Blog tour: The Second Marriage by Gill Paul

Ah, the lifestyles of the rich and famous!

When I was offered this book to review, I was definitely interested, despite modern American history not being my normal jam, and despite knowing very little about the main characters in this book: Maria Callas, Jackie Kennedy and the man that linked them, Aristotle Onassis.

So let's check off what I did know firstly about Maria Callas. She was an opera singer. And....that's it.

I knew a fraction more about Aristotle Onassis. I knew he was one of the richest men in the world, that he was a Greek shipping tycoon, that he owned a big yacht and a Greek island, and that he married Jackie Kennedy.

While I know more about Jackie Kennedy, it really is at the more common knowledge level - married to JFK and mother of his children, present at his assassination, grieving widow, style icon. Oh and I have, of course, heard of the Kennedy curse.

This book has an interesting structure. Both Maria and Jackie tell us their story, both starting in the 1950's. We meet Maria as a hugely successful opera singer. She is married to her manager, Battista, and has a reputation for being a bit of a diva. In reality, she works very hard on her voice and on putting on the best performance she can every time she sets foot on the stage. We meet her just as she is introduced to Aristotle Onassis, who then pursues her despite the fact that they are both married. What follows is a passionate, volatile life long affair, full of ups and downs, of glamourous parties and a luxurious lifestyle.

In the other side of the story, we meet Jackie Kennedy in the summer of 1956. She is heavily pregnant and her husband John Kennedy is off vacationing on the other side of the world as she goes into an early labour. We follow her life with JFK as she struggles with being a political wife, feeling like an outsider in the large Kennedy clan,  and feeling disassociated from her own family, in particular her younger sister Lee. When tragedy strikes the Kennedy family twice, Onassis offers her and her young family protection and financial security which she takes, without necessarily understanding the man that she was marrying.

Onassis is the kind of man who would have been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons during the #metoo movement. No matter how much he protests that he loves Maria he thinks nothing of having affairs with other women, bestowing them with gifts, and then marrying Jackie, breaking Maria's heart. He was also not afraid to manipulate anyone in order to get what he wants, from the media to paying off people for all sorts of reasons, and more.

What both of these women had in common is that they were cultured, high profile women who loved men who didn't treat them well.

So the question is, did I know more about these people by the end of the book, and the answer is yes.  I am not sure though that I necessarily felt connected with either woman. Of the two, the one who I ended up having more sympathy for was Maria Callas, who seemed to get the rough end of the stick over and over again.

Whilst I can see why the author wanted to tell the two stories together, bringing them together to the point where their lives overlapped, I don't think the structure of the book worked as well for me as it did for other people who have read it. I did like that there was a detailed authors note where she told us what was true and what she made up to fit the story.

Looking at Gill Paul's backlist, I think that she chooses very interesting stories from history, so I am curious about her Russian history books and will be keeping an eye out to see what comes next.

I thought in finishing I would share a video of Maria Callas in her prime!

Thank you to Random Things Blog Tours for the opportunity to read this book. 

About the book and author

The Second Marriage by Gill Paul

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Avon (17 Sept. 2020)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 000836625X
• ISBN-13: 978-0008366254

Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Second-Marriage-Gill-Paul/dp/000836625X

BLURB

JACKIE
When her first marriage ends in tragedy, Jackie Kennedy fears she’ll never love again. But all that changes when she encounters…

ARI
Successful and charming, Ari Onassis is a man who promises her the world. Yet soon after they marry, Jackie learns that his heart also belongs to another…

MARIA
A beautiful, famed singer, Maria Callas is in love with Jackie’s new husband – and she isn’t going to give up.

Little by little, Jackie and Maria’s lives begin to tangle in a dangerous web of secrets, scandal and lies. But with both women determined to make Ari theirs alone, the stakes are high. How far will they go for true love?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gill Paul's historical novels have reached the top of the USA Today, Toronto Globe & Mail and kindle charts, and been translated into twenty languages.

They include THE SECOND MARRIAGE (titled JACKIE AND MARIA in the US), two bestselling novels about the Romanovs - THE SECRET WIFE and THE LOST DAUGHTER - as well as WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST, which was shortlisted for the 2013 RNA Epic Novel of the Year award, NO PLACE FOR A LADY, shortlisted for a Love Stories award, and ANOTHER WOMAN'S HUSBAND, about links you might not have suspected between Wallis Simpson and Princess Diana.


Gill also writes historical non-fiction, including A HISTORY OF MEDICINE IN 50 OBJECTS, and she speaks at libraries and literary festivals on subjects ranging from the Titanic to the Romanovs.
Gill lives in London, where she is working on her tenth novel, and she swims daily in an outdoor pond.


www.gillpaul.com

Twitter @GillPaulAUTHOR

Instagram @gill.paul1

The Turncoat by Donna Thorland

When I signed up for the War Through the Generations challenge for this year, I knew that I was going to struggle to find books set in the American Revolution, but that's okay. It just means that you have to work a bit harder to complete the challenge. That doesn't mean to say that if a book that fits the criteria lands in your lap you don't say yes, so when I heard about this book I knew I was going to read it if only because of that. Fortunately, it sounded like a fascinating read too.

Kate Grey has been bought up in a Quaker family, but it is fair to say that hers wasn't a typical upbringing. Her father was a former soldier who converted to the faith for his wife and who has seen fit to ensure that his daughter is educated and has been freely allowed to share her opinions on many subjects that are not normally seen as womanly.When her father decides to join Washington to fight against the British, Kate is left to manage the household alone. Their home is on a major through road between New York and Philadelphia and it doesn't take long for some British troops to requisition the house. The leader, Major Lord Peter Tremayne, is carrying important plans regarding the invasion of Philadelphia. Kate feels an instant attraction to the man, and while at first he doesn't notice the Quaker miss, she is soon debating him on the finer points of military strategy and he is definitely paying attention, to the point where he plans to seduce the young lady. Unfortunately, while he is distracted by Kate, a rebel spy who happened to be staying there steals the papers, thereby implicating Kate in high treason and putting Peter in military disgrace, to the point where he could have been hanged.

Kate and the spy flee their home, never imagining that Kate won't be able to sit out the conflict in a safe home with her friends. Instead, she is drawn into the world of espionage and is recruited to gain entry into the inner circle of the British command. She soon finds herself caught up in the inner circle, including an engagement with an unsuitable man, but one who gives her unparalleled access to the military secrets that she then can pass on to her mentor and to the rebels.

However, it is when Peter Tremayne returns to the scene that the trouble starts. He believes that Kate was part of the plot to steal the papers, which nearly ended in him losing his life. He has been charged with the task of finding the women who caused his disgrace and bringing them to justice. Peter is not the only person on Kate's trail though. With their feelings for each other growing stronger, an engagement to another man who happens to be closely linked to Peter, and the dangerous situation that Kate has put herself in, there is no guarantee that they will both make it to the end of the war, let alone that they will make it to the end together. And, if they do, how can they possible make a life together when everything in their lives puts them on opposite sides of the political fence.

The author of this book has a background in screen writing and there are times you can tell, with some of the dramatic plot twists and turns. Sometimes that can be a bad thing because there is all plot and not enough focus on characters or the history, but in this case I think Thorland got the balance pretty much right, although there was a touch of melodrama. For example, you do have to suspend disbelief a little as you see Kate transform from a Quaker lass to a woman who would give away her virginity so easily, to a beautiful and worldly spy. This screen writing and involvement in TV and movies also meant that the author was able to bring those skills to making the book trailer below.

For a while there I was wondering if this book could have been classified more as a historical romance rather than historical fiction with romantic elements, but then some things happened that you would just never see happen in a straight romance novel!

On her website, the author has the tagline 'Sex, Violence and History' and I think that is perfectly apt for this book. While there aren't too many sex scenes, the ones that are there are quite revealing. There is also no backing away from the fact that the American Revolution was a violent time to be living in places like Philadelphia where the war came virtually to the door of the cities and where the people suffered due to blockades and the like, and it was doubly dangerous to be a 'rebel' against the British rule. The history seems to be strong, although I must confess that I don't know much more than the basics about this period in time but there were some familiar names coming to life on the page.There were some characters that I was surprised to see were actual historical figures given their actions!

This book is apparently the first in the Renegades of the Revolution series, and I can't wait to see where the author takes us next!

Rating 4/5
Synopsis

They are lovers on opposite sides of a brutal war, with everything at stake and no possibility of retreat. They can trust no one—especially not each other.

Major Lord Peter Tremayne is the last man rebel bluestocking Kate Grey should fall in love with, but when the handsome British viscount commandeers her home, Kate throws caution to the wind and responds to his seduction. She is on the verge of surrender when a spy in her own household seizes the opportunity to steal the military dispatches Tremayne carries, ensuring his disgrace—and implicating Kate in high treason. Painfully awakened to the risks of war, Kate determines to put duty ahead of desire, and offers General Washington her services as an undercover agent in the City of Brotherly Love.

Months later, having narrowly escaped court martial and hanging, Tremayne returns to decadent, British-occupied Philadelphia with no stomach for his current assignment—to capture the woman he believes betrayed him. Nor does he relish the glittering entertainments being held for General Howe’s idle officers. Worse, the glamorous woman in the midst of this social whirl, the fiancée of his own dissolute cousin, is none other than Kate Grey herself. And so begins their dangerous dance, between passion and patriotism, between certain death and the promise of a brave new future together.

A Parchment of Leaves by Silas House

One of the big advantages of being part of a book club is that you often find yourselves being encouraged to read books that you just normally wouldn't read. This is especially true if that particular book club has quite eclectic tastes. This year alone we have read Fifty Shades of Grey the book that shall not be named,  To Kill a Mockingbird, and then this book among others.

A Parchment of Leaves is a book that I hadn't heard of before, or even the author! It is historical fiction, but it is firmly set in a particular time and place - the mountains of Kentucky during the early 1900s - one which I haven't read much about at all. Whilst the events in the larger world do have an impact on the lives of the people, they are also relatively self contained within their area. One reason why I found this era so interesting to read about it is that it seems kind of in between, especially in terms of technology. For example, whilst there were some cars and trucks, for most people this was beyond reach and so they still either walked or rode their horses and most chores around the house were still very labour intensive.

The book opens with young Saul Sullivan braving the rumours about a Cherokee girl who is so beautiful that men die when they see her and heads to her home, looking for work. He has his younger brother Aaron with him. Whilst he doesn't die as soon as he see Vine, he is slayed emotionally and he knows that she just has to be his wife. This is reiterated when his younger brother is bitten by a snake and Vine and her family save Aaron's life. Vine too is mesmerised by Saul and it isn't long before they are married, despite the opposition of their families who are concerned about their mixed marriage.

Together Vine and Saul build a house, build a life together, with Vine overcoming his mother's opposition and soon becomes close to Esme. Really, the only thing that isn't quite right is Aaron's obsession with Vine, to the point that he runs off and bring himself home a wife - one with more than a little in common with Vine looks wise.

With World War I raging in Europe, Saul goes off to log trees on another mountain which in turn will be turned into turpentine and shipped off to the battlefields knowing that the money that he earns will help set his family up for years to come. While Saul has his eyes on the future, in the here and now Vine is left to run the home, help Esme and Aaron's wife. Most worryingly the only man around the house is Aaron. The implications of Saul going away will be felt by everyone on that mountain for quite some time.

Whilst at it's heart this novel is about Saul and Vine, it is also about secrets, about race issues and the loss of the Native American identity (when families try so hard to assimilate into the surrounding community), about trust and forgiveness and so much more.

As for the characters, Saul was the strong, silent type. Vine knew that he loved her, but it was really in his letters that he was the most eloquent and able to tell his wife how much he appreciated and loved her. Vine was an engaging character - strong, resilient, resourceful and proud. She was a woman who found herself in a very difficult situation. Whilst it would be easy to sit and judge and say that she did the wrong thing, it would also have been very difficult for her to take another path, particularly at that time in history and in that place.

I mentioned before that this is a novel firmly placed in the Kentucky mountains, and this was clear from not only the use of the mountains as the setting, but also in the dialect that the characters used. It took a little while to get used to it, but there was a certain charm to it nonetheless.

Because it is Tuesday and I often do a Tuesday Teaser, and also because I am claiming this book as a read for the War Through the Generations (WWI) challenge, I thought I would share a teaser from the book about the day that the war ended. Initially I was going to only quote the second paragraph, but then reading the first again, I realised that it was a good example of how the author used nature to advantage in the novel. The quote comes from pages 184 to 185:

There was an early snow the day we found out the war ended. Just a light dusting that didn't amount to anything, but it seemed like a sign. The sky was a bright gray, and the sun showed itself like a silver ball hung there, so smudged you could look right into it. The snow drifted down and frosted the big rocks lining the creek, clung to thin tree branches. It stood like sugar in the yard. By noon it had melted away except where the sun could not reach; it striped the mountainside like white rows in a garden. The road turned to mud, and the yard was too wet to walk through. Even after it melted, the scent of winter had come in, solid and tough, letting us know what it had in store for us.

We learned of the war's end from some boys over on Buffalo Mountain. They'd heard the news in town, got drunk, and come back through, firing their pistols up into the air. America Spurlock lived out at the mouth of God's Creek, and she could hear them coming from a long ways off. She always was nosy. She got her shotgun, went out to the edge of the road, and waited for them. They bowed their horses up when they seen her there. They took their hats off and started telling about the war ending as fast as they could, each of them taking a turn in sharing the news. And of course she run up the holler, squalling for everyone to come out and hear the news. She had a a grandson over there and she was wild with the prospect of him coming home. She was so excited that she paid no attention to the shining mud that caked her shoes and lined the hem of her skirt.

I am glad that I stepped outside my comfort zone just a little bit to be able to read this one!

Rating 4/5

Synopsis

It is the early 1900s in rural Kentucky and young Saul Sullivan is heading up to Redbud Camp to look for work. He is wary but unafraid of the Cherokee girl there whose beauty is said to cause the death of all men who see her. But the minute Saul lays eyes on Vine, he knows she is meant to be his wife. Vine's mother disapproves of the mixed marriage; Saul's mother, Esme, has always been ill at ease around the Cherokee people. But once Vine walks into God's Creek, Saul's mother and his brother Aaron take to her immediately. It quickly becomes clear to Vine, though, that Aaron is obsessed with her. And when Saul leaves God's Creek for a year to work in another county, the wife he leaves behind will never be the same again. the violence that lies ahead for Vine will not only test her ability to forgive - both others and herself.

Are you sitting down?

  

I would hate for anyone to fall over and hurt themself, because I tell you this is a shock to me, let alone to any one else! This week I managed to write not one, but two reviews! The first was for Mistress of the Sun by Sandra Gulland, and the second is a guest post that I wrote for Royal Reviews reviewing Roses by Leila Meacham.

Head on over to see what I had to say!

Dead Man's Walk by Larry McMurtry

Here, is the eagerly awaited prequel to Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Lonesome Dove. In Streets of Laredo he bought the story ahead, giving us Woodrow Call in his old age; in Dead Man's Walk, he takes the reader back, to the days when Woodrow Call and his friend Gus McCrae - surely two of the most beloved figures in American fiction - were young Rangers, first confronting the wild frontier that will form their lives. Danger, hardship, sacrifice, pain and fear test them to the limits of endurance; friendship, comradeship, courage and love give them the strength to survive and be cheerful against fearful odds.

In Dead Man's Walk Woodrow and Gus are not yet twenty; young Rangers in the days when Texas was still an independent republic. Having volunteered to join the forces of the capricious land pirate Caleb Cobb in a foolhardy attempt to seize Santa Fe from the Mexicans, they experience their first great adventure, in the barren, empty landscape in which shocking violence appears out of nowhere, whether from nature or Indians. Though their eyes, we meet the great Comanche war chief Buffalo Hump (one of McMurtry's most compelling creations), his companion Kicking Wolf, who specialises in prolonged torture, the deadly Apache child-stealer Gomez. It is these formidable figures - cruel, swift and almost invisible - who confront and eventually defeat Caleb Cobb's expedition, plus most of the Mexican army. Woodrow and Gus's companions include Matilda Roberts, a whore known as The Great Western, and Bigfoot Wallace, the famous scout. The wildness of the Frontier and the men who live there - the Indians defending it with savagery, the Texans attempting to seize and 'civilize' it, the Mexicans threatened by both - are at the heart of Larry McMurtry's extraordinary novel, at once a profound work of literature and one of the most riveting adventure stories of all time.

I first read Lonesome Dove years ago, not long after the mini series came out in fact, so that makes it..what..nearly 20 years ago. Since that time, I either didn't hear that Larry McMurtry had gone on to write further books in the series or just didn't take any notice. With my participation in the Pulitzer Project where the goal is to read all of the Pulitzer Prize winners, I figure now is as good a time as any to reread Lonesome Dove (hereafter referred to as LD) which one the award in 1986, but if I was going to do that, then I wanted to be sure to have started at the beginning of the story, and so I found myself reading this book.

Part of my difficulty in writing this review, is that I am comparing the writing and atmosphere in this book to a book I read so many years ago and remember absolutely loving, but not remembering much else in terms of specifics. It could therefore be that some of the issues that I had in reading this book were already present in LD and I just didn't remember them.

The narrative in Dead Man's Walk takes us back, way back, to where Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call are very young men - twenty years of age - and they are just setting out on their first adventures as Texas Rangers. Gus is impulsive, smooth talking and restless, Woodrow more of a thinker and less hotheaded but when he loses his temper he really loses it. Also travelling with them are a number of other colourful characters including the whore Matilda Roberts (known as the Great Western) who alternates between a prostitute and a mother figure during the novel (but is portrayed to have such bravery and put up with an awful lot), various trackers and Indian hunters.

After a disastrous first trip where the Rangers find themselves hunted by the vicious Indian chief Buffalo Hump, the boys join up for another adventure - this time a raid against Santa Fe which at that time was held by the Mexicans. This time they have not only Buffalo Hump and his cohorts to deal with, but also Gomez (an Apache warrior) and Mother Nature, all the while being lead by a man who only had marginally more experience than themselves.

In many ways the events in this book try and include as many of the things that we have come to expect from Westerns - there are Indian raids, scalpings, there are crazy Ranger leaders, there are whores (oh my...are there whores - Gus in particular is constantly obsessed with them), there are Mexicans, wild animals, wild weather. In fact, you name it. Anything that could go wrong on a journey across the wilds of colonial America does and McMurtry doesn't skimp on any of the gruesome details. He also has no heart for the minor characters he has created as he kills them off with reckless abandon - each method of death more and more gruesome.

Then there is an ending which whilst is has the desired effect of getting our two heroes out of the predicament that they found themselves in, seems a somewhat strange resolution to that problem.

For me, whilst this was an interesting read, it wasn't the compelling, touching tale that I remember LD to be. There are definitely glimpses within the characters of Gus and Call where you can see the men that were loved by so many in LD, and the colours and drama of the Wild West definitely came to life, but maybe in a slightly too surreal fashion.

I am looking forward to reading the next book in this series, which I believe is Comanche Moon.

Crossposted at Historical Tapestry

Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier

Will Cooper's search for identity and home begins at the age of twelve, when he is given a horse, a key and a map, and sent to the edge of the Cherokee Nation to run a trading post as a bound boy. With a Cherokee chief named Bear and the mysterious and beautiful Claire Featherstone, Will finds the passionate connections and the complications of manhood that will forge his character and shape his life. As his fate becomes intertwined with the destiny of the Cherokee, Will travels to Washington City to fight against the Removal of the Indians from their land to protect Bear's people, their culture, and way of life.

In a voice filled with insight, humour and regret, Will tells of a long life's journey, from the beautiful forests and mountains of the Nation across the South and up and down the Mississippi River, and on into the twentieth century. Thirteen Moons is a novel of breathtaking power and beauty, by an American master.

I like to read the back cover copy sometimes just for the spin they try to put on things. Can Charles Frazier be an American master after only one previous book? Did they read the same book that I did?

I have owned Charles Frazier's first book, Cold Mountain, for at least two years. If I recall correctly I got it off of the 3 for 2 table at Borders because (a) I had heard of it, (b) I didn't own it yet, and (c) there were two other books that I really wanted to get so I might as well get a third one for free right? I have never even picked it up off the shelf, and yet, it's setting is certainly one that I should love.

Our main character is Will Cooper, a young boy who is cast out into the wilderness to serve as a bound boy at a trading post. Before he even gets to his destination, he meets some shifty characters, and also a young girl named Claire Featherstone, who all end up playing pivotal roles in his life. Once at the outpost he is taken under the wing of a Cherokee chief by the name of Bear, and between them over the years they fight to keep Bear's people on their land, and not be sent to the new reserves in the west. The story then continues through telling us of the events of his life until his current age of about 90.

If I had to choose only a couple of words to describe this book they would probably be slow and ponderous. Now that isn't always a bad thing, but it isn't necessarily a good thing either.

Even though lots of things happened in this book including madly passionate love affairs, fortunes won and lost, duels, the Civil War, the coming of the rail road, the Trail of Tears and even though many well known historical figures make appearances including Davy Crockett and President Andrew Jackson, the book feels inordinately slow and, well, slow.

There were certainly beautifully written sections, with the author labouring over the descriptions of the beauty of the land and the passing of time but they weren't enough to make this a beautiful read. Given the adventures of Will Cooper, this book could have been amazing, but to me personally, it just wasn't!

By reading this book I certainly haven't been inspired to pick up Cold Mountain any time soon. Maybe one day I will, but in the meantime I have plenty of other books on my TBR list to get to.

To quote the Washington Post review (quite an entertaining read in itself) that is up on Amazon for this book: "Thirteen Moons is going to be putting a whole bunch of people to sleep".

Rating 3/5

Queen of Swords by Sara Donati

It is the late summer of 1814, and Hannah Bonner and her half brother Luke have spent more than a year searching the islands of the Caribbean for Luke’s wife and the man who abducted her. But Jennet’s rescue, so long in coming, is not the resolution they’d hoped for. In the spring she had given birth to Luke’s son, and in the summer Jennet had found herself compelled to surrender the infant to a stranger in the hope of keeping him safe.

To claim the child, Hannah, Luke, and Jennet must journey first to Pensacola. There they learn a great deal about the family that has the baby. The Poiterins are a very rich, very powerful Creole family, totally without scruple. The matriarch of the family has left Pensacola for New Orleans and taken the child she now claims as her great-grandson with her.

New Orleans is a city on the brink of war, a city where prejudice thrives and where Hannah, half Mohawk, must tread softly. Careful plans are made as the Bonners set out to find and reclaim young Nathaniel Bonner. Plans that go terribly awry, isolating them from each other in a dangerous city at the worst of times.

Sure that all is lost, and sick unto death, Hannah finds herself in the care of a family and a friend from her past, Dr. Paul de Guise Savard dit Saint-d’Uzet. It is Dr. Savard and his wife who save Hannah’s life, but Dr. Savard’s half brother who offers her real hope. Jean-Benoit Savard, the great-grandson of French settlers, slaves, and Choctaw and Seminole Indians, is the one man who knows the city well enough to engineer the miracle that will reunite the Bonners and send them home to Lake in the Clouds. With Ben Savard’s guidance, allies are drawn from every segment of New Orleans’s population and from Andrew Jackson’s army, now pouring into the city in preparation for what will be the last major battle of the War of 1812.

This book is the fifth book in the Into the Wilderness series by Sara Donati. The series in order is:

Into the Wilderness
Dawn on a Distant Shore
Lake in the Clouds
Fire in the Sky
Queen of Swords

Like many other readers of this series that I have chatted with over time, I first read these books after I read the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon and wanted to read something else with a similar time frame. While I liked the first book, I think that my enjoyment of the series has been building and building, and Queen of Swords continued that trend. It was a very, very good read.

As I have mentioned before, I have a lot of reading time when I am on the train commuting to and from work, and normally whenever I finish a book I have the next book I am going to read already in my bag. I finish one book, and pick up the next straight away. When I finished this one, I picked up the next book, but couldn't start reading....I needed some time to actually revel in the reading experience that I had just had. Reading on the train also means that I laughed out loud, and teared up several times throughout the book in public!

The book opens with Luke trying to rescue his fiancee from a man who kidnapped her nearly a year before. Accompanying Luke is his half sister, Hannah, a soldier by the name of Kit Wyndham and a group of loyal men. Rescuing Jennet, they find that in order to protect him, Jennet has given their son to a man by the name of Honore Poiterin, asking him to take him away from her prison like island. Now, the Bonners must try to get their son back, and their journey takes them to Pensacola and then to New Orleans.

The Poiterins have taken the baby and spread the story that he is the son of Honore himself, and they are not going to give him up without a fight. The Poiterin's are one of the Creole first families in New Orleans, and they have many allies, meaning that it is not always going to be a fair fight either.

As Jennet becomes more and more desperate to regain custody of her son, and as Luke and Jennet try to rebuild their relationship after the traumatic events of the past year, they find themselves having to make allies in a city where there is much uneasiness, for it is 1812 and the war between the English and the Americans is right on their doorsteps.

I have to confess that I know very little about the war of 1812, although I have read a couple of books that are set around that time. I certainly had no idea that there was so much fighting around New Orleans. I guess I just assumed that most of the fighting occurred on the East Coast and didn't really spread all that far from there.

The highlight for me in this book was getting to know Ben Savard, and seeing the way that he helped Hannah move forward with her life, without disrespecting her past or dominating her present. It was an interesting parallel to me that even though he too was biracial like Hannah, that one of the biggest traits that they shared was that they both had been bought up and accepted by their respective families, in stark contrast to the treatment of some others like them. To an extent these relationships were also reflected by society as a whole, with Hannah finding it much harder to exist in the city of New Orleans than she normally did.

By moving the action away from Paradise (where most of the other books take place), Sara Donati has managed to bring a completely different feel to this book, without losing any of the integrity of any of the characters. Whilst many of the characters we have come to love in previous books were offstage during this novel, we did get glimpses of them through the letters that were received, and there was a welcome cameo from Nathaniel and Running Bears as well.

I really do recommend reading this series if you enjoy historical fiction set in the early days of the US.

Sara Donati is just starting to work on the sixth book in this series, and I for one cannot wait to read it. In the meantime I am so tempted to actually reread the whole series....and I don't really do rereads normally!

Rating 4.5/5

City of Dreams by Beverly Swerling

In 1661 a brother and sister stagger off a small wooden ship after eleven perilous weeks at see to seek a new life in the rough and rowdy Dutch settlement of Nieuw Amsterdam. Lucas Turner is a barber surgeon, Sally Turner an apothecary. Both gifted healers, they are bound to each other by blood and necessity. But as their new lives unfold, betrayal and murder will make them deadly enemies.

In their struggle to survive in the New World, both make choices that will burden their descendants - dedicated physicians and surgeons, pirates and whoremasters - with a legacy of secrets and retribution. The is heritage will set cousin against cousin, physician against surgeon, and ultimately, patriot against Tory.

In a city where black slaves are burned alive on Wall Street, where James Madison and Thomas Jefferson walk The Broad Way arguing America's destiny, and one of the greatest hospitals in the world is born in a former shipwright's workshops by the East River, the fortunes of the Turner and Devreys families are inextricably entwined.

Their pride and ambition, their loves and their hates and their determination to live by their own rules will shape the future of medicine - and the becoming of the dream that is New York.

I actually finished this book about a week ago, came and created this post, and then left it in draft until now, so if I am a little vague, that will be why!

Subtitled A Novel of Nieuw Amsterdam and Early Manhattan, this is mainly the story of Lucas and Sarah Turner and their descendants. When Lucas and Sarah make the trip to the New World, they are looking for a new start where they will be free to live as they want to. For Lucas that means for him to operate as a surgeon and to have the opportunity to be able to try out some of his medical theories and for Sarah, that she can become an apothecary. When Lucas falls in love with a married woman, there are unexpected consequences that begins to impact the future of his family.

When Lucas agrees that Sarah can marry Jacob de Vries she is mortified, and thus begins a feud that will not only last the lifetime of Sarah and Lucas, but then escalate throughout the generations of their family... although it does have to be said that the next generations are happy to start feuds on their own.

The most interesting of their descendants is probably Jennet, who starts life as a young girl with a talent with the knife (as in surgery). It is however unthinkable for a woman to be a doctor in those days and so she takes to secretly innoculating people against smallpox and attempting to provide medical aid to those that she can in secret.

When she marries, her husband asks her to give it up, and she does so. When her husband returns from a journey as a shadow of his former self, she is transformed from a loving wife to a hard nosed business woman whose interests include several brothels. As she raises her son, her wealth increases, but really her focus is on destroying one of her relatives because of the way he treated her when they were younger.

Swerling takes us on a journey through the descendant's lives, and those of some of their slaves, servants and friends, whilst at the same time giving us glimpses into the life and times of Nieuw Amsterdam, or New York as the city became known as later, touching important events in the city's history without overwhelming with historical information.

I had seen this book recommended quite a few times as a book that fans of Diana Gabaldon would really enjoy, and I can see how those comparisons can be made. The differences between the two authors:

Swerling covers quite a long period of time in one book. This book starts in 1661 and ends in 1798. Can you imagine how many books Gabaldon would take to cover that same timeframe?

Swerling covers seven generations of the two families, instead of focusing just on the one or two generations.

Swerling is jumps in time between various sections throughout the book, and from generation to generation. She gives a sufficient amount of detail in relation to the key events that in the lives of her characters as opposed to dwelling on everyday life.

The similarities:

In the Outlander series, Gabaldon is just building up to the American Revolution and has her characters interacting with some of the main historical figures. Swerling also brings us a section of the story from that time, and there is also some interaction with historical people, although it is only part of the stories.

Swerling also likes to give us details relating to medical procedures, cures and experiments of the time. The main difference is that her characters are doing trial and error experiments from scratch, whereas Claire at least knew where to start with her knowledge from the 20th century.

I really enjoyed watching New York grow throughout the series, from a town that stretched a mile from the port, to a town where there are elegant brick buildings, and quite a sizeable town over 100 years later.

There are significant enough differences that anyone who doesn't like Gabaldon's work may enjoy this, whilst fans of the Outlander series will also likely enjoy it as well!

The first 130 pages or so of this book were exceptional, and whilst the rest of the book was still enjoyable it didn't quite maintain that high standard all the way through. If there was anything that I wasn't sure of it was of the last few pages, but I believe that there is a sequel out soon so maybe that will clarify things for me a bit more.

I really, really enjoyed this book, and will definitely be reading more of her work.

Rating 4.5/5

Dragonwyck by Anya Seton

Originally published in 1941, this book is classified as a gothic romance. It reminded me of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier in tone in several ways. Having read and loved Seton's classic Katherine, I am hoping to read a few more of her books.

Among the easy correlations to make between Rebecca and Dragonwyck are the darkness and Gothic nature of both homes where the majority of the action is set, the aloofness of both main male characters, the hint of murder and tragedy. I suppose that these are characteristics of gothic romance as a whole, however it is a genre that I have not personally read a lot of so these were quite striking to me.

Miranda Wells, an 18-year-old farmer's daughter, is, one afternoon in 1844, suddenly invited to live at Dragonwyck, the Hudson Valley estate of her distant relative, the great Nicholas Van Ryn. Falling under the strange and passionate spell of both the mansion and its owner, she becomes part of Dragonwyck, with its gothic towers, flowering gardens, acres of tenant farms, and dark, terrible secrets.

In this exquisite and compelling novel, Anya Seton, with her customary attention to detail paints a marvelous portrait of an America torn between ideals of freedom and feudal traditions. We meet not only the poor tenant farmers at Dragonwyck and the European royalty that visits there, but in finely crafted New York City scenes, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and the Astors. Above all, Seton masterfully tells the heart-stopping story of a remarkable woman, her remarkable passions and the mystery and terror that await her in the magnificent hallways of Dragonwyck.

I wasn't really quite sure what to expect from this novel when I started it, but almost from the beginning I was drawn into the story, in fact surprisingly so, given the broad generalisations that are given to our main characters. When we first meet our heroine, the very naive and innocent Miranda Wells, she is reading a romance novel instead of completing her farm chores. Our first glimpse of our villain, Nicholas Van Ryn, is of a very charismatic, dashing, darkly handsome man, whose wife, the unfortunate Johanna is a gluttonous, extremely overweight woman. Our first glimpse of her is as she asks Nicholas if he remembered to bring her pastries for her from New York.

Miranda has just received an invitation to act as the governess to the Van Ryn's child. The Van Ryns are distant relatives on her mother's side. Her father, the dour Ephraim, is not keen for this to happen, but through a tricky manipulation of The Test, where the family bible is opened at a random page, to pick a verse and see what light it adds to the matter under consideration, the decision is made that Miranda is to go. She therefore sets out for the brightness that is New York City in the 1840's, where Miranda feels completely inept and out of fashion in what she had felt were her smartest and most fashionable clothes.

After meeting the dashing Nicholas, she is literally swept up river on a paddlesteamer, fearing greatly as the paddlesteamer races against another steamer during the trip. Here we get our first real glimpse of Nicholas, a man who appears to be extremely passionate about things like paddlesteamer racing, but who also vacillates between tremendous charisma and terrible internal darkness.

As we progress through the novel we are introduced to the big issues of the day. The rights of tenant farmers to own their own land for example, the looming war with Mexico, issues of which Miranda is completely in ignorance about. Miranda is introduced into a world where she doesn't belong, feeling completely out of depth, and not being accepted by any, it seems, except Nicholas, despite her ethereal beauty and her lovely new wardrobe.

Eventually, Nicholas' wife dies, and Miranda is sent back to her home, but she goes with a secret. She is betrothed to Nicholas, and once the obligatory year of mourning is over, he will be coming to claim her, which he does, much to Ephraim Well's consternation.

So Miranda returns to New York, and during this time we see short glimpses into New York's social scenes with visits to Edgar Allan Poe, who Nicholas greatly esteems. However it seems that part of the reason that Nicholas wanted Miranda is that he can mould her into his perfect wife, a woman without her own social networks (Nicholas actively discourages her from making any friendships with anyone), her own opinions, existing only to appear to be perfect to all around her, a sign of his own power and control.

Of course, if there is a heroine and a villain, then there must be a hero, and in Dragonwyck, our hero is Doctor Jefferson Turner, the doctor from the nearby town of Hudson. Dr Turner is a man of many faces. Not only is he a doctor, he is also very involved in the movement to allow tenant farmers to own their own land, and in due course he also goes off to fight in the Mexican war. If there is a shortcoming in any of the major characters, then Jeff is probably it. Whilst he is likeable, and integral to the plot, his growing attraction to Miranda is not given a terrible lot of page time, maybe because the fact that an attraction to a married woman was something that wouldn't have really been talked about openly when the book was first written.

Another thing that is not talked about much compared to if this novel had been written today is that of the marital relations between Miranda and Nicholas. There are hints of violence at various points in the novel, particularly as we begin to see the disintegration of Nicholas Van Ryn the man as he descends into his own personal darkness with chilling results.


Overall this is an entertaining read that kept me engrossed from beginning to end, giving glimpses into both people and events from New York and America in the 1840's. I look forward to tracking down more of Anya Seton's books. Some of her more popular books are currently being rereleased with forewords by popular historical fiction author, Philippa Gregory.

Rating 4/5

A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon

The sixth book in the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon continues the story of the Fraser's and MacKenzies with all the action taking place in pre-revolution America.

The eagerly awaited new epic from the International Bestselling Author of The Fiery Cross Their love has survived time, but can they survive fate? 1772 - the eve of the American revolution. In Boston, men lie dead in the street and in the backwoods of America, isolated cabins burn in the darkness of the forest. The Colony is in ferment. Jamie Fraser, a passionate leader of men, receives an envoy from the Governor Josiah Martin, asking for help. The Governor needs someone to unite the backcountry, pacify the seething resentments of the settlers, and keep the mountains safe for King and Crown. Jamie Fraser, everyone agrees, is the man for the job. But Jamie knows what is to come. His wife, Claire, has travelled back in time from the twentieth century, and she knows that it's only a matter of a few years before the start of the War of Independence, ending with the exile or death of the men loyal to the King of England. Neither prospect appeals to Jamie. Beyond everything else, though, looms the threat of a tiny clipping from The Wilmington Gazette, dated 1776, which reports the destruction of the house on Fraser's Ridge, and the death by fire of James Fraser and all his family. Jamie hopes Claire is wrong, for once, about the future - but only time will tell.

When you read one of these books there are certain elements that appear to be necessary:

Rape

Abduction

Accusations of treason

Description of medical problems

Murder

Sex

Suggestions of witchcraft

I hope that doesn't sound too cynical, but I am afraid I was a little disheartened whilst reading this book. I went out and bought it the first day I saw it, and paid full price for it, not caring that if I had of waited two days I could have had it at a much reduced price. I settled down thinking that this would be the same as the others in the series in that I would be able to devour it in three days, having let an entire weekend pass me by while I spent time in 18th century Scotland and/or America. Six months later I have just finished listening to it in the car.

The good bits in this book, and there were plenty, were as always exceptional. The passages where Ian tells what happened to him when he spent time with the Cherokee were excellent and had me crying my eyes out as I travelled down the road at peak hour, as did several other sections of the book, including the parts that occurred after July 4, 1776. There were also numerous moments throughout the book when I gasped in shock, or laughed out loud, or was left wondering where on earth the journey was going to take me next.

As I was reading though, I couldn't help but feel that there were a lot of story arcs that didn't really need to be in the book to take the story forward. However, having now finished reading the book I can see how some of those parts actually did fit in with the ending, but it took me a long time to see it! There were also numerous occasions where I was far enough outside of the story to notice that phrases were repeated in quite rapid succession, and to be wondering what on earth this part had to do with anything!! I guess what I am saying is that the book could have done with harsher editing.

We still get to see plenty of the very lovely Jamie Fraser (....huge SIGH!!), but his son-in-law Roger Mackenzie comes into his own in this book, seemingly having found his place in the order of life on Fraser's Ridge. Jamie's young nephew Ian Murray is one of my other favourite characters and I really hope that in the next book we get to see him happy and settled (and yes, I am looking forward to the next book already!). Claire was Claire, and Brianna was much more likeable in this book, with wee Jemmy and Germaine in particular scene stealing merrily throughout the book.

I feel I must spare a word for Davina Porter, the actress who narrates the unabridged version of the Outlander books. She is amazing, with clear distinctions of voice between so many characters, and so easy to listen to. It is not always the case with narrators on audiobooks.

I do LOVE the earlier books in this series, and I will continue to buy them, but maybe I will wait a couple of days rather than buying the first copy I see of the next book. Many of the lingering questions of the series have been answered in this book, but I still look forward to reading more about how Claire and Jamie fair during the American Revolution, and hopefully beyond.

In summary, there were still many parts of trademark excellence from the author, but there were too parts of this book that either needed to be edited out or treated differently to keep my attention as the earlier books in the series had.

Rating 4/5

Dreamland by Kevin Baker

Set in a time of great social change, New York around 1910, this book should have been fantastic. The setting was interesting, the time was interesting, the characters were varied, and the book was, well to be blunt...hard work. If I hadn't been reading this with a group I would have put this book down with every intention of picking it up again, but then never quite getting around to it!!

It's not that I didn't like this book. I really love it when a book drags you in so far that real life is a distraction, and there were several times with this story that I felt as though that was just about to happen, but then the author would reintroduce a previous character and change the storyline to one of the many subplots, and I would be left waiting for that moment to come.

The main settings for this book were in the amusement parks of Coney Island, a collection of rides, freak shows, animal shows that we wouldn't even think of putting on today. As an example, one of the "shows" was an everchanging display of premature babies in their humidicribs, put on display as they fought for their very life. The other main setting was the tenements of New York where the mobsters and gangs ran everything, including the politicians.

Among the main characters are Esther, a machinist in the factories who is slowly getting immersed in the union, fighting for reasonable working conditions, Gyp the Blood, a man who breaks the backs of others for $2 bets, Kid Twist who starts off the book as one of Gyp's henchmen, along the way getting on his bad side, and therefore having to hide out in Coney Island with Trick the Dwarf after having saved Trick from being one of Gyp's victims. When we first meet Trick he is living in the Elephant Hotel, based on a real hotel that was built in the shape of an elephant in Coney Island. During the course of the book Trick has become a self styled mayor of a built to scale town for dwarfs, living there with his queen, Mad Carlotta. Tim Sullivan who is a Tammany Hall politicians with plenty of demons of his own. We even have a subplot featuring the famous psychiatrists Jung and Freud, although I am still not entirely sure why they needed to be there (just another subplot by chance?).

The major plots revolve around the strikes of the early 1900's that eventually gave the people in the textile industries of New York the right to work only 56 hours a week, the major fire that occurred at the Triangle Shirtwaist company, killing 156 women, children and men in less than an hour, the murder Beanie Rosenthal and the following police corruption enquiries, along with the fire that destroyed Dreamland. All of these events really happened, although the author has taken some literary licence with the dates that these events occurred.

All in all, I was left unsatisfied, and feeling as though I had worked so hard to get through this book that I needed to go and have a rest afterward! Now, off to read something a little lighter!

Rating: 3.5/5