The best immersive fiction that makes you feel something you didn’t expect

This is the oldest book on my list, and one of my all-time favorites. The Thorn Birds tells the sweeping story of Meggie Cleary and her life in rural Australia in the early 20th century. But it is her forbidden decades-long love affair with the haunted priest, Father Ralph de Bricassart, that is at its heart. This story grabbed me for its immersive qualities, certainly. But it’s the intensity of their forbidden relationship that makes it tragic in a way that settles into your soul. How does one survive a life without the love you yearn for? And how many times can a woman’s heart break? There’s a reason that this book is a classic—it reminds us why love is essential to the human condition.

Shining Through is the story of Linda Voss, a half-Jewish secretary in WW2 New York City who falls in love with her boss with wit and admirable self-awareness, and then finds herself volunteering to spy for him in Nazi Germany in a serious twist. If the plot sounds far-fetched, then you have to give the author credit for her skill in making it not only believable, but filling it with tension and heart. I love this story because of how close we become to Linda through the first-person POV, how we grow to love her and root for her and be terrified for her. She is a beautiful, every-woman hero, and she will stay with you long after you finish the book.

Dragonfly in Amber is the second book in the well-known Outlander Series, which tells the story of nurse-turned-surgeon Claire, who accidentally travels through standing stones to 18th century Scotland from the 1940s. In this particular installment, Claire has not only fallen in love with the honorable and wily Scottish Highlander Jamie Fraser, she becomes embroiled in an attempt to stop the doomed 1745 Jacobite uprising. This book is gorgeous not only because of its beautiful detail, brilliant dialogue, and complex historical plotting, but because it tells the story of the tragic end to the highlander way of life in an immediate, personal way. I’ve never forgotten the intensity of Claire and Jamie’s love and their desperation to change history, nor the enormity of the tragedy that both could be lost.

This book would stand out because of the gorgeous prose alone. But when you add in a multi-layered story of an American family torn apart by hubris in the African jungle, you get a true masterpiece. The novel’s premise is provocative—a family of daughters living in post-colonial Africa with a narcissistic father intent on converting the natives to his perverse, non-yielding brand of religion. And as expected, this is a story that is tragic and epic in a way that makes you question the arrogance of humanity in all its iterations. But what makes it especially memorable is how it provokes a grim satisfaction when the four daughters make lives out of the mess of a patriarchal disaster, while having little impact on the beautifully indomitable Africa.

My final selection was surprising in all the best ways. It is the story of conservationist Inti Flynn and her quest to reintroduce wolves to the Scottish Highlands, hoping to save the crumbling ecosystem while she struggles with the collapse of her own life. What makes this story special is that it not only evokes empathy for the wolves, it also emphasizes the connections we have to the earth and to each other, and how our individual, often trauma-informed decisions have cascading and unintended effects. The whole story is an allegory for the environmental balance that is essential for survival, but it is also a love letter to human-animal-earth connectedness. It is a reminder that we are more than individuals in a way that inspires hope and passion for change.