We read historical fiction to travel through time and space. Generally speaking, historical fiction is any story that is set in a time period in the past. It is no longer considered as bodice-rippers rife with anachronisms or depressingly dull textbooks dressed up in barely discernible plots. Historical fiction is now gaining the respect of readers and critics alike, regularly appearing on bestseller lists and on shortlists for major literary awards around the world. Whether or not you consider yourself a fan of historical fiction, you’ve heard the names Hilary Mantel, Eleanor Catton, Anthony Doerr and Kristin Hannah repeatedly over recent years.

What is Historical Fiction?

“HISTORICAL FICTION IS A LITERARY GENRE IN WHICH THE PLOT TAKES PLACE IN A SETTING LOCATED IN THE PAST.”

A historical fiction definition seems simple enough: it’s fiction that takes place in the past. Typically, historical fiction books are written about 30–50 years after the event has taken place. The read historical events and the time period of the book play as crucial of a role in the story as any character or plot twist. In addition, historical fiction is usually considered more realistic in nature. Though some of the Genre-bending books have added a bit of fantasy or magical realism flavour to enhance our understanding of the past.

 

Adding all historical fiction books into one manageable list is quite impossible, truly. This list, I believe, will give you the broadest view of our world’s shared past. Let us know in the comments below if we missed your favorite historical fiction book.

 

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Time Period and Setting: 1920s, Russia
Publication Year: 2019

Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov is sentenced to house arrest, except his ‘house’ arrest is confinement to the luxurious hotel Metropol. Should he leave the Metropol, he will be shot immediately. You get a view of his life by looking from the outside in. You see him living, working, entertaining, and growing over many years of his life in the hotel. His friendships with the staff at the hotel, his interactions with Anna, Nina, Sophia, and others are just wonderful. You hear of the many changes that occur in Russia over a long period of time. And you come to see that Count Rostov, is the luckiest man in all of Russia.

Count Rostov is a true gentleman. He has exquisite taste, loves literature, and has the most excellent manners. And he expects the same from others (well, manners at least). Having read Towles first book, I felt that he was really striving for this sense of elegance. But he just did not achieve it. Perhaps it was due to his character. In this book, he found that particular character and did achieve an elegant novel.

As in his first book as well, you can see his love of literature that is often discussed in this book. You get detailed descriptions of not only classic literature, but history, food, politics, and more. Oh the wonderful descriptions of the food will leave you salivating.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Time Period and Setting: France and Germany during WWII
First Publication: 2014

All the Light We Cannot See has two main storylines–about a French girl and a German boy–that intersect during the bombing of Saint-Malo on the French coast in 1944. Marie Laure is a blind French girl who leaves Paris with her father during the Nazi occupation to stay with her great uncle in Saint-Malo. Her devoted father has taught her to be self-reliant by building model cities of miniature buildings so she could learn her way around Paris, and later Saint-Malo. Marie Laure uses her sense of touch to become proficient at identifying sea creatures, and loves to read the nautical adventure stories of Jules Verne in her Braille books.

Werner is a precocious German orphan who is very skillful at fixing radios. Although he dreams of becoming an engineer, the boys in his village are destined to work in the coal mines. After he repairs the radio of a Nazi, he receives a recommendation to the National Political Institute of Education at Schulpforta. The light blond, blue-eyed boy fits the Aryan profile, and he’s soon on his way to becoming a soldier. The chapters about the school are exceptionally chilling where the students often have to choose between their own survival and their personal moral code. Werner often has his sister’s voice in his mind, reminding him what is ethically right, but he knows he will be crushed if he displays any weakness. Werner is assigned to a unit that works to detect the radio signals of Allied citizens, including the French Resistance in Saint-Malo.

The presence or absence of sensory perceptions is at the heart of the story with Marie Laure coping with blindness, Werner involved in listening to radio communication, and the citizens of both countries feeling cold and hungry. In this historical fiction book, Anthony Doerr puts his lyrical gifts to work in beautiful sensual descriptions. Marie Laure and Werner were sympathetic and courageous, two bright lights set against the background of a brutal war.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Time Period and Setting: Late 1800s, U.S.
Publication Year: 1987

Beloved is a devastating portrayal of the horrific tragedy of slavery in the aftermath of the civil war. Sethe escaped from slavery but her freedom has brought her little joy. The house is haunted by her dead daughter (a fact we learn almost immediately). The novel is compelling while almost unremittingly painful–Morrison does not soften the impact of slavery and the ongoing racism that continues.

The pain and suffering of slavery can, as we discover, haunt people in many heartbreaking ways, even ones who haven’t directly experienced it. Morrison is brave enough to ask, not if we can let go of that pain (because that is impossible), but how we will give that pain a place in our life.

The female relationships – between Sethe and her daughters, between Sethe and Baby Suggs, and even between Sethe and the village women – give so much depth and color to the story, and yet I don’t want us to forget the brave, loyal men we meet.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Time Period and Setting: 1930s, Germany
Publication Year: 2005

This book is set during WWII Germany and tells the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Her younger brother has died and her mother has been “taken away.” She has been taken in by a German couple who are scraping out a meager existence.

Liesel learns to read with the help of her accordion playing foster father. She develops a love of books and cannot help stealing them when the opportunity presents itself. She forms a closed relationship with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau. Liesel also forms another close friendship with a boy who has hair the color of lemons, Rudy Steiner. Two people who will have an impact on her life. “The Book Thief” is narrated by Death. It’s an unlikely narrator, but a very appropriate one for a book set during the Holocaust.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Time Period and Setting: 1800s, Nigeria
First Publication: 1958

Things Fall Apart is a fascinating historical fiction book that describes an African society both before and after the coming of Western European Imperialism. The first part of the book describes daily life in an area of Nigeria during the 19th Century. During this part, the novel focuses on Okonkwo, an ambitious and driven man who hopes to become a powerful person in his clan. Okonkwo is outwardly strong, but inwardly he is consumed by fear. The fear that he will become like his father: lazy, weak, and unable to support his wives and children. This fear causes him to consciously become everything his father is not. He is an angry and violent man, whose actions are often self destructive.

The characterization of Okonkwo and the overall characterization of the African society is one of the books strong points. Too often, these type of books portray their native characters as noble and their societies as idyllic Edens ultimately destroyed by western Imperialism.

Achebe chooses to portray Okonkwo as all too human and flawed and the Nigerian society he describes is far from idyllic. The clans war on each other and many of their customs are cruel by contemporary standards (twins are considered evil and are abandoned in the forest to die). Still, it is a vibrant culture rich in heritage and beliefs and Achebe does a good job of describing it and making it come alive. In the 2nd half of the book, white missionaries arrive and the society begins to change as their customs are deemed evil and many of their people embrace the new religion.

Written in the 1950’s in the years immediately preceding Nigeria’s independence when the British were losing their hold on Africa, Achebe reasserts the position of African identity in his poignant and seminal novel, Things Fall Apart. In context of when Achebe was writing, pervading dehumanizing stereotypes of Africans were commonplace (in part, a vestige of Conrad’s, Heart of Darkness) and deeply ingrained. When one reads the book in this light, it becomes clear how Achebe redresses the balance and beautifully rewrites the narrative of his ancestors to offer a truer reflection of reality.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Time Period and Setting: 1960s, India
Publication Year: 1997

India’s insane caste system. Forbidden love. Consequences of small actions, guilt, duplicity, anger and ultimately tragedy this story weaves a gripping tale. The twins Estha and Rahel are forever scarred by a tragedy when their young English cousin comes for a visit.

Growing up in Kerala by a river where there mother Ammu is trying to live with her family that tolerates her but worships her brother Chacko who is an overgrown spoilt child in an adults body. Chacko goes to Oxford where he meets an English woman and marries her. They have a baby girl and then divorce with the mother keeping the daughter. He goes back to India to manage the families pickle factory. It is a time in India of political upheavals and he faces unrest from a communist union organizer. In this atmosphere his ex wife Margaret arrives with his daughter Sophie for a holiday after her second husband dies suddenly. Consequently, events happen that will influence their lives forever more.

The description of the countryside, heat evokes images in the mind. This historical fiction book also captures tenderness, compassion and brutality. This at times funny, tragic and poignant novel is a worthy Man Booker prize winner. I also found out a sequel has been written called the Ministry of Happiness.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Time Period and Setting: 960s in Jackson, Mississippi
First Publication: 2009

This is a historical fiction book about what it is like being a black woman in the South in the 1960’s. The Help is a wholesome attempt to throw light on the plight of the black maids working for the white ladies of Jackson, Mississippi. The year was 1962. The year after which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous speech at Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. He declared that the time had come to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. It was a hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Yet, justice was a dream standing yonder. It was in such a climate that Kathryn Stockett chose to gently lay the foundation of the story on.

The Help, at its core divulges the alienation and the segregation suffered by the black maids, who were trusted enough to play a pivotal role, or sometimes the only role, in raising the white babies. The irony be in the fact that they were considered good enough for shaping the morals of the toddlers but not enough to leave them alone with the silverware. And while the white ladies were playing bridge and laying gossip on the vine, the maids were taking care of the house, their men, their babies.

 

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Time Period and Setting: Nazi occupied France during the second world war.
First Publication: 2015

‘The Nightingale’ is a historical fiction, set in German-occupied France during WWII. Spanning the years of the war, this riveting story follows two sisters as they struggle to survive and persevere through the Nazi invasion. As the reader, you get to see the war that was taking place on the home front from each sister’s unique vantage point. It is a heart wrenching, beautiful and tragic story.

As the older sister, Vianne feels responsible for keeping her younger sister, Isabelle, safe. When the occupation begins, Isabelle is sent to stay with Vianne in the country, being cast out of Paris by her father. Vianne’s husband, Antoine, has been called to report to the Army, leaving Vianne and their young daughter, Sophie, behind. As the Germans invade Paris, Isabelle begins the trek to her sister’s home, witnessing the atrocities committed by the invading troops firsthand.

By the time that Isabelle arrives on Vianne’s doorstep, she is determined to join the resistance and make a difference. Young and impulsive, Vianne is certain that her younger sister will get herself, if not all of them, killed. Their relationship is tenuous, at best, and Vianne struggles to get through to her strong-minded sibling. Vianne is naive, having not witnessed the actions of the invading Nazis, as her sister had. She believes that if they keep their heads down and don’t draw attention to themselves, they’ll be okay. She follows the rules and tries to reign in Isabelle’s defiant behaviors before it is too late.

However, as time passes and the occupation grows increasingly difficult, the sisters go their separate ways. Each of them sets out on a different course, trying to survive the best way they know how. Despite the distance between them, each sister ends up fighting the Nazi invasion in different ways. The bold and daring Isabelle actively assists allied airmen in their escapes, while the mild-mannered Vianne begins helping hide away Jewish children.

 

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Time Period and Setting: 1946 as London emerges from the Second World War
First Publication: 2008

A historical fiction drama about life under Nazi occupation on this tiny island in the English channel. Ms Juliet Ashton is an author looking for a subject for her next book while she is still promoting her previous work. In the middle of all this she receives a letter from Mr. Dawsey Adams of Guernsey, who wrote to her how he’d found a book by Charles Lamb which once belonged to her. Through his letter Juliet get to know about The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and she became infatuated with this Society which over the time change into lifelong bond of friendship. & now she also knew what her next book was going to be about.

whereas she first knew people of literary society only by their letters and what they suffered during the War, but once she was in Guernsey she realized that these people were survivors and they were doing their best to clear the scars that the World War had left on their lives.

 

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

Time Period and Setting: 17th-century Delft, Holland
First Publication: 2000

In 1664 16-year old Griet, a protestant, joins artist Johannes Vermeer’s household in the Papist Quarter of Delft, Holland, as a live-in maid. The few coins she earns per 6 day week is to feed her own family after her father was left blind in an industrial accident. The Vermeer’s and their soon to be 6 children live with the wife’s mother and her maid, in a chaotic household, where furnishings and food are much grander than at Griet’s own home, yet she quickly becomes aware of simmering tensions and that the family, though well-respected, is not as wealthy as it seems. Vermeer produces only 3 paintings a year and is dependent on his patron, the sleazy Van Ruijven, and commissions from businessmen around the town.

Griet is given a bed in the cellar, her main tasks to handle the household laundry – fetching water from the canal to heat on a stove; cleaning (she is fastidious and careful around Vermeer’s studio in the attic), and running errands to the market where she catches the eye of the butcher’s son. When the 6th child is born and a nurse moves in to feed the baby the household is even more crowded and Vermeer suggests that a bed be made for Griet in the storeroom next to the attic studio.

We follow Griet’s progress over three years through personal loss, as she graduates from a humble maid to assisting Vermeer in the preparation of pigments, and eventually, secretly posing for him in the famous painting, wearing his wife’s pearl earrings.

 

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Time Period and Setting: Clayton County and Atlanta, both in Georgia, during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era.
First Publication: 1936

Margaret Mitchell received 38 publishing rejections before the lucky Macmillan publishers accepted Gone With The Wind. Her only novel published in her lifetime, this historical fiction book sold 30 million copies (with two sequels authorised by Mitchell’s estate published more than a half century later). Mitchell won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for this epic of the highest order, of more than a thousand pages.

Set in the American Civil War and Reconstruction, this tracks the cunning antics of wealthy Southern plantation owner Gerald O’Hara’s daughter, Scarlett, who must do what she must to survive sudden destitution.

There’s a touch of the Scarlett O’Hara in the best of us. Tainted more with her Father’s forthright Irish blood than her gracious mother Ellen’s French ancestry, she’s strong-willed, self-centred, at times petulant, but ultimately practical and ever true to her own heart. This complexity makes her the great literary heroine she is and not simply a spoilt Southern princess who deserves a good slapping down. No wonder Hollywood interviewed 1400 actresses before settling on the extraordinary Vivien Leigh to capture her fabulous persona for the 1939 film, which won eight Academy Awards.

Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

Time Period and Setting: 1945, East Prussia
First Publication: 2016

Salt to the Sea opens in the closing months of World War Two, as the Russian forces advance across Poland and East Prussia towards Germany. The story follows four characters – Emilia, Florian, Joana and Alfred – as they flee ahead of the Russian Army and converge on the ill-fated Wilhelm Gustloff for a voyage which would go on to be the greatest maritime disaster of all time with six times the death toll of the Titanic.

For our four characters this ship is their last chance to make it back to Germany before the Russians arrive and they’ll do almost anything to get a ticket. Each character has a distinct voice and personality, and the short chapters make it surprisingly quick to read despite the often harrowing content.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

Time Period and Setting: 1942 in Germany
First Publication: 2006

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas tells the story of Bruno, a nine year old German boy whom his father serves as a commander in the Third Reich and is tasked with overseer of the horrific conditions at Auschwitz. Bruno, along with his father, mother, and sister and various servants move from their quaint home in Berlin to live in a house on the outskirts of the prison where Bruno and his sister Gretel can view the unfortunate occupants living behind the fence.

Without friends or much to do besides his studies and books, Bruno befriends Shmuel, a young Polish boy of Jewish descent who lives on the other side of the fence. The two meet up over a year or so, and while seemingly different at first, the two come to learn that they have a lot in common.

Author John Boyne targets the rather ignorant innocence and refusal to face facts of a portion of the German population at the time under the Third Reich (personified as Bruno), to mixed results.

 

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Time Period and Setting: 1932, Joliet, Illinois; Ithaca, New York
First Publication: 2006

As 93 year old Jacob Jankowski sits outside the nursing home despairing the imminent loss of his favorite caretaker and awaiting his family escort to the circus, he reminisces about the fateful day during depression times when as a young lad he ditched a final exam at Cornell and hopped aboard a freighter carrying the Benzini Brothers traveling Circus.

As a near graduate, he’s taken on as the shows veterinarian and is thrown into the mix of colorful characters and excitement that is the circus. Times are tough and though the performers try their best to maintain the grand illusion under the big top, what goes on behind the scenes is not pretty as Jacob finds out after falling for Marlena the beautiful horse trainer, whose husband August has a ruthless temper.

Throw in an obstinate elephant named Rosie, a dwarf bunk mate, a drunk stow away, and an animal stampede, and you’ve got a fine bit of storytelling which includes a surprise ending.

 

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

Time Period and Setting: 1943 in Nazi occupied Denmark
First Publication: 1989

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry takes place in Denmark during World War II and the Holocaust. The story begins with an introduction to the cruelty of German soldiers who are occupying Denmark. From there, this YA historical fiction novel tells a tale of bravery of a Danish family in the middle of WWII who helped a family of Jews escape from the Nazis. As the Afterword explains, much of the story was based on real people and historical events.

Soon after the beginning of the story, the Nazi soldiers begin attempting to take Denmark’s Jewish citizens away to concentration camps. As this happens, other Danish citizens and members of a secret movement, the Resistance, protect their Jewish neighbors and begin smuggling them to safety in Sweden. Eventually, Annemarie’s family smuggle Ellen Rosen, a young Jewish girl, to their relative’s house near Sweden. It is there that the story unfolds and the suspense begins.

One of the best things about Number the Stars was the way Annemarie demonstrated quiet bravery in the face of danger. Her character showed that it doesn’t take brute strength and power to be a hero.

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

Time Period and Setting: 1947, France & England
First Publication: 2017

This powerful historical fiction consists of 2 stories with alternating timelines (1925 & 1947). As indicated by the title, it tells the stories of a real life group of brave, selfless female agents operating in WWI, France and England who risked and gave their lives in an effort to stop Nazis. The characters are extremely well developed. They are strong, but flawed women. It is based on the life of Louise de Bettignies, alias Alice Dubois.

This book leaps forward in history and tackles the little known spy ring of the Alice Network during WWI. A dual narrative that engages readers in the events of 1915 and 1947 England and France. American Charlotte (Charlie) St Clair and Brit Eve Gardiner are two very memorable characters.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

Time Period and Setting: Krompachy (Slovakia) and Auschwitz (Poland) during World War II
First Publication: 2018

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris is an incredibly sad story of a young mans experience as a prisoner in the concentration camp during the holocaust. The cruelty and horrors that he went through just to stay alive were heartbreaking.

Written based on oral testimony from the protagonist Lale, this is a harrowing tale but with a feel-good ending about life and even love inside Auschwitz. The book details the true story of Lale Sokolov, a young man from Slovakia, who sent to Auschwitz in April of 1942. Lale is determined to survive, and so he becomes the tattooist of Auschwitz, tattooing numbers into the skin of every prisoner to arrive at the concentration camp.

Feeling guilty for collaborating with the germans, while being an outsider in the eyes of the other prisoners, Lale feels alone. But then one day he meets Gita, a female prisoner. Gita becomes Lale’s greatest source of happiness in an otherwise grim world. He may have tattooed the number on her arm that marks her as a prisoner of Auschwitz, but she ends up leaving a mark on his heart as well.

 

Cilka’s Journey by Heather Morris

Time Period and Setting: Auschwitz (Poland) during World War II
First Publication: 2019

Cilka’s Journey is the second novel by Australian author, Heather Morris and is a sequel to The Tattooist of Auschwitz, featuring one of the secondary characters from that story, Cecelia Klein (Cilka). When Russian soldiers liberated Birkenau in January of 1945, Cilka hardly dared believe her ordeal was over. And it seemed that it wasn’t.

The Russian agency overseeing the camp quoted from a report on Cilka stating that she collaborated with the Nazis (a position of privilege in a concentration camp, double-edged sword that it is, is bound to engender resentment). For this, she was found to be an enemy of the Russian state and a spy, and was sentenced to fifteen years’ hard labour, to be served at Vorkuta Gulag in northern Siberia.

Even though she had already experienced much of what the were being subjected to, it seemed, at first, that each new day brought some fresh hell. Wary of doing anything that might set her apart as in Birkenau, Cilka hesitated when a doctor at the short-staffed hospital, impressed by her languages and her speed of learning, encouraged her to train there as a nurse. When she reluctantly agreed, she made sure to share any advantage her position gave her with the women in her hut.

 

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

Time Period and Setting: 1939, Memphis
First Publication: 2017

Before We Were Yours is a historical fiction novel inspired by the real-life events surrounding the Tennessee’s Children Home activities during the 1920s and 1930s. It is written in two timelines – the past and the present. We follow the lives of two strong characters – Rill Foss and Avery Stafford. These characters are fictional but are based on true people.

Rill Foss and her brother and sisters are taken from their river boat shanty and placed as wards of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society (TCHS) under Miss Georgia Tann, the director. Rill was left with the care of her sibling. One of her sister’s, Camillia, has disappeared and the rest, including her brother, are being adopted by affluent families. Unable to stop Miss Tann from adopting out her siblings, Rill sees no other alternative but to try to escape.

Avery Stafford has returned home to help her father, Senator Wells Stafford, through a medical complication. She is also being groomed for his senate seat. It is during a visit to a nursing home for a political photo opportunity that Avery runs into a patient with a mysterious connection to her grandmother. This opens the door to hidden secrets and connections of the past.

 

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

Time Period and Setting: 1666, Eyam, Derbyshire, England
First Publication: 2001

In 1666, the bubonic plague struck England. Geraldine Brooks based her fictional novel on the true events of a small town Eyam in northern England. Two third of the people died that year, most notably the young.

Based on a real preacher and his wife’s attempt to keep the town’s people from losing their reason, their stable heads drive the story as told by a young woman, Anna’s point of view. During a time when women were suspected of being witches and outed, often wrongly, by the water test or the high degree of uneducated people making rash decisions, the story literally bounces from one disaster to another.

Brooks writes a skillful story. All three main characters are believable and their attempts to save the town are admirable even with failures. Anna befriends a woman who teaches her about using herbs for medicine during a time when doctors were not well talented in saving patients.

The preacher’s wife was well educated in her Latin and used a historical medical book based on an earlier Arabic manuscript. Somehow in a small town this seemed more far fetched but I gave it the benefit of the doubt. The townspeople were dropping like flies and any help was needed.

As the title suggests, the time frame for the novel spans a year. This historical fiction story drives on from bad to worse although hope is always front and centered. Religion and spiritualism clash with almighty death.

 

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Time Period and Setting: 1935 To 1999, England And France
First Publication: 2001

Atonement opens in 1935 at an English country estate, continues in rural France during the retreat to Dunkirk during WWII, and moves to a hospital in London in 1940. It mostly takes place during WWII, though it is not about the war itself.

This historical fiction is a story of the lives of Briony Tallis, her sister, Cecilia, and her sister’s beau, Robbie. Briony makes a terrible mistake that devastates the lives of these young people and their families. At the time of her error, Briony is thirteen years old. She is an aspiring writer with a vivid imagination, which is, in part, the cause of her misjudgment. Her mind is filled with the stories in her head, and her ambition to be a writer influences her judgment, so she “sees” events that coincide with what she believes to be true. This is the story of Briony’s atonement for her grievous error, trying to overcome almost unbearable remorse and guilt.

 

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

Time Period and Setting: Late 1700s and early 1800s, in Virginia
First Publication: 2010

A tragic tale of a young Irish girl who’s childhood is forever changed by the death of her parents aboard a ship bound for America. Upon her arrival a prominent tobacco plantation owner purchases her along with other slaves to help work his plantation.

Her young life was a happy one growing up with love and nurturing by the slaves who took her in as one of their own, and eventually became her secure and only family. Her budding years were spent with a prominent white family connected to the owners wife, where she received an education and elocution lessons. When she is thrown into a tailspin of the need to marry she ends up marrying the owners son.

After their return to the plantation her whole existence is changed upon the owners death and the son’s inheritance, she unfortunately learns very quickly, the difference between the father and the son. The father was a virtuous man who achieved success through respect and hard work, the son on the other hand looses everything due to his downright meanness, intoxication, greed and a never ending, right of entitlement.

 

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Time Period and Setting: 1964, in Tiburon, South Carolina (United States)
First Publication: 2001

Lily Owens is a 14-year-old girl who only wants a place to belong after running away from her miserable father with her black nursemaid Rosaleen. With nowhere else to go, Lily and Rosaleen are taken in by three eccentric sisters: black beekeepers who hold the clues to Lily’s past, and quite possibly her future. Expertly set in 1964 in the heart of the American South, Lily witnesses the everyday atrocities of a society in which color matters and fairness doesn’t.

Lily’s narrative voice is so strong in this piece that we are taken through her world as if it were our own. Lily desperately wants to be understood and through her moving narration we live her life and understand.