Historical Fiction

Remembering Babylon by David Malouf (1993)

From Queensland, Australia, son of a Lebanese-Christian father and English-Jewish mother, David Malouf (b. 1934) is an award-winning novelist and short-story writer as well as a poet, playwright, and opera librettist. His first poetry collection, Bicycle and Other Poems, was published in 1970 and his first novel, the semi-autobiographical Johnno, in 1975.

Malouf’s novel The Great World (1990), about two Australian prisoners of the Japanese during World War II, won the Best Book award from the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Prix Femina Etranger for best book translated into French. Remembering Babylon (1993) won the first International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (1996), the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. In 2008, his Collected Stories (2007) won the Australia-Asia Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award.

Set in a Scottish borderland settlement of Queensland, Australia, c. 1860s, Remembering Babylon is a novel about belonging and displacement—of the immigrant Scots, the native people, and the mysterious central character, Gemmy Fairley.

It opens dramatically when three settler children—Lachlan Beattie and his cousins Janet and Meg McIvor—see “something extraordinary”: a black man running toward them. (p. 1) Twelve-year-old Lachlan holds up a stick as if it’s a gun, prompting the man’s response, “Do not shoot … I am a B-b-british object!” (p. 3) They realize the man is white, though with scorch marks on his skin, a missing eyebrow, swollen joints, and one leg shorter than the other.

The news spreads quickly in the small settlement and residents try to determine who this “black white man” is and where he came from. (p. 9) Despite being British, his English is very limited, though he begins to remember more words. His name sounds like Gemmy (or Jimmy) Fairley (or Farrelly), and he’d been cast overboard 16 years before when he was about Lachlan’s age and had been living with natives in the northern bush ever since.

To learn more details, Gemmy is interviewed the next afternoon by Mr. Frazer, the sympathetic minister, with George Abbot, the 19-year-old schoolteacher, as reluctant scribe. Mr. Frazer was given to speculation and Gemmy seemed to be trying to please him. Abbot occasionally altered the statement: “The imp of invention … this scrap of mistruth … among so much … mere guesswork on the minister’s part … appealed to his [Abbot’s] sense of the absurd…” (p. 17)

Taken in by the McIvors, Gemmy sleeps in the lean-to and helps the father, Jock, with farm chores. Gemmy is a willing worker, though not strong. He feels a bond with the children who found him, teaching them skills like plaiting grass and Lachlan how to track animals, while playing pupil to the girls. Lachlan felt an obligation to Gemmy and wanted to include the stranger in his boyish plans for exploration.

For other settlers, however, Gemmy, with his native mannerisms and accent, make real their fear of a native attack. What if he was a spy, many wondered. Jock, although uneasy himself, plays down his neighbors’ fears. “It was the mixture of monstrous strangeness and unwelcome likeness that made Gemmy Fairley so disturbing to them … and the encounter was an embrace.” (pp. 38-39)

Ned Corcoran says the only way to deal with natives is to get rid of them. Some, however, thought the natives could become workers or servants, perhaps on plantations. Gemmy “felt a heavy responsibility.” To the hardliners who wanted to make him an ally for an easy war, he inflated the number of natives and placed them farther north than was the case. To those wanting to enserf the natives, he refused to give information, feigning ignorance of their questions.

The exception was Mr. Frazer, to whom Gemmy was trustful and more open. Frazer, an amateur botanist since childhood, would draw native plants and write down what Gemmy called them. Although the minister’s pronunciation of the native language was often bad, sometimes unwittingly humorous or blasphemous, his drawings showed he understood the spirit of the plants.

Frazer becomes an advocate of cultivating native plants rather than importing European ones. “We have been wrong to see their continent as hostile and infelicitous…” (p. 118) He writes, “…no continent lies outside God’s bounty and his intention to provide for his children. He is a gardener… The children of this land were made for it, as it was for them. … We must humble ourselves and learn from them.” (p. 119) He sees Gemmy as a forerunner, if a crude one, “…a true child of this place…” (p. 121)

Readers are given backstories of key characters. Ellen McIvor was from a Scottish mining family and, determined to leave that life, had married Jock, a gardener. After immigrating to Australia, their first two children died, and Ellen realized the sunniness she’d seen in Jock was not his true nature. Unlike Ellen, he was often homesick, though he never said so. When her favorite brother, Rob, died in a mining accident, his young son Lachlan was sent to live with them.

Schoolteacher George Abbott had also been uprooted. When he was a boy, his father died, and a godfather had paid for his education. After finishing his degree, he wanted to move to Africa to experience an arduous life, but his godfather countered with Australia. Once there, George “fought with his loneliness, his youth, and his sensual nature …” (p. 40) He considered his life “in this godforsaken place … desolate and without hope.” (p. 46) His attitude toward Gemmy changes profoundly over time.

Gradually, readers are given glimpses of Gemmy’s grim youth. Abandoned on the street as a child, he worked in a timber mill sweeping the sawdust from under the machines. He was then taken in by Willett, a ratcatcher, who gave him “curses, blows, growls, slobbery kisses.” (p. 134) Gemmy helped Willett remove rats from the ponds of London’s Regents Park, which were used in weekend rat matches. Gemmy received many wounds that became open sores and scars.

After a spontaneous act of retribution, Gemmy stowed aboard a ship, working as a cabin boy for two or three years. Again a victim of abuse, he cast himself off the ship and was found washed ashore by a group of native women and children. “Lying half in salt and … half in air that blistered. Eyelids so puffed … Nostrils crusted … All over him … tiny creatures … crawled into the cracks that had been opened in him…” (p. 20) The natives nursed him to health and he followed them. “He was accepted by the tribe but guardedly … proper to an in-between creature.” (p. 25)

The settlement’s mysterious Mrs. Hutchence lives with a younger woman, Leona Gonzales, in a real house that has real furniture. “It was like stepping back into a dream place…” (p. 78) George Abbott discovers that the McIvor girls and Hector Gosper gather there for kitchen-table conversation, with Gemmy in silent attendance. Janet McIvor, the eldest, will find her life’s passion when she begins assisting Mrs. Hutchence with beekeeping. One of the novel’s major symbolic episodes involves Janet and the bees.

When two natives briefly visit Gemmy, they are seen by Andy McKillop, a farm worker, with his own unfortunate past. When Gemmy refuses to explain the encounter, Andy is personally offended as well as angry. He quickly spreads the news, elaborating what happened: “He was inspired.” (p. 91) This confirms suspicions and exacerbates fears, which culminate in violence. “And the stone, once launched, had a life of its own. It flew in all direction … [to] leave wounds … [that] would not heal.” (p. 93)

After the unfolding of that watershed event and its impact on various characters and the community over several chapters, the final chapter leaps fifty years to the early post-World War One era. Lachlan and Janet, now elderly, reconnect after years apart and realize: “Something Gemmy had touched in them was … still living…” (p. 180)

The story and characters of Remembering Babylon have the substance for a longer saga, which author Malouf has refined to an eloquent essence.

Tan Twan Eng

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng (2012)

Born in Penang, Malaysia, in 1972, author Tan Twan Eng is a descendent of Chinese settlers to the British Straits Colony (“Straits Chinese”) like his main character in The Garden of Evening Mists (2012), Teoh Yun Ling. After receiving his law degree from the University of London, Tan worked in Kuala Lumpur as an intellectual properties lawyer until becoming a full-time writer.

Tan’s first novel, The Gift of Rain (2007), which I would also recommend, was longlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize, and the novel under review, The Garden of Evening Mists, won the Man Asian Literary Prize (2012) and the Walter Scott Prize for History Fiction (2013) and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize (2012) and the Dublin IMPAC Prize (2014). It was adapted into a film in 2019. His third novel, The House of Doors, was published in 2023.

Both The Gift of Rain and The Garden of Evening Mists are based on the Japanese occupation of Malaysia during World War Two. One of the author’s talents is to create complex characters who make difficult decisions in severe circumstances, such as a POW camp, without sliding into moral equivalency or relativism. All the main characters have interesting stories that allow readers to view events from various perspectives.

When readers meet Teoh Yun Ling, the central character of The Garden of Evening Mists, it is 1987 and she is retiring earlier than expected as Malaya’s Chief Justice. This is because a disease—"this trespasser in my brain” (p. 295) — is eroding her ability to understand language and she wants to write down her past experiences before they are lost.

Memory is an important theme in the novel. It is for Yun Ling not only in dealing with her disease but also in confronting her wartime experiences. “Memory is like patches of sunlight in an overcast valley, shifting with the movement of the clouds. Now and then the light will fall on a particular point in time, illuminating it for a moment before the wind seals up the gap, and the world is in shadows again.” (p. 294) Other characters, too, carry the weight of memories.

Before her judicial appointment, Yun Ling had worked as a public prosecutor and earlier as a researcher for the War Crimes Tribunal. During World War Two, she and her older sister, Yun Hong, had been interned in a secret Japanese slave-labor camp. Yun Ling was the only camp survivor and her incentive for joining the post-war Tribunal was to find information about the camp’s exact location.

After being fired in 1951 for criticizing the Allies for not requiring reparations from Japan, Yun Ling, traveled up the mountains to the tea estate of her friend Magnus Pretorius, a Dutch South African (Boer) and former business partner of her father. Magnus had arranged for her to meet his neighbor Nakamura Aritomo, former gardener to the Japanese emperor, to commission him to create a Japanese garden in honor of her late sister.

Yun Hong had fallen in love with Kyoto’s gardens when the family visited Japan before the war, and her memories of them sustained her spirit in the internment camp, where she was forced into sex slavery. Aritomo’s garden, Yigiri (Evening Mists), is the only Japanese garden in Malaya. Although he refuses the commission, he offers to teach Yun Ling how to create the garden, telling her not to take notes: “The garden will remember it for you.” (p. 84)

The Garden of Evening Mists alternates mainly between the period of Yun Ling learning the art of Japanese gardening in 1951 and her return 36 years later to renovate Aritomo’s garden, which had been neglected since his mysterious disappearance and presumed death. There are also flashbacks to Yun Ling’s youth and eventually the story of her internment—with its “unpredictable cruelties” (p. 80)—and escape is revealed. Readers also learn the past of other characters.

The novel’s pivotal relationship is between Yun Ling and Aritomo about whom she must first overcome her revulsion toward a Japanese man. His family had been imperial gardeners for generations, but in the 1930s he was fired after a design dispute with the emperor’s cousin-in-law. Aritomo then moved to British Malaya, where he bought land from Magnus whom he had met in Japan.

Magnus had been a POW during the Second Boer War (1899-1902) and when Japan invaded Malaya in 1941, he, his Chinese wife, Emily, and their servants were interned on his estate to work the fields. Aritomo was beaten by the Japanese occupiers but released after two months and seemed to remain aloof from the occupation. But did he?

Yun Ling’s description of her and sister Yun Hong’s experience in the Japanese slave-labor camp is particularly harrowing. Yun Hong was forced into prostitution, while Yun Ling worked in the kitchen before compelled to join other prisoners in 18-hour workdays repairing a collapsed mineshaft. “Each day was unchanging, differentiated only … by who had been injured, who had fallen ill, who had died.” (p. 254)

Yun Ling describes atrocities against prisoners, such as an Australian private beaten and then forced into a box in which he could neither sit nor stand. After two days, he went insane and was shot. Yun Ling is eventually made a translator for a visiting dignitary, Tominaga Noburu who loves gardening and mentions knowing Aritomo, whom Yun Ling had heard of from her sister.

When Yun Ling began her work with Aritomo in 1951, Malaya was in a state of emergency (1948-1960) because of a Communist insurgency. Security was heightened when the British High Commissioner is assassinated, and Yun Ling is a potential target because her work as public prosecutor had involved sentencing and deporting Communists. She will also be asked to fill the dangerous role of liaison between surrendering Communists and the police.

Magnus’ nephew, Frederik, is a captain in the Rhodesian African Rifles stationed in Malaya to suppress the Communist insurgency. He falls in love with Yun Ling and becomes jealous of her developing relationship with Aritomo.

As riveting as these stories are, readers of The Garden of Evening Mists also learn about four types of Japanese art: gardening, archery (kyudo), ukiyo-e printmaking, and tattooing (including full-body horimono).

Japanese garden design arose 1000 years ago, influenced initially by Chinese temple gardens, then developing its own aesthetic based on the Japanese landscape and stricter asceticism. Yun Ling found its concept of emptiness appealing in opening “the possibility of ridding myself of everything I had seen and heard and lived through.” (p. 81)

When Aritomo had turned 18, in preparation for becoming an imperial gardener, his father gave him a sketchbook and money for a six-month journey across Honshu (Japan’s main island) to learn by observing nature. “Nature is the best teacher.” (p. 209) His father said, “The palest ink will endure beyond the memories of men.” (p. 144) Aritomo eventually became “a master of shakkei, the art of Borrowed Scenery, taking elements and views from outside a garden and making them integral to his creation.” (p. 25)

At Yun Ling’s request, Aritomo also teaches her Japanese archery (kyudo) in which the archer must learn to breathe properly and concentrate on each ritualized movement. The purpose is to train the mind. The “song of the bowstring” when the arrow is released is called tsurune. Aritomo explains, “Anything beautiful should be given a name … The purer the tsurune, the greater the archer’s skills.” (p. 136)

When Yun Ling returns to Aritomo’s estate in the 1980s, Professor Yoshikawa Tatsuji arrives to request her permission to use Aritomo’s woodblocks for a book he is writing about Aritomo, who was a respected ukiyo-e artist. Although Aritomo’s style had been traditional Japanese, the images were of Malaya.

The professor also insists, to Yun Ling’s initial denial, that Aritomo was a tattoo artist, pointing out the close link in Japan between woodblock art and tattoos. Both were inspired by a Chinese novel, Suikoden (“Water Margin”), which was translated into Japanese in the 18th century and became very popular.

Besides his scholarship, Professor Yoshikawa is known for insisting that Japan take responsibility for its wartime atrocities, a view for which he had been criticized and even beaten. During the war, he had been a pilot for the Japanese Imperial Navy. He tells Yun Ling of the “rabbit hunting”—clubbing to death—of POWs by Japanese troops and supporters, implying his own complicity. He tells her of witnessing his father’s ritual suicide (seppuku), volunteering for Kamikaze duty, and the loss of his lover.

Throughout The Garden of Evening Mists, Tan’s graceful prose is adorned with inspired similes and metaphors:

“Sparrows rise from the grass into the trees, like fallen leaves returning to their branches.” (p. 15)

When Yun Ling first enters Aritomo’s house, she senses its silence has a different quality and feels as if she “had been plumbed … into a deeper, denser level of the ocean. I stood there, allowing the stillness to seep into me.” Hearing a bird’s whistle outside only “deepen[ed] the emptiness of the air between each note.” (p. 44)

While Aritomo discusses his past, “A memory wisped across his face, like rain drifting over a mountain.” (p. 140)

During her evening walks, Yun Ling sees bats flying and wonders if humans are the same: “navigating our lives by the silences between words spoken…” (p. 307)

The Garden of Evening Mists takes readers on an enlightening journey to the past suffused with beauty and pathos.

Gillian Bradshaw

Like fiction in general, historical fiction should first have literary merit, with such key elements as well-crafted prose, three-dimensional characters, and an engaging plot. In addition, it should present the past on its own terms, with verisimilitude of the minutiae and morals of the story’s setting without imposing contemporary norms. Gillian Bradshaw’s novels achieve all the criteria of good historical fiction.

The daughter of an American journalist father and British diplomatic secretary mother, Gillian Bradshaw was born in Washington, DC, in 1956. She earned a dual BA in English and Classical Greek from the University of Michigan, when her debut work, Hawk of May, won the Hopwood Prize for best novel. She continued her studies in Greek and Latin literature at Cambridge University. She quickly began earning a living as a writer and decided to remain in England, where she would marry and raise her children. Besides historical fiction, she also writes children’s literature, fantasy, and science fiction.

I first read Bradshaw’s novel The Sand-Reckoner (2000), which is deservedly on several lists of recommended historical fiction. It follows the story of the youthful Archimedes (c. 287-212 BC), the ancient Roman mathematician, inventor, and engineer.

I recently finished reading her novel The Bearkeeper’s Daughter (1987). An intriguing though fictional account of John of Bostra (Syria), a young man who was allegedly born out of wedlock to Theodora, who became the Byzantine empress (6th century BC). The title refers to Theodora, who according to some ancient sources was a circus performer, dancer, and courtesan in her youth. “She … loved being an empress … She loved to be flattered, but was never deceived.” (p. 64)

In Bradshaw’s story, Theodora reluctantly abandoned her baby, John, and his father. The narrative begins years later, when John, after the death of his father from the plague, travels to meet his mother. As he approaches on ship the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, it seems “… too vast and too beautiful to be real.” (p. 1) With the help of a letter from his late father, John gains an audience with the empress. Theodora gives him a position as secretary to the imperial chamberlain, Narses, creates a story that John is her cousin, and plans to make him successor to her husband, Emperor Justinian.

Narses plays a pivotal role in the plot. He is a eunuch who desires military glory and a man of honor. Other key characters include an elderly clerk, Anastasios, who befriends John; Sergio, an ambitious, conniving clerk who envies John; General Belisarius and his scheming wife, Antonina; Emperor Justinian, who loves his wife, is impressed by John’s abilities, but suspicious of their relationship; and Euphemia, the daughter of a disgraced provincial governor who “had a clear, sharp, critical mind” (p. 91) and whose antagonism with John will evolve into romantic feelings that each resists.

The Bearkeeper’s Daughter is filled with palace intrigue, thrilling battlefield scenes, and diverse characters, placed in an interesting, crucial historical milieu. The most important theme of the book is the tension between ambition and integrity. Bradshaw’s prose is seamless with gems of wisdom: It “is the condition of all humanity, to love what dies. Death is the prince of this world, and love is the only thing of durable value in all the chaos and futility. We can only try to have faith in God’s word that love will prove more durable in the end.” (pp. 298-299)

Gillian Bradshaw’s historical fiction:

- The Beacon at Alexandria (1986)

- The Bearkeeper's Daughter (1987)

- Imperial Purple (1988) (UK title The Colour of Power)

- Horses of Heaven (1990) [with fantasy elements]

- Island of Ghosts (1998)

- The Sand-Reckoner (2000)

- The Wolf Hunt (2001) [with fantasy elements]

- Cleopatra's Heir (2002)

- "The Justice of Isis" (2002) (short story)

- Render Unto Caesar (2003)

- "The Malice of the Anicii" (2003) (short story)

- The Alchemy of Fire (2004)

- Dark North (2007)

- The Sun's Bride (2008)

- London in Chains (2009)

- A Corruptible Crown (2011)

Publisher’s Weekly has a list of Gillian Bradshaw books with mini-reviews.

Mary Renault

Mary Renault (1905-1983) was the pseudonym of Eileen Mary Challans, an English writer remembered mainly for her historical fiction set in ancient Greece, but was also the author of contemporary fiction, a biography of Alexander the Great, and a historical account of key battles of the Persian Wars. A graduate of St. Hugh’s College, Oxford (1925), she became a surgical nurse in the 1930s and began a lifelong romantic relationship with fellow nurse Julie Mullard. In 1939, Renault [pronounced Ren-olt] published her first novel, Purposes of Love, about a secret romance between a young woman and young man. In 1948, Renault and Mullard moved permanently to South Africa.

In 1956, Renault published her first novel set in Greece during its Classical Era (a.k.a. the Golden Age) of the 5th-4th-century BCE. The Last of the Wine follows the life of Alexias, a student of Socrates who develops a romantic relationship with an older fellow student, Lysis, who will later marry a woman. Alexias serves as a soldier during the last phase of the Peloponnesian War, experiencing Athens’ defeat, the reign of the 30 Tyrants, and the democratic rebellion.

Over the next 23 years, Renault published seven additional novels in the series on ancient Greece, ranging from its mythical beginnings into the early Hellenistic Era. Her books are well researched and written, although she accepted some of the historical theories of her time, such as an early matriarchy (see The King Must Die), now usually discounted. Her most famous work is the Alexander trilogy, particularly The Persian Boy, although I found Funeral Games, about Alexander’s successors, more interesting. Renault’s historical novels are compelling stories well told, and may inspire readers to investigate scholarly treatments of the fascinating and influential culture of ancient Greece.

The King Must Die (1958): Perhaps the most exciting story in the series, this novel depicts the mythical Theseus’ quest to claim his birthright as king of Athens, with harrowing adventures, including against the Minotaur of Crete.
The Bull from the Sea (1962): The sequel to The King Must Die.
The Praise Singer (1978): The tale of lyric poet Simonides of Keos as he travels through 5th-century BCE Greece in the time of tyrants and cultural flowering. (This is the only one of the series I have yet to read.)
The Last of the Wine (1956): A male-male love story set in the Peloponnesian War (see above).
The Mask of Apollo (1966): The story of actor Nikeratos that intertwines stagecraft and statecraft in Athens, Macedonia, and Syracuse in the 4th-century BCE.
Fire from Heaven (1969): Part one of the Alexander trilogy from his youth to the death of his father, Philip II of Macedon.
The Persian Boy (1972): Part two of the Alexander trilogy is told from the perspective of Bagoas, the eunuch-lover of Alexander the Great, and covers the time from Alexander’s conquest of Persia to his death.
Funeral Games (1981): Part three of the Alexander trilogy is set in the tumultuous early Hellenistic Era as Alexander’s generals clash for control of his empire.

Charis in a World Of Wonders by Marly Youmans

Marly Youmans is a novelist and poet, the latter a talent which shows in the lyrical, beautifully crafted prose of her novel Charis in a World of Wonders.

"The starlight spilled on me … A thousand thousand bees had been set alight and were floating in the deep blue-black tunnel of night. Whiter than a candle of sun-bleached beeswax, the moon gleamed at me, and the most delicate silk scarf of cloud moved infinitely slowly across the sky. [p. 265]"

Set in Puritan New England during the early 1690s, the author has clearly done serious historical research to paint a richly detailed picture with more accuracy in context and particulars than most historical fiction. At the end of the book is a glossary of Puritan-era terms unfamiliar to most readers today. Occasionally, she includes a bit more information in the story than necessary, such as when readers are given an inventory of a spilled medicine bag amid an intense scene. Those interruptions, however, are few and do not detract overall from the engaging narrative.

In the title character, Youmans has created an intelligent, independent, and intrepid young woman. Charis was educated by her father alongside her brothers in subjects that included Greek philosophy and mythology. “The Greeks did not know what we know, but they were wise.” [p. 124] From a neighborhood woman, Charis learned German folk tales, and is familiar with local flora and fauna: “so the things of this world tell us a tale …” She also believes, though, in the existence of an enchanted world of unicorns and other fantastic creatures in less familiar realms.

Youmans’ story-telling ability and generally good pacing result in a lively read as the plot follows Charis’ hardships and joys. The story begins with a tragedy in which Charis’ family at Falmouth is attacked by members of the Wabinaki Confederacy, and she is forced to flee into the wilderness. She eventually finds temporary sanctuary in the Puritan settlement of Haverhill before taking residence in Andover.

While the author depicts the standard Puritan attitudes, assumptions, and prejudices, the title character and, in Charis’s memory, her father present a more sympathetic view of Natives and other socially maligned people. The French are blamed for stirring up the Wabinaki, who (as explained in the glossary) were allies during King William’s War. Charis’s father had spoken of Puritan encroachment on Native lands. When Charis encounters a young dead brave on her flight, she reflects on their common humanity. “Though intending to regard him with disgust as monstrous and condemned, I was surprised to find that his face appeared open and shorn of any anger.” [p. 38]

The novel conveys the sincere, thoughtful, and evolving spirituality of Charis in a convincing way. Conflicting sides of Puritanism are reflected in Andover’s two pastors, the younger Mr. Barnard with his vehement fire-and-brimstone Calvinism, and the elder, Cambridge-educated Mr. Dane with his emphasis on love, mercy, and grace. “Some prideful new-minted men of Harvard College … are remarkably prone to believe their own half-digested reflections correct. They wish to be the mirror that displays what all others should think—or better, the one others consult and are led by.” [p. 142] The community will eventually become embroiled in accusations of witchcraft.

The importance of class in the Puritan communities is most strongly embodied in the characters of Goody Holt and her elder daughter, Lizzie. Having risen in life, Goody Holt is obsessively determined to make well-connected marriages for her daughters. She treats Charis, who is from a such a family, as a servant when she becomes a hired seamstress in the Holt household.

The novel considers post-partum depression through the character of Phoebe Wardwell. Her husband fearfully relates the words of Pastor Barnard that the depressed and physically ailing Phoebe is beset by “the realm of witches and demons and powers … fighting to possess her.” To which Pastor Dane clicks his tongue, responding, “It is a flaw in our Massachusetts divines to be always to set on thoughts of writhing and furious devils who pitch trouble at us from the invisible world … bereft of tenderness … Likewise … that so many suffer from melancholy, deadness of heart, and over-anxiety as to sin.” [p.202]

One manifestation of Charis’ independence is learning the metalworking craft of her new husband, Jotham. On the broader topic of women acting in traditionally male roles, Youmans presents (as so deftly on other topics) the traditional view with a dissenting or questioning one.

"Those well-born, well-educated ladies, Mary Dyer and Anne Hutchinson, were busy in the cause of liberty, but our ministers preached that each of them suffered an unnatural birth because they abandoned the right role of woman and usurped a man’s duty. That our pastors were right in claiming them as heretics, I knew, yet I have a fellow feeling for the two, with their passion for truth and grace and desire to act for the good. Was I not a woman who longed to be like a boy eagerly riding off to Harvard, and who wishes to make beauties not just in cloth and thread but in a man’s prerogative of silver and gold? (p. 224)"

As with other authors who capture my fancy, I am looking forward to reading more of Youmans’ books.