Historical Fiction: Skeletons at the Feast, by Chris Bohjalian

Terrible beauty
Having read all of Chris Bohjalian’s previous works, I can venture the opinion that this is his masterpiece. Skeletons at the Feast tells the tale of the Emmerlich family, lower ranked aristocrats living in Poland during WWII. War is hell, to quote Civil War General W.T.Sherman, but – thankfully – most of us [...]

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It’s a Mystery: The Pale Blue Eye, by Louis Bayard

Blue eyed girl
As 2009 is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe, it’s fitting that the interests of several novelists have turned to him. Louis Bayard chose to depict Poe in a little known segment of his life, his tenure as a cadet at West Point. The mystery revolves around the [...]

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Watch This: The Tudors, season 2

It’s TV, not a history lesson, and The Tudors, Season 2 delivers good period drama, with plenty of courtly plotting. Natalie Dormer brings grit and moxie to her role as Anne Boleyn, and while Henry VIII was a bit older than Rhys-Meyers appears, it’s amazing to watch as the king slides into the megalomania that [...]

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Watch This: Lorna Doone

Civil war
R.D. Blackmore’s  classic Lorna Doone is a particularly dense novel, containing hundreds of characters and a lot of country philosophizing.    This sort of work is not easy to translate to the screen, but there are more than enough adventure, brawling, and love scenes to do the trick. Writer Adrian Hodges has remained true to [...]

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Historical Fiction: The Dark Tower, by Louis Bayard

Tour de force
It has generally been accepted that the son of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI was murdered shortly after the executions of his parents. Now, more than 200 years later, Louis Bayard has taken another look at the fate of the dauphin. Could he have been saved? Could he have lived to become [...]

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Historical Fiction: Sacred Hearts, by Sara Dunant

Love story
If you’re a daughter born to wealthy parents in 16th century Italy, you’d better be the firstborn. If not, you’re likely to end up, at a very young age, in a convent. Because of the dowry paid upon your entry, the Church is not particularly concerned about whether you have a true vocation, [...]

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Classic Lit: Lorna Doone, by R.D. Blackmore

4.0 out of 5 stars John’s coming of age
As a very young child, John Ridd encounters the equally young Lorna while fishing in Doone territory. The Doones, born noble, were deprived of their birthright, and now live in a fortress above the Somerset moors, sometimes emerging to pillage the countryside for food, money, and [...]

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Historical Fiction: The Wet Nurse’s Tale, by Erica Eisendorfer

Working woman
Susan Rose has been brought up by an abusive drunk of a father and a mother forced into wet-nursing to keep hearth and home together. When Susan, in service at the manor house, finds herself pregnant by the master’s son, she is forced by her father into following in her mother’s footsteps, only [...]

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Watch This: Australia, with Hugh Jackman

That’s Entertainment
There’s a reason why classics are classics, and that’s because they fulfill a basic human thirst for romance, adventure, the fellow getting the girl, and the good guys coming out on top. Nicole Kidman dares to be herself in this film, and turns in her best performance ever. As for Hugh Jackman, he couldn’t [...]

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Historical Fiction: Tallgrass, by Sandra Dallas

Our own personal war
The internment camps into which Japanese Americans were forced after Pearl Harbor have, at last, been garnering much interest lately. Sandra Dallas has made once such camp the center of Tallgrass. Rennie Stroud has just become a teenager when the Japanese arrive in her Colorado hometown, and her life will [...]

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