Sunday, 24 January 2021

Do you have room on your #Kindle for another book? Of course, you do. Check out The Danish King’s Enemy (The Earls of Mercia) By MJ Porter #HistoricalFiction #BookBlast #CoffeePotBookClub @coloursofunison @maryanneyarde

 


The Danish King’s Enemy
(The Earls of Mercia)
By MJ Porter


Publication Date: 20th December 2020 (please note this is a rerelease of Viking Enemy, which was a rerelease of Ealdormen)
Publisher: Independently Published 
Page Length: 211 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction

Every story has a beginning.

Leofwine has convinced his king to finally face his enemies in battle and won a great victory, but in the meantime, events have spiralled out of control elsewhere.

With the death of Olaf Tryggvason of Norway, England has lost an ally, and Leofwine has gained an enemy. And not just any enemy. Swein is the king of Denmark, and he has powerful resources at his fingertips.

In a unique position with the king, Leofwine is either honoured or disrespected. Yet, it is to Leofwine that the king turns to when an audacious attack is launched against the king’s mother and his children. But Leofwine’s successes only bring him more under the scrutiny of King Swein of Denmark, and his own enemies at the king’s court.

With an increase in Raider attacks, it is to Leofwine that the king turns once more. However, the king has grown impatient with his ealdorman, blaming him for Swein’s close scrutiny of the whole of England. Can Leofwine win another victory for his king, or does he risk losing all that he’s gained?

The Danish King’s Enemy is the second book in the epic Earls of Mercia series charting the last century of Early England, as seen through the eyes of Ealdorman Leofwine, the father of Earl Leofric, later the Earl of Mercia, and ally of Lady Elfrida, England’s first queen.

Pick up your copy of
The Danish King’s Enemy
(The Earls of Mercia)
Only 0.99 on #Kindle
Read for #Free with #KindleUnlimited Subscription!


M J Porter  

I’m an author of fantasy (Viking age/dragon-themed) and historical fiction (Early English, Vikings and the British Isles as a whole before the Norman Conquest), born in the old Mercian kingdom at some point since AD1066. 

I write A LOT. You’ve been warned!





Thursday, 21 January 2021

#BookReview — The Stars That Govern Us by J.R. Alcyone #HistoricalFiction #MedicalFiction @thegreenheron


Publication Date: 1st December 2020
Publisher: Green Heron Productions
Page Length: 341 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction / Medical Fiction

A gifted young surgeon. One of the 20th century's boldest inventions. And the unconquerable, fragile, and amazing human heart. 


As one of two dozen teams worldwide performing congenital heart surgeries in the middle 1950s, Alec Serafeim and his best friend, Pete O'Neill, excel in an unforgiving field where the line between life and death is eyelash thin. But while Pete is satisfied with all they have accomplished, Alec aches to do more. Desperate to save more children, he also wishes to be remembered for something other than his mental breakdown ten years earlier.

Alec's opportunity arrives via a chance to join the race to perform Australia's first open-heart surgery using total cardiopulmonary bypass. Swept up in the competition, with a heart-lung machine cobbled together in the hospital basement, Alec charges ahead with surgery on a gravely ill child over Pete's misgivings.

But the heart, for all its amazing strength, is a fragile organ. And when events conspire to shatter Alec's heart, he is left questioning everything. With sick children's lives hanging in the balance, as well as his career as a surgeon, he must find a way to cope with his fallibility--if he hopes to finish what he started.

Set in a fictionalized version of Perth, Western Australia in 1956, The Stars That Govern Us is a captivating, poignant, and unforgettable medical - historical novel set against the backdrop of the development of the heart-lung machine and the birth of open-heart surgery.






Be transported back to 1950s Australia in The Stars That Govern Us, where heart surgeons are competing against nature, disease, and each other, to perform the country’s first successful open heart surgery using cardio-pulmonary bypass. 


In The Stars That Govern Us by J.R Alcyone, we meet fictional surgeons Alec Serafeim and Pete O’Neill, two ‘chalk and cheese’ specialists in congenital heart surgeries in the university hospital of Perth, Australia, in the 1950s. This is a dangerous and complicated field, where life and death hangs by the proverbial thread, but the two men have risen to the top despite their own obstacles. Despite being a perfectly-choreographed team in the operating theatre, the best friends differ in one key driver: ambition. Whilst Pete would be content to continue working at their current (highly successful) level, Alec has dreams of pushing their boundaries even further, saving the lives of even more children, and cementing their names in medical and surgical history by being the first team to perform their country’s first open-heart surgery, using cardio-pulmonary bypass. 

They have the skill for it, Alec is sure of that, but what they lack is the technology: a heart-lung machine, to keep oxygenated blood moving around the patient’s body whilst the operation is taking place. Reading about a working design in his medical journals, Alec sees a way of bringing his dreams to reality, and with one specialist part ordered in from an already-successful medical team, he works on creating his own version of the machine. 

The machine is rough and ready, cobbled together in the basement of the hospital, but initial tests on animals are successful, and their managers approve them to continue the work, which leads them to their next challenge: selecting the right child to the first such surgery in Australia. There are strong arguments from both Alec and Pete, but during another operation, Pete is taken out of the equation, suffering his own illness, leaving Alec distraught, and on his own. The tension during Pete’s hospitalisation, and the subsequent operation is palpable, and there were moments I found myself holding my breath. 

This is neither a field (medical) or era (1950s) that I know anything about, or have read any fictional accounts of before, but I was intrigued by the introduction, and ended up absolutely enthralled. Although it is still a dangerous field of medicine, with so many advances in modern equipment, understanding and drugs, it’s hard to completely imagine a world where such things were tentative and new. But with detailed descriptions of the atmospheres and personalities present within the operating theatre, as well as going through some of the detail of the operations themselves, it really does feel like we are standing over the shoulders of Alec and Pete as they make the minute-by-minute decisions to get through such difficult work. 

There are heart-breaking and worrying moments throughout the book (this is a hospital full of sick people, after all, and very sick children at that), but the pioneering spirit and Alec’s determination ring true throughout. What also comes across are the very human natures of the two surgeons. Pete, although a war hero, is content to work at their current level, helping the children they can, but he is also a workaholic, putting his own health at risk in the process. And Alec suffers with problematic and sometimes debilitating mental health issues, including major anxiety spirals. The men are very different, but their friendship is entirely believable, and both are drawn to do and be the very best they can. 

For a few moments in the book, I was struck with the thought that Alec and his life seemed almost too perfect; there’s the beautiful wife, the wonderful child, the ability to excel at anything he turned to hand to. And yet, there’s a ‘roundness’ to him, through his strong desire to help the children on his ward, and his anxiety as to whether he has the means to do so. His despair at the loss of a patient is very real too. 

Although the majority of the book naturally centres around the hospital itself, there is a strong sense of time and place throughout, drawing us into the 1950s, and the coastal city of Perth. I was lost in the story, and didn’t feel jarred from this at any point. Likewise, the university, hospital and characters in the story may be largely fictional, but the detailed Historical Note at the end of the novel places them firmly into reality, providing the background to surgeons they mention being inspired by, such as Americans John Gibbon, and Clarence Walton ‘Walt’ Lillehei, the latter who genuinely did make the design of his heart-lung machine available so others could manufacture their own, as well as advising where key components could be purchased, and inviting surgeons in his field to visit and watch him work. 

Highly recommended for fans of medical fiction, the history of medicine, or those looking for something different in their historical fiction. 

Review by Jennifer C. Wilson.
The Coffee Pot Book Club.





 J.R. Alcyone writes historical and literary fiction for readers who enjoy character-driven fiction. She is a graduate of Baldwin-Wallace College, where she majored in history and philosophy and minored in literature and political science, and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, where she was managing editor of the Cleveland State Law Review. A practicing attorney in the area of warranty and consumer rights law, Jen lives a short distance from Lake Erie in northeastern Ohio. When she is not writing or taking pictures, she enjoys studying the American Civil War and running

Connect with J.R. Alcyone:

Website • Twitter • Instagram • Goodreads.


Wednesday, 20 January 2021

#BookReview - The Search (Across the Great Divide Book 2) by Michael L. Ross #American #HistoricalFiction @MichaelLRoss7

 



Publication Date: December 15, 2020
Publisher: HistoricalNovelsRUS
Page Length: 217 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction, Christian Historical Fiction, Historical Romance

Where do you go when home is no longer an option?

The guns of the Civil War have ceased firing, and the shots are but an echo... yet the war rages on, deep inside Will Crump's soul. His "soldier's heart" is searching for peace, and in that quest Will joins the westward movement, setting his path on a collision course with adventure, loss, and love.

The Westward Expansion floods the sacred, untouched lands with immigrants, bringing conflict to the Shoshone, Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. Amidst the chaos Will finds safety in the shadow of the US Army, but the army brings battle-hardened troops into Red Cloud's War, pulling Will into a tornado of conflict. Broken treaties and promises leave both sides searching for answers. Will's search leads him to a battle for survival, and there he finds a love that could change him forever.

Dove, a young Shoshone woman, is a survivor of the Bear Creek Massacre. After being kidnapped and escaping from the Cheyenne, she joins Will's search, seeking where she belongs. Dove longs for more than the restricted role placed on women in her tribe. If she can learn to trust a white man, he just might help her find home... and hope.

Together, Will and Dove must search for understanding, and reach Across the Great Divide.





 “How could he ever forget and pretend his life was normal?”

The Civil War had left its scars—not all of which could be seen. Will Crump craved peace. Peace from the nightmares which plagued him while he slept, but also while he was awake. Will knows he will never find peace amongst the familiar faces of his family, and so he packs up his life and heads for the mountains, hoping that there he will find the peace he needs. What he had not counted on was the unrest between the United States Army and the native population.

Will finds himself thrust into a conflict he neither foresaw nor wanted. But this time he is not just fighting for a flag and independence, he is fighting for the woman he is falling hopelessly in love with…

The Search (Across the Great Divide Book 2) by Michael L. Ross is a novel that does not threaten to mesmerise, it really does.

Riddled with survivor’s guilt because of what happened at Buffington Island and brought to his knees with grief for those who had died at Camp Douglas, Will is a man living on the edge. He desperately searches for words of comfort in the Bible, and he prays endlessly to God to stop the pain, but he is met with only a cold silence. So he chooses to try to outrun his past, leaving everything familiar behind him. He convinces himself that he will find peace in the mountains. Unfortunately, with the growing tension between the US Army and the native population, Will finds himself confronted with yet another war. I thought Will’s depiction was absolutely sublime. Ross has depicted Will’s extremely fragile mental health with a clear understanding of what we would now know as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. With no mental health help, Will must look inwards to drag himself out of the abyss of misery and guilt that is slowly destroying him. Will’s determination and his struggle to find the peace he so desperately desires and deserves saw me reaching for the tissues on more than one occasion. There is an honesty to Will’s character, which made him not only exceedingly likeable, but also profoundly real in the telling. On a side-note, although based upon an actual historical person, William Dorsey Crump (1844–1940), Ross admits in his historical notes that his portrayal of Will during this period is fictional, as there are no primary sources that explain what he was doing during this period of his life.

The other protagonist is the beautiful Dove, the niece of Chief Washakie. In this novel, Dove struggles to understand her feelings for Will—he is a white man and therefore her enemy. Having survived the butchering at Bear River, it is no wonder as to why she holds these views. But she cannot deny that Will had saved her life and continues to do so. I thought Dove’s depiction was truly fabulous. She is this strong woman who knows that what she has found with Will is true love, but there are so many obstacles set between them that being together seems next to impossible. But still, she insists and is determined to find a compromise between her beliefs and Will’s. I adored Dove. She is this marvelously rounded heroine who has seen her fair share of death, but she holds onto hope, and she cherishes the love which she discovers with Will. Dove was a character that I came to care deeply about.

Race and conflict are explored in all of their ugly details throughout this novel. Ross not only examines the violent clash of two profoundly different cultures, but he also scrutinizes the impact of a swiftly changing world to the Indian population. The greed for land and the natural resources this rich and unspoilt frontier had to offer was more important than the lives of those who lived there. The white settlers, and in particular the army, saw the native population as a savage nuisance that must be dealt with. The Bear Rivers Massacre is briefly mentioned in this novel, as is the US Army’s determination to mount an expedition into Powder River Country. But what I found especially sickening was the soldiers’ excitement about their vile orders to kill Indians on sight–no quarter was to be given. This government-backed genocide made for some sobering reading. What made a bad situation even worse was that the natives, who were still trying to hold on to their way of life, still insisted on fighting each other. Ross subtly asks his readers were the native American’s any different from their white brothers? The white settlers claimed land that did not belong to them, but the Indians fought to preserve their territories. In no way does Ross condone the genocide and abject cruelty and brutality which the natives faced, he does however try to show his readers a few small similarities between the two.

Another race-related topic which Ross depicts is that of interracial romance. Will and Dove’s relationship is very tender and sweet. But they both come from two vastly different worlds. They are realistic about the difficulties which their relationship would face. Dove is keenly aware that she would never fit into the white man’s world, and that Will would never give up his God to fit into hers. This ill-fated love was exquisitely told, and I was rooting for them to find the happiness that they both deserved.

Ross has explored the unpredictability of nature, both in the literal and metaphorical sense. Nature is the physical frontier which dictates not only the narrative but also the war between the US Army and the natives. It is the driving force that brings Will and Dove together, but it is also what nearly tears them apart. Ross has given his readers a setting that is on the one hand breathtakingly beautiful but on the other is thwarted with danger. It also fascinated me how the Indians used the knowledge of the land to their own advantage.

Ross has penned a novel that is as impressive in its sweep as it is in detail. Ross has a large canvas in which to tell his story, and he has done so with the utmost care to the attention of the historical detail while leaving out none of the historical controversies. The treatment of the native population and their retaliation has been explored with a keen understanding of this period in history. At times the tension in this story is almost unbearable as our brave protagonists' battle, not only to stay alive but to stay together in a world that wants to tear them apart. Ross has brought a very tragic but very fascinating era back to life in a story which is so brilliant that it is impossible to turn away from. 

Unlike before in The Clouds of War (Across the Great Divide: Book 1) where there were multiple points of view, in The Search the story is focused on Will and Dove. I thought this was a wise move, as Will and Dove’s story is utterly enthralling, and it also means that this book stands firmly on its own two feet. One certainly does not have to read the first book at all to enjoy The Search.

The Search (Across the Great Divide Book 2) by Michael Ross is a novel which gripped me from the opening sentence to the last full stop. It is, in all ways, an absolute triumph.

I Highly Recommend.





Best-selling author Michael Ross is a lover of history and great stories. He's a retired software engineer turned author, with three children and five grandchildren, living in Newton, Kansas with his wife of forty years. He was born in Lubbock, Texas, and still loves Texas. The main character of "Across the Great Divide", William Dorsey Crump, is one of the founders of Lubbock and Shallowater, Texas. Michael knew Will's granddaughter when he was a child. He has written a scholarly article on Will Crump for the Texas Historical Society, published in the Handbook of Texas Online, and has sold short stories in the past. This is his first novel and the first in the Across the Great Divide series, now an Amazon bestseller.
Michael attended Rice University as an undergraduate, and Portland State University for his graduate degree. He has degrees in computer science, software engineering, and German. In his spare time, Michael loves to go fishing, riding horses, and play with his grandchildren, who are currently all under six years old.

He sees many parallels between the time of the Civil War and our divided nation of today. Sanctuary cities, immigration, arguments around the holiday table, threats of secession - all are nothing new. Sometimes, to understand the present, you have to look at the past- and reach Across the Great Divide.  

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Friday, 15 January 2021

#BookReview — Falling Pomegranate Seeds: All Manner of Things, Book #2 by Wendy J. Dunn #HistoricalFiction #Tudors @wendyjdunn


 


Publication Date: January 15th 2021.
Genre: Historical Fiction.
Publisher: Poesy Quill Publishing
Print Length: 449 Pages


Winter, 1539

María de Salinas is dying. 

Too ill to travel, she writes a letter to her daughter Katherine, the young duchess of Suffolk. A letter telling of her life: a life intertwined with her friend and cousin Catalina of Aragon, the youngest child of Isabel of Castile. It is a letter to help her daughter understand the choices she has made in her life, beginning from the time she keeps her vow to Catalina to share her life of exile in England.

Friendship, betrayal, hatred, forgiveness – All Manner of Things tells a story of how love wins out in the end. 



"I serve Catalina with my life, and will until I die."

Queen Elizabeth had seen with her own eyes how the crown could destroy even the bravest of men. If Arthur were to die, and Henry ascended the throne, then it would destroy him as it had done her father and her husband. Queen Elizabeth had warned them what would happen, and she had been right. So very right. The way Henry had treated Catalina was eclipsed only by the way he had treated María. María had never known hate until she had unknowingly met the future King of England.

When the bell of the church tolled the hour, and the candles were just flickering flames at the end of a wick, María de Salinas, Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, put down her quill. The letter was finally finished. It was hard to die when your only daughter resented you and blamed you for her currently intolerable situation. But with a forlorn hope, María prayed that her daughter would come to understand the choices she had made and find it in her heart to forgive her, one day…

From a tender, yet forbidden, romance to the death of her dearest friend, Falling Pomegranate Seeds: All Manner of Things, Book #2 by Wendy J. Dunn is the unforgettable story of María de Eresby as she, along with Catalina of Aragon, learns to dance to a decidedly deadly Tudor tune.

Dunn has penned a gripping account of love, hate, loyalty and betrayal. But above everything else, Dunn has given her readers a novel that has been written with a sensitivity, not only to the plight of Catalina (Catherine) of Aragon, but also to the controversy that always seems to surround the English throne. Through the eyes of María, Dunn allows her readers to witness it all—the excitement, the disappointment, first love, abandonment, happiness, despair, loneliness, and a realisation that a woman had no control over her destiny. This was a man's world, and there was nothing that anyone, not even a queen, could do about it.

María is a protagonist that I simply adored. She is a remarkably brave and courageous young woman whose loyalty to her best friend is absolute. She is the one constant in Catalina's life—she was there near the beginning, and she would be there at the end, despite what Henry had to say about it. María's determination to remain constant, to not abandon Catalina, made her a character that I really came to care about, and although much of this story is centred around Catalina and the Tudor court, I came away from this book with a real sense of who María was. This novel has left me wondering why I have never come across María in literature before. Her story was one that was begging to be told, and I thought Dunn's portrayal of her was shamelessly compelling.

Likewise, Catalina was an arrestingly refreshing character. Dunn allows her readers to witness the young princess at the beginning of her journey to England, all the way to the end of her life, where a dying Dowager Princess of Wales was not even allowed the small mercy of seeing her only surviving child before she died. Catalina was an endlessly fascinating character. Her tender romance with Arthur, the appalling treatment she receives after his death, and then her subsequent marriage to Arthur's brother, makes for an endlessly fascinating tale. Throughout her marriage to Henry, Dunn hints that Catalina falls in love, not with the Henry that María knows, but with the ghost of his brother. Henry can be tender, kind and generous, but unlike Arthur, Henry is also flamboyant, full of life, and unfortunately inherently cruel and uncaring. Henry is a direct contrast to Arthur, who is pale, ill, but loyal and caring. Arthur’s love was real, Henry's, as real as it may have seemed at the time, was only ever going to be fleeting. He was a flame that the moths found irresistible, even if the outcome would scorch their wings and leave them broken and dying in the shadows.

Henry VIII, the monarch that is famous for all the wrong reasons is, as one would expect in a tale that involved the Tudor dynasty, a character that despite his charm, good looks and sense of humour hid a dark heart who relished in his own power. With the untimely death of his brother, Henry is thrust into the limelight far too early and, although his youthful extravagance and courtly manners hid all manners of sin for a time, the cruelty, the selfishness and the mercilessness of this king's dark soul would be etched in stone forever. Witnessed through the eyes of María, Dunn explores the complicated relationship between the young king and his Spanish bride. Dunn does not gloss over the dark nature of this infamous monarch. Henry is the antagonist in this story, and although Catalina is determined to see in him a shadow of what she had seen in Arthur, María is not so hoodwinked. Dunn has given her readers a Henry who is awfully easy to despise. She has also given us a plausible portrayal of a spoilt young child who grew up to be an extremely volatile and unpredictable monarch. Wyatt was right when he said that in Henry's kingdom, *circa Regna tonat and that is certainly the kind of king Dunn has given her readers. Despite Henry being the villain of this tale, I thought his depiction was superbly drawn, and he came across as very real in the telling.

Dunn explores in great depth the role of women in the Tudor era. Through the depiction of María and Catalina, Dunn shows her readers just how little control these women had over their own lives. They were dependent upon their fathers and husbands for everything. Catalina finds herself in a dire circumstance when Arthur dies. Her father's indifference to her letters and Henry VII's lack of compassion is heartbreakingly tragic. Catalina is treated abhorrently, and it really broke my heart to witness everything that this young woman had to go through, and in the end, as history tells us, she was passed over once again because, through no fault of her own, she could not give Henry a healthy male heir. Likewise, María finds herself in some perilous situations, and like Catalina, there is nothing she could do but comply, despite what that means for her own physical and mental wellbeing.

In this novel, reputation can either make you or see you locked up in the Tower and therefore, the fear of guilt by association is particularly pernicious. The plight of Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick, and indeed, Edmund Dudley demonstrated not only how cruel and fickle the crown was but also how the Wheel of Fortune turned so cruelly and how sometimes, to survive, you had to leave family and friends to their terribly unjust fate.

Falling Pomegranate Seeds: All Manner of Things, Book #2 by Wendy J. Dunn, is a novel that is absolutely irresistible from beginning to end. This is the kind of story that stays with a reader long after they have turned the last page.

I Highly Recommend.

*Wyatt, Thomas (1503 –1542): Innocentia Veritas Viat Fides Circumdederunt me intimici me, (1536).








Wendy J. Dunn

Wendy J. Dunn is an Australian author, playwright and poet who has been obsessed by Anne Boleyn and Tudor History since she was ten-years-old. She is the author of three Tudor novels: Dear Heart, How Like You This?, the winner of the 2003 Glyph Fiction Award and 2004 runner up in the Eric Hoffer Award for Commercial Fiction, The Light in the Labyrinth, her first young adult novel, and Falling Pomegranate Seeds: The Duty of Daughters.

While she continues to have a very close and spooky relationship with Sir Thomas Wyatt, the elder, serendipity of life now leaves her no longer wondering if she has been channeling Anne Boleyn and Sir Tom for years in her writing, but considering the possibility of ancestral memory. Her own family tree reveals the intriguing fact that her ancestors – possibly over three generations – had purchased land from both the Boleyn and Wyatt families to build up their own holdings. It seems very likely Wendy’s ancestors knew the Wyatts and Boleyns personally.

Connect with Wendy:

Thursday, 14 January 2021

#BookReview — Bertha: Shine like the Dawn by Lisa M. Hutchison #Historical #Biographies

 

Publication Date: 24th May 2019
Publisher: Word Alive Press
Page Length: 282 Pages
Genre: Historical Biographies

Bertha: Shine Like the Dawn is the true story of Bertha, the author’s great-grandmother, born into relative wealth and comfort in 1860 Germany, orphaned as a baby, and begrudgingly raised by two sets of grandparents.

Violated by her uncle at seventeen, Bertha becomes pregnant and is quickly married off to a man beneath her standing. After enduring years of domestic violence and forced pregnancies, she finally walks away with four young children and with only her grandmother in Berlin for support. Once there, Bertha finds love with a mysterious man—but will it last?

Bertha, who lives through the turn of the century, the sinking of the Titanic, the First World War, the Spanish Flu, The Great Depression, and the Second World War, accepts whatever life gives her, with courage and passion, but most of all with love.

This is a tender romance, filled with compassion and many unexpected turns in life. Bertha experiences unbelievable trials, tribulations, and triumphs, as well as great love and great loss. Readers will cheer for her, cry for her, and love with her.




“You should find yourself a husband…”

Everyone was telling Bertha that it was time to find herself a husband, but she was only sixteen years old, and she wanted to live a little first before settling down to a life of domestic bliss.

But, like her mother before her, Bertha was not destined for a simple, trouble-free life. Instead, by the age of seventeen, she is forced to marry a man who she does not know, and despite trying her very best, Bertha soon becomes resigned to the fact that her husband, Karl Hoffmann, will never love her, nor will he treat her with the respect that she deserves. There is no escape for Bertha, for even if she did flee the marriage, Karl would still be her legal guardian until she reached the age of twenty-one.

Unfortunately, there is no one for Bertha to turn to. Even the Pastor sided with her husband—after all, it is a husband’s right to discipline his wife as he sees fit, and there is no such thing as rape in marriage. To save herself, and her children, Bertha realises that she cannot wait until she is twenty-one, she needs to flee now. But, will Bertha have the courage to do so? And what kind of life can she expect to live as a single mother in Germany in the late 19th / early 20th Century?

From a desperately distressing death at sea to the last weeks of World War II, Bertha: Shine like the Dawn by Lisa M. Hutchison is the unforgettable true story of Bertha Holtzmann.

There are no words that can encompass how great this novel is. Within a mere 282 pages, Hutchison has penned a truly extraordinary story of unimaginable hardship, abuse, grief, and joy, but above everything else, this is a story about love. Set in an era of industrial growth and violent warfare, Hutchison has taken her readers on a voyage of emotional discovery. This story, this wonderfully compelling narrative, grabbed me from the opening sentence and left me gasping, reaching for the tissues, as I noted that final, devastating full stop. Hutchison demands every conceivable emotion from her readers, and such writing made this book next to impossible to put down.

This story maps the life of Bertha Holtzmann from birth to death. This seemingly insignificant child grows up to be a resilient fighter who strongly believes in family and never gives up hope that she will find true love one day. Bertha was a woman who I instantly connected with. The hardship she faced, the cruelty, and the courage she demonstrated throughout her life only made me love her all the more. Bertha is a wonderful example of the resilience of the human soul. Her quick sense of humour, her patient understanding of her children’s choices as they grow and become independent and her unconditional love made her a woman before her time. I can understand why Hutchison felt so compelled to tell her great-grandmother’s story and the scrupulous care she has taken to depict Bertha and the historical setting, as well as the historical controversy of the era, makes this book one in a million. Bravo, Ms Hutchison. Bravo indeed.

The historical detailing in this novel is staggering. Having tutored modern history for many years, I, like many avid readers of Historical Fiction / Historical Biographies set in the early half of the 20th Century have the misfortune, one might call it, of hindsight, and while Bertha and her family bravely stepped forward into a rapidly changing world, I felt a growing pit of dread in my stomach as I knew where this story was going to lead and the hardships that this family would be forced to endure. Many times, I found myself holding my breath, hoping for the best, hoping that the persecution and war would pass this family by unharmed.

Bertha is a heroine that I could not help but love. She made me laugh, she made me cry, but above everything else she earned my respect—who else would be brave enough to threaten the Gestapo armed only with a black umbrella when they tried to enter her flat? There was simply nothing about this feisty woman that I did not adore. Her sense of humour, her determination not to become bitter at the hand fate had dealt her, and her courage in the face of significant emotional loss, made her an unforgettable heroine. Bertha’s story deserved to be told, and I am sure she would be proud of the way Hutchison has portrayed her.

The historical research that has gone into this novel is staggering. Hutchison covers over 80 years of history, and as each era slips into the next, there come new challenges, new dangers. The historical accuracy, the sense of realism throughout makes this novel not only shamelessly compelling, but it really felt as if I had stepped back in time. The sinking of the Titanic, the horrors of the First World War, the 1918 flu pandemic, the terrible terms of The Treaty of Versailles and what that meant for Germany, the hyperinflation of 1923, the rise of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, The Wall Street Crash of 1929, and the horrors of the Second World War are depicted with a great deal of skill and diligence. Such emotional writing makes this book an enthralling read. 

There is a huge cast of characters in this novel, and each character has a story to tell. I adored the depiction of Oma Anna. Anna is very much like her granddaughter, she is a strong woman, not because it is in her nature to be so but because she had not been given a choice. She is the rock which Bertha depends upon. She is also a wise council, and a trusted friend. I thought Anna’s depiction was sublime.

There are several antagonists in this story, as there are so often in life, and Bertha has the misfortunate of being related to one and married to another. These two despicable men could have utterly vanquished Bertha, but her instinct for survival meant she dared to take the risk and leave an unbearably volatile situation. Once Bertha takes life into her own hands, once she has the courage and the conviction to take control of her own life, that was when she really came into her own. The antagonists may have done their very best to weaken her, to break her, but their cruelty somehow made her all the stronger. 

Bertha: Shine like the Dawn by Lisa M. Hutchison is a truly remarkable book. It is astoundingly ambitious and in all ways an absolute triumph. This is a book that deserves to be read again and again.

I Highly Recommend.




Lisa Hutchison is a Canadian author, living with her husband in Stratford, Ontario. She has penned two very successful books, Pieces of Us and Iron Annie and a Long Journey. Both are books based on first-person experiences and both are compelling accounts of her own life. Her latest book, Bertha, retraces the life of her great-grandmother. Lisa was born in Germany, immigrated with her parents as a child to Canada, and grew up mainly in Toronto. She has a degree in Commerce and has worked mostly in the financial field. Since retirement she has, together with her husband, Robert, travelled the world. She is also an active volunteer at the local hospital, church, and retirement homes. Lisa has always loved to write essays, short stories, poetry, music lyrics, and journals, and was instrumental in setting up and administrating her church's monthly newsletter for many years. While conducting research into her family's history, she found enough material to write Iron Annie and a Long Journey, a biography on her parents' life. Lisa and Robert have three adult children and six grown grandchildren. When they're not in Stratford, they can be found in Portugal, their favourite winter retreat. 

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Wednesday, 13 January 2021

#BookReview, The Graves of Whitechapel by Claire Evans #HistoricalFiction #Victorian @claireevans113

 

Publication Date: 25th June
Publisher: Sphere
Page Length: 300 Pages
Genre: Historical Thrillers

In the gripping new novel by the author of The Fourteenth Letter, a lawyer in Victorian London must find a man he got off a murder charge - and who seems to have killed again . . .

Victorian London, 1882. Five years ago, crusading lawyer Cage Lackmann successfully defended Moses Pickering against a charge of murder. Now, a body is found bearing all the disturbing hallmarks of that victim - and Pickering is missing. Did Cage free a brutal murderer?

Cage's reputation is in tatters, and worse, he is implicated in this new murder by the bitter detective who led the first failed case. Left with no other alternative, Cage must find Pickering to prove his innocence.

His increasingly desperate search takes him back to the past, to a woman he never thought to see again, and down into a warren of lies and betrayals concealed beneath Holland Park mansions and the mean streets of Whitechapel - where a murderer, heartbreak and revenge lie in wait.



“The power of words: scratched and feeble on their own, yet when marshalled together into an army they could break hearts and bones, tear down citadels…”

As a reputable lawyer, renowned for his almost theatrical, one might even say scripted, flare in the courtroom, as well as being a published poet, Cage Lackmann knew all about the power of words. He could just as easily convince a judge of a man’s innocence as he could pen a heartrending poem about lost love. However, words, as Cage knew only too well, also had the power to destroy. An innocent man can be found guilty of a hideous crime just as easily as a guilty man can be found innocent—it all depends on how good one’s lawyer is. And Cage was very good at his job.

Five years ago, Cage had successfully defended Moses Pickering, who had been accused of murder. In Cage’s opinion, Moses lacked the arrogance to take a man’s life. And yet, there had been another victim, another murder in the same manner as the first. All the evidence suggests that the same sick individual committed both murders, and once again, all eyes turn to Pickering.

Cage’s reputation is now on the line, along with his integrity, and with Pickering nowhere to be found, the authorities are drawing their own conclusions, and Cage has to ask himself if he had made a monumental mistake five years ago…

From The Old Bailey’s bustling courtroom to a cold and lonely cell in the notorious Newgate Prison, The Graves of Whitechapel by Claire Evans is a Victorian Crime Thriller triumph.

As is so often the case in Historical Crime Thrillers, there are red herrings aplenty that throw the reader off the right trail. Do we, the lucky readers, take the bait that Evans tangles in front of our faces so enticingly? Dare we make our own assumptions? Or do we wait and watch as the events unfold? The one question that plagued me throughout this novel was that if the murderer is not Pickering, then who is? Evans has given her readers ample opportunity to try to guess who the murderer is. I must admit, I did not figure out who the murderer was before it was revealed, which was remarkably refreshing and demonstrates the exceptional talent that Evans has for creating an enthralling, fast-paced narrative that is not only filled with numerous plot twists, but also with seemingly insignificant but clever details that ultimately concealed the killer in one of the best ways possible—at all times the murderer is in plain sight. 

The crime-infested world in which Evans has placed her story is a befitting backdrop for her novel. The corrupt nature of the legal system is explored in explicit detail, as is the seedy, poverty-driven description of the inhabitants of Whitechapel. The hours that Evans has committed to researching this fascinating era shines through in every sentence. She has brought Whitechapel, with all its darkness and destitution, back to glorious life. I could almost inhale the history. I fancied I could feel the bite of a cold London morning upon my face, feel the fear of finding your cloak pocket devoid of the coins you so desperately need, as well as the heart-wrenching longing for someone you can never have. I thought the historical detailing of this novel was breathtakingly portrayed. 

Throughout this book, the running theme is the corruption that seemingly afflicted the legal system during this period in history. And this corruption is demonstrated most admirably by the protagonist’s portrayal. Cage is beholding to a crime boss, Obediah Pincott, a position no lawyer would ever wish to find themselves in. Cage was given the opportunity to study law because Pincott paid for him to do so, but his education came with conditions. Cage is trapped, his life controlled by a man who cares about the outcome, not the process of reaching it. I thought the depiction of Pincott was fabulous. Here is a villain in the truest sense. He is deplorable in his treatment of Cage and, like most victims, Cage cannot break away from him for Pincott holds the purse strings. Pincott wanted a lawyer who could help keep the men who surround him out of prison, and that job falls to Cage. Cage is allowed to take on other clients as long as they are innocent, Pickering being one such client. With little to no money, a task of which he is not well versed in and his reputation hanging on the line, Cage must prove Pickering’s innocence once again, whether that means establishing the identity of the real killer or building a case against someone else to keep Pickering’s record clean. I thought the power and influence that Pincott held over Cage was cleverly depicted, and it shone a light on the corruption of the legal system during this era.

I thought Cage was a fascinating protagonist. He is a brave, although not always sober, hero. He has a taste for the finest claret, and keeps company with whores, in particular a young woman called Agnes, and it was this relationship that I found so endlessly fascinating. Due to unforeseen circumstances and through her acquaintance with Cage, Agnes finds herself involuntarily involved in the investigation, often as Cage’s alibi and helping provide Cage with information that may be crucial in the success or failure of his attempt to uncover the truth. I thought Evans’ depiction of Agnes was fabulous. 

I had mixed feelings about detective Jack Cross. His blindness to other possibilities and his continuous harassment of Cage made this character exceedingly unlikeable. However, he does have to find the killer and the only suspect, as far as he is concerned, is Pickering. His determination, his pig-headedness, hinders the investigation rather than enhances it. And much like one finds in the works of Arthur Conan Doyle’s, Sherlock Holmes, it is not Scotland Yard that will ultimately uncover the villain. However, unlike in Sherlock Holmes, Cross is no blundering fool. 

The Graves of Whitechapel by Claire Evans is worthy of the highest acclaim. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. This is a story, not only about murder, money and mystery. It is also one about love and justice. This is a novel that will keep you guessing to the very last chapter.

I Highly Recommend.


Where to Buy

Amazon UK • Amazon US • Waterstones •

WHSmith • Goldsboro Books


Claire Evans


Claire Evans divides her time between writing and her job as Chief Operating Officer at Two Brothers Pictures Ltd, the television production company behind Fleabag, Liar and Baptiste.
 
She lives in London with her partner.
 





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