Hopefully you’re cruising right along with the Read Harder Challenge, but if you’re not don’t worry. There’s still time to join us in this year’s challenge!
Task #6 is for a historical fiction novel not set in WWII. It seems like almost every historical fiction book is about World War II. It’s not your imagination — there really are a lot. But there are also a lot of historical fiction books covering EVERY OTHER TIME FRAME IN HISTORY.
What about other wars and conflicts? There have been a few. “The Quiet American” by Graham Greene is about CIA involvement in 1950s Vietnam, and “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien straddles the line between fiction and memoir covering his time in Vietnam. Both books are classics that I highly recommend. “The Good Lord Bird” by James McBride is a humorous look at some of the tragic and violent events surrounding John Brown leading up to the Civil War. For at look back at the genocide in Rawanda and its aftermath, “In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills” by Jennifer Haupt.
Or how about a fictionalized account of a famous person? “Euphoria” by Lily King was inspired by the life and early career of the famous anthropologist, Margaret Mead, set in 1933 New Guinea. You could also try “Learning to See: A Novel of Dorothea Lange, the Woman Who Revealed the Real America” by Elise Hooper. Although Lange was instrumental in photographing the internment camps during WWII, this book spans her entire life (well, most of it.) “A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts” by Therese Anne Fowler is another great option set in New York in 1883.
I also really liked and recommend Stephen King’s “11/22/63” if you like your historical fiction with a side of speculative fiction. What would you do if you could go back and change one of the most tragic moments in our history? And what would be the unintended consequences? Even though this book is well over 500 pages, it doesn’t count as a double dipper for task #16, the door-stopper, because Stephen King is sadly not a woman.
And for those of you looking for double dippers, how about a middle grade historical novel that doesn’t take place in the US or UK satisfying task #20 as well? I have a few suggestions there too. “Jahanara: Princess of Princesses” by Kathryn Lasky is part of the Royal Diaries series. It is set in 1627 and tells the story of a real Indian princess of the Mogul dynasty. Another option is “Cast Off: The Strange Adventures of Petra de Winter and Bram Broen” by Eve Yohalem. It’s set in Amsterdam in 1663 as Petra stows away on a ship and has to disguise herself as a boy with Bram’s help.
I have a few more suggestions that had not been previously listed. Hopefully you can find something you enjoy while you read harder.
