If history was your favorite class in high school, then you just might enjoy reading historical fiction, a genre that brings the past to life in creative new ways!
What is Historical Fiction and Why Do Readers Love it?
Historical fiction novels are set in the past. While I’ve not heard a definitive timeline about how far back “the past” is, this librarian would assume about fifty years or so. Some say that the events have to take place before the author was born. Regardless of the specific timeline, historical fiction does not use a contemporary setting, captures a sense of the time and the culture, and provides readers with a rich plethora of details. In a well-written historical fiction novel, you should feel like you’re “there”, whether that means Tudor England or Ancient Egypt.
Readers enjoy historical fiction because it’s so immersive. This richly detailed, often dense books are like opening a door to the past. Readers finish a historical fiction novel feeling like they know all about the time and the culture, even if the characters they followed were fictional. Because historical fiction is written decades (or even centuries) after the events occurred, writers have the benefit of understanding how the story plays out in a grander sense, which enriches the story for the reader. Historical fiction is all the fun of reading a history book with the added depth of being up close and personal with characters who are “living” those experiences.
Are Classics Historical Fiction?
For the readers who want to know whether titles like Pride and Prejudice or The Picture of Dorian Gray are considered historical fiction…my answer is no. Historical fiction is fiction about history. But, most of the classics (with some exceptions) were contemporary novels, talking about events or set during the time they were written. So, while they certainly have a historical feel to today’s readers, they are not in fact historical fiction, which would have been written with a history buff in mind. Of course, there’s nothing to say that readers of historical fiction wouldn’t adore these books as well!
Popular Time Periods
Historical fiction doesn’t exactly do traditional subgenres so much as it works with various time periods. Here are a few that are always popular:
- World War II: Holocaust fiction, Jewish experiences, and Nazi-fighting war stories
- American Civil War: Brother against brother, the antebellum South, slavery
- Tudor England: Palace intrigue, Henry and his wives
- The Roaring Twenties: Living life to the fullest in a gilded age of prosperity
Related Genres
Here are a few other genres to try if you enjoy historical fiction:
- Westerns: (sometimes historical) fiction set in the American Wild West
- Classics: Written as contemporary stories, but set in the past for modern readers
- True Crime: Nonfiction that focuses on old cases sometimes set decades in the past
- Romance: Love can blossom at any time
Reading Recommendations
Lilac Girls (Martha Hall Kelly) On a September day in Manhattan in 1939, twenty-something Caroline Ferriday is consumed by her efforts to secure the perfect boutonniere for an important French diplomat and resisting the romantic advances of a married actor. Meanwhile across the Atlantic, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish Catholic teenager, is nervously anticipating the changes that are sure to come since Germany has declared war on Poland. As tensions rise abroad – and in her personal life – Caroline’s interest in aiding the war effort in France grows and she eventually comes to hear about the dire situation at the Ravensbruck all-female concentration camp. At the same time, Kasia’s carefree youth is quickly slipping away, only to be replaced by a fervor for the Polish resistance movement. Through Ravensbruck – and the horrific atrocities taking place there told in part by an infamous German surgeon, Herta Oberheuser – the two women’s lives will converge in unprecedented ways and a novel of redemption and hope emerges that is breathtaking in scope and depth.
The Four Winds (Kristen Hannah) exas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman’s only option, the future seems bleak. Until the night she meets Rafe Martinelli and decides to change the direction of her life. With her reputation in ruin, there is only one respectable choice: marriage to a man she barely knows. By 1934, the world has changed; millions are out of work and drought has devastated the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as crops fail and water dries up and the earth cracks open. Dust storms roll relentlessly across the plains. Everything on the Martinelli farm is dying, including Elsa’s tenuous marriage; each day is a desperate battle against nature and a fight to keep her children alive. In this uncertain and perilous time, Elsa–like so many of her neighbors–must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or leave it behind and go west, to California, in search of a better life for her family.
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (Jamie Ford) While “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry Lee meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship-and innocent love-that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept. Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko. In the hotel’s dark dusty basement he begins looking for signs of the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot begin to measure. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice-words that might explain the actions of his nationalistic father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago.
Violeta (Isabel Allende) Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family with five boisterous sons. From the start, her life is marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth. Through her father’s prescience, the family will come through that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known. Her family loses everything and is forced to retreat to a wild and beautiful but remote part of the country. There, she will come of age, and her first suitor will come calling. She tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others, recounting times of devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy. Her life is shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women’s rights, the rise and fall of tyrants, and ultimately not one, but two pandemics. Through the eyes of a woman whose unforgettable passion, determination, and sense of humor carry her through a lifetime of upheaval, Isabel Allende once more brings us an epic that is both fiercely inspiring and deeply emotional.
The Henna Artist (Alka Joshi) Escaping from an abusive marriage, seventeen-year-old Lakshmi makes her way alone to the vibrant 1950s pink city of Jaipur. There she becomes the most highly requested henna artist–and confidante–to the wealthy women of the upper class. But trusted with the secrets of the wealthy, she can never reveal her own. Known for her original designs and sage advice, Lakshmi must tread carefully to avoid the jealous gossips who could ruin her reputation and her livelihood. As she pursues her dream of an independent life, she is startled one day when she is confronted by her husband, who has tracked her down these many years later with a high-spirited young girl in tow–a sister Lakshmi never knew she had. Suddenly the caution that she has carefully cultivated as protection is threatened. Still she perseveres, applying her talents and lifting up those that surround her as she does.
