Historical Fiction 101

What makes us classify a book as historical fiction? Well, it needs to be set in the past, at least fifty years past the event, and actual historical research is the key element in the writing. Authors employee two different styles - one that uses a real person set within an invented story while the other invents the character and sets him or her in a historical context. Many readers, drawn to a particular era, find a historical novel appealing not only for the setting but because a really good historical author will have done the homework and gotten the details just right.

Historical fiction can include anything from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird to Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear and every time period in between. You can read a novel featuring Abraham Lincoln slaying vampires or one about a young girl living in Salem, Massachusetts when the charge of witch is leveled at her neighbors. If a good mystery is what you crave you can read about a female medical examiner at the time of Henry II in Ariana Franklin’s Mistress Of the Art of Death series or if you would rather read about a Chinese peasant who becomes a rich land owner in the 1920s check out Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth. Whatever historical time period catches your fancy the librarians here at Rolling Hills can help you find a book that will capture your interest.

To get you started, here are some popular historical fiction authors: 

• Philippa Carr (English Tudor/Stuart and other crowned heads of Europe)
• Bernard Cornwell (Napoleonic Wars)
• Diana Gabaldon (Early Scottish history)
• John Jakes (Early American history)
• Rosalind Laker (English Regency period)
• Donald Clayton Porter (Western American history)
• Mary Renault (Greek and Roman history)
• Wilbur A. Smith (Egyptian to early Twentieth Century)

And for something a bit more “modern” in your Historical Fiction:

• The Far Reaches by Homer Hickam (WWII)
• Loving Frank by Nancy Horan (a novel about Frank Lloyd Wright)
• Song yet Sung by James McBride (19th century human rights conflict)
• Winter in Madrid by C. J. Sansom (Spanish Civil War)
• Birds Without Wings by Louis De Bernieres (WWI)
• African Queen by C. S. Forester (WWI Africa)