I promised I would add more historical fiction titles to my list of great reads this year, so here they are, in no particular order:
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- Shanghai by Joseph Kanon. This page-turning novel focuses on a little-told story: Jews who escaped Nazi Germany and ended up in Shanghai, China because they couldn’t get visas to the United States. It tells the story of one young man whose uncle managed to get him out of Berlin right after Kristallnacht in 1938 (when German Jews were killed and their stores and homes smashed up). He meets a young woman on the boat to Shanghai whose family has also lost everything (their factory was taken over by Nazis and her father killed) and he falls in love with her and tries to help her. But she is determined to survive on her own, and once their boat docks in Shanghai, she turns to escort work to support herself and her ailing mother. Meanwhile, our protagonist is drawn into Shanghai’s underworld (his uncle owns a casino with some unsavory characters), and he has to fight to stay alive and protect his and his uncle’s interests. Kanon weaves a rich yet ominous tapestry of Shanghai on the eve of World War II as Japan tightens its noose around China. Definitely worth a read.
- The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo. This is an intriguing tale of a young scullery maid in 16th century Spain who is trying to hide her Jewish origins but discovers she has magical powers that somehow derive from her knowledge of ancient Jewish and Moorish words. She gets caught up in a power struggle involving top officials to the ailing King of Spain and meets the love of her life, who has been cursed with eternal servitude to a grasping nobleman. If this all sounds too fanciful to be credible, let me reassure you that Bardugo, a gifted fantasy writer, somehow makes the tale both believable and captivatingly poignant. I couldn’t put this book down.
- If the Creek Don’t Rise by Leah Weiss. I guess this novel qualifies as historical fiction since it takes place more than 50 years ago, in 1970 in the hollers of southern West Virginia (coal country). It tells the story of a young woman from a hardscrabble childhood who finds herself married to a brutal lowlife with a baby on the way. Some well-meaning locals — a preacher, a gutsy teacher from out of state, and a neighboring medicine woman — want to help her but this victim of domestic violence has to help herself first. Weiss does a nice job of capturing the stew of poverty and hopelessness that so many West Virginians found themselves in despite the abundance of natural resources in their state (and still find themselves in). I won’t give away the ending; suffice it to say, the novel ends on a hopeful note.
- And last but not least, The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear. This is the last in a wonderful series of books about the private investigator and psychologist Maisie Dobbs as she solves crimes and helps many unfortunates better their lives. This wasn’t the most exciting book in the series, but reading it felt like donning a warm and cozy bathrobe and settling in for a nice evening of entertainment. On a personal note, the winter issue of Brandeis University’s magazine featured my novel, Rebecca of Ivanhoe in its On the Bookshelf column.
