21st Century Us Historical Fiction

This new collection examines important US historical fiction published since 2000. Exploring historical novels by established American writers such as Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, E.L. Doctorow, Chang-rae Lee, James McBride, Susan Choi, and George Saunders, the book also includes chapters on first-time novelists. Individual essays in 21st Century US Historical Fiction: Contemporary Responses to the Past tackle prominent and provocative new novels, for example, recent Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction by Anthony Doerr, Viet Thanh Nguyen and Colson Whitehead. Interrogating such key themes as war, race, sexuality, trauma and childhood; notions of genre and periodization; and recent theorizations of historical fiction, scholars from the United States, Canada, Britain and Ireland analyze an emerging canon of contemporary historical fiction by an ethno-racially diverse range of major American writers.

Ken Follett's extraordinary historical epic, the Century Trilogy, reaches its sweeping, passionate conclusion. In Fall of Giants and Winter of the World, Ken Follett followed the fortunes of five international families—American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh—as they made their way through the twentieth century. Now they come to one of the most tumultuous eras of all: the 1960s through the 1980s, from civil rights, assassinations, mass political movements, and Vietnam to the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, presidential impeachment, revolution—and rock and roll. East German teacher Rebecca Hoffmann discovers she’s been spied on by the Stasi for years and commits an impulsive act that will affect her family for the rest of their lives. . . . George Jakes, the child of a mixed-race couple, bypasses a corporate law career to join Robert F. Kennedy's Justice Department and finds himself in the middle of not only the seminal events of the civil rights battle but a much more personal battle of his own. . . . Cameron Dewar, the grandson of a senator, jumps at the chance to do some official and unofficial espionage for a cause he believes in, only to discover that the world is a much more dangerous place than he'd imagined. . . . Dimka Dvorkin, a young aide to Nikita Khrushchev, becomes an agent both for good and for ill as the United States and the Soviet Union race to the brink of nuclear war, while his twin sister, Tanya, carves out a role that will take her from Moscow to Cuba to Prague to Warsaw—and into history.

The #1 New York Times bestselling novel and basis for the Academy Award-winning film—a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t—nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read. Aibileen is a black maid in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, who’s always taken orders quietly, but lately she’s unable to hold her bitterness back. Her friend Minny has never held her tongue but now must somehow keep secrets about her employer that leave her speechless. White socialite Skeeter just graduated college. She’s full of ambition, but without a husband, she’s considered a failure. Together, these seemingly different women join together to write a tell-all book about work as a black maid in the South, that could forever alter their destinies and the life of a small town...

Davy kills two men and leaves home. His father packs up the family in a search for Davy.

The Nineteenth Century Revis(it)ed: The New Historical Fiction explores the renaissance of the American historical novel at the turn of the twenty-first century. The study examines the revision of nineteenth-century historical events in cultural products against the background of recent theoretical trends in American studies. It combines insights of literary studies with scholarship on popular culture. The focus of representation is the long nineteenth century – a period from the early republic to World War I – as a key epoch of the nation-building project of the United States. The study explores the constructedness of historical tradition and the cultural resonance of historical events within the discourse on the contemporary novel and the theory formation surrounding it. At the center of the discussion are the unprecedented literary output and critical as well as popular success of historical fiction in the USA since 1995. An additional postcolonial and transatlantic perspective is provided by the incorporation of texts by British and Australian authors and especially by the inclusion of insights from neo-Victorian studies. The book provides a critical comment on current and topical developments in American literature, culture, and historiography.

Has the Civil War really ended? Historical fiction is my passion. I so love bringing history to life - the reason I dedicate most of my time to writing historical fiction books! Carried Forward By Hope is the 6th book in the ongoing Bregdan Chronicles historical novel series. It's readers like you who have turned it into a worldwide bestseller. Thank you! Description: Carrie and Janie are living their dream in Philadelphia, but what price will they pay when cholera sweeps through America once again? Robert searches for peace on the plantation, but forces are in place that are determined to deny it. Moses and Rose are driven by forces beyond their control to become leaders in the midst of a violent racial revolution. Jeremy discovers love, but will the reality of his heritage make it impossible, and will he survive the forces determined to destroy the factory? And will Matthew finally free his heart? Volume # 7 of the Bregdan Chronicles continues to sweeping historical saga that now encompasses the first full year of American Reconstruction. ** How many books will be in the Bregdan Chronicles? You'll have to ask God about that... I intend to write these character's stories, one year at a time, for as long as I'm able to write. I'm passionate about bringing history to life through historical fiction. Since I'm amazingly healthy, that could be for a very long time! I don't like stories to end any more than you do. This one won't end for a very long time! Ginny Dye Review: I appreciate this book as much as the first 6 books in this series. The author, Ginny, keeps your attention by ending every chapter with a peaked desire to get on to reading the next one. Learning more about the reality of civilization in American in the nineteenth century and reading about the courage and hope that the individual characters in the book had to have to move forward is encouragement for us today to never stop working for change and equality. Nothing is new under the sun as even today in the 21st century there is still so much that calls for change. There is a need to value life and to acknowledge that all men and women are created equal in God and in His image. This book is an encouragement to continue the fight for equality, respect for each other and a need to acknowledge that irregardless of gender or color every individual was created in the image of God and are called to reflect that as we live in our respective communities. Keep up the great work Ginny, your work and your writing is appreciated very much. I look forward to "Shifted by the Winds". Review: This has to be the best book in the Bregdan series. I learned so much about what happened in this country in 1866. I appreciate the time and effort the author spent in studying the overall political situation in the southern states and President Johnson's refusal to intervene. The riots initiated by the police against the blacks in Memphis and New Orleans were horrifying. Yet I never felt like I was reading a history book due to the personal involvement of all the dear people that I have come to love throughout this series of books. Can't wait for the next one, Ginny Dye.

This book analyzes a significant group of contemporary historical fictions that represent damaging, even catastrophic times for people and communities; written “after the wreck,” they recall instructive pasts. The novels chronicle wars, slavery, racism, child abuse and genocide; they reveal damages that ensue when nations claim an exalted, exceptionalist identity and violate the human rights of their Others. In sympathy with the exiled, writers of these contemporary historical fictions create alternative communities on the state’s outer fringes. These fictive communities include where the state excludes; they foreground relations of debt and obligation to the group in place of individualism, competition and private property. Rather than assimilating members to a single identity with a unified set of views, the communities open multiple possibilities for belonging. Analyzing novels from Britain, Australia and the U.S., along with additional transnational examples, Susan Strehle explores the political vision animating some contemporary historical fictions.

Redefines the British historical novel as a key site in the construction of British national identityThe British historical novel has often been defined in the terms set by Walter Scott's fiction, as a reflection on a clear break between past and present. Returning to the range of historical fiction written before Scott, Reinventing Liberty challenges this view by returning us to the rich range of historical novels written in the late eighteenth-century. It explores how these works participated in a contentious debate concerning political change and British national identity. Ranging across well-known writers, like William Godwin, Horace Walpole and Frances Burney, to lesser-known figures, such as Cornelia Ellis Knight and Jane Porter, Reinventing Liberty reveals how history becomes a site to rethink Britain as 'land of liberty' and it positions Scott in relation to this tradition.Key FeaturesRecovers the richness of the historical novel and history writing before Walter Scott, including the contribution of women writers to this debateExplores how historical fiction probes anxieties at the rise of commerce, the question of empire, and radical political changeRewrites our understanding of Scott and his relation to the earlier British historical novel