Historical Fiction

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

/ Denise / 1 Comment

by Louise Erdrich

Cover of The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, with a beaded cross necklace and a small howling wolf on either side.

In Louise Erdrich’s book The Sentence, one character tells another about a sentence believed to kill the reader.  After thinking about it for a second she says, “I wish I could write a sentence like that.” So far, I haven’t died from reading her books, but Erdirch’s writing is powerful and moving. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse is a prime example of how her stories waft into your soul and make themselves at home for a time. 

The story focuses on Father Damien, the lone priest at an Anishinaabe reservation in North Dakota called Little No Horse. Father Damien, however —

***POTENTIAL MINOR SPOILER ALERT IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE BOOK. THIS NEXT PIECE OF INFORMATION IS ON THE BACK BLURB OF THE BOOK AND REVEALED IN THE FIRST FEW PAGES.  BUT IF YOU WANT TO GO IN COMPLETELY BLIND, CEASE READING THIS REVIEW, GO READ THE FIRST CHAPTER, AND THEN YOU CAN COME BACK. WHILE YOU GET THIS BOOK, YOU COULD ALSO CHECK OUT THESE BOOKS BY NATIVE AUTHORS THAT WERE PREVIOUSLY REVIEWED HERE. DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER THOUGH UNTIL YOU’RE READY.***

— is actually a woman named Agnes DeWitt.  Agnes isn’t a trans character, but Erdrich does touch on indigenous beliefs and ideas regarding gender as Agnes navigates between herself and Father Damien.

 

The story bounces back and forth between Agnes/Father Damien’s beginning at Little No Horse in the early 1900s as a young priest and the present (roughly the 1990s). As Father Damien nears 100 years of age, the Vatican sends another priest to Little No Horse. His job is to determine whether one of the Native nuns, Pauline Puyat/Sister Leopolda, is eligible for canonization. This forces Father Damien to wrestle with his secrets and what he can or should share.  Both story lines are intriguing, but I definitely enjoyed the earlier parts of Father Damien/Agnes DeWitt’s life more.

Erdrich weaves in a lot of themes and ideas throughout the book.  Obviously, gender/gender identity plays a significant role.  While Agnes embodies a male persona as Father Damien, she embraces her woman-ness as Agnes in the quiet, empty spaces of her life.  But many of Father Damien’s Ojibwe friends recognize that there is something different about him; unlike Euro-Americans, however, they have a background and tradition that allows them to articulate and understand that difference. 

Erdrich also gorgeously explores the mysteries of faith.  Throughout his tenure at Little No Horse, Father Damien writes letter after letter to each Pope for nearly a century.  Yet until the Vatican sends a priest to investigate the miracles of Sister Leopolda, he receives no answer.  It suggested the very nature of prayer – petitions and questions and begging for guidance to which there is never an answer. Agnes/Father Damien have a few instances in which they feel to be in direct contact with the Divine – and yet, it is only a moment followed by decades of silence. 

Despite his position as a missionary, ordered to bring the Word of God to the “heathens” of the reservation, Father Damien quickly finds himself accepting Anishinaabe beliefs. Often he finds those beliefs to be of greater value and comfort than Catholic dogma.  While Catholicism remains a grounding system for Agnes and Father Damien alike, they see the value of Anishinaabe traditions and spirituality and see no reason why those should be cast aside.  As other priests flit in and out of Little No Horse, they seem scandalized at Father Damien’s potential blasphemy. And yet, they also stand in awe of his faith.

Through all of this, Erdrich includes a variety of important historical events, from the 1918 flu pandemic to the horrific legacy of forced boarding schools for Native children to the starvation that regularly occurred on the reservations as a result of the U.S. failing to live up to its treaty obligations.  It is an incredible story of how people continue to survive and thrive, despite all the trauma, all the pain, all the hurt.  And not only do they survive, but they continue to love, to believe, to live.  Yet the story does not downplay the very real, long-lasting effects of those traumas either.  Each character must find a way to live with or drown in those hardships as well. 

I cannot recommend Erdrich’s books enough.  The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse is a great place to start.  Although my understanding is that some of her earlier books include some of the same characters, I have yet to read them. I never felt like I was missing something as I read this one though.  Go and enjoy.  

Find it online here.

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau

/ Denise / 4 Comments

by Silvia Morena-Garcia

Book The Daughter of Doctor Moreau set among green leaves and branches.

The Island of Doctor Moreau, by H.G. Wells, is one of those stories where even if you haven’t read the book, you likely know the broad strokes of the plot: a crazed scientists conducts horrible experiments on a remote island, resulting in strange human/animal hybrids.  There have been movies and references and even a Simpsons parody. But you can ignore all of those and dive straight into Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s reimagining take, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau.  It is a spellbinding tale, centering Doctor Moreau’s heretofore unknown daughter as she navigates the dangers coming her way. 

Carlota Moreau is a smart, stubborn, and curious young woman.  The natural child of Doctor Moreau, she has never traveled outside her father’s estate, Yaxaktun, in the remote Yucatán Peninsula. Her only human contacts are her father, his patron Hernando Lizalde, Ramona the servant woman, and the various mayordomos brought in to oversee the estate.  But those are far from her only companions.  There are a host of hybrids, the results of her father’s experiments, whom she knows and loves.

As our story begins, a new mayordomo, a British man named Montgomery Laughton arrives at Yaxaktun. The isolation of Yaxaktun, and the Yucatán in general, make it difficult to find hired help.  As Ramon explains to Carlota, it is not a place for people who want to be found.  But that seems to suit Mr. Laughton just fine. 

Six years later, however, more newcomers arrive at the remote estate and very quickly, the isolated routines of Yaxaktun begin to fall apart. There is more to this island her father created, and Carlota will seek the truth – whatever the cost. 

The book switches between Carlota and Montgomery’s perspective.  This effectively gives us a good background into both and understanding for their motives.  At times, the story loops back on itself so we get both characters’ insights into the exact same scene.  Had this been overdone, it might have been frustrating, but Moreno-Garcia uses it sparingly and to great effect. 

I first read Silvia Moreno-Garcia‘s The Gods of Jade and Shadow.  I quickly fell in love with her writing style and her characters.  I’ve since read The Beautiful Ones, Certain Dark Things, Mexican Gothic, Untamed Shore, and Velvet was the Night, her previous book before The Daughter of Doctor Moreau. Pick any of them and jump right in – they don’t disappoint! Moreno-Garcia does a fantastic job of creating amazing settings for her characters to inhabit and giving her heroines (and other characters) a plethora of emotions, motives, virtues, and vices.  Weaving in romantic story lines can be tricky, but she handles them deftly and beautifully. 

I also really appreciate the glimpses of Mexican history that she peppers through her novels.  In the background of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, the rebellion of Mayans against European and Mexican forces lurks, with some of the hybrids whispering the name of the famous (or infamous, depending on one’s perspective) leader.  While Carlota has the privilege of long ignoring politics and social issues, the hybrids do not.

And where Wells focused on issues of the search for knowledge and abuse in the name of science and man’s desire to dominate his environment and the creatures around him, Moreno-Garcia uses the hybrids to dissect issues of colonialism, racism, and labor exploitation.  As Hernando Lizalde explains early on in the book, he is only supporting Doctor Moreau’s experiments because the hybrids could be the key to the labor issues on the haciendas.  The Indians, he explains, can no longer be trusted in light of the rebellion, and with the end of the slave trade and the poor track record of European laborers, a “home grown” labor force designed for exploitation seems to be the perfect ticket.  While the doctor agreed to such a use, it is clear he has his own motives for his experiments.  But are they any better?   

Overall, I highly recommend The Daughter of Doctor Moreau.  And then the rest of her books. 

Find it online here.

The Devil’s Revolver by V.S. McGrath

/ Denise / 1 Comment
Cover of The Devil's Revolver

In the interest of full disclosure, I received a free e-copy of The Devil’s Revolver for the purposes of review.  That doesn’t change my opinions, but I probably wouldn’t have read this/been aware of it otherwise.  Just in case that counts as influence for some. 


American western meets fantasy is a fun world that The Devil’s Revolver drops us into.  We meet Hettie Alabama, a 17-year-old young woman preparing to enter a shooting competition to earn her family some money.  She lives with her parents, her younger sister Abby, and “Uncle” Jeramiah.

Things haven’t been easy for the family.  Hettie’s older brother, Paul, died protecting her from knife-wielding stranger years earlier.  Money is tight.  And perhaps most concerning for Hettie is Abby’s habit of slipping out of the house to wander down to the river to talk with friends no one else can see or hear. Such a habit is soon to garner unwanted attention.

Hettie can’t do much about two of those things, but she is a talented shooter. She enters the competition, determine to tackle the money issue.  Little does she know, however, that this decision will set into motion a chain of events that will lead her all over the West with a revolver that doesn’t miss, doesn’t run out of ammo, and doesn’t shoot without a cost.

McGrath does a splendid job introducing us to the rules of this world without any kind of exposition dump.  Within a few pages, we learn that magic is a regular part of life, but not everyone is gifted.  Most people use talismans and protection spells, but those cost money.  A government division seeks out children who show signs of being gifted, another concern for Hettie.  It seems clear that Abby has some kind of power, but no one in the family wants to risk her coming onto the government’s radar.  There are magical monsters roaming the terrain and plenty of human ones as well.  Aside from the magic, though, much of the rest is familiar to any Westerns fans. 

I really liked the character of Hettie.  While a talented shooter and a dedicated sister, she also still acts like most seventeen-year-olds.  There were a few situations where she makes choices that, as a reader, we can see are tricky or a trap, but if it was me at 17 and I didn’t know I was a heroine in a book, I would’ve likely done the exact same.  She can be rash and hot-headed, but her heart is in the right place, even with a demon-possessed revolver in hand. The other characters that move into her orbit are fun and interesting as well, but Hettie is definitely my favorite.

There are some aspects of the world and the titular revolver that remain unexplained or feel a bit underdeveloped, but I think it’s because this is just the first book in a series and you have to leave some questions and loose ends for the next story to take. 

Overall, this was a fun read with interesting characters and a cool take on Westerns.  Worth checking out!

Find it online here.

The Fervor by Alma Katsu

/ Denise / 1 Comment
Cover of The Fervor with a red sash behind it.

I planned on reading this as soon as I got it, since I really enjoy Katsu’s books, but I figured it would be a while before I got the review up.  I recently did my review of The Hunger and I still have a few more books lined up that I read over the past couple of months.  But I started reading The Fervor on Thursday and then the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe dropped on Friday.  By the time I finished The Fervor over the weekend, it seemed like this was the review to do for this week.

The Fervor takes place across several locations across the Northwest U.S. in 1944, including one of the internment camps where the U.S. imprisoned all Japanese and Japanese-American residents of the West Coast. This was based on the pretext that there may have been spies and fifth columnists hiding in the population.  It was, if you’ll excuse the academic jargon, bullshit. 

The government had no evidence of “disloyalty” when Franklin Roosevelt signed the executive order, they didn’t find any evidence throughout the course of the war, and no evidence emerged afterwards.  The push to round up and get rid of population stemmed from good ol’ American racism.  Whites in the west had their eyes on Japanese/Japanese-American-owned farms, land, and businesses and wanted everyone of Japanese descent out of there.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 halted any immigration from China, but the anti-Japanese movement had been unable to get a similar Japanese Exclusion Act to pass. They got around that with the 1924 Immigration Act, which barred immigration of people belonging to a nationality prohibited from becoming a naturalized citizen. Since American immigration laws dating back to George Washington barred anyone deemed “not white” from becoming naturalized citizens, that effectively excluded Japanese immigrants. Still, it didn’t do anything to get rid of those of Japanese descent who were already in the country or provide a way for white Americans to take their land. The hysteria after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, however, did.   

Anyway, back to The Fervor.  (I would like credit, though, for not continuing to write out my lectures on race, immigration, and internment – once a history professor, always a history professor.) We’re initially introduced to Archie and his wife, Elsie.  Archie is a white pastor in a small town in Oregon who seems to have an ideal life – beautiful wife, baby on the way, a good job, a good home, heading up to the mountains for vacation. Yet his past haunts him and a vision of woman in a red kimono suggests it may be catching up with him… 

Meanwhile, at Camp Minidoka in a remote part of Idaho, Meiko Briggs worries about her daughter, Aiko, while walking her to the internment camp’s school.  Aiko is a bit of an outcast among the other children – she’s half white (her father is a U.S. fighter pilot in the Pacific) and on top of that, Aiko is a very talented artist who draws many of the ghosts, spirits, and demons of Japanese folklore, whom she sees in the camp.  Meiko is concerned about all of this and about how growing up in a prison camp is going to affect Aiko. The more immediate threat, however, is a strange disease burning through the camp, turning formerly peaceful people into violent murderers. And now there are more American officials turning up, strange trucks, and disappearances…

Finally, out in Nebraska, reporter Fran Gurstwold witnesses a mysterious explosion in the night sky while at a remote cabin with her editor, with whom she is having an affair.  They walk through the darkness and discover thin sheets of a papery substance, which she at least is smart enough not to touch barehanded.  Her journalist instincts are telling her she’s on to a big story, one that might pull her out of the usual “women’s news.” Despite her increasingly agitated editor’s admonishments, she starts hunting for clues, tips, and connections to other mysterious flashes, leading her out of Nebraska and towards Oregon and Idaho…

As I’ve mentioned previously, I really enjoy Katsu’s writing.  The Fervor is a bit different from her other two books.  While there is still a spiritual/otherworldly element to this tale, it is much more grounded in reality.  Katsu’s in-laws were interned at Minidoka during the war and she draws on their experiences, as well as her own background and family history.  The illness aspect also ties closely to the rise of racist attacks against Asian-Americans due to Covid and false, racist claims regarding China.  While the demons Aiko sees create all sorts of fear, the real horror is watching how easily people can succumb to their worst instincts, while seeing themselves as heroes.  Even when people know what they’re seeing and doing is wrong, it is so easy to slip into justifications and rationalizations. 

The story of internment is also a reminder of how fragile many of our basic rights are, a lesson those who had the privilege to forget are learning again. Most of those interned, like Aiko, were American citizens, born and raised in the United States. They had basic constitutional rights against unreasonable search and seizure, unlawful detainment, etc. When Fred Korematus challenged his imprisonment, the Supreme Court ruled in Korematsu vs. United States that military strategic concerns were enough to justify stripping Americans of their rights.  The Court claimed it was not based on racial prejudice, even though it only applied to Japanese and Japanese-Americans on the West Coast (where racial bias against Asians was highest) and there was no similar action against German or Italian Americans. 

But The Fervor also reminds us that individuals can still make a difference. It’s hard not to feel completely overwhelmed at times or that there’s no way one person can make any kind of difference. And yet it’s still imperative to try. 

So overall, The Fervor is another great work of weaving historical fact with otherworldly tones like The Hunger and The Deep.  Though the otherworldly aspect is a bit less in this book, the horrifying nature of the reality keeps you wondering who will survive and how, and maybe get you thinking about what you would do in a similar situation.

Find it online here

***POSSIBLE SLIGHT SPOILERS HERE***

Nothing major, just something funny I wanted to share- I don’t think it will totally destroy the book for you, but it might and I don’t want to risk anyone being upset because they wanted to make connections for themselves and now I’m just rambling in a very long, run-on sentence that is going to kill my “readability” statistics, which already don’t like me because I am too verbose and use too many words and don’t use any headers, but I think you, the reader, can handle it, and is this long enough now for you to have backed out if you decided you didn’t want any kind of potential, possible, hint of a spoiler? Also, this probably will make more sense once you’ve actually read the book, so maybe go read it first and then come back for this last line, unless you’ve already read it, in which case, proceed.

Last chance.

Ok, anyway, I finished reading this book and went running two days later, where I ended up running face first into a spider web. Then two days after that, I got sick. Hmmmm….

Book Review: The Hunger by Alma Katsu

/ Denise / 1 Comment

I’m so excited to get to this book! Alma Katsu is definitely one of my new favorite authors. The Hunger is the second book of hers I’ve devoured. (If you’ll excuse the pun. Or even if you won’t.) She has a brand new book out called The Fervor, which I really want to get and read right now, but I’m forcing myself not to get any new books until I finish my current stack (which means I need to talk with work about how I can get a sabbatical, even though that isn’t a thing in my industry).

But in the meantime, I get to talk about The Hunger!

Cover of The Hunger, with a snowy tree, black tree sculpture and moon, and a dark shadow framing it.

Set on the ol’ Oregon Trail, this book follows the infamous Donner Party as they try to make their way to California. Now, like many people around my age, the bulk of my knowledge regarding pioneer trail life comes from the early computer game, Oregon Trail.  It was always a great day to walk into the computer lab, sit down in front of the old green screen computers, and push those giant floppy disks into the disk drive.  Then the decision-making began: what kind of profession should you choose?  Banker with money to buy provisions? Carpenter with better of odds of fixing the inevitable breakdowns of the wagon? (I never chose farmer.)

But when you left was the most important decision.  Leave too early and risk getting stuck waiting for your path to clear.  Choosing to leave to late, however, almost certainly condemned you to a cold, hungry, miserable death in the snowy mountain passes (assuming you even made it that far without drowning in the river, dying of dysentery, or losing your oxen). 

In real life, the Donner Party “chose poorly,” leaving much too late and taking their sweet time as they started. Katsu really captures that sense of urgency that some members of the party have, realizing this is not going to end well if they don’t get moving, but not wanting to leave the safety of the group. Slowly, it began to dawn on the rest of them that their provisions weren’t going to last forever. As their hunger increased, the distinct absence of game to hunt became ever more noticeable. Who – or what – was competing with them for food?

While I don’t remember ever actually learning about the doomed Donner debacle, I clearly absorbed it somewhere, but only the broad strokes – a group of hopeful pioneers who sought to find a shorter route to California, misjudged the time it would take, became trapped in the mountains, and eventually resorted to cannibalism.  That’s all I knew. 

That didn’t matter in the least though in being able to enjoy this book. It’s creepy and suspenseful, as an insatiable hunger stalks the wagon train. Katsu does a brilliant job of weaving the historical with the fantastical and creating a story you don’t want to stop.  (If I was still a student, this would be the kind of book that I secretly hide inside the textbook to make it look like I’m doing the assigned reading.  Although let’s be honest, I would have already completed the assigned reading too.)

The novel jumps from different characters perspectives as they move out along the trail.  Tragedy strikes early when a horribly mutilated corpse is found on the prairie.  Try as they might to convince themselves that it was an unfortunate animal attack, a sense of uneasiness takes root.  In addition to a shadowed horror, the group also tackles the rising tensions spinning out from a lack of strong leadership, competing personalities, wealth and status differences, and the sheer struggle of surviving the elements.  When they finally find themselves stranded, as we knew they would, all those horrors combine into a seemingly inescapable maw.

I have a deep appreciation for authors who can sweep a reader into history.  Obviously, this is fiction, but Katsu keeps everything grounded in the characters’ reality, with a supernatural element.  Writing from multiple characters’ perspectives can be hit or miss, but I enjoyed jumping around from person to person. We see how the struggles of the trail played out differently for individuals, while also learning what drove them west.   

And if you like this one, I also strongly recommend The Deep, the first book of hers that I read. I found it accidentally while looking for another book of the same title (which I also recommend).  Katsu’s The Deep follows a young woman recovering from the trauma of surviving the sinking of the Titanic.  As World War I rages, a fellow survivor offers her a job working as a nurse on the Britannica, Titanic’s sister ship drafted into becoming a hospital ship.  The story jumps between the two ships and slowly begins to unlock the same darkness haunting both. 

Stayed tuned here and eventually I’ll get to The Fervor as well!

Find The Hunger online:

Author’s website

Bookshop.org