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 Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

[Heather]

While this book is not new, it’s from 2006, I have absolutely no qualms about recommending it to anyone who likes a good Gothic Mystery (that might also be a ghost story in the end).  I’m someone who really enjoys a wide variety of mysteries, and because of that I often see the twist coming, but this one caught me totally off-guard and once I finished it, I was compelled to start reading it all over again to see if the clues were really there the whole time (they were, of course, but were so delicately crafted I’d never even picked up on them!)

Reclusive, wildly successful author Vida Winter hires a young woman with no real writing experience to write her biography.  The only thing Ms. Winter and Margaret Lee really have in common is a connection to twins. Margaret’s twin sister died at birth, which is a source of continued pain and sadness for her, and Vita Winter might be one of the two feral twins she begins telling Margaret about, but is she really? It’s hard for Margaret to tell, because every piece of information Vita Winter has given anyone about herself up to this point has been a complete and total lie. Why would she tell the truth now?

As Margaret proceeds with the project, mesmerized by the tragic story Ms. Winter tells about the George and Isabella Angelfield, Adeline and Emmeline March, a plucky governess, a terrible fire and the eventual ruination of the family, she starts to believe that Ms. Winter is telling the truth after all. But how either of these two uncontrollable twins could have grown up to become the beautiful and talented Vida Winter still escapes her. A bit of sleuthing on her own helps her unravel the mystery at the heart of the story, and it turns out to be more amazing, more heart wrenching, and more satisfying than she (or we) could have ever imagined.

A story within a story, The Thirteenth Tale is excellently paced, beautifully written and sweeping in the scope of its storytelling. Spanning years of the Angelfield and March families and still managing to help Margaret Lee heal from her own losses without feeling cumbersome or jarring the reader as it moves between narratives, it’s a rare gem of a novel that is as enjoyable to read in 2024 as it would have been in 2006.

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

[Tricia]

I have been reading quite a bit of historical fiction lately which has been excellent, but quite heavy and dark. In the wake of those books, I was happy to discover Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Australian author Benjamin Stevenson – a contemporary, funny, twisty, meta mystery. Our narrator Ernie Cunningham is the author of “how-to” books for mystery authors. His family has a complicated history with the law. His father was a criminal, his older brother is in jail for murder, and Ern has been ostracized from his family for testifying against his brother during the murder trial. The family has gathered at a ski lodge for the first time in three years to celebrate his brother’s release from jail. After a huge storm traps everyone at the ski resort, a dead body is discovered.

The fact that Ernie makes a living writing books about writing mystery novels tells you a lot about the tone of the book. Ernie is an expert on the tropes of classic Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes type mysteries, and he frequently references the “rules” of mystery novels, but Ernie himself is not a mystery author. Instead, the book is written in an informal, conversational style that reflects Ernie’s wry, self-deprecating, somewhat detached personality. I listened to the audiobook, and the dry, sardonic voice of the narrator was a perfect match for the book. This is not a cozy mystery – the murders are graphic, and some of the backstories of the family members are quite sad. But the overall tone is light, and the mystery is compelling. This would be a good choice for fans of Anthony Horowitz’s Hawthorne series.

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.