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For me, the mark of a good historical novel is how quickly and deeply I care about the author’s depictions of the issues of the past. Therese Anne Fowler’s A Well-Behaved Woman had me immediately engrossed in the world of monied NYC society during the Gilded Age. Based on the life of suffragist, socialite, and... Continue Reading →
Michelle Jana Chan’s novel Song tells the inspirational saga of a young Chinese boy’s struggle to defy class and racial lines in colonial British Guyana in the late 1800s. After a flood in his village in China takes his father and siblings, Song finds his way to Guangzhou and boards a ship that eventually takes... Continue Reading →
Mark Di Ionno’s Gods of Wood and Stone is a twenty-first century novel that explores the age-old conflict between fathers and sons. The two main characters, Horace and Joe, have entered middle age and are beginning to question their accomplishments, and their time remaining. Both stories run parallel to each other; the reader knows that... Continue Reading →
My College Sociology Notes. Circa 1997: Definition of Identity. How others see you.How you want others to see you.How you see yourself. This novel took me back to that classroom in college. My professor was trying to teach us the “academic language” for what we were supposedly doing in those four years of schooling. Even... Continue Reading →
Adrienne Celt's Invitation to a Bonfire tells the story of Zoya Andropova's travels from the Soviet Union as a young girl to an all-girls private school on the East Coast of the United States during the 1920s. She struggles through the last years of her schooling trying to learn English and make friends. The novel... Continue Reading →
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