Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell.

 This is a story of how a great loss resounds through literary history.  Hamnet was Shakespeare's son.  The father son relationship was frayed.  11 year old Hamnet was left to be the "man of the family" back home while Shakespeare lived the life of an honored playwright in London.  The relationship between Shakespeare and Anne/Agnes alternates between great love,  admiration for her strength and independence, and abandonment.  It was the time of the plague, of constant struggle and great tragedy.  If we are to accept O'Farrell's history, the tragedy of Hamlet was a way for Shakespeare to honor that son and acknowledge the debt he owed his wife.  I struggled with the omniscient narrator at first but once Anne took over as the primary voice, I was thoroughly caught up in the story.  Guess we will never tire of the Shakespeare mystery.

The Fortunes by Peter Ho Davies

This is really four separate stories all related to the Chinese-American experience. The first is told against the background of the gold rush and the building of the transcontinental railroad.  Ah Ling leaves his impoverished life in China for the "Gold Mountain"and becomes a servant to a wealthy man. The second story follows the career of Anna Mae Wong, a movie star who, although a great beauty, struggled to overcome racial barriers to her career.  The racially motivated  beating of Vincent Chin is the core of the third story. This story happened in our life time.  Did we notice?   Finally a young couple goes to China to adopt a baby girl and struggle with what it means to be hyphenated.  All explore the Chinese-American experience in various decades.  All are based are real stories.  There are positive moments but mostly the stories raise many questions about identity and the roots of prejudice.

One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow by Olivia Hawker

 If you love early pioneer stories, this is for you.  Two families must face a brutal winter in 1876 Wyoming.  Two women left alone to survive through a tragic event that makes them enemies when they desperately need to be friends.  Cora is a gentlewoman from the east who relied on the skills of her husband Earnest to make life bearable on their farm but he is in prison for murder.  Stoic Nettie Mae had worked the fields along side her unloving husband, but he was Earnest's victim.  It is Cora's daughter Beulah and Nettie Mae's son Clyde who will find a way through the families' dark histories into an understanding of the land and their own strengths.

A Soldier if the Great War by Mark Helprin

 Septuagenarian Alessandro Giuliani is on a journey to visit his granddaughter. He begins by bus but continues on foot when a young man is denied entry on the bus and the two decide to walk together.  Walking is good because he has a long story to tell to his young companion. One that begins with a patrician Roman family and follows through the twists and turns of WWl.  Lyrical, philosophical, wise, and 804 pages long it requires time to read and to ponder.  War - great or a fool's errand?  Allessandro introduces us to people and events both heroic and bizarre so you have plenty of opportunity to change your mind. Settle in and be transported.

A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier

 Violet Speedwell is a "surplus woman", one of many women with no special attributes to make them marriageable to the few men left after the devastation to the English male population in WWl.  Resentful at being dependent on her dysfunctional family, she escapes to the town of Winchester to be a typist.  It is a job she enjoys but does not find fulfilling. Then she learns of the Winchester Cathedral Broderers - a group of volunteer women who create the elaborately embroidered cushions and kneelers for the cathedral.   Here she finds other women who challenge the conventions of the time and stitch by stitch, she alters the fabric and the story of her life. Chevalier does a great job of putting you in the time and place of Violet's story so you can feel genuinely happy for her at the end.

The Guest Book by Sarah Blake

 I can't remember the last time I picked up what I thought would be a good historical fiction beach read and found myself at the end so wanting to discuss the book.  The Milton banking family - NY blue bloods, Mayflower WASPs, makers and power brokers of the world - once upon a time.  In that perfect time, they sail past a grand white house on an island off the coast of Maine and buy it - the whole island - as a summer escape, a statement of just who they are.  In 1936, Ogden, the Milton patriarch, travels to Berlin in the midst of the Olympics to renew a long term contract with a business friend.  Milton money will provide the means to make Walser steel products - hairpins and the like - except that the men standing next to the two of them in a picture as they sign the deal are ready to unleash a holy horror on the world and Walser is Jewish.  Two more generations add layers to the story ( back and forth of course ), a family history of seeing and understanding their role and responsibility through the magic mirror of denial.   But this is not a WWll story.  Many issues historical and contemporary are raised.  This story asks questions to all of us.  Can things both change and stay the same?  Are words of kindness and acceptance real if nothing changes?  What sacrifices are required? If change is necessary, can you preserve the good connected to an act of evil?  Are they one and the same? This has book group written all over it!

The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles

 Odile has landed the job of her dreams in the America Library in Paris in 1939. Literary references and Dewey Decimal numbers roll off her tongue with ease as she rushes to help the cast of characters that inhabit its hallowed grounds. But the war is coming and everything is about to change. 

In 1983, in Froid, Montana, eleven year old Lily lives next door to a very changed Odile. War is not the only thing that can drastically alter a life and many challenges confront Odile and Lily as the stories unfold, back and forth, over the next few years.  Right - wrong.  Good - bad.  Love - hate.  What can and cannot be forgiven.  All are part of the story. 

You have to wonder why after we fought the first war thousands of years ago, we didn't just come to the conclusion that that particular way of solving a problem made no sense at all.  How our big brains didn't just come up with a better plan?  The fact that so much of this story is based on real people and events allows it to move a good distance away from its "Hallmark" tendencies into a "Masterpiece" possibility. Not to mention that number of literary quotes you will want to underline or books you realize you still need to read.