Fictions have always rejoiced the readers, as it paves way for imagination and unfolds many creative illusions of human. Historical fictions explores the bygone eras from long ago. Why not step out of our current context and immerse ourselves in the glorious past? This may help us to learn something new about how and when we have reached our present context. Historical fiction has always been portal to what once was. Traditionally, the genre has been Eurocentric, awash in tales of European royals, or, alternately, about the escapades of pioneers in the US. As T.S. Eliot has written in “Four Quartets”, “Time present and time past, Are both perhaps present in the time future, If all time is eternally present, All time is unredeemable.”
Here are some of the historical fictions to explore the past and also the creative part of our brain for imagination. These books are 2022’s most intriguing, well-written, and diverse historical fiction titles.
More Thank You’ll Ever Know by Katie Gutierrez****
If you love murder mysteries, you’ll be desperate for the next word, the next chapter, while reading Katie Gutierrez’s tale of a woman named Lore who married two men in 1980s. She is only left alone after one husband kills the other when her secrets is discovered. Gutierrez brings to life one of the most complicated female protagonists in literature, while also showing how economic historical events shaped the intimate lives of countless people in the 1980s.
Woman of Light by Kali Fajardo-Anstine***
Her historical novel is based on her family’s stories, set in late 1800s and 1930s Denver. A Western novel exploring a diverse community and family, Women of Light takes readers on an adventure with vibrant characters like Mexican sharpshooter Simodecea, the Sleepy Prophet who took in an abandoned baby, charming and intuitive Luz. Fajardo- Anstine’s novel is so good, it’ll have you weeping and identifying with a rattler.
Groupies by Sarah Priscus****
Twenty- three-year-old Faun Novak is a rock’n’ roll-obsessed college dropout whose mother has just died. With only her beloved Polaroid camera and a Greyhound ticket for company, Faun sets for L.A. to escape her grief and reconnect with childhood friend Josie. Cinematic and glamorous, Priscus’s debut follows Faun’s descent into what seemed a fairy tale, but turns out to be its opposite. And the groupies!
I Must Betray You by Ruto Sepetys***
It’s 1989 in Communist Romanis, amid they tyrannical dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu. No one can be trusted. In this society ruled by fear and control, spies are everywhere. This novel is about the time when communist governments around the world were collapsing, leaving the remaining regimes clinging to power, and enlisting spies to aid in destroying families, and dreams. Cristain, who aspires to become a writer possess threat to the state, is threatened by the police to become informer. He must decide whether to betray the people he loves or use words to help take down one of the Eastern Europe’s most brutal dictators.
