Adriana Kraft

When it's time to heat things up...

Historical Fiction

My Review: #5Stars for the Lydiard Chronicles, by Elizabeth St. John @ElizStJohn #HistoricalFiction #UKHistory #KU

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When you read historical fiction that’s anchored in real events, do you ever wonder where your own ancestors were at that point in time, what their role was, what they were doing? My husband and I each have UK and European ancestors, and we’ve been able to follow some of their lines back farther than we’d ever hoped. A distant relative traced one my husband’s lines all the way back to England’s Edward III, through Edward’s second son, John of Gaunt, and John’s mistress, Katherine Swynford (later his wife).

So when the two of us delve into books about UK royalty during the War of the Roses, the Tudor era, and beyond, we’re reading about (very) distant relatives, and yes, we wonder where our related ancestors were and how they fit in with those events.

MY REVIEW

When I downloaded The Lady of the Tower, by Elizabeth St. John, I didn’t know what to expect. I was immediately pulled into 17th century England. The opening lines bring us a woman entering the Tower of London, uncertain what will happen to her next. I feared for her and kept reading. You will, too.

It turns out that the Lady who looks to be in peril is Lucy St. John, a descendent of the St. John family who owned the Lydiard estate, now preserved as Lydiard Park, some 85 miles east of London. The author is a present day descendent of that same family.

In her three-book series, aptly named The Lydiard Chronicles, Elizabeth St. John traces four generations of family members who, as relatives of Elizabeth I, were close to that court and continued to be connected to royalty throughout the 17th century during the reigns of James I/VI, Charles I, and later Charles II. During the civil war and the Commonwealth era, family members took opposite sides, with sometimes tragic results.

The works are thoroughly researched, and the major events are historically accurate. The prose is so engaging and the details rich that I was compelled to stay in in the 17th century through all three books in her series. I didn’t want to set them down, and I know I will go back and re-read them.

Highly recommend.

Five Stars.

BUY LINKS

The Lady of the Tower

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1523417889/

The Lydiard Chronicles

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GRDP6QP/

PORTRAITS

Author Elizabeth St. John has graciously sent me the following three photographs of portraits several major characters in the Lydiard series. The portraits were commissioned by their older brother, John St. John, for a family Polyptych which now hangs in St. Mary’s Church, Lydiard.

The Lady St. Johns (Lucy St. John is on the left, Barbara next to her.

The Original Polyptych

John St. John, painted when he had just acquired his title of Baronet in 1611:

The Huguenot Chronicles, by Paul C. R. Monk @pcrmonk: Review and Reflections #Huguenot #HistoricalFiction #KU

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Both my husband and I have French Huguenot ancestors. Each of our mothers carried the original immigrant’s Huguenot surname, though anglicized. Not long after the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes, his mother’s ancestor emigrated from Normandy, France, to the Northern Neck of Virginia. He arrived sometime between 1687 and 1693. It is thought he may have come through England, possibly via Jersey in the Channel Islands. We have no family stories about this trip.

My mother’s ancestor arrived somewhat later. Along with his two brothers, he landed in Philadelphia in 1752, having set sail from Antwerp, Belgium. The story we have is that the boys’ mother had fled France with her family many years earlier and settled in Geneva, Switzerland. After her death, the three sons, by then adults, chose to come to the Colonies.

We have no records of the financial situation of either family at the time they left France or arrived in the Colonies. My mother’s ancestors, like many Huguenots, were well educated and quickly found jobs teaching in the Pennsylvania Dutch region west of Philadelphia. My husband’s ancestor must have come with resources. Though he had previously married in France, he fairly quickly married a Virginia woman. By the time he died some 35 years later, he had become the owner of a vast tobacco plantation in Westmoreland County, which he purchased from from Catherine Culpeper and her husband, Thomas Fairfax, 5th Lord Fairfax. His neighbors included the Washingtons, the Monroes, and the Lees.

So it was with great personal interest that each of us read a fairly recent release, The Huguenot Chronicles, by Paul C.R. Monk. The fictional story is, according to its description, “based on true events.” I do not know if this means it is true of a particular family, or more generally true. I certainly believe that every event reported in the series actually happened, over and over, to countless Protestants of conscience during the years preceding and following the edict’s revocation.

This series is a chilling story about a treacherous and hazardous period of history. Thousands of French Protestants did not survive the harsh turnabout that took place in 1685. Thousands more converted to Roman Catholicism to save their lives and those of their families.

As I read these books, I was constantly imagining the experience and journey of my ancestor. Did that family, like the heroine, have a long trek on foot through France to reach the refuge offered by Switzerland? Did they, like her, travel with a small band of refugees, walking by night, hiding by day? Since I do not know when my ancestor’s mother fled with her three sons or how old they were then, I wonder how much her experience paralleled the travails so vividly brought forth in Monk’s work.

My husband’s ancestor likely travelled a different route; much of Normandy is not far from England. Perhaps he, along with other refugees, was able to cross the channel furtively and proceed with less threat from there. It is not clear from existing records whether his first wife had died in France, or whether he left her behind. Records do show that three children of that union reached adulthood in France. Perhaps, as with some of the families in Monk’s story, his wife was unwilling to make the sacrifice and chose instead to remain in France with her children and convert.

Can the fictional family in Monk’s series possibly have a happy ending? Odds are definitely against them; but so were the odds against safe and successful flight from persecution in France for my ancestor and my husband’s. Were this not true for thousands more, the early colonies and our infant nation would not have benefitted so greatly from the significant contributions of Huguenot immigrants.

In short, I found this trilogy of books to be well-told, gripping, and realistic. I highly recommend it, especially to anyone with Huguenot ancestry. More generally, it offers a vivid picture of prejudice, hatred, and power in a tumultuous period of history that many Americans know little about.

Five Stars.

Buy Link:

https://www.amazon.com/Huguenot-Chronicles-Merchants-historical-fiction-ebook/dp/B09J3RYL5G/

Read for Free on Kindle Unlimited

 

My Review: The Forever Queen, by Helen Hollick @HelenHollick #MedeivalHistory #UKHistory

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This week I’m continuing my reviews of fiction about women across the ages who’ve had an impact on the history of the British Empire. Two weeks ago I reviewed Cathie Dunn’s novel Ascent, focused on the Viking invader Rollo’s hand-fasted wife, Poppa. Poppa is the great grandmother of today’s impactful heroine, Queen Emma.

When I wrote about Poppa, I was writing about a direct – although very distant – ancestor of my husband. Like so many Americans of British descent, his lineage traces back to Edward III, in his case through Edward’s son John of Gaunt and John’s mistress and later wife, Katheryn Swynford.

Queen Emma is not my husband’s ancestor, and the British royal line descends not from her but from her brother. Nonetheless, she and her children had a profound and powerful impact on the course of UK history.

MY REVIEW

The Forever Queen, by Helen Hollick

Emma was but thirteen when her brother – the future Duke of Normandy – accompanied her across the channel from France in 1002 to wed King Æthelred, later known as Æthelred the Unready. Little could she know that as England’s future queen, she held in her hands both England’s rise to success across the middle decades of the century, and its fall to William the Conqueror, her grandnephew, in 1066.

Perhaps more is known about this pre-Norman queen than about any who preceded her, in part because late in her life, she commissioned a book about herself. One may need to take the details of that book with a grain of salt, but its broad strokes mesh with much that is documented elsewhere.

As Æthelred’s queen consort, Emma ruled England with him until his death except for a brief interim in 1013, in which the Dane Sweyn Forkbeard conquered the island and Æthelred fled with his family to Emma’s brother, by then Duke Richard, in Normandy. After Æthelred’s death in 1016, a son of Emma and Æthelred ruled briefly, but was defeated by Sweyn’s son Cnut the Great, who shortly married Emma; hence her title, the forever queen. She ruled with him until his death in 1032, and she was an active participant in the government of her two sons who succeeded him, Harthacnute and Edward the Confessor. Emma died in 1052. Counting her years as advisor to her ruling sons, Emma was central to English politics for nearly half a century, a ruler in fact if not in name.

Author Helen Hollick has taken these known and conjectured facts and delivered a compelling account of Emma, her inner world, her dilemmas, and her choices. In addition, she embeds this narrative in a rich and detailed presentation of Emma’s outer world – the backward state of England’s royal and liturgical structures, the complex medieval culture, the political interplay and some of its traitors, the powerful role of the Catholic church and its bishops, and the incessant Viking invasions.

The Emma who emerges is engaging, often admirable, sometimes devious, and clearly very clever to successfully navigate the swirling power plays that surround her. Is she a likable character? Yes and no. For me, Hollick succeeds in making us understand and empathize with her, so that even when she takes an action we might disapprove of, we know why. I found the presentation of her character and her era to be highly engaging and informative.

Five Stars ~ Highly Recommend.

BUY LINK

The Forever Queen: Sometimes, a desperate kingdom is in need of one great woman.

Helen Hollick

https://amazon.com/dp/B0042JU7QW/

My Review: Ascent: A story of danger, adversity, and love (House of Normandy Book 1), by Cathie Dunn @cathiedunn #Normandy #HistoricalFiction #Rollo #KU

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Since I wish to focus my next spate of Book Reviews on women across the ages who’ve had an impact on the history of the British Empire, where better to start than the hand-fasted first wife of of Rollo, the the Viking invader of Rouen, whose great-great-grandson conquered England in 1066?

Historical fiction author Cathie Dunn has penned a moving account of what could have been this important forebearer’s experience and influence in the decades immediately following Rollo’s late ninth century invasion and ultimate victory over what is now Normandy, France. Reliable records of Rollo’s life and actions are scarce, and those of his handfasted wife Poppa of Bayeux even more elusive. But weaving together what is known with what might be reasonably conjectured, Dunn has given us a brave, determined and hard working early French noblewoman who, given in marriage to the pagan invader against her will to secure advantages for her father, rose above hatred and prejudice and formed at least a tolerable relationship that surely impacted the course of history. It is the offspring of this union who form the foundation of what became the Duchy of Normandy and ultimately the House of Normandy in England.

I love reading about bold, impetuous women who none-the-less show good judgment when necessary and have their wits about them. This is who author Cathie Dunn has given us in fleshing out the bare bones of Poppa’s story. A mere fourteen years old upon Rollo’s arrival, Poppa is handfasted to him as wife but, in Dunn’s account, is left behind for several years as he moves further up the river valley, to Rouen, which he conquers. In the interim she develops skills in managing her father’s estate – skills that will be especially helpful when she must manage Rollo’s ever increasing dominions.

It required considerable boldness and dedication in that era for a Christian woman to consent to remain in what her church viewed as a non-sanctioned marriage to a pagan; yet there is no evidence that a Christian wedding ceremony ever took place between Poppa and Rollo. Many of the details Dunn has created in this highly engaging story are pure conjecture, but they surely fit with such boldness and as such, seem at least plausible. And, as any novelist hopes, they make for a story that will have readers rooting for Poppa. I highly recommend this novel.

This book is the first in a projected series about the first three Norman brides. I eagerly await the second installment, promised for sometime in 2023

BUY LINK

Available exclusively at Amazon.

Free to read on Kindle Unlimited.

https://amazon.com/dp/B09RNB6N5L/

 

My Review: The Atomic City Girls, by Janet Beard #WWII #WomensHistory #HerStory #ManhattanProject

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This review is the second book in my three review series (so far!) on women who won the war – women without whose contribution we could so easily have lost.

Daughters of the Night Sky, by Aimee K. Runyan Goodreads Review
The Atomic City Girls, by Janet Beard Goodreads Review
Code Girls, by Liza Mundy (review coming 11/19)

Growing up as a baby boomer, I naturally learned about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the first atomic bomb tests at Alamogordo, NM. Later, while I was studying at the University of Chicago, a Henry Moore sculpture commemorating the first atomic fusion was unveiled. It is situated on the university’s former football field, the site of Fermi’s laboratory in the 1940s. The sculpture’s shape vaguely resembles a mushroom cloud, which caused considerable controversy, as there was no explosion in Fermi’s successful experiment. But everyone involved in Fermi’s labs knew where the work was headed.

In spite of this awareness, until I picked up The Atomic City Girls, I was only familiar with “Oak Ridge” as the name of a famous country band, whose song “Elvira” I often dance to in line dance classes. Though I knew the term “Manhattan Project,” I had never heard of the massive calutrons that were secretly built in Oak Ridge, TN during World War II to enrich uranium for the atomic bomb. I was also unaware of the enormous and crucial role of so many women in the Manhattan Project.

The Atomic City Girls, written by a granddaughter and grand niece of two women who worked for the Manhattan Project in Tennessee, succeeds brilliantly in remedying this gap in my knowledge. Though the main characters are fictional, their experiences mirror the life and reality of the actual participants in the project.

The city of Oak Ridge was built nearly overnight in a remote Tennessee valley selected for the potential of its surrounding ridges to possibly contain an explosion, should there be a disaster in the project. Out of nothing, in very short order, grew a city of over 75,000, complete with housing, buses, movie theaters, bowling alleys, and other recreational venues. All who worked there were sworn to secrecy, and violations were not tolerated.

The project recruited recent female high school graduates chiefly from the surrounding region. For most of them, it was both their first paying job and their first time living away from their families. The ”girls,” most of them under 20, were trained to sit at a display of dials and keep them within a very narrow range of settings. In eight hour shifts, they did nothing but watch the displays and turn the dials when required. They were never told what the dials meant or what their work was producing.

Beard has created fictional characters both black and white, male and female, line workers and highly trained scientists and engineers. Thus she succeeds in conveying not only the daily experience of the young women, but also the inevitable tensions and cross currents of racial and status differences within the milieu. Within her story lies a microcosm of the changes that emerged in our society following the war in the roles of women and African Americans.

It turns out that the secrecy surrounding this project also impacted me personally. Shortly after reading the book, I was going through some family history accounts my mother passed along to me before her death. There I learned for the first time that her older brother, a chemical engineer at DuPont in Delaware, worked on the Manhattan project. DuPont was the US firm that designed and built the calutrons in Oak Ridge. My mother’s notes gave no further details about his role, so I do not know if his work was on site in Tennessee, or in Delaware during the planning and design stages.

In short, I found this book to be well written, thoroughly researched, highly informative, and very engaging, and I highly recommend it.

Buy Link https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062666711/

#Review: 1066 Turned Upside Down #HistoricalFiction #Midieval #BattleofHastings @AnnieWHistory @HelenHollick

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On my side of the pond, the history lessons I grew up with were woefully inadequate when it came to England. My college Western Civ history began with the Renaissance, as though nothing that came before either was known or would have mattered. I knew nothing about the Norman Conquest or the tribes and kingdoms that had preceded it across the British Isles.

I’ve been filling this gap in the last few years with marvelous history and historical fiction by, among others, Annie Whitehead and Helen Hollick. Annie Whitehead’s Alvar the Kingmaker, suspenseful and rich with cultural details, brings us up to the accession of Æthelred the Unready (978-1016). And Æthelred’s second wife, Queen Emma (984-1052), comes alive in Helen Hollick’s engaging The Forever Queen. It is Emma’s son, Edward the Confessor, whose lack of offspring sets the stage for the Norman invasion of 1066 – and it is Emma’s grand nephew, William the Conqueror, who ultimately won the Battle of Hastings, now being turned upside down in fiction.

So I was intrigued a while back as I scrolled through my morning Triberr posts to discover the title 1066 Turned Upside Down, then further thrilled to realize I was familiar with some of its authors. It takes a special talent to make history come alive, and the nine authors who’ve contributed to this work have succeeded marvelously.

The book is organized chronologically and examines nine turning points in the autumn of 1066, any one of which could easily have led to a different outcome. Each chapter creates a compelling narrative of that different outcome and its consequences.

The stories make great reading, and I was struck that they would be an excellent resource for middle school or high school students to soak up the history that hangs by a thread. But they are also delightful reading at any age. The players were already familiar to me though my earlier reading, and I was entertained and intrigued to explore their actions and motivations at each twist of the story.

Amazon Buy Link:

https://amazon.com/1066-Turned-Upside-Down-Alternative-ebook/dp/B01I1V7G42/

With a forward by C. C. Humphreys, the book brings us stories by the following authors:

Joanna Courtney

Helen Hollick

Annie Whitehead

Anna Belfrage

Alison Morton

Carol McGrath

Eliza Redgold

G.K. Holloway

Richard Dee