100 books like The Longest Echo

A toast to Tatiana and Alexander! *throws back a shot of vodka*

Compounded by Simons’ exquisitely detailed storytelling, which waxes lyrical about the siege of Leningrad during the summer of 1941, these lovebirds from The Bronze Horseman sit high on my list of unforgettable historical fiction characters.

The superb languor of Alexander’s courtship with Tatiana during a time of terrible hardship helped me overlook both of their faults, and become wholly invested in them as a couple.

He is unrelenting in his desire to take care of Tatiana and her family, and while she is young and at times incredibly naïve, she is also brilliantly resilient.

The character I love to hate: Dasha. Ugh! How can a sister be so cruel?

Boy, did my emotions run the gauntlet with this one!

I sat on my mother’s lap as a child to hear stories of her childhood in Appalachia—no running water or electricity, and the shame brought on by her mother’s escape from that hard life. The setting and the characterizations in Book Woman of Troublesome Creek brought back some of the memories of my mother’s stories.

I came to love the character’s adaptation to the harsh environment, their want for a better life, and the difference one person’s influence can make in a community. The spirit of survival, even with the hardest of circumstances, forced me to cherish this story. It was as if my mother had written this book or perhaps read it to me.

A love letter to books. And a nod to classic literature.

August, 1939, London prepares for war, as Hitler’s forces sweep across Europe. Primrose Hill is a dusty old bookshop in the heart of London. Grace Bennett, the main character, finds herself working there and discovers community through the hardships of war. Again, impeccable research.

Much like my first pick, this is an incredible novel that has stayed with me for years. It’s another go-to recommendation for me if anyone asks what my all-time favorite WWII novels are. Alexandra is a Russian-born Australian author, and I’m a huge fan of her other books too. Once again, she creates characters that are impossible not to fall in love with, and she’s a natural storyteller who artfully blends historical detail with fiction. 

I’ve become great friends with Healey over the years due to us having the same publisher, and we write similar historical fiction in that we love telling WWII from the female perspective. Honestly, all Jane’s WWII novels are brilliant, but this is my favorite of hers. Her characters are impossible not to love, and we truly see this moment in history through the eyes of women – I can’t get enough of historical feminism! If you want to read about women doing incredible jobs during the war, this is the book for you.

Set in the depression era in North Carolina’s turpentine pine forests, Rae Lynn Cobb learns a Tar Heel’s dangerous work. After life in an orphanage, she appreciates the work, a home of her own, and her loving husband. When he dies, with her grief-stricken help, she cuts her hair and flees dressed in his clothes and driving his rattle-trap truck. As a man, she works in a hazardous and treacherous turpentine labor camp and becomes indebted to the company-owned commissary. Like most labor camps, the owners have ways to keep indebted workers from running – dogs and guns. She gets locked in a sweatbox by a scheming man and survives, runs again, and finds peace. Rae does what is necessary with quiet grit and determination. For me, this book exemplifies what is missing in our world—personal responsibility—and I couldn't quit cheering for the heroine. A beautiful historical novel.

Set in Kentucky hill country at the birth of the twentieth century, a farm family scrabbles for sustenance with little help from an undependable father with an attachment to whiskey. Bertie is fifteen when her mother dies, and she is forced to raise her four younger siblings, but she was accustomed to doing the chores during the long years of her mother’s illness. She handles the work but fears she lacks the wisdom and warmth a mother should provide. She struggles to understand her sharp-tongued younger sister, Dacia, and her own responsibility for the early death of Timmy.  

The tale is written in old hill country dialect and paints a captivating portrait of a woman’s strength, determination, and pragmatism. I was entranced by Bertie’s harsh but loving family.

McKinley, the tiny monkey, helps Piper sell peanuts at Coney Island and is the only constant in her young life. Her mother rides bareback for the circus and takes in beastly men. Her father, a determined bachelor, refuses to give her a stable home but eventually saves her from reform school, a probability due to her penchant for fighting and shooting guns.  

The tale takes her from Coney to Manhattan to live with her wealthy aunt, on to college, and then to war-torn Belgium. Treachery and brutality follow Piper’s footsteps, and she faces obstacles with the same kind of headlong determination she used as a child; her fists and pluck.  

I loved the fast pace and detailed descriptions, expressive language, and surprising but believable events.

One of my favorite Italian figures of the twentieth century is the writer, painter, and anti-fascist Carlo Levi.

This collection of his essays, evoking the complexities of Rome and its people, sums up what it means to come to terms with the Eternal City:

“Here, everything has already existed: and existence has not vanished into memory, rather it has remained present... The virtues are not the moral and ideological values (which the passage of too long a time has gradually flattened out), but simpler and more visible values: health, physical strength, knowing how to eat and drink, knowing how to speak with a certain humor and brevity, knowing how to command respect, sincerity, friendship.”

May all roads lead to this understanding of the world. 

Among the greatest family memoirs of all time. Novelist, Natalia Ginzburg (née Levi) grew up in a big family in Turin between the wars. Her Jewish father was a famous and famously irascible scientist, her mother a charmer from the well-to-do bourgeoisie. The last of five, Natalia gives a sparkling picture of the loves, friendships and conflicts between her older brothers and sisters as Fascist Italy drifted toward war. Impossible not to laugh and cry, while at the same time getting a sense of the deeper forces driving Italian life.