Historical fiction: From 'Monticello' to Lincoln's assassin
Historical fiction can be an entertaining and edifying way to relive the past. USA TODAY's Jocelyn McClurg and Charisse Jones look at four new novels, set in different eras and places, which take us back to another time.
News of the World
By Paulette Jiles
William Morrow, 209 pp.
**** out of four stars
Paulette Jiles’ spare Western — a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction — packs a powerful punch. And, boy, can Jiles write. In 1870s Texas, Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd at age 71 is an itinerant “reader of the news”; he stops in towns to intone from various newspapers to customers who leave dimes in a tin can. (The captain is a 19th century news “aggregator.”) Along the way he takes a job to return a 10-year-old girl, kidnapped by Indians who slaughtered her parents, to her aunt and uncle. Blond, blue-eyed Johanna, a “semi-savage child” who no longer remembers English, and the “Kep-dun” forge an unexpected bond on their long, perilous journey. News of the World is surprisingly tender, but never soft. It’s lovely.
- Jocelyn McClurg
Fates and Traitors: A Novel of John Wilkes Booth
By Jennifer Chiaverini
Dutton, 385 pp.
*** stars
Who was John Wilkes Booth, possibly the most reviled figure in American history? The assassin of President Lincoln, a charismatic if not terribly good stage actor, is the ostensible “star” of the consistently engaging Fates and Traitors. Jennifer Chiaverini (Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker) takes an indirect approach to her subject that proves fascinating: She focuses on the supporting players, particularly the women who orbit Booth throughout his short, dramatic life. And so his devoted mother Mary Ann, loyal sister Asia, (secret) fiancé Lucy Lambert Hale (a senator’s daughter) and co-conspirator Mary Surratt variously take center stage. All are intriguing characters, and their perceptions of Booth function as a kind of theater in the round. If there is a flaw in Chiaverini’s history play, it’s her failure to strip Booth of his pretty-boy glamour and pierce his dark heart. He remains, as ever, an enigma.
- McClurg
Monticello
Sally Cabot Gunning
William Morrow, 368 pp.
*** stars
William Morrow, 368 pp.
Sally Cabot Gunning, whose previous fictional foray was into the life of Benjamin Franklin, delves once again into the world of the founding fathers, imagining the lives of Thomas and Martha Jefferson. Martha, Jefferson’s daughter, is the center of Monticello, and we see everything — her legendary father, the fledgling American experiment, and most critically, the hypocritical and degrading institution of slavery — through her eyes. Gunning’s writing is elegant, the period details exact, and the dissipation of Martha’s youthful exuberance into the weariness of being a dutiful daughter, wife and mother is often palpable. The novel’s most fascinating theme is how Martha feels about Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman with whom Jefferson had several children. Martha is at turns defensive, in denial, or seething with resentment about Hemings' relationship with her father. “I make no excuses for these families,’’ Guning writes in a note to readers. “I explored their struggles in an effort to better understand how intelligent, conscience-ridden people could accommodate such an institution (slavery) for so long.’’ Monticello does not fully answer the question. But it does begin the conversation.
- Charisse Jones
The Girl From Venice
By Martin Cruz Smith
Simon & Schuster, 305 pp.
**½ stars
With its atmospheric setting, wartime romance and elements of suspense, The Girl From Venice seems tailor-made for a movie starring, say, Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. There is an old-fashioned veneer to Martin Cruz Smith’s likable, laconic tale of a young fisherman named Cenzo who pulls a Jewish girl, Giulia, from a lagoon at nighttime during Nazi-occupied Venice in 1945. But this story is oddly lacking in urgency, strange in a world where so much is at stake. A subplot concerning whether Cenzo will be forced by his mother to marry his brother’s widow is just silly. More exciting is Cenzo’s rivalry with his other, older brother, an Italian movie star who stole the affections of Cenzo’s (now-dead) wife. Feisty Giulia and a risky aerial escape help rescue this Girl from B-movie doldrums.
- McClurg