I’m an eclectic reader who enjoys a wide variety of genres: romance, suspense, literary fiction, crime – although I do draw the line at horror. The first Stephen King novel I attempted scared me witless! But among the genres, historical fiction is one of my absolute favourites.
From Jean M. Auel’s The Clan Of The Cave Bear to Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall — I love them all. It’s intriguing to contemplate life without modern conventions and conveniences. Without advanced science and medicine. Without the women’s movement, workers unions and children’s welfare laws. Without the general understanding that poverty can drive good people to do bad things. Living in the past involved hardships and injustice that we can barely imagine.
But what about the advantages of living in the past? Village life offered a powerful sense of community, with strong family ties. Children played outside instead of watching screens all day. People lived closer to nature, and died in their own beds surrounded by loved ones, instead of in hospitals surrounded by tubes and machines.
History books tell us what happened, but novels give us a sense of the how and why. They draw us into the inner lives of people across time and place — inviting us to imagine their untold stories. The best historical fiction also reminds us of the mistakes of our past, so we can avoid repeating them.
They say history is written by the winners. In my historical novels Fortune’s Son and its sequel The Lost Valley, I wanted to write a fresh version of history, giving a voice to the outsiders, including the animals teetering on the extinction precipice.
The books follow the trials and tribulations of the Abbott family from the 1880’s to post World War 2 Tasmania. But they also tell the story of the last Tasmanian tigers (thylacines) soon to disappear from the Earth after a twenty-five-million-year reign. Apart from a little gem, Coorinna, written in 1953, there is no historical fiction concerning the thylacine. It’s time to fill the gap
To celebrate the upcoming release of The Lost Valley I’m giving away five Advance Reader Copies (Aust addresses only) and five eBooks (overseas readers). To enter, just comment below naming one of your favourite historical novels. Good luck! (drawn 02/09/2018)