I've realized that I really enjoy historical fiction that takes place in a time before the advent of in-home electricity/lighting. Or historical fiction about Native Americans who are living without electricity/technology. Examples of books I've loved this year that fit that genre are The Frozen River and Crow Mary. Thanks for any suggestions!
by nightskyforest
9 Comments
Fools Crow by James Welch.
Olohana by Kevin William O’Leary.
*A Place of Greater Safety* by Hillary Mantel
I will never stop shoehorning this book into any post I can because it’s so good
*The Last Witchfinder* by James Morrow
*Year of Wonders* by Geraldine Brooks
*A Vision of Light* by Judith Merkle Riley
But I’d be wary of the idea that there was anything “simpler” about living without electricity.
*Black Robe* by Brian Moore. Set in the 1600’s in Canada. Catholic priest arrives full of enthusiasm for bringing Catholicism to the Indigenous people of the land. Things don’t go as planned. I’ve read it a few times and it’s a great read. It was made into a movie in about 1990, too.
*1819* by Isa Kamari (translated into English by R. Krishnan), about the arrival of the British. Things definitely weren’t simple.
I enjoyed *Warlock* by Oakley Hall. It’s a fictional retelling/reimagining of the events surrounding the famous gunfight at the OK Corral.
If you have any interest in nautical fiction, the *”*Aubrey and Maturin” novels by Patrick O’Brian are a fun read.
Caleb’s Crossing (first Native American to go to Harvard) or March (the life of the patriarch of the Little Women) by Geraldine Brooks
Varina (Jefferson Davis’ wife in the aftermath of the Civil War) by Charles Frazier
Michener’s books are good reads, but they all start with the Big Bang and they do have a certain political spin.
I enjoyed Leon Uris’ book on the Irish troubles, Trinity
– The Silence of Bones by June Hur (historical mystery)
– A Shore Thing by Joanna Lowell (historical romance)
– The Great Divide by Cristina Henriquez (slightly past the end of the 1800s, but pretty sure there’s no in-home electricity)
– The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline
– Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
*The Sot-Weed Factor* is a comic novel about a young Englishman in the Seventeenth Century who goes to the Maryland colony to manage a tobacco plantation. It takes a decidedly jaundiced view of the colonists and native Americans and spoofs the conventions of historical novels. Extremely well written. And also extreme: there’s eight pages of a French woman and an English woman insulting each other in their respective languages, without a single insult being repeated.
Written by John Barth.