New Books: Historical Fiction

I made a cou­ple of quick pur­chases that were based on a reader’s rec­om­men­da­tion. I’ve missed read­ing some really good, meaty his­tor­i­cal nov­els. As I blog hopped, I ran across another reader’s blog that fea­tured another inter­est­ing title that I must add to my TBR.

The Year of Won­ders by Geral­dine Brooks. This is a novel about the Black Death, a topic that I am always inter­ested in read­ing about. I was fas­ci­nated with this topic in Diana Norman’s The Vizard Mask. The title is avail­able in paper­back with a pub date of 2002.

Book Descrip­tion:

When an infected bolt of cloth car­ries plague from Lon­don to an iso­lated vil­lage, a house­maid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely hero­ine and healer. Through Anna’s eyes we fol­low the story of the fate­ful year of 1666, as she and her fel­low vil­lagers con­front the spread of dis­ease and super­sti­tion. As death reaches into every house­hold and vil­lagers turn from prayers to mur­der­ous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to con­front the dis­in­te­gra­tion of her com­mu­nity and the lure of illicit love. As she strug­gles to sur­vive and grow, a year of cat­a­stro­phe becomes instead annus mirabilis, a “year of wonders.”

Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a vil­lage in the rugged hill coun­try of Eng­land, Year of Won­ders is a richly detailed evo­ca­tion of a sin­gu­lar moment in his­tory. Writ­ten with stun­ning emo­tional intel­li­gence and intro­duc­ing “an inspir­ing hero­ine” (The Wall Street Jour­nal), Brooks blends love and learn­ing, loss and renewal into a spell­bind­ing and unfor­get­table read.

March by Geral­dine Brooks. I bought it because this one also sounded very inter­est­ing to me. I am a his­tor­i­cal buff any­way and I’ve great things about Ms. Brooks work. Sup­pos­edly, this novel is a take-off of Lit­tle Women by Louisa May Alcott. Here is the back blurb:

From Louisa May Alcott’s beloved clas­sic Lit­tle Women, Geral­dine Brooks has ani­mated the char­ac­ter of the absent father, March, and crafted a story “filled with the ache of love and mar­riage and with the power of war upon the mind and heart of one unfor­get­table man” (Sue Monk Kidd). With “pitch-perfect writ­ing” (USA Today), Brooks fol­lows March as he leaves behind his fam­ily to aid the Union cause in the Civil War. His expe­ri­ences will utterly change his mar­riage and chal­lenge his most ardently held beliefs. A lushly writ­ten, wholly orig­i­nal tale steeped in the details of another time, March secures Geral­dine Brooks’s place as a renowned author of his­tor­i­cal fiction.

 

As usual, any feed­back or rec­om­men­da­tions for his­tor­i­cal fic­tion titles are always wel­come.  And I found another reader’s blog called The Writ­ten Word. Enjoy. Another his­tor­i­cal fic­tion fan.

For Fur­ther Reading

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