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A mix of fact and fiction is an enduring genre, and popular among readers who frequent the eight branches and bookmobile of the Springfield-Greene County Library District.
Kay Church, a self-described eclectic reader who works in the administrative office at the Library Center, recently completed her first title in the historical fiction genre—James A. Michener’s "The Source,” a multi-layered Jewish history told through a huge cast of fictional characters.
Michener, one of the grand-daddies of historical fiction and a prolific writer who died in 1997, wrote nine blockbuster novels, averaging 848 pages each. “I had never read any of his books,” says Church. “I was told he was a detail ‘nut,’ and his books were encyclopedic, but I found that I loved ‘The Source.’ Historical fiction allows you to learn so much while enjoying a good story.”
Church also vouches for “The Haj” by another bestselling historical fiction writer, Leon Uris who died in 2003. Written in 1984, the book traces the lives of Palestinian Arabs from World War I until the Suez war of 1956. She also liked “Battle Cry,” a 1953 novel about a battalion of Marines during World War II.
I’m a fan of both novelists and recommend both authors’ first big hits, Michener’s “Hawaii,” and Uris’s “Exodus,” the biggest bestseller in the U.S. since “Gone With the Wind.” I’d also add Uris’s 1976 “Trinity,” a chronicle about a Northern Irish farm family from the 1840s to 1916. The book finally made me understand the divisions in Northern Ireland and how similar it is to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
You can catch up on the historical fiction you missed the first time around, or sample some new or recently released books on the shelves, such as “Red River” by Lalita Tademy. She tells a spellbinding story based on her own family history and her father’s roots as a newly freed black resident of Colfax, Louisiana, after the Civil War.
“The Lords of the North” by Bernard Cornwell is his third volume in the Saxon Chronicles, a series about ninth-century Britain in which the Saxons battle to expel the Danish invaders from their land. These books are a painless way to learn some Anglo-Saxon history without cracking a textbook.
HISTORICAL FICTION ON THE SHELVES
Jeanne C. Duffey, community relations director for the Springfield-Greene
County Library District, can be reached at jeanned@thelibrary.org.
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