Tag Archives: historical fiction

BOOK REVIEW: THE KEPT BY JAMES SCOTT

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4/10/2016.  BOOK REVIEW: THE KEPT BY JAMES SCOTT

Several years I ago I stood on a red-rock mountain in Arches National The Kept cover 2Park, Utah, and looked across a vista of severe canyons and soaring rock formations, including amazing natural arches. The land was stark, but it was beautiful. In the same way, The Kept, a novel by James Scott, is beautiful. It’s not the kind of novel that welcomes you with warmth, but it takes your breath with its incisive characterizations and the harsh realities they reveal. The characters of The Kept expose the good and bad in all of us with crystal sharp clarity.

The Kept opens with Elspeth Howell arriving at her isolated home in upstate New York after months away working as a midwife.

INTERVIEW WITH TESSA BRIDAL, AUTHOR OF RIVER OF PAINTED BIRDS

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9/4/15 – INTERVIEW WITH TESSA BRIDAL, AUTHOR OF RIVER OF PAINTED BIRDS

Called a “fresh voice in Latin American literature” by the New York Times for her debut novel TheTrTessa Bridal Headshotee of Red Stars, Tessa Bridal is about to enter new territory with a second novel, River of Painted Birds. Slated for release in mid-October in both English and Spanish language versions, this new novel follows the adventures of an 18th century Irish woman who marries an abusive husband at fifteen and boards a ship westward-bound ship after accidentally killing him six years later. Rather than landing in Boston as expected, she ends up in the country known today as Uruguay where she joins forces with a wealthy half-Indian smuggler and a renegade priest determined to save the native people from slavery. 

Pompeii and Wolf Hall: Two Kinds of Historical Novel

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Pompeii and Wolf Hall: Two Kinds of Historical Novel

By Garry Craig Powell

I have just finished reading, back to back, Robert Harris’ Pompeii and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. Both are international bestsellers; both deserve to be for the quality of the research and the vividness of the writing; both authors are English and middle-aged. (One of them, Harris, is like me an alumnus of Selwyn College, Cambridge, and was, I believe, in residence while I was, but if I met him, I don’t remember.) Both are worth adding to your summer reading list, if you haven’t read them already. Still, there are some major differences between them, which illustrate, for me, the two main categories of historical fiction, so it may be useful to consider their qualities in a little more detail.

6/10/2015. INTERVIEW WITH TOM FRANKLIN, CO-AUTHOR OF THE TILTED WORLD

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6/10/2015. INTERVIEW WITH TOM FRANKLIN, CO-AUTHOR OF THE TILTED WORLD

Tom Franklin’s fiction overflows with detailed characters, richTom Franklin headshot credit Maude Schuyler Clay (2) emotion, and the smoldering energy of the Deep South. I first encountered his novels with Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, a marvelous story of murder and tested loyalty that was nominated for nine awards and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the prestigious Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger Award.

The Tilted World, which Franklin wrote with his wife, Beth Ann Fennelly, is even better. In The Tilted World, Franklin and Fennelly explore the devastating consequences of the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 on property and people. As I said in my review of The Tilted World last month, the authors give life to the fear, grit, and courage of the people who were there.

Introducing Guest Blogger John Vanderslice

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Introducing Guest Blogger John Vanderslice, author of Island Fog

John Vanderslice is our guest blogger for June 1st. Here, with gratitude to Jeremiah Chamberlain, the editor of Fiction Writers Review, who first published my interview with him, I reproduce our conversation, which dealt mainly with his linked collection, Island Fog.

A native of the Washington DC area, John Vanderslice has an MFA from George Mason University and a PhD from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. After graduating from ULL in 1997, he began teaching at the University of Central Arkansas (UCA), where I met him when I began teaching there in 2004. John is a much-loved professor, and I was at once struck by the wit, the range, and the quality of his short fiction, which has been published in many leading journals, as well as several anthologies, including Chick for a Day and The Best of The First Line. 

REIMAGINING THE MOMENT

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3/04/2015 – REIMAGINING THE MOMENT

I’ve just finished reading two novels that re-envision a few days out of history, one about a famous battle, the other an obscure murder. Both novels include meticulously researched historical details, stretched here and there to fit the arc of a story and perhaps highlight a deeper truth, but still leaving readers with a fresh sense of worlds long vanished.  More than that, though, both Frog Musicnovels reminded me of the infinite richness in the smallness, shortest of moments, something all writers should remember.Killer Angels Cover

From Fact to Fiction

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10/17/2014 – From Fact to Fiction

I’ve been working on my latest novel, tentatively entitled In the Rembrandt’s Shadow, which alternates chapters set in 1999 with chapters following a painting’s provenance from 1616 to 1930. I feel as though I’m walking in a mine field of anachronisms on every page.

For instance, when were cell phones invented? My characters use them in 1999, and, yes, they were available then, but expensive. In fact, the first cell phones were released to the public in 1983 by Motorola and cost about $4,000. By 1999, they’d become smaller and somewhat more affordable, so it’s reasonable to suppose my characters had them.

5-23-2014 Stolen Remains: A Lady of Ashes Mystery REVIEWED by Sonia Linebaugh

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23 MAY 2014 5-23-2014 Stolen Remains: A Lady of Ashes Mystery REVIEWED by Sonia Linebaugh

5-23-2014 A REVIEW OF CHRISTINE TRENT’S STOLEN REMAINS: A LADY OF ASHES MYSTERY

A lady undertaker, a summons from Queen Victoria, a questionable death, a grieving housekeeper, arguing relatives, a body gone missing. In this second of the Lady of Ashes mysteries, when Queen Victoria summons her, Mrs. Violet Harper can’t refuse. She leaves her ill mother, her harried father, and her beloved second husband on their own while she rushes to London to tend to a dead viscount whose burial must be delayed until the Queen gives permission. The Queen trusts Violet’s discretion because she was so very kind and helpful when Prince Albert died.

Christine Trent Aug 2013

INTERVIEW WITH MARIAN SZCZEPANSKI, AUTHOR OF PLAYING ST. BARBARA

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11/4/13 – INTERVIEW WITH MARIAN SZCZEPANSKI, AUTHOR OF PLAYING ST. BARBARA 

Playing St. Barbara 2Novelist Marian Szczepanski and I met at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference in the summer of 1993. We recently reconnected through a mutual Facebook friend who had just reviewed Marian’s new (and first!) novel, Playing St. Barbara. Marian was gracious enough to catch me up on the missing twenty years, including how she came to write this historical novel chronicling the brutal lives and enduring spirit of Depression-era immigrant coal-mining families in southwestern Pennsylvania.