Although it’s long been known that Marie Antoinette was hardly the extravagant, hateful woman often depicted in history, she just hasn’t been able to shake her let them eat cake image, even after more than 200 years. By the time she was publicly beheaded in 1793, Marie Antoinette had earned the wrath of virtually an entire nation. Rumors flew about her sexual exploits and her lavish spending sprees, and mobs in Paris waited to kill her with their own hands. It must have been a terrifying time for the queen of France, who by then was a mother and a key adviser to her husband, Louis XVI, a meek man who was ill-suited for the duties of a king. Carolly Erickson offers a stark, fascinating view of the queen in The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette, a fictionalized journal that is a strikingly believable account of what she might have felt as she watched the French monarchy crumble.

In truth, the queen did not do much to help her own cause. As someone whose chief purpose in life was producing an heir to the throne, Marie Antoinette lived aimlessly, filling her days by remodeling her many estates and starting new fashion trends among the royal court. Her idea of economy was wearing a pair of slippers at least twice. She rarely ventured beyond the gates of her palace and had little concept of the poverty in which her subjects lived.

Yet Erickson allows the queen frequent flashes of humanity. In one entry, Marie Antoinette is horrified to stumble across two homeless women who froze to death in the palace gardens. And to think that last night while these poor women were out here freezing, we were dancing at Madam Solange’s ball, she wrote, noting that she arranged a funeral mass for the two unknown paupers.

Erickson has written extensively about royalty, including the Marie Antoinette biography To the Scaffolding. Erickson’s fondness for her subject is clear, but she wisely refrains from romanticizing the queen, and as a result, The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette is an astonishingly fresh portrait of one of the most talked-about women in history. Amy Scribner writes from Olympia, Washington.

Once upon a time in 1903, 12-year-old Diamante Mazzucco and his nine-year-old cousin Vita left their small village in Italy and traveled in the company of more than 2,000 other hopeful immigrants on the SS Republic to begin new lives in America. Vita, an impressively poignant and thoroughly entertaining novel by Italian author Melania Mazzucco, is their fascinating story. As they learn how to survive in an often strange and sometimes inhospitable culture, the two young immigrants whose story is based upon that of Mazzucco’s own ancestors encounter powerful passions, unimaginable poverty and heartbreaking challenges. Throughout the erratic courses of their lives, Diamante and Vita join the millions of resourceful and resilient immigrants who have given America something of their souls, ideas, feelings and dreams. Diamante’s experiences are both harrowing and humbling; even though he had ever since leaving the reassuring familiarity of Italy dared to dream of a different life, he ultimately believes himself to have been betrayed both by the dream and by America. While Vita’s life in her new country is often no less traumatic and devastating than Diamante’s, she learns to trust in what she thinks is the great lesson of the American experience: have an unshakeable faith in a better tomorrow.

This uniquely crafted work is a modern woman’s attempt to rediscover the nearly invisible historical tracks left by two children whose legendary experiences, failures and successes have left an indelible impression on subsequent generations of the Mazzucco family. Vita was awarded the Strega Prize in 2003, Italy’s leading literary award. Now American readers (so many of whom have families who also shared in the great American immigrant experience) have an opportunity to enjoy this powerful portrait of Diamante, Vita and America a sweeping saga of hope and disappointment, love and loss, and endurance and success in the face of staggering odds. Tim Davis teaches literature at the University of West Florida.

Robert Morgan paints a searing portrait of a North Carolina family during the 1920s in his latest novel, This Rock. Ginny Powell, widowed for years, tries to keep her sons together while they struggle to survive in a grim Appalachian valley. Moody, true to his name, looms sullen and mean-spirited, running moonshine and developing a reputation as a knife-fighter. The younger brother, Muir, dreams of building things and escaping the valley. The conflict between the two runs rampant throughout the book, spilling over into internecine violence.

As he demonstrated in Gap Creek, a widely admired novel that became an Oprah Book Club selection, Morgan has a gift for capturing the cadences and diction of North Carolina mountain people. An honesty bordering on intense self-reflection graces the voices of both Ginny and Muir, who alternate in narrating the novel. Ginny remains preoccupied with making peace between her sons, and her anguish at Moody’s self-destructive behavior parallels the anxiety she feels with Muir’s restlessness. She is a tough but tender woman, tempered by tragedy and hardship, fixated on her family. She is also a curious hybrid of Pentecostal and Baptist, and she limns her story with a heavy spiritual tone. The chapters narrated by Muir also reveal a spirituality (at the age of 16, he feels called to be a preacher, and later, in a moment of drunken epiphany, he charges himself with building a church) as well as his wanderlust. At one point, Muir lights out for Canada, only to encounter bewildering cities and people on his journey. This collision of urban and rural proves too intense, and he eventually returns to North Carolina chastened and humbled.

Morgan’s prose is sharp and saturated with details, and he has a particular talent for describing the intricacies of manual labor. He can spend pages chronicling the minutiae of clearing land on a mountain in order to build a road, though never in a fashion to bore or stunt the story’s flow. Indeed, he imbues his writing with a sort of lyrical sheen, taking particular delight in illustrating with words the mountains, forests and rivers of Appalachia. The sum of these parts is a novel that explores the relationship between people and land in a way both moving and spiritual.

Michael Paulson teaches English in Baltimore.

One of the odder things about art vs. life is that synchronicities, coincidences and generation-spanning family patterns occur in real life that one would never believe in fiction unless the writer is exceptionally skilled. In her latest novel, October Suite, writer Maxine Clair displays the required talent as she deals with the fortunes and misfortunes of the Brown family, particularly October, the book’s conflicted heroine.

The novel takes place in the 1950s Midwest, where October not the name she was born with, but one she adopted as a tribute to her mother works as a school teacher. Having striven all her life to be a proper Negro lady in order to distance herself from an exceptionally fraught legacy, she is nevertheless seduced and abandoned by the married handyman at her boarding house. Times being what they were, the disgraced October takes refuge with her sister Vergie, her husband Gene and the two maiden aunts who raised the girls after tragic circumstances took their parents from them. When her son David is born, October, resentful over the failure of her affair and possibly suffering from postpartum depression, hands him over to Vergie, who possessive and loving can’t tolerate the thought of anyone ever telling him the truth. From then on, Clair quietly uncovers the real story behind the sisters’ upbringing and the recurring patterns that have both blessed and cursed their family.

October is a fascinating character, tidy but hankering after pleasure, a bit selfish and a bit rigid but essentially kind-hearted. She is jealous of Vergie’s relationship with her son but grateful to her, obviously intelligent but just as obviously dumb when it comes to her love life. Vergie, unable to have children of her own, is all unleashed maternal passion, ready to take on her sister if it means sparing David pain. The minor characters are also well drawn, particularly the maiden aunts Frances and Maude, both strong, funny and insistent about their own version of the family myth; Leon the jazz musician October finally realizes she’s in love with; and Foots, Leon’s grizzled mentor who has a past of his own.

The award-winning author of the novel Rattlebone, Clair evokes a time and place beautifully; a snowfall that begins in the morning and buries a tall fence by lunchtime; 78s played on Victrolas; Negro teachers’ clubs; chenille bedspreads in a boarding house room; the cut of a shirtwaist dress. The sad and lovely story of October Suite lingers in the mind like the first hint of fall in the Midwest.

Arlene McKanic writes from Jamaica, New York.

<B>Renaissance man’s Revolutionary tale</B> Like many prominent Revolutionary figures John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson former president Jimmy Carter is a Renaissance man, a person with a wide array of interests and expertise. A peanut farmer, a president and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, Carter is also a prolific writer who has published 16 books since leaving office in 1981. Now he has drawn on his keen interest in the American Revolution from the Southern perspective to produce the first novel by an American president. <B>The Hornet’s Nest</B> is a sweeping historical saga set largely in the Carolinas and Georgia. It begins in 1763 and ends some 20 years later, around 1783, when the main character, Ethan Pratt, returns to rebuild his life and what is left of his devastated homestead. Although Ethan emerges as the leading figure in the story, Carter enlists a whole regiment of characters, American, British and Indian, to tell his tale. This many-sided panorama of the Revolution reveals that every faction had legitimate motivations for its stance, but the thirst for revenge made them equally capable of unspeakably horrific acts. Raised in Philadelphia where their father is a shoemaker, Ethan and his brother Henry head south after each of them gets married. Henry, the eldest, has always been politically inclined, and early in the debate, he chooses to oppose British rule. He becomes part of the Regulator movement that meets its demise in 1771, and it is Ethan, the would-be pacifist, whose story takes us through the bitter battles and brings us doggedly back to pick up the pieces and begin the making of a new country. The narrative gets bogged down in historical data in places, but diligent readers will be rewarded with a renewed appreciation for the spirit of those early rebels who faced inconceivable losses but held on against all odds for the realization of one dream freedom.

<B>Gabaldon’s intriguing return</B> With <B>Lord John and the Private Matter</B>, best-selling author Diana Gabaldon launches a new series featuring a character well known to fans of her popular Outlander books. Lord John Grey was first introduced in <I>Dragonfly in Amber</I> as a 16-year-old soldier captured by Jamie Fraser during the Jacobite uprising. He was later administrator of the military prison where Fraser was confined. Which of the many private matters involving Lord John Grey are alluded to in the title sets the ambiguous tone for this period novel of deception and intrigue.

Set between June 1757 and August 1758, the novel opens as Grey is biding his time on the home front between military assignments. What he has seen in the confines of his London private club could inflame familial scandal if not handled discreetly. Grey suspects that Joseph Trevelyan the man engaged to Grey’s cousin, Olivia might have venereal disease. His inquiries about Trevelyan in London brothels are interrupted by his superiors, who appoint him to investigate the murder of a fellow soldier. Grey finds that his reputation, career and family could be irreparably damaged if he fails to be appropriately circumspect in this matter as well.

Gabaldon is known for her lengthy page-turners. This novel, which started out as a short story, is somewhat shorter than her previous work but just as packed with vivid description and detail. Gabaldon ably transports the reader to 18th century London, with all its reeking humanity and glitteringly elegant excess.

Grey’s sexual predilection and his relationship with Fraser are fleetingly mentioned throughout the book. These references might confuse those unfamiliar with the Outlander saga, but for the most part the book stands admirably on its own.

Fans are sure to snap up this volume. If you’ve not yet encountered Gabaldon’s earlier books but enjoy reading about spies and historic intrigue, this crafty tale of intertwined mysteries will surely please. <I>Linda Dailey Paulson is a Ventura, California-based freelance writer.</I>

A classical voice teacher isolated on the plains during the Depression tries to teach a black rodeo performer with one lung how to sing, drawing the wrath of the Ku Klux Klan. Not the stuff of your average novel, but then Ivan Doig does not write average novels. In Prairie Nocturne, with his usual idiosyncrasy, he brings back several characters from his highly applauded Montana Trilogy in a coda that opens up the 20th century and its achingly modern concerns.

Susan Duff, the endearing singing schoolgirl from Dancing at the Rascal Fair, reappears here as a mature, professionally talented freethinker. She is persuaded by her former lover, Wes, to take Monty of the gorgeous voice under her wing. In the process, she and Wes get back together again, and a whole new relationship develops between teacher and student as well.

Big Sky Country never had a better booster than Doig. Although the action swings to New York City for a while, the Two-Medicine territory he portrays so lovingly is not short-changed. Neither is Doig’s facility with words; his writer’s gait bucks a bit, but he keeps a sure hand on the reins. Although it would add to the reader’s enjoyment and understanding to have read the author’s earlier books, Prairie Nocturne stands amply on its own, dealing with Doig concerns in characteristic Doig fashion. As usual in his books, human beings who just barely fit into the jigsaw puzzles of each other’s worlds form the heart of the story. Even more typical are the unexpected perfect phrasings that litter his prose. One might quibble with certain plot turns, or with his portrayal of a career-conscious singer who relies so heavily on old songs his mother taught him. Still, any author who can remark on “the sort of person who would be fun on a picnic, if it was a short enough picnic,” and “the ancient impatience of water,” and “Montana’s long-legged miles” deserves a wide and loyal readership.

Maude McDaniel writes from Cumberland, Maryland.

William Faulkner did it. Thomas Hardy did it. Robb Forman Dew does it. Each of these authors invented imaginary geographical places and made them seem so real that literary tourists are often disappointed to find them not listed on the map. Robb Forman Dew accomplishes this feat with an imaginary town in Ohio.

The characters in Dew’s new novel, The Evidence Against Her, live in the invented town of Washburn, Ohio. The year is 1888, and so little happens in this sleepy hamlet that the birth of three children on a sunny day in September passes for big news.

Within a 12-hour span, the children are born into an enclave of friends and family on the prosperous side of the tracks in Washburn. The family of Leo Schofield gains their first child, a daughter; Leo’s brother John Schofield acquires a son, and their friend Daniel Butler, pastor of the Methodist church, also becomes the father of a son. These three children Lily Schofield, Warren Schofield and Robert Butler come into the world together through the accident of their mothers’ almost simultaneous labor pains, but the ties they forge are of their own making. Their alliance lasts a lifetime and grows richer and more complicated with the passage of the years.

In this story of an extended family and its town, nothing is as simple as the bucolic setting implies. Lily Schofield and Robert Butler marry, to no one’s surprise. The fact that Lily happens to be in love with her first cousin Warren Schofield is a pain she hides as best she can. When Warren falls in love with Agnes Claytor, a younger woman and outsider to the clan, the lives of the triumvirate of Lily, Robert and Warren undergo changes that none of them could have anticipated.

In this beautiful, moving novel, the life of a small town at the turn of the century is transformed through the wonder of the author’s sure grasp of her characters. Each character, each relationship is developed with such grace and intimacy that the Schofields, the Claytors and the Butlers come to seem like old friends. The relationship between Agnes Claytor and her mother, Catherine, an unwillingly transplanted Southern belle, is as memorable a portrait of the struggle between generations and cultures as any found in modern fiction.

The Evidence Against Her is an intricately constructed novel, as deceptively effortless as a stroll through Washburn’s Memorial Square on an early summer afternoon. Author Robb Forman Dew is the granddaughter of poet John Crowe Ransom and the goddaughter of novelist and poet Robert Penn Warren, and she does credit to her literary heritage. Like Eudora Welty, Caroline Gordon and Edith Wharton, Dew’s stories evolve magically out of place and time in response to her uncanny talent for fleshing out the abstract patterns of existence to the point where poetry and life converge.

Mary Garrett reads and writes in Middle Tennessee.

The famous photos of abolitionist/feminist Sojourner Truth show a dignified old lady with strong African features wearing a lace cap and an immaculate shawl. It’s hard to imagine her as a child, or even a young woman, but Jacqueline Sheehan does this skillfully in her novelization of Sojourner’s long and eventful life, Truth. Lucid, suspenseful and bitterly humorous, the book traces Sojourner’s life from an early 19th-century childhood spent in slavery in upstate New York to her emergence as an abolitionist itinerant preacher renamed Sojourner Truth in 1843 by God Himself.

Born in 1797 and named Isabella after the Spanish queen by her master, Sojourner is blessed to spend some of her childhood with her deeply spiritual parents, Bomefree (meaning tree in low Dutch, because he stood so straight and tall as a young man) and Mau Mau Bett, who love each other and their children as best they can. While Sheehan tweaks some of the facts surrounding Isabella/Sojourner’s life, the descriptions of the family’s experience as slaves are stunning.

After her master’s death, Isabella and her younger brother are sold, and neither she nor her parents ever hear from him again. Sheehan follows the young girl as she endures a cruel, English-speaking master who won’t even give her boots for the winter. Her mistress, Sally Dumont, takes the unhappiness of her own life out on Isabella. Yet few people are irredeemably evil in Sheehan’s reckoning, and the complexities of the characters are another attractive element of her book. Eventually, Sojourner redeems her son from slavery in Alabama, makes the famous “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech in Akron, Ohio, meets with Frederick Douglass and a beleaguered Abraham Lincoln to end up, to the reader’s relief, living a comfortable old age in Battle Creek, Michigan. Truth is an intriguing book about a woman of towering strength and integrity. Arlene McKanic writes from Jamaica, New York.