The Twelfth Enchantment (2011)

I was delighted to find The Twelfth Enchantment, by one of my favorite historical fiction writers, David Liss - don't know how I missed this one for so long. As with other historical mystery-thrillers by Liss, the creation of very plausible fictional alternative explanations for "known" historical facts is really well done and compelling. Supernatural subjects are a departure from previous Liss novels, but handled in such a way that they don't compromise historical accuracy. Highly recommended! 

The Twelfth Enchantment takes place in 1812 England, mostly in Nottinghamshire, where the unsatisfactory but settled life of main fictional protagonist Lucy Derrick experiences a remarkable series of upheavals. She gradually learns that she has natural gifts of a metaphysical and supernatural nature, and that because of those gifts she has become the target of several nefarious schemes. Such things as alchemy, magic, and spirits were commonly accepted as factual in those days, and the story creates a series of events and characters based on those beliefs. At the novel's beginning, the reader is as ignorant of Lucy's imminent life changes as Lucy herself, so I won't spoil any of the surprise reveals here.  

A number of historical events and persons are accurately woven into the fictional narrative. Central to the story is the Luddite movement and its destructive campaign against mechanization of textile factories. Another 1812 event woven into the novel is the assassination of Prime Minister Spencer Percival, who appears briefly as a character, with a fictional involvement in the supernatural struggle that has overtaken Lucy and her family. And always in the background is the war against Napoleon.

Lord Byron, remembered now mainly as a poet and libertine, plays a prominent role, which Liss extrapolated from his defense of the Luddites in the House of Lords. The secretive Rosicrucian movement is also involved in the supernatural plot. 

Los Alamos (1997)

Re-reading and taking a fresh look at Los Alamos, by Joseph Kanon, was the second follow-up to a previous post about the film Oppenheimer. Los Alamos was Kanon's debut novel, and its success launched a writing career that has since produced ten more historical novels, with no signs of slowing production.

Like Martin Cruz Smith's Stallion Gate, the setting for Los Alamos is the leadup to the August, 1945 first successful atomic bomb test. The common backdrop provides commonalities in the cast of historical characters. J. Robert Oppenheimer is a fictionalized self in both novels, and both fictional main protagonists have an intimate and unofficial relationship with the project director. Most other historical characters appearing under their own names have very limited roles in the novel's plot, while other persons and events are represented by fictional equivalents. 

For example, the actual death of physicist Harry Daghlian from radiation poisoning, after he accidentally dropped a plutonium bomb core, was repurposed in Los Alamos into a fictional subplot involving a fictional physicist's involvement in the murder. That's about as far as Kanon ever strayed from the historical facts. The fictional additions to the historical record maintain plausibility.

Kanon's main protagonist is Michael Connolly, a New York City newspaperman who is brought in to investigate the murder of the bomb project's head of security. The book's plot is the familiar mystery/thriller type of story, and Kanon did it very well, with all the requisite twists and reveals.

Los Alamos and Stallion Gate are both fine novels, sharing a common historical backdrop, and both are recommended as fictionalized accounts of a slice of the historical events contained in the the movie Oppenheimer. High marks for both on all of the five criteria.

Stallion Gate (1986)

Following up on the previous post about the film Oppenheimer, it seemed like a good time to re-read and comment on Stallion Gate, a 1986 novel by Martin Cruz Smith (the cover image is from the paperback edition).

Stallion Gate was Smith's second novel, following his very successful debut with Gorky Park, but having no tie-in with or references to the earlier novel.

Smith's novel is a fictional biography of U.S. Army sergeant Joe Peña, member of a Pueblo community native to the Los Alamos area around the Trinity test site. When the story begins, Peña is in solitary confinement at Leavenworth, having run afoul of an officer. 

He is suddenly rescued by an Army intelligence officer and assigned to be aide and bodyguard to Joseph Oppenheimer. Agostino believes Oppenheimer is a Russian spy, and Peña must report anything he learns about the scientist - or be sent back to Leavenworth.

The novel is better at dramatic descriptions (perhaps exaggerations) of events than at scrupulous adherence to the historical record, but never strays into make-believe. 

Some of Peña's character development reminded me of the protagonist in From Here to Eternity. Both novels are set in the WWII military. Like Private Lee, Sergeant Peña follows instincts that constantly get him into hot water with his superiors, while remaining popular with non-military peers. Also like Lee, Peña is a boxer and, in both novels, one source of dramatic tension is the buildup to a big boxing match. A third similarity is that both characters are musicians. Peña is a jazz pianist, and Smith demonstrates an expansive knowledge of that genre.

Some historical Persons appear as themselves in Stallion Gate, while others are replaced by similar but fictional characters. For example, in the actual events, a Polish-British physicist named Joseph Rotblat quit the Trinity team for reasons of conscience after Germany surrendered. A fictional British scientist does that same thing in the novel.

Stallion Gate is a very entertaining historical novel that doesn't mess with the history (or the science). Highly recommended. Next up is a re-read and review of the 1997 Joseph Kanon novel Los Alamos.

Oppenheimer (2023 film)

 

The Wikipedia article calls Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer an "epic biographical thriller drama film". It also gets pretty good marks on its use of history, although the biographical arc introduces problems in the dramatic arc. The first half of the film ramps up the dramatic tension, culminating in the (literally) explosive climax of the Trinity A-bomb test. That makes the film's second half, dealing with Oppenheimer's post-Trinity career, seem anticlimactic. Still, the film deserves the honors it has received, and belongs on the top tier of Hollywood "historical" productions, where filmmakers are not bound by any constraints of historical accuracy. The film is about a person, not a big explosion, so kudos to Nolan for resisting the temptation to end the film with that dramatic mushroom cloud (or with Hiroshima).

The film also prompts a re-examination of that important period in history. Oppenheimer and those around him are fascinating characters, and many of them have also become the subject of scholarly biographies. I just finished reading The Pope of Physics by Gino Segré and Bettina Hoerlin, a fine 2016 biography of Enrico Fermi co-written by two children of Fermi colleagues. A re-reading and reviewing of two novels I read before these reviews began is also called for: Stallion Gate (1986) by Martin Cruz Smith, and Los Alamos (1997) by Joseph Kanon. 

Booth (2022)

Before beginning Booth, Karen Joy Fowler's masterful 2022 historical novel, a reader might fairly assume that the central character of Booth will be Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth. Fowler surprises us, however. The central role is given to the entire family as a unit, and John Wilkes is actually one of the lesser figures in this drama. The assassination itself is not a central focus - this novel is very much a family saga. From father Junius Booth down to the several Booth children who died young, the members of the famous American acting family each take roles to form a company in the telling of this tale. 

John Wilkes' brother Edwin and sister Asia - both prolific journal and letter writers - provided much of the primary research material for Fowler. Little known sister Rosalie, however, plays the central role as the oldest sister who sees it all play out. Fowler is able to fill in the blanks in Rosalie's life, making her narrative the one that ties all the other family member stories together. 

To place the Booth story in its historical context, Abraham Lincoln is included as an off-stage presence, his political life outlined in third-person sections interspersed among those of various Booths, all following a chronological presentation.

Thanks also to Fowler for adding a detailed "Author's Note" at the end, explaining the many and sundry sources consulted. I hope to see more historical fiction from this author. Highest marks across the board!

The Song of Achilles (2011)

The Song of Achilles (2011), the first novel by classics scholar Madeline Miller, retells Homer's ''The Iliad'' from boyhood to Achilles' death on the battlefield of Troy. Homeric events after that are skimmed over at the end. The first-person straight-narrative viewpoint is that of Patroclus, Achilles' best friend and lover. Being a minor character in ''The Iliad'' lets the Patroclus character be more accessible, with a more modern viewpoint than other more-familiar names in the story. At the same time, the unenlightened historical setting means the two boys have to begin from cluelessness to work out what it means to have and respond to homosexual feelings.

Starting so young makes this a coming-of-age story, as the two boys grow up and have to face the greed and power-lust of the adult world, while dealing with its opposition to their feelings for each other. Complicating matters are Achilles' half-divine nature, his sea-nymph mother, the always-feuding Greek gods, and the war against Troy instigated by the gods' constant meddling in mortal affairs (if only we could still blame "the gods" for our screwups!).

Miller obviously knows her Homer, so the persons and events in The Song of Achilles are faithful to The Iliad and selected supporting mythology. Miller also chooses to ignore some familiar Achilles lore, notably the story of his famous heel. The Iliad certainly can't be read as straight history, so this is not exactly a historical novel, but it reads like one and Miller earns high marks for faithfulness to her sources.  

A Dangerous Business (2022)

Jane Smiley won a Pulitzer Prize for a different historical novel - A Thousand Acres - but I was attracted to A Dangerous Business because it is set in Monterey, California; a town I'm pretty familiar with, not too far from where I live. The murder-mystery plot unfolds over a short span of years from 1850 to 1853, and falls into a category Amazon calls "amateur sleuths". Eliza was brought from Michigan to California by her new husband who dreamed of striking it rich in the gold fields, but he never makes it out of Monterey - killed in a barroom shooting. Eliza is left to fend for herself, and eventually finds employment at a local brothel. She makes a friend, and the two of them set out to find the killer of several other women from Eliza's profession. Along the way, Eliza learns a lot about life, and about herself. The climax comes, of course, when the killer is revealed.

Monterey itself is a character, and Smiley puts considerable effort into conveying a sense of its geography and climate, although a number of small details give away the fact that the author herself has not lived there. Only some very general Monterey history is included, and no historical persons - just general descriptions of the types of people that would have been found there in 1850: Californios, sailors, ranchers, etc. Many of the old streets and a few historical places make cameo appearances - as when Eliza and her friend follow a local lawyer to the courthouse in Colton Hall, but neither the building nor its namesake Walter Colton are described. 

The novel is well-written and enjoyable, but oddly low key for a murder mystery. The murder story seems to be mainly a plot device whose twists and turns allow Eliza room for some adventure and self-discovery. I was disappointed that the plot didn't incorporate more actual history (a la David Liss), which keeps this novel below my highest ranking, but it was fun to read a story set in old Monterey. 

The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)

The Years of Rice and Salt is a 2002 novel by Kim Stanley Robinson. Not exactly what is usually considered to be a historical novel, this work instead belongs to a science fiction sub-genre known as 'alternate history' - Robinson's only venture into this area. When the actual history is treated with respect, however, such novels allow the author to examine historical forces and how events lead to subsequent events. This novel does that by positing a change to one crucial historical event.

The 'Black Death' was a pandemic that began around 1345 CE and eventually killed a third of all Europeans. In Robinson's alternate history,  it is imagined instead as a much more deadly event - killing over ninety percent across Europe, effectively destroying Christian influence over world events. The dominant remaining and familiar world cultures are Islam, China, and the Indian subcontinent. 

The destruction of incipient colonial empires in Spain, Portugal, France, and England has far-reaching effects in many parts of the world. India never falls under British influence. The Middle East never sees Crusades from Europe. In the Western Hemisphere, the native cultures are given more time to develop and resist colonial pressures. While political history changes radically, however, science and technology develop along similar lines to our own history.

To tie the stories together over the book's 1400 projected years, beginning in the reign of 'Temur the Lame' (Tamerlane), Robinson uses several ideas borrowed from reincarnation theories to have the same small group of 'souls' appear over and over. In between mortal lives, the characters meet in the "bardo", a place where souls go after death to await their assignments to new bodies. While together there, the story's characters can discuss their spiritual evolution, and that of the physical world to which they will soon return.

A lot of actual history is used to set up the alternate story, and the historical research is well-done. Alternate history is not usually very attractive to me, but this one is well done and thought-provoking.

The Mirror and the Light (2020)

The Mirror and the Light (2020), by Hilary Mantel, concludes the trilogy of historical novels about Thomas Cromwell,  chief minister to Henry VIII of England. It lives up in every way to the high standards set in the previous two novels, Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012), earning straight 5's in my five criteria. The gap between 2nd and 3rd novels has been much longer than the three years between 1st and 2nd, even though it covers a period of only four years. 

Those were Cromwell's last four years in this life, of course, which filled them with dramatic tensions that Mantel captures so expertly. More childhood back-story is included, as well, which seemed appropriate as Cromwell progressed into later middle age. As Henry descended into a mid-life crisis that became dangerous to all around him, Cromwell meditated on the personal history that shaped him and brought to the position of second-most-powerful person in England, before it was all suddenly snatched away.

It's probably just me and/or the recent times we've been living through in the US, but it seemed that as the events of 1536-1540 unfolded in the novel's pages, Mantel's portrayal of Henry VIII's reign came more and more to resemble the presidency of Donald Trump, which has been unfolding in parallel with the end of her writing about Henry. And Cromwell's ultimate failure to please his king could be compared to numerous appointees who departed the administration because they failed to please Trump. Fortunately, their penalties for failure did not include beheading. 

The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington

The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington (2019) is a work of history by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch. Far from the stereotypically dry history tome, however, this book reads like a fast-paced historical wartime spy novel. Amazon's descriptive blurb says:

Taking place during the most critical period of our nation’s birth, The First Conspiracy tells a remarkable and previously untold piece of American history that not only reveals George Washington’s character, but also illuminates the origins of America’s counterintelligence movement that led to the modern day CIA.

The heart of the narrative takes place during the year-plus that newly-appointed commander General George Washington spent in New York City, 1775-76, preparing for the inevitable and overwhelming British assault against his ragtag Continental Army.

As if that weren't daunting enough, Washington learns of a treasonous plot within his own elite guard unit. The ensuing effort to expose the traitors and foil the plot has enough surprising twists-and-turns to satisfy the most demanding spy novel fan. New York legislator John Jay leads the investigation, and in the process lays the groundwork for future counterespionage and counterintelligence agencies in the US. Well-written and researched, and highly recommended.

Note: a good chronological follow-up to this history would be Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring, by Alexander Rose, which was adapted into the AMC TV series Turn: Washington's Spies.