Category: Historical Fiction for Hipsters

Twenty-two year old scullery maid Anne Green is NOT having a very good day. First, she was hung by the neck after being found guilty of a crime she didn’t commit. Then, she wakes up in total darkness, not being able to move or speak, and realizes that instead of standing at the pearly gates, she is actually STILL ALIVE IN HER COFFIN! Worse yet, just on the other side of the rough wooden planks, doctors are deciding which of her lovely limbs they’re going to carve up first in the name of science. See, Anne’s body has been requested for dissection by the good physicians of Oxford University, and her parents are too poor to demand it back. So unless Anne finds her voice, and soon, she’s going to go all to pieces—literally! Based on the true story of a young woman in 1650 England who survived the hangman’s noose, this enormously hip historical fiction by Brit author Mary Hooper is written in chapters that alternate between Anne’s increasingly anxious voice as she recounts the events that led to her almost-end, and the room outside her coffin, where a young medical student begins to notice signs of life in Anne’s ice-cold corpse. Utterly-un-put-down-able, you will find yourself frantically reading ahead to see if Anne lived through the noose just to fall prey to the doctors’ scalpels. If you’ll pardon the pun, it’s a ripping good read!

Fifteen-year-old Annie is used to twisting the truth to her own benefit. After all, Annie’s Mama is Madame Caterina, a fake medium who claims to speak to spirits, but whose sham séances are about as real as a wooden nickel. Cross her palm with silver, or better yet, cold hard cash, and she’ll tell you anything you want to hear. But now that Mama wants Annie to pretend to be a drooling idiot so people will carelessly speak their deepest thoughts around her—thoughts that Mama can then use when pretending to tell their fortunes—Annie’s decided that she’s sick and tired of lying for Mama. She’s going to hatch a new scam that benefits her, and now Mama’s the one who’s going to have to learn to play along! This totally hip hist. fic., set in upstate New York in 1924, is full of the fascinating tricks of the trade that scam artists used to make grief-stricken people believe that they were communicating with the dead. I had a ball learning how a few strings, a hidden bell, some low light, and a double-jointed big toe could convince folks that they were really speaking to their beloveds who had “crossed over.” How Annie undermines and breaks free of sly Mama will leave you cheering and feeling grateful that instead of grifters, your parents are just ordinary teachers, stockbrokers, or truck drivers!

In this oldie-but-goodie tale of adventure and intrigue set in 16th-century Japan, young orphaned Taro is taken under the wing of the great samurai Lord Akiyama, after his father is killed in battle and his mother slain in the aftermath. By using his wits and suppressing his fierce pride, Taro slowly ascends the ranks of his lord’s household until he achieves his greatest goal—becoming a samurai like his father and Lord Akiyama, whom he has come to admire. But the life of a warrior is not easy, and Taro finds himself sacrificing opportunities of love and friendship in order to gain honor and respect. Is Taro willing to give up all the comfortable trappings of hearth and home for the dubious privilege of living–and dying–by the sword? Full of period detail that immerses the reader in the everyday life of a samurai in training, this retro-read will appeal to fans of Lian Herne’s Tales of the Otori (Thanks for the suggestion, Harry!)

Well, fiddle-dee-dee! Picture book author Rosemary Wells has penned a rousing Civil War novel whose heroine is the very antithesis of spoiled southern belle Scarlett O’Hara. India Moody is the daughter of a modest Virginia harness maker who reluctantly leaves home to become an ambulance wagon driver for the Confederates. In his absence, India (who is a daddy’s girl through and through) pines for him as she tries to help her mother keep their family together while the war goes on and resources become scarcer. She is encouraged and inspired by her teacher, Emory Trimble, a young man of science who teaches India all about the wonders that exist beneath the glass of the microscope. After a friend up North writes to tell her that there is a college in Ohio that accepts women, India becomes determined to work her way there, war or no war. Soon Emory follows her father to the battlefield and India finds herself unable to just sit and wait for bad news. She leaves home to find her father, and ends up smack dab in the middle of the bloody battle of Sharpsburg. Will India survive long enough to find her father and realize her dream of a college education? Although Wells succumbs to the occasional bit of melodramatic purple prose (in this example, literally): “Mauve is a pinkish purple of such delicacy I can only hold the silk square to the light and gaze at it. I have seen it only in petunias and stained-glass windows,” it suits India’s rebellious, yet lady-like personality. And who doesn’t enjoy a little historical melodrama, especially of the skirt-swishing, finger-wagging, swooning sort? I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough to find out what would happen to India and her dream of studying science with the big boys, and I will definitely be recommending Red Moon to my 8th grade students next year as a perfect selection for their Civil War book project.

After fifteen-year-old Tamar’s beloved grandfather commits suicide, it is three months before she can bring herself to open the old box of keepsakes he left her. When she does, the odd assortment of WWII memorabilia that dates back to his days as a spy for the Allied Forces in Nazi-occupied Holland holds little meaning for her. Until she looks closer, and realizes that “Grandad hadn’t been mad when he put these things in it. I knew that these things fitted together in some way, and I had to find out how.” Using a set of maps, an old crossword puzzle, and a bundle of money that adds up to 1945, Tamar sets out on a journey along the English river she was named for to uncover the past of a man she thought she knew. Alternating chapters tell the story of her grandfather’s final dangerous mission into occupied Holland during the terrible “Hunger Winter” when the Dutch people were slowly starving to death waiting for the Allies to come. Working undercover, he and his partner were given orders to try and unite the chaotic Dutch Resistance; desperate rag-tag groups of men who did whatever they could to undermine the Nazi’s efforts, including stealing supplies and bombing roads. What he did there had always been a total mystery to his family…until now. The two stories finally converge in the shocking truth that drove Tamar’s grandfather to suicide, leaving Tamar with a new understanding of the complicated man who asked that she be named for his code-name: a beautiful, winding river that could be both treacherous and calm. Friends, I loved this epic story, but I’m not going to lie, it was a struggle to get into. Clocking in at just over 400 pages, it takes a while to get going. But those last hundred pages make the initial slog through the first hundred all worth it. Full of espionage, romance, and incredibly brave acts of derring-do, this satisfying war-time tome is like six-course banquet, so don’t sit down to it unless you’re ready for a serious feast of historical fiction!

Dewey Kerrigan is an eleven-year-old budding Einstein. The other girls in her class, with their giggling and boy talk, don’t interest her half as much as the experiments she reads about in The Boy Mechanic. Now her scientist dad has taken a top-secret job in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Dewey is going to join him. She has no idea what he’s working on, all she knows is that her father and his colleagues are developing a “gadget” that is supposed to end the WWII. No one knows the details, but anything that will end the war has got to be good, right? Even if you think you know how this story goes, Klages’ creative, thought-provoking ending will haunt you. And I wasn’t the only one who was impressed! Klages scored the 2007 Scott O’Dell award for best historical youth fiction.

Octavian grows up in a house of colonial scholars in the years before the American Revolutionary War. His mother is a princess from a foreign land, flirted with and adored by the bookish men who toil at their mysterious experiments all day, while Octavian is petted and coddled by the kindly old professors who teach him science, Latin, and how to play the violin. Then one day he discovers a room within the house of books that reveals a startling truth so contrary to what he understands about his existence that Octavian must re-learn who and what he is from the ground up, basically from nothing. Who is Octavian Nothing? Patriot? Traitor? Property? Or Freeman? M.T. Anderson’s compelling book is at once incredibly complex in its construct, told in a myriad of forms and voices, while being breathtakingly simple in its theme of freedom and individual choice. This book isn’t an easy read, or a light one. It will take some awhile to get into and finish. But finish it you must to learn the secret—and the surprising fate—of the Astonishing Octavian Nothing.

The Rivers are your typical 1960’s family. Mom is a housewife who dreams of being a writer, little brother Danny desperately dreams of getting a dog, older brother Beau is obsessed with the NASA space program, which currently features the Gemini space capsules piloted by astronaut Gus Grissom, and Dad is building a fallout shelter in the backyard. Typical. Ordinary, even. But what is not so ordinary is how Danny reacts after Beau is in a terrible accident. After the accident, Danny’s parents finally let him have a dog. The dog, Rocket, becomes Danny’s best friend and shadow. But when Rocket savagely attacks a neighborhood bully, the authorities come to put him down. Danny knows he has to save his dog no matter what, his dog who loves model airplanes and seems to watch the television every time Gus Grissom is on. Because Danny knows, even though no one else believes him, that Rocket is really the reincarnation of his dead brother Beau. Haunting, beautifully written and sweetly nostalgic, Gemini Summer is reminiscent of “Stand By Me” or “The Outsiders,” and will transport you back to a time when we were still in awe of all the things we didn’t know and couldn’t always explain.