In recent years, I’ve come to crave historical fiction. When I was in school, history was hardly my
favorite subject. I think that had to do
with history textbooks. Yet I had been
learning some exciting history while reading good books. Researching later on, I found that history
books in the library were far more interesting. An author’s narrative style, their ability
to tell a story, and their personal commitment to a historical subject made a
nonfiction book readable and even fascinating.
Eventually, I chose to read books that concentrated on a time or a gap
in my understanding. Here I will share
the works of a few historical authors, those I read in 2014.
I had read The Histories of Herodotus, Volume 1, and
because I enjoyed this ancient historian’s perceptive and flowing style, read
Volume II. This was not only history but
anthropology, and it lead up to the Persian attack on Athens, a thrilling chronicle.
Here are my comments:
As with
Herodotus's other works, this varied between fascinating accounts and more
tedious material. It was mainly about the Persian Empire's campaign against
Athens, after they had conquered most of the city-states in Greece and Turkey,
besides the Middle East and Egypt. I'm surprised there wasn't a blockbuster
film about this. The description of the
armies that marched with Xerxes into Greece was incredible - a much bigger cast
than Cleopatra going into Rome. Most Greeks thought that Xerxes was Zeus come
down to earth and most submitted. The Athenians didn't think that and tried to
persuade others to accept that Xerxes was a mortal man.The Greek tactics turned out to be Herculean, winning the naval battles and waylaying the Persian army until the Persians had no more supplies or food. I don't usually enjoy war stories but this was so colorfully told.
Then I read The Girl from
Ithaca by Cherry Gregory. Odysseus’s
sister gets caught into the Trojan War in this historical fiction. My comments:
I liked
from the beginning the author's interpretation that the Trojan War wasn't just
about Helen, and that it was about women and Greek men. Cherry Gregory's telling was usually
well-based on the historical story, and it told about Odysseus's sister being
part of the war. The idea that women helped during the years of the Trojan War
is solid.The book also brings Greek heroes into human scenes while Neomene, Odysseus’ sister, attempts to be diplomat with Helen, helps to heal the injured, falls in love with a hero, and all the while, shows with the other women caught in the war the ancient woman's options in a treacherous and advancing world where warriors won.
Another recently published
historical novel is Fiji by Lance Morcan and James Morcan. I was glad to discover this book last summer
and to be absorbed with the Island of Fiji in the 1800s. Here are my comments:
 Fiji was immediately very readable,
written with flair, and smoothly intertwining its character plights with the
history of missionary efforts, traders, and the Fijian people. While a love
story between Nathan, the American trader, and Susannah, the missionary's
daughter, dominates, the other characters figure with their own plots.
Rambuka the outcast is comprehended in all his vengeance towards his brother.
The passion of Joeli for his people and Sina for her lover, after she is
abducted by Rambuka and made a slave, is ably drawn.Also, the theme of death, its meaning to the Fijians, to the missionaries, and to Nathan, gives this book its realistic depth and that contrasts with the native lifestyles, their attachments, and their festivities. Moving at the end, the book is full of believable heroism.
Dealing in used books, I kept coming
across those of H. Rider Haggard, an author I hadn’t read. He was very popular in the late 1800s, and
I’d heard he had inspired some of the plot in the movie Raiders of the
Lost Ark. I read his book Cleopatra. Ever since reading Shakespeare’s Anthony
and Cleopatra in college, I’ve been interested in depictions of Cleopatra,
historical and fiction. Haggard’s was tops, I thought. The books I’ve read of
his seem to be modern movie fare. Here
are my comments on The People of the Mist.
 Because of his uncle's financial affairs,
Outram loses his family mansion and his intended. He leaves England for
Africa with his brother but when his brother dies, Outram has no gold, only
his trusty Zulu servant Otter. Otter recognizes a woman from a slave camp that
he escaped. Soa knows where rubies are but she requires that the two help her
free the white woman she worked for, and as many other captives as possible. After they all bamboozle Arab slavers, I realized I had downloaded a long
Kindle book. What I’d read seemed adventure enough but every time I picked up
the book, the characters were so well-drawn that I continued to the ruby
treasure. Soa ran away from the mountain People of the Mist and she knows how to
disguise Juanna and Otter to look like gods prophesied to return someday.
From one peril to the next, the story surges.
At Authonomy.com, I read the first chapters of
Gev Sweeney’s The Scattered Proud.
This is set in colonial America and moves to the France of Napoleon. Here are my comments:
 Gev Sweeney does a brilliant job in creating
characters that are challenged with the turmoil of colonial times, then the
revolution politics in France, heroically and in the spirit of religious
commitment. An adolescent at the outset, Jeannette matures in France where
her clergyman father dies. She
continues work at an orphanage with Kit, a young clergyman who is married to
a returned French ex-patriot. The
scenes in France are vivid while the characters Jeannette comes to know are
surprising under their surfaces, especially when she takes refuge in the
country outside of Paris. The Bonaparte brothers enter because of stored arms
which is part of a clever intrigue, a scene led up to and climactic. This is
a book that doesn’t slacken in its storyline, continuing to be as compelling
as the first scenes. Underlying is the
protagonist’s religious probing which can entangle the contemporary reader.
So I
have found that historical fiction can be the tumultuous stuff of life!
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