Category: Historical Fiction for Hipsters

Death has seen quite a few catastrophic events in his time, but none quite so ruthless and methodical as the genocide of the Jewish people carried out by Hitler and his death squads during WWII. But no matter how terrible the circumstances, there is no rest for gentle Death, who must continue to gather souls, from battlefields and gas chambers alike. However, he finds his ancient head turned by one little German girl who, in the midst of darkness, has found light through the magic of books and reading. Liesl, the book thief of the title, has attracted Death’s attention because of her unusual habit of stealing books during times of great distress in her life. Now, Liesl and her parents have hidden a young Jewish man in the basement of their home, and he will need more than just words on a page to survive the war. Narrated by the striking and original voice of Death, the tale of The Book Thief is one of horror, courage and unbelievable love that you will probably need (and want!) to read more than once to fully understand and appreciate.

In 1645 England, Nell is the granddaughter of a village healer, and a “merrybegot,” a child conceived on the first of May, a joyful and auspicious day according to Pagan tradition. Her new neighbors, Grace and Patience, are daughters of the widowed Puritan minister, a stern man with no tolerance for the villagers’ superstitious customs. Nell cares not for the prissy, stiff girls who are rarely allowed outside the dark walls of their forbidding house, and Grace thinks Nell is more wild animal than girl, with the way she races headlong through the forest on bare and dirty feet. When the minister embarks on a mission to clear the village of remnants of the “Old Religion” once and for all, Nell and her grandmother are immediately singled out as possible witches. Nell stands defiant against the minister’s crusade, even as her grandmother weakens and grows ill. But when Grace needs to hide a terrible secret, she takes advantage of her father’s “divine” cause to get rid of Nell and her independent ways once and for all! Shivery, shocking, and wonderfully atmospheric, The Minster’s Daughter blends fact, fiction, and fantasy in a way that will have you frantically flipping pages to find out what happens next, while simultaneously hoping this amazing book will never end!

In the unforgiving frontier landscape of late 1870’s Colorado, 13 year old Eva suddenly finds herself with no folks and no money when both of her African American foster parents pass away. But not quite with no place to go. Seems that Eva’s adopted mama kept the name and address of Eva’s birth mama and upon her deathbed, gave that information to Eva. Now Eva is traveling all alone to Denver, to discover the identity of the woman who lives on Holladay Street. And the fact that she lives in a high class brothel is not nearly as upsetting to Eva as the secret that is revealed the first time she sees her biological mother’s face! Fascinating and utterly original, Last Dance will give you some idea of the lack of choices women had when this country was new, and the sacrifices that were made to insure the freedom of the daughters of this generation. An amazing story by an equally amazing storyteller, who writes some of the hippest hist. fic. around!

It’s 1935, and twelve year old Moose Flanagan’s dad is a new guard on the notorious Alcatraz Island prison. Back then, guards and their families were given free housing on the island. Understandably, Moose is a little weirded out living next door to criminals, no matter how famous they are. “I’m sleeping with my clothes on. Who wants to face a convicted felon in your pajamas?” Moose also has to deal with his “big” sister Natalie, who looks like a teenager but acts like a little kid. And Moose has to watch Natalie a lot more now that his father is working so much and his mom is away teaching piano lessons. While all this sister-sitting doesn’t leave much time for hunting baseballs outside the cons’ recreation yard, or getting involved in a laundering (shirts, that is) scheme with the manipulative daughter of the warden, Moose still manages to get into some serious trouble doing both. When the special school that his sister goes to threatens to remove Natalie, Moose turns to the infamous Al Capone for help. Smuggling a note to the hard nosed criminal through the laundry, Moose asks that if Capone has any pull left on the outside, could he use some of it to help Natalie stay at her school? You won’t believe the kind of answer Moose gets…This is one funny historical fiction novel, set in one of the most original locations ever!

Just when I was convinced that I couldn’t be surprised or moved by yet another emotionally wrenching Holocaust story, veteran author Spinelli proved me wrong. Misha is an orphan in the Warsaw ghetto who can’t remember his real name, who his parents were, or where he was born. With his coloring, he could be a Jew or a Gypsy, neither of which is safe in Hitler’s Europe. Having never known any other life than that of a hungry beggar and a thief, Misha takes pleasure in small things, like a warm mouthful of bread, or the polished boots of the Nazi soldiers. He is shockingly naive, not recognizing the danger that surrounds him until it almost too late. It is only when most of his gang of orphan friends have been killed or deported that he begins to see how amazing it is that he has survived this long, and plans his own escape from the ghetto. There are images in this book that will haunt me forever, mostly the picture Spinelli paints of a group of Nazi soldiers and their girlfriends, who come to the ghetto in their rich clothes and full bellies to throw bread to the starving Jewish children as if they were hungry birds, and laugh as they fight over it. Gorgeous writing, but oh so sad. Keep some Kleenex handy.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin story is given fresh breath in this inventive retelling by the master of the fractured fairy tale, Donna Jo Napoli. In medieval Hameln, the townsfolk can’t seem to cure the horrible disease that is felling both man and beast. Twelve year old narrator Salz is the only one who seems to be unaffected by this illness that looks like the dread Black Death, but isn’t. Could it be coming from the swarms of filthy rats that seem to be everywhere: in the beds, in the stables, even the soup pots? When a traveling musician offers to pipe the vermin away, the townsfolk happily agree. But when the fits of madness still plague the people after all the rats have been removed, they no longer believe that they owe the piper his due. Salz has all the pieces to the puzzle of the mysterious illness, if he could only put them together in time. This is a rich, gorily detailed story that is not only great hist. fic. but an absorbing mystery as well. An author’s note at the end puts it all together for readers who, like Salz, can’t quite figure it out.

In 1906, 16 year old aspiring author Mattie Gokey finds herself in the middle of circumstances she couldn’t even imagine in one of her own stories: a possible murder at the Catskills hotel where she is working as a maid. The first time Mattie meets the sad and lonely Grace Brown, she thrusts a handful of letters into the surprised Mattie’s hands just before going boating with her fiancee. The next day, Grace Brown drowned body is found, the fiancee has disappeared, and Mattie has to decide what to do with the incriminating letters. Meanwhile, Mattie’s dream of moving off the mountains and heading to New York to pursue her dream as a “writing woman” grows dimmer and dimmer as her widowed father puts more pressure on her to take care of her many siblings, and a local Lothario urges her to marry him. As Mattie begins to read Grace’s letters and piece together the mystery of her death, she begins to see the danger in letting other make your life decisions for you. Is she brave enough to leave the Catskills and all she have ever known behind? If she doesn’t, she may end up as dead inside as Grace Brown. A 2004 Printz-award honor book, A Northern Light is historical fiction at it’s very best.

This is a cool retelling of the Illiad from the teen’s point of view. Xanthe and Marpessa are sister servants in the palace of Hector, ruler of Troy. Xanthe is nanny to Hector and Andromache’s royal baby, and Marpessa is beautiful Helen’s (“the face that sailed a thousand ships”) personal assistant. Xanthe also works in the “Blood Room,” the place where all the Trojan soliders are brought when they’re wounded. It’s there that Xanthe falls for hottie solider Alastar as he recovers from battle. Gods and goddesses also drift through the story, usually causing trouble. Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, sees Xanthe mooning over Alastar, and, because she’s bored with all the war stuff, decides to make both Xanthe and Marpessa fall for Alastar, but make him love only Marpessa. Meanwhile, the crippled stablehand who both sisters are friends with only has eyes for Xanthe, but she can only see Alastar. And least you think this sounds too romantical, outside the sieged city walls, the Trojan war between the Trojans and the Greeks over Helen’s “kidnapping” (she actually went willingly from her Greek husband so that she could knock the boots with Paris, the gorgeous, although shallow Trojan warrior) continues, with Greek warrior Achilles is slaying people left and right while the god of war, Ares, strides up and down the battlefield, admiring his handiwork. Sexy, bloody, and just downright absorbing, you don’t need to read the original Illiad to understand this hip interpretation. (Trust me, I never read the Illiad, either!)<

Donata is tired of being talked down to by her big brothers. In 1592 Venice, girls, even those of the upper class, aren’t allowed to study anything other than music or needlework, can’t go outside unescorted, and must always be quiet unless spoken to. The only way outgoing Donata learns anything is by quizzing her brothers about it. But she knows even they are carefully selecting what they can and can’t tell her. So she decides to take matters into her own hands. With the help of her identical twin, Laura, Donata scores some beggar boy clothes, ties up her hair and heads out into Venice on her own, dressed as boy. (I know, that whole “girl dressing as a boy” plot has been done to death, but this in this story it works well) There, she gets beat up by another alley-rat kid, and makes friends with Noe, a young scholar from the Jewish ghetto. But once Donata discovers the real Venice, she knows she can never go back to being a quiet, dutiful daughter. How can she convince her parents to let her get an education like her brothers, without telling them about her double life? The best part of this book is the intricate historical detail. Napoli carefully describes the architecture of Venice, it’s complicated system of canals, and most importantly, the many, many rules that governed it’s Renaissance women. When I closed the cover, I couldn’t believe that I was still sitting in my apartment in Queens instead of a swaying gondola. (And please dismiss the childish cover on this book–it’s really much older than it looks!)

It’s hard to believe, but many writers have taken one of the most fascinating periods of history–the Salem Witch Trials–and made it kinda dry and dusty. You know what I mean–books like Witch of Blackbird Pond or Witch’s Children. They always have an innocent girl at the center, accused of witchcraft, but she comes out okay because she really is a good, God-fearing gal, blah, blah, blah. What’s the fun and fear in that? Now Brit author Rees knows how to stir up the cauldron a little–her story is about a girl who’s a REAL witch, the last of her kind in a long line of pagans who follow the Old Religion and worship nature. Mary Nuttall helplessly watches her own grandmother hung as a witch before a beautiful and mysterious benefactor whisks her off to the New World with a batch of Puritans. There, Mary thinks she will be free to be her witchy self, but she finds these pilgrims are even more Puritanical that the ones she left behind in merry old England. Now, she’s gotta watch her back as all the town elders start shooting black looks her way just because she happens to knows how to read and heal the sick. Can Mary keep these pinch-faced Puritans in the dark? Or will her secret identity be revealed? Written in diary form, this is one witch story that will keep you riveted.

Twelve year old African American Leonora Sutter is running scared. Even though she and her father have dealt with racism before (after all, this is 1924, before Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement) she is terrified of what will happen to them now that the Klu Klux Klan has come to their small Vermont town. Who among the townspeople can she trust not to don white hoods after dark? Will Constable Johnson help her family if there is trouble, or is he one of THEM? On which side is general store owner Harvey Pettibone? Or Mrs. Sara Chickering, the lady farmer who avoids Leonora, but has a little Jewish girl staying with her? The tension builds as Leonora tries to decide who to put her faith in during these dangerous times. Witness is written entirely in free-verse poetry, each poem being the inner thoughts of eleven different characters (including Leonora, Harvey and Sara) about how they feel about the KKK setting up shop in their town. Everyone thinks they know which side is right and which side is wrong, but when a furtive gunman opens fire on Sara Chickering’s house, each person must painfully reevaluate their position. Besides being a wonderfully deep examination of racism and identity, Witness is also a great history mystery. Note the clues each character drops to help you figure out who the guilty shooter is.

Sixteen year old Mattie Cook yearns for some greater excitement than the dubious thrill of washing countless mugs in her family’s Philadelphia coffee shop. But she learns the hard way to be careful what you wish for when the whole city falls victim to yellow fever in the summer of 1793. Left all alone when members of her family are torn from her by illness or death, Mattie has to fend for herself in a city gone crazy, as opportunistic looters break into homes that have been abandoned and yellow-eyed corpses pile up in the streets. It’s only when Mattie meets up with Eliza, her mother’s free black friend, that she is able to deal with what has happened to her family and decide to take charge of her fate by helping others worse off than herself. Full of adrenaline charged action and lots of gruesome disease detail (blood vomiting and gravediggers hauling dead bodies through the streets) Fever is a fascinating medical thriller that reads like a historical Hot Zone! By the way, this book is based on a REAL epidemic that wiped out 10% of Philadelphia’s population in just three months.

Based on true events, Donna Jo Napoli tells a different kind of Holocaust story that fans of Anne Frank may not have encountered before. Roberto is an Italian boy sick to death of WWII scrimping and pinching. So when a couple of his guy friends suggest taking in a rare American movie, Roberto goes, even though he knows if his mom finds out he’s in for it. Unfortunately, German soldiers have picked this Venetian movie theatre to raid for free labor. They take all the able bodied boys in the audience, load them up on a train, and without even a goodbye or explanation, take them all far away from their homes to toil in German work camps. Already cold, hungry, and afraid for his life, Roberto has one other little thing to worry about–his friend Samule. See, Samule is Jewish, but the German guards who took them don’t know that. Because to get into the forbidden movie theatre, Samule took off the yellow star that identified him as a Jew. Now, the two of them struggle to stay alive, keep Samule’s secret and hope against hope that they’ll make it home safely. Brutal and compelling, this is an amazing story of strength and friendship with lots of harsh landscape living thrown in. Get ready to cry buckets.