost works. It all engenders in Maud a lust for vengeance that recalls Greek tragedy. The phrase “revenge is a dish best served cold” seems not to have occurred to her. But will it be a tragedy for her, or a tragedy for the people who betrayed her?

Robertson is skillful at conjuring up not only a twisty, gripping plot, but also compelling characters. There’s the upright, intelligent and ambitious Maud and her wealthy, compassionate fellow artist Tatiana, who’s in Paris with two fussy aunts who want her to marry some rich Russian dolt against her will. There’s the earthy life model Yvette, neurasthenic Sylvie and an American-born Countess who’s no better than she ought to be. These multidimensional characters and Robertson’s descriptions of Belle Epoque Paris—even of rats in ancient, flooding cellars—make the reader want to visit, even for a day.

Set in the 1800s, Citizens Creek chronicles two different lives in its two parallel sections: those of Cow Tom, a slave born in Alabama and sold to a Creek Indian chief prior to his 10th birthday, and his granddaughter, Rose.

Cow Tom possessed many unique gifts. As a healer and expert in keeping cattle healthy, he became a kind of cow-whisperer as he grew, a trait that later manifested itself in the ability to master all kinds of languages. Armed with dreams of freeing himself, his wife and their two young daughters and establishing themselves in the Creek Tribe, Cow Tom must navigate working as a translator for the U.S. military and traveling the Trail of Tears, among other trials.

Following in Cow Tom’s footsteps is his granddaughter Rose, who, in her efforts to lead the family, becomes the matriarch and guardian of his legacy. As she tries to ensure her family is provided for and grapples with love, motherhood, political and social hostility, Rose proves her story is timeless.

Set against a vibrant backdrop of American expansion, black emancipation and the displacement of Native-American nations, Citizens Creek is a story of identity, community, family and an individual’s will to make a difference.

California-born Lalita Tademy is the author of Cane River, a best-selling novel and a 2001 Oprah Book Club Selection, and its critically acclaimed sequel, Red River. Here, she uses frank, descriptive prose that teems with life as it depicts Cow Tom’s travels and Rose’s trials and triumphs. Some books hold whole worlds between their pages—Citizens Creek is one of them.

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

Peter Schoeffer has no choice. Johann Fust raised him as his own son, and Peter owes him everything—even if that means he must do the work of the devil.

This is how Peter feels about Fust’s request that Peter abandon his promising career as a scribe to apprentice to Johann Gutenberg. The cunning inventor’s rote technique of making books seems blasphemous to all who learn of it. Anxious that the Church will feel the same, Gutenberg and his financial backer Fust vow to keep their press a secret until they complete a massive undertaking: the printing and binding of nearly 200 copies of the Holy Bible, a book with well over a thousand pages.

At first, the clandestine workshop in Mainz is just as Peter imagined it would be—a brutal, spirit-crushing, suffocating place full of molten metal and jet-black sludge. But as Peter devotes all his waking hours to the task of printing with movable type, he slowly discovers printing’s beauty, its power and its art.

Gutenberg’s Apprentice is, in large part, a depiction of the creative process. It highlights the ingenuity, patience and skill that often shape seemingly lifeless mechanisms, but it also examines the interdependent and often rocky relationships that exist between individuals involved in collaborative, creative activities. Those with ideas, skill and funding all depend upon each other to make their vision a reality—which makes betrayal all the more brutal, as the novel shows.

Letterpress printer Alix Christie’s debut novel also asks profound questions. How do we determine whether the work we’re doing is good or evil? Is a greater dissemination of knowledge through mass production worth the creative touches and soulful variations it often loses? Gutenberg’s Apprentice is an imaginative recounting of history that, despite a 15th-century setting, reflects many of today’s chief matters of concern. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the ever-changing art of publishing.

RELATED CONTENT: Read Alix Christie's behind-the-book essay.

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

Lin Enger’s moving and enlightening second novel resonates emotionally and intellectually on several levels: as an homage to the vanished American bison, a reflection on the forceful removal of Northern Plains Indians from their homelands and an engaging family saga peopled with characters who could have been this Midwestern author’s own ancestors.

The High Divide opens in the summer of 1886, when Ulysses Pope, husband to Norwegian-born Gretta and father to Eli, 16, and younger son Danny, abruptly disappears from their western Minnesota home. Shortly thereafter, Eli finds a letter to his father from a woman in Bismarck—so he and Danny hop a freight train west, following their only clue to their father’s whereabouts. Gretta, in turn, embarks on her own journey, “with two dollars left in her purse and not a single blood relative in all the North American continent—aside from her own two sons, whose whereabouts were unknown to her.” She instead heads east to St. Paul, the home of Ulysses’ sister, who shares details of her brother’s military years that were unknown to Gretta—and which may somehow be connected to his disappearance now, nearly two decades later.

Enger entwines Ulysses’ odyssey with the actual Hornaday Expedition of 1886, during which the curator of the National Museum in Washington, D.C., now the Smithsonian, sought to kill a large number of the vanishing bison—paradoxically, to stuff and preserve them for future generations.

Though the reader gradually learns the facts behind Ulysses’ disappearance, his ultimate search is for forgiveness for his part in what he now knows is the decimation of the Cheyenne, Crow, Lakota and Blackfeet tribes that were part of the land on which he was raised. Enger’s gripping story is a marvelous blend of strong characters and a brilliant depiction of a land and time now lost.

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

Eliza Granville’s suspenseful novel hearkens back to the fairy tales we remember from childhood—but not the sanitized Disney versions. These are the darker tales about witches, ovens and children lost in the deep woods, fleeing for their lives.

Gretel and the Dark tells two stories that eventually connect, revealing the mystery at the heart of the novel. The first concerns Krysta, a young girl in Nazi-controlled Germany whose widowed father works at an infirmary with an ominous mission. Granville reveals this world through the eyes of Krysta, a spirited and stubborn girl who seems to delight in confounding her adult caretakers. Krysta uses elements of fairy stories to explain her father’s increasingly tortured mental state and the bizarre world in which she finds herself. As Granville gradually unveils the chilling details—which her innocent narrator does not fully understand—we readers recognize the true terror of her situation.

The second story, told in alternate chapters, takes place in the late 19th century. Josef Breuer, a psychoanalyst of some renown, becomes fascinated by a nameless, beautiful woman claiming to be a machine. She’s in search of a monster, she tells him, who must be destroyed before he spawns more monsters just like himself. Breuer is determined to discover who she is and why she bears a smudged tattoo of numbers on her forearm.

This combination of history, mystery and fairy tale makes for engrossing and irresistible reading—right up to the ultimately redemptive final twist.

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

It is said that truth is often stranger than fiction, but what happens when truth can only be found in the pages of fiction? Readers of Laila Lalami’s latest novel, The Moor’s Account, may find themselves asking exactly that question, as fact and fantasy coalesce in a masterful story that shines a new light on one of the darkest eras of history.

A sweeping saga that revisits the Spanish conquest of the New World in the 1500s, The Moor’s Account is told through the eyes of a Moroccan man named Mustafa, born as a Muslim and reborn as a Christian named Estebanico when he is sold into slavery. Stripped of his freedom, Estebanico travels far across the ocean in the service of the legendary Narváez expedition to seize the modern-day Gulf Coast—and all its incumbent riches—in the name of Spain. But in this foreign land, everything that can go wrong—from hostile Indians and debilitating disease—does. A mission bent on conquest soon turns into a desperate bid for survival, and Estebanico finds himself questioning who the savages really are and what it means to truly be free.

The backbone of Estebanico’s story is a brutal one that even the most disinterested history student will be familiar with. And yet, with Estebanico as the narrator and Lalami at the helm, the events take on such a deeply personal tone that it is all too easy to believe that The Moor’s Account is actually a long-lost memoir written from a shamefully overlooked perspective. Lalami spent more than four years dwelling in the murky excised portions of historical accounts to piece together this story, based on actual events. The compelling end result rings so true, it feels like one of history’s silent witnesses has finally been given back his voice. Whether you have a special interest in this period of history or not, Estebanico’s miraculous journey is not to be missed.

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

It’s estimated that around 500 women passed themselves off as men so they could fight in the Civil War. In the haunting Neverhome, Laird Hunt deftly imagines one such situation and its heartbreaking repercussions.

She calls herself Ash Thompson, a farmer who enlists to fight for the Union. Ash quickly earns a reputation as a brave and stoic soldier, even in the direst of battles. But Ash is actually Constance, an Indiana farmer’s wife who left her husband behind to fight. Her reasons become clearer as this beautifully paced novel unfolds, and Ash goes from a war hero to a broken woman looking for a way home.

After Ash is revealed as a woman and accused of spying for the South, she is jailed in deplorable conditions, nearly going mad while awaiting a chance to escape. On her trek back to her farm, many of those she encounters help her in their own ways: a trio of orphaned sisters; the wife of the General who commanded Ash. Others stick to their own path, fighting their demons as they make their way home from war. “Here and there you would cross a discharged veteran still had bombs and bullets flying in his eyes,” she said.

Hunt is at the top of his game with Neverhome, a mesmerizing book whose quiet surface belies its rich depths, up until its heartbreaking conclusion. His impeccable ear for authentic Civil War-era dialect—and his vivid battle scenes—breathe life into a novel that explores what happens when the call of duty collides with the lure of home.

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

It is 1922, and England and her citizens are still recovering from the upheaval of the First World War: High unemployment, disillusioned ex-soldiers and severely strained circumstances are commonplace. Twenty-seven-year-old Frances Wray and her mother are living in South London. Both of Frances’ brothers died in the war, and her father’s recent death left the two women close to financial ruin. Even with the dismissal of servants and Frances taking over the housework and meals, the Wrays no longer have enough to live on. Their decision to take in lodgers, or “paying guests” as they genteelly refer to them, leads to an event as ultimately life-altering as the war itself.

The Wrays’ lodgers are a young married couple, Leonard and Lillian Barber. The lack of privacy and the added noise prove troublesome, but Frances, who is cut off from people her own age, puts up with Leonard’s overly familiar conversation and is drawn to Lily’s artistic nature and seductive good looks. The budding friendship between the two women deepens, and when Frances confesses her sexual attraction to women, Lily is intrigued and reciprocates. Their affair reveals the cracks in the Barbers’ marriage as well as the depths of Frances’ loneliness. When a marital argument leads to a fatal accident, the novel swiftly transforms from a romance about forbidden love to a fast-paced courtroom drama, and Frances finds herself in the middle of an ethical dilemma that casts a deep shadow on her relationship with Lily.

Fans of Sarah Waters’ previous novels (Fingersmith, The Little Stranger) know that she is a gifted storyteller with a way of bringing historical eras to life. She is sensitive to the telling details of character and class. Some of the strongest sections of The Paying Guests depict Frances’ discomfort as she navigates uneasily between her mother’s expectations and those of the Barbers; as bold as she may be in her desires, she is easily discomfited by the middle-class lodgings and speech of Lily’s mother and sisters. In addition, the hidden nature of the women’s relationship proves a double-edged sword—though Frances wishes she could proclaim her love out loud, she also knows that its very invisibility keeps her safe. With the swiftly shifting mores of postwar British society as a backdrop, Waters once again provides a singular novel of psychological tension, emotional depth and historical detail.

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

It’s been quite a run lately for Civil War-era African Americans. Not only was Solomon Northrup’s 1853 memoir, Twelve Years a Slave, adapted into a triple Academy Award winner (including Best Picture), but now author Jeffery Renard Allen has resurrected the career—if perhaps not quite the true life story—of Thomas Greene Wiggins, also known as Blind Tom, in his second novel, Song of the Shank. Wiggins was perhaps the most unlikely of stars ever thrust on the international stage; sightless, probably autistic, heavyset (though somewhat handsome in a rough-hewn way) and, for the first 16 years of his life, a slave.

Some people have suggested that Blind Tom never ultimately escaped his "previous condition of servitude," but that’s another story for another time.

In many ways, Allen treats language in Song of the Shank the way an Impressionist approached paint: a little color laid on a canvas in a bold swipe meant to signify something much more complex than itself. Stand too close, and it’s a nearly indecipherable jumble of form and light and shadow; step back, and an image emerges, but it calls upon all the senses of the viewer to bring it into focus and give it meaning.

Allen is remarkably fluid with time and perspective as well. The novel opens in 1866, but hopscotches back as far as 1849 and forward to 1869, roughly the first third of Blind Tom’s life. And while some of that extraordinary life has been fairly well documented—Wiggins was the first African American ever to give a command performance at the White House, at the request of President James Buchanan—many of its details are speculative. It’s here that Allen grabs the reins and gallops as if astride a thoroughbred. While some critics have compare his storytelling to that of Beckett, Pynchon and Gabriel García Márquez, perhaps the more appropriate point of reference is Walter Mosley’s depiction of Robert Johnson in his 1995 tour de force, RL’s Dream.

Unlike Johnson, Blind Tom didn’t leave any actual recordings behind (though pianist John Davis released an excellent re-creation of Wiggins’ work in 2000), but both of their lives were surrounded by myth, and the gaps allow Allen a wide berth in reimagining a mosaic that forms a fairly complete, if somewhat fragmented, portrait.

That he pieced together anything readable at all, given the paucity of actual documentary evidence, is testament to the tenacity of Allen’s decade-long research journey and his narrative prowess. But that’s damning the novel with faint praise. He’s managed to gather the caustic consequences of fame, a mini-history of American race relations, Reconstruction, the solitary interior life of an artist, and a whole lot more, between the covers of a book worthy of any attentive reader’s notice.

Thane Tierney lives in Inglewood, California, less than a mile from where Ray Charles, Lowell Fulson and Ella Fitzgerald are buried.

Chinese-American author Lisa See has made her mark in the realm of historical fiction by melding her well-researched historical sagas with strong female characters linked either by birth, as in Shanghai Girls (2009) and Dreams of Joy (2011), or by lifelong friendship, as in her breakout book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005).

In her ninth book, See explores the Chinese community in San Francisco, where three young women meet on an evening in 1938 as they audition for spots as dancers at the glamorous Forbidden City nightclub. Grace Lee has fled from an abusive father in Plain City, Ohio, where her family members were the only Chinese she had ever seen. She becomes lost in the maze of Chinatown, and is rescued by Helen Fong, the only daughter in a very traditional family. Her father expects her to marry soon and become a traditional Chinese wife and mother.

At the audition, the two meet the flamboyant Ruby Tom, a young Japanese woman passing as Chinese. She loves glitter, she tells her new friends, and she wants to become famous. The three are hired to dance at the Forbidden City, and soon each one becomes a star—while at the same time vowing to support one another through good and bad.

See traces the lives of these three memorable women through chapters told in their alternating voices, drawing the reader into their struggles, their romantic adventures and their backstories, which are only gradually revealed. As the story reaches World War II and then beyond, the women face racism, as well as more challenges in their personal lives and their careers.

See’s compelling story of these three resilient women—connected by fierce loyalty, as well as one act of betrayal that threatens that bond—is backed by meticulous research into the Chinese-American nightclub era, making her portrayal of this little-known period in history all the more memorable.

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