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The Last White Rose, by Alison Weir

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Historical novel based on the life of Elizabeth of York. The story starts with Elizabeth being woken by her mother when she’s about four years old. Quietly, but hurriedly, they are fleeing the castle for sanctuary. Edward’s rule is being challenged and his queen fears for the safety of his heirs. They flee to the church where they are housed until Elizabeth’s father returns victorious. Unfortunately Elizabeth’s life is lived in fear of invaders and later, imposters. When her beloved father dies at an early age, he appoints his trusted ally Richard as regent for his young sons, Edward and York. But it soon becomes apparent that Richard has designs on the throne for himself. Elizabeth’s mother again takes her children into sanctuary. Richard’s men come and demand that her youngest son, York, be taken to the Tower to join his older brother Edward (Ned), in preparation for his coronation. Reluctantly, the queen agrees. Neither of the princes are ever seen or heard from again. Richard seizes the throne and keeps it until Henry VII returns from exile, rouses the people, and kills Richard in battle. Part of Henry’s plan to establish his reign is to marry Elizabeth, who is the rightful heir to the throne, except that at the time women could not rule alone.

During her life, Elizabeth is haunted by the fact that no one has ever discovered what happened to her brothers, for if either of them could be found alive, Henry’s claim to the throne could be undermined. More than once, imposters mount insurrections which have to be quelled. Elizabeth would dearly love to see her brothers again, but she fears what would happen to her husband, and their children if either of her brothers should come forward. She and Henry have numerous offspring, the first boy, Edward, is good, studious and pious, but sickly. He is removed at an early age from court, to study and train, but his health remains poor. He is betrothed to the princess of Spain, in a royal chess match which allies England with a potential enemy. But Edward’s health is misdiagnosed and he dies soon after the marriage. Fate has played a big hand here, because the spare is Henry VIII. From birth a boisterous, lively and ambitious child, he is well suited to being a king.

One thing I found hard to follow in the book was all the different characters with the same name. Many Elizabeth’s, Margaret’s, Edward’s, Henry’s. Not being British, it all got rather confusing at times. Still, a good story. I look forward to reading more of Alison Weir’s works in the near future.

Dawnlands, by Phillipa Gregory

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Published 2022

The year is 1685, King Charles of England has died and King James is set to gain the throne. This news causes Ned Ferryman of Boston, Massachusetts to set sail for home. He plans to join the Duke of Monmouth’s challenge to King James. Before he can board ship he observes a gang of slaves, mostly Native Americans, heading to the docks. One of them manages to call him by his Indian name, and he recognizes a child he once knew in the wilderness, who has now grown into a young man. Ned ends up purchasing this slave, it’s the least he can do to repay the tribe’s kindness to him in years gone by. They board ship before he discovers that the young man is actually a young woman, who is passing as male to keep from being assaulted. Ned hatches a plan to pose the young woman, still posing as male, as his servant. Not a slave, but a working man in his service. Once they reach England he will give her freedom but for now, keeping her with him will provide for her safety. However, once they reach England, Rowan, as he calls her, will not leave his side until her debt to him is repaid. She follows him to enlist with the Duke, and sets out on the march to overthrow the new king. Ned is injured and taken prisoner, but Rowan tricks the guards into letting her in dressed as a washerwoman. She knocks Ned out and steals his clothes, posing as him on the ship where the prisoners are to be transported to Barbados to serve a ten year indenture. Ned, when he comes to, dresses in the washerwoman’s clothing and escapes back home to the wharf.

Meanwhile, in London, Livia Avery, whose ties to Ned’s family are based on deceit but whose son has been raised as their foster child, has gone to court as the queen’s favorite lady in waiting. She has not seen any of the Stoneys, or her son for many years but now that the queen has elevated her she uses her son as a pawn in her attempts to gain favor at court.

Alinor, Ned’s sister, is getting old and lives with her daughter Alys and her husband at the wharf where their warehouse is located. As Livia’s plots thicken, she rewards her son Matthew, with the gift of the lands where Ned, Alinor and Alys lived prior to coming to London many years ago. Alinor returns to her old home but instead of living in a small hut beside the ferry she now lives in the priory, owned by the crown and given to Matthew by his mother as a gift from the queen. Here, she remembers her affair with Livia’s husband many years before and his refusal to protect her when the townspeople descried her as a witch. She survived the ordeal but fled with her daughter to London and had not returned. No one is left who remembers her or her family, although tales are told about the mermaid who fell in love with a man, but who was cast back into the sea.

It appears I have missed a book in this series, will have to find it and read how the main characters ended up in this novel. I learned a lot about this period of history in England, and the US. More details on how cruelty to Native Americans and slaves was the norm during those times

Barkskins, by Annie Proulz

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Published 2016

The author of The Shipping News and Brokeback Mountain now tells the store of two immigrants to the New World. Both are from France and have signed on as indentured servants to a man who puts them to work chopping trees in what is now Canada. People at that time believed the forests to be indestructible, since the wilderness was so vast compared to what they had seen in the Old World. The native Americans did not cut the forests and made their homes from animal hides instead of lumber. Since they were at least partially nomadic they did not want immovable homes made of wood. Even though the original Americans had been on the land for many centuries, the forests were virgin. The timber was cut mostly for export back to the Old World, much of it for ships’ masts.

Rene Sel and Charles Duquet are the two men whose stories the author follows through many generations. Rene Sel remains with his master for many years and is rewarded with a piece of land of his own. He is forced to marry his master’s cook when the master’s new wife believes he is having an affair. But the marriage is a happy one, and their children go on to inhabit America. They do not achieve much wealth since they are part Native American and during that time were largely treated as slaves or at best, expendable. Charles Duquet, on the other hand, is a rebel from the very beginning. He is plagued with ill health, in particular suffering from bad teeth. When the pain becomes overwhelming, he runs away into the forest where Sel and the master can hear his painful moans. No attempt is made to recapture him, the forest at night being deemed too dangerous to enter. Years later Rene hears of a man with bad teeth, or no teeth, having had them all pulled, who has made a reputation for himself as a fur trader, one of the best in the new country. When the old master hears of this, he is enraged and sets out to find and recapture his servant, who has not worked his time to pay for his passage. Duquet goes on to found a wealthy family, trading in furs and timber from the new world.

Life during this time in Canada and North America is pretty dismal. Lawlessness and corruption are rife. The book was a struggle to get through at times, because the life it portrayed was so fraught with peril from all sides. I did get a new awareness of the plight of the Native Americans, how much they gave and how much was taken from them at the beginning of colonization. Disease killed many, but greed killed many more. This is a very long book. It reminded me in some ways of Jane Smiley’s saga of the Iowa farm family, but hers is modern day and split into three novels.

The Rising Tide, by Jeff Shaara

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This is a novel about many of the high profile characters of WWII involved in Africa and Italy before the Normandy invasion. Rommel is there, Eisenhower, Patton, Montgomery, Hitler of course, President Roosevelt and many others. A few enlisted men’s stories are there as well and theirs are the ones where death is all around them, seeing their pals and even guys whom they hated blown to pieces. Yet some survived and not necessarily due to any special ability on their part.

This is the second book by the author I have read and although I don’t usually like reading about war, the battles and strategy, this book is interesting. I found myself looking forward to reading the next chapter to find out what happened. And then wondering, if Hitler hadn’t kept Rommel away from Africa just before the invasion of Sicily, would the Allies have prevailed? Maybe not, was my conclusion. I had always heard that Hitler kept his generals from succeeding by interfering with their plans. If he had left them to their jobs the outcome of WWII may have been different. But of course it was not in his nature to allow others to have their opinion. Rommel left Africa apparently to convince Hitler that he did not have the supplies needed to fight any longer, that while Mussolini promised ammunition it was never received in the amounts needed to win. Rommel’s plan was to withdraw his army quickly so that it might fight another day in Italy or Germany. Once he was with Hitler, he was kept nearby as an advisor. Much of the German army did escape into Italy, making the Allied invasion and attack much more difficult than the generals had hoped.

There are several historical events described in the book, most notably Patton’s slapping of a soldier in a hospital for a nervous condition. Patton had no patience for what he considered cowardly behavior and perhaps had the doctors and the press not protested so much this incident might not have cost Patton so dearly. And had Patton not been one of the best campaign generals on the Allied side, he would’ve been dismissed over it. Shaara gives a good indication of Patton’s’ personality so that you can see where he’s coming from, whether you agree with his actions or not. He was very strict, requiring men in full uniform including tie, even in the brutal heat of the African desert.

I’ll look for another one of these books by Jeff Shaara. Maybe he continued this story as many of the survivors of the Africa and Sicily campaigns moved to England to begin preparations for the Normandy invasion.

Unsheltered, by Barbara Kingsolver

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2018

Willa Knox has inherited her aunt’s house in Vineyard, New Jersey just when her husband has found a teaching job nearby, so she thinks her luck has changed for the better. She’d built a career in the magazine industry as a journalist but the magazines, like all print media, are going under. With her career ended she moves with her husband, his disabled father, and her daughter into the old house and begins repairs. But the contractor who shows up to give her an estimate has bad news, the house’s foundation can’t be fixed. With this bad news comes more, her son Zeke’s wife has taken her own life shortly after giving birth to a baby boy. Willa brings the baby back to her crumbling house and finds herself caring for a grumpy, elderly father-in-law and a new baby who has lost his mother. Quite a career change.

Over a hundred years ago, another family lived on the same corner, maybe even the same house. Thatcher Greenwood has taken a position as a teacher at the local school in the town of Vineyard. The house is falling down around him and his wife Rose, her younger sister Polly, and the girls’ mother. Thatcher is excited about teaching his science classes about the new theories of Charles Darwin. As it happens his neighbor, Mary Treat is in correspondence with Darwin regarding rare species of plants and animals she finds in the countryside nearby. Mary’s husband has deserted her and Thatcher finds in her a reasoning mind similar to his own, a vivid contrast between her and the females of his household. At this time, the city is ruled by a man named Landis, who built the town promising heaven on earth. He has control of most aspects of the city including the school where Thatcher teaches. The schoolmaster demands that Thatcher debate him in front of the community with Landis officiating. Thatcher does very well, having been coached by young Polly and Mary Treat, but there’s really no winning against a man like Landis, whose authority could be threatened by reasoning minds.

Meanwhile, in the current century Willa is trying to find out if Mary Treat lived in her house, hoping that if she did, she can get funding from a historical society to restore it. Mary has gone on to become a noted naturalist after Thatcher Greenwood leaves the area. Willa’s daughter begins to show a very mature interest in her nephew, and the boy’s father has moved to the big city to try to move on past the death of his beloved wife.

Unsheltered reminds us of the value of what we call home, how sometimes the roof over our heads is not where home is, that it may have more to do with the people we are with than any man made structure.

Munich, by Robert Harris

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Published 2017, 303 pages

This is another historical novel by the author of Dictator (previously reviewed). It’s about two former Oxford classmates, one English, one German, who now work for their respective governments in the days before a last ditch effort to avert war, the Munich Agreement. Legat, the Englishman, works in the diplomatic corp as private secretary to Chamberlain. His former friend, Hartman, is a staff member in the German Foreign Office. Though the two young men were close during their Oxford years, they haven’t contacted each other in several years. The story gives many interesting details about Chamberlain’s efforts, and the reasoning behind them, to keep the fragile peace between Germany, England, France and Czechoslovakia. Through indirect channels both Hartman and Legat are brought together again during the meeting in Munich between Chamberlain and Hitler. Despite their countries being at the brink of war, the two realize that they have always remained friends. An interesting history of what might have been.