Epoch Tales

Half-Blood Blues, by Esi Edugyan

2012-01-11T12:08:00.002-07:00

Wow, my blogging really fell off after Historical Tapestry's Alphabet Challenge. I'm also finding it a challenge to fit in much reading, with a 19-month-old keeping me busy. But I did read a couple of titles lately that I want to blog about, and the first of these is Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan, originally from Calgary (local pride!!!) and now living in Victoria.

This is a great story, and I was thrilled to see it nominated for so many prizes (among others, it won Canada's prestigious Giller Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize). Edugyan explores a little-known facet of World War II history in this tale of a Berlin jazz band in the 1930s and 1940s.

The novel opens in the 1990s, with the aging American jazzmen Sid Griffiths and Chip Jones travelling to Berlin for the premiere of a documentary film on the life of their former bandmate, Hieronymous Falk. Hiero was a young trumpet virtuoso in 1930s Berlin, when he joined Sid and Chip's band, the Hot Time Swingers. Berlin had a vibrant jazz scene in those days, as many black American musicians found a receptive audience in Germany and, oddly, less racial discrimination than in the U.S. Falk himself is a mixed-race German; his father was a Senegalese soldier with the French forces occupying the Rhineland after the First World War. As such, he is an outsider in his own land, and under the Nazis he becomes officially stateless.

The Hot Time Swingers face continuing pressure under the Nazi regime, and it eventually breaks up the band. The band's Jewish pianist is picked up and sent to a concentration camp, all Americans are advised by their government to leave Germany, and the German band members are under pressure to dissociate themselves from both jazz music and their non-Aryan friends. After an altercation with some German soldiers in which a soldier is killed, Chip, Sid and Hiero end up escaping to Paris. There they meet Louis Armstrong, who wants to record with Hiero. Unfortunately, Paris is invaded by the Nazis before that plan can bear fruit, but the Swingers do cut an iconic record called Half-Blood Blues, which ensures that Hiero's fame will live on, even though he is picked up by the Nazis, sent to a concentration camp, and is presumed dead when he doesn't resurface after the war.

The wartime setting is fascinating, but this is also a moving story of friendship, genius, professional insecurity and rivalry, and love.

Bride of New France Review

2011-06-09T10:14:00.000-06:00

I haven't been posting a lot of reviews lately, now that Historical Tapestry's A-Z reading challenge has wrapped up, but I really wanted to get back to reviewing some Canadian historical fiction. I really enjoyed Bride of New France, a novel that developed out of author Suzanne Desrochers' MA in history. Her thesis was on the filles du roi, poor French women in the late 17th century who were provided with a dowry by the king and shipped to Quebec to marry the French colonists there and populate the new colony with their children.

Whether these women were volunteers or were coerced is a matter of some debate among historians, but it's known that many of them were drawn from the Salpetriere, a hospital/poorhouse in Paris that housed insane women, prostitutes, and other impoverished women who were picked up off the streets for various reasons.

Our protagonist, 17-year-old Laure Beausejour, has grown up in the Salpetriere, but dreams of escape. Trained in embroidery and lace-making, she dreams of being a seamstress with her own shop someday. However, an act of disobedience gets her in trouble with the management of the Salpetriere, and she is chosen instead to be one of the cohort of girls sent to Canada.

Quebec in 1669 was little more than wilderness, and Desrochers' intensive research really colours the book with a feel for how harsh life must have been in the new land. Laure quickly marries a settler, whom she loathes, and takes up with Deskahay, an Algonquin man who becomes an unlikely kindred spirit. Laure is a spirited and likable character who is a survivor, whether her environment is a Paris poorhouse or a harsh new land.

Z is for Zuana

2011-02-14T20:36:00.000-07:00

Wow - the last letter of Historical Tapestry's Alphabet Challenge! It's been great fun finding books to read for each letter, exploring new fiction, and reviewing old favourites. I've tried to highlight Canadian historical fiction where I can, and I've really appreciated some of the feedback from readers who may not have heard of these wonderful books and authors.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a Canadian title/character for letter Z. But I did read Sarah Dunant's Sacred Hearts, and I really got to like the character of Sister Zuana. The novel is set in 16th-century Italy, a time when dowries for the daughters of the nobility were prohibitively expensive. Most nobles could only afford to make a lavish match for one daughter; any remaining daughters were often put into convents. Such is the fate of Serafina, a teenage noblewoman who has fallen in love with her music teacher. Her parents quickly place her in a convent before she can disgrace her family.

The convent is a stifling place. A routine of strict discipline is enforced, visits from family are rare, and the nuns are never allowed to see or be seen by the outside world. Serafina rages against her fate, then she pines, almost starving herself to death.

In contrast with the teenage rebel Serafina is Sor (Sister) Zuana, a middle-aged nun who has lived in the convent for many years, and manages the infirmary. For Zuana, placement in the convent was almost a blessing; she has a sharp mind, has inherited her medical skills and knowledge from her physician father, and had no desire to marry. Zuana takes Serafina under her wing.

I really enjoyed the book for its evenhanded portrayal of the fates of these women who were mostly placed in convents against their will. Dunant does an excellent job of portraying how stifling (to the point of panic) Serafina's imprisonment is. Indeed, it seems more like entombment than incarceration; at a very young age, she believes her life to be over, and realistically, she's right. Yet Zuana's experience shows another side of convent life: a woman given the opportunity to fulfill her intellectual potential in a way that would not be possible in the world outside the convent.

Y is for Ysabel

2011-01-26T11:24:00.000-07:00

Canadian author Guy Gavriel Kay made his name writing high fantasy, with his Tolkien-esque series The Fionavar Tapestry. However, he has been moving closer and closer to historical fiction with books set in fictional lands that closely resemble real ones: The Lions of Al-Rassan (a setting much like Moorish Spain); The Sarantine Mosaic (Byzantium); and The Last Light of the Sun (a civilization very like the Vikings). With the time-slip novel Ysabel, though, Kay turns his attention to a real historical setting: Provence.

The story begins in the present, as 15-year-old Canadian Ned Marriner accompanies his photographer father to Aix-en-Provence for a photo shoot. While exploring the ancient cathedral, Ned meets Kate Wenger, an American girl who is also visiting for the summer. Kate knows all about the history of the cathedral, and is just filling Ned in when they encounter a mysterious scarred man who threatens them with a knife. There is something otherworldly about the man, and about the other experiences Ned and Kate begin to have. It soon becomes apparent that Ned and Kate are witnessing the latest cycle in a love triangle that dates back to Celtic and Roman Provence, and keeps playing out over the centuries as the original three characters are reincarnated. Modern and ancient worlds come together as Ned and Kate try to end the cycle of torment for these three lost souls.

I have mixed feelings about this book. It was a bit of a guilty pleasure; the kind of thing I adored when I was a teenager, and still occasionally enjoy. It's certainly not as intensely detailed and researched as a lot of the historical fiction I usually enjoy, and it has many of the usual conventions of other time-slip novels, so it doesn't get high marks on the originality scale. Still, I couldn't put it down. If you enjoy time-slip books with a bit of fantasy along with the history, then you'll enjoy this. It reminded me a fair bit of Kate Mosse's Labyrinth, so if you enjoyed that one, then you should certainly seek this book out.

X is for Xavier

2010-12-13T20:56:00.000-07:00

I've been waiting for letter X for ages, so I can profile one of my favourite novels, Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden. In my opinion, this book should displace Timothy Findley's The Wars as Canada's definitive novel of World War I. Anyone who likes war novels will appreciate this book, which looks at the First World War through the experience of two young Cree men, Xavier Bird and his cousin Elijah Whiskeyjack. Readers interested in the history of North America's native peoples will also find much to hold their interest, as Xavier and Elijah's story is interspersed with the life story of Niska, Xavier's elderly aunt, and one of the last Cree to still live a traditional lifestyle.

The book opens with Niska venturing into town to meet the train that bears Xavier home from the war. A strapping young man when he left, Xavier is now a wraith: emaciated, missing a leg, and addicted to morphine. He is planning to use the last of his morphine to kill himself by overdose; his aunt must discover the source of his pain, and heal it if she can. In a series of flashbacks, Xavier tells the story of his and Elijah's experience in France. Their native heritage makes the boys excellent hunters, and they are soon promoted to snipers in the army.

The two boys are a study in contrasts. Xavier is an introvert who was raised in the bush by his aunt, has had little exposure to white men prior to enlisting in the army, and finds the culture strange. Elijah, on the other hand, grew up in a residential school (these schools were set up by the Canadian government to "civilize" Indian children by taking them away from their parents and sending them to a boarding school where they would be educated, Anglicized and Christianized). Elijah's agile mind received a good education, but his child's soul was damaged by years of abuse. Elijah initially appears to thrive in the army, but his enthusiasm for killing disturbs Xavier, who fears his cousin may be descending into madness.

Xavier and Elijah's story is interspersed with Niska's own story, of a girlhood spent with a tribe that was still free and able to live off the land; of the forcing of her people onto reservations and into residential schools; and of her own doomed efforts to maintain her people's way of life and avoid the white man's world. Niska is her tribe's medicine woman, and has taught her nephew all she knows. She represents the old ways, Elijah represents the new world, and Xavier is perched uncomfortably between the two. Yet of the two cousins, it is Xavier who will keep his sanity amid the horrors of war, despite being called upon to do terrible things.

This book is on my very short list of Canadian novels that I would happily re-read. It's a beautiful book about family, war, love, and brotherhood. Also about duty, dignity, heartbreak and culture. I came to care deeply for these characters.

W is for Winter

2010-11-17T21:02:00.000-07:00

OK, it's a stretch, in that my letter doesn't correspond to the author name, a place, a character name, etc., as specified by the rules. But winter is so prominent in Canadian author Helen Humphreys' The Frozen Thames, that it practically qualifies as a character. And winter is on my mind and outside my window (my husband has been shovelling for an hour, and still has about an hour to go). Plus, I meant to do this book for letter T, but forgot to write it up (Mommy brain).

Anyway, if you are looking for a lovely little gem of a book to get in the mood for winter and Christmas, you couldn't do better than this one. In fact, it's a beautiful Christmas gift for the HF fan in your life. Humphreys pursues a simple yet clever idea here: writing one short story set during each of the 40 times the Thames has frozen solid in recorded human history.

The stories in this book are very short - perfect for a little bedtime reading. Some are festive, evoking the wonders of the brilliant "frost fairs" that were held on the ice in London. Others are tragic, portraying the bitter plight of the poor during winters so harsh that the birds freeze to death in the trees, their corpses falling from the branches. For those of you who love the Tudors, Queen Elizabeth I features in a few of the stories.

The stories are illustrated by gorgeously reproduced illustrations from the different freezes, ranging from woodcuts to oil paintings to photos.

Due to global warming and the construction of new bridges that allow for a faster flow, the Thames will never freeze solid again, so this book is the closest you will come to browsing the stalls at the frost fair, and picking up a few souvenir postcards to commemorate the rare event.

V is for Voyageurs

2010-11-14T18:18:00.002-07:00

Scottish writer Margaret Elphinstone's book Voyageurs is a marvellous tale set against the backdrop of the War of 1812 (for those of you a little fuzzy on your history, that's the one where the U.S. tried to invade Canada several times as part of a struggle with Britain, and the British/Canadian soldiers ended up burning down the White House and a good chunk of Washington). Anyway, the book takes place largely in the leadup to the war, and focuses on the efforts of a young English Quaker man, Mark Greenhow, to locate his sister Rachel, who has eloped with a fur trader and consequently been disowned by her co-religionists.

When he leaves England, Mark is quite a young, naive, earnest and religious man. His travels in Canada, and his interactions with Indians and settlers of widely varying backgrounds, test his faith without breaking it, and ultimately make him a far more interesting person. The characters are well drawn, and the plot is suspenseful. There aren't a lot of novels that focus on this period, and that alone makes this one worth reading, but it's also a really enjoyable story in its own right.

One quibble: I really hate it when authors try to claim their fictional work was based on an actual manuscript/bunch of letters/diary/interview. Elphinstone claims the book is based on a manuscript she found in the attic of an old house she purchased and renovated in 2003. Maybe it's true, but it rings false - it's so convenient that it's always novelists who stumble across these hidden treasures! Alan Massie's not-very-good Roman emperor novels are supposedly based on manuscripts he found in caves. Robert James Waller's maudlin The Bridges of Madison County was supposedly based on his "interviews" with the main characters, who were in fact so non-existent that National Geographic had to issue a plea for people to stop contacting them asking for copies of the non-existent articles featuring the photos of these bridges. The unspeakably awful Celestine Prophecy also claimed to be based on a real prophecy that the author discovered.

In my opinion, this is a cheap trick used by authors to bolster the validity of really mediocre stories - if it's a good story, you don't need to tell people it's sorta true in order to get them engaged with the story and its characters. This is a good book, and such a tawdry literary device is unworthy of this author.

S is for Fred Stenson

2010-09-29T23:14:00.000-06:00

If, like I did, you grew up on the Canadian prairies, you probably studied the fur trade in social studies. It was probably a heaping helping of boredom, sprinkled with a light seasoning of white guilt over the terrible exploitation of native peoples. The fur trade is one topic where I really think the best way to get a real feeling for the history of the period, both the exciting and the tragic elements, is through fiction. There are some excellent novels out there documenting this period. I've already reviewed Isobel Gunn, and I plan to review Margaret Elphinstone's excellent novel Voyageurs for letter V. All are great reads, but I think Fred Stenson's book is the best for a raw, unvarnished look at this period in history.

The novel begins in 1822, shortly after the merger of the Hudson's Bay and Northwest Companies, formerly bitter rivals in the fur trade. The merger isn't a sign of growth, but rather of decay; Canada's beaver populations have already been exploited to near-extinction.

In this context, two of the company's employees, Ted Harriott and John Rowand, are sent to explore new territory on the unmapped Bow River in Alberta. Prospects for fur are poor, and there is deep unrest among the natives as smallpox decimates their populations and American whisky traders, banned from trading in the States under a new law, move up to Canada to sell their destructive liquor to the Indians. Harriott is particularly unenthusiastic about this mission, but his talent for native languages makes him invaluable for the job. He also hopes to advance in his career, and establish himself so that he can marry his Metis cousin.

This is not a lighthearted book. It explores the collapse of many things: the fur trade, the last vestiges of traditional native cultures, and the last hope that anything like a fair deal will ever be offered to Canada's native peoples. While the novel is bleak, it does shine a light on an important period of Canada's history, and humanizes it with the stories of two likable protagonists.

R is for Riel

2010-09-07T18:32:00.000-06:00

Well, I'm back after a hiatus of baby-care, in which I never really got my act together for a few letters. But for R. I'm going to profile a book that covers one of my favourite characters in Canadian history, Louis Riel. Riel was the elected leader of the Metis people in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The Metis were a mixed-race people, combining French, native, and Scottish heritage, who developed their own vibrant culture on the Canadian prairies. They had deep roots in Manitoba and Saskatchewan long before the great push to settle the West. When the Canadian government got serious about opening up the West for settlement, the Metis were systematically dispossessed of their lands. Riel, who had trained as a lawyer in Quebec, represented the Metis, and is considered the Father of Manitoba. He led his people in the Red River Rebellion, and was elected Manitoba's first Member of Parliament, but was never able to take his seat, because the government had a warrant out for his arrest.

Riel escaped to the U.S. for several years, living as a schoolteacher, but his people asked him to return to Canada and represent them in Saskatchewan, where they were again in danger of not having their rights recognized. Riel led another rebellion, one that would end in his execution for treason. A messianic leader, he was not entirely sane, and his lawyer tried to plead insanity to save his life, over Riel's own objections. Riel's execution spelled the end of Metis hopes for equal treatment, and also widened the rift between English and French Canada.

Chester Brown's comic-strip biography covers all the salient developments of this era, often quoting directly from historical documents and the transcripts of Riel's trial. It has won several awards (see here for a list), and Publishers Weekly called the book "a contender for best graphic novel ever." Though it's sold as nonfiction, it is very novelistic in nature.

P is for Padma Viswanathan

2010-08-16T22:57:00.000-06:00

I missed a couple of letters on this challenge, due to a combination of having a newborn and taking vacation, but I started this book while in labour with my son two months ago, and have finally managed to finish it.

Those of you who love family sagas will enjoy this novel by Indo-Canadian author Padma Viswanathan, loosely inspired by her own grandmother's stories of her family history. The novel is set in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) during the first half of the 20th century, a time of rapid social change in India. The main character is Sivakami, a young Brahmin girl who is married young to an astrologer who correctly prophesies the date of his own death, leaving Sivakami a widow with two children at age 19. Following Brahmin custom, Sivakami dons a white sari, shaves her head, and sequesters herself in her home, living largely in isolation from the outside world.

Yet she is unable to withdraw from the world completely; she needs to manage her husband's estate and provide for her children's future. The novel tells the tale of Sivakami, her children and grandchildren during a time when traditional values are giving way to new ones.

This isn't a fast-paced or dramatic saga, but rather an intimate portrait of a particular time and place.

M is for Masters of Rome

2010-06-14T13:53:00.000-06:00

I took a brief hiatus from the Alphabet Challenge to give birth to my first child (a son, Malcolm Arthur). I also finished a historical novel that will give me a character for letter Z - very exciting! Since the baby's having a nice long nap now I thought I'd take the time to submit an entry for letter M.

I'm taking a little trip down memory lane with this one. Colleen McCullough's engrossing Masters of Rome series was the work that got me started on my historical fiction addiction. I'd read some juvenile HF in my preteens and teens, but really wasn't aware of the genre until, in my 20s, I picked up a deeply discounted copy of The First Man in Rome at my local bookstore. I was hooked. Most of what little I knew about Ancient Rome was about the Caesars, and most authors really only concern themselves with Julius Caesar and the later emperors. The wonderful thing about this series is that McCullough starts long before Caesar's birth, with compelling portraits of two powerful men, Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who will be sometime allies, sometime adversaries as each seeks to become the "First Man in Rome," an unofficial title bestowed on Rome's most powerful male citizen.

Marius is a "New Man" from the provinces. He has risen to a certain level thanks to his wealth and his brilliant generalship, but his political ambitions are thwarted due to his plebeian status, a problem he solves by making an alliance with the illustrious but somewhat impoverished Julius family. He marries the eldest daughter Julia (aunt to the future Caesar). Sulla, meanwhile, has the opposite problem: an impeccable patrician pedigree, but no money to outfit himself for a political or military career. He obtains his money through an alliance with the newly wealthy Caesars, as well as through other morally reprehensible means that I won't reveal here.

The first few books in the series concern themselves with Marius and Sulla's rises to power. They also do a great job of illustrating how, as the Roman Empire expanded, the republican model of government came under increasing strain as powerful men sought to dominate the political systems with armies that were loyal to them and fortunes that were earned through military plunder and governance of lucrative provinces. These books have a wealth of detail on the workings of Rome's political system, but it's never dull.

As the series progresses, young Julius Caesar is also introduced, and the series ends with his murder (though McCullough later also wrote a book about Antony and Cleopatra). This series remains my favourite chronicle of Ancient Rome.

K is for The King's Grace

2010-05-15T18:36:00.003-06:00

I had planned to be ambitious for letter K and read Kamouraska by Anne Hebert. It's set in a small 19th-century Quebec town, and it's about a woman who plots with her lover to murder her husband. But it seemed so dreary and Canadian, and the weather had been so dreary and Canadian (snow in May? Why do I live here?). So I opted for something a little more escapist: The King's Grace, by Anne Easter Smith.

The novel's protagonist is Grace Plantagenet, the bastard daughter of Edward IV. Grace is only mentioned once in the historical record, as one of the attendants at the funeral of Edward's queen, Elizabeth. Smith imagines a well thought out story here, in which the quiet but resourceful Grace sets to work on the mystery of what happened to her half-brothers Edward and Richard, the famous Princes in the Tower.

I wasn't sure whether I'd enjoy this book, as I don't buy all the conspiracy theories around the princes; I think the simplest explanation -- that Richard did them in -- is probably the correct one. But Grace is an engaging character, and her outsider view on the court of Henry VII is an entertaining one. The secondary cast of characters -- Edward's widow and his other children; Richard III's bastard son John, and an array of others, are also fascinating. And Smith does a good job of presenting an alternative narrative of what might have happened.

J is for Maureen Jennings

2010-04-26T22:26:00.003-06:00

Fans of Victorian mysteries will enjoy Maureen Jennings' Inspector Murdoch series. Set in turn-of-the-century Toronto (turn of the 20th century, not the 21st), they feature the likable Inspector William Murdoch as a protagonist. Murdoch is the first Toronto police detective specifically assigned to investigate homicide cases. His immediate boss doesn't agree with this little pilot project, and consequently tries to make Murdoch's life difficult at every turn. Murdoch is also haunted by the death of his beloved fiance from tuberculosis, and by memories of an abusive and impoverished childhood. Like all the best literary detectives, he has a lot of sympathy for the downtrodden classes of the city, and many of his cases involve the victimization of poor people that others may not care much about.

In order, the books are: Except the Dying; Under the Dragon's Tail; Poor Tom Is Cold; Let Loose the Dogs; Night's Child; Vices of My Blood; and A Journeyman to Grief. You can read synopses and reviews of all of them on Jennings' web site, so I won't go into detail here about each.

I think fans of Anne Perry and Caleb Carr would enjoy this series, and anyone interested in Toronto's urban history would also be intrigued, even if historical mysteries aren't your usual thing. It's rare to find a Canadian novel set in this period that features an urban setting; most Canadian historical novels focusing on this time have rural settings. Jennings has been honoured by the City of Toronto for her historical portrait of the city. She does a wonderful job of bringing Victorian Toronto to life. The books explore the class distinctions that often led to conflict; racist attitudes against groups such as Catholics, French Canadians, and Chinese immigrants; the different subcultures of the city (the theatre community in Under the Dragon's Tail, dog-fighting in Let Loose the Dogs).

Murdoch is a less hard-bitten and worldly character than many detectives. He clings to his Catholic faith, and abides by a rigid moral code, particularly where the ladies are concerned. Occasionally he seems a bit staid and, dare I say, Canadian. However, he's saved from complete prudery by his compassion and understanding of the world he navigates within his work, a world that involves all kinds of lurid crimes and sexual exploitation. One senses that his knowledge of the worst that men can do is one of the reasons he's so inhibited in his own conduct.

These books have been made into a TV series; I haven't seen it so can't comment.

On a completely unrelated note, I'm not sure how much longer I'll be taking part in the alphabet challenge, as I'm expecting my first baby (due May 17). We'll see how much time that gives me for reading and writing!

I is for Isobel Gunn

2010-04-12T13:07:00.000-06:00

Novelist Audrey Thomas is not known for historical fiction, but while spending time in Scotland, she kept coming across references to Isobel Gunn, the first European woman to settle in the Rupert's Land settlements of the Hudson's Bay Company in the early 1800s. Fascinated by these references, Thomas went looking for the history, and fleshed it out with her imagination in this compelling novel.

Isobel is a young woman from the Orkneys (Scotland) facing the bleak prospect of poverty. Like many young Scots of her time, she decides to seek a better life as a fur trader with the Hudson's Bay Company in Rupert's Land (a large swath of what is now Canada, Rupert's Land was originally granted to the Hudson's Bay Company for the purpose of fur trading).

There is only one problem with Isobel's plan: the Hudson's Bay Company does not employ women, or even allow men to bring their wives and families. As anyone who has read other histories or historical novels about the fur trade knows, the white men employed by HBC were heavily dependent on their native "wives" for food, clothing, medicine, and knowledge of survival in the harsh Canadian climate. Most of these relationships were not formalized, and many of the men even had European wives and children. However, European women were seen as too weak and unskilled in the areas that were important for survival in a harsh land.

As a result, Isobel decides to disguise herself as a man. In the guise of John Fubbister, she gains employment in Rupert's Land in the summer of 1806. The work is hard, but Isobel is used to a hard life, and she thrives in her new post. Unfortunately, she becomes pregnant when a fellow HBC employee discovers her secret and threatens to reveal her identity unless she becomes his lover. Isobel manages to hide her pregnancy for months, and is only discovered when she goes into labour.

If all of this seems a little far-fetched, keep in mind that many of the "men" employed by HBC were in fact teenage boys; it would not have been hard for a strapping young woman to pass as one of them. As for concealing her pregnancy, many HBC employees spent months alone on their trap lines, and in the winter months everyone would have been bundled up in multiple layers, even indoors. Isobel's ability to disguise her pregnancy surprises me a lot less than modern teenage girls you hear about who somehow managed to hide their pregnancies until the end, despite living in an age of body-hugging garments.

I started reading novels about the fur trade a few years ago (including Fred Stenson's marvellous book The Trade and Margaret Elphinstone's Voyageurs). Having found the history of the fur trade dull and incomprehensible when I studied it in school, I was pleasantly surprised to find these books highly readable, with all kinds of fascinating characters, and details that weren't boring at all when presented as part of a compelling narrative. Isobel Gunn is another great read in this genre, and really unique in presenting a woman's perspective on a heavily masculine time and place.

H is for Hilary Mantel

2010-03-28T19:51:00.000-06:00

Hilary Mantel's account of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's most powerful minister, won the Booker Prize, but I really enjoyed this book in spite of that (I don't have a great track record with Booker winners, most of which I find incredibly dreary and self-consciously literary). This book also just won the National Book Critics Circle Award in the UK.

Those of you who are fans of the BBC series The Tudors, which portrays Cromwell as a dour, power-hungry and ruthless Protestant will find Mantel's portrait quite different. Mantel's Cromwell is an affectionate family man. Abused by his own father, he is determined to treat his children with kindness. He loves his wife, and grieves when she dies of a sudden illness. He's an idealist, who tries to deal ethically with others and work for the good of the realm. He's also a former protege of Cardinal Wolsey, and grieves over that man's tragic end.

I found this glowing portrait of Cromwell a little hard to believe at times. Though I don't know a lot about the man's actual life, he seems a little too modern and sensitive to be quite credible, and certainly surviving and succeeding in Tudor England would have required a little more cunning and ruthlessness than Mantel's character demonstrates. Still, he's a compelling personality, and the period detail in the book is fascinating. I also liked Mantel's portrayal of Thomas More; I've always felt that portraits such as "A Man for All Seasons" and even The Tudors painted him a little too glowingly, given his hard line with religious dissenters. Mantel portrays him as a narrow-minded bigot who flagellates himself, is unkind to his wife and children, and loves to see heretics burn.

Mantel is working on a sequel to Wolf Hall, which I very much look forward to.

G is for The Given Day

2010-03-07T16:27:00.003-07:00

I've been meaning to read Dennis Lehane's The Given Day since it came out in 2008, but only just recently got around to it. This is a great slice of history, encompassing so many topics - race relations, the history of policing, the union movement, the influenza pandemic, immigration in the early 1900s, pro baseball, and much more. Larger-than-life figures such as Babe Ruth, Calvin Coolidge, and J. Edgar Hoover all make appearances in the book.

The novel is set in Boston in 1919. For the most part, the story follows two protagonists who form an unlikely friendship: Danny Coughlin, a beat cop and the son of a police captain; and Luther Laurence, a black man on the run from a terrible deed, hoping to forge a new life for himself in Boston.

Boston at the time of the novel is a seething cauldron of tensions. Paranoia about immigrants, and the Bolshevik and anarchist ideas they bring with them, runs rampant. Danny himself is the survivor of a police station bombing carried out by an anarchist group, and he is easily persuaded to take part in a sting against some other suspected left-wing militants. As thousands of men return home from the war seeking work in an already depressed market, the union movement gains strength, and powerful business interests engage in union-busting tactics, and embark on a media campaign to link unionists with Communism. Danny is drawn into this conflict when he becomes involved with attempts to organize a police union in Boston - if successful, it will be the first police union in the country, and the city and state governments are therefore determined to break these organizers so they don't set a precedent. Danny's commitment to his cause makes him question some of the other rhetoric he's hearing against left-wing groups, particularly because the "anarchists" he's supposed to infiltrate do not appear to be violent.

One thing I found absolutely fascinating about the police-union thread of the story was just how badly police officers were compensated for work that was hard, dangerous, and long. These men were paid poverty wages (far less than any other municipal employees, and less even than dock workers and other manual labourers), and they were expected to work 80-hour weeks, sleep at the station when they were on duty (not only did this take them away from their families, but the stations were in disgusting sanitary condition), and buy all their uniforms and other equipment themselves; if their uniform was destroyed in an altercation with rioters, its replacement would come out of their meagre paycheques. The stereotype of the corrupt, "on-the-take" Irish cop of that era makes sense when seen in the context of the grinding poverty these men had to endure.

Danny befriends Luther when the other man becomes his father's butler. Luther carries with him a dark secret: he has fled Ohio, leaving behind his pregnant wife, after he was forced to kill a local crime boss in self-defence. He's hoping to make a new life for himself and persuade his wife to join him. Living in the black community in Boston, he becomes involved with the fledgling NAACP. Unfortunately, Luther incurs the enmity of police lieutenant Eddie McKenna, an unscrupulous cop who doesn't mind breaking the law himself in pursuit of his ends.

Babe Ruth is also a minor protagonist in the story. He's portrayed as a good-hearted but none-too-clever baseball genius, brilliant despite the fact that he's drunk most of the time. He's taken advantage of by men who pay him less than he's worth, doesn't understand the union movement gathering steam within professional baseball at the time, and is haunted by his fleeting encounter with Luther Laurence, in a "friendly" baseball game in which things turn nasty after the Babe and his fellow pros are roundly beaten by a bunch of "amateur" black players.

It's difficult to come up with a neat synopsis for such a complex story, but this is a great, great read. Lehane also wrote the novel Mystic River, which later became a critically acclaimed movie starring Sean Penn. I would love to see this novel adapted for the big screen (or better, made into an HBO series). Actually, this book reminded me a fair bit of The Wire, HBO's fantastic series set in modern Baltimore. The urban decay, corruption among officialdom, and the ambiguity created by the image of rotten cops and noble criminals that makes The Wire so interesting are all here in this book.

UPDATE: April 2010: Dennis Lehane is working on a sequel, chronicling the life of Danny's younger brother Joe as a gangster during the 1920s.

F is for Fitzwilliam Darcy

2010-02-20T11:10:00.001-07:00

Here's my first non-Canadian entry in Historical Tapestry's Alphabet Challenge. I'm not usually fond of literary spin-offs, or of fan fiction, and this trilogy is both. Pamela Aidan began writing it online, then self-published it, and then it was picked up by Simon & Schuster. However, I found these books very entertaining and true to the period. Of the many, many, Jane Austen-inspired works out there, I think these books rank among the best.

The Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman trilogy tells the story of Pride and Prejudice from Darcy's perspective. The first book, An Assembly Such as This, covers the period from Darcy's first meeting with Elizabeth at the Meryton assembly rooms, to Bingley's departure from Netherfield after the Netherfield ball.

Book two, Duty and Desire, covers the months in which Darcy throws himself into London society in an attempt to forget Elizabeth and find a suitable wife. It also pokes fun at the gothic novels so popular at that time, as Darcy ventures to a friend's country estate and finds that his host has a closet full of skeletons, including a legend that predicts his family's downfall. His enigmatic and beautiful half-sister, Lady Sylvanie, may be a helpless victim of a cruel brother, or a cunning trap to ensnare Darcy and his fortune.

Book three, These Three Remain, chronicles Darcy's attempt to reform his own character, his chance meeting with Elizabeth in Kent, and the happy ending that Austen fans are familiar with.

What I found most entertaining about these books is that Aidan does a great job of mixing the story we already know with a story from her own imagination. Austen, who lived a secluded country life, and was never much in the company of men outside her own family, would have known little of the London society life that Aidan brings to life so marvellously. The Season, the wild parties, the political tumult, and the gentlemen's clubs with which Darcy must have been familiar are all portrayed here, often with a very appealing sense of humour. Darcy has a valet who is quite a droll character, and his work on Darcy's cravat becomes famous when Darcy shows up to a party with a more elegantly knotted neckpiece than Beau Brummel, the reigning male fashion icon of London. Darcy is all over the fashion pages the next morning, much to his annoyance. Another interesting new character is Darcy's Welsh friend Dyfed Brougham, who, to Darcy's bafflement, hides a keen mind under a foppish, dandyish demeanour, for reasons that only become clear near the end of the trilogy.

These three books should delight any true Austen fan, though non-fans will likely not be swayed by this take on Darcy and Elizabeth's story.

E is for The Englishman's Boy

2010-02-16T12:18:00.002-07:00

Whoops, I'm falling down on the job - didn't make my deadline for E, even though I'm covering an old favourite, not a new favourite. Where did the first half of February go? Time to introduce a favourite book and author from my home province of Saskatchewan, Guy Vanderhaeghe.

Do creators of historical fiction have a responsibility to be true to the past, particularly when that past lies within living memory? That's the question at the centre of this novel.

As the cover suggests, it's a western, but one that critiques the romanticization of the genre and presents a grittier, more tragic West. It's also a great book for those of you who love the history of Hollywood, as it moves back and forth between the final decades of westward expansion and the early days of silent film.

In the 1920s, a young Canadian writer named Harry Vincent journeys to Hollywood, hoping to make his fortune as a screenwriter in the glamorous new world of silent film. He's given a plum assignment by Damon Ira Chance, a D.W. Griffith-like major director. Westerns are big in Hollywood at the time, but they're heavily romanticized portraits of the Old West. Chance tells Vincent that he dreams of directing an epic blockbuster that tells the true story of the Old West, as opposed to the fairy tale. He suspects he's found his blockbuster in the person of Shorty McAdoo, a reclusive and embittered old cowboy who has fallen on hard times, and now works as a stunt rider for the Hollywood films that he loathes. Chance wants Harry to earn Shorty's trust, wheedle his story out of him, and make it into a screenplay. Harry plies Shorty with money, groceries and booze, presenting himself as a journalist rather than a screenwriter. Meanwhile, Chance sets up Harry with a glamorous actress and all the Hollywood night life he needs to quell his ethical qualms over deceiving Shorty. Over time, the old man divulges his story.

Shorty's story of the Old West is interwoven with chapters on Harry's experience of Hollywood, but his account is neither the romance of the Hollywood Western, nor the great epic of which Chance dreams. As a teenager in Fort Benton, Montana during the late 1873, Shorty takes a job as assistant and odd-jobs boy to an Englishman who has come to the American West to make his fortune. The Englishman quickly dies of fever, leaving Shorty jobless and unpaid. At the same time, a party of wolf-hunters has arrived in Fort Benton, angry at the theft of their horses. They blame the Assiniboine tribes, and are looking to hire men to help them pursue vengeance and reclaim their lost mounts. They're paying well, and the boy signs up. The wolfers are led by Tom Hardwick, a man who appears at first to be merely hardbitten, but as the pursuit of the Indians progresses, he reveals a disturbingly bloodthirsty and vicious streak. The party journeys several days over the border into Canada, and when they finally find their quarry, the result is the infamous Cypress Hills Massacre. Instead of the lucrative adventure the boy was expecting, he is traumatized for life, as is evident from the beginning in Harry's conversations with the bleary, hard-drinking and very angry older McAdoo.

Despite its grim themes, this book is one of those rare titles that manages to be both a highly literary work (winning the Governor General's Award, and nominated for the IMPAC Dublin Prize) and a compulsive page-turner with characters that really grab you and pull you into their lives. It was difficult to choose between this book and The Last Crossing, Vanderhaeghe's other great chronicle of the Old West, and I would highly recommend both; but this book won out for its thoughtful criticism of the ethical issues around fictionalizing history.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation made this novel into a miniseries a couple years ago, and it's a great adaptation, starring Nicholas Campbell (familiar to viewers of Canadian television as the hard-drinking coroner in Da Vinci's Inquest) as the older Shorty. If you didn't catch it when it aired, you may be able to find it on DVD at your public library.

D is for Aminata Diallo, Heroine of The Book of Negroes

2010-01-21T14:48:00.001-07:00

American readers may be saying, "Wait, I've never heard of this book." Well, that might be because the author is Canadian, but it's also because the American publishers were squeamish about the N word (despite the fact that the title refers to a real historical document) and opted instead for the (ironically) white-bread title Someone Knows My Name. Not exactly a title that screams, "read me," and they also ditched this gorgeous cover for one that, while competent, just doesn't have the visual impact of this very striking woman's face.

Anyway, you SHOULD read this book. It was a #1 bestseller in Canada, and won the Commonwealth Writers Prize, as well as being selected by CBC Radio's annual Canada Reads competition, where a panel reviews a selection of Canadian novels and selects the one book they think all Canadians should read that year. I've passed it around to many friends, all of whom loved it, even if they weren't big readers of historical fiction.

Aminata Diallo is a completely compelling heroine. She grows up in Mali in the 18th century, the only child of two loving parents. Her father is the village jeweller, and her mother is the village midwife. Her idyllic childhood comes to an abrupt end at age 11, when she is abducted by slavers who slaughter her parents in front of her, and force-march her and many others in chain-gang formation to the African coast, where they are loaded onto a slave ship bound for pre-Revolutionary South Carolina, a British colony at that time. The conditions on the ship are horrific. Upon arrival in South Carolina, Aminata is taken to an indigo plantation, where she is put to back-breaking labour. A clever girl, she also learns to read in secret from one of the other slaves. She marries a man from another plantation, and has a son by him.

Aminata is eventually purchased from her owner by Solomon Lindo, a Jewish indigo broker from New York who visits the plantation and notes her above-average intelligence. Bindo teaches her bookkeeping, a valuable skill, but does not free her (slavery was legal throughout the British Empire at this time). Though her conditions are less onerous, she is separated from her husband and son. Unhappy with Lindo's role in this, she escapes his house, and gains employment and protection from the British, who are preparing to fight the rebellious Americans in the American Revolution. They promise any blacks living in New York their freedom and some land in Nova Scotia, Canada, in exchange for black enlistment in the British forces. Aminata becomes their recorder, noting down the names of black Loyalists in The Book of Negroes, the document that will arrange for passage by ship for the fleeing blacks as the Revolution draws to a close.

Aminata is united with her husband for a time (he has fled to the north), but they end up on different ships to Nova Scotia, and she loses track of him. It will be years before she receives word of his fate. Aminata is still fated to travel widely, leaving Nova Scotia for Africa in an attempt to locate her home village, and eventually ending up in England as a powerful speaker in the abolitionist movement there.

Aminata's life is a hard one, with more heartbreak and loss than many have to bear, but not more than was usual for slaves during their centuries of oppression. Her story is inspired in part by historical slave narratives, and is authentic, moving, and beautiful. Perhaps because Aminata is not born a slave, she never accepts any of the premises that underlie her slavery, questioning her cruel treatment at every turn, and even defying her white abolitionist allies, who prefer to take "baby steps" towards the ending of slavery.

C is for Camulod

2009-12-26T19:42:00.003-07:00

Scottish-Canadian author Jack Whyte's A Dream of Eagles is one of my favourite historical series (American readers will know it as The Camulod Chronicles, which was the series title of the American editions). In this series, Whyte constructs a historical interpretation of the Arthur legend.

The Skystone, the first book in the series, begins with Arthur's great-grandparents' generation. The Romans are pulling out of Britain as their empire falls. A few of them decide to stay and found a colony, along with some Romanized Britons and local Celts, that will provide the Isle of Britain with some stability. One of these men is Publius Varrus, a blacksmith with a gift for designing innovative weapons. It is Varrus who discovers a meteorite that contains a mysterious metal, from which he forges Excalibur.

Varrus' friend Caius Britannicus, a former Roman officer, provides military leadership to the fledgling colony. Varrus marries Britannicus' sister Luceiia; the two will be grandparents to the future King Arthur, while Caius Britannicus is the father of Merlyn, Arthur's teacher in matters of war and politics.

The series chronicles the building-up of the thriving colony known as Camulod, the aging of Varrus and Britannicus, and the coming-of-age of Merlyn and his best friend and cousin, Uther. Originally, Whyte had planned to end with the two Sorceror books narrated by Merlyn (conceived as a single book, but split in two at the recommendation of the publisher). However, Whyte had left a major question unanswered, concerning whether Uther had committed a terrible crime and betrayed his cousin Merlyn. Readers pressed him for answers on this point, and in response he wrote Uther, which tells Uther's side of the story.
Whyte took a break from the series for a while, then wrote two additional books to portray the period of Arthur's reign, both told from the perspective of Lancelot (who does not betray Arthur with Guinivere in this version). The first book, Clothar the Frank (U.S. edition is titled The Lance Thrower) tells of Clothar/Lancelot's upbringing in France, as the adopted son of King Ban of Benwick. Eventually, he travels to Britain, where Arthur is recruiting knights into a new chivalric order. The final book, The Eagle, covers the glory years and final fall of Arthur's reign.

I've glossed over a lot here, as these are big, dense books. Personally, I like the earlier books best, where Whyte was inventing his own characters and wasn't so constrained by the Arthurian canon. But they're all worth reading, for a straight-up historical presentation of the Arthur story. I particularly love the character of Merlyn, who is not the aged wizard of so many accounts, but rather a fighting man and a wise teacher, unjustly stigmatized with the label of sorceror in his later years.

The books, in order of publication, are:

The Skystone
The Singing Sword
The Eagles' Brood
The Saxon Shore
The Sorceror: The Fort at River's Bend (The Sorceror part appears to have been dropped from U.S. editions)
The Sorceror: Metamorphosis
Uther
Clothar the Frank (The Lance Thrower in the U.S.)
The Eagle

B is for Black Robe

2009-12-04T17:37:00.002-07:00

Continuing on with Historical Tapestry's Alphabet Challenge, I've chosen Black Robe, by Brian Moore, for letter B. This is a superb novel about the early encounters between Canada's native peoples and Europeans.

Set in New France (what would become Quebec) in 1635, this is the story of Father Laforgue, a young, idealistic Jesuit who has come to the new world to save the souls of the native peoples. He is bound for a Huron settlement in the interior of Quebec, where he is to join another priest at a mission. A group of Algonquin have agreed to take father Laforgue and his young companion, Daniel, in exchange for iron pots and other trade goods.

On the journey, Father Laforgue faces both physical and spiritual hazards. His simplified beliefs about the natives as "savages" do not hold up on getting to know them better. He is dependent on them for survival, and comes to admire their better qualities. Yet, he is scornful of their religious beliefs, and appalled by certain elements of their culture. The book is laced with graphic profanity, which is apparently historically accurate. According to Moore's author's note the Algonquin used sexual profanity in their everyday conversation, and the Jesuits frequently remarked on this in their Relations, the account of their work in New France, and a work that Moore consulted extensively in the writing of this novel.

Young Daniel soon falls in love with an Algonquin woman, which Father Laforgue finds upsetting, as he was mentoring Daniel for the priesthood. The two grow increasingly further apart as Daniel integrates well into native culture, while Laforgue is looked upon with fear and suspicion. The natives fear that Laforgue, or "the Black Robe," as they call him, is a demon (this is their explanation for why he does not sleep with women; he is not a real man). They resent his attempts to convert them, and fear that his "water sorcery" (baptism) will turn their own gods against them. They consult their own sorcer, Mestigoit, who confirms their suspicions.

Laforgue's journey is both physical and spiritual. The novel is often bleak, but beautifully so. Moore expertly renders the psychological shock that must have befallen many Jesuits as they encountered a fierce landscape and alien peoples who were not the simple, childlike savages of their stereotypes.

Moore also wrote the screenplay for an excellent film adaptation of Black Robe that came out in the 1990s. It's well worth seeking out.

A is for Any Known Blood

2009-11-23T11:44:00.003-07:00

Below is my first entry in Historical Tapestry's Alphabet Challenge.

Lawrence Hill is one of my favourite Canadian authors. A lot of readers hadn't heard of him until The Book of Negroes became a bestseller and the top pick of CBC Radio's Canada Reads panel early this year. That book, also one of my favourites, may have to be my pick for letter B.

Any Known Blood, published several years ago, is a fantastic book that didn't get nearly enough attention and deserves to be better known by both Canadian and American readers. It's a bit of a mid-life crisis novel, which I usually find off-putting, but Hill handles this theme with amazing sensitivity.

The protagonist, Langston Cane V, is the middle-aged son of a black man and a white woman (as is Hill himself). After losing his job and his marriage, Langston finds himself adrift, and decides that this is a good time to investigate his roots on his father's side. He ends up travelling from his home in Canada to Baltimore, where his father's family lives. The chapters detailing Langston's discovery of family lore and growing sense of his own identity are interspersed with historical chapters on the lives of the four other Langston Canes, from the first Langston Cane's escape from slavery on the Underground Railroad to Canada, to his descendants' return to the U.S., to the current Langston's father's controversial marriage to a white woman and their decision to move to Canada in hopes of finding a more tolerant society in which to raise their children.

Why this blog?

2009-11-17T16:15:00.001-07:00

I'm a voracious reader of historical fiction, and I couldn't resist the "Alphabet in Historical Fiction" challenge over at Blog Tapestry. Basically, the deal is this: they post a letter of the alphabet every two weeks, and other bloggers have to write a post somehow related to that letter - the letter can be the first or last initial of the author or of the main character, the title could start with that letter, or the setting for the book can be a place that begins with the letter.

I'm going to try to stay away from really obvious favourites as much as possible, and feature some of my favourites, particularly from Canadian historical fiction.

I thought this would be a fun way to get started reviewing historical fiction, and share a few favourites with some friends. So...on to letter A with the next post.