The best sweeping historical fiction by women

In my late twenties, I faced a stark reality: history belongs to those who write it. What I had learned in school was simply the history according to the white Christian patriarchy.

The voices of women, as well as people of many ethnicities, religions, and cultures, were silenced. I began to seek out books in which diverse characters were allowed to speak. 

Reading The Red Tent opened my eyes to the possibility of writing historical fiction from the perspective of a woman. As I listened to Dinah’s voice in the novel, speaking so honestly about matters of the heart, I imagined my own historical novel told in women’s true voices.

Thus my novel A Tale of Two Maidens was born.

I read The Mists of Avalon while on a backpacking trip in Hawaii. Thus the mists described so vividly in the novel are forever intertwined with the morning mists on the north shore of Kauai. 

Atmospheric and compelling are the first two words that come to mind in describing this novel. Stereotypes about women, such as Morgan le Fay (usually portrayed as a one-dimensional villainess) are completely dismantled.

Instead all of Bradley’s characters, both male and female, are as real as flesh and blood people, caught in a tumultuous time period.

Like Dances with Wolves, The Mists of Avalon spoke to me deeply about the sadness of a dominant culture completely suppressing a richer, older one that was much more in harmony with nature.

As a historical fiction writer, I am continually honing my ability to create characters wholly from the past, devoid of any trace of my modern perspective.

The Weight of Ink inspired me in this pursuit and gave me a beautiful model of how a writer can achieve that goal. The main character, Ester, doesn’t lash out at the men who control her or shrink meekly into her prescribed role as a passive woman.

Instead, she quietly and cleverly pursues what brings her the most joy: a rich life of the mind and heart.

The ending of this novel is one of my favorite endings of any book I have ever read!

In my next novel, a sequel to A Tale of Two Maidens, I hope to create such a memorable conclusion.

Growing up, I avidly read fairy tales and especially enjoyed a character’s transition from suffering to joy.

Discovering magical realism in my twenties was a natural progression, and House of the Spirits remains my all-time favorite of this genre. Isabelle Allende’s writing style is amazing – she is so gifted at intertwining the achingly beautiful with the harsh realities of our cruelty to other humans. 

House of the Spirits opened a window onto a time and place I had never explored, Chile during the rise of dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Through the character Alba’s unflinching narration, I not only witnessed the horrors of that time period but felt them deeply. Alba’s connection to her female ancestors sustained both her and me during her ordeal as a prisoner.

A powerful and inspiring read!

The Poisonwood Bible took me completely out of my 21st-century, privileged world and dumped me unceremoniously into the 1960s in the Belgian Congo.

The novel takes the Price sisters and their mother on that journey too, into the ugly truth of colonialism and the U.S. government’s proxy war there against the Soviet Union.

I relived my childhood of the sixties with its prescribed “Barbie” roles for girls. I cheered for the sisters battling for autonomy and mourned with their mother. I fell in love with the beauty of the Congo, the forest “that eats itself”, the river and even the deadly green Mamba snake.

Even if I never travel to this part of Africa, I feel that I have been there through the gift of Kingsolver’s writing.