Let me start with how I ended the year then circle back to how I began my 2021 reading journey. The year ended on a high With West with Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge. I didn’t only like this novel because a female author wrote it from a male point of view, which I appreciate after tackling that challenge with Whiskey and Old Stogies. Not a romance, but West with Giraffes shows how Americans, and especially one dust bowl boy, fell in love with a pair of giraffes heading from a east coast hurricane to the San Diego Zoo. I loved how the reader never knew what might popup around every curve of the road.
If after reading that you want to know more about the dust bowl era check out The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah. I tried The Nightingale a couple years ago and put it down. Hannah doesn’t do deep point of view, matter of fact the POV in her books tends to wander. I stuck with The Four Winds because I found Elsa Wolcott Martinelli a likable character. BTW, I appreciated the movie Being the Ricardos more because I recently read The Four Winds.
Not long before I read The Four Winds a similar novel crossed my path, Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera. Both novels involve a husband who runs out on his wife so she must work to support her children. Then the working single mother gets dragged in the fight for worker’s rights. I picked it up because it takes place in the Carolinas in the 1920s, the strong female characters came as a bonus.
Reading Historical Fiction
Yes, I read a lot of historical fiction. Not only do I get to know the genre I write in, I also learn a lot about history. Where I believe I particularly enjoyed West with Giraffes, and also Glory over Everything: Beyond the Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom, because of the male protagonists, I find a lot of good historical fiction centers on strong female characters. Some historical novels I read this year featuring strong women include:
- The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman
- The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
- Woman 99 by Greer Macallister
- Hour of the Witch by Chris Bohjalian (spoiler alert…she’s not one)
- White Houses by Amy Bloom
Many books I picked up and set back down for whatever reason. I won’t mention those but will mention one I finished only because it served as an example of a southern gothic novel by a debut author. I found If the Creek Don’t Rise by Leah Weiss a waste of time despite the many good reviews it received.
No, I didn’t read ONLY historical fiction. A couple of present day novels I enjoyed in 2021 are Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane and Razor Girl (Andrew Yancy, #2) by Carl Hiaasen.
Reading YA Novels
Let’s return to the concept of historical novels with strong female leads. Teenage girls especially need those kinds of protagonists to look up to so I rejoice when I find a Young Adult (YA) book which provides that. A lot of well-written YA novels appeal to folks of all ages, think The Hunger Games, so I fully admit that I love the genre, especially the historical variety.
As the spring of 2021 approached I thankfully got pulled out of a reading slump. You know that period after you read several excellent books in a row then every other novel you see falls short? So the Shenandoah Sisters series by Michael Phillips popped up like a bunch of wildflowers after a cold winter. The four novels follow a white girl and a black girl who find themselves alone and needing each other’s help at the end of the American Civil War.
Particularly Peculiar Adventure in the Life of Jacky Faber
This brings me back to how my reading journey of 2021 started out engrossed in a fabulous series of YA adventures starring an intrepid girl. In contract to the end of 2021, this female protagonist emerged as the brainchild of a male author. I want to thank author and literary agent Donald Maass for writing about Bloody Jack by L.A. Meyer in The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface. The excerpt Maass choose interested me enough to check it out and led to me devouring the twelve book series. Jacky Faber has a way of making people, me included, fall in love with her. Plus I learned a lot about many subjects along the way.
The only flaw came at the end of the twelfth book. Meyer passed away before the publication of that last one so I believe somebody else on his team needed to do some patching to the end. If you go on a read trip I recommend borrowing the audiobooks of the Bloody Jack series using the Libby app by Overdrive. The award-winning actress Katherine Kellgren does a superb job of narrating the audiobooks. Unfortunately she also passed away at a young age. But both Meyer and Kellgren left quite a legacy for those of us who relish historical novel audiobooks that show off empowered women.
What books caught your attention last year?