In honor of Women's History Month, here are some historical fiction books in the library's collection that feature female characters or subjects, and are written by female authors:
Helen Simonson's The Summer Before the War starts in the summer of 1914, when 23-year-old, orphaned Beatrice Nash is hired by the school board of the small town of Rye in England to be the Latin teacher. In the first part of the book, the reader gets to know the independent Beatrice and her champions, Agatha Kent, her London government employee husband John, and their nephews, medical student Hugh Grange and poet Daniel Bookham.
The title is a bit of a misnomer, as World War I starts about 23% into the book. The first impact on the town of Rye is the arrival of a number of Belgian refugees - Beatrice takes a beautiful young girl named Celeste into her small apartment, so she can be near her widowed father, taken in by an American writer living across the street.
Later, though, British soldiers are drawn into the war, and both Hugh and Daniel enlist (Hugh as a surgeon) - along with Beatrice's promising Romani (Gypsy) Latin student nicknamed Snout. Simonson does an outstanding job showing the impact of the war on these participants as well as their friends and loved ones back home in Rye. She also subtly takes on issues such as women's roles and rights in that era, as well as class distinctions and prejudices. Simonson lists numerous research sources in her acknowledgements at the end of the book. This title is available as an e-book in our OverDrive collection.
Based on the real-life "Alice Network" of mostly-female spies centered in Lille, France, on the border with Belgium, during World War I, this book has two story lines, one set during World War I and the other in 1947. Eve Gardiner is the character that ties them together. She begins 1915 as a 22-year-old file clerk in England, recruited to spy in France during the war because she can also speak French and German - with a stammer in all languages that makes people overlook her and assume she is stupid.
The 1947 Eve is a broken woman with gnarled hands, contacted by 19-year-old American Charlotte "Charlie" St. Clair, who is trying to find her French cousin Rose, last seen working in 1943 in a restaurant in Limoges, France, called Le Lethe, owned by a Monsieur Rene.
That hits close to home for Eve - whose cover while working as a spy involved working in a restaurant in Lille, also called Le Lethe, and also owned by a Monsieur Rene - the evil Rene Bordelon, a Frenchman collaborating with the Germans.
The tale goes back and forth in time and between narrators. Along the way, the reader meets the real-life head of the Alice Network, Louise de Bettignies, aka Alice Dubois, aka "Lili" (among many code names) in this book. Author Kate Quinn does a masterful job weaving this (and other) real-life character(s), places, and incidents into the story, which is available as an e-book on OverDrive.
"The Nightingale" is the code name for a member of the French Resistance during World War II, and it's also the last name (in English) for three characters in the book, Vienne Rossignol Mauriac, her younger, single sister Isabelle Rossignol, and their father Julien Rossignol. They are each part of the resistance, in different ways. Vienne's story in some ways is the most compelling, for she has to pretend to be "normal" both for the sake of her children and because of the German officers billeting in her home.
Kristin Hannah states in her author's note and a conversation in the reading group guide that she based Isabelle on a "young Belgian woman named Andrée de Jongh, who had created an escape route for downed airmen out of Nazi-occupied France," while researching the Siege of Leningrad (also in World War II) for another novel.
This book is available in our OverDrive collection as both an e-book and an e-audiobook. Polly Stone was an excellent reader - she has lived in France, and it shows in the audio version, which won the 2016 Audie Award for Fiction and was a finalist for best female narrator and Audiobook of the Year.
Helen Simonson's The Summer Before the War starts in the summer of 1914, when 23-year-old, orphaned Beatrice Nash is hired by the school board of the small town of Rye in England to be the Latin teacher. In the first part of the book, the reader gets to know the independent Beatrice and her champions, Agatha Kent, her London government employee husband John, and their nephews, medical student Hugh Grange and poet Daniel Bookham.The title is a bit of a misnomer, as World War I starts about 23% into the book. The first impact on the town of Rye is the arrival of a number of Belgian refugees - Beatrice takes a beautiful young girl named Celeste into her small apartment, so she can be near her widowed father, taken in by an American writer living across the street.
Later, though, British soldiers are drawn into the war, and both Hugh and Daniel enlist (Hugh as a surgeon) - along with Beatrice's promising Romani (Gypsy) Latin student nicknamed Snout. Simonson does an outstanding job showing the impact of the war on these participants as well as their friends and loved ones back home in Rye. She also subtly takes on issues such as women's roles and rights in that era, as well as class distinctions and prejudices. Simonson lists numerous research sources in her acknowledgements at the end of the book. This title is available as an e-book in our OverDrive collection.
Based on the real-life "Alice Network" of mostly-female spies centered in Lille, France, on the border with Belgium, during World War I, this book has two story lines, one set during World War I and the other in 1947. Eve Gardiner is the character that ties them together. She begins 1915 as a 22-year-old file clerk in England, recruited to spy in France during the war because she can also speak French and German - with a stammer in all languages that makes people overlook her and assume she is stupid.The 1947 Eve is a broken woman with gnarled hands, contacted by 19-year-old American Charlotte "Charlie" St. Clair, who is trying to find her French cousin Rose, last seen working in 1943 in a restaurant in Limoges, France, called Le Lethe, owned by a Monsieur Rene.
That hits close to home for Eve - whose cover while working as a spy involved working in a restaurant in Lille, also called Le Lethe, and also owned by a Monsieur Rene - the evil Rene Bordelon, a Frenchman collaborating with the Germans.
The tale goes back and forth in time and between narrators. Along the way, the reader meets the real-life head of the Alice Network, Louise de Bettignies, aka Alice Dubois, aka "Lili" (among many code names) in this book. Author Kate Quinn does a masterful job weaving this (and other) real-life character(s), places, and incidents into the story, which is available as an e-book on OverDrive.
"The Nightingale" is the code name for a member of the French Resistance during World War II, and it's also the last name (in English) for three characters in the book, Vienne Rossignol Mauriac, her younger, single sister Isabelle Rossignol, and their father Julien Rossignol. They are each part of the resistance, in different ways. Vienne's story in some ways is the most compelling, for she has to pretend to be "normal" both for the sake of her children and because of the German officers billeting in her home.Kristin Hannah states in her author's note and a conversation in the reading group guide that she based Isabelle on a "young Belgian woman named Andrée de Jongh, who had created an escape route for downed airmen out of Nazi-occupied France," while researching the Siege of Leningrad (also in World War II) for another novel.
This book is available in our OverDrive collection as both an e-book and an e-audiobook. Polly Stone was an excellent reader - she has lived in France, and it shows in the audio version, which won the 2016 Audie Award for Fiction and was a finalist for best female narrator and Audiobook of the Year.
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