The best historical fiction books in which the location/place are primary characters – there will be trees & water

By far the best book I have read in a decade, Williams’ gifts as a writer are many but this book stands out for the pitch-perfect ‘ear’ he has for the Irish dialect. The story is a simple tale of love set against the history of electricity coming to rural Ireland, and two men who help each other find their path to love. The characters are immaculately drawn and find their footing within the details of the insular countryside of early 20th c. Ireland. We experience cycling the country roads, visiting the rural pubs, and following the seasons of the vivid river that drives and divides the land. Love and how to follow through with the heart are the point of this amazing gift of a book, but settle in with it and hear the voices, experience the country, and you will truly escape to another time and place. Surprisingly, I would also say that this book is going to be a compelling read for men. Don’t shy away from a love story. 

Evie Wyld writes atmospheric and eerie stories that always have an edge, a threat of danger about them, and this wonderful book is almost gothic in its atmosphere of place. The rock itself actually exists, I’m not sure if the house in question does, but the rock and the house and the remote Scottish location bind us into a feeling of constant danger like no single character ever could. The story unfolds in a series of tales told across time periods, back and forth (a tricky format to pull off, but Wyld does it brilliantly). The central character is the great old house, in some disrepair,  and how it has been occupied over time by women who have been, to one degree or another imprisoned by their circumstances. I don’t want to spoil the story, but I guarantee that from the first few pages you will be drawn into the sense of being bound and held and in danger. This is a tale of misogyny, of women in danger, of isolation by social divisions, and by the difficulties of finding oneself isolated by a remote landscape. 

This harrowing description of WWI French army medical teams fighting to save lives in a remote landscape, cut off by winter conditions, threatened with enemy actions and meager supplies is, believe it or not, a love story. Describing the life of a young volunteer doctor from a well-to-do family in Paris who chooses to volunteer for this remote and hazardous post rather than find a safe job (his mother’s preference), the cold, the slogging forest denuded of summer green, the horrible injuries, madness, and futility the Hero of the story encounters will make you reach for a hot cup of tea and a blanket, and then keep reading. Mason is a fine writer, and this book has been compared to similar love stories (Cold Mountain, which I also loved), but the book is its own and the scholarly research of the military and medical landscape is impressive on its own merits. Mason has a deft touch with the love story as well, incongruous and satisfying. Put the kettle on.

Set in the 19th century New England social landscape of transcendentalist educational trends, this is an important book about women, misogyny, education, and ‘western’ medicine. The landscape here is a farmhouse outside a New England village where the patriarch social philosopher and teacher has started a school for girls following the death of his wife. His grown daughter is his helper, and you see where I’m going with this…also his prisoner. She is vulnerable by her sensitive nature and by her lack of worldly education. When other girls come to board at the new school and other teachers, men, arrive to practice the educational theories they have developed in a fervor of advancing just how women’s education should evolve, the young women respond variously to these new influences. The remote landscape, again, keeps them from freedoms that might improve their awareness. There are also magical trees, birds, and a touch of gothic mystery that seems so bound to that time period. This is not Little Women, and can be uncomfortable reading at times, but the book is supremely important in its message, its unpredictable sense of balance, of magic, and vulnerability make every page a reason to make women’s rights your most important social agenda.

This little book is a gem that I just read for the first time recently. It’s the kind of book I would read with a pencil nearby for there are gems here, of descriptive prowess and of wisdom. It is the story of a grandmother and her young granddaughter alone on a remote Finnish island spending the summer at their little cottage as they always do. The days are long, sleepy, and lush with swims in the sea, berry collecting, and conversations between an inquisitive seven-year-old and her grandmother. The grandmother has a way of guiding the child in and out of life’s daily progress that is soft and wry. But odd and intrusive things happen as well. The landscape begins to change. The rocky island has boundaries, the sea makes itself known. You could read this book to a seven-year-old, or read it to yourself, and when you are finished, I think you will set it in a special place and read it again from time to time.