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Tag: biographical novels

Illuminations, by Mary Sharratt

Illuminations, by Mary Sharratt

Illuminations illuminates the life of Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th century nun who founded her own abbey and composed beautiful works of sacred choral music. Hildegard’s journey to becoming a nun began against her will, when her mother “tithed” her to the church at the age of eight (she was her family’s 10th child). Hildegard became a companion to Jutta, who chose to become an “anchorite” nun, bricked into two rooms in the church. In compensation for Hildegard’s companionship, Jutta’s…

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Circling the Sun and West With the Night

Circling the Sun and West With the Night

After I read Circling the Sun by Paula McLain, a historical novel based on the life of aviator Beryl Markham, I was curious about how it compared with Markham’s memoir, West with the Night, which Ernest Hemingway called “a bloody wonderful book.” West with the Night was first published in 1942, six years after Markham made her historic solo flight from east to west across the Atlantic. It is told in 24 essays which are not always in chronological order,…

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Katherine, by Anya Seton

Katherine, by Anya Seton

Katherine, first published in 1954, is the story of Katherine Swynford, mistress and then wife of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. It takes place in England in the 1300s. Since I don’t know much British history, I looked up these two names. Katherine and John are ancestors to King Henry VII and to the current royal family. Katherine was, like many of Anya Seton’s novels, a bestseller when it was first published, and is still a well-known historical novel….

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Cane River, by Lalita Tademy

Cane River, by Lalita Tademy

The novel Cane River is so closely based on Lalita Tademy’s ancestors that she includes family photographs, documents, and newspaper clippings. In 1995, Tademy quit her job as a vice president of Sun Microsystems so she could research her family’s history and write a novel. Cane River was published in 2001. Tademy starts her novel with the story of a woman seven generations removed from herself: Elisabeth, a slave in the early 1800’s on a plantation along Cane River in…

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Pope Joan, by Donna Woolfolk Cross

Pope Joan, by Donna Woolfolk Cross

Did you know there may have been a female Pope in the 800’s? According to Pope Joan, which is based on historical clues, such a person could have existed. Donna Woolfolk Cross brings Pope John (or Joan) to life, from her birth to her death, and constructs plausible and engaging scenarios to explain how Joan became educated and was able to hide her gender until she reached the pinnacle of power in medieval Christianity. Joan was born in Ingelheim, which…

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Half Broke Horses, by Jeannette Walls

Half Broke Horses, by Jeannette Walls

Jeannette Walls calls Half Broke Horses a “true-life novel” because although she based it on the life of her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, she tells the story in first person (re-creating Lily’s voice) and she also imagined details to fill in the gaps of the real story. In the author’s note at the end of the book, Walls says, “My grandmother was quite a character.” She is indeed. Her voice jumps off every page as we follow her through the…

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In the Time of the Butterflies, by Julia Alvarez

In the Time of the Butterflies, by Julia Alvarez

What gives people the courage to risk their lives for political freedom? That question spurred Julia Alvarez to write In the Time of the Butterflies based on the true story of the four Mirabal sisters, three of whom were activists with the code name “butterflies” in mid-twentieth century Dominican Republic. Alvarez, who is from the Dominican Republic, became interested in their stories because of the parallels with her own family: her father had also been involved in underground activities against…

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Jubilee, by Margaret Walker

Jubilee, by Margaret Walker

If you are looking for a non-racist alternative to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, here it is: Jubilee. Written by an African-American woman and first published in 1966, Jubilee is a fictionalized account of the author’s great-grandmother’s experiences before, during, and after the Civil War. The photo above shows Walker’s great-grandmother, the “Vyry” of the novel. She took after her white slave-owner father in the color of her skin. I found this photo on the U Space Gallery web site….

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I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé

Maryse Condé, a writer of African-Caribbean heritage, expands on the story of Tituba, the black slave from Barbados accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. In an interview printed at the back of the book, Condé reveals that she learned about Tituba by accident when she got lost in a library. She became curious, and sought more facts about her life. Finding very little, Condé says “I decided I was going to write her story out of my own…

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Burial Rites, by Hannah Kent

Burial Rites, by Hannah Kent

Burial Rites is based on the almost mythic Icelandic true story of 34-year-old Agnes Magnusdottir, the last woman beheaded in public in Iceland (in 1830). The author, Hannah Kent, was a teenaged Australian exchange student in Iceland when she first heard about the execution of Agnes, and became fascinated. She then spent many years visiting Iceland and researching the story of this woman through oral histories and government records. The jacket copy for this book is a little misleading: “Charged…

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