The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

[Tricia]

You may know Leigh Bardugo from her YA Shadow and Bone series or her adult contemporary fantasy Ninth House series. Her newest book, The Familiar, is a stand-alone historical fantasy inspired by the history of Bardugo’s family who were Sephardic Jews thrown out of Spain during the Inquisition. The book is set in Madrid in the late 1500s, and tells the story of Luzia Cotado, a young scullery maid living in poverty and servitude, having lost her parents at a young age. She is able to make her difficult life somewhat easier through her ability to create magic – what she calls little miracles – from songs she sings in a language that combines the little bit of Hebrew she remembers from her parents, with Latin and Spanish. In this world, magic exists, but the only acceptable type of magic is that sanctioned by the Royal Court and the Catholic Church. When Luzia’s mistress discovers Luzia’s ability, she sees it as an opportunity to boost her own social standing, and demands that Luzia perform her magic in a tournament before for the Royal Court. If Luzia wins the tournament and becomes accepted by the Court, it would be an opportunity for Luzia to escape a life of drudgery. However, life in the Court means joining a world that believes in the Inquisition, and hiding her Jewish heritage at all costs. This is a story about ambition and choice, as well as the limitations of the choices available to so many in this world. If you like historical fiction and dark fantasy, give this one a try.

The Great Divide by Cristina Henríquez

[Tricia]

Cristina Henríquez is a wonderful writer with a gift for telling character-driven stories that are sweeping in scope, but somehow feel small and intimate. I loved this aspect of her earlier novel, The Book of Unknown Americans, and it works beautifully as well in her new historical fiction novel The Great Divide. Set in Panama in 1907 during the construction of the Panama Canal, the book focuses on a diverse set of characters whose lives are impacted by this momentous undertaking. Omar is a lonely Panamanian teenager who joins the workforce to build the canal, hoping to finally finding a place where he belongs. Omar’s father Francisco, a fisherman living with his own private heartbreak, is devastated by Omar joining this project that he feels is destroying their country. John Oswald is a scientist from Tennessee who has been brought to Panama to find a cure for malaria, along with his wife Marion, a kind, unfulfilled former scientist. Ava Bunting, a 16 year old from Barbados who has come to Panama to earn money for her sister’s operation, is hired as Marion’s nurse after she falls ill. Valentina, who has spent her life taking care of her family, finds new purpose in organizing a protest after plans are announced to relocate her entire hometown to make way for a dam. The book moves with empathy from one character’s thoughts, hopes, and pain to another as they go through their days. Meanwhile the construction of the canal, and all that it brings with it, goes on around them. The book touches on big issues of national and international politics, colonialism, racism, sexism, class divisions, but always through the thoughts and experiences of its characters. This is a place and a time I knew little about, and as so often happens with historical fiction, reading this book made me want to learn more.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden

[Tricia]

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is a dark, haunting, historical fiction/ghost story set during the turbulent years of World War I. The story revolves around Laura Iven, an army nurse from Halifax, Nova Scotia who was injured while working near the frontlines in Belgium. While recuperating from her injuries at home in Halifax, her parents are killed in the devastating Halifax Narrows explosion. Although a skeptic herself, she receives a message during a seance that her brother is alive, after he had been reported as missing during combat in Flanders. Having lost everything else, she returns to Belgium to find him, and in the hospitals she starts to hear wounded soldiers speak about a mysterious figure they call the Fiddler, who runs a hotel where soldiers can go and forget their pain. Alternating with Laura’s narrative, the book follows Freddie’s experiences in the chaotic aftermath of battle, and his encounters with the Fiddler.

The blending of historical fiction with a ghost story is so effective here. The years during World War I were a time of devastating, widespread loss and change, with so many people experiencing what we would now recognize as PTSD, that it makes perfect sense that the boundary between life and death, reality and the otherworldly, would be blurred. These characters move through the world in a state of desperate longing to hold onto something, trying to process the magnitude of what was happening, between the Great War and the rising Influenza pandemic. The depictions of the lives of the soldiers and the wounded are brutal, as they should be. Arden’s writing is visceral and dreamlike, and that sense of apocalyptic unreality is so strong that I had to put the book down once or twice to take myself out of it. But ultimately I found this to be a moving, effective, and empathetic way to remember, and try to make sense of that painful, turbulent time.

We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian

[Heather]

It’s a wonderful thing indeed that Cat Sebastian’s excellent queer historical romances are starting to be accessible in print in libraries and bookstores! And if historical fiction set in New York in the time period of Mad Men or Marvelous Mrs. Maisel;  newspaper reporters and newspapers of yore; and/ or queer romance—particularly with a bit of a grumpy curmudgeon main character –is your thing, you should run, not walk, to check this book out of our collection. (You can also get as an eBook, a Kindle book. or an eAudiobook on Libby through us.  It’s a pretty great audiobook, too!)

Nick Russo is an up-and-coming newspaper reporter at a pretty successful paper in the late 1950s. Nick is still in his mid-20s, but he’s gone out of his way to craft a grizzled old newshound exterior. He’s not friendly and he doesn’t much like people.  But then the editor’s son, Andy Fleming, shows up in the newsroom. Andy is set to inherit the paper from his wealthy father and has his famous mother’s reporting legacy to live up to, but for the most part everyone assumes he’s just playing at being a reporter until his ship finally comes in and he inherits a fortune. Everyone but Nick. Before he knows it, Nick has developed a real friendship with klutzy, forgetful, awkward Andy, and when Andy is jilted by his fiancé and moves in with Nick, that friendship start to feel like something more. A lot more.

This development might seem complicated by the fact that it’s 1958 and it’s a dangerous time for men like Nick and Andy to be too open about their personal lives, but the two manage to carve out a little domestic space in their shared apartment where they can care for each other and just be joyful about being together.

Cat Sebastian has an incredibly deft touch when it comes to building her characters. I’ve loved every character from every novel I’ve read by her, so it wasn’t long before I adored Nick and Andy too, both separately and as a couple. And even though they have to be careful to protect themselves from the intolerant dangers of the time, this story still manages to deliver on the happy ever after that I was pining for the whole time. Cat Sebastian’s books are always my go-to when I’ve just finished a high-stakes fantasy or a really intense mystery/thriller, or when life just gets really crazy or busy and I need a little bit of a comfort break, and this book was so good at delivering that feeling that I’ve read it three times since it came out in 2023.

There’s nothing violent, gory, scary, or too overly graphic here. There’s no mystery or murders or jump-scares, or contests, and that’s just fine with me. It a lovely, enjoyable romance and a lovely enjoyable read. And sometimes that’s just what I need.  You don’t even have to take my word for how good it is, because this book was on a TON of best book lists last year and it’s a finalist for Best Romance in the Libby Awards (a new award this year!)

Small Things Like These, and Foster by Claire Keegan

[Tricia]

I first heard about Claire Keegan when someone in the Library’s Virtual Book Group recommended her writing – thank you Ken! Having now read two of her novellas Small Things Like These and Foster, I absolutely second Ken’s recommendation. Small Things Like These is set in an economically struggling small town in Ireland in the mid-1980s. Bill Furlong sells coal in town to support his wife and five daughters. Having grown up in difficult circumstances, he is grateful for his life and his family, but his hard-won sense of stability is challenged when he encounters a badly treated girl from the nearby Magdalene laundry. This spare, quiet book touches on a painful chapter of history in a powerful yet hopeful way.

Foster tells the story of a young Irish girl from a very poor family who is sent to live with some unknown distant relatives while her mother has another child. Her family’s circumstances are dire, and the girl (we never learn her name) has been neglected. But with this new couple she experiences the kind of attention and kindness that had been unavailable to her before. Told from the girl’s perspective, it is a lyrical, bittersweet story of a brief but transformative summer.

These are short, beautifully written novellas that focus on people living difficult lives, but highlight the power of empathy. I look forward to reading more from this author.

Absolution by Alice McDermott

[Tricia]

This thought-provoking novel tells the story of a group of white American corporate and military wives living in Saigon in the very early years of the Vietnam War. Tricia, the narrator for most of the book, is a smart, educated young newlywed who considers her primary job to be that of a helpmeet to her husband and his career. As she enters the sheltered, image-conscious social circle of corporate wives in Saigon, she is befriended by the glamorous, charismatic Charlene who immediately pulls Tricia into her “charitable” projects. Mostly told in flashback as a long letter from Tricia to Charlene’s daughter Rainey, the novel is an exploration of morality – particularly the desire to look away from pain, destruction, and poverty, and the motivations and consequences of some kinds of “helping”. This is a character-driven novel, and these characters are often not very sympathetic. They are, however, written with an empathy that always keeps in mind the systems that have shaped, and restricted, their lives and their choices. I have found myself thinking about this book a lot since reading it.

In Memoriam by Alice Winn

Veronique – Library Trustee

What a brilliant debut novel. In Memoriam is mix of historical fiction and an evolving complicated and forbidden romance, Elwood and Gaunt will take you from the comfort and safety of an upscale English boarding school to the horror and devastation of the trenches in the 1914 Belgium Flanders. Gaunt’s half German origins add a twist to him going to fight on the English side. 

I am so glad I opened this book even though it was classified, among other categories, as romance which is usually a resounding “no” for me! My first 5 star book of 2023 and I’ve read 92 so far! 

The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey

[Tricia]

In this smart, absorbing mystery/historical fiction set in 1920s Bombay, Parveen Mistry is trying to put her difficult past behind her while working at her father’s law firm. Although she attended law school, as a woman she is not allowed to argue cases in court. When she comes across a case involving the will of one of her father’s clients who has recently died, she is suspicious to find that the three widows of this client have all signed over their inheritances to a charity overseen by their male estate manager. The three widows practice Purdah, living in seclusion in their home, and as such do not speak directly to men who are strangers. As a woman, Parveen is the only one at the firm able to speak to the widows directly to make sure they have consented to this agreement. During her visit to the widows, the estate manager is murdered.

While the mystery aspect of the book is compelling, I was particularly taken with the historical context, and the rich depictions of the lives of women in the diverse world of 1920s Bombay. The characters in this book come from a variety of religious, cultural, and economic backgrounds, and these identities intersect in interesting ways. Parveen’s experience growing up in a wealthy, progressive Parsi family is strikingly different from her time with Cyrus’ traditional Parsi family. The experiences of the three Muslim widows living in seclusion differ widely, and their relationships are complicated by their different economic, educational and cultural backgrounds. Parveen’s close relationship with her best friend Alice, the wealthy white daughter of a British government official, is necessarily impacted by the dynamics of British Colonialism. I very much enjoyed Parveen as a character. She is smart and compassionate, with a passion for fighting for justice for women that comes out of her lived experience. The Widows of Malabar Hill is the first in a series of Parveen Mistry mysteries, and I look forward to spending more time in this world.

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

[Tricia]

James McBride is a wonderful, complex storyteller. If you’ve read his novels The Good Lord Bird and Deacon King Kong, you already know how gifted he is at creating a rich of community of characters, interweaving satire and social commentary, all while taking you on a wild, entertaining ride. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, his newest novel, is no exception. This novel is loosely based on the life of McBride’s grandmother, brought to life in this book in the character of Chona Ludlow, who along with her husband Moshe, runs the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store in the Chicken Hill neighborhood of Pottstown, PA, a historically Black and Jewish neighborhood. Set mostly in the 1920s, the story circles through a rich and diverse cast of characters, ostensibly moving toward solving a murder that is revealed at the beginning of the novel. However the murder is almost beside the point in this novel. What matters is the community, and the many, complicated, longstanding ways in which these characters are both connected and separated. Alongside the racial, ethnic, and economic factors that unite and divide members of this community, the shared experience of disability impacts several of the main characters in the book, including Chona, Doc Roberts, who marches in the KKK parade in town, and Dodo, a young Black orphan who is deaf due to an explosion. McBride has said that his work at a camp for young people with disabilities was another inspiration for this book, and the friendship between Dodo and Monkey Pants, a young man with Cerebral Palsy that Dodo befriends while institutionalized in an absolutely terrifying asylum, are in many ways the heart of the story. James McBride’s books have a way of staying with me long after I’ve read them, and I am sure that I will be thinking about this complicated, funny, heartbreaking novel for quite a while.

The Carnivale of Curiosities by Amiee Gibbs

[Crystal]

The Carnivale of Curiosities is one of those rare books that straddles the line between many genres.  Equal parts historical fiction, gothic mystery, and fantasy, it subtly reminded me of one of my favorite books, The Night Circus.  Taking place during the Victorian age, when curiosities, magicians, and the PT Barnum’s of the world captivated audiences, the story unfolds through multiple narratives.  On one side we discover the story of Charlotte, a ward to the wealthy but dubious Odilon Rose, and on the other side we meet the members of the Carnivale, who are extraordinary outcasts.  This Faustian tale has gothic romance and intrigue, especially by way of the tragic and beautiful Lucien, or “The Lucifer”, a flame wielding member of the Carnivale harboring dark secrets.  There is a tangled web between the many characters throughout the story, who all seem to have some connection to Ashe, the ringmaster of the Carnivale; who is not quite what he appears.  Eventually, we see the mystery of how Charlotte, the elite Rose family, Lucien, Ashe, and his partner Pretorious are all connected.  This book is perfect for anyone who likes their Dickens with a dash of magic, mayhem, and mystery.  The style and tone is both fitting of the time period in which it takes place, and perfectly modern at the same time.  This was a quick, but enjoyable read, and I suspect that Gibbs has a sequel already in the works!