1) "Countdown" by Deborah Wiles
Just as 11-year-old Franny Chapman squabbles with her once-best friend in their neighborhood near Andrews Air Force Base, outside of Washington, D.C., President Kennedy and Chairman Khrushchev are also at odds. Franny’s spot-on “Heavens to Murgatroyd” dialogue captures the trepidation as the world holds its breath during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Adding to the pressure are her college-student, activist older sister, who may be a spy, her aspiring-astronaut younger brother, who refuses to eat, her steely, chain-smoking mother, who has inexplicably burst into tears, her often-absent pilot father, now spending long days on base, and her PTSD-suffering, World War I–veteran Uncle Otts, who’s digging up the front yard to build a bomb shelter. Wiles’s “documentary novel,” based on her own childhood memories and the first in The Sixties Project trilogy, has a striking scrapbook feel, with ingeniously selected and placed period photographs, cartoons, essays, song lyrics, quotations, advertisements and “duck and cover” instructions interspersed through the narrative. References to duct tape (then newly invented), McDonald’s and other pop culture lend authenticity to this phenomenal story of the beginnings of radical change in America. (historical note, author’s note, bibliography) (Historical fiction. 10-13)
2) "A Death Struck Year" by Makiia Lucier
A teen girl struggles to survive the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918.
In her brother’s care since the much earlier loss of their parents, 17-year-old Cleo Berry longs for freedom and adventure, even as she languishes under the expectations of upper-middle-class society in Portland, Ore. When her brother and his wife leave for an anniversary trip, Cleo moves into the dormitory of her school. Already living under the constant dread of bad news from the World War I front, the students and staff of the school find themselves now facing a new threat, drawing closer each day—the dreaded Spanish flu. After the school is closed by the Portland Health Department, Cleo sneaks out and returns to her vacant family home. She answers a call from the Red Cross for volunteers and learns to overcome her fears as she fights to help educate the community and bring the sick to shelters. Lucier adopts a first-person narration, which is sometimes too formal and stilted (even given the historical setting), but she expertly weaves in historical details (including snippets from Sanger’s controversial birth control writings). Readers will be swept up in the story as Cleo builds friendships and manages to find hope amid disease and death.
A notable debut. (historical note, further reading) (Historical fiction. 12-18)
3) "Gilt" by Katherine Longshore
The short life and times of Henry VIII's fifth wife, as seen through the eyes of her friend.
Cat Howard styles herself Queen of Misrule in the Duchess of Norfolk's maidens’ chamber (a misnomer if ever there was one). When Cat is selected to be one of Anne of Cleves’ ladies-in-waiting, she soon catches the king’s eye, and the rest, as they say, is history. Cat rescues mousy friend Kitty to attend her in her chambers, giving Kitty and readers an intimate view of that history. Hewing closely to what little is known about Howard's circumstances, Longshore allows Kitty to thread the maze of alliances that was the court of Henry VIII. She concentrates on domestic details while brushing with broad strokes the politics of the men’s world. Kitty's narration is formal, but her language is modern, a balance between authenticity and readability that is mostly successful. Her sense of her own powerlessness, and by extension all women's, even the queen’s, comes through clearly. The mounting terror as lusty, luxury-loving Cat’s fortunes fall is palpable, as is the sense that the queen is no innocent. The author’s adherence to historical detail is admirable, clashing with both title and cover, which imply far more froth than readers will find between the covers.
A substantive, sobering historical read, with just a few heaving bodices. (Historical fiction. 13 & up)
4) "Mary, Bloody Mary" by Carolyn Meyer
Meyer (Gideon’s People, 1996, etc.) presents the youth of Mary Tudor, oldest daughter of Henry VIII, as a bitter tale of mistreatment, political machination, and battling wills. From the outset, Mary blames the witch, Anne Boleyn, for separating her and her mother, Catherine of Aragon, then depriving them of wealth and security; for persuading the king to declare Mary illegitimate; for forcing her at last into the role of scorned servant, charged with changing the infant Elizabeth’s nappies. Certain that she will one day be queen, Mary fights back in the only ways she can, by becoming an accomplished spy, holding in her anger, and refusing for years to sign the acknowledgement of her illegitimacy. Meyer gives Mary, Henry, and Anne strong, distinct personalities and motives, enlivens historical events with closely observed details of dress and ceremony, and drives it all forward with engrossing emotional intensity—climaxed by an eyewitness’s lingering account of Anne Boleyn’s beheading: “We heard the dreadful sound—there is none like it in all this world." It’s an absorbing story, compellingly told, and if Mary doesn’t come off as the religious fanatic she evidently was, her later brutality is not soft-pedaled in the appended historical note. Follow this up with Rosalind Miles’s equally powerful I, Elizabeth (1994). (Fiction. 12-15)
5) "The Caged Graves" by Dianne K. Salerni
When an inquisitive teen returns to her birthplace to meet her fiance, she uncovers a bizarre mystery surrounding her mother’s grave, unleashing disturbing buried secrets.
Since her mother’s death, 17-year-old Verity Boone has lived happily with her aunt in Worcester, Mass. She returns to Catawissa, Penn., in 1867 to meet Nate McClure, the farmer who successfully wooed her with his letters. Verity’s initially disappointed and wonders if Nate’s really more interested in her father’s farm. Compared to the dashing local doctor who barely hides his attraction to Verity, Nate seems dull, even though locals openly resent her for winning the eligible bachelor. As she sorts through her true feelings for Nate, Verity’s shocked to discover her mother and aunt buried outside the town cemetery in graves enclosed in metal cages. Why were her mother and aunt ostracized in death? Was it to protect them from body snatchers or grave robbers? Were they suspected of witchcraft? Determined to find the truth, Verity investigates, exposing community prejudices and twisted family secrets that lead her to a perilous confrontation and stunning revelations. Salerni grounds her story in local Revolutionary War lore, creates a spirited heroine with enough self-reflection to feel convincing and crafts a suspenseful plot that skirts sensationalism.
This unusual romantic mystery stands out. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 12 & up)
6) "Uprising" by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Three young women from different backgrounds experience the New York City Triangle Shirtwaist strike and fire of 1911. The story is told in flashbacks, which recount the treatment of hands in sweatshops culminating in the deaths of so many. Two of the workers are Bella, a young immigrant from the poverty of Southern Italy whose family was starving, and Jewish Yetta, from Russia after a pogrom. The rich young protected Jane becomes involved with the other two when a friend mentions that college girls (Jane is not in college because her father does not believe in educating women) will be walking the strike line with the workers. Here she becomes acquainted with the sewing machine girls. Thus, the reader has three viewpoints of the times, conditions and events as they coalesce in a story told by an omniscient narrator. Because of its length, the book requires a reader who can stick with it. Author’s note and list of works consulted give a fair summary of the Triangle fire and the condition of laborers, immigrants and life in the tenements.(Historical fiction. 12+)
7) "Belle Epoque" by Elizabeth Ross
The aristocrats and the poor clash in 1888-9 Paris.
Most Parisians dislike the new tower under construction by Monsieur Eiffel, but Maude, a 16-year-old who has run away from home, loves what others see as a monstrosity. Maude, too, is a monstrosity to some. A girl with no better than plain features, she nearly starves until she takes a job as a repoussoir. Wealthy women hire ugly women such as Maude to join them in public so that they will shine all the brighter in comparison. Countess Dubern hires Maude as a companion for her daughter Isabelle during the girl’s first social season, with the expectation that Maude will steer Isabelle into an engagement with the handsome and wealthy Duke d’Avaray. Rebellious Isabelle intends to study science at the Sorbonne instead, refusing to marry. The two girls develop a real friendship, leaving Maude torn between her job and her loyalty to Isabelle. Ross models her plot on an 1866 story by Zola, “Les Repoussoirs,” expanding its focus to highlight Maude’s plight and using that to illuminate the chasm that existed between the wealthy and the poor. Maude, with her artistic insight, her pluck and her intelligence, despite her lack of formal education, perhaps comes across as a less-than-typical adolescent of that time but holds readers’ interest throughout.
A refreshingly relevant and inspiring historical venture. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)
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