Book Club Ideas: Historical Fiction

From My Shelf

Orphan Train (paperback, $14.99, Morrow) by Christina Baker Kline remains a book club favorite. This story about the fictional friendship between a young Irish immigrant and a 91-year-old woman ties in with the history of the trains that transported 200,000 abandoned children put up for adoption in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century.

The aim of historical fiction is to situate characters--sometimes real, sometimes imagined--amid actual events and backdrops that are accurately rich in detail and/or epic in scope. The genre continues to flourish. Here are some other titles worth a closer look:

Isabelle Allende examines the past and present, youth and old age, in The Japanese Lover (paperback $16, Atria, July), a novel about destiny, sacrifice and redemption. The story is set in a senior home, but the details are anchored in 1939, when an eight-year-old Polish girl flees the Nazis and goes to live with her aunt and uncle in San Francisco. There, the girl makes friends--and eventually falls in love--with a Japanese boy interned in the United States following Pearl Harbor.

Lee Smith sets Guests on Earth (paperback, $14.95, Algonquin) in 1936 in Highland Hospital, a noted psychiatric facility in Asheville, N.C. Smith examines ideas of sanity versus insanity, art and madness via her orphaned, 13-year-old protagonist, Evalina Toussaint. Evalina is institutionalized and falls under the spell of flamboyant Zelda Fitzgerald (wife of author F. Scott Fitzgerald) who was an actual patient in the hospital before a tragic, suspicious fire killed her and several other women.

The Civil War and the horrors of slavery infuse The Invention of Wings (paperback, $17, Penguin) by Sue Monk Kidd, a tale inspired by the life of 19th-century abolitionist and suffragist Sarah Grimké. Kidd tackles issues of race, gender, activism, religion and feminism via the creation of two richly drawn characters: the strong-willed daughter of a wealthy South Carolina plantation owner and her personal slave whom she seeks to liberate.

Note: This column (published 6/10/16) has been reprinted with the permission of Shelf Awareness: Shelf Awareness for Readers. Link HERE to read the article as it originally appeared.

All Aboard: Riding the Rails in Fiction

For many of us, trains are fascinating: cargo and passenger trains, subways, high-speed rail. The call of a train whistle--the rumbling, chugging sound--awakens the spirit and encourages the imagination to crisscross time and place. That's what inspired me to write In Transit, a woman-in-jeopardy novel published two years ago. It's the story of a misguided, rookie NYPD transit cop assigned to the labyrinthine New York City subway system and how, when she falls in love with the wrong man, her life derails.

In Trains and Lovers by Alexander McCall Smith, four travelers, diverse in backgrounds and ages, are brought together on a train bound from Edinburgh to London. They pass the time by telling tales of how the railroad played a significant part in each of their love lives.

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline is a coming-of-age novel that connects the disparate lives of two women. The story is based on the program that, from the 19th century until the Great Depression, carted orphans via train to adoptive families in the Midwest.

Pandemonium infuses Mrs. Queen Takes the Train. In William Kuhn's clever, inventive novel, Queen Elizabeth gets fed up with the demands of life at Buckingham Palace, slips on a borrowed hoodie and goes rogue, taking public rail transportation to Scotland.

The Train of Small Mercies, a collection of short stories by David Rowell, links the poignant, personal experiences of six ordinary people who witness and grieve as the train carrying the body of Robert F. Kennedy from New York City to his final resting place in Washington, D.C.

The idea of riding the rails conjures romance, intrigue and drama as trains take us on collective and individual journeys--both on the page and off. 

NOTE: This article is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this column as published via Shelf Awareness for Readers (11/5/13), link HERE