Historical Fiction

‘Until We Meet’ by Camille Di Maio

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It’s 1943. The United States has entered World War Two. Men are off fighting. Women are at home trying to fill the void. 

Four women sit by the water in New York City knitting socks

This is the setting in which Camille di Maio places her latest book Until We Meet. The historical fiction novel centers around two friend groups: one training for the war, and one back home—both waiting for the war to be over. 

Margaret, Gladys, and Dottie are in New York, taking over the absent men’s jobs (and often, to their surprise, enjoying them!), knitting socks for soldiers, and dreaming of their futures. Margaret’s brother has been deployed, and Dottie is in love with that brother and is secretly carrying his baby. Gladys is the model image of the modern woman in 1944: she doesn’t care for romance or gendered ideology, or anything that doesn’t fit her notion of what it means to be independent. Then there’s John (Margaret’s brother), Tom, and William, training for the war they know they will eventually be sent off to fight in.

In the age of letter writing, Dottie, John, and Margaret all share a pen pal in one another. John, though, feels bad for his friend William, who receives no letters from friends or family and asks his sister to write to William in the hopes of cheering him up. Margaret agrees, and so ensues a tangled story of friendship, love, and identity.

Eventually we come to be most closely tied with Margaret and Tom. Tom, who is now writing letters to Margaret in William’s stead, but still signing those letters, William. And Margaret who is eagerly awaiting the return of the men but also already lamenting the day she will have to give up her welding job at the navy yard to those same men. The story continues to gather speed, leaving readers reeling for Tom to come clean and for Margaret to stand strong and grab hold of the future she wants.

Until We Meet shows the strength of friendship, particularly female friendship and the way the women at home support and lift one another up. This is a time of change for women, and some of the women are more open than others to that change. Dottie wants a typical life of the stay-at-home mother, Gladys wants anything but, and Margaret, for the first time in her life, stands somewhere in between. While Dottie and Gladys feel sure in their dreams and feelings about independence and lifestyle, Margaret feels there is no place for someone like her: someone who does want a family but also wants a career and her own passion. This is something Margaret struggles with throughout the novel, trying to rationalize to herself how it could work, what she’s entitled to, and what it means to be a woman in the 1940s.

Much of the novel is told epistolary form, and these letters are often the most engaging sections of Until We Meet. Watching a relationship unfold between two characters who have never met is a hard move to pull off and has the corollary feel of online dating today. Do you know someone you haven’t met? Can you love someone you’ve only met through words? What changes about a person on the page, or today on the screen? 

In these two ways, Di Maio draws a nice corollary to how things in the 1940s were in some ways radically different, and in others almost a shadow image of the world we live in now. Women still struggle with the question of whether to stay home and raise a family, go to work, or juggle both. Love and friendship is, now more than ever, blooming in a space our bodies can’t reach.

A romantic and engaging novel, Until We Meet weaves a carefree sentiment with tough subject matter to offer a thoroughly enjoyable read. Di Maio does a fantastic job of painting the challenges present for both men and women at the time and portraying characters that embody each these changes in and challenges.

Until We Meet was released by Forever, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing owned by Hachette Book Company Group, Inc., in March 2022. You can purchase a copy of Until We Meet at your local independent bookstore.

Read more historical fiction reviews on Centered on Books.

FTC Disclaimer: This book was given to me in return for a fair and honest review of the text.

‘The Wolf Den’ by Elodie Harper

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Elodie Harper’s historical fiction debut The Wolf Den is a rare look into the lives of women living in bondage in the city of Pompeii just years before the monumental eruption of Mount Vesuvius. 

The cover of The Wolf Den is an orange and black illustration that portrays the women held captive there dancing, playing the lyre, and sitting contemplatively.

Harper takes readers on a journey into the heart of the Roman Empire’s Pompeii from the perspective of Amara. Amara, a Greek woman sold into sexual slavery, once lived a life of prestige and certainty, until the man who provided for her (her father) died. Now, Amara is forced to live as a prostitute at the behest of a conniving and unsympathetic master. Amara though, and we soon discover many of the other women, are not as servile as their male oppressors would hope. With her friends by her side, Amara aims to be free again one day, and readers join her as she battles both internal and external hurdles to that freedom.

Throughout the novel, Harper does nothing less than exalt women: their strength, the numerous obstacles they have had to overcome throughout history, and their bravery in the face of these struggles. There is not one point in the novel where womanhood, or the role of a female character is portrayed as anything less than powerful and capable. Never are women subjugated, fearful creatures in any way that diminishes their bodies, self-respect, or strength. Harper does a uniquely superb job in valorizing the women portrayed in The Wolf Den while also perfectly capturing the complicated nature of trauma, self-sacrifice, and independence. The story of these women’s lives is not romanticized in any way, but instead they are portrayed with dignity, a sense of humanity, and a voice that has been stripped away from them for centuries.

A truly compelling novel, it will be hard to put The Wolf Den down once you start. Harper’s plot, protagonist, worldbuilding, and prose are all of the highest quality and well worth the investment of all 400+ pages.

Previously published in the UK, The Wolf Den will make its US debut on March 29, 2022. Preorder a copy from your local independent bookstore today.

Read more historical fiction reviews on Centered on Books.

FTC Disclaimer: This book was given to me in return for a fair and honest review of the text.

‘One Must Tell the Bees’ by J. Lawrence Matthews

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A reimagining of Sherlock Holmes’ last adventure, One Must Tell the Bees: Abraham Lincoln and the Final Education of Sherlock Holmes by J. Lawrence Matthews starts out as a delightful and light read.

In Matthews’ version of this Holmes installment, we get stories within stories, mysteries layered on mysteries, and all in model Holmes style. At the beginning of One Must Tell the Bees, Watson receives a letter from the retired Holmes indicating that Holmes has started abusing narcotics again and needs Watson’s aid as a doctor. With his letter, Holmes also sends a manuscript detailing his first ever case and his own origin story. This is a story Holmes claims he’s told no one, not even Watson: one that involves the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and Abraham Lincoln. Watson, perturbed by the urgent nature of his friends’ request, rushes to Holmes’ aid in the English countryside, taking the manuscript along with him. From there, readers are whisked on a wild journey to 1860s America through Holmes’ manuscript while simultaneously following Watson on a harrowing train ride. 

Charming, spectacularly detailed, and thoroughly engaging, One Must Tell the Bees unfortunately falters hard in one major place: Matthews’ portrays all of the African American characters in the novel as subservient and deferential. While it could easily be taken for granted that a freed slave (such as the leading African American character, Abraham) would act in such a way, I wanted that assumption to be challenged. In his portrayal, Matthews reduces the African American characters in the book to stock characters with colloquial vernacular that Holmes narrates in an entirely unhelpful way. In an interview with Big Blend, Matthews talks about the research he did to accurately portray the history and people he depicts, including reading the diaries of enslaved people. But what I wondered the whole time I read the book, was not what research Matthews did, but to what lengths he went to involve real, living black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) in accurately portraying BIPOC in the past. Did he have sensitivity readers, editors, reviewers that were people of color?  

Similarly, Matthews portrayal of Holmes and Abraham Lincoln only further espouse problematic white-savior narratives. Not only is there a feeling of “white man saves the day” in the book, but there’s also a strange moralizing component as well. These perspectives aren’t uncommon, and often garner a wealth of positive reviews (e.g., The Greatest Showman, The Help), but that doesn’t mean we need any more of those perspectives circulating.

All of these feelings were tangled in the fast-paced, engrossing narration, and I often found myself second guessing what I was thinking. Was I over analyzing Matthews’ portrayal of people of color, of white men in the novel? And then I found the interview with Big Blend mentioned above, and my suspect feelings were confirmed. In the interview, Matthews argues for maintaining Confederate statues so as not to forget our past. And while the sentiment of remembering our past and learning from our mistakes is a commendable one, doing so through glorifying slave owners and people who fought to enslave other human beings (no matter what their arguments to the contrary were), is not quite the way to go about remembering our past. Unfortunately, the interview only confirmed the hunches I had about the book.

Matthews has already announced a sequel to One Must Tell the Bees, and my greatest hope is that he does the work to address the above-mentioned issues in his sequel in order to write a more social justice conscious book.

One Must tell the Bees was beautifully written, captured the style and tone of Holmes with fervor, and was undeniably enjoyable most of the time; however, its major flaw is one that can’t be overlooked.

Published in May of 2021 by East Dean Press, One Must Tell the Bees: Abraham Lincoln and the Final Education of Sherlock Holmes is available for purchase at your local independent bookstore.

Read more historical fiction reviews on Centered on Books.

FTC Disclaimer: This book was given to me in return for a fair and honest review of the text.

‘The Bohemians’ by Jazmin Darznik

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Bestselling author Jazmin Darznik is at it again with her latest historical fiction novel The Bohemians. Set mainly in 1920s San Francisco, The Bohemians follows photographer Dorothea Lange from her arrival in The Golden City to becoming the artist she never claimed to be.

When we meet Dorothea, she is a cautious and withdrawn young girl only planning to pass through San Francisco when she’s robbed and left with nothing but her camera and the kindness of a few strangers. She quickly befriends Caroline Lee, a seamstress and artist herself, who introduces Dorothea to Monkey Block. Monkey Block is the core of the bohemian scene in San Francisco at the time, and Dorrie quickly rises through the ranks of artists surrounding her to become the first woman to own a portrait studio in the city.

Along the way, we meet a host of famous (and often infamous) characters including artists Maynard Dixon, who eventually becomes Dorothea’s husband, and Ansel Adams. Each new introduction enlivens the novel with fresh verve as readers not only recognize, but grow eager to learn more of, these historical figures. While the novel is a fictionalized account of Lange’s life, there is an element of pure fun to reading about legendary artists whose lives can only be known through what little pieces we have left of their pasts.

Darznik takes on numerous thematic and moral feats with The Bohemians drawing connection to modern day issues that still haven’t resolved over 100 years after Dorothea Lange experienced them. There’s systemic racism and politicians who support and further that ideology. There’s plague and pestilence that result in mask mandates, shuttered businesses, and social isolation. There’s misogyny. And then, perhaps most central to Dorothea’s own life is the issue of how we see ability in our society. 

Dorothea survived polio as a child, leaving one of her legs with a limp that she is wholly ashamed of until Caroline starts to convince Dorothea to see things differently. Dorothea’s embarrassment stems from how society views her and how she believes she should view herself based on societal norms and values of “beauty” and “perfection.” However, as Dorothea’s fame grows and with it her confidence to see beyond more traditional viewpoints, we hear less and less about her leg as something problematic and shameful. She is wildly successful, she is happy, she is loved by others and by herself and not despite her disability but because of who she is and how she defines herself, disability and all. At one point in the novel, Dorrie proclaims that without her differing abilities, she wouldn’t be the photographer that she is. A rare and powerful view of disability that is widely lacking in fiction (as well as our society), Darznik does a superb job portraying disability as it should be: something not to be lamented, ashamed of, or less in any way, but rather a part of the human condition that adds insurmountable value to individual lives and society as a whole.

A fast-paced, captivating novel that draws you in from the very beginning, The Bohemians is the perfect novel for history buffs, artist, or anyone looking for a delightful read that doesn’t shy away from hard topics.

Published by Ballantine Books in April 2021, The Bohemians is available from your local independent bookstore today.

Read more fiction book reviews at Centered on Books.

FTC Disclaimer: This book was given to me in return for a fair and honest review of the text.

‘The Night Tiger’ by Yangsze Choo

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the-night-tiger-choo-picThe Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo captures mystery, magic, and mysticism in a literary litany to 1930s colonial Malaysia. Weretigers, mummified fingers, haunted dreams, and forbidden love are only a few of the elements that comprise Choo’s story.

Ji Lin is the first of Choo’s point of view characters that the reader meets. She is a young, spunky girl living in Malaysia at a time when women are meant to be men’s wives and nothing more. Unmarried and unwilling to relent to the patriarchal pressures to do so, Ji Lin finds herself living a double life as a seamstress’ apprentice and a dance hall girl. Life is far from thrilling for Ji Lin until she meets a man at the dance hall who drops a vial in which sits a blackened and decrepit finger. Suddenly, Ji Lin is propelled into a nightmarish adventure.

Next, we meet Ren. Ren is eleven years old, but he’s already experienced more of life and of death than most children his age. His twin brother died three years ago, leaving Ren to survive on his own, eventually becoming the house boy of a Western doctor. But now Ren’s master is dead, and his last order to Ren is to return the master’s missing finger. Ren must do so before the 29 days after his master’s death have expired. If he doesn’t fulfill this last duty, Ren is certain that his master will turn into a tiger and be cursed to walk the streets of Malaysia feeding on women and never being laid to rest.

Finally, we meet William. William is a doctor at the Batu Gaja hospital, a friend of Ren’s former master, and a rather unlucky man.

Choo weaves these three characters’ narratives together revealing the story in pieces to the reader as the characters grapple to figure out the mysteries surrounding them. Packed with murder, ghosts, and high stakes sexual tension, The Night Tiger takes on a lot in its 300-plus pages.

While The Night Tiger’s storyline is fascinating and consumes its reader even when its pages are closed, the telling of the story often becomes cliché and too told for lack of a better word. The characters, who in themselves are captivating and compelling, tend to have things happen to them without having much agency in the matter. Similarly, the events that happen to these characters often feel contrived or too easily given. A conversation is overheard just as one character bumps into another. People are connected in too obvious of ways. While this can become overbearing at times, Choo’s plot is powerful enough to carry the narrative to its end without losing the reader.

Slated for release by Flatiron Books in February of 2019, you can preorder a copy of The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo from your local bookstore.

Read more historical fiction book reviews at Centered on Books.

FTC Disclaimer: This book was given to me in return for a fair and honest review of the text.

‘The Language of Trees’ by Steve Wiegenstein

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the langauge of trees-wiegensteinIn the Ozarks of Missouri, a community of early 19th century settlers face the challenges of an ever-changing America in Steve Wiegenstein’s latest novel, The Language of Trees.

Daybreak is a utopian society that has thrived for 30 years until it is suddenly shaken by the outside world. Now, it’s up to the founders’ children to not only maintain their community, but to thrive within it when the world seems set against them. It is a post-Civil War America, and Daybreak has met with little trouble since the war until a group of loggers move in nearby and offer to buy a large chunk of the community’s land. With the loggers come love interests, the ideals of capitalism, and the threat of what selfishness can do to a community.

Each of the characters takes a turn to show the reader Daybreak from her eyes, even characters that at first seem to be villains. Wiegenstein, though, does a fantastic job of staying in a single character’s head at any one time. Through all of these different perspectives, Wiegenstein is able to truly build the idea of community within the reader’s mind.  The reader becomes acquainted with each character so fully that even those who are less honorable are still able to be sympathized with by the reader.

Melding history with fiction, allure, and mystery, Wiegenstein paints a beautiful and romantic picture of 19th century America: a world where even in hardship, a community can stick together.

The Language of Trees is the third in Wiegenstein’s Daybreak saga. With the next generation of characters leading the way, though, The Language of Trees is just as strong on its own as it is within the series.

Slated for release by Blank Slate Press on September 26, 2017, you can preorder a copy of The Language of Trees by Steve Wiegenstein at your local bookstore.

Read more fiction book reviews at Centered on Books.

FTC Disclaimer: This book was given to me in return for a fair and honest review of the text.

‘Girl in the Blue Coat’ by Monica Hesse

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girl-in-the-blue-coat-hesse.jpgGirl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse is a novel steeped in history, passion, and emotion. A coming of age book that tells the story of the main character, seventeen-year-old Hanneke’s experiences in Amsterdam during World War II. Hanneke is an angry citizen of Amsterdam during the German occupation in 1943, angered not only by the Germans’ presence, but mostly because her boyfriend died during the war and she feels responsible. Now, Hanneke works in dealings on the black market, delivering goods like coffee, chocolate, and cigarettes to her fellow citizens.

At the beginning of the novel, Hanneke is completing a routine drop off at Mrs. Janssen’s house, a woman Hanneke knows well and whose son and husband have also died at the hands of the Germans. When Mrs. Janssen invites Hanneke to stay for real coffee and pastries though, Hanneke is suspicious of what more Mrs. Janssen might want from her. After reluctantly agreeing to join the old woman, Hanneke begins to relax and wonders if perhaps Mrs. Janssen is merely lonely. And she is, though not exactly for the reasons Hanneke was thinking.

Mrs. Janssen reveals to Hanneke that she was hiding a young Jewish girl in her house, a girl she not only feels responsible for because the girl’s whole family is dead, but a girl she has also come to love as a daughter. Though Hanneke has never worked in dealing with contraband people, she decides to help Mrs. Janssen almost as a way to please Bas, her dead boyfriend. She knows he would help Mrs. Janssen if he were alive, so in an attempt to regain the trust she thinks Bas has lost in her, she decides that hunting for this girl is the right choice.

Along the twisting roads of mystery leading up and down Girl in the Blue Coat, Hanneke finds much more than and not at all what she was ever looking for. She finds unsuspecting friendships, passion for a cause, and more than one reason to keep living her life.

Though marketed as a young adult novel, Girl in the Blue Coat is an exhilarating and powerful read for any aged booklover.

The paperback version of Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse was published by Little Brown and Company in April of 2017. You can purchase a copy of the novel at your local bookstore.

Read more historical fiction book reviews at Centered on Books.

FTC Disclaimer: This book was given to me in return for a fair and honest review of the text.

 

‘The Cauliflower’ by Nicola Barker

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the-cauliflower-barkerThe Cauliflower by Nicola Barker is a semi-biographical, spiritually investigative, and entirely comedic novel about the Hindu Swami Sri Ramakrishna, about religion in general, and about perspective.

The Cauliflower is told from a variety of perspectives and from a multitude of vantage points. Spanning a wide cast of characters, all who have some form of contact with Sri Ramakrishna, the book does not follow a conventional biographical telling, instead, the various narrators skip through years out of sequential order but in an order that reveals more about the characters themselves.

While The Cauliflower is a biographically fictional story of Sri Ramakrishna and his rise to “fame,” Barker also investigates interlaying themes that extend beyond the simple telling of this one particular story. The nature of reality of the ability to clearly define anything is a theme that recurs throughout The Cauliflower in a variety of ways. In fact, the reader is made to question what exactly this book is: is it a book, a biography, a newspaper report. At one point, Barker raises the question herself, “Is this book a farce, a comedy, a tragedy, or a melodrama?” Though she does not answer her own question, it appears by the end, that The Cauliflower, and by extension life, must be all three.

Another related theme is the meaning of veracity and certainty, particularly as it relates to religion and perspective. As mentioned above, The Cauliflower is told from different perspectives, but the reader can’t be certain who is telling the truth or what “truth” even means in the novel. Many of the characters disagree on certain events or even on descriptions of other characters; but further, the characters also disagree with themselves. Barker seems to beg the question, what is truth when we all are standing in, and coming from, different places – even if we are all seeing the same thing? This metaphor is extended to religion, and not only the Hindu religion that Sri Ramakrishna inhabits, but all religions.

Though The Cauliflower is a bit slow in the beginning because the reader needs to meet and become accustomed to not only the numerous characters and perspectives, but also the general layout of the book as rather disoriented, once it does pick up speed, it is hard to put down. Overall, this journalistic, meta-reality novel is a beautiful and comedic look into the intricacies and complication involved in living life, following religion, and finding peace with perspective.

The Cauliflower by Nicola Barker was released in 2016 by Henry Holt & Company and is available for purchase at your local bookstore.

Read more fiction book reviews at Centered on Books.

FTC Disclaimer: This book was given to me in return for a fair and honest review of the text.

‘The Orphan’s Tale’ by Pam Jenoff

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the-orphans-tale-jenoffAn enthralling and entrancing read, Pam Jenoff’s The Orphan’s Tale is a beautiful and heart wrenching book. Told from the perspective of the book’s two main characters, The Orphan’s Tale is a story of interconnected love, heartbreak, and sacrifice.

Noa is an outcast who works in a railway station in Germany in the mid-1940s. She has been excommunicated by her parents for sleeping with a German soldier and becoming pregnant. After being forced to give up her child, Noa finds refuge working in the station until she comes across a train car headed east towards the notorious “camps.” She usually ignores the goings on in the station, but something draws her to the car. Inside she finds piles of living, dead, and near dead infants on their way to what end she can’t imagine. In a flurry of desperation, empathy and remorse for her own lost child, Noa takes a baby: a Jew. But now she must run.

Astrid is also an outcast. A Jew who had married an officer of the Reich but was kicked out of their home after he received an order to divorce Astrid. She is now back to the life she always knew: the life of the circus. Things are going as well as they can be going for a Jew hiding during World War Two, until Noa shows up at the circus.

Now the two women are both seeking refuge under the guise of the circus’ act. At first enemies, the two women learn to care for one another in the ways that no one else can. A story of love, betrayal, hope and loss, The Orphan’s Tale is nearly impossible to put down. Jenoff’s fast-paced narrative style propels the reader into the worlds of both Astrid and Noa with a verve and emotive quality that is all encompassing.

Based on historical research, The Orphan’s Tale is a book of fiction, but Jenoff considers the book a tribute to those whom she based the tale off of.

Slated for release by HarperCollins Publishers on February 21, 2017, The Orphan’s Tale is available for preorder at your local bookstore.

Read more fiction book reviews at Centered on Books.

FTC Disclaimer: This book was given to me in return for a fair and honest review of the text.

‘Human Acts’ by Han Kang

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human-acts-kangHuman Acts by Han Kang is an eloquent and masterful investigation. It is an investigation into humanity, into the existence and nature of the soul, into the effects and implications of our memories. Originally written in Korean and published in 2014, translator Deborah Smith does a superb job of expressing these sentiments in her stunning yet detached translation of Human Acts.

The book is split into several narratives, each told by a different character, but all interrelated. Human Acts begins, though, with a student uprising in South Korea in the 1980’s. This is where the reader meets, or essentially is, Dong-ho, the character that stitches together all the rest of the stories. Told in second person perspective, Dong-ho’s narrative becomes the reader’s story: a story that then follows the reader through the rest of the book, a story told through a multitude of eyes, eyes that have seen Dong-ho, eyes that haven’t. Every perspective, every retelling, is an attempt to crack open the mystery of death, the mystery of evil.

Dong-ho haunts the characters of Human Acts through their memories or knowledge of him. The characters cannot escape the injustices that were done to Dong-ho nor the innocence he embodied. In fact, no character can turn away from the horror surrounding her despite any effort to do so. Even if given the chance to run from the pain or the terror, no one can. They need to absorb it, to be with the horror happening around them. Whether to justify the existence of those who perished or to stand staunchly against ignorance and in unison, Kang never fully reveals.

The desperate search for “why” pervades Human Acts in a way that makes the question also burn into the reader’s mind. Why such terror? Why such hatred? Why such pain?

Han Kang does a superb job of wrapping together her themes without providing an answer to any of the questions she raises. She seems to point to the fact that we are all human: these terrible acts have been committed by humans. Humans who have jobs. Humans who have families. Humans who feel. Humans who love. Humans who hate.

Beautiful, terrifying, and an absolute must read, Human Acts by Han Kang will be released in the United States on January 17, 2017. You can preorder a copy at your local bookstore today.

Read more fiction book reviews at Centered on Books.

FTC Disclaimer: This book was given to me in return for a fair and honest review of the text.