Hitty, Her First Hundred Years

Title: Hitty, Her First Hundred Years

Author: Rachel Field

Pages: 256

Genre: Historical Fiction, Newbery Award

Grade: B+

Synopsis: Hitty is a doll made out of the best mountain ash wood in Maine in the early 1800s. You wouldn't think a doll would have so many interesting experiences to tell about, but Hitty sure does.  From being deserted on tropical islands, to the slums of India, to the steamboats of the Mississippi and back to Maine, Hitty describes all sorts of adventures.

My Review: I didn't really have high hopes for this book, but I've got to be honest that I was pleasantly surprised. The book was simply written, but fairly enjoyable.

The Atomic City Girls

Title: The Atomic City Girls

Author: Janet Beard

Pages: 353

Genre: Historical Fiction

Grade: B+

Synopsis: The Manhattan Project started towards the tail end of World War II and ended up employing a secret city's worth of scientists, physicists and young women, because most of the other young men were off fighting in Europe or the Pacific. This story mainly takes place in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which was a city that was built from scratch specifically for the research behind the atomic bomb and for the isolation and enrichment of Uranium. The book follows a few different characters and most of their stories are from real-life accounts of the people who lived and worked in Oak Ridge.

My Review: I started this book believing that it was a non-fiction account, but after about a chapter I realized that it was more of a historical fiction than non-fiction.  After my initial disappointment I carried on and found that I enjoyed the book, even if it bounces around throughout the first 80% before finally linking the characters together towards the end of the book.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Title: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Author: Jamie Ford

Pages: 290

Genre: Historical Fiction

Grade: B+

Synopsis: The book takes place in Seattle during World War II.  Seattle had a strong Chinese and Japanese presence with areas of the city known as Japantown and Chinatown where people of these ethnicities generally lived.  Henry Lee was a Chinese child who attended the white American/English school where he befriended a Japanese girl, Keiko Okabe.  His friendship was kept in secret as his father hated the Japanese because of the destruction they were causing in China during the war.  When all of the Japanese families in Seattle were gathered and sent to Japanese Interment Camps, Henry works hard to still maintain his friendship with Keiko.

My Review: There are so many books that use WWII as a backdrop, that I sometimes find it exhausting to read another.  However, I found this one interesting and unique because it deals with the Japanese Internment Camps, which is a part of the war that is a black mark on the United States.  That said, it is unfair to judge the nation's response without having been there during Pearl Harbor and the rest of the war. Hopefully, though, we will always remember these mistakes and learn from them. Ok, enough digression on that vein.  It took me a good chunk of the book to get into it.  The story flips back and forth between the 1940s and the modern day and it was sometimes confusing.  Otherwise, a pretty decent book.

The Aviator's Wife

Title: The Aviator's Wife

Author: Melanie Benjamin

Pages: 13 discs

Genre: Historical Fiction

Grade: B

Synopsis: This book is the story of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the wife of the modern hero-explorer Charles Lindbergh and mother of the famously kidnapped Charles Jr. Everybody is familiar with Charles' accomplishments, but not as many people know Anne's story and she was a brave, strong woman in her own right.

My Review: Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres.  I actually really liked this book, but the writing style and dialogue was too awkward and all of the dialogue and interaction with their children just felt strange to me. My one other gripe was that the book could have been about 2/3 as long as it was.

The Witch of Blackbird Pond

Title: The Witch of Blackbird Pond

Author: Elizabeth George Speare

Pages: 6 discs

Genre: Historical Fiction, Newbery Award

Grade: B+

Synopsis: The book is set in the late 1600's.  Kit Tyler had been growing up in Barbados when her grandfather passed away, leaving her an orphan.  She elects to hop on a ship to go stay with her only remaining family in the Connecticut colony, where Puritan ideals and witch hunts are still a part of their lives.

My Review: I find books about the Puritans very frustrating.  The snobbery and judgmentalness (is that a word?) that they show just grates on me and makes me mad.  Kit Tyler, however, is a perfect heroine and example of love, compassion, kindness and acceptance that even today should be emulated. I listened to this book with Ada while driving to the Southern Utah ski resorts and she tells me that she liked everything about it.

Silk

Title: Silk

Author: Alessandro Baricco

Pages: 132

Genre: Fiction, Historical Fiction

Grade: B

Synopsis: Herve Joncour is a Frenchman who deals in silkworms.  After an epidemic decimates the European supply in the late 1800's, Joncour begins to travel further and further to find healthy silkworms to bring back to France.  On his visit to Japan he comes across a woman with whom he never speaks, but who enchants him and becomes an obsession for him.

My Review: This is a short read (I finished in around an hour I think) and is a lovely story.  I believe the book has since been made into a movie, but I have not seen it.

All the Light We Cannot See

Title: All the Light We Cannot See

Author: Anthony Doer

Pages: 530

Genre: Historical Fiction, Pulitzer Prize

Grade: A-

Synopsis: Marie-Laure is a blind French girl who lives with her father in Paris. Her father works at the Museum of Natural History and builds elaborate models of the neighborhoods where they live to allow Marie-Laure to feel her neighborhood with her hands in order to learn her way around. Once Paris is occupied during WWII, Marie-Laure and her father flee to Saint Malo, near the coast in France to live with Marie-Laure's great uncle.

Werner is an orphan in Germany and is brilliant with electronics and radios.  He is recruited at a young age into the Nazi Army where he is put to work on their electronics.

This is the story of how their lives collide.

My Review: This is a book that I would say was beautiful.  It was on the artsy side as far as the writing is concerned, and it took me a little work to get into it, but once I did I really enjoyed everything about it.

Gwenhwyfar: The White Spirit

Title: Gwenhwyfar: The White Spirit

Author: Mercedes Lackey

Pages: 404

Genre: Historical Fiction

Grade: C-

Synopsis: This book is a spin on the tale of King Arthur.  Gwenhwyfar lives at a time when gods walked among their pagan worshippers and a woman was expected to live her life doing a woman's work.  However, some women did learn to fight and became great warriors, which was the path Gwenhwyfar chose.

My Review: In full disclosure, I didn't actually finish this book.  I made it about 30% of the way through and just found that I had absolutely no interest in the book.  I've come to the conclusion that life is too short to spend time on books that are not interesting for me.

Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter

Title: Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter

Author: Seth Grahame-Smith

Pages: 336

Genre: Historical Fiction

Grade: B+

Synopsis: Abraham Lincoln has gone down in history as an excellent President and a strong leader. He guided the country through the emancipation of the slaves and the civil war. What is less well-known about his history is his personal reasons for fighting slavery so boldly.  Abraham's mother was killed by a vampire in his youth (although he didn't find out the truth until he was much older). Once he did, he dedicated his life to the eradication of vampires, many of whom would prey on slaves.

My Review: This book is not for everybody.  Written in a similar style as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the book intricately weaves Abraham's fight against vampires into his biography.  I really enjoyed it and found myself often thinking, what if...?  All the while learning about our 16th President.

Jamestown

Title: Jamestown

Author: Matthew Sharpe

Pages: 416

Genre: Historical Fiction?

Grade: D

Synopsis: This story is a retelling of the Jamestown story (i.e. the first English settlement in the New World), but it is set in a post-apocalyptic world.  Jamestown seems to be in the same location as it currently is (in Eastern Virginia), and the story spans from the Jamestown area up the coast to New York City, which has mostly been destroyed from how we know the city today.  A group of settlers set out from Manhattan, looking for a place to settle and create a trading post for oil when they come to the Jamestown area.  The groups communications officer starts a strange romance with Pocahontas in an effort to become trading partners with the Indians in the area.

My Review: I didn't really get this book.  It was a bizarre mixture of just about everything including rap and Ebonics and history and politics.  Too much of the humor felt forced and it took me far too long to get into the story.

The Judas Testament

Title: The Judas Testament

Author: Daniel Easterman

Pages: 437

Genre: Historical Fiction

Grade: B

Synopsis: A controversial scroll that was in the hands of the Jews until WWII is finally unearthed in the Lenin Library in Moscow, Russia.  The different groups that are trying to get their hands on the scroll instigates an International conspiracy between British Intelligence, a Nazi German group and a group of scholars.

My Review:  The book was based on an interesting premise, but there were large parts of the book that felt like the story was forced.  Just a little too much unbelievable things for me to give this book more love.

The Dark Frigate

Title: The Dark Frigate

Author: Charles Boardman Hawes

Pages: 246

Genre: Historical Fiction, Newbery Medal

Grade: C

Synopsis: A terrible accident in a pub forces young Philip Marsham to run away afraid for his life. More than anything he wants to be on the sea, and ends up signing on with the Rose of Devon, a dark frigate sailing for Newfoundland. After a terrible storm, the Rose of Devon is "Captured by a band of murderous pirates!" as the cover suggests.

My Review: A few things stood out to me about this book. It is an early Newbery Award Medal winner, but I have a hard time believing that children in the 1920's were able to understand this book. It is written in seventeenth century sailor's English and the book was quite difficult for me to understand, which made it a challenge for me to make it through. Of the Newbery Award winners that I've read so far, this one is at the bottom.

The Great Train Robbery

Title: The Great Train Robbery

Author: Michael Chrichton

Pages: 329

Genre: Historical Fiction

Grade: B+

Synopsis: Edward Pierce fits in well in high-society in Victorian England, while also being able to navigate the slums of poverty.  Pierce has a grand scheme to rob the train that is carrying the gold from the bank to pay for England's involvement in the Crimean War.  Over the course of many months he concocts a complicated scheme to get his hands on the money.

My Review: I'm not sure where I picked this book up, but it was the perfect book to read on a vacation (I did my reading in Jamaica).  It was fast-paced and easy to follow.  The details of the story have been filled in by Crichton, but the overall story is true and based on lots of testimonies from a court trial.

Pope Joan

Title: Pope Joan

Author: Donna Woolfolk Cross

Pages: 422

Genre: Historical Fiction

Grade: A-

Synopsis: Nobody really knows whether or not Pope Joan actually existed.  She was born more than a millennium ago and had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, but at the time girls were not allowed to study and learn.  When her brother is killed by marauding Vikings, she takes up his cloak and identity and enters training in the monastery at Fulda.  From then on, her genius, compassion and abilities took her to Rome, where eventually she was elected as the Supreme Pontiff.

My Review: I love books like this that take a story from the dark ages and bring it to life injecting details and storylines.  Based on what I've read about Pope Joan, I believe that she actually existed in history and even sat on the throne of St. Peter for a time.  All of the other details from the book are completely fiction, and are generally believeable, but there are some that are a bit of a stretch.

In the Skin of a Lion

Title: In the Skin of a Lion

Author: Michael Ondaatje

Pages: 256

Genre: Fiction, Historical Fiction

Grade: B

Synopsis: Patrick Lewis arrived in Toronto in the 1920's from deep in the woods of Ontario, where his father was a dynamiter for the logs that would be shipped down the river.  In Ontario, Patrick works as a searcher for the vanished millionaire Ambrose Small, and in doing so he falls in love with Small's mistress.  In parallel times and stories, there are detailed descriptions about the building of the Bloor Street Viaduct and the huge waterworks plant for the city of Toronto, focusing on the lives of the immigrant workers, who have accepted Patrick as one of their own.

My Review:  I enjoyed this book, and I think that I would have enjoyed it more if I had been able to read it over the course of a week or so.  Instead, I was quite busy at the time I was reading it, which meant that I would only get to read it about once a week.  Because of this, I had a hard time following the stories and parallel plotlines. Going back and reading the detailed summaries and synopses online was a big help in understanding and remembering what was going on.  I've read that this is a prequel to The English Patient, however, I have not read that book yet.

The Pale Blue Eye

Title: The Pale Blue Eye

Author: Louis Bayard

Pages: 16 discs

Genre: Historical Fiction

Grade: B

Synopsis: Augustus Landor is a retired New York City police detective living near West Point Academy.  After a cadet is found hanging on Academy grounds, he is asked to discreetly investigate the incident.  The death becomes even more bizarre when the dead man's heart is savagely removed during the night.  As Mr. Landor begins to investigate the crimes, he enlists the help of a young cadet, one Edgar Allan Poe.

My Review:  The book was an interesting amalgamation of West Point History and the younger life of Edgar Allan Poe.  A poem that Poe has written plays a large role in the course of solving the mystery.  I'm not sure if the author was trying to mimic Poe's style or the style for the time, but it felt like the book was literally written in the first half of the 19th century, and there were times that it dragged on a bit. 

Loving Frank

Title: Loving Frank

Author: Nancy Horan

Pages: 9 discs?

Genre: Historical Fiction

Grade: B

Synopsis:  Mamah Borthwick Cheney and her husband Edwin commissioned the brilliant architect Frank Lloyd Wright to design a house for them in Oak Park, Illinois.  With Mamah working closely with Wright as he designed the house, they ended up having a long and elaborate love affair that spanned from the Chicago area to Europe and back to Wisconsin. The story is based upon actual events, with the details filled in by the author.

My Review:  The story mainly follows Mamah throughout this time in her life and provides insight into her relationship with Wright from letters that she wrote.  She comes across as being very selfish, while Wright is amazingly arrogant.  There were parts of the book that were quite slow, but the ending is surprising and shocking (don't read Wright's wikipedia entry if you're planning on reading the book).

Girl with a Pearl Earring

Title: Girl with a Pearl Earring

Author: Tracy Chevalier

Pages: 7 discs

Genre: Historical Fiction

Grade: B+

Synopsis: Griet is hired as a servant in the household of the Dutch painter Vermeer when she is just 16 years old.  She quickly earns her master's trust and he begins to secretly enlist her help with preparing his paints and ultimately as a model for one of his commissioned paintings.  This is all done in complete secrecy as the eternally pregnant wife of Vermeer was also extremely jealous as she was not allowed into Vermeer's studio.

My Review: I've read a handful of books about artists and painters, and this is the best one yet.  The story is thoroughly researched and very well told.  Very little is known about Vermeer, except that he is one of the finest painters to use light and texture in his paintings (from the mid-17th century).  The story is very believable and transports the reader back hundreds of years into the town of Delft.

From the Book:"I came to love grinding the things he brought from the apothecary--bones, white lead, madder, massicot--to see how bright and pure I could get the colors. I learned that the finer the materials were ground, the deeper the color. From rough, dull grains madder became a fine bright red powder and, mixed with linseed oil, a sparkling paint. Making it and the other colors was magical."

The Third Life of Grange Copeland

Title: The Third Life of Grange Copeland

Author: Alice Walker

Pages: 328

Genre: Historical Fiction

Grade: B-

Synopsis: This book tells the story of Grange Copeland, his wife, his son Brownfield and his granddaughter Ruth.  Set in Baker County, Georgia in the early 20th century, the black people that work in the fields are virtual slaves as they are encumbered with debts to the white landowners that they'll never be able to repay.  Grange heads north looking for a better life and while he's gone Brownfield ends up marrying and killing his wife, landing in prison.  Grange returns and tries to turn his life around.

My Review:  This book had an interesting story that was terribly depressing at times.  The poor black folk of Baker County, Georgia have very few chances or opportunities to lift themselves out of the poverty that they are born into.

Disclaimer:  There is quite a bit of language to be aware of.

War and Remembrance

Title: War and Remembrance

Author: Herman Wouk

Pages: 1042

Genre: Historical Fiction

Grade: A-

Synopsis: This book is a sequel to The Winds of War and it continues to follow the Henry family throughout World War II. Victor "Pug" Henry is an American Naval Officer who is stationed in the Pacific, London, Washington DC and Moscow throughout the book.  He has one son in the Naval Air Force (with his wife in Pearl Harbor), another son in submarines (with his Jewish wife stuck in Axis Italy) and a daughter working for a well-known radio personality.

My Review: What really sets this book apart is that while the war is a major part of the book, it is not what the book is about.  The book really shines in the way that it highlights how the War impacted families and individuals and crept into their romances and hearts.